- In a post-9/11 climate, the right of free expression
is under attack and endangered in the age of George Bush when dissent may
be called a threat to national security, terrorism, or treason. But losing
that most precious of all rights means losing our freedom that 18th century
French philosopher Voltaire spoke in defense of saying "I may disapprove
of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Using it to express dissent is what noted historian Howard Zinn calls "the
highest form of patriotism" exercising our constitutional right to
freedom of speech, the press, to assemble, to protest publicly, and associate
as we choose for any reason within the law.
-
- Even then, there are times more forceful action is needed,
and Thomas Jefferson explained under what circumstances in the Declaration
of Independence he authored. When bad government destroys our freedoms,
we the people have the right and duty to disobey civilly and resist.
Henry David Thoreau called it "Civil Obedience" in 1849, and
men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King practiced it successfully 100 years
later. That's our challenge today at a time our constitutional rights
are more compromised and threatened than at any previous time in our history.
Resistance is the antidote to restoring them, and freedom-loving people
have a duty and obligation to do it.
-
- That's what democracy is all about and what our Founders
had in mind when they crafted what they called "the great (democratic)
experiment" that became our Constitution and Bill of Rights, imperfect
as they are with omissions and ambiguities. In words first written by
Thomas Jefferson, they "declared their independence" in 1776
from the British king who ruled the colonies with "repeated injuries
and usurpations (by his) absolute Tyranny" using language considered
audacious then or now:
-
- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal (and) endowed....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 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....to
effect their Safety and Happiness." Try doing that today, and it's
called treason, a capital offense. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and others
thought otherwise saying we must act in our own defense when government
won't do it for us.
-
- Their "experiment" was glorious, even flawed,
and never before tried in the West in any form since its few decades of
existence in ancient Athens under its system of "demokratia"
or rule by the entire body of Athenian citizens - or at least the non-slave
adult white male portion of it meaning a selective democracy for an elite
minority excluding all others the way it's always been here. It began
in 1776 with our Declaration of Independence followed by our Constitution
ratified in 1789 and Bill of Rights in 1791. This extraordinary document's
Preamble said what our country's liberties are in 52 historic words even
though the language belied the reality:
-
- "WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to
form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity,
provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure
the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America." And
so it was with all its flaws in a nation beholden to privileged white male
property owners, doing little for others including women, nothing for black
slaves who were property, and even less for "original Americans"
exterminated to make way for "newer ones." We called it democracy
Winston Churchill once said was the "worst form of government except
for all those others that have been tried." Today it's also called
"Western civilization" Gandhi thought "would be a good idea"
when asked what he thought about it.
-
- At best, our form of it is a flawed, unfinished project.
At worst, it's heading in reverse at a time of our single-minded pursuit
of empire in an age of:
-
- -- Predatory capitalism and corporate dominance, incompatible
with democracy;
-
- -- Sparta-like iron-fisted militarism and all its fallout:
mass killing and destruction, occupation, torture and overall inhuman barbarism;
-
- -- The most secretive, intrusive, repressive and lawless
government in our history;
-
- -- An unprecedented wealth disparity former US Supreme
Court Justice Louis Brandeis once warned about saying: "We can either
have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated
in the hands of a few, but we can't have both;"
-
- -- The rollback of civil liberties and essential human
rights and needs;
-
- -- A contempt for the rule of law; -- A deepening social
decay; -- The absence of checks and balances and separation of powers
and a president usurping "unitary executive" powers to claim
the law is what he says it is; and
-
- -- The loss of our constitutional freedoms heading the
nation toward tyranny and ruin unless reversed.
-
- More than ever, the right to freely express dissent is
crucial to surviving. Lose it, as is happening, and lose everything.
-
- The Constitution's First Amendment explicitly bestows
that right no government can lawfully remove, but this one's doing it anyway.
It states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
No other nation in history ever granted more of these freedoms, and few,
if any, matched them in law or practice.
-
- Nonetheless, there were numerous examples of abusive
earlier laws violating various constitutionally guaranteed rights including
that of free expression. The Sedition Act of 1798 (with the ink barely
dry on the Bill of Rights) did it making it a crime to publish "false,
scandalous, and malicious writing" against the president (John Adams)
or Congress but allowed it against the vice-president and Adams rival (Thomas
Jefferson). It thus illegally banned dissent the Constitution allows.
-
- During WW I, the Espionage Act was passed (under Democrat
Woodrow Wilson) in 1917 imposing a maximum 20 year sentence for anyone
causing "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or (encouraging) refusal
of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States." It
was aimed at First Amendment speech protesting the war and US participation
in it everyone lawfully has the right to do. The Sedition Act in 1918
went further criminalizing "disloyal, scurrilous (or) abusive"
anti-government speech. Shamefully, the Supreme Court upheld the Espionage
Act, most notably in (Eugene) Debs (five time socialist presidential candidate)
v. United States resulting in his serving prison time for speaking out
against militarism and the US entry into WW I.
-
- Other High Court Rulings Affirming or Infringing on First
Amendment Rights
-
- -- On war protests when the Warren Court in 1968 disallowed
draft card burning claiming it would disrupt the "smooth and efficient
functioning" of the draft system. But in 1969 the Court said students
had free speech rights and could wear black arm bands protesting the Vietnam
war. And it ruled for KKK leader Brandenburg against Ohio in 1969 holding
that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it directly incites
lawless action. Then in 1971, the Court upheld Cohen against California
ruling four-letter word anti-war profanity was permissible on a jacket
in Los Angeles country courthouse corridors. Don't try it in the halls
of Congress.
-
- -- On flag burning in 1989 in Texas v. Johnson when Justice
William Brennan, writing for the majority, said "if there is a bedrock
principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not
prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea
offensive or disagreeable," and that includes the right to protest
by burning the flag in public.
