Ron Jacobs : Creeping Fascism? Ask the Cop on the Corner

Police state shown busily creeping. Image from The End of the World.
Ask the cop on the corner:
Creeping fascism

The infant U.S. police state is no longer learning to crawl; it has learned to walk and will soon be stomping its boots in a neighborhood near you.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / February 22, 2012

The list contines to grow. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The essentially unprovoked police attacks on protesters, bystanders, and journalists at Occupy protests around the nation. The continuing murder of (mostly young and black) men by police departments around the nation with few or no legal repercussions to the murderers.

The growing surveillance state and the denial of basic freedoms via emergency legislation in cities facing political protest usually from the left. The permanence of that legislation even after the protests have ended. The continuing pursuit of “material support” charges against antiwar and solidarity activists involved in work against U.S. and Israeli policies.

The infant U.S. police state is no longer learning to crawl; it has learned to walk and will soon be stomping its boots in a neighborhood near you.


Anyone following the Occupy protests since last fall is well aware of the response of the authorities. It can best be characterized as brutal and with little regard for civil liberties. This is the case even though many of the protesters were/are white-skinned and from middle class backgrounds.

It is fair to say that this demographic fact gave the protesters more press coverage while it also prevented the police from carrying out even more brutal attacks. Young black and Latino men going about their daily lives generally have more to fear from the police than the Occupy protesters. That being said, it is useful to take a look at some recent comments regarding Occupy Oakland, the police attacks on the group, and the response of officials and others.

In short, the response to the Oakland protesters' commitment to defend themselves against police attacks has caused some potential rifts in the Occupy movement. Those rifts have been covered well across the media universe. It is not my intent to continue those discussions here.

Instead, I would like to paste a quote from a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice that goes a long way towards explaining law enforcement’s perception of the Occupy movements tactics. This quote first appeared in a San Francisco Chronicle article on February 11, 2012, discussing the police tactic of kettling.

For those unfamiliar with the tactic, it essentially involves surrounding a group of protesters in an area where they have no escape, then arresting them all. Sometimes the arrests are preceded by a series of gas attacks and various physical attacks by the police.

The professor quoted is named Maria Haberfeld. Ms. Haberfeld’s career path is not one that suggests a strong belief that police should protect protesters’ civil rights and liberties. She was born in Poland and immigrated to Israel as a teenager.

According to her profile on the John Jay website, Haberfeld served in a special counter-terrorist unit of the IDF that was created to prevent terrorist attacks in Israel. After that, she served in the Israel National Police and then the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. None of these agencies are known for their commitment to civil liberties. Indeed, most of their work is undertaken in what can be best termed as a murky legal and moral environment.

When asked to comment on the recent police tactics against Occupy protesters intent on squatting an abandoned building in Oakland -- tactics that provoked a melee between well-armed police and unarmed protesters -- Haberfeld was quoted when describing the protesters’ intent: “It almost falls into the description of a terrorist threat.”

Suffice it to say that, with a perception of protesters as terrorists, the police would certainly feel free to prevent such a protest from succeeding. In fact, there are probably some in law enforcement that feel they should be able to use live ammunition in such cases.

Funeral of Ramarley Graham at Crawford Memorial United Methodist Church in the Bronx, Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012. Photo by Anthony DelMundo / New York Daily News.

Recently, a young African-American man was shot and killed by the police in the bathroom of his apartment in the Bronx. The young man, Ramarley Graham, was 18 years old. The police involved in the incident explained their actions by claiming Graham had a gun and that he ran from the police because he was selling marijuana.

The NYPD’s own investigators did not find a gun and video footage of Graham walking into his apartment building show an 18-year-old kid walking calmly up the sidewalk and to the building’s entrance. Then, a group of police with guns drawn are shown kicking down the door and entering the building. Within minutes, Graham was killed while his grandmother was in another room in the same apartment.

Graham’s murder was the third fatal shooting of a black man in New York City in a week. A week!

New York is not alone in this epidemic of murder. Police shot over 40 people in Chicago in 2011, with at least 16 fatalities among the shooting victims. This evidence, while anecdotal, is representative of the role police play in the police state. The fact that most of the killings are considered justifiable lends further evidence to the argument that the police state is growing.

If there were not a campaign directed from the highest political offices in Manhattan against marijuana smokers and providers in New York City, the likelihood of Graham’s death diminishes greatly. As it has for decades, the “war on drugs” continues to provide authorities with an excuse to surveil, arrest, imprison, and sometimes kill poor and working-class residents of the United States.

Chicago is also the site of a number of police state exercises. Foremost among them is the continuing investigation of antiwar and solidarity activists by the U.S. Department of Justice. For those who might not remember, on September 24, 2010, the FBI raided several houses and a couple offices in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Chicago, and North Carolina under the guise of looking for proof that the people living in those houses were involved with organizations that “lent material support to terrorists.”

On February 1, 2012, Northern Illinois Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas told the press that the “investigation is continuing” into the case. The assignment of Jonas to the case is telling, primarily because of his earlier role in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation defendants.

This prosecution focused on five officials of what was once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. The foundation’s mission was to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine and other countries. In 2001 its offices were raided and five people associated with the charity were indicted in 2004.

The first trial ended with a hung jury. The second trial ended with convictions and the defendants were sentenced up to 65 years in prison. One of the individuals who is being investigated, Jess Sundin, told the press: “That Barry Jonas is now involved in our case is an ominous development. He is famous for one of the most appalling attacks on civil and democratic rights in the past decade -- the prosecution of the Holy Land Five.”

According to Mick Kelly of FightBack News, the Holy Land Five prosecution “included secret witnesses -- the defense never got to find out who the witnesses were -- the use of hearsay evidence, and the introduction of evidence that had nothing to do with the defendants in the case, such as showing a video from Palestine of protesters burning an American flag, as a means to prejudice the jury.”

One assumes that this is permissible in the post-911 Patriot Act world we now live in. The fear of terrorism trumps all and the State is not afraid to stoke that fear in order to maintain its power.

Cops at Chicago Occupy protest, Nov. 17, 2011. Photo by misterbuckwheattree / Flickr / Chicagoist.

The other instance of the police state assault on civil rights and liberties can also be found in Chicago. This May, the city is hosting the NATO/G8 summit meetings. This meeting of the capitalist rulers of the world and their biggest armed force will make Chicago the site of what will hopefully be some of the largest protests against the imperial intentions of Washington since earlier in this century.

The stated intention of organizers to protest is being met with a concerted attack on the protesters and their motives from the establishment media and politicians, while the city of Chicago is changing its laws to prevent the protests from attracting the thousands they can potentially draw. Like Charlotte, N.C., and Tampa, FL -- the sites of the 2012 major U.S. party political conventions -- the city of Chicago has put a series of ordinances into place that will make it easier for the police and other law enforcement agencies to attack the protests and limit their effectiveness.

