Wednesday, 31 December 2008

by Rady Ananda

The American Prison Gulag, already one-half Black, is becoming increasingly co-ed. "The US jailed one in 746 women in 2006, up from one in 100,000 back in 1925. Compared to other nations, the female portion of the prison population is highest in the US - at 9%." Melissa Mummert's film, Perversion of Justice, tells the "story of Hamedah Hasan and her three children" to "exemplify the need to repeal the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, and the mandatory minimum laws."

Perversion of Justice: Gulag America

by Rady Ananda

This article was originally posted at OpEdNews.

In 1925, the US jailed 1 in 100,000 women. In 2006, it jailed 1 in 746. The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act and mandatory minimum sentence laws need to be repealed for the protection of families, communities and society as a whole. The film, Perversion of Justice, highlights the experiences of one family victimized by these laws.

Perversion of Justice

A film by the Reverend Melissa Mummert

Border Walk Productions

Changemaker Award at the 2008 Media That Matters Festival

Run time: 30 minutes Website: www.PerversionOfJustice.com

In Perversion of Justice, filmmaker Melissa Mummert potently calls for prison sentencing reform. She highlights the victimization of one family caused by extreme penalties imposed for peripheral support of small time drug dealers. Examining the social costs, Mummert exposes the rank injustice and provides action links for battling outrageous terms meted for nonviolent crimes.

The story of Hamedah Hasan and her three children exemplify the need to repeal the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, and the mandatory minimum laws. Legal commentators bolster the argument, including the trial judge. The film asserts that the public cost for warehousing nonviolent prisoners is $30,000 a year. A review of legal documents reveals that over a four-year period, the drug selling operation earned $180,000. Divided among the three defendants, that's $15,000 a year in earnings. Society deserves a more judicially and fiscally sane policy in dealing with drug offenders.

Perversion of Justice is perfectly adapted for showing at faith-based and social justice meetings, allowing time for Q&A within a one-hour format. This 8-minute teaser should provoke interest in the 30-minute version that won the Changemaker Award at the 2008 Media That Matters Festival:

No stranger to the US penal system, Mummert watched her father's peace advocacy land him a six-month prison stay. In 1992, he organized a protest of the missile silo sites in Missouri. His crime: planting a white pansy on Air Force soil. With her father's activist background, it is not surprising that Mummert chose to intern at a prison while a student at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley.

While interning as a prison chaplain, Mummert learned of harsh sentences imposed on drug users and small time dealers, and began to research the topic. She pored through several case studies provided by Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Hamedah made the best case for public review: she had no prior run-ins with the law, her actions only peripherally supported small time drug deals, and she is a single parent who was pregnant at the time of sentencing. No better case for leniency could be made.

Mass Incarceration

But compassion is not a hallmark of the US justice system, where female incarceration rates jumped 64% from 1995 to 2006. For a longer view showing a cultural shift toward imprisonment, the US jailed one in 746 women in 2006, up from one in 100,000 back in 1925. Compared to other nations, the female portion of the prison population is highest in the US - at 9%. In 2006, two-thirds of incarcerated women in the US were mothers; and three-fourths had symptoms or a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, and/or received treatment from a mental health professional in 2005. (WAP)

Worse, Hamedah Hasan is black in a nation that universally convicts people of color at rates far above those for whites, and for longer terms. In 2006, the incarceration rate per 100,000 for whites was 409, and 2,468 for blacks. That's an imprisonment rate of nearly 3 in 100 for blacks, or six times higher than for whites. The film mentions Hasan's "Do Not Snitch" value; given these statistics, that value better serves human rights than cooperating with authorities.

Even the form of cocaine most readily available to poor blacks - crack cocaine - receives far harsher sentences than does the powdered form. Hamedah Hasan's case is featured in the most recent issue of Crack the Disparity, which also reports that the Obama-Biden Transition Team "has made elimination of the federal sentencing disparity for crack cocaine offense a key goal on its Agenda for Change" under its Civil Rights agenda.

"In 2006, two-thirds of incarcerated women in the US were mothers."

The Sentencing Project reports that "The rapid growth of women's incarceration - at nearly double the rate for men over the past two decades - is disproportionately due to the war on drugs." The federal Bureau of Prisons generally agrees: "As a result of Federal law enforcement and new legislation that dramatically altered sentencing in the Federal criminal justice system, the 1980s brought a significant increase in the number of Federal inmates. In fact, most of the Bureau's growth from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s was the result of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (which established determinate sentencing, abolished parole, and reduced good time) and mandatory minimum sentences enacted in 1986, 1988, and 1990." This chart graphically shows the marked increase for all inmates (prison and jails) for the past 100 years:

Sources: Justice Policy Institute and PEW Center on the States

Featured in Perversion of Justice, the trial judge in Hamedah's case is no stranger to balking at sentencing guidelines. Richard George Kopf was appointed to the federal bench by George the Elder in 1992. Early this year, he published his Top 10 List of sentencing debacles. Here's one:

"9. You don't need experience in actually sentencing people in order to totally screw up the law of sentencing. It is telling and painfully obvious that not a single Justice ever had to look a federal defendant in the eye while not knowing what law to apply."

Under the federal guidelines, Judge Kopf was required to sentence Hamedah to two life sentences, two 40-year sentences, two 20-year sentences and two more sentences at 5 and 4 years each. He felt awful. "This is the most unfair perversion of justice that I can think of." Pointing out the difference between small time and kingpin drug dealers, he clarifies, "The problem is that we begin to treat the Hamedah Hasans of the world like the Noriegas of the world."

Under new guidelines, he was able to reduce her sentence to 27 years. She appealed for further reduction and Kopf modified her sentence to 12 years. But, zealous prosecutors fought and won a reversal of the 12-year sentence. Now serving in a medium security prison at Victorville (California), Hasan is due to be released in 2016.

A Global Look at Prisons

At 5% of the world's population, the US imprisons a fourth of the 10 million reported prisoners globally. Of 218 nations surveyed by the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS), the US ranks No. 1, far and away jailing more of its citizens than China, which ranks 118; Burma-Myanmar, at 117; and Zimbabwe, at 104. The Pew Center on the States shocked the nation early this year with its widely disseminated and devastating report, 1 in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. Not only does the US have the highest incarceration rate in the world, but also the highest number of all prisoners worldwide.

Prison conditions vary widely across nations. The ICPS summarized data from 2003 through 2006 in a report released this year, International Profile of Women's Prisons. In this detailed study of twenty countries, Germany rises as an advocate of one of the most proactive prison systems in the world. It models what an enlightened view of incarceration means:

"The object of imprisonment is to enable prisoners to lead a life of social responsibility without committing criminal offences. This means that life in penal institutions shall be approximated as far as possible to general living conditions outside [and] that detrimental effects of imprisonment shall be counteracted."

