Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens (2)

Part 2 of Naomi Wolf's 6th principle on how to destroy a democracy.

2. Arbitrary Search and Seizure

Naomi Wolf's initial citation comes from the United States Constitution: the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

She emphasizes the historical role of the amendment which lies in the firsthand experience of the colonial Americans of “how abusively authorities [British Crown tax agents] could use the power of a blanket warrant to break into their homes and seize private papers […] rip up their trunks and cabinets […] and haul off their goods – even if they weren't hiding anything that they should have paid taxes on”. Wolf further notes that “the Fourth Amendment specifically rejects vague general warrants” as given by Bush's USA PATRIOT Act and that “most of us don't fully understand the details of the debate over the Bush administration's efforts to avoid getting a legal warrant for each time that it reads our e-mails, opens our mail, and listens in on our phone calls – or enters our homes unbeknownst to us”.

The only examples she offers is Brandon Mayfield, an American lawyer erroneously accused by the FBI to have left his fingerprints on evidence of the Madrid train bombings 2004. The FBI had bungled a fingerprint match, see Washington Post: $2 Million Will Be Paid For Wrongful Arrest After Madrid Attack!

The so-called Patriot Act can be read here:

UNITING AND STRENGTHENING AMERICA BY PROVIDING APPROPRIATE TOOLS REQUIRED TO INTERCEPT AND OBSTRUCT TERRORISM

(USA PATRIOT ACT) ACT OF 2001

(end of summary)

Justice Robert H. Jackson (chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials) once during a trial put the importance of these rights aptly, after quoting the Fourth Amendment:

“These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. And one need only briefly to have dwelt and worked among a people possessed of many admirable qualities but deprived of these rights to know that the human personality deteriorates and dignity and self-reliance disappear where homes, persons and possessions are subject at any hour to unheralded search and seizure by the police. But the right to be secure against searches and seizures is one of the most difficult to protect. Since the officers are themselves the chief invaders, there is no enforcement outside of court.”

Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens (1)

This is the 6^th of 10 steps to destroy a democracy as discussed in Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. The chapter (Nr 7) is divided into 3 parts, the first one being summarized here and equipped with links, additional information and some neutral remarks (discussion follows in later posts).

1. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens

Wolf starts the theme with talking about her own experiences at U.S. airports:

“In 2002, I began to notice that almost every time I sought to board a domestic airline flight, I was called aside by the Transportation Security Administration and given a more thorough search. When this was happening on nine flights out of ten, I asked the officials about the special search. They told me that the search was due to the quadruple 'S' that routinely came up on my boarding pass.

There are several reasons why one might receive a quadruple 'S' on one's boarding pass if one doesn't fit a terrorist profile: buying a ticket at the last minute, for instance, or paying in cash. But those circumstances didn't apply to me. I kept asking, but not getting real answers.

This stepped-up search became so routine as I traveled that companions who were flying with me began to simply say, "I'll meet you at the gate," even before we got through the security line.

On yet another preboarding search, I asked yet again. The TSA agent searching me, a young woman, said pleasantly, "You're on the list."

"The list?" I asked. "What list?" Her supervisor abruptly ended our exchange, took over from her, and then moved me on.”

The psychological effect of the action – even if performed on a respectable citizen – is one of feeling small, vulnerable and intimidation face to face with the authorities:

“When you are physically detained by armed agents because of something that you said or wrote, it has an impact. On the one hand, during these heightened searches of my luggage, I knew I was a very small fish in a very big pond. On the other hand, you get it right away that the state is tracking your journeys, can redirect you physically, and can have armed men and women, who may or may not answer your questions, search and release you.”

Some of Wolf's further examples of persons stopped at U.S. airports for being on the No-Fly-List:

Washington Post: “Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List”

Washington Post: “Hundreds Report Watch-List Trials”

Wahington Post: “Cat Stevens Held After D.C. Flight Diverted”

“Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, American peace activists, tried to check in at the San Francisco airport for a trip to Boston in August 2002. Airport personnel who said that these middle-aged women were on the "master list" called the police and notified the FBI. At least twenty other peace activists are confirmed to be on the list: A 74-year-old Catholic nun who works for peace was detained in Milwaukee; Nancy Oden, a leader of the Green Party, was prevented from flying from Maine to Chicago.” [Wolf's examples from here].

