WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
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Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together. |
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Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
... in Afghanistan or at home.
Why Do They Hate Us?
It has everything to do with U.S. policy.
Qatar stops making sense.
Creeping Authoritarianism.
Back Talk
Y'all enjoying the war?
Appall-o-Meter
With "economic stimulus," Republicans reward their most loyal constituents.
Arms reduction doesn't mask race toward missile defense.
Arrested Development
Brits crack down on civil liberties.
Truth Before Freedom
Death Row inmate turns down state's attorney's offer
In Person
Diane Wilson: An unreasonable woman.
Art and lies.
Words for an Afterlife
Tahar Djaout's Last Summer of Reason.
Art and Shadow
Death and painting in Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul.
Salman Rushdie does New York.
Lost in Transit
V.S. Naipaul's comic journey.
The Corrections of Jonathan Franzen.
The Lonely Tribune
Victor Serge's revolution.
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November 21, 2001
Creeping Authoritarianism
On October 26, Bush signed the USA PATRIOT (Provide Appropriate Tools Required
to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, which grants federal agencies expanded
surveillance and intelligence-gathering powers, redefines computer hacking as
a terrorist offense and allows the government to hold immigrant terrorist suspects
indefinitely. The Justice Department has detained more than 1,200 immigrants
suspected of being terrorist accomplices. The exact number and names of the
detainees have not been released. On October 31, Ashcroft issued a decree allowing the Justice Department to
monitor attorney-client conversations of those in federal detention, thereby
doing away with attorney-client privilege. No court order would be needed; the
monitoring would be done at the discretion of the attorney general. Meanwhile, some congressmen want to amend the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which
prohibits the U.S. military from getting involved in domestic law enforcement.
Sen. John Warner (R-Virginia) proposed lifting this prohibition to “enable
our active duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in the war
against terrorism.” On November 13, declaring an “extraordinary emergency,” Bush signed
an executive order authorizing the establishment of military tribunals to judge
foreigners accused of terrorism. Under this special new system, non-citizen
suspects could be accused on the basis of secret evidence, not informed of the
charges against them, tried in secret, convicted by a vote of two-thirds of
the jurors and, in the case of capital crimes, executed. Vice President Dick Cheney explained away the question of civil liberties,
saying terrorists “don’t deserve the same guarantees and safeguards
that would be used for an American citizen.” And Ashcroft chimed in with
the judgment that terrorists “do not deserve the protections of the American
Constitution.” Apparently, these are tribunals that will try only the guilty.
Civil libertarians are rightly outraged. The ACLU called “on Congress
to exercise its oversight powers before the Bill of Rights in America is distorted
beyond recognition.” Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes the World Trade Center site, accused
Bush of using the attacks “as an excuse to destroy our Constitution and
the protections of liberty that we pride ourselves on.” He asked, “Will
we rise up and assert that we can fight a war and keep our constitutional traditions
and not junk them in the name of national security?” The administration is betting we will not, and with good reason. What the administration
can do (and get away with) depends on how vigilantly the news media perform
their duties as public watchdogs. Mainstream media have the power to define
the tone of public debate and set the limits of what is acceptable. Some newspapers,
such as the New York Times, have inveighed against Bush’s action.
Yet the television networks have tended to soft-sell Bush’s audacious,
dangerous and precedent-setting use of executive orders to circumvent Congress
and the judiciary. We should remember that neither the Reagan nor Bush I administrations were averse
to violating the Constitution to pursue covert policy objectives. But to what
extent, we may never know. On November 1, Bush, via executive order, amended the Presidential Records
Act to allow any sitting or former president to veto the release of presidential
papers. Normally those papers would be released 12 years after the end of a
presidential term. Hence, with a stroke of his pen, Bush protected a host of
current administration officials (along with his father) from any embarrassing
Iran-contra revelations that could have come to light during the 2004 presidential
election. |
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WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
he Bush administration has a knack for answering the knock of opportunity.
It has used the war as a pretext to pass another tax cut for the rich, to increase
domestic spying powers for the CIA, and to put the national-unity squeeze on
an already pliant press. But nowhere is that opportunism more apparent than
in the administration’s efforts to expand police powers at the expense
of civil liberties.