"In separating children from their mothers, the US penal system harms families."

Germany's rehabilitation policy goal is backed up by conditions that support family life in their "open" prisons where children up to age six live with their mothers:

"Mothers live with their children in self contained flats which consist of a kitchen, bathroom, one bedroom and a living room. They do not have the appearance of cells but look more like well-equipped family houses. The building also does not look like a prison but more like a student flat from the outside.

"There are no bars at the windows and every flat has its own balcony. Also, mothers can go outside. According to a prison guard, the prison is very open and there are no fences. Staff do not wear uniforms because they do not want to create distance between themselves and the children."

In stark contrast, the US federal prison system does not allow mothers to keep their newborns. Hamedah gave birth to her third daughter while in federal prison. State prisons also generally do not allow mothers to keep their newborns, but some do for up to three months, and in some venues up to 18 months. In separating children from their mothers, the US penal system harms families, a point stressed in Perversion of Justice.

Like the Wall Street Bailout: Taxpayer Costs and Private Profits

The US penal system has grown into a massive prison industrial complex (PIC) in the past three decades. Over 350 prisons have been built since 1980. In addition to the big firms running private prisons (GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation, Cornell Companies, Inc., etc.), a host of industries feed off incarceration. One blogger posted over 100 companies that do business with prisons. In commenting last year on the growth of the U.S. prison industry, Neal Peirce wrote:

"[A]ny governor faces formidable political obstacles trying to pare back America's vast prison-industrial complex. In California, it's the Correctional Peace Officers Association, an astounding 31,000 members strong.... It has more than 2,000 members earning over $100,000 a year; its contract-guaranteed pension benefits are today superior to those of the state university system.... The three-strikes law is its full-employment act."

The PIC also relies on mass media to promote its growth and expansion. Violent crime has steadily declined over the past 20 years. Yet, cable and network television provide a steady stream of crime and punishment shows, from fiction to infomercials that celebrate the prison industrial complex and a gulag culture. Earlier this month, I received a viral email exemplifying PIC's propaganda, showing several pictures of a modern, shiny new prison and a slate of "facts" comparing prison life to work life. It ends with a wish for imprisonment.

The US prison system is privatized in more than half the states and at the federal level in 14 of its 194 facilities, using cheap prison labor to create products that are sold domestically and overseas. In this comprehensive 1998 article, Eric Schlosser shows how the PIC creates billions of dollars in profits for private corporations while underwriting the costs with public funds, hiring at non-union wages, and avoiding bureaucratic red tape.

Mummert's film only touches on the social impacts of harsh drug sentencing policies, but the PIC is wide open for reform, if not outright abolishment. Social scientists argue that prisons create far more problems for society than other methods of dealing with crime. Many advocate for full voting rights, ending felon disenfranchisement. Some advocate the abolition of prisons, given abuse of prisoners and political corruption that inevitably occur when humans cage humans.

About Media That Matters

If you feel inspired to take action in your community, Media That Matters sells DVD collections for showing films, as well as providing nuts and bolts advice on how to organize screenings. They'll even help publicize your event. Launched in 2001 by Arts Engine and one of the oldest and largest online film festivals, the MTM Film Festival is an annual global showcase of short films with "insight, humor and creativity that make audiences think, laugh and take action on today's most pressing social issues." Each short screened in the festival is accompanied by "Take Action Links," interactive tools that empower audiences to become activists at the click of a button.

"Media That Matters stands apart from other film festivals in that it really engages audiences and makes them feel part of something bigger, whether you're participating at home or at a screening," said Katy Chevigny, co-founder and executive director of Arts Engine. "These are films that not only entertain, but also inspire and motivate."

The eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival launched on May 28th and is currently touring the world. Shorts for a dozen films can be viewed online, covering topics ranging from post-Katrina New Orleans to Argentina workers, to African Hip-Hop, to the disappearance of honey bees, to e-waste, and more.

Buy and show Perversion of Justice to support Mummert's work, and visit her website to support Hamedah Hasan's clemency appeal.

Check out these annotated Prison Resources.

Rady Ananda can be contacted at drum4peace@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Ananda offers special thanks to Roy Walmsley of the International Centre for Prison Studies for his help in clarifying calculation methodology of incarcerated foreigners, and for his incredible work in this field.

US veto blocks UN anti-Israel resolution

The UN Security Council has been unable to force an end to Israeli attacks against Gaza due to the intervention of the United States. Washington once again used its veto powers on Sunday to block a resolution calling for an end to the massive ongoing Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip. The council has only been able to issue a 'non-binding' statement that calls on Israel to voluntarily bring all its military activities in the besieged region to an immediate end. The statement comes as Israel has begun a fresh wave of air strikes on Gaza on Sunday, killing at least six people. At least 230 people were killed and 800 wounded in similar attacks on Saturday. The number of Palestinians deaths has so far risen to 271. The council called on the parties to address the humanitarian crisis in the territory but has not criticized the Israeli air attacks. Croatian UN Ambassador Neven Jurica read out the non-binding statement on behalf of the 15-member body that "called for an immediate halt to all violence" and on the parties "to stop immediately all military activities." "The members of the Security Council expressed serious concern at the escalation of the situation in Gaza," he said, as the president of the council. The council also requested the opening of border crossings into Gaza to address the serious humanitarian and economic needs in Gaza and to ensure medical treatment and a continuous supply of food and fuel. US representative to the UNSC, Zalmay Khalilzad, defended the Israeli move, saying Tel Aviv has the right to self-defense. "I regret the loss of any of all innocent life," he said, adding that Hamas rockets precipitated this situation. Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip say they fire rockets into Israel in retaliation for the daily Israeli attacks against them. Unlike the state-of-the-art Israeli weapons and ammunition, the home-made Qassam rockets rarely cause casualties. The US, a staunch ally to Israel, has so far vetoed over 40 anti-Israeli resolutions sought by the council since 1972. Since 2004, Washington has prevented the adoption of four other resolutions that called for Tel Aviv to halt its operations in the Gaza Strip. DB/AA/DT

Related News Israel launches new wave of Gaza attacks Egypt opens Rafah crossing to Gazans The Palestinian story: Remember us

America’s Immigration ‘Concentration Camps’ — A Growing ‘Prison-Industrial Complex’

The prison-industrial complex refers to interest groups that represent organizations that do business in correctional facilities, such as prison guard unions, construction companies, and surveillance technology vendors, and to the belief that these actors may be more concerned with making profits than actually rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates….[Read More]

City of Immigrants Fills Jail Cells With Its Own

Writes: NINA BERNSTEIN — | CLICK FOR PICTURES | THE “IMMIGRANT GOLD RUSH” - THE PROFIT MOTIVE BEHIND IMMIGRANT DETENTION [PDF Document] |

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Few in this threadbare little mill town gave much thought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jail beside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded and added barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, its name stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored.

Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the public charter school; a woman who mopped floors in a Providence courthouse.

After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt — only blocks from home, but in a separate world.

In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime — people caught in the nation’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal into an expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propelling detainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.

If anything, the people of Central Falls saw Wyatt as the economic engine that city fathers had promised, a steady source of jobs and federal money to pay for services like police and fire protection. Even that, it turns out, was an illusion.

Wyatt offers a rare look into the fastest-growing, least-examined type of incarceration in America, an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work.

Last spring, The New York Times set out to examine this small city of 19,000 and its big detention center as a microcosm of the nation’s new relationship with immigration detention, which is now sweeping up not just recent border-jumpers and convicted felons but foreign-born residents with strong ties to places like Central Falls. Wyatt, nationally accredited, clean and modern, seemed like one of the better jails in the system, a patchwork of county lockups, private prisons and federal detention centers where government investigations and the news media have recently documented substandard, sometimes lethal, conditions.

But last summer, a detainee died in Wyatt’s custody. Immigration authorities investigating the death removed all immigration detainees this month — along with the $101.76 a day the federal government paid the jail for each one. In Central Falls, where many families have members without papers, a state campaign against illegal immigrants spread fear that also took a toll: People went into hiding and businesses lost Latino customers in droves. Slowly, the city awoke to its role in the detention system, and to the pitfalls of the bargain it had struck.

In a sinking economy, immigration detention is a rare growth industry. Congress has doubled annual spending on it in the last four years, to $2.4 billion approved in October as part of $5.9 billion allotted for immigration enforcement through next September — even more than the Bush administration had requested.

Seeking a slice of that bounty, communities like Farmville, Va., and Pahrump, Nev., are signing up with developers of new detention centers. Jails from New England to New Mexico have already made the crackdown pay off — for the private companies that dominate the industry, for some investors and, at least in theory, for places like Central Falls, a city so strapped that the state pays for its schools.

Here, a specially created municipal corporation built the jail in the early 1990s to hold federal inmates, and last year more than doubled its size. As the City Council president, William Benson Jr., put it, “The more inmates they have, the more money we get.”

Yet in a community whose 1.3 square miles are said to be too small for secrets — “If you sneeze on Washington Street, someone on Pine Street says, ‘Gesundheit,’ ” Mr. Benson said — city officials, overwhelmingly non-Latino, seemed uninformed about who those inmates were. “Nobody knows exactly who’s down there,” he said. “I hear some are Arab terrorists.”

The mystery is in some ways understandable. Though immigration detainees made up one-third of the daily population and a majority of the 4,200 men and women who moved through Wyatt’s 722 beds in a year, most were from other states, and those from Rhode Island did not remain long: Immigration and Customs Enforcement typically transferred them within a week.

Some were legal immigrants who had served time for serious crimes. But increasingly they were the kind of people who in the past would not have been arrested — people without papers, similar to some of the people who play, cheer and live in Wyatt’s shadow. Sometimes the same people.

Anthony Ventetuolo Jr., one of Wyatt’s developers and now the jail’s chief executive, said that who the inmates were made no difference to the jail, which was run like a business, under strict standards. “I’m not interested in getting involved in the politics of immigration,” he said. “All we do is detain people that our clients tell us to detain.”

Swallowed by the System

Over 10 years, Maynor Cante, 26, hardly glanced at the jail he passed as he hurried between home, two jobs and St. Matthew’s Church, where he led a prayer group. ……CONTINUED HERE

| READ FULL ARTICLE HERE |

Homeland Security: Respect civil rights

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Americans have a right to move about without fear of being groundlessly stopped by law enforcement. As far as we know, that constitutional right applies to all Americans, not just the minority who live far removed from the nation's borders.

In what is proving to be a sweeping Bush administration security initiative, the Department of Homeland Security has expanded use of its authority to operate within 100 miles of the border. That has come to include increasingly frequent use of roadblocks in Western Washington.

Much of the activity has occurred around Bellingham and Port Angeles. As the Seattle P-I's Paul Shukovsky reported, it has become routine to check an intercity bus on the Olympic Peninsula at least weekly, subjecting each passenger to questioning about his or her citizenship papers. The Border Patrol maintains it could exercise its authority in Seattle, as well.

Indeed, by American Civil Liberties Union calculations based on U.S. Census Bureau data, nearly two-thirds of Americans live within 100 miles of either a land border or the coast. That alone ought to show why it's important that the ACLU plans to test the continuing expansion of border-related powers in court.

There's also the matter of priorities and effectiveness. Just last month, U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan had to tell the Border Patrol his office didn't want to see any more small marijuana possession cases from the roadblocks.

A disabled veteran said that despite Sullivan's decision to drop charges related to his use of medical marijuana, he remained shaken. As with so many Bush administration security policies, this seems to be neither effective nor respectful of fundamental rights. If the Obama administration doesn't make changes, the courts must sort out the matter.

Activists hold anti-Taser vigil after year of deaths

In Santa Rosa, Calif., residents are not happy with their local law enforcement.

After two men died by police wielding Tasers in the last two months and four more in the past year, a number of Sonoma County groups rallied about 40 people to protest the electro-shock weapon.

"Although it might seem like a lesser evil, they have been misusing it to such a degree that it has become lethal in this county," said Maggie Coshnear, a member of the county's October 22nd Coalition.

Sherry Heyberger, a 40-year-old hairdresser, stood on a curb during the rally holding a sign that read "Tasers are Torture."

Nathan Vaughn, the most recent victim of Taser use, was hit three times by a Taser less than two minutes after a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy entered his home.

Vaughn, 39, was assaulting his father and his mother had called police for help, but less than an hour after the deputy arrived, Vaughn was dead.

"He shouldn't have died the way he did," Heyberger said. "He's been in and out of jail, yeah, but does that call for someone being Tasered three times?"

Tasers have grown increasingly controversial as stories like Vaughn's continue to surface across the country.

In Houston, Texas, a naked man disturbing the neighborhood died after police shocked him with a Taser four times.

A recent report found that 400 people in the US and Canada have died from Taser shocks since 2001. Since the report was issued, Canada has begun removing the weapon from its police forces.

School cyberbullying law takes effect Jan. 1

A new law aimed at deterring the proliferation of cyberbullying at public schools goes into effect Jan. 1, bolstering educators' ability to tackle the problem head-on.

