America's Creeping Police State

[yathrib]

AlterNet
America's Creeping Police State
By Rania Khalek, AlterNet
Posted on May 31, 2011, Printed on June 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151150/am ... lice_state

The late Chalmers Johnson often reminded us that “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.” His warning rings more true by the day, as Americans watch the erosion of their civil liberties accelerate in conjunction with the expansion of the US Empire.

When viewed through the lens of Johnson’s profound insights, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kentucky v. King makes perfect sense. On May 13, in a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Court upheld the warrantless search of a Kentucky man’s apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared those inside were destroying evidence, essentially granting police officers increased power to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police are barred from entering a home without first obtaining a warrant, which can only be issued by a judge upon probable cause. The only exception is when the circumstances qualify as “exigent,” meaning there is imminent risk of death or serious injury, danger that evidence will be immediately destroyed, or that a suspect will escape. However, exigent circumstances cannot be created by the police.

In this case, the police followed a suspected drug dealer into an apartment complex and after losing track of him, smelled marijuana coming from one of the apartments. After banging on the door and announcing themselves, the police heard noises that they interpreted as the destruction of evidence. Rather than first obtaining a warrant, they kicked down the door and arrested the man inside, who was caught flushing marijuana down the toilet.

The Kentucky Supreme Court had overturned the man’s conviction and ruled that exigent circumstances did not apply because the behavior of the police is what prompted the destruction of evidence. Tragically, an overwhelming majority of the Supreme Court upheld the Conviction. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that citizens are not required to grant police officers permission to enter their homes after hearing a knock, but if there is no response and the officers hear noise that suggests evidence is being destroyed, they are justified in breaking in.

In her lone and scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the Kentucky Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling “arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.” She went on to stress that “there was little risk that drug-related evidence would have been destroyed had the police delayed the search pending a magistrate’s authorization.”

Not only did the police instigate the destruction of evidence by banging at the door and shouting “Police, police,” but they could have easily obtained a warrant since they likely had probable cause. There is no reason to believe that delaying the search to obtain a warrant, as legally required, would have led to the destruction of evidence. This was pure laziness and contempt for the constitution on part of the officers.

An argument could be made that entering without a warrant saves money, time, and resources, especially if it’s obvious that a crime is being committed. However, the protection of our rights is worth the money, time, and resources. Living in a free society requires that we make these sacrifices, even at the peril of our safety if need be. In fact, I would argue that the wasting of money, time, and resources is the fault of a deeply flawed drug policy, not the protection of those pesky civil liberties always getting in the way of law enforcement.

As for the implications of such a ruling, arming the police with more power will have serious consequences for an already institutionally biased criminal justice system in regards to the “war on drugs.” Jordan C. Budd notes the existence of a “poverty exception” to the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment, a bias that renders much of the Constitution irrelevant at best, and hostile at worst, to the American poor. While attacks on the Fourth Amendment negatively affect all members of society, minorities and the poor, generally the targets of the drug war, are more vulnerable to the abuse of power that follows.

Chief Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit recently decried this “unselfconscious cultural elitism” in a case upholding the ability of police to clandestinely attach a GPS tracking device to the underside of a car parked in the driveway of a modest home:

Poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can’t afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it. . . . When you glide your BMW into your underground garage or behind an electric gate, you don’t need to worry that somebody might attach a tracking device to it while you sleep. But the Constitution doesn’t prefer the rich over the poor; the man who parks his car next to his trailer is entitled to the same privacy and peace of mind as the man whose urban fortress is guarded by the Bel Air Patrol. . . .We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.

The same holds true in the context of warrantless door-busting. In the Kentucky case the police smelled marijuana in the hall of the apartment complex that the initial suspect they were tracking had taken refuge in. An apartment hall is a common space shared by many people, who could be emitting various odors from inside their homes, such as cooked onions or fresh paint. Had this been a single-family home in the suburbs, there is no way the smell of pot would have been detected from the doorway of the house across the street.

Scott Lemieux made this point well when he wrote:

As with the broader drug war, civil-liberties violations have a disparate impact in terms of race and class. It is generally not wealthy white suburbanites who have to worry about being stopped and frisked on the streets or having their doors broken down. Like the grotesquely harsh sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine possession, this erosion of Fourth Amendment rights has persisted because wealthy people are largely insulated from its effects.

The failure of society at large to secure the rights of all segments of the population, has resulted in what can only be described as a nail in the coffin of our right to privacy, at least for those who can afford it.

In her dissent, Ginsburg went on to ask, “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?” While I agree with Ginsberg’s premise, I would go further in arguing that the war on drugs has created a dangerous precedent where even when a search warrant is obtained, we are far from secure in our homes.

For example, about a week prior to the Kentucky ruling, police authorities in Pima County, Arizona, fired 71 shots in seven seconds at 26 year old Jose Guerena, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq. Guerena was murdered in the middle of the night while his terrified wife and 4-year old son hid in the closet. The SWAT team that killed him was there to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multi-house drug crackdown. As Guerena lay dying with his wife pleading for help, the SWAT team barred paramedics from entering the home.