“Free speech advocates are on the list: King Downing of the ACLU was detained in the Boston airport in 2003. David Fathi, also of the ACLU, was detained as well. Scholars who defend the Constitution are on the list: in 2007, Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton, one of the nation's foremost Constitutional scholars, who had recently spoken critically of Bush's assault on the Constitution, was detained for being on a "watch list." A TSA official confirmed informally that it was probably because Murphy had criticized the President and warned him that his luggage would be ransacked.”

Further examples:

Members/staff of foreign government or international regulatory body

Evo Morales, President of Bolivia

Nicolas Maduro, foreign minister of Venezuela

Since the No-Fly List contains only names and some meager additional data like birth dates, it is not surprising that among the “stopped” passengers there were children, nuns or such having a garden name like 'Robert Johnson' (used by some alleged terror suspect). The list also contained the names of dead persons, including the majority of the alleged 9/11 hijackers and Saddam Hussein. As a highlight (after the release of Wolf's book, Nelson Mandela found his name on the list.

Trouble at the airport is one thing. Wolf goes on by mentioning fears of future misuse this kind of secret lists as for instance with job applications. Heavier implications follow if people are arrested based on this list – or even tortured. Wolf mentions Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was arrested 2002 at the Kennedy Airport and, after two weeks, deported to Syria (remember Robert Baer!) where he was kept for more than a year and tortured.

“The Canadian government pursued a two-year investigation and concluded that it had all been a terrible mistake -- Arar actually had no ties to terrorists whatsoever. Canadians were so appalled by this miscarriage of justice that the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned. After he was released with his government's help, Arar, emboldened perhaps by living in a working North American democracy, sued the U.S. government.

The Bush administration refused to concede that it had been wrong; refused to provide documents or witnesses to the Canadian investigators; and finally announced in January 2007 that they had "secret information" that justified keeping Arar on the list.”

Click here to learn details from Mr. Arar's website.

As a case of an American citizen being subject to an intense investigation the severe case of army chaplain James Y. Yee is summarized by Wolf. Yee was finally released and all accusations were dropped.

Wolf also mentions that

“ The United States has recently been refusing visas to various respected Muslim scholars from universities such as Oxford -- scholars with no ties whatsoever to terrorists -- because they have been critical of U.S. policy. This has happened before in America: in the 1950s the FBI confiscated the passports of intellectuals and journalists who had been critical of anticommunist witch hunts.”

and refers to MacPherson's All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone, p. 339.

Wolf does not give an example for Muslim scientists being refused visa for criticizing the U.S. government. But she goes on by quoting from William L. Shirer's Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 on how the Nazis performed an airport search. She mentions that about 36% of all Germans living under the Nazi regime said that they had been arrested, interrogated, and released. A similar tactics applied by Pinochet in Chile's slums:

“Every so often the military would enter a slum, arrest people in random sweeps, keep them behind bars briefly, and then let them go. The only real reason was to intimidate the population.”

Naomi Wolf finally puts forward the following – from her point of view - rather rhetorical question:

“Are the cases we hear of Americans being caught up in detention, searches, and releases merely Homeland Security or TSA zealotry? Or are the stories effective PR about a new reality? Fascist propagandists target individuals, detain and release them, and then publicize the stories. Could all these [mentioned above] be victims not of simple clumsiness but, rather, examples of the fact that perfectly ordinary Americans can now get entangled in the increasingly punitive apparatus of the state?”

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(end of summary)
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While in the U.S. spooky TSA and other governmental authorities are still on their way to “strengthening America”, the European Court of Human Rights is already back-paddling: see “Stop and search powers illegal, European court rules. Judges in Strasbourg say UK powers under Terrorism Act 2000 violate convention on human rights.”

... to be an agnostic,

but to be an outright atheist when it comes to the bible, the tora, the koran, the book of mormon, the veda, the guru granth sahib ... or some south pacific tribesman's revelations about prince philip ...