-
- -- On obscenity where Courts ruled against pornographic
speech especially to protect children from it but held no government can
prohibit its possession in the home.
-
- -- On slander and libel impermissible in cases of intentional
instances of "actual malice" or speech provably false, but acceptable
for opinions which cannot be held legally defamatory.
-
- -- On political speech in the famous Buckley v. Valeo
1976 ruling when the High Court held that limits on campaign contributions
"serve the basic governmental interest in safeguarding the integrity
of the electoral process without directly impinging upon the rights of
individual citizens and candidates to engage in political debate and discussion."
However, the Court found expenditure limits imposed "substantial
restraints on the quantity of political speech." The Court also ruled
in 2003 upholding provisions barring the raising of "soft money"
contributions to a political party, not a candidate.
-
- Now the High Court is considering arguments on that restriction
in the five year old McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and may soon
rule to weaken it. At issue is a provision barring corporations and unions
from funding campaign ads 60 days before an election and 30 days before
a primary naming a candidate for federal office. In their 5 - 4 December,
2003 decision, the court upheld the provision, but its new majority may
rule otherwise inviting a tsunami of paid political speech as the 2008
federal elections heat up.
-
- -- On press freedom with High Courts ruling for and against
the media on matters of taxes and content issues involving political speech,
religious speech, "criminal syndicalism," defamation, obscenity,
personal injury, hate or other offensive speech, and other constitutional
issues affecting press freedom. Various High Courts have had differing
notions of free speech and press rights with some like the current hard
right sitting one unlikely to be shy ruling they're not what the Constitution
says they are.
-
- The Post 9/11 Climate of Fear and Attack on Dissent
-
- Thomas Jefferson said "What country can preserve
its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their
people preserve the spirit of resistance." He also said free speech
"cannot be limited without being lost." Former US Supreme Court
Justice Thurgood Marshall added "Above all else, the First Amendment
means that government has no power to restrict expression (regardless of
its) ideas...subject matter (or) content....Our people are guaranteed the
right to express any thought, free from government censorship." Former
Bush White House spokesperson Ari Fleicher's response was: "There
are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say (and)
watch what they do...." implying those who don't at best are unpatriotic
and at worst are terrorists or sympathetic to them meaning you'll be targeted
for prosecution.
-
- Indeed they will and have been, with a vengeance, with
lots of help from the dominant media, the courts and even academia, one
of the latest examples being Catholic liberal arts Emmanuel College adjunct
professor Nicholas Winset April 23. He lost his academic freedom and job
when the Massachusetts-based college fired him by letter ordering him to
stay off campus for holding a five minute classroom demonstration on the
Virginia Tech mid-April shootings school officials deemed inappropriate
even though students hearing it felt otherwise and seemed supportive.
-
- Though now unemployed, Professor Winset is a free man.
Other academics like former South Florida University (USF) Professor Sami
Al-Arian are not. He was arrested, indicted, exonerated in court but remains
imprisoned under harsh conditions in isolation reserved for dangerous hardened
criminals because of his courageous and effective public advocacy for human
and civil rights and liberation for his Palestinian people long oppressed
for six decades (http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/04/long-ordeal-of-sami-al-arian-
civil-and.html).
-
- Dr. Rafil Dhafir's fate was the same for his "Crime
of Compassion" (see dhafirtrial.net, Katherine Hughes). He, too, was
arrested, indicted, tried, convicted and is now imprisoned for violating
the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations (IEEPA) and 58 other trumped up charges
including his public stance against gross injustice and for using his own
funds and what he could raise through his Help the Needy charity to bring
desperately needed essential to life humanitarian aid to Iraqi people the
Clinton and Bush administrations disgracefully wished to deny them.
-
- The (Professor) Ward Churchill Solidarity Network web
site defends the academic freedom and right of free expression for one
of the nation's most courageous advocates of those rights and much more
for his own Native Indian peoples and all others. Churchill was viciously
and unjustifiably attacked for his essay analyzing the 9/11 attacks he
later included in his important 2003 book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.
It detailed the stunning history of US military interventions since 1776
at home and abroad, the fact that this nation has been at war every year
since inception (without exception) to the present day with one or more
adversaries as well as our post-WW II obstruction, subversion and violation
of constitutional and international law proving this country is and always
was arrogant and lawless.
-
- For his public stance on this and other injustices, Churchill
receives a steady stream of death threats, and his home has been vandalized.
He's also been viciously vilified in the corporate media and by University
of Colorado (CU) officials (taking orders from the state's governor) who
announced June 26, 2006 Churchill would be fired even though he's a distinguished
award-winning tenured professor of ethnic studies guilty of no misconduct.
His case continues so far unresolved while he remains suspended on pay
from academic duties but backed in his struggle by CU students, noted academic
members of "teachers for a democratic society," and many other
supporters speaking out publicly in his behalf.
-
- Another noted academic is also under attack and may be
denied his well-deserved tenure because of his courageous writing and outspokenness.
He's political science Professor and Israeli-Palestinian history and conflict
expert Norman Finkelstein of DePaul University in Chicago. As a prominent
public figure, he became a target of the hard right in the age of George
Bush, but it was that way earlier for him as well. Finkelstein completed
his doctoral dissertation at Princeton in 1988 on the theory of Zionism
also exposing Joan Peters' "colossal hoax" in her 1984 best seller
From Time Immemorial in which she falsely claimed Palestine was uninhabited
when the Jews arrived. Ever since, Finkelstein's been practically radioactive
for supporting the Palestinians' struggle for freedom and justice after
decades of Israeli oppression and occupation.
