------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 20, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
BUSH COUNTS ON MEDIA HYPE: COLOR-CODED SCARE TACTICS ARE RUN-UP TO WAR By Leslie Feinberg >From banana yellow to citrus orange--just one shade below tomato red. The Bush administration is camouflaging state- sponsored repression with color codes. Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge proclaimed a "Code Orange" alert at a Feb. 7 news conference. They declared that the United States faces high risk of terrorist attack. "As in the past," reported the Feb. 8 Trenton Times, "officials said they had no information regarding specific terrorist threats and no indication of a time, place or manner of any attack." Yet just 72 hours later, a federal judge upheld New York City officials' refusal to allow anti-war protesters to march past the United Nations on Feb. 15. Citing "this time of heightened security," U. S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled, "The city's restriction on marching is not a restriction on pure speech, but rather a restriction on the manner in which plaintiff may communicate its message." Pure double-speak. Lawyers for anti-war activists argued that City Hall had granted permits for other mass marches, including the St. Patrick's Day Parade. "National security" is the code word. The mission is to beef up the state and dismantle hard-won civil rights and liberties. Arab, Muslim and South Asian people in the United States are the first to feel it. Immigration and Naturalization Service-forced "registrations" of these immigrants of color is reminiscent of the roundup and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Today's mass "disappearings" have caught undisclosed numbers in their dragnet. In the glow of Code Orange, U.S. police agencies are using Cold War spy tactics against Arab people. And they have arm-twisted Canadian cops into joining them. "Spy agencies from both countries are conducting physical and electronic surveillance, wiretaps and planting agents in universities to gather information," according to the Feb. 10 London Free Press. "As part of the raised alert, several diplomats based in Ottawa and the United Nations in New York City have been placed under surveillance to prevent them from agitating �migr�s should the U.S. attack Iraq, U.S. police said." In the United States, the article continued, more than 1,000 Iraqi nationals are being monitored. Police are "interviewing" 50,000 Iraqi immigrants, "in hopes someone will blow the whistle on possible terrorist activities." CYNICAL PRETEXTS On Feb. 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to line up Washington's allies at the UN behind its war against Iraq. The next day, the U.S. State Department warned of a growing threat of terrorists attacking with chemical or biological weapons. One day later, Code Orange. Top cop Ashcroft also floated the idea that the Muslim holy period of the hajj creates a domestic threat to the United States. How exactly would the five-day pilgrimage to the Saudi city of Mecca by some 2 million Muslims affect apartment buildings, hotels, bridges, tunnels and national parks in the continental United States? He didn't say. Instead, the thought police rely on racist profiling, ratcheted up to the level of official domestic policy. For example, a "wanted poster" picturing and describing a "manhunt" for Pakistani-born immigrant Mohammed Sher Mohammad Khan appeared in newspapers across the country with the announcements of Code Orange. But this was buried in the sensational coverage: "The FBI clarified in a statement that it has no specific information on Khan, but it still wants to locate and question him." (The Straits Times, Feb. 10) Muslim prisoners being held unlawfully by the Pentagon and CIA at Guantanamo are evidently being tortured, according to a widely circulated Washington Post article. A CRYING NEED FOR ANTI-RACIST SOLIDARITY Many organizations that oppose the war in Iraq see the heightened police measures as aimed at intimidating the masses of people. Carla Collins of San Jose summed up what many are muttering in lunchrooms and on shop floors, unemployment lines and picket lines. She is "very concerned they're trying to instill fear in the public to justify the war." (Mercury News, Feb. 8) Unions add that a big target of "Homeland Security" is the workers' right to organize and fight back against rampant big business. On Jan. 27 the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor passed a resolution assailing the USA Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act for serving "to undermine labor's right to organize and fight anti-immigrant attacks by expanding the government's ability to detain non-citizens, to conduct telephone and Internet surveillance, and to carry out secret searches." The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the full-text draft of the Bush administration's "Patriot Act II," which reportedly aims to give the government broad, sweeping power to increase its domestic spy network and muscle up its repressive arms. (publicintegrity.org) Ashcroft has already intervened in court cases across the United States-- even over prosecutors' objections--to call for applying the death penalty. Immigrants, documented and undocumented, are finding themselves in the cross-hairs at increasingly militarized U.S. border crossings. But when all those threatened by this repressive blueprint close ranks, shoulder to shoulder, this racist and reactionary law of the land can be quashed like old Jim Crow. And nothing will create more good will around the world than seeing people across the United States stand up to the racist warlords in Washington. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