... ein agnostiker sein,
aber ein ausgesprochener atheist, was die bibel, die thora, den koran, das buch mormon, die veden, den guru granth sahib betrifft ... oder die Offenbarungen irgendeines südpazifischen Hinterwäldlers über prinz philip ... 

The Devil on Duty

In recent articles highest circulation German newspaper Bild calls Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinedschad „der Irre von Teheran“ (the Madman/Lunatic of Tehran, see example1, example2).

Before, Saddam Hussein had been dubbed „der Irre von Bagdad“ by German journalists. Still before, Slobodan Milosevic was the recipient of this title (among other most hair-raising such as Monster, Sociopath or Butcher of Belgrade. The vocabulary of war propaganda is relatively stable for short periods of time. To call a foreign Head of State a lunatic is an old feature of war mongers among the news- and statesmen (see Morelli's principle 3) - the devil on duty. In recent years certainly George W. Bush has been the devil on duty par excellence, any good search machine displaying a huge load of results when searching for „bush devil“.

Morelli's Principle 3 of war propaganda -„The Devil on Duty“ - is certainly not to be understood as saying that each demonizing of a politician is done with the intent to invade his country but rather the other way round: having the intent to potentially starting a military conflict goes hand in hand with demonizing mostly one political leader (instead of a whole population) of the opponent.

Most famous, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on 20 September 2006 during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, when, after recommending Chomsky's „Hegemony or Survival“ at lenght, referring to G.W. Bush:

The Devil is in their home. The Devil, the Devil himself is in their home. The Devil came here yesterday [laughter and applause]. Yesterday the Devil was here, in this very place. This table from where I speak still smells like sulfur. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, in this same hall the President of the United States, who I call "The Devil," came here talking as if he owned the world. It would take a psychiatrist to analyze the US president's speech from yesterday.

The case gave rise to an extra enty at wikipedia. The whole speech with English voice-over U.N. Interpretation can be watched at the U.N. Webcast service (only with Real Player, the devil's between 02:28 and 03:17).

Knowing about the various hegemonic U.S. undertakings and propaganda against Venezuela under Chavez, his application of „the devil on duty“ becomes more coherent (but not more rational).

God's Own State: Russia

Boiko the Great

News agency Reuters reported last week "Russian dairy to dismiss women over abortions". The story is about Russian "oligarch" Vasily Boiko-Veliky announcing his orthodox fundamentalist staffing policy in an interview. His dairy "Russkoye Moloko" was "established  to promote the revival of the Orthodox church in Russia" by applying new rules: no new employees having previously performed abortion, a wedding ultimatum for the unmarried (living in sin) until October 14 , ... and the wildfire catastrophy in Russia this summer being a punishment for sin but improvable by suggested weddings. (Back to the old days of spell and counter-spell)

Boiko-Veliky (his artist name meaning "Boiko the Great") is not the only Russian business man or politician (which often comes to the same thing in Putin's Russia) carrying his prayer-book . Putin himself embraces and propagates "traditional confessions" - as he called Russian Orthodox Church. And as with Yeltsin's tennis club - which anyone had to visit in order to get acquainted to him and make some money, it almost comes down to an obligation in todays Russia to expose oneself as a believer, not unlike for U.S. politicians in order to win elections. No TV-event without orthodox priests.

German Sterligoff

Another Russian business man, German Sterligoff, showed similar fundamentalist attitudes towards labour and politics. In a talk  together with Boiko the Great and some journalists of radio station "Echo of Moscow" he expressed his religious redneck views as shown by the following Question-Answer excerpt [translated by a member of base 2014].

Interview in Echo of Moscow

Question: What shall we do with all the godless people, gays and lesbians?

Sterligoff: As it is written by apostle Paul "there shall be blood on their heads" [this quotation is rather known by Leviticus 20:33: "If a man has intercourse with another man in the same manner as with a woman, both of them have committed a disgusting perversion. They shall be put to death by stoning", comment by base2014]

Question: Are  there gays and lesbians mentioned explicitly?

Sterligoff: Yes, it said specifically about men having intercourse with other men.

Question: So, they ought to be killed?