Guerena’s wife asserts that her husband grabbed his gun because he thought his family was the victim of a home invasion, not a police raid. This is understandable given the family’s location in Arizona, a state where anti-immigrant militants are notorious for the cold-blooded murder of hispanic families. Deputies initially justified their actions by claiming that Guerena fired at officers but later said he kept the gun safety on and never pulled the trigger.

As it turns out, Guerena’s murder is just the most recent in a long line of botched paramilitary operations. According to an investigation carried out by the CATO Institute, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 25 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

The CATO study found that some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.

These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.

Considering the level of brutality we have been dishing out around the world, from the “war on drugs” to the “war on terror,” the erosion of our civil liberties is sadly inevitable. Did we really think that we could wage war and occupy other nations with checkpoints, invasive surveillance, and brutal violence without these same policing tactics spreading to our country?

After sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad to terrorize people in their homes around the world, we shouldn’t be surprised that our government would eventually employ the same actions against its own citizens. Just as Chalmers Johnson predicted, our imperialism abroad is destroying what is left of our democracy at home. From warrantless wiretapping to warrantless door-busting, this is what a police state looks like.

Rania Khalek is a young, progressive activist with a passionate dedication to social justice. Check out her blog Missing Pieces or follow her on twitter @Rania_ak. You can contact her at raniakhalek@gmail.com.
© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151150/
[w1]

[hanshan]

...

In her lone and scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the Kentucky Supreme Court, arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling “arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.” She went on to stress that “there was little risk that drug-related evidence would have been destroyed had the police delayed the search pending a magistrate’s authorization.”

In her dissent, Ginsburg went on to ask, “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?” While I agree with Ginsberg’s premise, I would go further in arguing that the war on drugs has created a dangerous precedent where even when a search warrant is obtained, we are far from secure in our homes.

The CATO study found that some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.

Those who suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Kentucky is ‘no big deal’ or that it’s ‘alarmist’ to think otherwise, must not understand the extent to which the boundaries are pushed when the Court makes exceptions to our rights. Nor do they comprehend that once lost, civil liberties are impossible to reclaim. With SWAT teams already injuring and at times killing the wrong people to serve warrants, just imagine the abuse to come given the increased power the Court has bestowed upon the state.

Appalling.


...

[semiconscious]

'creeping'?! as in, 'an elephant creeping up on you'?...

[Sweet Tooth]

There is no "creeping" police state. It is here already, full blown and fully grown.

[Peachtree Pam]

There is no "creeping" police state. It is here already, full blown and fully grown.

Word.

[82_28]

Yup. It's here for real. It's been upon us for decades, but here is now the difference: The normalization of such in the populous' minds and a new generation of police that don't know that there used to be freewill. And so it goes. . .

I remember like 12 years ago when I moved from Denver to Seattle, like a day or two before I moved, I went into a 7-11 and some jock ass asshole dick that used to sweat all of us in high school rolled in at the same time. Only now he was wearing an Arapahoe County's Sheriff's uniform and was driving a police cruiser. I said, "thank fucking god I am getting the fuck out of here." But, it's caught up to me, you and everyone. You can't outrun the police state.

on edit: The reason he sweated us along with all of his jock brethren was because we were skaters, punks, whatever -- we were free of the authority they recognized. Now also note that you cannot skate anywhere as a kid outside of skateparks. As a skater growing up, the whole city was your oyster. Every shopping plaza, every office park, every parking garage was free reign. Best shit in the world. Kids that skate today do it for the tricks in self contained zones known as skateparks -- akin to free speech zones. For our generation is was simply about having fun, making lifelong friends, being free and learning about the world. That shit's gone now because of creeping authority. No joke. I lament about the state of skateboarding probably once a day to people.

[beeline]

Link

Criminalizing free speech

By Glenn Greenwald


Anwar al-AwlakiAlex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress rightly takes Sen. Rand Paul to task for going on Sean Hannity's radio program -- one week after commendably leading opposition to the Patriot Act on civil liberties grounds -- and advocating the arrest of people who "attend radical political speeches." After claiming to be against racial and religious profiling, Paul said: "But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after -- they should be deported or put in prison." Seitz-Wald correctly notes the obvious: "Paul’s suggestion that people be imprisoned or deported for merely attending a political speech would be a fairly egregious violation on the First Amendment, not to mention due process."

Indeed, the First Amendment not only protects the mere "attending" of a speech "promoting the violent overthrow of our government," but also the giving of such a speech. The government is absolutely barred by the Free Speech clause from punishing people even for advocating violence. That has been true since the Supreme Court's unanimous 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who had threatened violence against political officials in a speech.

The KKK leader in Brandenburg was convicted under an Ohio statute that made it a crime to "advocate . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform" and/or to "voluntarily assemble with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism." The Court struck down the statute on the ground that it "purports to punish mere advocacy" and thus "sweeps within its condemnation speech which our Constitution has immunized from governmental control." The Court ruled that "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" -- meaning conduct such as standing outside someone's house with an angry mob and urging them to burn the house down that moment -- "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force" (emphasis added).

