[lbo-talk] Here's a real example of Bush authoritarianism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org, Tue Feb 22 21:34:33 PST 2005:
>What I have said is that her case and the issues are more 
>complicated than your simplistic characterization and there are much 
>better symbols of authoritarian actions by our government.  Such as 
>the following case where an American citizen was likely tortured 
>with the approval of the US and charged with terrorism for even 
>discussing a  conspiracy to kill Bush.
>
>The Left in its typical way wants to rally around the least 
>sympathetic possible case, attack as many of its potential allies in 
>fighting Bush's authoritarian policies, and stew in their isolated 
>righteousness.  You'd rather excommunicate me for voicing even mild 
>dissent from left orthodoxy on the Stewart case than find common 
>ground with me and other folks who oppose the whole gamut of Bush's 
>other attacks on civil liberties.
>
>--------------------------------
>American Accused in a Plot to Assassinate Bush
>By ERIC LICHTBLAU
>Published: February 23, 2005
>
>ASHINGTON, Feb. 22 - An American student who was imprisoned in Saudi 
>Arabia for the last 20 months was returned to the United States and 
>accused by the Justice Department on Tuesday of plotting with 
>members of Al Qaeda in 2003 to assassinate President Bush.
>
>In an indictment unsealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., the 
>student, a 23-year-old American citizen named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, is 
>charged with providing material support for terrorism. Mr. Abu Ali 
>is accused of training with Al Qaeda overseas and wanting to "become 
>a planner of terrorist operations" like Mohammed Atta or Khalid 
>Shaikh Mohammed, two Qaeda leaders central to the Sept. 11, 2001, 
>attacks.

What you call "left orthodoxy" has its value: oppose any attack on 
civil liberties in the United States in principle, not on a 
case-by-case basis.

It's disingenuous to compare the Lynne Stewart case and the Ahmed 
Omar Abu Ali case and complain that leftists have said more about the 
former than the latter.  For many Americans, yesterday was probably 
the first day when they heard of the Abu Ali case, whereas the Lynne 
Stewart case got covered by the corporate media as soon as Stewart 
and her co-defendants got indicted in April 2002: 
<http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/09/inv.terror.indictment/>. 
Amnesty International, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the 
Muslim Students' Association, the Muslim American Society, etc. had 
been working on this among other cases, though: e.g.,

<blockquote>US Muslims Discuss Foreign Policy With Secretary of State
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Morning Editor
<http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200406/NAT20040618c.html>
June 18, 2004

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Among their concerns, the Muslim groups mentioned the case of Ahmed 
Abu Ali, an American citizen who has been held in Saudi Arabia for 
the past year without being charged.

"I hope to secure your intervention in this case in order to obtain 
the immediate release of Ahmed, who has been held in al-Ha'ir prison 
in Riyadh for nearly a year without charge and without access to a 
lawyer," CAIR Executive Director Awad said in a letter to Secretary 
Powell, sent after Thursday's meeting at the State 
Department.</blockquote>

It is possible that there is a bit of disconnect between US Muslims 
and secular US leftists.  I recommend that everyone pay attention to 
news items and action alerts circulated by established Muslim and 
Arab American organizations, local Muslim and Arab American 
listservs, etc.
-- 
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: 
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, 
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>