Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 14:42:38 -0500
Subject: The Internet Anti-Fascist: Fri, 11 January 2002 -- 6:4 (#639)



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          The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 11 January 2002
                        Vol. 6, Number 4 (#639)
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Analysis Of the Current Hysteria
    01) CNN, "Explosive New Book Published in France Alleges that U.S. Was
        in Negotiations to Do a Deal with Taliban," 8 Jan 01
    02) Rory Carroll (The [London] Guardian), "Bloody evidence of US
        blunder," 7 Jan 02
    03) Frederick Clarkson (Salon), "Our own terror cells: If the Bush
        administration treated homegrown terrorists like their overseas
        comrades, its dragnet could ensnare the far political right -- and
        John Ashcroft," 7 Jan 02
    04) Lloyd Grove (Washington Post), "Boxers or Briefs? Rep. Dingell's
        Airport Exposure," 8 Jan 02    05) George Monbiot (The [London]
        Guardian), "The Taliban of the west: This war is threatening the
        very freedoms it claims to be defending," 18 Dec 01
Fascist Crime In the News:
    06) Lawrence Budd (Dayton Daily News), "Aryan Nations Figure Guilty On
        Weapons Charge: Plea bargain drops other counts," 5 Jan 02
    07) Richard Green (AP), "Oklahoma man arrested in weapons case," 9 Jan
        02

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ANALYSIS ON THE CURRENT HYSTERIA

01) Explosive New Book Published in France Alleges that U.S. Was in
        Negotiations to Do a Deal with Taliban
     CNN
     8 Jan 01

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Time to check in with ambassador-in-
residence, Richard Butler, this morning. An explosive new book published in
France alleges that the United States was in negotiations to do a deal with
the Taliban for an oil pipeline in Afghanistan.

Joining us right now is Richard Butler to shed some light on this new book.
He is the former chief U.N. weapons inspector. He is now on the Council on
Foreign Relations and our own ambassador-in- residence -- good morning.

RICHARD BUTLER, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Boy, if any of these charges are true...

BUTLER: If...

ZAHN: ... this...

BUTLER: Yes.

ZAHN: ... is really big news.

BUTLER: I agree.

ZAHN: Start off with what your understanding is of what is in this book --
the most explosive charge.

BUTLER: The most explosive charge, Paula, is that the Bush administration -
- the present one, just shortly after assuming office slowed down FBI
investigations of al Qaeda and terrorism in Afghanistan in order to do a
deal with the Taliban on oil -- an oil pipeline across Afghanistan.

ZAHN: And this book points out that the FBI's deputy director, John
O'Neill, actually resigned because he felt the U.S. administration was
obstructing...

BUTLER: A proper...

ZAHN: ... the prosecution of terrorism.

BUTLER: Yes, yes, a proper intelligence investigation of terrorism. Now,
you said if, and I affirmed that in responding to you. We have to be
careful here. These are allegations. They're worth airing and talking
about, because of their gravity. We don't know if they are correct. But I
believe they should be investigated, because Central Asian oil, as we were
discussing yesterday, is potentially so important. And all prior attempts
to have a pipeline had to be done through Russia. It had to be negotiated
with Russia.

Now, if there is to be a pipeline through Afghanistan, obviating the need
to deal with Russia, it would also cost less than half of what a pipeline
through Russia would cost. So financially and politically, there's a big
prize to be had. A pipeline through Afghanistan down to the Pakistan coast
would bring out that Central Asian oil easier and more cheaply.

ZAHN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) as you spoke about this yesterday, we almost
immediately got a call from "The New York Times."

BUTLER: Right.

ZAHN: They want you to write an op-ed piece on this over the weekend.

BUTLER: Right, and which I will do.

ZAHN: But let's come back to this whole issue of what John O'Neill, this
FBI agent...

BUTLER: Right.

ZAHN: ... apparently told the authors of this book. He is alleging that --
what -- the U.S. government was trying to protect U.S. oil interests? And
at the same time, shut off the investigation of terrorism to allow for that
to
happen?