As Think Progress explains, Paul's argument runs directly afoul of these established constitutional principles and "is especially appalling coming from someone who fashions himself as a staunch defender of civil liberties." There's no doubt about that (and, ironically, some of the rallies from the Tea Party movement, the faction most responsible for Paul's election, as well as many pro-life rallies, may well qualify as "speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government" if viewed by a hostile government official).

But what Think Progress doesn't mention is that the Obama administration is not only advocating views that violently breach the same principle, but has been attempting to act on those violations for more than a year now as they try to kill the American-born Terrorist suspect Anwar al-Awlaki (along with at least three other unknown U.S. citizens targeted for assassination). Indeed, this is one of the prime principles that has made me view the President's assassination program as so odious from the start.

What has made Awlaki of such great concern for American officials is not any alleged operational role in Terrorism, but rather the fact that he advocates violent jihad and does so with some degree of efficacy. To see how true that is, just consider this morning's New York Times debate forum that asks: "How Dangerous Is Anwar al-Awlaki? With Yemen on the verge of civil war, how aggressive should the U.S. be in trying to kill an American-born cleric?" The responses from five Terrorism experts span the range of opinion from "he's not particularly dangerous" to "he's extremely dangerous," but all of them -- in explaining why he's attracted so much attention -- emphasize the speeches he gives and ideas he advocates, and make only the most passing and cursory reference to the unproven government assertions that he's involved in plotting Terrorist attacks:



Gerges: Awlaki "is not even the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula . . . a more effective measure [than killing him] would be to shut down Awlaki's propaganda shop by convincing the tribe that gives him shelter, the Awalik in southern Yemen, to turn him over to the Yemeni authorities."

Bodurian and Nelson: "Awlaki's real danger -- his potential to incite Islamist terrorism among far-flung constituencies living in the United States, Europe and even Asia. The American-born, Yemeni-raised cleric delivers scathing English-language online lectures to audiences in the West. Awlaki's rhetoric plays up a war between the West and Islam and has led some Muslims living throughout the world to embrace Al Qaeda’s toxic ideology and to plan attacks."

Benotman: "Awlaki’s fluent English certainly sets him apart from most other Al Qaeda members. It also makes him a potent force among Western Muslims. Thanks to a long immersion in American culture and many years of working with Muslims living in the West, he understands how to recruit impressionable young Muslims with his message that Muslims will never be accepted by the West, and that the only correct Islamic response to the West's cultural, political and economic influence is jihad."

Khalil: "Awlaki remains a potent threat to U.S. security. He has a proven ability to radicalize would-be violent extremists in the West in a way that Bin Laden, Zawahiri and others could never have. He has a unique talent in reaching out to a segment of disaffected people, mostly male and English-speaking, who may or may not have originally come from a Muslim background. . . . He is able to reach them through snazzy graphics, videos and speeches posted online. Inspire Magazine, an online English publication thought to be published by Awlaki encourages a kind of do-it-yourself terrorism . . . ."

Mendelsohn: "Few jihadists represent a bigger threat to the United States than Anwar al-Awlaki. He played an important role in a string of attacks in the West and, more than any other figure, proved to be great inspiration for homegrown cells and lone terrorists."


Plainly, the American obsession with Awlaki has virtually everything to do with his advocacy and, especially, the fear that it's effective because he can speak to English-speaking Muslims. In other words, the U.S. Government is trying to kill him primarily because of his constitutionally-protected speech in advocating the justifiability and necessity of violence.

This is not an academic question. The right at stake here is absolutely vital. It is crucial to protect and preserve the right to argue that a government has become so tyrannical or dangerous that violence is justified against it. That, after all, was the argument on which the American Founding was based; it is pure political speech; and criminalizing the expression of that idea poses a grave danger to free speech generally and the specific ability to organize against abusive governments. To allow the government to punish citizens -- let alone to kill them -- because their political advocacy is threatening to the government is infinitely more dangerous than whatever ideas are being targeted for punishment, even if that idea is violent jihad.

Indeed, it is simply obvious that an American citizen -- Muslim or otherwise -- is and should be Constitutionally permitted to stand up and make the following argument:


For decades, the U.S. Government has been engaging in violence and otherwise interfering in the Muslim world. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim men, women and children have died as a result. There is no end in sight to this American assault on the Muslim world and those of its client states. Therefore, it is not only the right, but the duty, of Muslims to engage in violence against Americans as a means of self-defense and to deter further violence against Muslims. That is the only available means for fighting back against the world's greatest military superpower. The only alternative is continuing passive submission to this onslaught of violence aimed at Muslims.


That is Awlaki's core message in explaining why he supports the use of violence aimed at Americans (while arguing that it should be aimed at military rather than civilian targets):


I have been seeing my brothers being killed in Palestine for more than 60 years, and others being killed in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And in my tribe too, US missiles have killed 17 women and 23 children, so do not ask me if al-Qaeda has killed or blown up a US civil jet after all this. The 300 Americans [targeted by Abdulmutallab] are nothing comparing to the thousands of Muslims who have been killed. . . . The American people are the ones who have voted twice for Bush the criminal and elected Obama who is not different from Bush as his first remarks stated that he would not abandon Israel, despite the fact that there were other anti-war candidates in the US elections, but they won very few votes. The American people take part in all its government's crimes. If they oppose that, let them change their government.


