Part 2
By Dr. Steve Best - [email protected]
In Part 1 of this article, I explored how a new
ultra-repressive political culture is emerging around the U.S. Patriot
Act. I described its origins and how animal and earth liberation
movements are key targets of this new legislation reminiscent of the
McCarthy period in the 1950s. In Part 2 of this article, I discuss the
implications of the Patriot Act for animal rights and direct action in
this new era of global terrorism.
***************.
Implications of the Patriot Act
�The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her
arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of
thinking, speaking, and writing.�
John Adams
Under the Patriot Act, the government now has the power
to violate the rights of activists or political suspects in ways such as
the following:
** Demand from bookstores and libraries the names of
books anyone purchased or borrowed. Workers at the store or library are
thereafter under a firm gag order not to mention the request to anyone
such as the media and they have no power to contest it in court
** Conduct secret surveillance of religious or political
groups without the need to show probable cause. This includes
clandestine searches of homes and offices in sneak and peak operations
** Increase wiretapping of phone calls and monitor
Internet searches, email correspondence, and chat room discussions.
Internet Service Providers may be required to hand over content
information and customer records to law officials without a court order
or subpoena
** Have broad access to a person�s medical, financial,
and educational records
** Eavesdrop on conversations between lawyers and
clients in federal custody
** Detain foreigners indefinitely without charges or
right to counsel
To do all this surveillance, the Pentagon has initiated
the method of �data mining� and the system of �Total Information
Awareness� that builds on the infamous FBI Carnivore program for
Internet surveillance. This means that the state is monitoring
electronic communication and research in order to identify possible
�terrorists.� All federal agents need to say to the courts, should they
ask, is that their prying is relevant to an ongoing criminal
investigation. If a judge believes a request is without merit, he or she
must grant it anyway. At the same times, citizen rights for disclosure
of public documents and records under the Freedom of Information Act
increasingly are being weakened and denied.
The Patriot Act also creates the new legal category of
�domestic terrorist� and defines it in a chillingly broad manner.
According to the Patriot Act, the crime of domestic terrorism is
committed when a person engages in activity �that involves acts
dangerous to human life that violate the laws of the U.S. �and appear to
be intended: to intimidate or coerce a civilian population [or] to
influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion.�
Clearly �intimidation� and �coercion� could mean
anything, and the government does not adequately distinguish between
violent and nonviolent methods of persuasion. This definition is a
direct challenge to liberation groups like the ALF and ELF that are
targeted as top domestic terrorist threats. Indeed, nearly any protest
group can fit the definition of terrorists, for what is it to
�intimidate� or �coerce� a �civilian population� or �to influence the
policy of the government by intimidation or coercion�? Protests often
are intimidating, and their entire point is to �influence� policy.
Not only do the ALF and ELF fall under the definition of
�domestic terrorism,� but also groups like PETA. For �harboring,�
�concealing,� �aiding,� or �lending material support to� �terrorists� is
punishable under the Patriot Act. PETA has given money to well-known
animal rights �terrorists� such as Rod Coronado, Gary Yourofsky, and
Josh Harper, and in Ashcroft�s world this makes PETA aides and abettors
of terror. Indeed, right wing industry organizations like the Center For
Consumer Freedom are denouncing even the Humane Society of the United
States as a terrorist group for allegedly funding an Internet service
used by the ALF and hiring �ALF-affiliated criminal� J.P. Goodwin in
2001.
Similarly, if you shelter dogs that are rescued from a
laboratory by the ALF, or if you provided a room for a demonstrator who
later became involved in a violent protest activity, you too could be
arraigned under the Patriot Act. A foreign student involved with PETA
or, certainly, the ALF, could be retained and deported for providing
assistance to a �domestic terrorist� organization. Speaking out in
support of the ALF or ELF can earn you a criminal charge, as can taking
pictures of animal abuse in laboratories or factory farms and
slaughterhouses. In our Orwellian culture where truth is falsehood and
falsehood is truth, documenting animals tortured in a slaughterhouse is
terrorism, but beating and killing animals in unspeakably vicious ways
is not.
Amidst the current dragnet, the penalties for liberation
activities are far higher that previously. Whereas the crime of arson on
a vivisection laboratory, for example, carried a penalty of not more
than twenty years, the Patriot Act amends the law to read �for any term
of years or for life.� The Patriot Act also has removed the statue of
limitations for specific terrorists offenses, including those that
create a �foreseeable risk� of death or injury to another person. The
maximum penalty for providing material support to, harboring, or
concealing a �terrorist� increases from ten to fifteen years in prison.
That�s When I Reach For My Revolver
�When a long train of abuses and usurpations �evinces a
design to reduce the people under absolute despotism, it is their right,
it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new
guards for their future security.�
Thomas Jefferson
A collective insanity is sweeping the nation no less
absurd, outrageous, frightening, and irrational than the Red Scare of
the 1950s. The Patriot Act expands government�s law enforcement powers
nationwide as it minimizes meaningful review and oversight by an
independent judicial body. Rather, the law is reduced to a Soviet-style,
rubber-stamp device, compelled to grant an order authorizing
surveillance so long as the FBI, CIA, or Justice Department say the
magic words -- �This surveillance is part of an authorized terrorist or
intelligence investigation,� or just, �Do it.� The Bush world is
straight out of the film Minority Report where you are guilty until
presumed innocent, and the government condemns you even for thinking an
illegal thought and arrests you before you have a chance to possibly put
the thought into action.