The law gives school administrators the leverage to suspend or expel students for bullying other students by means of an electronic device such as a mobile phone or on an Internet social networking site like MySpace or Facebook; the law, however, only applies to bullying that occurs during school hours or during a school-related activity.

The new law also incorporates the term "cyberbullying" into the lexicon of the California Education Code, which better equips school and law enforcement officials to educate students and parents on the issue.

California is one of only two states in the U.S., the other being Arkansas, that has passed legislation specifically addressing cyberbullying in its education code, said Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-El Segundo), who authored the proposed legislation, Assembly Bill 86, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sept. 30.

"We hope that other states copy this law," Lieu said.

"(Cyberbullying) is a growing problem."

Educators and law enforcement officials have taken aggressive steps to address the dilemma of cyberbullying and its potential deadly consequences.

In November, a federal jury, in an unprecedented criminal case, convicted a 49-year-old Missouri mother of misdemeanor computer crimes after she intentionally tormented a 13-year-old girl on MySpace, leading the teen-age girl to believe she was engaged in an online romance with a 16-year-old. The girl, Megan Meier, later killed herself after Lori Drew, posing as the boy, wrote Megan saying, "The world would be a better place without you."

Prosecutors in that case, however, failed to convince a jury to convict Drew of a felony conspiracy charge that could have sent the woman to prison for a maximum of 20 years.

According to i-SAFE, a nonprofit specializing in Internet safety education, 42 percent of children have been bullied while online, and one in four has had it happen more than once.

According to a 2005 study by at UCLA psychology professor Jaana Juvonen, nearly three in four teenagers said they had been bullied online at least once during a 12-month period, and only one in 10 reported the incidents to their parents or other adults. Her research was based on a Web survey of 1,454 participants between the ages of 12 and 17 between August and October 2005.

Juvonen said the new California law may help dispel longstanding acceptance among many that bullying, in any manner, is just a part of growing up and something kids need to learn to deal with.

"This is a very clear message to the community at large that these incidents shouldn't be taken lightly," said Juvonen. "It protects the right for kids to go to school without being fearful of other kids harrassing them or intimidating them."

School districts across the Inland Empire have been taking steps to inform teachers, students and parents of the new law. Some established cyberbullying policies of their own long before Lieu's bill was signed into law.

At the Ontario-Montclair School District, a task force composed of teachers, administrators and classified staff is being created to review the new law and develop a new district policy, said James Kidwell, the district's deputy superintendent of human resources.

In Redlands, officials are considering holding assemblies, sending out letters to parents and including the information in school newspapers, said Jon Best, director of student services for the Redlands Unified School District.

At Beattie Middle School in Highland, assistant principal Chris Ruhm posted a letter on the school's Web site in November informing parents of the forthcoming law.

Some school districts have already taken steps to address the issue.

Last spring, all middle school and high school counselors for the San Bernardino City Unified School District received new curriculum on cyberbullying, which included suggestions for holding group discussions on the dangers of cyberbullying, how to report cyberbullying and basic tips for Internet safety, said Linda Bardere, district spokeswoman.

This year, the district adopted a new program called `Too Good for Violence,' a curriculum addressing bullying, drugs, alcohol and violence, Bardere said.

As with the case of Megan Meier and others in the not-to-distant past, the tragic tales associated with bullying illustrate its potentially deadly consequences.

In October 2004, 15-year-old Pacific High School student and San Bernardino resident Velia Huerta Victorino hung herself in her living room after years of relentless bullying at school. Before she took her life, she left a heartbreaking note for her mother. It read, "Sorry for what I did, but I had to. No one liked me anymore.

All my friends left me because of what some people were saying."

In September 1998, 13-year-old Pasco, Wash., resident Jared High called his father to say goodbye, then fatally shot himself while still on the phone with him. He had been victimized repeatedly and assaulted by bullies at his school.

Jared's mother, Brenda High, founded Bully Police U.S.A., a nonprofit watchdog organization advocating for bullied children.

She's impressed with California's new law, but stressed it may fall short.

Educators, High said, must stress the importance of documenting every bullying incident that occurs on a school campus in order to track problem students and their victims.

"The really good schools are going to have a really good reporting procedure," High said. She said Florida has one of the best mandatory reporting laws on bullying, and the state threatens to pull funding if schools don't comply.

Still, California appears to be off to a really good start, she said.

"The state has done its job by having this law passed, and now the job is up to the educators," she said.
SUGGESTIONS FOR PARENTS WHEN DEALING WITH BULLYING:

# Stay calm. Plan out what you are going to say to your child's teacher and school administrators. Stay sensitive to your child's feelings and concerns.
# Report the bullying incident as thoroughly and accurately as possible. Listen to your child with an open heart and mind, and let them know they have done the right thing in coming to you with the problem.
# Document everything! Pretend you are a lawyer and put everything in writing. Tape record statements, type them up and have witnesses sign them. Take pictures of injuries and date them accordingly.
# If your child is being bullied online, print hard copies of all the messages. Save all e-mails and instant messages. Build a file.

Source: Bullypolice.org

T-shirt sparks ACLU to act

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 2:22 PM PST

Mariah Jimenez

Mariah Jimenez is standing up for her rights. She is proud of her actions.

The Big Bear High School sophomore class president and the ACLU joined forces after Jimenez was asked to change her shirt on Nov. 3. The shirt was printed with “Prop 8 Equals Hate.” On Nov. 4, California voters approved Proposition 8, which banned same sex marriages.

The American Civil Liberties Union says Jimenez must be allowed to wear the shirt because its message is protected under state and federal constitutions regarding free speech.

Jimenez wore the shirt all day without incident. During her sixth-period class, her teacher, Sue Reynolds, told her the shirt was divisive and drew a line down the school, Jimenez told The Grizzly. The sophomore was sent to the principal's office and given a choice-change her shirt or spend the rest of the day in his office. Jimenez chose to change her shirt.

Jimenez wrote a letter to the editor of The Grizzly that afternoon. In the letter she wrote, “While I am passionate about this cause, I was a little apprehensive of wearing my shirt for fear of being treated poorly by fellow students. What I encountered was verbal harassment, students replying with ‘Vote yes on 8.' But that was not what concerned me most.”

Jimenez's letter ended with, “I feel strongly about my beliefs and think that it is atrocious that my First Amendment rights are being compromised. We all need to embrace tolerance a little more, especially when trying to influence the youth of America, even if we don't agree with others' opinions.”

The ACLU got involved when Jimenez's mother contacted the organization, and the attorneys agreed to take the case. Carole Ferraud, superintendent of Bear Valley Unified School District, was contacted and informed that the school violated Jimenez's rights. An apology was requested.