One can find that view odious and repugnant. One can find it dangerous and frightening. But what one cannot do is dispute that it is pure political speech squarely within the zone of First Amendment protection, as established by Brandenburg. And to punish or kill an American citizen for expressing those views -- which is exactly what the Obama administration is attempting to do with Awlaki -- is a grave assault on core free speech rights (let alone to do so without any judicial process). The Supreme Court, in Claiborne, has also ruled -- unanimously -- that the First Amendment bars imposing liability on someone for the criminal acts "inspired" by their speech (it so ruled when protecting NAACP officials from attempts by the State of Mississippi to hold them liable for the violent acts their fiery speeches inspired on the part of their followers). If one wants to argue that Awlaki's speech falls outside the scope of Brandenburg and Claiborne protections, the place to do that is a courtroom after indicting him, not vesting the President with the power to act as judge, jury and executioner.

In recognition of that fact, the Obama administration -- once the existence of its hit list became public -- began asserting, with no evidence presented and usually anonymously, that Awlaki has an "operational role" in Al Qaeda. But as Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen said today in response to the NYT debate: "We suspect a great deal about Anwar al-Awlaki, but we know very little, precious little when it comes to his operational role"; he added in response to Mendelsohn's claim that Awlaki "played an important role in a string of attacks in the West": "We just don't know this, we suspect it but don't know it." Of course, punishing (or killing) Americans based on government accusations that have never been proven in court happens to violate a different though equally critical Constitutional principle (the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that "no person shall be deprived of life [or] liberty . . . without due process of law).

It will never cease to amaze me how acquiescent the country is to the seizure by this President of the extremist and warped power to target American citizens, far from any battlefield, for killing, all without a shred of due process. It's not just a profound assault on due process rights but also free speech rights.

Submission to this power is, I believe, based on three factors: (1) blind faith in political leaders of the type that led Americans to accept the due-process-free punishment at Guantanamo ("my President accuses this person of being a Terrorist and therefore it's true; I don't need a trial to know it's true"); (2) acceptance of anything done to a fellow citizen as long as he has a foreign-sounding, Muslim-ish name like "Anwar al-Awlaki," who dresses in white cleric robes and is in Yemen and is thus probably guilty of something or other; and (3) the automatic and enthusiastic embrace by America's Foreign Policy Community of the use of force in response to any problem, as epitomized by this bloodthirsty-rant-masquerading-as-Serious-analysis in Foreign Policy, which notes that Awlaki's role in Al Qaeda has been drastically overstated but nonetheless concludes -- citing the fact that he's a "brilliant and captivating orator" and that Yemeni officials privately describe "Awlaki's sermons as convincing and dangerous" -- with this:


The most omnipresent terrorist threat the United States faces today is the opportunistic attacks that are either homegrown or stem from weak or failing states, not the spectacular attacks that take months of preparation. . . . And those are the kind of attacks Awlaki has the power to inspire. In the end, it doesn't help much to ask who the next bin Laden is, since the problem is bigger than any one man. Regardless of whose image captivates the world, al Qaeda figures, including Awlaki, are busy plotting terrorist mayhem. And Washington needs to do all it can to reduce the risk of another attack.


The government "needs to do all it can" in the name of Terrorism: even targeting its own citizens with assassination without a trial based on the mere suspicion that he's doing something criminal -- or invading other countries that haven't attacked us -- or dropping a continuous stream of missiles on people's homes who are purely innocent -- or locking people up for life without a trial. This is the sociopathic mindset of the security fetishist that dominates our political discourse -- Terrorism: the meaningless though all-justifying slogan -- and, more than anything else, this is what explains why something as radical and dangerous as the President's due-process-free assassination program aimed at American citizens triggers so little objection. "Washington needs to do all it can" -- no matter how violent and lawless -- "to reduce the risk of another attack." To a militarized, authoritarian, collapsing Empire in a posture of Endless War, security is the only cognizable value.

[beeline]

Link

Criminalizing free speech

By Glenn Greenwald

Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress rightly takes Sen. Rand Paul to task for going on Sean Hannity's radio program -- one week after commendably leading opposition to the Patriot Act on civil liberties grounds -- and advocating the arrest of people who "attend radical political speeches." After claiming to be against racial and religious profiling, Paul said: "But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after -- they should be deported or put in prison." Seitz-Wald correctly notes the obvious: "Paul’s suggestion that people be imprisoned or deported for merely attending a political speech would be a fairly egregious violation on the First Amendment, not to mention due process."

Indeed, the First Amendment not only protects the mere "attending" of a speech "promoting the violent overthrow of our government," but also the giving of such a speech. The government is absolutely barred by the Free Speech clause from punishing people even for advocating violence. That has been true since the Supreme Court's unanimous 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who had threatened violence against political officials in a speech.