-
- Finkelstein is a major scholar known worldwide and a
highly regarded DePaul academic evaluated by his students as "truly
outstanding, and among the most impressive" of all university political
science professors. That's why his Department of Political Science recommended
he be granted tenure when it said of him his academic record "exceeds
our department's stated standards for scholarly production (and) department
and outside experts we consulted recognize the intellectual merits of his
work." Nonetheless, Finkelstein is being attacked and vilified by
DePaul officials making his tenure struggle a much greater issue. It's
for his academic freedom right to dissent publicly and in his writings
and for his constitutional right of free expression no one should be denied
use of even when exercised on the most sensitive of all political issues
most public figures won't touch - criticizing Israeli policies openly,
harshly and deservedly. For that he should be praised.
-
- Instead, Finkelstein is assailed and denounced. He's
called a self-hating Jew, an anti-semite, a Holocaust- denier and more.
Unmentioned is that his now departed parents survived the Warsaw ghetto
and years in concentration camps including time at Auschwitz, and that
he lost all other family members on both sides at the hands of the Nazis
who exterminated them.
-
- Nonetheless, university officials want to deny him tenure
even though two campus committees voted he be granted it. For now, the
issue is very much in play with his Department of Political Science and
College Personnel Committee supporting him and administration officials
opposed including College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Chuck Suchar
who incredibly wants Finkelstein judged according to Vincentian,"
or religious, values, not on his merits as a teacher and scholar. What
he's saying, of course, is that faculty members expressing views other
than ones DePaul considers acceptable will be punished for them.
-
- Like his CU counterpart, Ward Churchill, Finkelstein's
struggle continues unresolved thus far with DePaul students, academics
around the world and others expressing their support through the Norman
G. Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign gathering signatures on his behalf and
on a letter sent to the school's administration. It says "Dean Suchar's
letter sets a dangerous precedent, and also sends the signal that arts
and sciences are now endangered at DePaul University and in the American
academy in general" where free expression and dissent no longer will
be tolerated.
-
- The Corporate-Controlled Media's Assault on Free Expression
-
- The dominant major media have always functioned to achieve
what noted Australian academic, author and psychologist Alex Carey called
"taking the risk out of democracy" to "protect corporate
power against democracy" by acting as national thought-control police
gatekeepers controlling what information reaches the public and what's
suppressed. It's worse than ever now resulting from virtually uninterrupted
media consolidation with friendly Democrat and Republican administrations
allowing five giant global media cartels today to control most newspapers,
magazines, radio, television, book publishing, and films. Other than the
internet, they hold a stranglehold over the kinds of news, information,
entertainment and other programming and material most people get from which
they form their views of the nation's state, its government, and the world.
-
- The media giants supplying it are master manipulators.
They make sure the public gets their one-sided corporate/state-friendly
views in their role as government/business partners instead of their watchdogs.
It's called censorship, the willful suppression of free expression, ideas
and thought in an age of sophisticated mind control "manufactur(ing)
of consent" (see Manufacturing Consent - Edward S. Herman and Noam
Chomsky) in a democracy where it can't be done by force. It's an effort
to program the public mind to go along with whatever agenda best serves
wealth and power by effectively suppressing dissent against it.
-
- The work of three noted print journalists are prominent
cases in point, but shamefully what's true for them applies across all
the entire dominant media landscape that ranges from pathetic to appalling.
One example is Washington Post columnist and so-called dean of the Washington
press corps and political "pundits" at age 77, David Broder.
In many ways he's the worst of a bad lot because of his ill-deserved image
as a man of integrity, decency, honor and perceived wisdom. It hides his
dark side unprincipled support for the rogue administration in power and
his willingness to cover for it and suppress its indisputable record of
lawlessness and contempt for ordinary people everywhere.
-
- Since George Bush took office in 2001, Broder has been
out in front characterizing him as a strong, decisive, effective, and principled
leader protecting the nation against threats to our national security including
waging just wars for it. His harshest comments are reserved for Bush critics
he attacks maliciously like calling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a
"loose cannon" and "an embarrassment" for daring to
say Iraq is a lost war even though anyone with common sense knows it is
including high present and former Washington officials unwilling to deny
what Broder does.
-
- Broder is an "award-winning" journalist. It's
long past time he took his ill-deserved trophies and ended his morally
corrupt and intellectually dishonest lifetime career of misreporting at
the Washington Post where he's done it for the past 40 years.
-
- The New York Times never met a Republican president or
US-instigated war of aggression it didn't love, fully support and be willing
to give plenty of front page space to journalists like Judith Miller assigned
to wave the flag and lead the journalistic charge. Miller had the dubious
honor leading up to the Iraq war in 2003 and held it until she was forced
to resign in disgrace in late 2005 ending her controversial 28 year career
at the Times but not her presence in the corporate media where she's welcomed
on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal never shy to publish
material extremist enough at times to make a Nazi blush.
-
- Miller is picking up there where she left off in shame
across town with her latest near-full page "When Activists Are Terrorists"
piece defending New York police Gestapo thuggery against anti-war protesters.
Removed from leading the charge to wars of aggression, Miller's now out
in front supporting police brutality and illegal political spying against
people exercising their First Amendment right to protest publicly she can't
tolerate so she's taking aim against them in a venue always friendly to
her kind of extremist views.
-
- With Miller gone, the New York Times continues its pro-war
stance with military correspondent Michael Gordon, and former Miller co-conspirator,
now putting out regular propaganda like they both once did together and
Gordon always was comfortable doing alone. Michael Munk in an online February
11, 2007 After Downing Street.org article calls him "The Ghost of
Judith Miller" citing one example of his reported "evidence"
that Iran is supplying Iraq resistance fighters with "more effective
IEDs" without a shred of evidence to prove it because there is none.
The New York Times shamelessly ran Gordon's preposterous piece February
10 (and all his others prominently) titled "Deadliest Bomb in Iraq
is Made by Iran (and) Used Against US Troops" citing anonymous sources
only to back up his unsupportable claim.