Furthermore, these ordinances will not disappear after the so-called “state of emergency” brought on by the events in these cities is over. Instead, they will become permanent, essentially restricting the right to protest forever.

Having politically come of age in the Nixon era, I naturally compare the current situation with the assault on civil rights and liberties in the United States that occurred then.

An incomplete list from that time includes the indictment of dozens of organizers on conspiracy (most notably the Chicago 8, Panther 21, and Harrisburg 7) and other charges; the brutal attacks on protesters in demonstrations large and small; the assassinations of Black Panthers, Latinos, and American Indian Movement members; the murders by law enforcement at People’s Park, Kent and Jackson State, Attica, and in African-American and Latino urban areas across the nation; the prosecution of Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, and Ericka Huggins; etc.

You get the point. The repression was clear and it was everywhere. Yet, it was not always successful. Why? Primarily because there was a mass movement that fought it. The highlights of this movement were its successes: the acquittals of Angela Davis, Bobby and Ericka, and the Panther 21, and the failure of the prosecution in the case of the Harrisburg 7.

The failures of the moment against repression were unfortunately too frequent, but those successes remain important, both for the very fact of their success and as examples of the potential of a mass movement against repression.

Repression can be fought and defeated. The place to begin lies in front of us.

[Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. This article was also published at CounterPunch. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog. ]

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Colombia : Uribe's Murderous Secret Police

Top: Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) headquarters in Colombia. Photo from El Tiempo. Below, forces of the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) on patrol. Photo from latinamericanstudies.org.
Colombia's DAS:
Vicious security octopus acts with impunity

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / February 2, 2010

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia -- If you’ve ever traveled to Colombia, then you’ve met the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), the government’s Administrative Department for Security. When you get off the plane, DAS employees stamp your passport and, perhaps, ask why you’re visiting.

The DAS does much more than stamp passports, though. It is a powerful agency, a sort of “secret police” institution founded in 1960. Its mandate covers intelligence and counter-intelligence, domestic and international. It is also a law enforcement body whose agents have judicial police powers: they investigate crimes and can arrest and interrogate people. The DAS also provides bodyguards and security services for high government officials and others at risk.

To someone familiar with the U.S. government, the DAS is a strange beast. It combines aspects of the FBI, the CIA, and ICE. It isn't part of any cabinet ministry like Defense or Interior; it is part of the Colombian President’s office.

If you think this arrangement seems like a recipe for disaster, you’re right.

Disaster has struck with a vengeance during President Álvaro Uribe’s administration. According to recent reports in Colombia’s media and testimony from former officials, the DAS was essentially at the service of right-wing paramilitaries and major narcotraffickers between 2002 and 2005. It drew up hit lists of union members and leftists, and plotted to destabilize neighboring Venezuela.

Before DAS

The government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957) replaced the existing security police by creating the Servicio de Inteligencia Colombiano (SIC) in 1953, which was answerable to the President’s office and used methods like those of the FBI in the U.S. The SIC worked in close coordination with the state Office of Information and Propaganda in activities such as the monitoring of the press. SIC was advised in this effort by Karl von Merk, a former secretary to Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, according to a report by journalist Alberto Donadío.

SIC's focus was on hunting down communists and dissidents. A military commander in the western province of Valle del Cauca has said SIC agents also operated in complicity with "los paracos" there – paramilitary squads hired by Colombia's conservative elites.

At a Feb. 5, 1957, bullfight, when Rojas Piniella’s daughter, Maria Eugenia's, was booed upon her arrival, numerous SIC agents among the crowd beat the vocal spectators mercilessly. According to U.S. Embassy reports, 20 people were killed.

What does the DAS do?

The DAS, created by decree in 1960 by then-President Alberto Lleras Camargo, who came from the Liberal Party, but who, like most liberals was a closet fascist, continued the SIC’s work, under the shelter of the then-existing "State of Siege" and the security statute (the latter adopted in late 1982), instruments that almost became a permanent part of the legal system after a new 1991 constitution was adopted. However, under this constitution, the State of Siege laws were abandoned. It does include a "catch-22" section covering whatever the agency wants to do, essentially: "Raison de Estado," or "reasons of State."

According to a later draft law on the state of emergency, searches and wiretapping could be carried out without a legal warrant. While this law would have applied to the “justice” apparatus, it was not passed; however DAS can and did wiretap, as it is independent of normal justice channels.

Today, the DAS' roles include domestic intelligence gathering, passport and immigration control, security services for threatened individuals, and acting as Colombia’s main interface with Interpol. The DAS has been a key partner for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Uribe’s DAS

Álvaro Uribe’s first DAS Director (2002-2005) was Jorge Noguera, who directed Uribe’s 2002 campaign in the state of Magdalena. In early 2006, Noguera was revealed to have collaborated closely with some of Colombia’s most notorious narcotraffickers and right-wing paramilitaries. He allegedly facilitated drug shipments and gave the paracos lists of human rights defenders and labor leaders to assassinate.

In late 2008, the DAS was found to have ordered illegal surveillance of opposition Senator Gustavo Petro, a revelation that forced the resignation of then-DAS Director Maria de Pilar Hurtado. (Four appointees and one interim director have led the DAS during Uribe’s seven-plus years in office.)

Spying on human rights defenders

International human rights workers were targeted by DAS as well as politicians. E-mails from Human Rights Watch ended up in DAS files, and the G-3 recommended carrying out “offensive intelligence” against the organization’s Americas director, José Miguel Vivanco. The OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission protested when it was revealed that the DAS had spied on a June, 2005, visit of UN Special Rapporteur for Women’s Rights Susana Villarán.

Forces of the paramilitary AUC check citizens' identification at roadblock. Photo from latinamericanstudies.org.

Links with paramilitaries

According to Rafael Garcia, the agency’s former chief of information systems who has made a series of explosive allegations, “Jorge Noguera conspired against the governments of neighboring countries, did away with leftist leaders, participated in narcotrafficking operations, maintained relations with paramilitary groups," etc. etc.

Garcia contends that Noguera maintained a close relationship with Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, “Jorge 40,” the leader of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC; United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia) paramilitaries’ powerful Northern Bloc, who controlled (and probably still control), much narcotics transshipment from the eastern half of Colombia’s Caribbean coast along with Hernán Giraldo’s Tayrona Resistance Front. Garcia says that Noguera met several times with “Jorge 40” to talk about local politics, including candidates in the 2003 municipal and gubernatorial elections. “On various occasions Jorge Noguera told me that 'Jorge 40' was very grateful for the collaboration that he had offered him,” said Garcia

In an interview with Semana, a Colombian news magazine, José Miguel Narvaez, who as sub-director was Noguera’s second-in-command at the DAS, said he told Colombian government investigators that Noguera’s relationships with paramilitaries went beyond “Jorge 40." Other paracos who got help from the DAS included Luis Eduardo Cifuentes (“El Aguila”), AUC's chief in Cundinamarca (the department around Bogotá); Carlos Mario Jimenez (“Macaco”) of the powerful Central Bolivar Bloc; and Miguel Arroyave, who headed the Centauros Bloc in Bogotá and in the southern llanos (the savannahs of Meta, Casanare, Guaviare and Vichada provinces) until his own men killed him in September, 2004. Narvaez said that Enrique Ariza, whom Noguera recruited to be the DAS chief of intelligence, ran a telephone wiretapping operation at the request of “Macaco."

