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Election Day thoughts on free speech and “material support of terrorism” Some election-day musings, prompted by a perplexing recent exchange on the discussion list of my union at the University at Buffalo. On October 29, I posted on that list a wonderful video clip of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on the Mike Douglas Show in 1967 (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/28/events/index.html). I said I admired the way King refused to distance himself from militancy, defined the term rather carefully, and noted that violent black militancy of the time was a product of racism, not the cause of it. My UB colleague Scott Harrigan responded with a sprightly bit of mud-slinging, saying I was engaging in “a reimagining of him to fit with particular views you now hold (especially with regard to the use of terroristic violence to achieve political goals on the parts of Hamas, et. al.).” On the one hand, this seemed berserk and out of left (or right) field. On the other hand, Scott managed deftly to smear me without quite moving into an actionable libel. It’s really quite a skillful statement. Hats off, Scott! (Just for clarity’s sake, I support any occupied people’s right to resist occupation violently, but not attacks directed specifically against civilians. This is the utterly moderate position defined by all the usual international law instruments.) There’s an interesting new local and national context for such charges of “support for terrorism.” In 2003, the Lackawanna Six (six young Yemeni-American men from a city near Buffalo) were charged with providing “material support” to a proscribed terrorist group, on the grounds that they (probably) traveled to an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and provided it with “material support” by spending the equivalent of $2.50 for uniforms, etc. Dick Cheney wanted to send Federal Troops into Lackawanna and try the L6 as enemy combatants. But instead, the government opted for 130 Homeland Security agents, placing the community under protracted siege, and threatening to try the accused as enemy combatants in Guantanamo. Predictably, they folded and “confessed,” receiving 7-10-year sentences. The federal law defining material support is a 1996 act with a macabre name: “The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act” (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=104_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ132.104). The Federal listing of proscribed terrorist groups (Hamas is one of them) can be found at http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm. As in so many things, the Obama Administration is not rolling back Bush-era legislation but pushing it forward. His agents have recently executed search warrants and commenced grand jury proceedings against a number of activists in Chicago and Minneapolis, many of them from communist organizations, on the grounds that they may have provided “material support” to “terrorist groups” in Colombia, Lebanon, and the Palestinian diaspora. But here’s the interesting thing: there’s no evidence or charge of “material support” as previously defined. Instead, speech with or perhaps even about proscribed groups is being redefined as “material support.” The AP has reported, “In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a free-speech challenge to the law from humanitarian aid groups that said some provisions put them at risk of being prosecuted for talking to terrorist organizations about nonviolent activities” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39345147). These raids are connected with the mass 2008 arrests of Minneapolis-area activists who were planning protests against the Republican convention. For more on this, see “Does terror law on 'material support' protect us or stifle free speech?”http://public.shns.com/content/does-terror-law-material-support-protect-us-or-stifle-free-speech; http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m70099). We seem to be getting very close to the point at which US citizens opposing Colombian military assaults on oppositional peasants and Israeli massacres in Gaza may be subject to prosecution for providing “material support” to terrorism. We may already be there. And Scott’s whimsical attack on me has a little more bite than it might have just a year ago. Three interesting corollaries: first, there is a strange symmetry between this Supreme Court ruling and its January ruling in “Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission,” which used free speech arguments to defend the unlimited flow of corporate money to political campaigns. Just as the former decision redefines legal free speech as illegal money (i.e. material support), so the latter redefines illegal money as legal free speech. Second: I was at a meeting last night at which the attendees discussed the strange absence of civil disobedience from the repertoire of most political radicals. The last instance anyone could recall of local civil disobedience was a 2003 sit-in at a military recruiter’s office? Why is this? Perhaps because civil disobedience itself is being redefined not simply as illegal (which it has always been, by definition), but as conspiracy and perhaps even terrorism. People practicing civil disobedience in the sixties risked clubs, dogs, water hoses, and a few nights in jail. People practicing it now risk hard time. Third, the US is egregiously selective in its prosecutions of material support for the groups it defines as terrorist. This is a little involved, but still interesting. One of the groups on the proscribed terrorist list is “The People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI, also MEK, MKO) (Persian: سازمان مجاهدين خلق ايران sāzmān-e mojāhedin-e khalq-e irān)” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Mujahedin_of_Iran#Designation_as_a_terrorist_organization). Its history is complicated, incorporating Marxist as well as Islamic elements, and support from Saddam Hussein. But it has generally been violently opposed to Iran’s Islamic government, and has been engaged in bombings and other attacks on Iranian government officials and civilians. Because of their anti-Iran ideology and practice, they have become protégés of the US government in camps in Iraq: “They are currently under the guard of US Military. Defectors from this group are housed separately in a refugee camp within Camp Ashraf, and protected by U.S. Army military police (2003-current), U.S. Marines (2005–2007), and the Bulgarian Army (2006-2008)”. Because of their anti-Iran stance, they have notable allies in Washington: “Past supporters have included Rep. Tom [‘Nuke Mecca!’] Tancredo (R-CO), Rep. Bob Filner, (D-CA), and Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, ‘who became involved with the [PMOI] while a Republican senator from Missouri.’ In 2000, 200 U.S. Congress members signed a statement endorsing the organization's cause.” So all of these anti-terrorist crusaders, along with George Bush and Barack Obama, are guilty of providing “material support” to a US-designated terrorist group. Just as the endless “war on terror” has brought Bush and Obama together, so this assault on civil liberties is bringing together right and left libertarians. I’m going out to vote for a party that opposes criminalizing free speech. Happy Election Day! But as John Ashcroft once said, “Be careful what you say!” ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