The KKK leader in Brandenburg was convicted under an Ohio statute that made it a crime to "advocate . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform" and/or to "voluntarily assemble with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism." The Court struck down the statute on the ground that it "purports to punish mere advocacy" and thus "sweeps within its condemnation speech which our Constitution has immunized from governmental control." The Court ruled that "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" -- meaning conduct such as standing outside someone's house with an angry mob and urging them to burn the house down that moment -- "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force" (emphasis added).

As Think Progress explains, Paul's argument runs directly afoul of these established constitutional principles and "is especially appalling coming from someone who fashions himself as a staunch defender of civil liberties." There's no doubt about that (and, ironically, some of the rallies from the Tea Party movement, the faction most responsible for Paul's election, as well as many pro-life rallies, may well qualify as "speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government" if viewed by a hostile government official).

But what Think Progress doesn't mention is that the Obama administration is not only advocating views that violently breach the same principle, but has been attempting to act on those violations for more than a year now as they try to kill the American-born Terrorist suspect Anwar al-Awlaki (along with at least three other unknown U.S. citizens targeted for assassination). Indeed, this is one of the prime principles that has made me view the President's assassination program as so odious from the start.

What has made Awlaki of such great concern for American officials is not any alleged operational role in Terrorism, but rather the fact that he advocates violent jihad and does so with some degree of efficacy. To see how true that is, just consider this morning's New York Times debate forum that asks: "How Dangerous Is Anwar al-Awlaki? With Yemen on the verge of civil war, how aggressive should the U.S. be in trying to kill an American-born cleric?" The responses from five Terrorism experts span the range of opinion from "he's not particularly dangerous" to "he's extremely dangerous," but all of them -- in explaining why he's attracted so much attention -- emphasize the speeches he gives and ideas he advocates, and make only the most passing and cursory reference to the unproven government assertions that he's involved in plotting Terrorist attacks:



Gerges: Awlaki "is not even the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula . . . a more effective measure [than killing him] would be to shut down Awlaki's propaganda shop by convincing the tribe that gives him shelter, the Awalik in southern Yemen, to turn him over to the Yemeni authorities."

Bodurian and Nelson: "Awlaki's real danger -- his potential to incite Islamist terrorism among far-flung constituencies living in the United States, Europe and even Asia. The American-born, Yemeni-raised cleric delivers scathing English-language online lectures to audiences in the West. Awlaki's rhetoric plays up a war between the West and Islam and has led some Muslims living throughout the world to embrace Al Qaeda’s toxic ideology and to plan attacks."

Benotman: "Awlaki’s fluent English certainly sets him apart from most other Al Qaeda members. It also makes him a potent force among Western Muslims. Thanks to a long immersion in American culture and many years of working with Muslims living in the West, he understands how to recruit impressionable young Muslims with his message that Muslims will never be accepted by the West, and that the only correct Islamic response to the West's cultural, political and economic influence is jihad."

Khalil: "Awlaki remains a potent threat to U.S. security. He has a proven ability to radicalize would-be violent extremists in the West in a way that Bin Laden, Zawahiri and others could never have. He has a unique talent in reaching out to a segment of disaffected people, mostly male and English-speaking, who may or may not have originally come from a Muslim background. . . . He is able to reach them through snazzy graphics, videos and speeches posted online. Inspire Magazine, an online English publication thought to be published by Awlaki encourages a kind of do-it-yourself terrorism . . . ."

Mendelsohn: "Few jihadists represent a bigger threat to the United States than Anwar al-Awlaki. He played an important role in a string of attacks in the West and, more than any other figure, proved to be great inspiration for homegrown cells and lone terrorists."


Plainly, the American obsession with Awlaki has virtually everything to do with his advocacy and, especially, the fear that it's effective because he can speak to English-speaking Muslims. In other words, the U.S. Government is trying to kill him primarily because of his constitutionally-protected speech in advocating the justifiability and necessity of violence.

This is not an academic question. The right at stake here is absolutely vital. It is crucial to protect and preserve the right to argue that a government has become so tyrannical or dangerous that violence is justified against it. That, after all, was the argument on which the American Founding was based; it is pure political speech; and criminalizing the expression of that idea poses a grave danger to free speech generally and the specific ability to organize against abusive governments. To allow the government to punish citizens -- let alone to kill them -- because their political advocacy is threatening to the government is infinitely more dangerous than whatever ideas are being targeted for punishment, even if that idea is violent jihad.

Indeed, it is simply obvious that an American citizen -- Muslim or otherwise -- is and should be Constitutionally permitted to stand up and make the following argument:


For decades, the U.S. Government has been engaging in violence and otherwise interfering in the Muslim world. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim men, women and children have died as a result. There is no end in sight to this American assault on the Muslim world and those of its client states. Therefore, it is not only the right, but the duty, of Muslims to engage in violence against Americans as a means of self-defense and to deter further violence against Muslims. That is the only available means for fighting back against the world's greatest military superpower. The only alternative is continuing passive submission to this onslaught of violence aimed at Muslims.