Semana reported that DAS agents protected “Salomón," the right-hand man for a Cundinamarca paramilitary leader known as “El Pájar," whenever “Salomón” visited Bogotá. Also, in both April and June 2004, senior DAS officials foiled operations against “El Aguila," tipping him off that police and DEA agents knew his whereabouts and planned to capture him.

Another witness, a 15-year DAS veteran named Enrique Benitez, says he saw Noguera call off a secret operation to capture Hernán Giraldo. Shortly afterward, the DAS agent who'd developed the operation was transferred to a post in far-off Arauca department.

Garcia said that some DAS contractors had to pay 10% kickbacks to DAS officials, who passed most of the money on to the paramilitaries. Garcia told Semana, “Once Noguera told me that he had to do a favor for the paramilitaries of the llanos,” meaning Arroyave’s Centauros.

Responding to reports of an unnamed DAS agent who complained to Narvaez, along with fired agent Carlos Moreno, that DAS intelligence chief Ariza “stole some intelligence documents on Miguel Arroyave” and erased the information they contained, Garcia said, “I know that Jimmy Nassar, who ended up being Noguera’s advisor, offered this service. I’ve known people from the Centauros Bloc, to whom Nassar offered to erase their files in the system. He charged between 5 million and 10 million pesos (2,250 to 4,500 USD).”

Moreno has alleged that the DAS performed a similar file-disappearance service for Arroyave’s principal rival in the llanos region, Hector Buitrago, alias "Martin Llanos," in exchange for more millions of pesos.

Cambio, another Colombian magazine, reports that the DAS even gave "Jorge 40" an armored SUV intended for President Uribe’s exclusive use:

On November 17, 2004, the DAS sub-director at the time, José Miguel Narváez, called the DAS section chiefs in Atlántico and Cesar and told them that, by Noguera’s instructions, they were to place at the disposal of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, 'Jorge 40', in Santa Fe de Ralito – where the AUC commanders were concentrated – an armored SUV for his personal protection... Days later, the paramilitary chief was using a red Toyota Prado, license plate QGC 851, with armor and a special chip to allow it to pass through security forces’ roadblocks. The incredible part of this story is that the vehicle had been acquired by the Atlántico governor’s office and given to the DAS for the exclusive use of President Álvaro Uribe when he visits the Atlantic coast. Informed about the matter, the government ordered a search for the vehicle, which was found in Valledupar with 'Jorge 40' at the wheel.”

Helping “Don Diego” and other narcos

Diego Montoya ("Don Diego"), the most powerful leader of Colombia’s most powerful drug cartel, the Norte del Valle organization, is on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives’ list alongside Osama bin Laden. That, says Garcia, didn’t stop the DAS from helping Montoya avoid capture. "Giancarlo [Auqué, who served as DAS intelligence director before Ariza] and Jorge Noguera passed secret information to... Montoya and the idea was not just to help him avoid capture, but to let him know that an informant in his own organization was revealing his location."

There is more. According to Semana, "Carlos Robayo, alias 'Guacamayo', was for years the right hand of the Norte de Valle boss. Two years ago, Semana witnessed 'Guacamayo' calling one of his contacts in the DAS and asking him to remove [from DAS archives] arrest orders, background information, photographs and fingerprint data for a dozen people. He also demanded that these materials be brought to [him]. Less than two hours after [the] call, a DAS detective arrived with the package."

The DAS also appears to have helped Montoya's archrival in the Norte del Valle cartel, Wilber Varela, alias "Jabón." Carlos Moreno said he was once sent to the attorney general’s office (Fiscalía) to steal files about a case tying unnamed individuals to Varela.

Drug boss Diego Montoya (Don Diego) is arrested in 2007. Photo from Telegraph, U.K.

Uribe’s 2002 campaign:
Narco funds, voter fraud, and paramilitary ties

Garcia also alleges that Noguera helped to facilitate narcotraffickers’ contributions to Uribe’s 2002 presidential campaign, mentioning lesser-known figures like Néstor Ramón Caro, a Casanare-based narcotrafficker whose extradition to the U.S. was sought in 2001; Raúl Montoya, from Magdalena department; and Ramón Crespo of Barranquilla.

In the run-up to the 2002 presidential election, García says, the Uribe campaign did “things that were more serious than what happened in the Samper campaign” [in 1994, when winning candidate Ernesto Samper allegedly took contributions from the Cali drug cartel].

Before Uribe named him to the DAS directorship, Noguera managed the Uribe campaign in the Caribbean coast department of Magdalena. This province was (and probably still is) under the heavy influence of two paramilitaries, the Northern Bloc and the Tayrona Resistance Front. The paramilitaries’ influence on politics is visible there: in 2003, their mayoral candidates ran unopposed in 14 of Magdalena’s 30 municipalities.

According to Garcia, Noguera and Juan Carlos Vives (now Uribe’s "drug czar") campaigned in Magdalena municipalities where it was impossible to do so without paramilitary permission, and were in contact with "Jorge 40."

But García’s charges go further.

An electoral fraud was organized [for the March 2002 legislative elections] to carry to the Congress the candidates preferred by the AUC’s Northern Bloc. I named three senators [and] three candidates for the House of Representatives from Magdalena, two Senate candidates from Cesar and two for the House, two House candidates from La Guajira, and a Senate candidate from Bolívar.

In Cesar, Magdalena, La Guajira and Bolívar states, Garcia said that Noguera used illegally obtained electoral-census data to ensure that, in several districts, those who did not show up at the polls still “voted” for the paramilitaries’ candidates. The same fraud was repeated two months later, said García, to benefit Uribe. Indeed, while Uribe’s challenger, Horacio Serpa, did rather well in northern Colombia thanks to the strength of Liberal Party machinery, Uribe won overwhelmingly in the districts where García alleges fraud occurred.

García also contends that in 2002, Presidential candidate Uribe actually met with José Gelves, another leader of the Tayrona Resistance Front. Gelves, an AUC member since 2000, told Semana that he did indeed meet with Uribe, and actively campaigned for him.

In 2003, García says, Noguera met with "Jorge 40" to discuss the October gubernatorial election in Magdalena.

