----- Original Message ----- From: Thomas Gomez To: FSRN Steering Committee ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FreeMix Radio ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Dave Z ; Shawn Gainor ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; priya warcry ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; KPFK LA LSB ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; ken hechtman ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; friends of KPFT ; hprt ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Not In Our Name ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 4:03 AM Subject: RE; US Government Seizes Passport of FSRN Journalist in West Bank
She's FSRN last I heard....anyone know Riva from NLG? This is way bad....I know the merger hasn't happened yet, I sent this to the board anyway....reporters get hurt covering conflict zones all the time. Lets try to do what we can that it isn't our reporter this time. sing and dance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 02:00:38 +0300 From: sing and dance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: jenka's journal: palestine 3 may 2006 palestine the US government just stole my passport! i went to the consulate to get more pages added to my passport, and when i handed it in they looked up my name, found a 'hit' on their database, and refused to return my passport. so here is the US agency that is supposed to look after me when I'm in a foreign country, acting instead as a gestapo-like organization, leaving me totally vulnerable in a country where travelling around without a passport is impossible. in case i didn't mention it before, or maybe i didn't mention it enough, this country is chock full of military checkpoints -- hundreds of them! and at every checkpoint, i am supposed to present my US passport. a palestinian friend responded, "now you are in prison, with us!" -- referring to the fact that millions of palestinians are caught in this situation -- unable to travel, unable even to leave their village or town, because of the complete israeli control of their country (or what is SUPPOSED to be their country, under the united nations resolution, but has been under military occupation by the country next door since 1967 - to the point where it is not considered a country, but a 'territory'). so.....why did they seize my passport, you ask? please tell me, if you find out! because i would LOVE to know. I am now in that kafka-esque position of trying to navigate various bureaucracies of various federal agencies to try to find SOMEONE who has SOME INFORMATION on why my own government would treat me like a persona-non-grata. why? i ask the consulate. they tell me it is the US Marshals who have put a hold on my passport (which presumably means that there is a warrant on me, as the US Marshals are the nation's premier warrant-enforcers). So I call the US Marshals, three separate offices of the US Marshals, including the Federal Investigative Division. They search through their databases and find nothing. NOTHING! which doesn't surprise me, because I know I have done nothing wrong. But maybe, in this time of constitutional stripping and secret government, in which immigrants are rounded up by the thousands and put into secret camps, and torture is approved for use on 'enemy combatants', when wiretaps are approved for use on virtually everyone, when activists are put on FBI lists and their every movement is tracked - simply because they are politically active and aware (supposedly the cornerstone of democracy is civic participation, right?) -- maybe, at a time like this, having done nothing wrong is not enough to avoid being a target of the US government. this article, "The US is Strangling Its Democracy", published today, says it well: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=050106225718 and the irony of the whole thing came clear to me, as it was starting to sink in that the US government was REALLY and ACTUALLY stealing my passport, as I stood there in the waiting room of the US consulate, behind two layers of tight security, with bulletproof glass and armed guards standing between me and the outside, I noticed a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence on the wall. I recognized it from the prominent 'John Hancock' signature at the bottom -- which is probably the only thing most americans remember about the declaration. as for the words of the document itself, well, let me give you this reminder: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. " The document goes on to issue a list of grievances against the King of England, listed as the reasons for starting a revolution against him. Among these grievances: " He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures." "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power." "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." "For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments." "For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever." "For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury" ----------- Now, I'm not a big fan of the founding fathers -- their genocide of native americans and enslavement of africans were built into their system of government from the beginning -- but as a bumper sticker I read recently said, "The Constitution isn't perfect, but it's better than what we have now!" So as Congress debates implementing even more draconian measures of surveillance and control, and expanding the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. (Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, as these men in their suits sit in mansions and determine the fate of the world (in ways that will benefit them financially, of course), I urge everyone to re-read these documents: the declaration of independence: http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html the constitution: http://www.usconstitution.net/const.txt thomas paine's 'common sense': http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/singlehtml.htm -as one of the 'founding fathers', paine's thoughts on government are especially important to remember at a time like this. and most especially, the words of ben franklin, which I found again just now on the website of my congressman as I solicited his help in getting my passport back: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Ben Franklin Meanwhile, I am here in the prison called Palestine, with 5 million Palestinians stuck as I am, unable to move more than a few miles due to the complete Israeli apartheid system. And I hear in the distance music -- Jewish music, and fireworks are in the distant air. And I remember that today is the Israel 'Independence Day', known to Palestinians as 'Al-Nakba' ('The Catastrophe') -- the day on which, 58 years ago, the state of Israel was created, here, on Palestinian land. The day that the United Nations directed that half of Palestine be given to the Jews, to make a Jewish homeland (Israel), while the rest be left for the Palestinians -- and those who lived in the 'Jewish half' were to be pushed aside, killed, or otherwise made invisible, so that the 'Jewish homeland' would always and completely be made up of a majority of Jews. A demographic ethnocracy that they dare to call a democracy. I can hear the music clearly, loudly -- it is less than a mile away, just on the other side of a massive 30-foot wall. There the Israeli settlers are celebrating, cheering, dancing.......while the Palestinians are mourning, brooding, praying, and remembering what they've lost. ----------------------------- http://www.jenkasjourneys.org ----------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blab-away for as little as 1¢/min. Make PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Everything you need is one click away. 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