That is Awlaki's core message in explaining why he supports the use of violence aimed at Americans (while arguing that it should be aimed at military rather than civilian targets):


I have been seeing my brothers being killed in Palestine for more than 60 years, and others being killed in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And in my tribe too, US missiles have killed 17 women and 23 children, so do not ask me if al-Qaeda has killed or blown up a US civil jet after all this. The 300 Americans [targeted by Abdulmutallab] are nothing comparing to the thousands of Muslims who have been killed. . . . The American people are the ones who have voted twice for Bush the criminal and elected Obama who is not different from Bush as his first remarks stated that he would not abandon Israel, despite the fact that there were other anti-war candidates in the US elections, but they won very few votes. The American people take part in all its government's crimes. If they oppose that, let them change their government.


One can find that view odious and repugnant. One can find it dangerous and frightening. But what one cannot do is dispute that it is pure political speech squarely within the zone of First Amendment protection, as established by Brandenburg. And to punish or kill an American citizen for expressing those views -- which is exactly what the Obama administration is attempting to do with Awlaki -- is a grave assault on core free speech rights (let alone to do so without any judicial process). The Supreme Court, in Claiborne, has also ruled -- unanimously -- that the First Amendment bars imposing liability on someone for the criminal acts "inspired" by their speech (it so ruled when protecting NAACP officials from attempts by the State of Mississippi to hold them liable for the violent acts their fiery speeches inspired on the part of their followers). If one wants to argue that Awlaki's speech falls outside the scope of Brandenburg and Claiborne protections, the place to do that is a courtroom after indicting him, not vesting the President with the power to act as judge, jury and executioner.

In recognition of that fact, the Obama administration -- once the existence of its hit list became public -- began asserting, with no evidence presented and usually anonymously, that Awlaki has an "operational role" in Al Qaeda. But as Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen said today in response to the NYT debate: "We suspect a great deal about Anwar al-Awlaki, but we know very little, precious little when it comes to his operational role"; he added in response to Mendelsohn's claim that Awlaki "played an important role in a string of attacks in the West": "We just don't know this, we suspect it but don't know it." Of course, punishing (or killing) Americans based on government accusations that have never been proven in court happens to violate a different though equally critical Constitutional principle (the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that "no person shall be deprived of life [or] liberty . . . without due process of law).

It will never cease to amaze me how acquiescent the country is to the seizure by this President of the extremist and warped power to target American citizens, far from any battlefield, for killing, all without a shred of due process. It's not just a profound assault on due process rights but also free speech rights.

Submission to this power is, I believe, based on three factors: (1) blind faith in political leaders of the type that led Americans to accept the due-process-free punishment at Guantanamo ("my President accuses this person of being a Terrorist and therefore it's true; I don't need a trial to know it's true"); (2) acceptance of anything done to a fellow citizen as long as he has a foreign-sounding, Muslim-ish name like "Anwar al-Awlaki," who dresses in white cleric robes and is in Yemen and is thus probably guilty of something or other; and (3) the automatic and enthusiastic embrace by America's Foreign Policy Community of the use of force in response to any problem, as epitomized by this bloodthirsty-rant-masquerading-as-Serious-analysis in Foreign Policy, which notes that Awlaki's role in Al Qaeda has been drastically overstated but nonetheless concludes -- citing the fact that he's a "brilliant and captivating orator" and that Yemeni officials privately describe "Awlaki's sermons as convincing and dangerous" -- with this:


The most omnipresent terrorist threat the United States faces today is the opportunistic attacks that are either homegrown or stem from weak or failing states, not the spectacular attacks that take months of preparation. . . . And those are the kind of attacks Awlaki has the power to inspire. In the end, it doesn't help much to ask who the next bin Laden is, since the problem is bigger than any one man. Regardless of whose image captivates the world, al Qaeda figures, including Awlaki, are busy plotting terrorist mayhem. And Washington needs to do all it can to reduce the risk of another attack.


The government "needs to do all it can" in the name of Terrorism: even targeting its own citizens with assassination without a trial based on the mere suspicion that he's doing something criminal -- or invading other countries that haven't attacked us -- or dropping a continuous stream of missiles on people's homes who are purely innocent -- or locking people up for life without a trial. This is the sociopathic mindset of the security fetishist that dominates our political discourse -- Terrorism: the meaningless though all-justifying slogan -- and, more than anything else, this is what explains why something as radical and dangerous as the President's due-process-free assassination program aimed at American citizens triggers so little objection. "Washington needs to do all it can" -- no matter how violent and lawless -- "to reduce the risk of another attack." To a militarized, authoritarian, collapsing Empire in a posture of Endless War, security is the only cognizable value.