Jorge Noguera went to see 'Jorge 40' and asked him to support his friend José Fernández de Castro, but 'Jorge 40' said no, because they were supporting Trino Luna [who ran and won unopposed]. Everyone had to vote for him. Jorge [Noguera] went to the meeting with 'Jorge 40' one Saturday, accompanied by retired General Rito Alejo.

Gen. Rito Alejo de Río is widely seen as a paramilitary supporter. He commanded the Colombian Army’s 17th Brigade in the northwestern region of Urabá while paramilitaries carried out near-daily peasant massacres without Army intervention, and Uribe was governor of Antioquia department, incorporating much of Urabá. Alejo was recently defeated in his bid for a seat in Colombia’s Senate.

Ordering assassinations of unionists and activists

One of García’s most frightening claims is that the DAS drew up a list of union leaders, leftist activists, and academics and passed it along to the Northern Bloc. According to Semana, several of those listed have been killed, most have received death threats, and others have been detained by the authorities.

“The detectives who told me about it showed me part of the list,” García says. “I wrote down some of the names. It drew my attention because it included Zullty Cotina, who had already been killed, and that of [Barranquilla professor] Alfredo Correa de Andreis, who was murdered after I saw the list.”

García offers new information about what happened to Professor Correa, whom the DAS arrested in 2004 on charges of "rebellion." Held in prison for months, and then released for lack of evidence, he was murdered weeks later. Though the DAS arrested Correa in Barranquilla, in Atlántico department, García says that the unit that carried out the arrest was from neighboring Bolívar department, whose section chief at the time, Rómulo Betancourt, is now under investigation for links to paramilitaries.

García says he in fact witnessed Noguera, when hiring Betancourt for the Bolívar post, actually asking “Jorge 40” for permission to do so.

When Semana asked whether assassinations of those on the DAS list were carried out by the DAS or paramilitaries, García responded, “They were carried out by self-defense groups [paramilitaries]. But they told me that the killing of [Correa] had been carried out by people from the DAS. I also told the prosecutor that I had heard mention of a Cartagena union organizer who was killed while holding his child’s hand.”

Three unions with members on the DAS list that have been hit particularly hard are the Association of Health and Social Security Workers (ANTHOC) and two agricultural workers’ unions, Sintragrícola and Fensuagro. Since 2001, two ANTHOC leaders have been killed and 40 have received death threats.

The union’s vice-president, Gilberto Martínez, says he began receiving threats in 2001, intensifying in 2003. He told Semana, “Since that moment we have denounced, in many places, the conspiracy between the DAS and the paramilitaries in Atlántico to follow, threaten and murder members of our union. These denunciations have not prospered in the justice system, but now Mr. García has ratified them.”

A hit on Chávez?

Though he offers few details, citing security concerns for himself, García also told Colombia’s press that “there existed a destabilization plan against the Venezuelan government, and there are many Colombian government people involved.”

García contends that Noguera and others were drawing up plans to kill high officials in the Venezuelan government, including leftist President Hugo Chávez. His allegations recall the 2004 arrest of 114 Colombian men at a compound near Caracas, a combination of young campesinos from Norte de Santander department and paramilitaries from AUC's Northern Bloc. At the time, Chávez described the Colombians’ presence as part of a plot to kill him.

Six months later, Venezuela was shaken by the assassination of prosecutor Danilo Anderson, the first such attack the country had seen in over 30 years. In November 2009 a Colombian man identifying himself as a demobilized paramilitary member who'd served the DAS as an intelligence source told Venezuelan authorities that Noguera had advance knowledge of a plan to kill high-ranking Venezuelan officials like Anderson and President Chávez. García’s testimony lends credibility to this story. Venezuelan authorities also claim that “Jorge 40” paid a visit to Maracaibo, Ven., to meet with anti-Chávez figures.

Former DAS director Jorge Noguera. Photo from Cambio.

Murdering informants

According to Cambio, in his recorded statement Moreno talked about extrajudicial executions of DAS informants “who were no longer useful or who posed a danger because they knew too much.”

The magazine discusses the case of Fernando Pisciotti, mayor of El Banco in Magdalena department. In October 2003 Noguera and Juan Carlos Vives (at the time a vice-minister of interior, now head of the national drug enforcement directorate or DNE) visited Pisciotti’s town. The mayor complained that paramilitaries were pressuring local officials for their candidate to run unopposed in the upcoming mayoral elections, that they had plans to do the same in the congressional elections, and that he and other locals feared for their safety.

Noguera and Vives told Pisciotti to meet them at the DAS headquarters in Bogotá on November 15, and to bring a written report of his accusations. When the mayor reported to Noguera’s office, the DAS director was unable to meet with him. On December 9, Pisciotti was kidnapped. His body was found hours later, shot in the head. Cambio reports, “Based on the case file, Julio César Pisciotti, a lawyer and the victim’s brother, said that before killing him, the murderers tied his feet together with his shoelaces, beat him, and read to him excerpts from the document that he gave to the DAS.”

Though Noguera remains under investigation, he faces no formal charges to date. In fact, President Uribe did him the great honor of naming him Colombia’s Consul in Milan, Italy, in February 2009, where he remains today.

Where is President Uribe on all this nastiness?

Miami’s El Nuevo Herald reported that Uribe was already well-informed about problems in the DAS back in January 2004 when Enrique Benítez, then-head of the DAS bodyguard division, gave evidence of corruption in a major agency arms buy supposedly destined for those assigned to protect union members. Not only did Benítez’s whistle-blowing fail to get the case properly investigated, Noguera demoted him and transferred him to the distant, poor, conflictive department of Chocó near the Panama border.

Benítez met to discuss his situation with José Roberto Arango, at the time an advisor to Uribe. Benítez says Arango told him, “President Uribe is already aware of all the corruption in the DAS, but I don’t understand why he doesn’t want to get this (expletive) [an apparent reference to Noguera] out of the director’s position.”

These continuing, unrelenting episodes cannot any longer be blamed on a few functionaries with axes to grind, or a few “bad apples." There are abundant signs of a criminal takeover of Colombia’s most important intelligence agency.

The ongoing accusations have worsened an atmosphere already charged with suspicions and fears about Colombia's demobilization and negotiation process with the paramilitaries. Some of the government’s critics are already speaking of the formation of a “Mafioso” state.

'G-3': the secret police’s secret police

In 2003, then-DAS Director Noguera created the “Special Strategic Intelligence Group” (G-3), which appeared nowhere in the agency’s organization charts. The G-3, whose very existence the DAS denied until March 2009 was created to carry out sensitive intelligence operations including, according to one document from agency headquarters: “Surveillance of organizations and people with tendencies to oppose government policy in order to restrict or neutralize their actions.”

The G-3 was abolished when Noguera left in November 2005. However, many of its functions passed to another DAS unit, the “National and International Observation Group” (GONI). The G-3’s original coordinator, Jaime Fernando Ovalle, remained in the DAS until November 2008, when he was fired for his role in the illegal surveillance of Senator Petro. The GONI was dissolved in March 2009. [Coincidentally or not, in the U.S. Army, "G-3" designates Operations and Training at the Brigade level.]

Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. Photo from Vivirlatino.

Spying on judges

The G-3 appeared to focus principally on non-governmental activists. The GONI’s targets, however, included Supreme Court magistrates who have been investigating dozens of President Uribe’s political allies’ alleged ties to murderous paramilitaries.

In May 2009 investigators found recordings revealing that all the candidates opposing Uribe’s 2006 re-election bid were wiretapped. Colombia’s daily El Espectador published a list of 36 prominent politicians, nearly all from the opposition, and six noted journalists who were under surveillance at the time.

One DAS detective said he was assigned to monitor people like ex-presidents Ernesto Samper and Andrés Pastrana. This included wiretapping and wearing disguises to meetings and events, as well as following their children, wives, advisors, and assistants.

Semana columnist Daniel Coronell noted a series of “inexplicable coincidences” in which DAS agents searched the agency’s restricted database for information about former president César Gaviria, an Uribe critic. Days later, on April 27, 2006, Gaviria's sister was murdered.
Revelations of new spying

In its August 30, 2009, issue, Semana reported that, in the wake of the DAS surveillance revelations,

Things not only have not changed, but they have even gotten worse. The wiretaps and surveillance of [Supreme] Court members, journalists, politicians and some lawyers continue. And if that weren’t enough, they have extended to some presidential candidates [Colombia has elections in 2010] and, recently, to members of Congress.

"Some of the [wiretapping] equipment being used was hidden from the Attorney-General [Fiscalía] and Inspector-General [Procuraduría] during the... investigation,” an anonymous DAS source involved in the operation told Semana. "Two weeks ago, some of the equipment was returned to Bogotá to monitor members of Congress, based on the referendum voting." The "referendum," a bill passed by Colombia’s Congress in September, will schedule a plebiscite on changing the country’s constitution to allow Uribe to run for an unprecedented third straight term.

The U.S. response

Among the new wiretap recordings are more of Judge Iván Velásquez, the Supreme Court’s chief “paraco-politics” investigator. One is of a mid-2009 phone conversation between Velásquez and James Faulkner, a Justice Department official at the U.S. embassy. “It worries me to hear the voice of my judicial attaché in a wiretapped call,” U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield told reporters.

It should come as no surprise that the voices of U.S. Embassy personal are heard on the DAS wiretaps. It is the Embassy, and Brownfield, along with other U.S. agencies and departments, that provided the equipment to tap the phones and read the e-mails in the first place, paid for, of course, with your U.S. taxpayer dollars.

In February 2009 Brownfield recognized this fact, but said that the U.S. aid to an agency embroiled in a scandal over illegal spying was given solely in order to "resist, combat and eventually defeat drug trafficking, international crime, and terrorism."

Ahhh yes, “the drug war,” the ever present excuse for criminal activity, both at home and abroad. Never mind that the equipment was used to, among other crimes, promote and facilitate the flow of drugs to the U.S.

The response from Washington…

Barack sez:

“[W]e obviously think that... steps... have already been made on issues like extrajudicial killings and illegal surveillance that it is important that Colombia pursue a path of rule of law and transparency, and I know that that is something that President Uribe is committed to doing.” – President Barack Obama, June 29, 2009, hosting President Uribe at the White House.

Hillary sez:

“Allegations of illegal domestic wiretapping and surveillance by Colombia’s Department of Administrative Security (DAS) are troubling and unacceptable. The importance that the Prosecutor General’s Office has placed on prosecuting these crimes is a positive step for Colombia, but media and NGO reports allege that illegal activity continues, so it is even more vital that the Colombian government take steps to ensure that this is not the case... [A] rigorous, thorough and independent investigation [is] in order to determine the extent of these abuses and to hold all perpetrators accountable.” – September, 2009 State Department press release announcing that Colombia, in the department’s view, meets human rights conditions in U.S. foreign aid law.

Stop it; I’m laughing my culo off here!

However, Congress sez:

The U.S. Congress has now voted to stop subsidizing DAS, removing its funding from the U.S. Consolidated Appropriations Act (USCAA 2010) for 2010 passed earlier this year. The Colombian government recently decided to disband the agency, after it was found to have illegally wiretapped the Chief of the National Police, the Minister of Defense, as well as former Presidents, Supreme Court judges, prominent journalists, union leaders and human rights advocates.

Activities of the scandal-prone agency had not, until now, affected U.S.-Colombian relations, nor had they dampened U.S.-Colombian intelligence cooperation. But, in a surprising development, the USCAA 2010 bars DAS from receiving U.S. funds for law enforcement training and anti-narcotics trafficking operations. The Act explicitly connects the suspension of aid with "reports that the DAS has repeatedly engaged in phone tapping, e-mail interception, and other illegal activities against law-abiding citizens, including collusion with illegal armed groups."

It is worth noting that the suspension applies to DAS’ possible successor organizations.

This from a government that is itself engaged in warrantless phone taps of thousands; you might notice they didn’t mention the Colombian murders and disappearances. Well, one thing at a time, it seems...

Postscript:
Prosecutor investigates DAS Agency officials in La Guajira

Less than a month ago a new chapter surfaced in the DAS story.

A few days before Christmas, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe learned from intelligence reports that the Director of the Public Prosecutions branch in La Guajira, Lozano Claudia Doria, and others, were paid for returning seized drug shipments to a cocaine trafficking network.

Attorney General Guillermo Mendoza has opened an internal investigation because information came to his office months ago that senior prosecution officials in La Guajira and two DAS detectives in the region had participated in the return of a shipment of cocaine for which they received 800 million pesos ($400,000 USD) from traffickers. Mendoza has assigned a procurator from the Superior Court of Bogotá to investigate the allegations.

The case hinges largely on a witness identified as "Mary," who has been for several years an informer, described as "reliable." In statements to the court, he said he had learned that DAS officials were paid for the return of two shipments: one of cocaine and another of marijuana.

"Mary" was moved to Bogotá and into a witness protection program, but before the move, on November 21, after giving his first public comments about the corruption network operated by the DAS and attorneys, he was attacked at his home in Riohacha.

According to "Mary"’s account, in November 2008 DAS investigators Germain William Velasco and Jose Galindo returned a shipment of 500 kilos of cocaine that had been confiscated by authorities near Maicao, and received 850 million pesos in the deal.

He claimed that both Galindo and Velasco began to buy expensive cars and properties in other cities, and live like kings, and that Velasco had confided that the operation had been the brainchild of senior prosecution officials, who had also received money, including the branch director, Lozano Doria.

The witness' statements were corroborated by a former prosecutor, former judge, and a senior member of the Army, who assured officials that, in effect, the return of the drug shipment occurred, and that prosecutors would also have been involved. "You cannot imagine the degree of corruption of these prosecutors," said one witness.