BUTLER: That's the allegation that instead of prosecuting properly an
investigation of terrorism, which has its home in Afghanistan as we now
know, or one of its main homes, that was shut down or slowed down in order
to pursue oil interests with the Taliban. The people who we have now bombed
out of existence, and this not many months ago. The book says that the
negotiators said to the Taliban, you have a choice. You have a carpet of
gold, meaning an oil deal, or a carpet of bombs. That's what the book
alleges.

ZAHN: Well, I know you're going to be doing your own independent
homework on this...

BUTLER: Yes.

ZAHN: ... to see if you can confirm any of this. Let's move on to the whole
issue of Iraq. The deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, at one time
was considered one of those voices within the administration...

BUTLER: Yes.

ZAHN: ... that was pushing for moving beyond Afghanistan. He seemed to back
off a little from that yesterday.

BUTLER: Yes.

ZAHN: What do you read through the tea leaves here?

BUTLER: A very interesting report that the administration will focus on the
Philippines, Yemen, Somalia as places where there are al Qaeda cells. But
the word Iraq wasn't used by the man who was the chief hawk -- used as a,
you know, as a future target. So what I interpret from that is this: That
very likely our allies have been saying to us, this is too hard. This is
really serious. Be careful. Saddam is essentially contained at the moment.
Don't start, you know, a bigger problem either in the Arab world or in the
coalition by going after him. And Wolfowitz, it seems, has probably
accepted that.

ZAHN: A quick thought on the Israelis intercepting this latest armed
shipment? What that means? You've got to do it in about 15 seconds.

BUTLER: It's extraordinarily serious, because it seems to have been tied to
Yasser Arafat himself. It needs to be further investigated, but you know,
Paula, the potentiality that this could once again prove an impediment to
resume peace negotiations is really quite serious.

ZAHN: Thank you as usual for covering so much territory. Richard Butler,
see you same time, same place tomorrow morning.

BUTLER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

ZAHN: We appreciate your insights.

- - - - -

02) Bloody evidence of US blunder
     Rory Carroll (The [London] Guardian)
     7 Jan 02

QALAYE-NIAZI, Afghan. -- The attack on Qalaye Niazi was as sudden and
devastating as the Pentagon intended. American special forces on the ground
confirmed the target and three bombers, a B-52 and two B-1Bs, did the rest,
zapping Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in their sleep as well as an
ammunition dump.

The war on terrorism came no cleaner and Commander Matthew Klee, a
spokesman at the US central command in Tampa, Florida, had reassuring news:
"Follow-on reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage."

Some of the things his follow-on reporters missed: bloodied children's
shoes and skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided
grey hair, butter toffees in red wrappers, wedding decorations.

The charred meat sticking to rubble in black lumps could have been Osama
bin Laden's henchmen but survivors said it was the remains of farmers,
their wives and children, and wedding guests.

They said more than 100 civilians died at this village in eastern
Afghanistan.

Survivors lacked the bewilderment common to those who have been bombed,
because they had an explanation: a tribal rival had manipulated the
Americans into attacking Qalaye Niazi to further his political ambitions in
Paktia province.

The Pentagon said it had indications that senior Taliban and al-Qaida
officials were at the site and that two surface-to-air missiles were fired
at the aircraft during the December 29 raid. The bombs set off secondary
explosions consistent with stockpiled ammunition.

The Pentagon has produced no evidence that missiles were fired at the
planes but there was a stockpile. From the ruins of two houses yesterday
spilled boxes of Russian, Chinese and Iranian rockets.

Diehard Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are said to still rove Paktia and its
neighbouring provinces of Paktika and Khost, where a US soldier was killed
at the weekend. Qalaye Niazi's role seemed clear to Commander Klee: "You
have a known al-Qaida-Taliban leadership compound."

But survivors say they stored the ammunition six weeks ago on the orders of
retreating Taliban troops. When the regime fell they notified authorities
but no one came to collect the ammunition. "We left it. What else were we
supposed to do with it?" said Taj Mohammad, the village elder.

It was stored in two unfinished houses in a five-house complex six miles
north of the collection of mud-brick compounds which passes for Qalaye
Niazi's centre. The complex housed 10 families who grew wheat, apples and
grapes, said Mr Mohammad.

About two dozen guests had crammed into the three occupied houses for a
wedding, raising the number of occupants to more than 100, said the elder.
The bombers came early in the morning.