-
- Like Miller, Gordon excels in state and corporate supportive
Times-speak suppressing the free and open kind his readers want but never
get from him. Most often he cites as sources unnamed "American intelligence
(or) Western officials (or those old faithfuls) high administration (or)
Pentagon officials" while almost never quoting others with contrary
views debunking his and theirs. Gordon, like Miller, is important because
he writes lead stories on what media critic Norman Solomon calls the most
valuable print real estate in the country - the front pages of the New
York Times that are read by government and business leaders and opinion-makers
everywhere. He's also the same Michael Gordon who wrote the false and
discredited story on Saddam's aluminum tubes. He now continues putting
out regular falsified reports on the Times front pages as an agent of the
state he and his employer serve.
-
- One of his latest efforts is titled "General Says
Iraq Pullback Would Increase Violence." In it he parrots Iraq military
commander General David Petraeus' administration-friendly line that reducing
US forces would increase "sectarian violence" and increase internal
instability caused, in fact, by the military occupation the general's in
charge of running. Without a US presence, the generalissimo says, "It
can get much, much worse (and) right now (with the troop surge) it's a
good bit better" claiming "sectarian" killings declined
two-thirds since January while ignoring how out-of-control things really
are and the reverse of how he and Gordon portray them.
-
- Gordon also goes along with Petraeus' assessment that
"The new hydrocarbon law is of enormous importance," ignoring
how it's structured to suck out Iraq's enormous oil wealth transferring
most of it to Big (US) Oil from Iraqis who own it. Finally, comes the
key part of the article with Gordon trumpeting the general's unsubstantiated
claim of continued (unrevealed) evidence showing Iran is providing Shiite
"militants" military and other support. Citing computer documents
supposedly seized in a March Karbala raid, Petraeus claims "There
are numerous documents which detailed a number of different attacks on
coalition forces, and our sense is these records were kept so they could
be handed in to whoever it is who is financing them" - pointing his
finger directly at Iran from his previous comments with Gordon obligingly
implying the same view on the Times front page.
-
- Along with falsifying news, the Times also excels in
suppressing it as willing Pentagon partners going along with Department
of Defense (DOD) rules on reporting on Iraq. An absurd one on its face
states: "Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable
photographs of wounded service members will not be released without service
member's 'prior' written consent." Of course, the Times and rest
of the dominant media rarely ever do what this DOD regulation forbids so,
rule or no rule, the Bush administration's happy-face-of-war is preserved
to suppress its true ugly hidden one.
-
- One other recent example of intimidation and censorship
also deserves mention. It's a story reported April 27 by AP, the Chicago
Tribune and elsewhere that a straight 'A' Chicago area Cary-Grove High
School senior of Chinese ethnicity, with no history of disciplinary problems
or trouble with the law, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct
for comments he made in an assigned creative-writing classroom essay.
Students were told to "write whatever comes to your mind. Do not
judge or censor what you are writing" and apparently were also told
to exaggerate. Lee followed instructions, made comments his teacher thought
were violent, and she reported it resulting in his arrest and removal to
an off-campus learning program.
-
- This is a small incident, likely to be easily resolved,
about one student in one school. Yet it signifies a state-induced climate
of fear and intimidation heightened by TV transmitted color-coded terror
alerts, daily reports of permanent war, imagined enemies stalking us everywhere,
and events like the over-reported and hyped Virginia Tech shootings making
it worse. Now even freely expressed creative classroom speech is threatened
with suppression and punishment unless it conforms to acceptable school
content norms, whatever they are. In the age of George Bush, it's another
reminder of former press secretary Ari Fleischer's warning that Americans
(even teenage straight 'A' high school students) "need to watch what
they say," or else.
-
- Organizations in the Lead for Free Expression
-
- The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) was
founded in 1974 to support our constitutional right of free expression
and defend against the dangers of censorship. It's an "alliance of
50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious,
educational, professional, labor and civil liberties groups" united
for that common purpose and to promote an open marketplace of ideas and
thought.
-
- It does it through local and national grassroots organizing
and activism on:
-
- -- free speech issues; -- educational activities; --
conferences and public meetings; -- publications like its quarterly Censorship
News reaching 25,000 readers;
-
- --providing help, advice, and information to individuals,
organizations and community groups around the country;
-
- -- monitoring and interpreting litigation and legislation
on First Amendment issues;
-
- -- and aiding "thousands of artists, authors, teachers,
students, librarians, readers, museum-goers and others around the country
opposing censorship" on issues ranging from:
-
- -- politics and political correctness -- the media and
internet
-
- -- academic freedom -- race and ethnicity -- religion
-- culture -- the arts and entertainment -- sex education and orientation
-- class -- science -- obscenity, and more. NCAC rejects all barriers in
a pluralistic society on any material no matter how controversial or abhorrent
to some. That's what the free interchange of speech, ideas and thought
are all about in a democratic society that can't be one without upholding
that freedom. Today, supporting and telling the truth is what Orwell called
"a revolutionary act" in times of "universal deceit"
now plaguing us. It's why organizations like NCAC are important defenders
of our constitutionally protected free speech rights as well as being bulwarks
against the forces effectively denying them to us.
-
- The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free
Expression is in this fight as well to defend "free expression in
all its forms (as) concerned with the musician as with the mass media,
with the painter as with the publisher, and as much with the sculptor as
the editor." The Center was established in 1990 and is based near
Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, VA, also near the University of Virginia
he founded in 1819 is and with which it has close ties. Its mission ranges
over a wide range of programs in education, the arts, and in judicial and
legislative matters involving all forms of free expression. Each year
around Jefferson's April 13 birthday, "Jefferson Muzzles" are
awarded to individuals or organizations committing especially outrageous
affronts to free expression. Annual William J. Brennan, Jr. Awards (honoring
the former High Court Justice) are also given to individuals or groups
showing special commitment to free expression issues and values in the
spirit of the former Justice.