EXCHANGE Magazine contacted the director of DAS, Felipe Munoz, for the agency's side of the story Munoz said there was an internal investigation to establish the responsibility of his subordinates in the case, but for now there is no conclusive result.

The magazine also interviewed Claudia Lozano, Director of the Public Prosecutions branch of La Guajira.

EXCHANGE: You've been involved in an alleged return of a shipment of cocaine. What can you say about that?

Claudia Lozano: They want to ruin my reputation.

EXCHANGE: But before the prosecution a witness said a DAS detective told him that you were involved in the release of the drug and therefore received money.
Claudia Lozano: I am amazed with what you say.

I too am amazed.

The Rag Blog

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Rag Blog Scoop about 'Cognitive Infiltration' Stirs up Internet Storm

Marc Estrin exhibits the tag line to his exclusive Rag Blog article about Obama advisor Cass Sunstein that has received much attention in the blogosphere.
Estrin's exclusive about Obama confidant
Triggers alarm about controversial scheme

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2010

The Rag Blog broke a story on January 11 entitled "Got Fascism?: Obama Advisor Promotes 'Cognitive Infiltration’” that has stirred up an internet storm.

The article, written for The Rag Blog by novelist Marc Estrin, reveals a previously unreported and highly controversial strategy for fighting dissension and “extremism” -- especially targeted at those adhering to "conspiracy" theories -- originated by Obama appointee and long-time Obama friend and colleague Cass Sunstein in a 2008 scholarly journal.

The material published in The Rag Blog was in turn covered by Daniel Tencer at The Raw Story on January 13. It was followed up by Glenn Greenwald in an extensive article published by Salon.com entitled “Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal,” that has been updated several times since and even received a response from Paul Krugman. Greenwald’s Salon.com article was also distributed by CommonDreams.

Both Tencer and Greenwald credited The Rag Blog and Marc Estrin with breaking the story. Marc Estrin’s original article has been reposted extensively on domestic and international websites, and The Rag Blog has received thousands of referral hits from the Raw Story, Salon.com, and CommonDreams postings and from the republishing of our original story around the internet.

Visits to The Rag Blog have come from links placed on a wide variety of sites and from across the political spectrum, but the story has especially caught on with conspiracy buffs and among some on the ultra-right.

(In December The Rag Blog published an article about a Supreme Court decision that let stand a lower court ruling declaring torture, in the words of the author, “an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention” -- a ruling that in effect denied even suspected enemy combatants the protection that comes with being classified a "legal entity.” The Rag Blog posting of that article (a story that did not originate with us) also drew extensive attention including a front page link on The Raw Story -- much of it again from the conspiracy fringe -- and resulted in thousands of visits to The Rag Blog.)

In his original Rag Blog feature Estrin wrote:

In a recent scholarly article, [Cass Sunstein] and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures." (J. Political Philosophy, 7 [2009], pp. 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Estrin reflected:

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called "provocateurs" -- even if only "cognitive." One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members,” and “raise the costs of organization and communication” -- which Sunstein applauds as "desirable." "[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides." (p.225).

Glenn Greenwald wrote for Salon.com:

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs."

In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).

This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role." Sunstein's 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger [The Rag Blog's Marc Estrin], and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story's Daniel Tencer...

And from Daniel Tencer at The Raw Story:

Sunstein's article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that "our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a 'crippled epistemology,' in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources."

By "crippled epistemology" Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust.

Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public -- the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.

Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government "enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts."

Sunstein argued that "government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories." He suggested that "government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."

"We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI," Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that "a high-level presidential advisor" would support such a strategy.

Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of "extremist" groups so that it undermines the groups' confidence to the extent that "new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides."

Sunstein has been the target of numerous "conspiracy theories" himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting "a second Bill of Rights" that would do away with the Second Amendment. Sunstein's recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as "a blueprint for online censorship."

Sunstein "wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading 'rumors,'" wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker.

[Versions of The Rag Blog's story about Cass Sunstein are also up on Daily Kos, OpEd News, and Information Clearing House, along with numerous other blogs and news aggregators.]

[Thorne Dreyer is editor of The Rag Blog.]

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Got Fascism? : Obama Advisor Promotes 'Cognitive Infiltration'

This page has moved. You will be redirected in 5 seconds.

Presidential advisor and long-time Obama buddy Cass Sunstein.
Your government appointees at work:
Cass Sunstein seeks 'cognitive' provocateurs

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2010

Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures." (J. Political Philosophy, 7 [2009], pp. 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the language and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?

• It is "extremists" who "supply" "conspiracy theories."
• Their "hard core" must be "broken up" with distinctive tactics. What tactics?
• "Infiltration" ("cognitive") of groups with questions about official explanations or obfuscations or lies. Who is to infiltrate?
• "Government agents or their allies," virtually (i.e. on-line) or in "real-space" (as at meetings), and "either openly or anonymously," though "infiltration" would imply the latter. What will these agents do?
• Undermine "crippled epistemology" -- one's theory and technique of knowledge. How will they do this?
• By "planting doubts" which will "circulate." Will these doubts be beneficial?
• Certainly. Because they will introduce "cognitive diversity."

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader? Eat the Rich?

It's easy to destroy groups with "cognitive diversity." You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don't come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called "provocateurs" -- even if only "cognitive." One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members,” and “raise the costs of organization and communication” -- which Sunstein applauds as "desirable." "[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides." (p.225).

And are we now expected to applaud such tactics frankly proposed in a scholarly journal by a high-level presidential advisor?

The full text of a slightly earlier version of Sunstein's article is available for download here.

Marc Estrin. The author gets in the last word.
[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

UPDATE: See Rag Blog Scoop about 'Cognitive Infiltration' Stirs up Internet Storm by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2009

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Obama Administration: Continuing the Police State Mentality of BushCo

This is nothing other than shameful. This administration continues to move away from the promise of a different future, but rather marches closer and closer to fascism. The police state holds no promise. Why does Barack Obama not see this?

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

AP sources: Military-civilian terror prison eyed
By Lara Jakes / August 2, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

The officials outlined the plans — the latest effort to comply with President Barack Obama's order to close the prison camp by Jan. 22, 2010, and satisfy congressional and public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil — on condition of anonymity because the options are under review.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said Friday that no decisions have been made about the proposal. But the White House considers the courtroom-prison complex as the best among a series of bad options, an administration official said.

For months, government lawyers and senior officials at the Pentagon, Justice Department and the White House have struggled with how to close the internationally reviled U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo.

Congress has blocked $80 million intended to bring the detainees to the United States. Lawmakers want the administration to say how it plans to make the moves without putting Americans at risk.