“The apology was unacceptable,” Jimenez said. She said Ferraud wrote a letter that stated the matter was handled.

The ACLU wrote a response letter to Ferraud and Mike Ghelber, Big Bear High School principal, protesting Ghelber and Reynolds' actions. Jimenez said she is waiting for the outcome of that letter.

“I want acknowledgment that my First Amendment rights were violated,” Jimenez said. For her, Prop. 8 is a human rights issue, she said. She said the fact that it passed is a step backward. The Bible bans interracial marriages and homosexual marriages, she said. Passing Prop 8 opens the door to ban interracial marriages, she said. “What's next?”

Jimenez said she hopes the ACLU's involvement will help change policy. She said she is proud she stood up for her rights, and that she is willing to fight for what she believes in.

“I will never get married,” Jimenez said. But she has friends who are gay and want to get married. She wants them to be able to make that choice and be happy, she said.

Jimenez is a member of the Big Bear High School girls golf team. She has been involved in school politics for several years. Her mother was an assistant coach for the high school wrestling team for several years.

Ferraud did not return a phone call before press time.

Contact reporter Judi Bowers at 909-866-3456, ext. 137 or by e-mail at jbowers.grizzly@gmail.com.

Police State Propaganda

One mark of a rising police state is a lapdog media that is sympathetic to those in power. And when it goes out of its way to portray agents of the state in a compassionate and heroic light, no one will dare raise criticism for fear of being branded unpatriotic. Enter Homeland Security U.S.A.:

This is how it starts.

* News * World news * Israel and the Palestinian territories Israeli blockade 'forces Palestinians to search rubbish dumps for food'

UN fears irreversible damage is being done in Gaza as new statistics reveal the level of deprivation

• Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
• The Observer, Sunday 21 December 2008
• Article history

Impoverished Palestinians on the Gaza Strip are being forced to scavenge for food on rubbish dumps to survive as Israel's economic blockade risks causing irreversible damage, according to international observers.

Figures released last week by the UN Relief and Works Agency reveal that the economic blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza in July last year has had a devastating impact on the local population. Large numbers of Palestinians are unable to afford the high prices of food being smuggled through the Hamas-controlled tunnels to the Strip from Egypt and last week were confronted with the suspension of UN food and cash distribution as a result of the siege.

The figures collected by the UN agency show that 51.8% - an "unprecedentedly high" number of Gaza's 1.5 million population - are now living below the poverty line. The agency announced last week that it had been forced to stop distributing food rations to the 750,000 people in need and had also suspended cash distributions to 94,000 of the most disadvantaged who were unable to afford the high prices being asked for smuggled food.

"Things have been getting worse and worse," said Chris Gunness of the agency yesterday. "It is the first time we have been seeing people picking through the rubbish like this looking for things to eat. Things are particularly bad in Gaza City where the population is most dense.

"Because Gaza is now operating as a 'tunnel economy' and there is so little coming through via Israeli crossings, it is hitting the most disadvantaged worst."

Gunness also expressed concern about the state of Gaza's infrastructure, including its water and sewerage systems, which have not been maintained properly since Israel began blocking shipments of concrete into Gaza, warning of the risk of the spread of communicable diseases both inside and outside of Gaza.

"This is not a humanitarian crisis," he said. "This is a political crisis of choice with dire humanitarian consequences."

The revelations over the escalating difficulties inside Gaza were delivered a day after the end of the six-month ceasefire between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers, which had been brokered by Egypt in June, and follow warnings from the World Bank at the beginning of December that Gaza faced "irreversible" economic collapse.

The deteriorating conditions inside Gaza emerged as Tony Blair, Middle East envoy for the Quartet - US, Russia, the UN and the EU - warned explicitly yesterday that Israel's policy of economic blockade, which had been imposed a year and a half ago when Hamas took power on the Gaza Strip, was reinforcing rather than undermining the party's hold on power. In an interview in the Israeli newspaper Haartez, Blair warned that the collapse of Gaza's legitimate economy under the impact of the blockade, while harming Gaza's businessmen and ordinary people, had allowed the emergence of an alternative system based on smuggling through the Hamas-controlled tunnels. Hamas "taxed" the goods smuggled through the tunnels.

It was because of this that Blair wrote to Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, earlier this month demanding that Israel permit the transfer of cash into Gaza from the West Bank to prop up the legitimate economy.

"The present situation is not harming Hamas in Gaza but it is harming the people," Blair said yesterday. Calling for a change in policy over Gaza, he added: "I don't think that the current situation is sustainable; I think most people who would analyse it think the same."

Blair's comments came as an Israeli air strike against a rocket squad killed a Palestinian militant yesterday, the first Gaza death since Hamas formally declared an end to a six-month truce with Israel.

Also yesterday, a boat carrying a Qatari delegation, Lebanese activists and journalists from Israel and Lebanon sailed into Gaza City's small port in defiance of a border blockade. It was the fifth such boat trip since the summer. The two Qatari citizens aboard the Dignity are from the government-funded Qatar Authority for Charitable Activities.

"We are here to represent the Qatar government and people," said delegation member Aed al-Kahtani. "We will look into the needs of our brothers in Gaza, and find out what is the most appropriate way to bring in aid."

The arrival of the delegation reflects the growing anger in the Arab world over the Gaza siege, directed at Israel but also at Egypt, which has allowed the border crossings at the southern end of the Strip to remain sealed.

On Friday, thousands of people joined a rally in Beirut organised by Lebanon's Shia Hezbollah movement against Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Addressing the Beirut crowd, Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Kassem called on Arab and Islamic governments to act to help lift the Gaza blockade, and urged Egypt to take an "historic stance" by opening its border crossing with Gaza.

"Silence on the [Gaza] blockade is disgraceful. Silence on the blockade amounts to participation in the [Israeli] occupation," Kassem said.

The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It's time to stop the mission creep.

By Thomas A. Schweich

Sunday, December 21, 2008; Page B01

We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk.

This Story

• The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It's time to stop the mission creep.
• Monday, December 22, 11 a.m. ET: Outlook: Make Sure Civilians Call the Shots

President-elect Barack Obama's selections of James L. Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, to be his national security adviser and, it appears, retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair to be his director of national intelligence present the incoming administration with an important opportunity -- and a major risk. These appointments could pave the way for these respected military officers to reverse the current trend of Pentagon encroachment upon civilian government functions, or they could complete the silent military coup d'etat that has been steadily gaining ground below the radar screen of most Americans and the media.

While serving the State Department in several senior capacities over the past four years, I witnessed firsthand the quiet, de facto military takeover of much of the U.S. government. The first assault on civilian government occurred in faraway places -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- and was, in theory, justified by the exigencies of war.

