American Muslims 12 years after 9/11 - Page Three
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism?
It is a common adage that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism," however in the post-9/11 America, dissent has become unpatriotic.
A string of similar “terror” prosecutions around the country take aim at the First Amendment protection of free speech and political expression. The authorities have already branded select participants in Occupy Wall Street and anti-NATO protests as “terrorists.” Last year, heavily-armed “domestic terrorism” commandos raided Occupy Wall Street protesters’ homes in Washington and Oregon, using battering rams and stun grenades. The commandos were authorized to seize all “anti-government or anarchist literature or material.” As with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, also guaranteed under the First Amendment, has not been officially repealed. The reality, however, is that political assembly is already a semi-criminal activity in America. Political protests are routinely met with vastly disproportionate police mobilizations, confinement to oxymoronic “free speech zones,” “kettling” (in which protesters are surrounded and forcibly moved in one direction or prevented from leaving an area), beatings, tear gas, pepper spray, stun grenades or rubber bullets. The standard government response to a political protest is a massive show of force, complete with police snipers on rooftops. [Tom Carter - Information Clearing House, May 14, 2013]
There is also an escalation of the government's effort to neutralize critical online opinion. Here are few examples:
Justin Carter, a Texas teenager was arrested on February 14 and jailed as a “terrorist” for a Facebook post. On the basis of a Facebook post, he was charged with making a “terroristic threat” to “impair public/government service. Police arrested him at work. Subsequent police searches and investigations yielded no weapons, no plans to acquire weapons, no motive, no target, no intended victims, no conspiracy, no membership in a terrorist group, and no plans to carry out an attack on a particular day or at a particular place. Justin Carter is being prosecuted on the basis of the Facebook post alone.
The judge vindictively set the bond for Justin Carter’s release at $500,000, implying that the teenager was a serious threat to the community. The high bond was also calculated to encourage Justin and his family to accept the prosecutor’s offer of a guilty plea in return for eight years in prison.
In July he was released after an anonymous donor posted his bond. The anonymous donor donated the full half million to cover the fee. However, Justin Carter’s legal troubles are by no means over. His trial is scheduled for next year, and he still faces up to ten years in prison if convicted.
In another similar example, in May, Massachusetts teenager Cameron D’Ambrosio was arrested and charged with “terrorism” for posting rap lyrics to his Facebook account. He was subsequently released when a grand jury refused to indict him, but not before he spent several weeks in jail. Earlier this year, Michigan high school student Alex David Rosario was arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism” for allegedly making threats on Twitter about his co-workers at a Subway restaurant. Two teenage girls in Louisiana were arrested in January and charged with 10 counts of “terrorism” for emails they sent to other students and faculty at their high school.
Where Liberty Lies: Civil Society and Individual Rights after 9/11
Professor David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center says that after 9/11 all three branches of government compromised in their commitments to liberty, equality, dignity, fair process and the rule of law. In a paper titled "Where Liberty Lies: Civil Society and Individual Rights after 9/11," Prof Cole said in November 2012 that "during the last decade the legislature (Congress) has, if anything, proved a source of law violations and abuse, and has provided little or no enforceable check on executive overreaching." In this regard he cites the following legislations:
"It passed the USA Patriot Act shortly after the attacks, and while it did not give the President all that he asked for, the Act expanded his authority to conduct surveillance, gather intelligence, detain and deport foreign nationals on grounds of political association and belief, and freeze assets based on secret evidence, while relaxing judicial oversight and other constraints on these powers." When the Supreme Court declared the President's military commissions illegal, Congress made them legal by authorizing them in the Military Commissions Act of 2006. When the Court held that the habeas corpus statute extended to persons held without charge at Guantánamo, Congress repealed that portion of the statute in the Detainee Treatment Act....It granted retroactive immunity to telecommunications-service providers who, at the executive's request, engaged in illegal warrantless electronic surveillance."
Prof. Gary Orfield of the UCLA Civil Rights Project wrote in May 2003: “The loss of civil rights often begins with the reduction of rights in a time of crisis, for a minority that has become the scapegoat for a problem facing the nation. The situation can become particularly explosive in a time of national tragedy or war. But when civil rights for one group of Americans are threatened and the disappearance of those rights is accepted, it becomes a potential threat to many others."
Prof. Orfield wrote this while commenting on the plight of Arabs and Muslims who were the immediate target of the Patriot Act provisions and other legislations in the aftermath of 9/11. However his prediction proved correct about the erosion of civil rights of all citizens. In the last twelve years we have seen a steady erosion of the fundamental rights and civil liberties, all in the name of national security.
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