Precision-guided bombs vapourised all five buildings and a second wave an
hour later hit people digging in the rubble and, judging from hair and
flesh on the edge of three 40ft holes some distance from the complex, those
trying to flee.

Two days later villagers with shovels and tractors extracted the remains. A
hand, an ankle, a bit of skull, sometimes an entire torso, and buried some
in 11 graves, each said to contain several people, and relatives from Khost
took some for burial in the mountains.

Yesterday there were just human scraps and the carcasses of sheep, dogs and
a cow, circled overhead by two crows.

One villager said 32 died. The United Nations said 52, including 10 women
and 25 children. Mr Mohammad said at least 80. Other villagers said 92.
Staff at the hospital in Gardez said 107.

Innumeracy, rapid burial, damage to bodies, propaganda, remoteness, they
all conspire to shred certainty in this and other bombings. It is no one's
job to count the dead.

The UN said its envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, will discuss Qalaye
Niazi with US diplomats. The Pentagon has shifted slightly from its initial
certitude and promised to investigate a raid which Donald Anderson,
chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee,
denounced as a massive failure of intelligence.

That civilians were present there can be little doubt. Taliban and al-Qaida
too? Survivors swear not. Yet there is little venom for the US. "They were
given bad information by bad Afghans," said Hinzer Gul, echoing neighbours.

Haji Saifullah, head of Paktia's shura, or tribal council, said: "Our local
enemies are delivering this information to the Americans that Taliban or
al-Qaida people are here and Americans just bomb without any search."

The finger was collectively pointed at Aghi Badshah Khan Zadran, 58, an
anti-Taliban commander who controls Khost province and is lobbying the
interim government to add Paktia and Paktika provinces to his fief.

Some tribal elders said he threatened to call in US planes against them if
they did not back him and that Qalaye Niazi was a warning. Mr Zadran, also
known as Pacha Khan Zadran, was also accused of wiping out rivals by
triggering the US blitz of a convoy of elders on December 20, which killed
up to 65 people.

Mr Zadran's officials were spotted with US special forces who relied on him
because of his impeccable anti-Taliban credentials, said aides of his
rival, Mr Saifullah.

By his own account Mr Zadran is the most powerful commander in south-east
Afghanistan. He hails the bombing as accurate and necessary to purge
terrorists but says he has no idea where the Americans get their
intelligence. He hotly rejects the accusations of manipulating air strikes.

The allegations have rattled the prime minister, Hamid Karzai, who last
week summoned Mr Zardan to Kabul to discuss Qalaye Niazi. But supporters
were confident Mr Zadran would return home this week with his fief expanded
to include Paktia and Paktika.

"These allegations against him are nonsense. He is a democrat and pro-west.
The government will confirm his appointment by Tuesday or Wednesday," said
Amanullah Zadran, the minister for frontier and tribal affairs, and Mr
Zadran's younger brother.

Tribal politics tend to confuse even Afghans and one US official in Kabul
admitted it was impenetrable to outsiders, no matter how well briefed. "So
sure, mistakes happen."

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- - - - -

03) Our own terror cells: If the Bush administration treated homegrown
        terrorists like their overseas comrades, its dragnet could ensnare
        the far political right -- and John Ashcroft
     Frederick Clarkson (Salon)
     7 Jan 02

Self-described anti-abortion "terrorist" Clayton Waagner, arrested last
month by the FBI, might remain a footnote in the White House's war on
terror. But should the Department of Justice decide to treat Waagner -- the
man who has admitted to sending hundreds of anthrax threats to clinics and
abortion rights organizations in October and November -- as more than just
a lone nut case, and rather as part of a domestic terrorist network, that
could all change quickly.

And if the Justice Department decides to pursue this network with the same
zeal with which it has pursued foreign terrorist networks in this country,
it could expose a network that spreads broadly from the far-right fringe to
right-wing politics. Even, indirectly, to the attorney general himself.

Waagner signed his anthrax hoax letters "Army of God" -- after the violent
anti-abortion group he affiliates with. An Army of God adjunct called
Prisoners of Christ, meanwhile, gets part of its cash flow from an Oklahoma
City company called AmeriVision, which fashions itself as a Christian right
version of the liberal Working Assets long-distance phone service.