The White House, which basically let the Defense Department call the budgetary shots, vastly underfunded efforts by the State Department, the Justice Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to train civilian police forces, build functioning judicial systems and provide basic development services to those war-torn countries. For example, after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Justice Department and the State Department said that they needed at least 6,000 police trainers in the country. Pentagon officials told some of my former staffers that they doubted so many would be needed. The civilians' recommendation "was quickly reduced to 1,500 [trainers] by powers-that-be above our pay grade," Gerald F. Burke, a retired major in the Massachusetts State Police who trained Iraqi cops from 2003 to 2006, told Congress last April. Just a few hundred trainers ultimately wound up being fielded, according to Burke's testimony.

Until this year, the State Department received an average of about $40 million a year for rule-of-law programs in Afghanistan, according to the department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs -- in stark contrast to the billions that the Pentagon got to train the Afghan army. Under then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Defense Department failed to provide even basic security for the meager force of civilian police mentors, rule-of-law advisers and aid workers from other U.S. agencies operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, driving policymakers to turn to such contracting firms as Blackwater Worldwide. After having set the rest of the U.S. government up for failure, military authorities then declared that the other agencies' unsuccessful police-training efforts required military leadership and took them over -- after brutal interagency battles at the White House.

The result of letting the Pentagon take such thorough charge of the programs to create local police forces is that these units, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, have been unnecessarily militarized -- producing police officers who look more like militia members than ordinary beat cops. These forces now risk becoming paramilitary groups, well armed with U.S. equipment, that could run roughshod over Iraq and Afghanistan's nascent democracies once we leave.

Or consider another problem with the rising influence of the Pentagon: the failure to address the ongoing plague of poppy farming and heroin production in Afghanistan. This fiasco was in large part the result of the work of non-expert military personnel, who discounted the corrosive effects of the Afghan heroin trade on our efforts to rebuild the country and failed to support civilian-run counter-narcotics programs. During my tenure as the Bush administration's anti-drug envoy to Afghanistan, I also witnessed JAG officers hiring their own manifestly unqualified Afghan legal "experts," some of whom even lacked law degrees, to operate outside the internationally agreed-upon, Afghan-led program to bring impartial justice to the people of Afghanistan. This resulted in confusion and contradiction.

One can also see the Pentagon's growing muscle in the recent creation of the U.S. military command for Africa, known as Africom. This new command supposedly has a joint civilian-military purpose: to coordinate soft power and traditional hard power to stop al-Qaeda and its allies from gaining a foothold on the continent. But Africom has gotten a chilly reception in post-colonial Africa. Meanwhile, U.S. competitors such as China are pursuing large African development projects that are being welcomed with open arms. Since the Bush administration has had real successes with its anti-AIDS and other health programs in Africa, why exactly do we need a military command there running civilian reconstruction, if not to usurp the efforts led by well-respected U.S. embassies and aid officials?

And, of course, I need not even elaborate on the most notorious effect of the military's growing reach: the damage that the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and such military prisons as Abu Ghraib have done to U.S. credibility around the world.

But these initial military takeovers of civilian functions all took place a long distance from home. "We are in a war, after all," Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, told me by way of explaining the military's huge role in that country -- just before the Pentagon seemingly had him removed in 2007 because of his admirable efforts to balance military and civilian needs. (I heard angry accounts of the Pentagon's role in Neumann's "retirement" at the time from knowledgeable diplomats, one of them very senior.) But our military forces, in a bureaucratic sense, soon marched on Washington itself.

As military officers sought to take over the role played by civilian development experts abroad, Pentagon bureaucrats quietly populated the National Security Council and the State Department with their own personnel (some civilians, some consultants, some retired officers, some officers on "detail" from the Pentagon) to ensure that the Defense Department could keep an eye on its rival agencies. Vice President Cheney, himself a former secretary of defense, and his good friend Rumsfeld ensured the success of this seeding effort by some fairly forceful means. At least twice, I saw Cheney staffers show up unannounced at State Department meetings, and I heard other State Department officials grumble about this habit. The Rumsfeld officials could play hardball, sometimes even leaking to the press the results of classified meetings that did not go their way in order to get the decisions reversed. After I got wind of the Pentagon's dislike for the approved interagency anti-drug strategy for Afghanistan, details of the plan quickly wound up in the hands of foreign countries sympathetic to the Pentagon view. I've heard other, similarly troubling stories about leaks of classified information to the press.

Many of Cheney's and Rumsfeld's cronies still work at the Pentagon and elsewhere. Rumsfeld's successor, Robert M. Gates, has spoken of increasing America's "soft power," its ability to attract others by our example, culture and values, but thus far, this push to reestablish civilian leadership has been largely talk and little action. Gates is clearly sincere about chipping away at the military's expanding role, but many of his subordinates are not.

The encroachment within America's borders continued with the military's increased involvement in domestic surveillance and its attempts to usurp the role of the federal courts in reviewing detainee cases. The Pentagon also resisted ceding any authority over its extensive intelligence operations to the first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte -- a State Department official who eventually gave up his post to Mike McConnell, a former Navy admiral. The Bush administration also appointed Michael V. Hayden, a four-star Air Force general, to be the director of the CIA. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley saw much of the responsibility for developing and implementing policy on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- surely the national security adviser's job -- given to Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, Bush's new "war czar." By 2008, the military was running much of the national security apparatus.

The Pentagon opened a southern front earlier this year when it attempted to dominate the new Merida Initiative, a promising $400 million program to help Mexico battle drug cartels. Despite the admirable efforts of the federal drug czar, John P. Walters, to keep the White House focused on the civilian law-enforcement purpose of the Merida Initiative, the military runs a big chunk of that program as well.

Now the Pentagon has drawn up plans to deploy 20,000 U.S. soldiers inside our borders by 2011, ostensibly to help state and local officials respond to terrorist attacks or other catastrophes. But that mission could easily spill over from emergency counterterrorism work into border-patrol efforts, intelligence gathering and law enforcement operations -- which would run smack into the Posse Comitatus Act, the long-standing law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement. So the generals are not only dominating our government activities abroad, at our borders and in Washington, but they also seem to intend to spread out across the heartland of America.

If President-elect Obama wants to reverse this trend, he must take four steps -- and very quickly:

1. Direct -- or, better yet, order -- Gates, Jones, Blair and the other military leaders in his Cabinet to rid the Pentagon's lower ranks of Rumsfeld holdovers whose only mission is to increase the power of the Pentagon.

2. Turn Gates's speeches on the need to promote soft power into reality with a massive transfer of funds from the Pentagon to the State Department, the Justice Department and USAID.

3. Put senior, respected civilians -- not retired or active military personnel -- into key subsidiary positions in the intelligence community and the National Security Council.

