--- Chiang Ching <chiangching at alltel.net> wrote:
> The New Domestic Order: What Has Changed, Why It
> Changed, and How It Matters
> by C. Clark Kissinger
>
> Revolutionary Worker #1206, July 6, 2003, posted at
> http://rwor.org
>
> The America that we have known for many generations
> is quickly disappearing. Yet many do not yet
> recognize the full extent of what is taking place.
> People may hear about immigrants being secretly
> detained, or of a plan to give the Pentagon access
> to the financial, health and credit card information
> of every citizen. They may have a sense that the
> "checks and balances" of government are not working,
> and that the rule of law is increasingly being
> replaced by the rule of men -- men with an extreme
> new agenda. They may sense that behind the campaign
> of "security" and "public safety" this extreme
> agenda is being implemented. The full picture
> remains obscure, but many people are deeply
> troubled.
>
> Vice President Cheney has spoken of a "new normalcy"
> for America in the context of a war that may last
> for generations. What are the full dimensions of
> this, what are the implications, and where is it
> headed?
>
> September 11 Unleashes the Flood
> While democratic rights were under assault before
> "9/11," the attacks on the World Trade Center and
> the Pentagon produced a dramatic and qualitative
> change. There have been drastic changes in the law.
> There has been an assault on immigrants' rights and
> a manufactured climate of xenophobia (i.e., hatred
> and fear of foreigners). There has been a
> restriction of dissent, both of organized protest
> and the speaking out by public figures. There has
> been the widespread utilization of new surveillance
> technology and the promotion of a culture of
> complicity and snitching. And there has been a
> radical restructuring of government itself, giving
> much more power to the executive branch. Let's look
> at each of these.
>
> Drastic changes in the law: The Patriot Act, for
> instance, gives the government vast new surveillance
> powers, allows the virtual unlimited detention of
> immigrants without charges, permits "roving
> wiretaps," and imposes gag rules to prevent persons
> served with warrants from revealing it. It expands
> the power of the government to obtain secret search
> warrants from secret courts to obtain any personal
> information, from our library checkouts to our
> personal medical records.
>
> Assault on immigrants: Immediately after 9/11
> federal agents spread out across the country,
> rounding up immigrants from Arab and Muslim
> countries (the "Ashcroft Raids"). People simply
> disappeared into government custody without charges
> or due process.
>
> Hearings by immigration courts were suddenly closed
> to the public. Lawyers were often unable to even
> find out where their clients were being held. (Not a
> single one of these detainees has been charged with
> a crime relating to September 11.) Racial and ethnic
> profiling was back with a vengeance. Tens of
> thousands of immigrants were ordered to report and
> register with the government, and 13,000 who did now
> face deportation.
>
> Restriction of dissent: On February 15 in New York,
> police refused to allow antiwar protesters to march
> anywhere in the city, blocked off streets to prevent
> people from gathering, attacked people from
> horseback, and confined those who did make it to the
> mobilization site to fenced-off "protest pens."
> Police repression of dissenting politics went still
> further in Oakland in April, when rubber bullets
> were shot at peaceful protesters. It was later
> revealed that firing on these protesters was the
> result of recommendations from a state police agency
> on counter-terrorism.
>
> Meanwhile, artists like Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon,
> Danny Glover and scores of others came under fire
> for speaking out against either the impending war on
> Iraq or the attacks on civil liberties. Bill Maher
> lost his TV show Politically Incorrect . Dixie
> Chicks' CDs were destroyed in rallies that seemed to
> come out of news clips from Germany 1933--after
> singer Natalie Maines dared to criticize the
> president on stage at a concert. The antiwar Phil
> Donahue lost his talk show in the increasingly
> prowar atmosphere of the media, despite the fact
> that he was the highest rated MSNBC host. Major
> antiwar organizations and leaders were red-baited
> and attacked as treasonous -- with ties to everyone
> from al-Qaida to the Cuban government being
> insinuated.
>
> This chill came from the highest offices of the
> land. Ari Fleischer, speaking to the Bill Maher
> incident, warned the American people to "watch what
> they say." And Attorney General Ashcroft, speaking
> to the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted any
> criticism of the Patriot Act: "To those who scare
> peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty,
> my message is this: Your tactics only aid
> terrorists, for they erode our national unity and
> diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to
> America's enemies and pause to America's friends."
> This language echoed the legal definition of treason
> and was directed at some of the Democratic Senators
> present.
>
> Stepped-up surveillance and a culture of snitching:
> The Department of Defense rolled out its Total
> Information Awareness program (now renamed Terrorist
> Information Awareness), a computer network that
> would allow the military to cross-check both
> government and private commercial databases, to
> quickly turn up credit card, travel, and other
> personal information on anyone. The new Computer
> Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System II (CAPPSII)
> will rate the "security risk" of every airline
> passenger, based on government or corporate
> databases. Those who don't pass are put on a secret
> "no fly" list.
>
> Along with this have come widespread appeals to
> "report anything suspicious." The government
> attempted to set up the TIPS program, which called
> on everyone from teachers to UPS deliverymen to
> report on the people they came in contact with. It
> was defeated this time, but the effort to instill an
> ethos of informing has not diminished.
>
> Restructuring government: A major reorganization of
> the government is well under way. In a break with
> 225 years of precedent, the army is now routinely
> deployed on our streets in a domestic policing role.
> The Department of Homeland Security--a ministry of
> internal security--has been created. The Attorney
> General announced that the function of the
> Department of Justice was now "prevention and
> disruption," not law enforcement. Government agents
> were authorized to monitor conversations between
> lawyers and their clients. Decisions by Immigration
> Court judges to release detainees were simply
> overturned on executive order. At least two
> native-born U.S. citizens have been transferred to
> military custody by executive order and denied
> access to lawyers or the courts.
>
> One stunning and important example of the fading
> role of "checks and balances" was the passage of the
> USA Patriot Act. On September 17, 2001, Ashcroft de-
> manded that the congress pass within one week a
> collection of new laws that they had not even seen
> yet. The House Judiciary Committee balked at some of
> Ashcroft's more outrageous demands and unanimously
> approved its own watered-down version. But the next
> week, when the bill came up for a vote in the House
> of Representatives, members found that a new bill
> had been substituted overnight. There was no time to
> even read it. In an atmosphere of coercion and panic
> the congress quickly voted through the
> "anti-terrorism" Patriot Act by a vote of 98-1 in
> the Senate and 357-66 in the House.
>
> The rapid-fire events since 9/11 are more than a
> series of isolated incidents or a motley collection
> of wrong-headed policies. It is not just a further
> step in already existing trends to criminalize
> immigrants, demonize people of color, and eviscerate
> our legal and political rights. It has elements of
> all of these, but taken together these developments
> amount to a watershed. We now face both the new
> repressive measures outlined above and the distinct
> possibility of a new social order qualitatively more
> ominous and draconian than anything we have known.
>
> Behind the New Repression
> We are told, of course, that this is for our safety.
> But that's not what this is about.
>
> The driving force behind this heightened repression
> is the U.S. agenda of open-ended war for global
> domination undertaken after September 11. George
> Bush was very precise in declaring that the U.S.
> victory in Iraq was only one battle in an overall
> "war against terrorism," and administration
> officials have continually spoken of a war lasting
> for a generation. Today there is open speculation
> that Iran, Korea, or Syria may be the next victim of
> U.S. military might, while American troops are
> already deployed in Yemen, Somalia and the
> Philippines.
>
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