The facility would operate as a hybrid prison system jointly operated by the Justice Department, the military and the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration's plan, according to three government officials, calls for:

• Moving all the Guantanamo detainees to a single U.S. prison. The Justice Department has identified between 60 and 80 who could be prosecuted, either in military or federal criminal courts. The Pentagon would oversee the detainees who would face trial in military tribunals. The Bureau of Prisons, an arm of the Justice Department, would manage defendants in federal courts.
• Building a court facility within the prison site where military or criminal defendants would be tried. Doing so would create a single venue for almost all the criminal defendants, ending the need to transport them elsewhere in the U.S. for trial.
• Providing long-term holding cells for a small but still undetermined number of detainees who will not face trial because intelligence and counterterror officials conclude they are too dangerous to risk being freed.
• Building immigration detention cells for detainees ordered released by courts but still behind bars because countries are unwilling to take them.

Each proposal, according to experts in constitutional and national security law, faces legal and logistics problems.

Scott Silliman, director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, called the proposal "totally unprecedented" and said he doubts the plan would work without Congress' involvement because new laws probably would be needed. Otherwise, "we gain nothing — all we do in create a Guantanamo in Kansas or wherever," Silliman said.

"You've got very strict jurisdictional issues on venue of a federal court. Why would you bring courts from all over the country to one facility, rather than having them prosecuted in the district where the courts sit?"

Legal experts said civilian trials held inside the prison could face jury-selection dilemmas in rural areas because of the limited number of potential jurors available.

One solution, Silliman said, would be to bring jurors from elsewhere. But that step, one official said, could also compromise security by opening up the prison to outsiders.

It is unclear whether victims — particularly survivors of Sept. 11 victims — would be allowed into the courtroom to watch the trials. Victims and family members have no assumed right under current law to attend military commissions, although the Pentagon does allow them to attend hearings at Guantanamo under a random selection process. That right is automatic in civilian federal courthouses.

"They'll have to sort it out," said Douglas Beloof, a professor at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., and expert on crime victims' rights. He said the new system "could create tension with victims who would protest."

The officials said that another uncertainty remains how many Guantanamo detainees would end up housed in the hybrid prison.

As many as an estimated 170 of the detainees now at Guantanamo are unlikely to be prosecuted. Some are being held indefinitely because government officials do not want to take the chance of seeing them acquitted in a trial. The rest are considered candidates for release, but the U.S. cannot find foreign countries willing to take them. Almost all have yet to be charged with crimes.

Two senior U.S. officials said one option for the proposed hybrid prison would be to use the soon-to-be-shuttered Standish maximum-security state prison in northeast Michigan. The facility already has individual cells and ample security for detainees.

Getting the Standish prison ready for the detainees would be costly. One official estimated it would cost over $100 million for security and other building upgrades.

Several Michigan lawmakers, including Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin and Rep. Bart Stupak, both Democrats, have said they would be open to moving detainees to Michigan as long as there is broad local support.

But the political support is not unanimous. Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor next year, is against the idea.

Administration officials said the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth is under consideration because it is already a hardened high-security facility that could be further protected by the surrounding military base.

It's not clear what would happen to the military's inmates already being held there. Nearly half are members of the U.S. armed forces, and by law, cannot be housed with foreign prisoners.

Kansas' GOP-dominated congressional delegation is dead set against moving Guantanamo detainees to Leavenworth. Residents told Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., at a town hall meeting in May that 95 percent of the local community opposes it.

Administration officials say they are determined to keep to his promise of closing Guantanamo in January as a worldwide example of America's commitment to humane and just treatment of the detainees.

Glenn Sulmasy, an international law professor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., said the prison-court complex will "be difficult, but it's logical."

"This is all based on Closing Gitmo by 2010, which seems to be a priority, and if we are going to do it, we have to step up to the plate and find solutions to the conundrum we're facing," said Sulmasy, who agrees with the administration's efforts. "And this seems to be the most pragmatic way ahead."

On the Net:

Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks
Standish, Mich., Maximum Correctional Facility

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press.

Source / AP / Google

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US Military: A Little Too Big for Its Britches

National Guard (murderers) at Kent State in May 1970.
The Military Is Not the Police
July 29, 2009

It was disturbing to learn the other day just how close the last administration came to violating laws barring the military from engaging in law enforcement when President George W. Bush considered sending troops into a Buffalo suburb in 2002 to arrest terrorism suspects. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily a problem of the past. More needs to be done to ensure that the military is not illegally deployed in this country.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from law enforcement activities within the United States. If armed officers are going to knock on Americans’ doors, or arrest them in the streets, they should answer to civilian authorities.

Despite this bedrock principle, The Times’s Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston reported last week, top Bush administration officials, including (no surprise) Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that the president had the authority to use the military to round up a suspected terrorist cell known as the Lackawanna Six.

Mr. Cheney and others cited a legal memorandum co-written by John C. Yoo (author of the infamous torture memo), which made the baseless claim that the military can go after accused Al Qaeda terrorists on United States soil because it would be a matter of national security, not law enforcement.

The Lackawanna Six controversy is history, but there are troubling signs the military may be injecting itself today into law enforcement. The American Civil Liberties Union has been sounding the alarm about the proliferation of “fusion centers,” in which federal, state and local law enforcement cooperate on anti-terrorism work. According to the A.C.L.U., the lines have blurred, and the centers have involved military personnel in domestic law enforcement. Congress should investigate.

Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said Wednesday that fusion centers were not intended to have a military presence, and that she was not aware of ones that did. She promised greater transparency about what role, if any, the active military was playing.

Civil libertarians are also raising questions about a program known as the Chemical, Biological, Radiological/Nuclear and High-Yield Explosives Consequence Management Response Force. The Army says its aim is to have active-duty troops ready to back up local law enforcement in catastrophic situations, like an attack with a nuclear weapon. That could be legal, but the workings of these units are murky. Again, Congress should ensure that the military is not moving into prohibited areas.

Some of the military’s line-crossing seems ad hoc. Earlier this year, when a man in a small town in Alabama went on a shooting spree, Army troops reportedly went out on the streets to participate in the law enforcement effort. It is still unclear precisely what role they played. It is important that the military be thoroughly trained on what the law does and does not permit.

After the lack of respect for posse comitatus at the highest ranks of the previous administration, the Obama White House and Congress must ensure that the lines between military and law enforcement have been restored, clearly, and that they are respected.

Source / New York Times

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Great Britain : Extensive Camera Network Ups Police State Ante

Photo from Getty Images.

The BBC says the massive tracking database will be up and fully functional in a matter of months.

By Stephen C. Webster / May 25, 2009

See BBC Video, Below.

The British government will soon have a fully-operational network of cameras fitted with license plate recognition software, according to a published report.

In a major first for any Western government's police enforcement apparatus, the new system will allow any vehicle in the United Kingdom to be tracked to its precise location.

Excerpts from the BBC:

A number of local councils are signing up their Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems to the ANPR network. As long as the cameras are technically good enough, they can be adapted to take the software.

