VMs in Paradise as commented upon by the trans-Atlantic perspective of Eurocult news

from SPIEGEL ONLINE - 22. Juli 2002, 11:58 URL:

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,206079,00.html

Operation TIPS

Bush wants a country full of informants

by Alexander Schwabe

Nearly a year after the September 11th attacks, US President George W.

Bush is trying to change the country into a society full of spies. His newest weapon in the fight against terrorism, Operation TIPS, starts in August. If the pilot project is approve d, then the percentage of informants in the States will soon be higher than it ever was in former East Germany.

Hamburg - William Harvey is a daring man. About three weeks after the horrible attacks on the World Trade Center, he positioned himself in Manhattan near Ground Zero and raised a sign depicting the World Trade Center. Superimposed over the towers on his poster was a portrait of Osama Bin Laden. Harvey also distributed fliers and told anyone who would listen "America is getting paid back for what it did to Islamic countries."

Naturally nobody wanted to listen to him. "Fuck this guy, lock that fucking guy up before I kill him," yelled an enraged man from the crowd.

That is exactly what happened. Harvey was taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct.

Five months after September 11th in the middle of February, a court rejected Harvey's application to drop the charge. New York Judge Neil Ross based his rejection by saying that Harvey should have known that he was causing trouble. Meanwhile he was doin g nothing more than expressing his opinion - a basic constitutional right.

The Empire arms itself with an army of citizens

What Richard Rorty, American philosopher and literature specialist, had feared would happen after September 11 was coming to pass: when a country wages war, civil rights suffer. Within a week of the attacks, the Stanford professor complained about the arrogance of the US government, and said that the US was more similar to an empire than it was to a republic.

Since that time, the Empire has been busy recruiting new troops to go out into the field against a nearly invisible enemy, terrorism. In the USA, a gigantic citizens army of volunteers is forming across the country.

Shaken up by the effects of the September 11 attacks and affected by an obligation to their fatherland, Americans from Florida to Oregon and from New Mexico to Maine feel themselves compelled to register for the "USA Freedom Corps."

Every American should sacrifice two years of their lives

US President George W. Bush is trying to make use of the patriotic mood of the land. He envisions all Americans spending two years of their lives in the service of fatherland security - a total of 4,000 hours over the course of their lifetimes. Bush wants to give 560 million dollars to the "Citizen Corps" organization alone.

The government is planning on spending much more than that to equip its state security apparatus. The Department for Homeland Security, as conceived by Bush, shall have 170,000 staff and be built up to be one of the largest state agencies in the USA. The President wants to furnish this Homeland Security with a yearly budget of 37.4 billion dollars.

Busybodies, loudmouths, agitators and peeping toms

The Citizen Corps is to consist of five distinctive divisions: CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), the Medical Reserve Corps, the Initiative Neighborhood Watch, the VIPS (Volunteers in Police Service) and TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention S ystem).

TIPS in particular has received sharp protest from advocates for civil and constitutional rights. Some fear that the country could turn into a society of busybodies, loudmouths, agitators and peeping toms. Rachel King, legal counsel for the American Civ il Liberties Union (ACLU), founded in 1913 and one of the most influential citizens' rights groups, said, =93The Administration apparently wants to implement a program that will turn local cable or gas or electrical technicians into government-sanctioned peeping toms."

Suspicious terrorist activities

According to figures from the Center for Constitutional Law in New York, for every 24 Americans there will be one informant who will keep his or her eyes and ears peeled for the Justice Department. About four percent of American citizens are to become ci vil spies who report "suspicious terrorist activities" to the authorities. Tom Ridge, chief of Homeland Security, has already gone on the defensive. He claims, "=93The last thing we want is Americans spying on Americans."

The authorities are especially interested in gaining people who are employed in the key public positions or in positions operating between public and private sectors. Bus drivers, letter carriers, telephone operators, truck drivers, employees at water, gas and electric companies, guards, ship captains and dock workers are to keep their eyes and ears open as they go out into the world with a toll-free number which they are to dial in case anything happens that looks suspicious to them.

The pilot project will start in ten cities in August. One million informants will watch over their fellow citizens. If the test works in the ten largest cities in the USA, that means there would be one million informants to 24 million residents (almost four percent). In the population centers that would mean more "unofficial staff" than there were in the East German Stasi (State Security). Stasi had, depending on whose figures you use, between 110,000 and 170,000 unofficial staff for approximately 17 million residents, less than one percent of the population.

Memories of McCarthy

The Justice Department keeping files on suspicious people is reminiscent of the McCarthy era in the 1950s, when FBI director J. Edgar Hoove maintained Black LIsts with names of hundreds of people who allegedly sympathized with the communists. The informa tion gathered is supposed to be accessible to intelligence agencies and police stations. People on whom files are being kept will not be notified [as Scientology has been in Germany ... Eurocult News].

Until then, it cannot be predicted whether this will turn into a witch hunt. That is because the authorities are leaving open for now how far the planned eleven million informants can go with their snooping. ACLU warns that a large bandwidth of monitoring of citizens will be wide open for abuse and misuse. What should the army of private spies be looking for? Should they be looking while they are on the job or on their time off?