Liberation movements are being demonized not just as
whacko or extreme, but also as terrorist. Surveillance is increasing in
inverse relation to legal accountability and political scrutiny. Even
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) acts and extortion
laws developed two decades ago to fight organized crime are now being
used against groups like SHAC, with activists being arraigned under such
charges in cities like Boston and San Antonio.
Clearly the stakes of the game are higher, and this
should prompt new reflection on what direct action tactics are
appropriate in the face of these new attacks. Activists should not be
afraid or intimidated, but they also need to know their rights, or what
is left of them, and everyone needs to exercise particularly high levels
of security. Even a tenuous association with the ALF could satisfy the
Patriot Act�s definition of harboring, concealing, or supporting a
�terrorist.� It is important that activists have an awareness of the
history of state repression, and to know, in particular, how the FBI
COINTELPRO infiltrated, raided, disrupted, and destroyed the many groups
and causes attacking the government during the 1960s and thereafter. The
government may right now be unleashing a similar war against the ALF,
ELF, and SHAC, although they will have a much harder time with the ALF
and ELF because of their underground, decentralized, cellular level of
organization.
The movement needs more lawyers, but it must in the
first place strive to avoid long and costly court battles as these drain
time, energy, and will, as happened to SHACtivists in San Antonio, Texas
when HLS�s insurance company, Marsh, fought back with lawsuits claiming
harassment. Liberationists must resist being defined as violent and
extremists; they must defend themselves rhetorically and
philosophically, establishing a sharp distinction between theft,
property destruction, and terrorism. They must also work on the
philosophical level to challenge the status of animals as property and
to define them to be, rather, subjects of a complex life, as are we.
In the current neo-McCarthyist climate, activists need
to tone down the rhetoric, so as not to hand the state the rope with
which to hang themselves and the movement. The enemy reads our writings
and comes to our lectures, recording every word, as is obvious by their
use of the infamous Bruce Friedrich sound bite from the national animal
rights conference of 2002 that champions property destruction. I am
elated to see the �marvelous new militancy� (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)
of groups like SHAC, but we must not transgress non-violent boundaries
or indulge in antics such as harassing family members of employees
working for corporations like HLS. We must avoid even threats to
violence, not only to escape the harsher penalties for such speech but
also to adhere to the higher moral ground that activists rightly claim.
Be intelligent, but do not be afraid; take strength from the courage of
King and Gandhi who risked their lives for justice and fought harder
when the state repression got worse. Now would be an excellent time to
revisit their writings and actions.
We must attack militarism, link this to our general
critique of violence, and grasp the connections between militarism
abroad and suppression of dissent at home. We must resolutely defend the
Constitution, because fundamental rights are under attack.
Unfortunately, the Patriot Act and the damages it has wrought to civil
liberties are going to scar our society for a long time to come. There
is no guarantee that freedoms lost once will return again, especially if
the new global paradigm of heightened dangers and insecurities will
prevail indefinitely.
A great sign of hope, however, is that in communities
throughout the country, city councils and local governments are passing
resolutions against the Patriot Act. From Ithaca, New York to Oakland,
California, over two dozen councils have condemned the Patriot Act as
anti-constitutional and devoid of moral legitimacy, even if it is the
law. Taking more than just symbolic action, cities like Ithaca are
requiring city employees (e.g., librarians) to adopt a policy of
non-cooperation with the Patriot Act if legitimate government action
against terrorism violates the civil rights and liberties of people
within their communities. In effect, entire cities are adopting policies
of civil disobedience as they pit individual rights and state duties
against the federal government. Where Congress has proved cowardly and
inept in its duties, city governments are taking on protection of the
Constitution as their own responsibility. As one member of the Oakland
Civil Rights Defense Committee said, �Congress hasn�t been able to check
this unconstitutional executive grab, so it is up to us to reclaim our
fundamental rights of free speech, free association, due process and
equal protection.�
Wisely, local communities realize that we must not
accept the false dualism the Bush administration and its accomplices are
trying to foist on us -- either security or liberty. Sewing seeds of
mass paranoia about the great Evil lurking everywhere, the Bush
administration is dismantling liberties in the name of Homeland
Security. Citizens who challenge Bush�s efforts to wage war with Iraq
are denounced on national media as traitors who should go to jail.
According to some critics, Bush and Ashcroft have compromised freedom in
ways previous administrations have not even in times of formally
declared war. Just as the war on drugs is a Trojan horse for the
entrenchment of state power in our personal lives, the ever-so misnamed
Patriot Act is an anti-democratic vehicle of conservative reaction
against citizen dissent against globalization, corporate destruction of
animals and the earth, and a multitude of injustices.
While the nation braces for war with Iraq and additional
attacks from Al Quaeda, a key aspect of the terrorist agenda is already
realized. If their mission is to destroy the foundations of Western
democracy, then, with the help of Bush and Ashcroft, they are
succeeding.
Go on to A Neologism:
Amitor - By Greg Lawson
Return to 9 February 2003 Issue
Return to Newsletters
** Fair Use Notice**
This document may contain copyrighted material, use of which has not been
specifically authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that this
not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the
copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your
own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.