[....]

John Dean, who is co-ordinating the ANPR network for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: "It's the finest intelligence-led policing tool we've got.

"It covers so many different areas from crime reduction, crime detection to road safety and everything in between."

The British news service also details the case of John Catt, who's already had a rather unpleasant run-in with Britain's Big Brother.

John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.

It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a "marker" on his car. That meant he was added to a "hotlist"."

This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.

'I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?'

Quite an apt question, wouldn't you say? The BBC says the massive tracking database will be up and fully functional in a matter of months.

Do not be surprised when this software makes its way to the United States. It's only a matter of time.

Source / The Raw Story

BBC: Camera grid to log license plates



Thanks to Richard Bowden / The Rag Blog

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Militarizing the US/Mexico Border Is Not the Solution to the Drug Battles Taking Place There

Operation Jump Start training in Phoenix, Ariz., Feb. 21, 2007, teaches U.S. Customs and Border Patrol procedures while observing the Arizona-Mexico border for illegal activity. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Trisha Harris)
We shouldn’t militarize the U.S.-Mexico border
By Yolanda Chávez Leyva / March 23, 2009

We should not send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, despite the drug-related violence on the Mexican side.

President Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and a variety of other government officials have discussed the possibility of sending the National Guard. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has requested 1,000 troops on his southern border.

To be sure, violence has risen dramatically across the border in the past year and a half. There have been almost 2,000 murders since the beginning of last year in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, across from my hometown of El Paso in Texas.

I hear stories from friends and acquaintances almost daily of the robberies, kidnappings, carjackings and shootouts.

The local university has undertaken a study of women in Juarez who are experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of living in the chaos of ever-increasing violence.

While once a frequent visitor to Juarez, I haven’t crossed the border in months. I grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, but I have never seen this level of violence on the Mexican side.

But do I want troops sent to the border in the name of protecting me?

No.

For more than twenty years, those of us who live on the border have witnessed the increasing militarization of the border. The border wall is a daily reminder of this, as are the helicopters that fly over our neighborhoods, the checkpoints manned by the Border Patrol and local law enforcement, as well as the daily harassment of citizens who happen to have darker skin. We are frequently the target of various “wars” —against undocumented migration, against terrorism and now against drugs. I am tired of living in a war zone.

The model of “war” has not worked, and it will not work.

Too often the war against drugs or terrorism or undocumented immigration turns into violence against innocent civilians.

Too often it turns into human rights abuse.

Too often it becomes a justification for even more violence.

What is the price that those of us living on the U.S. side will be asked to pay because of the possibility that the violence will “spill over” the border?

For a change, look at what is spilling over from the United States into Mexico — illegal arms and ammunition from U.S. dealers, laundered drug money and an increasing demand for drugs.

Instead of further funding a military solution that will not work, let’s fund more drug rehabilitation, enforce existing gun laws, and take responsibility for our part in creating the violence.

I look forward to crossing over the border once again in safety.

But that won’t be possible until we stop militarizing this problem and start addressing it at its roots.

[Yolanda Chávez Leyva is a historian specializing in Mexican-American and border history. She lives in Texas. She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.]

Source / The Progressive

The Rag Blog

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Israeli Government Suppressing Dissent; Hundreds Jailed

Israeli anarchists demonstrate in Jaffa on Jan. 13, 2009.
Israeli police officers arrest a Palestinian man during a protest against Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip, outside Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, Jan. 16, 2009. Photo by Atta Awisat / AP.
'According to Israeli police reports, at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian and 244 under 18 years old, have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for participating in demonstrations.'

By Nora Barrows-Friedman / January 19, 2009

JERUSALEM -- The Israeli government is stepping up efforts to suppress dissent and crush resistance in the streets. Police have been videotaping the demonstrations and subsequently arresting protesters in large numbers.

According to Israeli police reports, at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian and 244 under 18 years old, have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for participating in such demonstrations. Most have been held and then released, but at least 30 of those arrested over the past three weeks are still being held in prison.

Ameer Makhoul, director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations in Haifa, tells IPS that these demonstrations "are part of the uprising here inside the Green Line, to share responsibility and to share the challenge with the people in the Gaza strip."

As an organiser of many of these solidarity demonstrations inside Israel, Makhoul himself was arrested by the Shin Bet (the Israeli secret service). "They called me, came to my home and held me for four hours," he tells IPS. "They accused me of being a terrorist and supporting terror. They said that they are watching me and monitoring me." Israel, he said, "has become a terror state."

The Shin Bet has accused Makhoul and the hundreds of others arrested of "being a rebel, threatening the security of the State of Israel during war time."

Makhoul believes that such threats are being implemented by Israel's security forces "(in order to) break our will and the spirit of our people. But I think our spirit is much, much stronger here in Haifa and in Gaza than the Israeli oppression."

On Jan. 15, a Haaretz-Dialog public opinion poll taken in Israel found that 82 percent of the Israeli population believes that Israel did not go too far in its three-week operation in Gaza, "despite pictures from Gaza depicting massive destruction and a large number of wounded and killed, including women and children," reports Haaretz.

At a demonstration last week in front of Kishon prison north-east of Haifa, where some of the Palestinian demonstrators are being held, Israeli anarchist and professor of mathematics Kobi Snitz tells IPS that this figure is indicative of the current social climate inside the state.

"People are made to be afraid. Virtually all Israelis, particularly Israeli Jews, are convinced that Hamas was the one that violated the ceasefire. This just isn't true...(But) you won't find this in the Israeli media. There is no understanding of the level of violence used on Gaza by the Israeli military. And the police operate under the assumption and guidelines that every political expression now is to be repressed and prevented."

IPS asked Snitz to describe the momentum of these daily protests across the country. "These demonstrations happened virtually by themselves," he says. "At this point, anybody who is not severely indoctrinated or ignorant just feels compelled to do something every day. It's unbearable to sit at home and not do anything."

Last Saturday night in the coastal town of Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, several thousand demonstrators - including Palestinians, various peace groups, Israeli anarchists and teenaged Israeli refusniks fresh from jail for refusing to serve in the mandatory military - marched through the main street in the old city with flags, banners, and vociferous determination to keep up the fight inside Israeli society against their government's lethal operations in Gaza. Israeli security forces, carrying weapons and video cameras, heavily flanked the protesters.

But activists say it is crucial to expand the discussion from this current struggle for Palestinians inside the Gaza strip outward into the larger context. "I'm here to take a stand for Gaza," Mahmood Jreri of the acclaimed Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, based in Lydd (east of Tel Aviv), tells IPS during the march.

"The main reason (I'm here) is to say that we are not part of what the Israeli government is doing. The Palestinian people are fighting for their freedom and fighting against the occupation. When Palestinians have their freedom, then there will be peace here."

Source / IPS News

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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