AmeriVision -- using the brand name "LifeLine" -- "provides 10 percent of
our long distance revenues to thousands of organizations that support
family values -- all part of our Christian commitment of helping others,"
according to its Web site. LifeLine's client list reads like a who's who of
the Christian right: American Family Association, Concerned Women for
America, Christian Broadcasting Network, the Christian Coalition, Gun
Owners of America and the National Right to Life Committee. For several
years LifeLine also partnered with the militant anti-abortion group
Operation Rescue.

AmeriVision says it has donated over $50 million to its "partners" in the
10 years of its existence. One of those partners is Prisoners of Christ --
whose address is a private postal box four blocks from the White House.
This reporter called LifeLine in December as a prospective customer and was
told that LifeLine had cut checks averaging between $40 and $50 a month to
Prisoners of Christ since May of 1996, and that the money flows to a
Washington D.C. public relations group called Christian Communication
Network headed by Gary McCullough -- the longtime principal of Prisoners of
Christ. (McCullough's group maintains a web link to the Prisoners of Christ
site.) When Salon called McCullough for comment about the LifeLine
connection, he said, "We are a small potato in that pie and I prefer not to
comment," then hung up. When Salon contacted LifeLine again for an official
response, we were told that under the privacy rules set forth by the
Federal Communications Commission, they "cannot give out customer or donor
information."

Meanwhile, during the time of his announcement for president, then-Sen.
John Ashcroft was the Christian right's favorite contender. To help finance
his campaign, Ashcroft made a pilgrimage to Oklahoma City, where he
addressed a group of AmeriVision executives at the Oklahoma City Marriott
Hotel on Nov. 11, 1997, according to an account in the St. Louis Post
Dispatch. Campaign finance reports reveal that top AmeriVision executives
kicked at least $26,500 into Ashcroft's Spirit of America PAC within days
of the candidate's personal pitch for funds. Contributors included company
founders Tracy Freeny and Carl Thompson, who each contributed $5,000 to
Ashcroft's Spirit of America PAC. Major stockholder and soon to be board
member Jay Sekulow and his wife, Pamela, also contributed $5,000 each; five
executives of AmeriVision's VisionQuest and Hebron marketing divisions
contributed a total of $5,000; and investor and later director John Damoose
added $500.

In 2000, AmeriVision board member Jay Sekulow and Pamela Sekulow
contributed  the legal maximum of $2,000 each to Ashcroft's unsuccessful
reelection campaign to the U.S. Senate.

Should President Bush's imposition of "terrorist sanctions" be applied to
companies with ties to domestic terrorists -- as with the 62 individuals
and businesses whose assets were frozen because of their alleged ties to
foreign terrorists -- it is conceivable that not only Army of God but,
through its connections, AmeriVision could be a target as well. And
Ashcroft would find himself in the awkward position of trying to
investigate one of his own campaign contributors.

Embarrassment caused by financial contributors is not a new problem for
politicians, of course. "If you strip away the hot button issues of
abortion and terrorism," says Larry Noble, executive director of the Center
for Responsive Politics, "what you have is a classic case of a business
having made campaign contributions. And now the administration has to make
a decision that may financially impact that business. People will logically
ask, what connection is there between the campaign contribution and the
decision?"

But contributions from groups with ties to any form of terrorism, of
course, are a whole different story. And foes of Army of God -- and
Ashcroft, who has largely given a cold shoulder to abortion rights groups
since taking office -- are more than eager to promote Waagner and the group
as serious domestic threats.

"This is the first time that these anthrax threat letters have been
classified as domestic terrorism," says Vicki Saporta, executive director
of the National Abortion Federation, whose members had received over 80
anthrax threats by mail prior to Waagner's crime spree. "I think there has
been a very big change in the way these crimes are being viewed."

"But," she says, "until we start looking at these individuals as part of a
network that thinks it appropriate to murder people to accomplish their
political objectives, we are doomed to looking at individual crimes after
they are already committed."