[82_28]

If shit wasn't criminalized time after time it would give Type-A's nothing to do. Thus they buttress their existences with methods to control and intimidate. Sometimes I think it is simply akin to Douglas Adams' answer to everything. Just a curt and disappointing "42". There is a need in some to control everything and do not look kindly on people who just live and let live. If you go back through history you see this everywhere. For a time it was just reported that a dude had been killed and it all was wrote off as having been "ruled" an accident, a suicide, a fill in the blank, a non-descript "negro" was to blame. Then they got into putting addresses and shit next to people's names when a story focused around them as the "wild west" got tamed and literal street addresses came to be established. Then they got out of using racial slurs in about 1972. "Negroes" became blacks for instance, "Japs" became Japanese, "Russ" became Russian or Soviet. But none of us have ever been humans to these people. We've always been, as our website attests, "classified humanity". (edit: "classified humanity" is literally what papers called their classifieds back in the day -- thus we named the site such.)

(BTW, I don't mean to totally honk the horn of our website all the time. But rolling through history the way I have for the past few months really is a dizzying affair when you try and apply what you find in the past and apply it to today the way I do naturally and express myself here at RI.)

[StarmanSkye]

beeline quoted Greenwald, who wrote: "This is the sociopathic mindset of the security fetishist that dominates our political discourse -- Terrorism: the meaningless though all-justifying slogan -- and, more than anything else, this is what explains why something as radical and dangerous as the President's due-process-free assassination program aimed at American citizens triggers so little objection. "Washington needs to do all it can" -- no matter how violent and lawless -- "to reduce the risk of another attack." To a militarized, authoritarian, collapsing Empire in a posture of Endless War, security is the only cognizable value."


WORD.

I hate to say never, but I sure don't think I'll be able to support Paul after his quavering rollover on a matter of core, basic principle. Few things are as contemptable as a backsliding Constitutionalist -- even IF (or esp. if) he's pandering to the Security FIRSTER!: War on Terrrorr for JeSuS! crowd.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 8819.story

By Ken Dilanian Washington Bureau

June 2, 2011, 6:43 a.m.
Reporting from Washington—

When two senators warned that the Patriot Act is being interpreted in a secret way that would alarm Americans if they knew the details, civil liberties activists could only speculate about what they meant.

The activists' fear: that the government is using the anti-terrorism law to collect vast troves of personal information, including cellphone records, on Americans who have no link to terrorism.

Congress voted overwhelmingly last week to reauthorize key provisions of the Patriot Act for four more years. President Obama signed it from France by authorizing the use of an autopen.

The Senate debate on the law featured an unusual dissent by two senators who serve on the Intelligence Committee.

Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats, proclaimed that the Patriot Act's surveillance powers are being used far more expansively than most Americans realize. But they can't disclose what they know, they said, because the documents that detail how the Obama administration implements the act are classified. As members of the Intelligence Committee, Wyden and Udall are privy to secret briefings.

"Today the American people do not know how their government interprets the language of the Patriot Act," Wyden said. "Someday they are going to find out, and a lot of them are going to be stunned. Some of them will undoubtedly ask their senators: 'Did you know what this law actually did? Why didn't you know? Wasn't it your job to know, before you voted on it?' "

In an interview, Udall said he wasn't even allowed to discuss details about the government's intelligence-gathering with fellow senators unless they go to a secure room in the Capitol designed to thwart eavesdropping.

But in a statement before the vote, Udall said the law allows the government to "place wide-ranging wiretaps on Americans without even identifying the target or location of such surveillance; target individuals who have no connection to terrorist organizations, and collect business records on law-abiding Americans, without any connection to terrorism."

Nonetheless, most members of Congress, including others who have received the classified briefings, apparently did not share their concerns. The Senate passed the extension, 72-23, with Wyden and Udall voting "no." The bill cleared the House, 250-153.

Still, the warnings by two lawmakers with access to secret information underscore the extent to which government surveillance is shielded from view, in an age when nearly every American leaves a digital trail through the Internet and mobile devices.

Civil libertarians say they suspect the act is used to justify bulk collection of data, most of which is associated with people unconnected to terrorism investigations. The business records provision, Section 215, is subject to a particularly broad reading, they say. It lets government obtain "any tangible things," including cellphone or other personal records, that are "relevant" to a terrorism inquiry after a secret order is obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"There's absolutely nothing in the law that would prevent them from using 215 to do bulk grabs of stored information," said Michelle Richardson, an American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist.

Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "I expect that the main concern is that they are obtaining cellphone records in bulk masses, often pertaining to people who have no link to spying or terrorism."

A clue about Wyden's concerns may be found in a separate bill he is proposing, to forbid the government from tracking, without a court order, the location of Americans through the GPS signals given out by their cellphones.

In 2009, members of Congress voiced concerns that the National Security Agency, which sweeps up huge volumes of foreign communications data, was "over-collecting" and obtaining phone and email records of Americans without warrants. No full accounting was ever made public.

Government officials declined to address the specifics of what Wyden and Udall were referencing. But Todd Hinnen, the assistant attorney general for national security, told Congress in March that the Patriot Act's business records provision supports "important and highly sensitive intelligence-collection operations" that he could not discuss further.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, noted that the surveillance is approved by the intelligence surveillance court.

"We have gone to great lengths to ensure that the public's elected representatives are fully informed of the ways in which we interpret and use these authorities," he said.

Wyden argued that it's one thing to support a provision about which the public is unaware, and another to have to explain it to constituents when they learn of its implications.

