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What Not to Emulate: The Reincarnation of Discrimination
Hadiza Wada, DBA ...December 24, 2010
If there is
anything that makes conspiracy theories about the twin tower attacks believable
it is the many legislations and acts that were literally forced through the U.
S. Congress in rapid succession in the early years of the twenty first century
that made it literally impossible to adequately deliberate and debate them
before passing them into law. These
Acts and laws, especially the
Patriot Act
established many laws civil rights advocates, including scholars and lawyers
view as undemocratic and mostly unconstitutional.
Such laws were a dream come true to everything your typical anti civil
liberties and racist groups adore, while it was every nightmare that civil
rights activists would detest. Many
books, articles and web sites have appeared since the beginning of the emergence
of such legislations. The
legislations and Acts appear to aim at countering and gradually eroding civil
rights progress achieved about half a century ago. Civil rights movements such as those
led by Christian Reverend Martin Luther King, and the Islamic Minister Malcolm X
registered great strides with the passage of a legislation called the Civil
Rights Acts of 1964. Some of those who marched with both are still alive, as
their struggle for which many gave their lives, sweat, blood and jail time began
to be reversed.
Since then, with
every passing year, more technologies, programs, departments and institutions
come into being seeking to further exploit that trend which many see as a
gradual movement towards a police state. A
more convincing reason to question the motive of such laws is the way they are
being enforced to date, more than a decade later.
For example, people of questionable character, including convicted felons
have been used in FBI entrapment of law abiding U S citizens as well as
immigrants who mostly fall within the protected populations under the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. The 1964 Act
protects citizens and every legal resident including visa holders, foreign
students and any other person legally residing or even visiting, from
unnecessary violations of rights guaranteed by the constitution and also
protected from discriminatory actions and undue profiling due to their race,
age, national origin, religion or gender.
Earlier this
month, for example, The Washington Post
a leading paper in the nation’s capital ran a story about a convicted forger
named Craig Monteilh living in Irvine California, who was recruited by the FBI
and paid in cash tax free to spy on a community of about 500,000 Muslims at
their local Mosque. He earned almost
two hundred thousand dollars of tax free money as a Federal Bureau of
Information (FBI) informant in just 15 months. “Muslims were so alarmed by his
(the informant’s) talk of violent jihad (in his undercover entrapment quest)
that they obtained a restraining order against him” the report says. The report goes on to say Muslims
across the nation, not only in that community of California have made reference
to such pattern of revelations that have become quite common, to move away from
any cooperation between mosque communities and the FBI.
The troubling
problem with the arrangement lies in the deliberate use of persons with criminal
records against people who have hitherto been law abiding. Any person who was captured and
convicted as a forger must have believed himself an expert in forgery to risk
using the art to earn something from it.
The FBI who uses intelligence as a tool in solving and tracking criminal
cases should fully know that. Why
then is a convicted forger being recruited to report about a people and be paid
for it? It is highly probable that
he would forge stories and report them as facts to earn money. And surely, as a result of the
collapse of the FBI and Montelieh relationship, some cases brought about,
including some previous convictions in which evidence from the informant was
used have been overturned, or dismissed.
One such case that was overturned was against a man named Ahmadullah
Niazi.
Also revealed by
the Monteilh’s case was the kind of language used to recruit informants which
was in contrast to what the government proclaims at all time since the beginning
of the anti terrorism effort. Mr.
Monteilh reported that his handler told him “At a follow-up session at a
doughnut shop,… that "Islam is a threat to our national security." Mr. Monteilh has since the incidence
been going around the community apologizing to Muslims for his actions and most
especially, the report says, for his disrespect of their religion.
Also, in the
name of preventing the possibilities of another attack untrained and novice
people could send in reports about anyone, which could directly be entered into
a database of law enforcement and other security agents. eGuardian is a new device, which was
introduced two year ago, as an upgrade of its predecessor Guardian, which has
been in use for almost a decade earlier. People can sign into a web site and
load reports including names and pictures of individuals into the data base for
law enforcement. The American Civil Liberties Union
ACLU, and
EPIC Electronic Privacy
Information Center as well as other civil groups have been fighting hard to
protect people from such laws. With every law passed, such groups go into action
analyzing and pointing at troubling areas of the legislation as well as calling
on the responsible authorities to either amend and make them legally complaint
or repeal them in totality. But such struggles gain only incremental successes,
as other legislations are brought in along the same lines. Other areas of concern expressed, of
course, is the rate at which elements from law enforcement use and get away with
abuse of such already confining legislations.
To many innocent
citizens, the United States is gradually becoming the police state that U S
freedom lovers use to associate only with countries such as the former Soviet
Union. That Soviet Union you use to
hear in the news or read in books then, in those days, was a place where a
neighbor is typically recruited and made to spy and report on his neighbor,
sometimes even his own family members.
And since these are not professionals, and likely to also have an axe to
grind with each other as coworkers, or neighbors e.t.c, the room for unnecessary
blackballing is open wide. That usually leads to people becoming suddenly
unemployable, and or being treated as some kind of security risks as they try to
lead their lives. In an interview
with former FBI agent Mike German who today works as a representative of ACLU
aired by LINK TV recently just yesterday, many disturbing trends were disclosed.