Working Assets, meanwhile, has mounted its own letter-writing campaign to
get the Justice Department to designate the Army of God as a terrorist
group. "By even cautious standards," writes Working Assets president
Michael Kieschnick, "the Army of God is clearly a terrorist organization
and should be treated as such by the Department of Justice. Where possible,
this should carry the following legal consequences, similar to those
imposed on foreign terrorist organizations." Working Assets, which also
incorporates social and political views as part of its marketing efforts,
has given grants to Planned Parenthood Federation of America among other
reproductive rights, environmental and social justice organizations.

Kieschnick points out that if his campaign succeeds, it would mean that it
would be specifically against the law to fund or materially support the
Army of God (and, by connection, Prisoners of Christ), just as it would any
other terrorist group. Banks and other financial institutions would be
obliged to block funds designated for the Army of God and report their
actions to the Department of the Treasury.

But many of these groups receive their money directly, and not just through
the conservative Christian phone service. Visitors to the Prisoners of
Christ Web site are urged to sign up with LifeLine. "Help the prisoners
with every call," supporters are urged, "10 cents a minute, 30 minutes
free, plus 10% back to this ministry." All you do is "Call 1-800-607-5155
and tell them you want 30 free minutes and 10% of your long distance bill
to go to" Prisoners of Christ. An announcement next to the ad for LifeLine
also urges that checks "for general prisoner needs" should be sent to the
White Rose Fund, care of one of the leading institutions in the Army of God
network: Reformation Lutheran Church in Bowie, Md.

This church, headed by convicted clinic bomber Rev. Michael Bray, is best
known for playing host to a Prisoners of Christ fund-raiser -- the annual
White Rose Banquet -- a name misappropriated from a short-lived World War
II-era anti-Nazi resistance group. Convicted anti-abortion felons and their
most vocal supporters publicly gather every year on the anniversary of Roe
vs. Wade to celebrate their victories and raise funds for their imprisoned
martyrs. This year's event has been announced on the Army of God Web site.
Typically about 100 veterans of militant and violent anti-abortion activism
gather to network, to raise funds, and to taunt the abortion rights groups
and law enforcement agencies that monitor the event closely. Bray, for
example, described the attendees at the 1997 banquet as an "august cadre of
conspirators."

Last year's banquet featured a blatant appeal from convicted arsonist
Dennis Malvesi. He thanked those who helped him -- without naming names --
and called on others to assist those "on the lam, from the lock gluer to
the bomber [to] arsonists and snipers."

Apparently Malvesi wasn't asking anyone to do anything he wouldn't do
himself. According to a federal indictment, he had been secretly assisting
accused assassin James Kopp, who was on the lam in Europe at the time. But
the feds were already onto Malvesi.

While Malvesi was in Bowie, Md., bucking up the White Rose banqueteers, the
FBI was searching Malvesi's apartment in Brooklyn. They eventually captured
Kopp by tracking Malvesi's efforts to wire him money in France. Malvesi and
his associate Laura Marra are now in jail without bond, charged with aiding
and abetting Kopp's flight from justice.

The funds raised at the White Rose Banquet are ostensibly for the Prisoners
of Christ, which also provides financial support to the most notorious
anti-abortion criminals and criminal suspects currently behind bars: Paul
Hill, on Florida's death row for the murder of a doctor and his escort;
Michael Griffin, serving a life sentence for murdering a doctor; Shelly
Shannon, convicted of the attempted murder of a doctor and series of arsons
across the western United States; and James Kopp, indicted for the murder
of a doctor and awaiting extradition from France. Kopp has also been
charged in Canada for a series of sniper attacks on physicians. Malvesi and
Laura Marra are being held without bond in New York on charges of aiding
Kopp in his international flight from justice.

The highlight of each year's banquet is an auction featuring relics of
terrorist acts and handicrafts by convicted felons. The announcement for
the 2002 banquet, for example, reminds prospective attendees:

Items donated by prisoners in the past have included: handicrafts, pencil
sketches, including calligraphy of the Ten Commandments, by Paul Hill;
artwork from Shelley Shannon; the black leather jacket worn by James
Mitchell as he burned a baby killing center in Northern Virginia; denim
jacket Joshua Graff wore while performing his acts of kindness towards the
unborn; and the watch used by Dennis Malvesi to time his incendiary device
to blow up Planned Parenthood in NYC.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the banquet is that it is visible
proof that there exists more than just a loose association of individuals
or small groups utilizing the name of Army of God. "Nothing secret about
that meeting anymore," observes Tracy Sefl, a sociologist at the University
of Illinois who has studied the nexus of these groups. It's so obvious, she
says, that the White Rose Banquet might as well be called the "annual
above-ground meeting of the Army of God."

