[NYTr] Chris Hedges: The American Police State

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

TruthDig via Info Clearing House - Oct 29, 2997
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18637.htm


The American Police State

By Chris Hedges

A Dallas jury, a week ago, deadlocked in its deliberations and caused a
mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic
charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of
American democracy.

If we lived in a state where due process and the rule of law could curb
the despotism of the Bush administration, this mistrial might be
counted a victory. But we do not. The jury may have rejected the
federal government’s claim that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development funneled millions of dollars to Middle Eastern terrorists.
It may have acquitted Mohammad el-Mezain, the former chairman of the
foundation, of virtually all criminal charges related to funding
terrorism (the jury deadlocked on one of the 32 charges against
el-Mezain), and it may have deadlocked on the charges that had been
lodged against four other former leaders of the charity, but don’t be
fooled. This mistrial will do nothing to impede the administration’s
ongoing contempt for the rule of law. It will do nothing to stop the
curtailment of our civil liberties and rights. The grim march toward a
police state continues.

Constitutional rights are minor inconveniences, noisome chatter, flies
to be batted away on the steady road to despotism. And no one, not the
courts, not the press, not the gutless Democratic opposition, not a
compliant and passive citizenry hypnotized by tawdry television
spectacles and celebrity gossip, seems capable of stopping the process.
Those in power know this. We, too, might as well know it.

The Bush administration, which froze the foundation’s finances three
months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and indicted its
officials three years later on charges that they provided funds for the
militant group Hamas, has ensured that the foundation and all other
Palestinian charities will never reopen in the United States. Any
organized support for Palestinians from within the U.S. has been
rendered impossible. The goal of the Israeli government and the Bush
administration—despite the charade of peace negotiations to be held at
Annapolis—is to grind defiant Palestinians into the dirt. Israel, which
has plunged the Gaza Strip into one of the world’s worst humanitarian
crises, has now begun to ban fuel supplies and sever electrical
service. The severe deprivation, the Israelis hope, will see the
overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza and the reinstatement of
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has become the Marshal Pétain
of the Palestinian people.

The Dallas trial—like all of the major terrorism trials conducted by
this administration, from the Florida case against the Palestinian
activist Dr. Sami al-Arian, which also ended in a mistrial, to the
recent decision by a jury in Chicago to acquit two men of charges of
financing Hamas—has been a judicial failure. William Neal, a juror in
the Dallas trial, told the Associated Press that the case “was strung
together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence.”

Such trials, however, have been politically expedient. The accusations,
true or untrue, serve the aims of the administration. A jury in Tampa,
Chicago or Dallas can dismiss the government’s assaults on individual
rights, but the draconian restrictions put in place because of the
mendacious charges remain firmly implanted within the system. It is the
charges, not the facts, which matter.

Dr. al-Arian, who was supposed to have been released and deported in
April, is still in a Virginia prison because he will not testify in a
separate case before a grand jury. The professor, broken by the long
ordeal of his trial and unable to raise another million dollars in
legal fees for a retrial, pleaded guilty to a minor charge in the hopes
that his persecution would end. It has not. Or take the case of
Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who in 2002 was spirited away by Homeland
Security from JFK Airport to Syria, where he spent 10 months being
tortured in a coffin-like cell. He was, upon his release, exonerated of
terrorism. Arar testified before a House panel this month about how he
was abducted by the U.S. and interrogated, stripped of his legal rights
and tortured. But he couldn’t testify in person. He spoke to the House
members on a video link from Canada. He is forbidden by Homeland
Security to enter the United States because he allegedly poses a threat
to national security.

Those accused of being involved in conspiracies and terrorism plots, as
in all police states, become nonpersons. There is no rehabilitation.
There is no justice.

"He was never given a hearing nor did the Canadian consulate, his
lawyer, or his family know of his fate,” Amnesty International wrote of
Arar. “Expulsion in such circumstances, without a fair hearing, and to
a country known for regularly torturing their prisoners, violates the
U.S. Government’s obligations under international law, specifically the
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment.”

You can almost hear Dick Cheney yawn.

The Bush administration shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief
and Development six years ago and froze its assets. There was no
hearing or trial. It became a crime for anyone to engage in
transactions with the foundation. The administration never produced
evidence to support the charges. It did not have any. In the “war on
terror,” evidence is unnecessary. An executive order is enough. The
foundation sued the government in a federal court in the District of
Columbia. Behind closed doors, the government presented secret evidence
that the charity had no opportunity to see or rebut. The charity’s case
was dismissed.

The government has closed seven Muslim charities in the United States
and frozen their assets. Not one of them, or any person associated with
them, has been found guilty of financing terrorism. They will remain
shut. George W. Bush can tar any organization or individual, here or
abroad, as being part of a terrorist conspiracy and by fiat render them
powerless. He does not need to make formal charges. He does not need to
wait for a trial verdict. Secret evidence, which these court cases have
exposed as a sham, is enough. The juries in Tampa, Chicago and Dallas
did their duty. They spoke for the rights of citizens. They spoke for
the protection of due process and the rule of law. They threw small
hurdles in front of the emergent police state. But the abuse rolls on.
I fear terrorism. I know it is real. I am sure terrorists will strike
again on American soil. But while terrorists can wound and disrupt our
democracy, only we can kill it.