-
- The Free Expression Network (FEN) is another organization,
among many others, in the struggle for free and open expression. It's an
NCAC financially sponsored "alliance of organizations dedicated to
protecting the First Amendment right of free expression and the values
it represents, and to opposing governmental efforts to suppress constitutionally
protected speech." It does it through its Free Expression Network
Clearinghouse web site as well as maintaining a listserv for private communications
among its members who also meet quarterly with invited guests to share
information and strategies. Its many member organizations include the
Thomas Jefferson Center, People for the American Way, ACLU, American Society
of Newspaper Editors, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law,
The Center for Media Education, Feminists for Free Expression, and First
Amendment Center.
-
- Post-9/11 Constitutional Violations to Our First Amendment
Rights
-
- Organizations like NCAC, the Jefferson Center, FEN and
others courageously defend our First Amendment rights especially under
attack post-September 11, 2001. Six weeks later, the USA Patriot Act began
assaulting those rights (and Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment
ones too) all of which were well eroded already.
-
- Most disturbing in the law is Section 215 under which
federal investigators may seek a search warrant relating to an ongoing
terrorism or intelligence investigation without meeting probable cause
standards for it. It can then be used for intrusive unconstitutional searches
without our knowledge for "any tangible things" about our speech-related
activities in libraries, bookstores, banks and other repositories of our
financial records, places of worship, medical provider records, internet
use records, floppy disks, computer hard drives and other documents or
places with records or information on our speech-related activities.
-
- Section 505 of the Patriot Act is about as intrusive
as Section 215 as it authorizes administrative subpoena targeting of bank
and other financial records, credit reports, telephone and e-mail logs
and more by use of a National Security Letter (NSL). Again, no probable
cause standard is needed, and those receiving NSLs are gagged from disclosing
its issuance so those targeted never know. Unlike Section 215, however,
NSLs require no judicial oversight, only that they relate, without corroborating
evidence, to an ongoing terrorism investigation on federal investigators'
say alone.
-
- A scant two decades longer than Orwell imagined, high
tech surveillance makes it possible for modern-day thought control police
to watch and know our activities, control our lives, and, if they wish,
make us believe and accept as true "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery,
(and) Ignorance is Strength" under an omnipotent state using its will
to subvert ours. Where there's a "signing statement," there's
a way to do it on top of complicit congressional pre and post-9/11 legislation
passed to make it simple enough already.
-
- George Bush is a serial abuser of the presidential practice
of attaching "signing statements" to laws passed although nothing
in the Constitution allows it. He's done it around 800 times, more than
all past presidents combined, using his usurped "Unitary Executive"
power to claim the law is what he says it is. He issued one "statement"
shortly after 9/11 authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop,
for the first time ever, without legally required Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrants on international phone and e-mail
communications originating from or received within the US.
-
- Then following the passage of the Postal Accountability
Enhancement Act of 2006, he issued another "signing statement"
giving himself broad authority to order opening US citizens' mail without
a warrant. In so doing, he violated US law and regulations including FISA
permitting warrantless surveillance only for foreign intelligence collection
between "foreign powers" for up to one year. With a warrant,
FISA courts nearly always approve requests allowing surveillance and physical
searches of US citizens' "premises, information, material, or property
used exclusively by" a foreign power or by an individual thought to
be an "agent of a foreign power."
-
- Never satisfied, the Bush administration now wants expanded
warrantless spying authority within and outside the country requesting
Congress amend the FISA law legalizing what it's already doing anyway,
law or no law. On May 2, director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell,
testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee claiming the president
may legally authorize warrantless surveillance (under the Constitution's
Article II making him commander-in-chief) but wants FISA amended so it
can do it without challenge it'll ignore anyway. It also wants to fix
and modernize what McConnell calls "communication gaps" in intelligence
gathering including "monitoring" the internet, cell phones and
other new technology as well as "transit traffic" international
phone calls and emails.
-
- Amendments requested would further erode laws protecting
against illegal searches and seizures and our First Amendment rights connected
to them. They would also allow surveillance of any non-citizens in the
country "reasonably expected to possess, control, transmit, or receive
foreign intelligence information while such a person is in the United States,"
even if they're not a target of an investigation. In addition the administration
wants legal cover to spy on anyone it claims engages in activities related
to buying or developing WMDs, even with no evidence to prove it. Bottom
line: the Bush administration wants Congress to give it near limitless
authority to spy on anyone in any way in the name of national security,
and sadly, rhetoric aside, this complicit Congress will likely give in,
further eroding what little freedom we still have.
-
- Post-9-11, other unconstitutional speech-related monitoring
began as well including John Ashcroft's short-lived Terrorism Information
and Prevention System (Operation TIPS). The idea was to use civilian informers
like postal employees to report "unusual" neighborhood activities,
police-state style. The scheme flopped when the postal service refused
to be spies. Then there was the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness
(TIA) renamed Terrorism Information Awareness to monitor anything about
anyone under the spurious cover of it relating to "terrorism."
TIA came under considerable congressional flack but some or all its activities
continue under new names relating to other Pentagon projects and initiatives
so illegal military spying continues unabated.
-
- One program is called the Threat and Local Observation
Notice (TALON) to conduct domestic intelligence by amassing a huge data
base, again spuriously related to "terrorism." It focuses on
war protesters targeted by police state monitoring of their constitutional
right to freely oppose the nation's illegal wars of aggression, meaning
in Pentagon-think they're threats to national security in the age of George
Bush. Now the Pentagon has second thoughts after drawing flack for its
illegal intrusions against peace activists. Under secretary of defense,
James Clapper, announced through his spokesperson in late April TALON's
results have been disappointing and doesn't "merit (being) continued
(as) the program (is) currently constituted...in the light of its image
in Congress and the media."