But it is long past time that the Army of God should be viewed as more than
a confederacy of lone nuts, according to Sefl. She sees the Army of God and
its constituent parts as displaying considerable "rationality and
organization" -- particularly in the staging of the White Rose Banquet.

"If an organization exists to create order, to plan, to articulate a
message," she says, "these are all things that we see in the Army of God."
Other characteristics of organization evident in the Army of God are such
things as "commonality of language, shared tools, identifiable leadership,
and fund-raising," she observes. "The hook? Prisoners of Christ."

The Army of God has evolved, she believes. "As the political climate has
changed around clinics, so has the Army of God. It's a classic case of
organizational behavior," she says. "It adapts to its environment."

- - - - -

04) Boxers or Briefs? Rep. Dingell's Airport Exposure
     Lloyd Grove (Washington Post)
     8 Jan 02

Count frequent flier Rep. John Dingell, ranking member of the powerful
House Energy and Commerce Committee, among the victims of post-9-11 airline
security measures. After his artificial hip set off a metal detector
Saturday afternoon, the 75-year-old Michigan Democrat was ordered to pull
down his pants at Reagan National Airport as he tried to board Northwest
Airlines Flight 1417 to Detroit.

Dingell, who flies Northwest between Washington and Detroit around 100
times a year, told us yesterday that he explained to an airport security
employee he was wearing a knee brace and surgically implanted pins are in
his ankles, as well as a steel hip joint. Dingell said he refused a request
to send his wallet through the X-ray machine, telling employees that a few
weeks earlier jewelry had been stolen from his wife, General Motors
Foundation President Debbie Dingell, when she sent it through.

It was then that the security employee, known as a screener, ordered him to
unhook the brace from his knee and remove his shoes and socks, Dingell
said. Then the congressman was led into a temporary office and directed to
lower his slacks while the employee waved a metal-detecting wand over his
boxer shorts.

"I complied, but tried to do it with some small bit of dignity," Dingell
said, adding that afterward he couldn't help seething to his wife, "Woman,
do you realize what they made me do?" He added: "It seems to me that there
was some incompetence involved here." The screener appeared to be unaware
of Dingell's status as a congressman, and Dingell stressed that he never
mentioned it during the ordeal.

Northwest Airlines spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch yesterday defended the conduct
of the screener, an employee of the airline's security contractor, Globe
Aviation, saying the employee was merely following procedures mandated by
the Federal Aviation Administration. "We regret any inconveniences that
FAA-mandated procedures created for Representative Dingell," Ebenhoch said,
adding that Globe employees "performed their duties in a professional and
dignified manner."

Maybe. But yesterday, after we alerted Transportation Secretary Norman
Mineta to Dingell's suffering, Mineta phoned his former House colleague to
apologize profusely. "The secretary got ahold of Mr. Dingell and told him
he is appalled," said Mineta's communications director, Chet Lunner, adding
that Mineta had also been subjected to rigorous probing at airports, though
not pants-dropping. "They're old friends, and he said, 'John, I feel your
pain. I fly commercial all the time, and it seems like they sometimes pick
out public officials to make an example of them and show how thorough they
are.' "

Dingell recounted: "I said, 'Norm, I'm not asking for an apology. And I
know we don't want any more events like September 11th. I don't want any
special treatment. I don't want to be treated any better than anyone else,
but I don't want to be treated any worse either.' "

- - - - -

05) The Taliban of the west: This war is threatening the very freedoms it
        claims to be defending
     George Monbiot (The [London] Guardian)
     18 Dec 01

The pre-Enlightenment has just been beaten by the post-Enlightenment. As
the last fundamentalist fighters are hunted through the mountains of
eastern Afghanistan, the world's most comprehensive attempt to defy
modernity has been atomised. But this is not, as almost everyone claims, a
triumph for civilisation; for the Taliban has been destroyed by a regime
which is turning its back on the values it claims to defend.

