it's been a while since i've given you all a good rant. maybe you were feeling deprived. ok maybe not. either way, you're in for it today. as usual, please send hate mail here .

it's easy sometimes to forget that there's a war going on...if you don't play close attention, you can start to believe that things aren't all that different. with the "news" telling you about the new blockbuster films and who tom cruise is dating, sometimes it's easy to forget that every day, atrocities are being committed. and not just in afghanistan. in this country, right now, 1,000 people are being held in prisons, without due legal process, without any idea of when they're going to get out, and with the possibility that they could end up facing a military tribunal. Ashcroft has made the decision to round up another 5,000 legal immigrants of arabic/muslim descent.

and then there are the details of the super-secret tribunals: bush can declare any person who is not a citizen of the us a terrorist, and the pentagon can take them before the tribunal. the secretary of defense sets the rules of the trial, including "modes of proof." any evidenec can be introduced that has "probative value to a reasonable person." there is no prohibition on hearsay or confessions extracted under duress. conviction and sentencing require not a unanimous vote, but two-thirds of the commission present at the time of the vote. the sentence can include life imprisonment or death, and there appears to be no appeals process. the only people who can overturn the decision are the secretary of defense, and dubyah.

but wait, there's more! known dissidents who were in prison at the time of the attacks were moved to solitary confinement, and not allowed to see or speak to anyone (including their families) for days, weeks, or months, depending on the person. on october 31, john ashcroft published new rules that allow the department of justice to select certain prisoners for solitary confinement, incommunicado, for up to a year, with more one-year periods if deemed necessary. the previous amount of time any inmate could be held that way was 120 days. the bureau of prisons is also now allowed to eavesdrop on prisoner/lawyer conversations, whenever the attorney general feels it necessary, on any prisoner deemed a national security threat. all the people who have been subjected to this treatment were or are left-wing political militants, but had no connection at all with islam fundamentalism. excuse me, did i miss something? when did i move to chile? or did we become a fascist state overnight?

and yes, this applies to people outside the immediate attention of the FBI as well (actually one of my highest ambitions is to get my own little folder in their system. all the best people have them, from eleanor roosevelt to martin luther king.). the word unamerican is making a comeback. and the FBI is busily investigating everyone from small-time visual artists to college students. and according to ashcroft, a criticism of him is a criticism of the United States, an act of treason. having an anti-bush poster is cause for investigation. among the people who have been fired or pushed out of their jobs for their anti-war views are barbara wien, an employee at the United States Institute of Peace, jackie anderson, a staff reporter for a utah paper, Dan Guthrie, a columnist in oregon, and tom gutting, a reporter in texas, not to mention several cartoonists whose strips have been pulled.

and if you think you're safe, bush has signed into law a bill that gives the federal government the authority to search booksellers' business records, including the titles of books purchased by their customers, and the gag order that prevents the bookseller from objecting in court and disclosing to anyone if they have received an order to produce documents.

the list is endless, and it gets worse so i'll just stop there. what's at stake here are our civil rights: the right to criticize the government, the right to speak as we see fit, the right to read what we want, and our right to protest actions of our government. not to mention our legal rights, the right to due process, our right to speak privately with an attorney, and in some cases our right to just cause for imprisonment. and i'm scared to death of a government that can so casually revoke so many rights at once, and still consider itself a democracy. and i know we've been to all these places before, from the japanese iternment camps to the mccarthy trials to FBI infiltration and sabotage of dissident groups in the 60s.

people are saying that we're sacrificing some of our freedoms in order to be safe. and maybe for some people that's good enough, but i didn't volunteer for this. the government says they need to restrict our freedoms to protect us from terrorism. who will protect us from our government, once our freedoms have been revoked?

" I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death."
-patrick henry.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." -Abraham Lincoln

if this be treason, gentlemen, make the most of it. -beatpoetgrrl

**all facts in this entry were taken from The Progressive .
The New McCarthyism, by Matthew Rothschild
You're in the Hole:A Crackdown on Dissident Prisoners, by Anne-Marie Cusac
A Grave Assault on the Constitution , by Matthew Rothschild**

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