-
- What he's likely saying is TALON's activities will be
rebranded and continued, the same way all improperly intrusive domestic
spying activities drawing flack are carried out in impressive Orwellian
style. What he's not saying is all Pentagon domestic spying/surveillance
programs violate the Posse Comitatus Act's prohibitions against them.
However, last year's Public Law 109-364 (HR 5122 - Defense Authorization
Act) revised the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus allowing
the president illegal authority to give the military free reign on claims
of a public emergency or that old standby "national security"
in the "war on terror." That includes monitoring freely expressed
speech and cracking down on it if so ordered.
-
- Scott Horton reports on another Bush administration assault
on free expression in his April Harper's magazine article titled "The
Plot Against the First Amendment." In it he notes an important case
going to trial in June in Northern Virginia "that will mark a first
step in a plan to silence press coverage of (whatever the administration
calls) essential national security issues." It would ban exposing
policies like secret renditioning captives to torture-prisons to be held
without charge, brutalized, denied due process, tried in military tribunals,
and disposed of as the administration wishes. The scheme to pull this
off is the work of disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his
deputy Paul J. McNulty, the central figures in a "growing scandal
over the politicization of the prosecution process."
-
- Inspiring Gonzales' scheme is Britain's Official Secrets
Act, the latest 1989 version of which is quite detailed but is intended
overall to protect against revealing information the UK government claims
relates to "national security." The act makes it crime for designated
British subjects (in some cases all of them) under its 16 sections to do
whatever that provision prohibits including disclosing what the state wants
kept secret. Gonzales' interest is to devise a scheme based on the UK
model to keep print publications and broadcasters from reporting information
Washington claims is secret and thus criminal to disclose. In other words,
the idea is to silence the media when government wants it silenced, as
if it wasn't already secretive enough, except when it's dutifully trumpeting
state and corporate-friendly propaganda, lies and distortion not good enough
for Gonzales wanting more restrictions.
-
- Horton reports Gonzales sees this scheme "as a panacea
for his problems....Then you can torture and abuse prisoners....without
fear of political repercussions." So they won't have to "close
down Guantanamo (just) Close down the press." Horton explains further
Gonzales wanted to propose the idea in end-run fashion with no official
secrets language headlined he'd never even get Republican allies to adopt
out of fear alone. So his idea was to "spin it out of whole cloth
(by) reconstru(ing) the (repressive) Espionage Act of 1917" including
in new legislation "the essence of the UK Official Secrets Act and
try getting this version "ratified in the Bush administration's 'vest
pocket' judicial districts (of) the Eastern District of Virginia and the
Fourth Circuit."
-
- The sordid tale continues, but it's coming to a head
in a June Northern Virginia trial the outcome of which will indicate whether
the administration can criminalize legal acts of journalism on matters
it wants kept secret. If it can, Horton says what all free press advocates
would agree on. It would be a "dream world for Karl Rove and Alberto
Gonzales (and) a nightmare for the rest of us."
-
- In addition, this scheme and all other Bush administration
assaults on First Amendment freedoms make a sham out of the president's
galling hypocrisy May 3 on World Press Freedom Day. Agence France-Presse
(AFP) reported he denounced (with effrontery) a host of other countries
for their lack of press freedom including China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia,
Belarus and Venezuela (all US targets for daring to place their own sovereignty
above ours) saying "The United States values freedom of the press
as one of the most fundamental political rights and as a necessary component
of free societies" except whenever the press anywhere dares criticize
his wars of aggression and other repressive, unjust and illegal policies.
-
- That's the way things are by the rules of George Bush's
Global War on Terror (GWOT) rebranded The Long War about to undergo another
rebranding because the current name denotes the wrong message of endless
wars and occupation the public is tiring of. The name may change, but
the mission won't so long as George Bush remains president. According
to him, opposition to his wars gives aid and comfort to the nation's enemies
that's tantamount to treason. So is dissent and any criticism of his agenda
by his reasoning but not according to the law of the land.
-
- Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution defines the
strict limits of what George Bush makes light of. It states: "Treason
against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them,
or in adhering to their enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person
shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses
to the same overt act, or on confession in open court." Crimes of
treason include:
-
- -- armed insurrection or rebellion; -- mutiny or unlawfully
taking over command of the US government or military;
-
- -- sabotage including damaging or tampering with national
defense material;
-
- -- sedition intended to incite rebellion; -- subversion
defined as free speech gone too far by blatantly transmitting false information;
-
- -- Syndicalism that's an act of organizing a political
party or group advocating the violent overthrow of the government;
-
- -- Terrorism defined as the systematic use of violence
or threats of violence to intimidate or coerce the government or whole
societies by targeting innocent noncombatants.
-
- Speaking for the president, an unnamed White House spokesman
said in January, 2003 George Bush "considers this nation to be at
war, and, as such, considers any opposition to his policies to be no less
than an act of treason" although he had no legal basis to say it,
and publicly expressed opposition to government policies is not an act
of treason as the Constitution defines it above. Nonetheless, according
to Bush-think: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,"
and by implication are guilty of treason. According to Bush, if a US citizen
or foreign state "continues to harbor or support terrorism (it) will
be regarded by the United States as a hostile power," meaning, justified
or not, line up behind George Bush, or else.
-
- It's a dangerous and frightening time in America today
as the nation hurtles toward tyranny, and our right to speak out and protest
continues being challenged and undermined. That makes the battle for the
last frontier of press freedom crucial to preserving our fragile democracy
now somewhere between life support and the crematorium.