Sterligoff: Yes, unconditionally.
----------------------------
Question: German, do you exercise birching?

Sterligoff: Birching whom?

Question: Children?

Sterligoff: Yes sure! It's written in the holy scripture: "you are an enemy to your son if you spare birch for him" ... It's important to do it with love. Because, if you punish your children with anger, it humiliates them - ...

Question: Do you birch your employees?

Sterligoff: No, I don't. When it comes to abortions - since already 15 years it has been forbidden [in my firm]  - I pay no salary to those who kill children. I don't have such female employees.

Question: Does that mean that your employees are aware of this precondition?

Sterligoff: Yes, during our interviews I ask everyone if they have performed abortion or not. As a rule, they don't lie and answer openly. It's such a question where it's hard to lie.

Question: But you haven't issued any printed directives on this topic?

Sterligoff: No, everybody simply knows it. It's self-evident because it's scary to work with a murderer of a child. Because you don't know - since he/she had managed to kill a child - ... The same applies to men, bacause some of them force their broads to perform abortion.
----------------------------------------
Question: This is a very important moment for me, because I have to understand that this political correctness which we all curse all the time and which exists in Europe as well as in the U.S. ... Maybe the time has came for us to adopt certain provisions or to initiate their adoption?

Sterligoff: I'm convinced that we have to adopt all your laws based on the holy scripture.

Some More Provocations

Best Time of Her Life
Slightly perverted female Israeli soldier exposes her power over blindfolded hand-cuffed Palestinian prisoners in pics on Facebook (this is one interpretation). Officer Eden Abergil's photos will undoubtedly cause a huge outrage, especially in the Arab world - one more provocation.  At the time of posting, this was not available in German speaking online news.
see also France24


Few Days Before - Holocaust Mockery
Haaretz reports: Iran launches cartoon website aimed at questioning the Holocaust, giving the link to a website and stating first that Iran had launched it and later on that the site would be "financed by a non-governmental cultural foundation" - but without giving any source. The European Jewish Press, more carefully, said that "the website is hosted on an Iranian server and, according to media reports, is sponsored by a non-governmental cultural foundation". However, the cartoons are designed for an immense provocation on Jewish side.


Could both events be "state provocations"? Or, more guardedly, products of systematic war propaganda? One might easily be inclined to say so in the case of the Holocaust Mockery. But was Officer Abergil really that stupid to think of no consequences when publishing those photos on one of the world's most frequented social networks?

Egypt's Cyber Dissidents

German GEO 08/2010 reports about Egyptian bloggers. The Report entitled "Cyber Dissidenten. Demokratie 2.0" tells stories of various internet publishers bullied and/or tortured  by Mubarak's henchmen - the Egyptian police. (German mp3 coverage here)
Various Egyption bloggers - men and women - are introduced and their sufferings, fights and achievements briefly touched:

Wael Abbas - blogger - http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com

Karim el-Beheiry -  blogger - http://egyworkers.blogspot.com/

Ahmad Gharbeia - programmer and blogger from Cairo coaching other bloggers, often in internet security - http://ahmad.gharbeia.org/

Gamal Eid - Egyptian lawyer frequently defending bloggers, director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) - www.anhri.net; Gamal Eid is mentioned in this Amnesty International report: EGYPT MUST DROP CHARGES AGAINST THREE ACTIVISTS

Noha Atef - concentrates on (in her own words) " the daily experiences of citizens [..] with the Egyptian ministry of interior [...] which continues to protect the perpetrators and to deny victims access to justice" - http://www.tortureinegypt.net

Nora Younis - blogger, the hero of the "Black Wednesday, 25-05-2005" - http://norayounis.com/

Hossam el-Hamalawys - Marxist, reports of the miserable working conditions in Egypt - http://www.arabawy.org/

and others. If only 5 of these mentioned would meet offline in some Cairo café, bazar or some other public place, they could be arrested by the police due to the fact that Mubarak rules the country under emergency law since 1981. "If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt" Robert Baer once said. The US financially and militarily support the Mubarak regime as the US Departement of State eagerly and proudly admits on its website (see section "U.S.-EGYPTIAN RELATIONS").