4. Above all, he should let his appointees with military backgrounds know swiftly and firmly that, under the Constitution, he is their commander, and that he will not tolerate the well-rehearsed lip service that the military gave to civilian agencies and even President Bush over the past four years.

In short, he should retake the government before it devours him and us -- and return civilian-led government to the people of the United States.

Thomas A. Schweich served the Bush administration as ambassador for counter-narcotics in Afghanistan and deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement affairs.

Ariz. police say they are prepared as War College warns military must prep for unrest; IMF warns of economic riots

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Wednesday of economy-related riots and unrest in various global markets if the financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are hurt by credit constraints and rising unemployment.

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., both said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson brought up a worst-case scenario as he pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September. Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, said that might even require a declaration of martial law, the two noted.

State and local police in Arizona say they have broad plans to deal with social unrest, including trouble resulting from economic distress. The security and police agencies declined to give specifics, but said they would employ existing and generalized emergency responses to civil unrest that arises for any reason.

“The Phoenix Police Department is not expecting any civil unrest at this time, but we always train to prepare for any civil unrest issue. We have a Tactical Response Unit that trains continually and has deployed on many occasions for any potential civil unrest issue,” said Phoenix Police spokesman Andy Hill.

“We have well established plans in place for such civil unrest,” said Scottsdale Police spokesman Mark Clark.

Clark, Hill and other local police officials said the region did plenty of planning and emergency management training for the Super Bowl in February in Glendale.

“We’re prepared,” said Maricopa County Sheriff Deputy Chief Dave Trombi citing his office’s past dealings with immigration marches and major events.

Super Bowl security efforts included personnel and resources from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. military’s Northern Command, which coordinated with Arizona officials. The Northern Command was created after 9/11 to have troops and Defense Department resources ready to respond to security problems, terrorism and natural disasters.

Northern Command spokesman Michael Kucharek and Arizona Army National Guard Major. Paul Aguirre said they are not aware of any new planning for domestic situations related to the economy.

Nick Dranias, director of constitutional government at the libertarian Goldwater Institute, said a declaration of marital law would be an extraordinary event and give military control over civilian authorities and institutions. Dranias said the Posse Comitatus Act restricts the U.S. military’s role in domestic law enforcement. But he points to a 1994 U.S. Defense Department Directive (DODD 3025) he says allows military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations to save lives, prevent suffering or mitigate great property damage.

Dranias said such an emergency declaration could worsen the economic situation and doubts extreme measures will been taken. “I don’t think it’s likely. But it’s not impossible,” he said.

The economy is in recession. Consumer spending is down, foreclosures are up and a host of businesses are laying off workers and struggling with tight credit and the troubled housing and financial markets. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and U.S. Treasury Department have pumped more than $8.5 trillion into the economy via equity purchases of bank stocks, liquidity infusions, Wall Street and bank bailouts and taxpayer rebates. U.S. automakers are seeking more than $14 billion in federal loans with fears they could fall into bankruptcy without a bailout. The U.S. housing and subprime lending-induced recession also has hit economies in Europe, Japan and China.

Gov. Janet Napolitano’s office declined comment on emergency planning and possible civil unrest. Napolitano is president-elect Barack Obama’s pick for secretary of Homeland Security, an agency that oversees airport security, disaster response, border security, customs and anti-terrorism efforts.

As governor, Napolitano sent National Guard troops to Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in 2003 in response to terrorism threats.

Glendale Police spokesman Jim Toomey said the West Valley suburb developed new emergency plans with the approach of Y2K computer changeovers leading up to the year 2000 and police have updated those plans several times including after 9/11. Toomey said strategies to deal with public unrest usually involve deploying personnel and equipment to deal with specific incidents while still providing usual services.

The Bill Nobody Noticed: National DNA Databank

Patty Donovan
Natural News
December 20, 2008

(NaturalNews) In April of 2008, President Bush signed into law S.1858 which allows the federal government to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S. This was to be implemented within 6 months meaning that this collection is now being carried out. Congressman Ron Paul states that this bill is the first step towards the establishment of a national DNA database.

S.1858, known as The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, is justified as a “national contingency plan” in that it represents preparation for any sort of public health emergency. The bill states that the federal government should “continue to carry out, coordinate, and expand research in newborn screening” and “maintain a central clearinghouse of current information on newborn screening… ensuring that the clearinghouse is available on the Internet and is updated at least quarterly”. Sections of the bill also make it clear that DNA may be used in genetic experiments and tests. Read the full bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xp…

efoodsTwila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council on Health Care warns that this new law represents the beginning of nationwide genetic testing. Brase states that S.1858 and H.R. 3825, the House version of the bill, will:
• Establish a national list of genetic conditions for which newborns and children are to be tested.
• Establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide.
• Build surveillance systems for tracking the health status and health outcomes of individuals diagnosed at birth with a genetic defect or trait.
• Use the newborn screening program as an opportunity for government agencies to identify, list, and study “secondary conditions” of individuals and their families.
• Subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent.
Read her entire analysis of the implications of this bill here: http://www.cchconline.org/pdf/S_1858_NB…

Brase states that under this bill, “The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research.” All 50 states are now routinely providing results of genetic screenings to the Department of Homeland Security and this bill will establish the legality of that practice plus include DNA.

Ron Paul has also vigorously argued against this bill making the following comments before the US House of Representatives:

“I cannot support legislation…that exceeds the Constitutional limitations on federal power or in any way threatens the liberty of the American people. I must oppose it.”

“S. 1858 gives the federal bureaucracy the authority to develop a model newborn screening program. Madame Speaker, the federal government lacks both the constitutional authority and the competence to develop a newborn screening program adequate for a nation as large and diverse as the United States. …”

“Those of us in the medical profession should be particularly concerned about policies allowing government officials and state-favored interests to access our medical records without our consent … My review of S. 1858 indicates the drafters of the legislation made no effort to ensure these newborn screening programs do not violate the privacy rights of parents and children, in fact, by directing federal bureaucrats to create a contingency plan for newborn screening in the event of a ‘public health’ disaster, this bill may lead to further erosions of medical privacy. As recent history so eloquently illustrates, politicians are more than willing to take, and people are more than willing to cede, liberty during times of ‘emergency.”

S. 1858 PDF

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Wikileaks Threatened with Criminal Prosecution by the BND

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Court sides with ACLU, strikes down Patriot Act gag provision

ACLU victorious as federal court declares Patriot Act provision a violation of the First Amendment

A federal appeals court ruling late Monday is the cause célèbre of the American Civil Liberties Union, as another provision of the Bush administration’s Patriot Act falls to the judicial system.