-
- The Last Frontier of Press Freedom and Crucial Battle
to Save It
-
- If the telecom and cable giants prevail, lawmakers will
remove the few remaining regulatory barriers remaining giving them full
control over what they already have most of plus one remaining free and
open public media space - the online world of internet communication still
able to produce material like this article free from the censoring power
of media giants or government to prevent.
-
- Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital
Democracy, says in his book, Digital Destiny, the telecom and cable companies
are lobbying ferociously for "new national policies....to connect
everyone to what they call a 'superbroadband' Internet highway. (If they
get their way), the companies vow that the nation will benefit from advances
in healthcare, improvements in the quality of life for senior citizens,
and major boosts for jobs and the economy." But to achieve this,
government must get out of the way and give the media giants free reign
as "Competition....will address any problem once handled by law or
regulation and also bring us the promised digital cornucopia." It's
hard believing any sane person would buy this argument, but who said lawmakers
invoke reason or the public interest when huge campaign contributions are
the mother's milk of politics, and no need guessing where they come from.
-
- Today, the internet is last frontier of press freedom
Net Neutrality supporters, like this writer, are fighting back to save.
We're up against giant corporate predators aiming to take from us what's
ours, and going against them is no easy task. There's even an astonishing
and threatening report by Steve Watson (infowars.net) that federal government
funded researchers "want to shut down the internet and start over,
citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the systems whereby
users cannot be tracked and traced all the time." They call their
proposed substitute Internet 2 claiming it would be faster and more streamlined
for those willing to pay more for it.
-
- Supporters of this idea won't say telecom and cable giants
will control it, and they and government regulation would allow only "appropriate
content" in the fast lane with whatever else is allowed "relegated
to the slow lane internet." What's even more at stake is a free and
open public internet space, as we know it, that will almost certainly disappear
if this new scheme is developed with powerful gatekeepers in charge deciding
what's published, what's not, and how much users will be charged.
-
- Also at stake is bipartisan support for "all out
mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens" plus the Pentagon's recently
announced "effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for
the war on terror," its foreign wars, and all others to come. Further,
there are government efforts to force bloggers and activists (like this
writer) "to register and regularly report their activities to Congress."
Non-compliance could result in a prison term up to one year.
-
- These are just some of the threats to the one remaining
public space available to anyone to publish material free from corporate
or government control or interference so long as the material doesn't advocate
an armed insurrection to unseat the government the law says is treasonous.
-
- Congress this year will resume debate from where the
109th Congress left off last year and likely will decide Net Neutrality's
fate. The battle lines are drawn with public advocates facing down powerful
cable and telecom giants going all out to gain what we the people can't
afford to lose - keeping the internet free and open that's become a symbol
and best hope to revive our flagging democratic society, structure and
culture close to the tipping edge of tyranny.
-
- If the media giants prevail, they'll establish internet
toll roads or premium lanes so users wanting speed and access will have
to pay more for it. Those who can't or won't will get slower service or
none at all. Content as well be controlled with whatever is judged unfriendly
to state or corporate interests kept out in a new age of online thought
control.
-
- Organizations like SavetheInternet.com are in the forefront
supporting internet freedom, and it just marked its first anniversary.
It's a coalition of more than a million "everyday people....banded
together with thousands of non-profit organizations, businesses and bloggers
to protect Internet freedom." Its coordinator is FreePress.net, "a
national nonpartisan organization (this writer belongs to and supports)
working to increase informed public participation in crucial media policy
debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive
and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial
sector (aiming for) a more democratic US media system (leading) to better
public policies."
-
- SavetheInternet's diverse members include Common Cause,
Consumers Union, American Library Association, Consumer Federation of America,
Prometheus Radio Project, ACLU, and hundreds of other groups and organizations
from unions, women's groups, religious organizations, the arts, media,
business and more.
-
- SavetheInternet.com members and the public can't afford
to lose this battle, and already over 1.6 million signatures have been
collected on a congressional petition drive to save the internet as we
know it. However, the outcome of this struggle is very much up for grabs
with media giants outspending public citizen advocates 500 to 1. Winning
in spite of their effort isn't everything, it's the only acceptable thing,
and potential media reform depends on how it turns out and whether this
nation can regain its democratic moorings now in tatters.
-
- For now, one victory has been won but at a great cost,
and it might end up less than it appears. In late December, media giant
AT & T agreed to observe Net Neutrality principles for at least 24
months as part of an FCC deal allowing its $85 billion merger with BellSouth
to be approved. The agreement does not preclude other media giants from
continuing to lobby for ending Net Neutrality that's now up to Congress
to prevent by making it permanent by law.
-
- Legislation has been drafted to prevent internet companies
from charging content providers extra for priority access. In addition,
the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (S.215) was introduced in the Senate
in January with House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
chairman Edward Markey strongly in support saying "Saving the Internet
is vital for civic involvement....and free speech." It aims to ensure
broadband service providers aren't gatekeepers and won't discriminate against
internet content, applications or services by offering preferential treatment
to select customers and not others. Nonetheless, a final resolution remains
an unfulfilled goal with powerful divergent interests on either side of
this issue vying for which way it will turn out. It's crucial the outcome
guarantees permanent Net Neutrality and that our representatives in Congress
make it the law of the land.
-
- New Postal Rate Increases Will Undermine Small Publications
-
- Free expression in the nation is coming under assault
in numerous ways that must be strongly and effectively countered if we're
to save it (http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-us-postal-rates-
undermine-small.html). Another First Amendment enemy emerged when the US
Postal Service (USPS) for the first time ever in its 215 year history implemented
what Free Press founder and noted professor of media studies at the University
of Illinois' main Champaign-Urbana campus called "a radical reformulation
of its rates for magazines" placing a much greater cost burden on
smaller publications than on larger ones standing to benefit from the policy
change.