"I don't take a back seat to anybody when it comes to the importance of protecting genuinely sensitive sources and collection methods," he said. "But the law itself should never be secret -- voters have a need and a right to know what the law says, and what their government thinks the text of the law means."

[Joe Hillshoist]

we were skaters, punks, whatever -- we were free of the authority they recognized. Now also note that you cannot skate anywhere as a kid outside of skateparks. As a skater growing up, the whole city was your oyster. Every shopping plaza, every office park, every parking garage was free reign. Best shit in the world. Kids that skate today do it for the tricks in self contained zones known as skateparks -- akin to free speech zones. For our generation is was simply about having fun, making lifelong friends, being free and learning about the world. That shit's gone now because of creeping authority. No joke. I lament about the state of skateboarding probably once a day to people.

Thats a very simple but very profound observation dude.

I never got into skating, but my younger brother did. What you said sums it up. Tho I don't think you were sposed to skate at malls, or carparks or wherever - but people still did.

[82_28]

And the skateparks back then were sketchy places, insurance wise. Yeah, you'd sign the waiver, yeah, you jumped through the hoops, yeah you paid $3 or whatever it was to get in. But you were still free. Now the fucking municipality controls all that shit. But at night you would explore. The skateboard was the device, the apparatus that made it possible. At midnight, you and your buddies would say, "let's skate", day after day after day. I have lost a lot of these dudes however, to drugs, jail and murders. I wound up at RI. But those are the yokels I ran around with in my very most formative years. I still surprise my parents with stories, violent, awful stories of those years. But that's the way it was. Wouldn't trade it for a billion dollars.

It's like taking a break at work. I feel like I basically smoke because who says, "I'm gonna step out for some fresh air"? Nobody. You're gonna step out for a smoke. Smoking gives you the liberty to get the fuck outside and contemplate. Back when you could smoke inside (fucking asshole ass liberals) we always speculated the the cigarette was the best thing that ever happened to conversations and debates. You could take a pull off the cigarette, gather your thoughts or point and then continue.

I also love all the health nuts who are just shocked when we all pull up to a red light on our bikes and I have a cigarette hanging out of my mouth and no helmet on. It's total cognitive dissonance to them. And seriously, I ain't no badass of any sort. Never been in a fist fight in my life. I've never wanted to hurt a soul ever. But I will not follow your stupid rules, world. I will not.

[Nordic]

Nothing "creeping" about this:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=22744

Miami Police Smashed Mobile Phones Belonging to People Who Witnessed Shooting; One Witness Hid His Phone’s Memory Card in His Mouth

This is a pretty timely development, coming just a day after the news about Apple’s iCensor technology.

Via: Miami Herald:

On Thursday, The Miami Herald spoke to the couple that saw the end of the 4 a.m. police chase on Collins Avenue, then watched and filmed from just a few feet away as a dozen officers fired their guns repeatedly into Raymond Herisse’s blue Hyundai. They say the only reason they were able to show the video to a reporter is because they hid a SIM card after police allegedly pointed guns at their heads, threw them to the ground and smashed the cell phone that took the video.

The three-minute video captured on Narces Benoit’s HTC EVO phone begins as officers crowd around the east side of Herisse’s car with guns drawn. Roughly 15 seconds into the video, officers open fire.
Benoit filmed the incident from the sidewalk on the northeast corner of 13th Street and Collins Avenue, close enough to see some officers’ faces and individual muzzle flashes.

Shortly after the gunfire ends, an officer points at Benoit and police can be heard yelling for him to turn off the camera. The voices are muffled at times. The 35-year-old car stereo technician drops his hand with the camera and hurries back to his Ford Expedition parked further east on 13th Street.

The video shows Benoit get into the car, where his girlfriend, Ericka Davis, sat in the driver’s seat. He raises his camera and an officer is seen appearing on the driver’s side with his gun drawn, pointed at them.

The video ends as more officers are heard yelling expletives, telling the couple to turn the video off and get out of the car.

“They put guns to our heads and threw us on the ground,” Davis said.

Benoit said a Miami Beach officer grabbed his cell phone, said “You want to be [expletive] Paparazzi?” and stomped on his phone before placing him in handcuffs and shoving the crunched phone in Benoit’s back pocket. He said the couple joined other witnesses already in cuffs and being watched by officers, who were on the lookout for two passengers who, police believe at the time, had bailed out of Herisse’s car. It is still not known whether any passengers were in the car.

Four bystanders were shot in the gunfire and three officers suffered minor injuries.

Benoit and Davis said officers smashed several other cell phones in the ensuing chaos.

Benoit said the officers eventually uncuffed him after gunshots rang out elsewhere and he discreetly removed the SIM card and placed it in his mouth.

Officers again took his phone, demanding his video. He said they took him to a nearby mobile command center, snapped a picture of him, then took him to police headquarters and conducted a recorded interview while he kept the SIM card in his mouth. He insisted his phone was broken.

Miami Herald link:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/02/v ... orced.html

[fruhmenschen]

http://www.leo.gov/