The ACLU
representative describes a lady who reported the troubling trend with the
present system of information gathering about activists. She was an anti war activist during
the Vietnam War era. She says though
she knows that the FBI may again be gathering information about her, she was
surprised that today, information can be manufactured about where you were, and
what you said because it was something that happened to her personally. The former FBI agent describes how
such actions by security agents “damage(s) our democracy because people begin to
become afraid of participating in our democratic process.”
Another
Washington Post expose quoted by LINK broadcaster Amy Goodman reports that out
of a massive collection of intelligence of about 160,000 files about individuals
who have never committed a crime but were reported to have acted suspiciously by
local police and fellow citizens, only five arrests were made, and no
conviction, while a database of about 96 million fingerprints are being stored. The massive waste of resources and
also destruction of innocent lives could only be envisaged from such a figure.
Citizens Groups Make a Difference
One of the
beauties of the sovereignty of democratic principles above all individuals and
sectional interests in any enduring democratic nation such as the United States,
is the existence of principled individuals and groups who have the courage to
challenge and expose any violations of the law of the land. While acknowledging
that every land has a right to protect its land and interests, such groups
however being professionals in their various areas including law, could readily
decipher serious issues that appear either inconsistent, or else a violation of
the constitution, the document upon which all legislations must not counter. The
reality is, the present day challenges have not been seen in decades. What makes them humongous is (a) the
percentage of the U S population that is affects, i.e. all those protected by
the Civil Right Act of 1964; (b) it targets the law of the land for
backpedalling, striking at the credibility of the United States as the world
leader of democratic ideals (b) it challenges the very foundation of democratic
principles and (d) the new laws are liberally used by elements within the law
enforcement apparatus to target the very people it claims to protect.
This writer has been to very credible seminars that educate about issues of civil rights erosion, including one where she was on the panel of speakers. The seminar was conducted on the floors of the United States Congress, where the Congressional Judiciary Chair was in attendance during Whistle Blower Week. Some of her co-speakers were former members of the FBI, and some from such Civil Liberties Pressure Groups, including an Associate Director from Electronic Privacy Information Center. The Former FBI whistle Blowers for example spoke about credible and serious issues they had operating within the circles of their colleagues, which consequently made them whistle blowers. A few day ago, December 20, 2010 to be precise a leading figure of the ACLU, of which this writer is also a member, one of the strongest and most proactive vanguards of civil liberties has this to say;
“Treating innocent citizens as suspects flies in the face of
our most fundamental American values and does not make anyone safer. Americans
must to be able to meet and debate without fear that their associations and
dissent will end up in a law enforcement database. Law enforcement already has
the authority it needs to fight crime and terrorism without sacrificing the
rights of those it seeks to protect.” ( Michael German, December 20, 2010 ACLU
press release)
The counter effect of divisive and non-adequately debated legislation on a
nation
Whenever any
legislation is literally forced on a nation without adequate deliberation as to
its merits and demerits as far the law of the nation is concerned as well as the
welfare of all its citizens, there surely will be consequences. Because the laws
and the institutions that made them where not structured to be established
through hurried and inadequately debated congressional sessions, such laws when
made become misnomers, fragmenting the nation and its people along new non
existent and sometimes old historical cracks in the fabric of national unity. They literally become counter
productive. Many intelligent,
skilled and productive members of the society with the ability to churn the
engines of economic growth, political stability and social development find
themselves under some great challenges including invisible and secretive ceiling
preventing them from becoming willing and able participants in national
development. As a consequence, the
nation looses great talents and its many opportunities for growth.
Individuals and
groups who would otherwise be proactively engaged in nation building, and
raising equally skilled and productive members of the society get forced into a
defensive mode often fighting ghostly and non existence issues not grounded in
fact. The activists of the
yesteryears, who fought fervently and resisted the vestiges of slavery and its
discriminatory aftermaths in U.S. history, will tell you it is Déjà vu all over
again. What is appalling in this age
and time when information sharing about almost anything is global is the effect
of such true to day experience on the upcoming generations of young Americans,
and what they may end up thinking about their country and their government. Today, the effects of those recent
legislations have spread beyond those protected groups to the greater society. You may need to watch a movie made
last year by one of many movie critics Michael Moore called
Capitalism to get a feel of the harm
the escalation of such sentiments have been causing beyond the typical minority
population. As the centennial of the
American Civil War approaches, many scholars and activists say the nation will
once again surely face issues such as this, most especially within the African
American population.
Already the
Republican Governor of a Southern former slave owner State of Mississippi,
Harley Babour has been the subject of many African American Radio talk shows,
when he was quoted by the media making a statement that was widely described as
supportive of a historically racist group who are part of various groups
planning to celebrate 150 years after their rebellion towards freeing slaves,
which actually led to the civil war of 1861.
Not referencing “slavery” anywhere, which was the cause of the war, was
described by many as demonstrating insensitivity to African Americans who
descended from those slaves. It
becomes insensitivity also, they say, because a good percentage of those people
of color believe discrimination and unequal treatment still exists despite the
Civil Rights Act, which is still facing challenges to date.