"We can do without block fuhrers"

Neither is it at all clear as to whether the Orwellian nightmare of "Big Brother's Watching You!" will be in effect. A 1992 study published in Harvard showed that many informants are unreliable sources. Some embellish the truth and others make it up as they go along to denounce their fellow citizens. Robert Levy of the Cato Institute, an organization that promotes freedom for the individual, anticipates an avalanche of worthless tips that will render the authorities useless. "We can do without block f uhrers," he said.

The terrorism prevention program is another step on the path of the Patriot Act, which restricts individual rights of freedom. New York constitutional legal rights advocate Nancy Chang is concerned that the Homeland Security law will lead to more and more citizens being targeted because of profiles based on ethnic background or ideological convictions.=

The equal treatment before the law that is based on the Constitution is the first to go, especially for immigrants taken into custody.

What about America's pride?

There is more at stake than causing inconvenience for private citizens.

Since Bush signed the law "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001" that passed the House 356 to 66 and the Senate with 98 votes, Chang sees a danger to the basic rights on which America's pride is founded. "What's so patriotic about trampling on the Bill of Rights?" asks the Senior Litigation Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Chang believes that "To an unprecedented degree, the [Patriot] Act sacrifices our political freedoms in the name of national security." She also wrote that it upsets the democratic values in that it greatly enhances police ability to conduct surveillance and gather intelligence.

As frequently happens in times of crisis, the judicial branch has given way to the interests of the politicians. That is a tradition in the USA.=

During the First World War, for example, the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction of Socialist Eugene Debs for demonstrating against US participation in the war. The judge refused to tolerate Debs' cry for non-violence although the Constitution - as in the Harvey case - really guarantees the right to free speech for every American.

Basic rights were also taken out of effect for citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At that time the Supreme Court upheld as just the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese origin. The elementary right of ev ery citizen to equal treatment before the law counts for little in times of crisis.

At the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York it has been voiced with concern that the events of September 11 have apparently been viewed by the top judges of the land as acts of war, similar to those of the First World War or of Pearl Harbor. It i s not anticipated that even top citizens rights advocate, Supreme Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor, will be supporting citizens' rights to freedom. O'Connor was reported to have said, as she stood at Ground Zero, "We're likely to experience more restrict ions on personal freedom than has ever been the case in this country."

Intelligence Experts in the Role of Terrorists

The judge's prediction appears to have been right. Just last week Bush repeated that the protection of the homeland against terrorist attacks was the most important mission of his administration. He has a whole array of measures planned. US Armed Force s are to be deployed within the USA itself. Driver license systems are to be consolidated nationwide.

[Eurocult note: the role of drivers license offices has changed from the protection of people from unqualified drivers to government identification of people.] Extradition treaties with other nations are to be expanded.

Sea containers in the USA and in foreign harbors are to be more thoroughly inspected. The work of government agencies is to be better coordinated, and vaccine depots in the country are to be stocked up.

The Homeland Defense Plan even calls for creating "intelligence threat divisions." "Red Teams" consisting of intelligence experts will take the role of terrorists and hatch plots of attack so that experience may be gained and preventive measures developed against such attacks.

On this theme

In SPIEGEL ONLINE:

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan: the deadly model of US strategists (July 21, 2002)

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,206213,00.html

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan. Apparently they were casualties of rather consistent misconduct by US Armed Forces.

Hamburg - According to the New York Times, an analysis of eleven air strikes by the Anti-Terrorism Alliance in which about 400 civilians were killed shows that hitting the wrong target has two main causes.

In all eleven mass attacks, it was determined afterwards that the US Command was led astray by misunderstood directions given by the local Afghans. Another reason given was the preference of Americans for air attacks. Intelligence information could have been more thoroughly checked out if the more risky ground operations were being conducted.

According to the newspaper, analysis of the past six months shows that the fire power of the air attacks was so strong that civilians were also killed, although the attacks had strictly military objectives.

Pentagon officials said that its strategy had changed over the past months. They said there were fewer air attacks and that any remaining Al Quaida fighters and the Taliban regime was now better fought on the ground. The Air Force was to play only a sup porting role. The consequences of this supporting role was often monstrous enough, wrote the paper.

Critics have accused Pentago strategists of too often using the military to strike without knowing exactly what they were bombing or shooting at.

They say that the word of Afghan war lords was too often relied upon without knowing where their loyalties l ie.

Top military brass try to play down the events. They say they are not keeping track of civilian casualities, but that their war strategy is successful. In the beginning of this year, top gun General Tommy R.

Franks called the campaign the most precisely conducted war in the history of the land. The military consoles itself, moreover, by saying it has suffered only minimum casualties, only 37 soldiers so far.

The Afghanistan campaign is not the first war in which there were differences between what was actually on the ground and what the pilots thought they were shooting at. In 1999, after 78 days of constant air attacks on Serbia, the military commented that the damage done to the Yugoslavian army was much less than had been thought. Nevertheless, the US organization Human Rights Watch said at least 500 civilians were killed.

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