-
- The new rates are scheduled to take effect July 15 that
will force small publications to pay postal rates as much as 20% higher
than the largest ones in a willful effort to undermine them, weaken competition
further, and make it almost impossible for new independent magazines or
other publications to be launched. The scheme was secretly crafted without
public involvement or congressional oversight by media giant Time Warner,
the largest magazine publisher in the country, and postal officials agreed
to it announcing the change protests against which have been mounted.
This is another effort toward media consolidation that will further erode
the most precious of our constitutional rights - our free and independent
speech without which no democracy can survive.
-
- McChesney explained how corrupt and sleazy the whole
scheme is that his Free Press organization is taking the lead to undo.
The deadline for USPS comments has passed, but it's never too late standing
against what no one constitutionally has the right to take from us. A good
place to start is freepress.net.
-
- Congressional Efforts to Criminalize Speech
-
- Legislation is being introduced in Congress in the form
of an Orwellian "hate crimes" bill that's being supported by
organizations like People for the American Way (PFAW), Human Rights Campaign
(HRC), and other action groups for civil and human rights everyone should
support. PFAW makes a credible case on its web site "urging Congress
to expand the current federal (hate crimes) law to protect victims of hate
crimes based on disability, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.
In addition, we have advocated extending the protections of present law
to 'all' hate crimes victims."
-
- These stated aims are noble, but the problem is Congress
will likely pass a hate crimes bill other than what PFAW wants though it
may appear otherwise, although it won't likely override a George Bush veto.
Hate and all other crimes are abhorrent, and laws are needed protecting
us from them, but not ones that harm more than they help. That's what's
likely to emerge from the 110th Congress with legislation on a hate crimes
bill called The Hate Crimes Prevention Act (H.R. 1592) already passed in
the House with the Senate soon to take it up. In an effort to criminalize
preaching hate against gays, minorities and all other targeted groups,
Congress is likely to produce a "Thought Crimes Act" that may
make dissent a crime and/or ban any exercise of free expression government
wishes to deny making it punishable by heavy fines, imprisonment or both.
-
- The 110th Congress will pass a hate crimes bill because
all Democrats will vote for it, and no Democrat-led body ever failed not
to. But what's likely to emerge, if it becomes law, may turn out to be
another blow to our First Amendment rights eroding them further that's
not what PFAW, HRC, other civil and human rights groups and ones supporting
free and open expression want or should tolerate. In the age of George
Bush, anyone may be prosecuted for terrorist-related activities without
corroborating evidence because repressive laws were passed making it possible.
If hate crimes legislation gives government similar latitude against unacceptable
speech it calls "hate," another serious blow will have been struck
against our First Amendment freedoms already reeling under so many others.
-
- John McCain's Assault On the First Amendment
-
- Republican presidential candidate John McCain proposed
his "Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children's Act" on December
6, 2006 as another example of what this hawkish, anti-democratic figure
would do if elected in 2008. If this act becomes law, it will fine bloggers
up to $300,000 for posting offensive statements, photos and videos online
as a thinly veiled hardball effort exploiting the issue of child abuse
to suppress anti-war voices. This is another intrusive effort to regulate
speech allowing the federal government the right to decide when our First
Amendment rights apply and when not to stifle criticism by imposing heavy
fines on dissenters. In John McCain's world, only government-supportive
voices will be allowed online while critics Homeland Security Director
Michael Chertoff calls "disaffected people living in the United States
(with) radical ideologies and potentially violent skills" will be
heavily fined and effectively banned.
-
- The War On Free Expression We Can't Afford to Lose
-
- A play on Thomas Jefferson's words might be that "All
tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience"
to be denied their First Amendment rights to speak, write and otherwise
communicate freely and openly without fear of recrimination in a state
they want to remain democratic but won't without that right. Today our
freedoms are jeopardized in an atmosphere of heightened fear with too few
people aware how threatened their most important one of all is at a time
there's risk they all may be lost without a concerted effort to save them.
-
- It starts by propping up our First Amendment one without
which none of the others are guaranteed or safe. Freedom of expression
is the foundation of a free society, or as Jefferson put it: "Information
is the currency of democracy (and) If a nation expects to be ignorant (uninformed
or misinformed) and free....it expects what never was and never will be."
-
- Potentially, it's never been easier if we can hold what
we have and act to restore what's eroding. There's never been more ways
to do it including an expanding and amazing online world of web sites,
databases, portals, subject gateways, desktops, laptops, palmtops, "begged
and borrowed new and used-tops," remote access, authentication protocols,
logins, iPods, eservices, ebooks, eresources, eworld-at-our-fingertips,
and a wondrous almost limitless future online world connecting potentially
everyone to almost anything with a click provided we're the gatekeepers,
not the corporate predators out to get what belongs to us.
-
- They'll do it unless we're mobilized and energized enough
to stop them in a mega-struggle where they have the resources and friends
in high places, and we're the people potentially empowered as famed Chicago
community organizer Sol Alinsky noted saying: "The only way to beat
organized money is with organized people," and with enough of them
committed they'll win. It's our choice, and the stakes are too great not
to go all out for what we can't afford to lose.
-
- It starts at the grass roots with a well-coordinated
massive outreach effort to bring together educators; human and civil rights
groups; labor; the clergy; alternative media journalists; writers; artists;
women's groups; small business; your friends, family and neighbors; and
other organizations and activists of all stripes concerned enough to build
a collective mass-action movement in numbers too large to be stopped. History's
lessons are clear. Whenever enough determined people are set on achieving
something and go about it effectively, no power of government anywhere
can deter them. Is saving our Republic not incentive enough to go for
it? It starts with saving and preserving our most precious of all First
Amendment rights to speak freely and openly and be able to spread our ideas,
thoughts and beliefs widely for the things we hold most dear - our rights
as free people.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The Micro Effect.com
each Saturday at noon US central time.
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