Until the ruling, recipients of so-called “national security letters” were legally forbidden from speaking out. The letters, usually a demand for documents, or a notice that private records had been searched by government authorities, were criticized as a cover-all for FBI abuses.

“The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients,” said the ACLU in a release. “The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders – provisions that required the courts to treat the government’s claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch.”

Because of the ruling, the government will now be forced to justify individual gag orders before a court, instead of casually wielding the power of a blanket gag as the Bush administration has done since the blindingly fast passage of the Patriot Act in Oct. 2001.

In Sept. 2007, a federal judge ruled unconstitutional provisions within the Patriot Act which allowed the government to obtain search warrants without probable cause.

The ACLU’s complete press release follows.

####

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 15, 2008

NEW YORK – A federal appeals court today upheld, in part, a decision striking down provisions of the Patriot Act that prevent national security letter (NSL) recipients from speaking out about the secret records demands. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the FBI’s authority to use NSLs to demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers and then forbid them from discussing the requests. Siding with the ACLU, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the statute’s gag provisions violate the First Amendment.

“We are gratified that the appeals court found that the FBI cannot silence people with complete disregard for the First Amendment simply by saying the words ‘national security,’” said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “This is a major victory for the rule of law. The court recognized the need for judicial oversight of the government’s dangerous gag power and rejected the Bush administration’s position that the courts should just rubber-stamp these gag orders. By upholding the critical check of judicial review, the FBI can no longer use this incredible power to hide abuse of its intrusive Patriot Act surveillance powers and silence critics.”

The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients. The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders – provisions that required the courts to treat the government’s claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch.

“The appellate panel correctly observed that the imposition of such a conclusive presumption ignored well-settled First Amendment standards and deprived the judiciary of its important function as a protector of fundamental rights,” said Arthur Eisenberg, Legal Director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

In this regard, the opinion stated: “The fiat of a governmental official, though senior in rank and doubtless honorable in the execution of official duties, cannot displace the judicial obligation to enforce constitutional requirements.”

The court, therefore, also ruled that the government must now justify the gag on the John Doe NSL recipient in the case, a gag that has been in place for more than four years.

The ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed this lawsuit in April 2004 on behalf of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that received an NSL. Because the FBI imposed a gag order on the ISP, the lawsuit was filed under seal, and even today the ACLU is prohibited from disclosing its client’s identity. The FBI continues to maintain the gag order even though the underlying investigation is more than four years old (and may well have ended), and even though the FBI abandoned its demand for records from the ISP over a year and a half ago.

In September 2004, Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York struck down the NSL statute, ruling that the FBI could not constitutionally demand sensitive records without judicial review and that permanent gag orders violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The government appealed the ruling, but Congress amended the NSL provision before the court issued a decision.

The ACLU brought a new challenge to the amended provision, and in September 2007, Judge Marrero again found the statute unconstitutional.

Bills aimed at bringing the NSL authority back in line with the Constitution were introduced last year in both the House and Senate after reports had confirmed and detailed the widespread abuse of the authority by federal law enforcement. Since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, relaxing restrictions on the FBI’s use of the power, the number of NSLs issued has seen an astronomical increase, to nearly 200,000 between 2003 and 2006. A March 2008 Office of Inspector General (OIG) report revealed that, among other abuses, the FBI misused NSLs to sidestep the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). In one instance, the FBI issued NSLs to obtain information after the FISC twice refused its requests on First Amendment grounds. The OIG also found that the FBI continues to impose gag orders on about 97 percent of NSL recipients and that, in some cases, the FBI failed to sufficiently justify why the gag orders were imposed in the first place.

In addition to this case, the ACLU has challenged this Patriot Act statute multiple times. One case was brought on behalf of a group of Connecticut librarians and another case, called Internet Archive v. Mukasey, involved an NSL served on a digital library in California. In the latter case, the FBI withdrew the NSL and the gag as part of the settlement of a legal challenge brought by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Attorneys in Doe v. Mukasey are Jameel Jaffer, Goodman and L. Danielle Tully of the ACLU National Security Project and Eisenberg of the NYCLU.

Today’s decision can be found online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/38110lgl20081215.html

More information on Doe v. Mukasey and NSLs is available online at: www.aclu.org/nsl

Update: Marine “Military Presence” Confirmed in San Bernardino County

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 15, 2008

Audio of the KCDZ-FM news report

As we reported yesterday, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center has dispatched uniformed and presumably armed (we have no confirmation of the latter) soldiers to assist the California Highway Patrol (CHP) in the operation of unconstitutional sobriety checkpoints in San Bernardino County, California, the largest county in California and the country (San Bernardino County is directly east of Los Angeles).

On the Alex Jones Show today, Gary Daigneault, News Director at KCDZ-FM based in Joshua Tree, California, said the California Highway Patrol was less than forthcoming with their plan to team up with the military police, a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing the military from performing civilian law enforcement duties.

	Press releases faxed to KCDZ-FM. Click to see a larger image.

After running an editorial last week reminding the Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center of the illegality of such an operation, the California Highway Patrol sent the radio station a fax indicating that the action would not include military police (see faxes at right).

As a KCDZ-FM news report broadcast today points out, by law — to avoid entrapment — the California Highway Patrol is required to provide the location of its checkpoints to the media at least two hours prior. Although the CHP did provide the radio station with a telephone number to get this information, when the number was called there was no answer.

Moreover, “to add insult to injury,” Marine Corps military police, in uniform and in marked military police cars, were indeed teamed up with CHP outside of a Home Depot in the town of Yucca Valley.

After examining the documents faxed to KCDZ-FM, it becomes obvious that the CHP in Joshua Tree deliberately released disinformation to the media designed to cover its participation with the Marines, as noted a direct violation of Posse Comitatus.

The first CHP News release dated December 10 indicated the police planned to work with the Marines, while a second press release dated December 12, after KCDZ-FM aired a critical news editorial, had this reference removed. Both documents include a note indicating the media would be able to contact the Barstow Dispatch Center on December 12 to receive location information required by law. As noted above, calls to the number provided went unanswered.

As Alex mentioned on his show today, the Marines are well aware of Infowars coverage of the story and made reference not only Alex by name but Infowars staff members Aaron Dykes and Kurt Nimmo as well.

It should be obvious the Marines and the California Highway Patrol are engaged in a disinformation campaign against the media in order to cover up their illegal and unconstitutional behavior. Not only do they want to entrap the residents of San Bernardino County in their “sobriety/driver license checkpoint” in violation of the Fourth Amendment protecting the people against unreasonable searches and seizures, they also want to send a message that the military will henceforth be involved in domestic law enforcement in direct violation of Posse Comitatus.