In West Virginia, a 15-year-old girl is fighting the state's supreme court.
Six weeks ago, Katie Sierra was suspended from Sissonville high school in
Charleston. She had committed two horrible crimes. The first was to apply
to found an anarchy club, the second was to come to classes in a T-shirt on
which she had written "Against Bush, Against Bin Laden" and "When I saw the
dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of
national security. God bless America." The headmaster claimed that Katie's
actions were disrupting other pupils' education. "To my students," he
explained, "the concept of anarchy is something that is evil and bad." The
county court upheld her suspension, and at the end of November the state's
supreme court refused to hear the case she had lodged in defence of free
speech.

Katie is just one of many young dissenters fighting for the most basic
political freedoms. A few days before Katie was suspended, AJ Brown, a 19-
year-old woman studying at Durham Tech, North Carolina, answered the door
to three security agents. They had been informed, they told her, that she
was in possession of "anti-American material". Someone had seen a poster on
her wall, campaigning against George Bush's use of the death penalty. They
asked her whether she also possessed pro-Taliban propaganda.

On October 10, 22-year-old Neil Godfrey was banned from boarding a plane
travelling from Philadelphia to Phoenix because he was carrying a novel by
the anarchist writer Edward Abbey. At the beginning of November, Nancy
Oden, an anti-war activist on her way to a conference, was surrounded at
Bangor airport in Maine by soldiers with automatic weapons and forbidden to
fly on the grounds that she was a "security risk". These incidents and
others like them become significant in the light of two distinct
developments.

The first is the formal suspension of certain civil liberties by
governments backing the war in Afghanistan. The new anti-terror acts
approved in Britain and the US have, like the reinstatement of the CIA's
licence to kill, been widely reported. The measures introduced by some
other allied governments are less well known. In the Czech Republic, for
example, a new law permits the prosecution of people expressing sympathy
for the attacks on New York, or even of those sympathising with the
sympathisers. Already one Czech journalist, Tomas Pecina, a reporter for
the Prague-based investigative journal Britske Listy, has been arrested and
charged for criticising the use of the law, on the grounds that this makes
him, too, a supporter of terrorism.

The second is the remarkably rapid development of surveillance technology,
of the kind which has been deployed to such devastating effect in
Afghanistan. Unmanned spy planes which could follow the Taliban's cars and
detect the presence of humans behind 100 feet of rock are both awesome and
terrifying. Technologies like this, combined with CCTV, face-recognition
software, email and phone surveillance, microbugs, forensic science, the
monitoring of financial transactions and the pooling of government
databases, ensure that governments now have the means, if they choose to
deploy them, of following almost every move we make, every word we utter.

I made this point to a Labour MP a couple of days ago. He explained that it
was "just ridiculous" to suggest that better technologies could lead to
mass surveillance in Britain. Our defence against abuses by government was
guaranteed not only by parliament, but also by the entire social framework
in which it operated. Civil society would ensure there was no danger of
these technologies falling into the "wrong hands".

But what we are witnessing in the US is a rapid reversal of the civic
response which might once have defended the rights and liberties of its
citizens. Katie Sierra's suspension was proposed by her school and upheld
by the courts. The agents preventing activists from boarding planes were
assisted by the airlines. The student accused of poster crime may well have
been shopped by one of her neighbours. The state is scorching the
constitution, and much of civil society is reaching for the bellows.

This, I fear, may be just the beginning. The new surveillance technology
deployed in Afghanistan is merely one component of the US doctrine of
"full-spectrum dominance". The term covered, at first, only military
matters: the armed forces sought to achieve complete mastery of land, sea,
air, airwaves and space. But perhaps because this has been achieved too
easily, the words have already begun to be used more widely, as commercial,
fiscal and monetary policy, the composition of foreign governments and the
activities of dissidents are redefined as matters of security. Another term
for "full-spectrum dominance" is absolute power.

There are, of course, profound differences between the US and Britain. The
US sees itself as a wounded nation; many of its people feel desperately
vulnerable and insecure. But while our cowardly MPs seek only to dissociate
themselves from the victims being persecuted by Torquemada Blair's
inquisitors, the lord chancellor's medieval department is preparing to
dispense with most jury trials, which are arguably now the foremost
institutional restraint on the excesses of government.

The paradox of the Enlightenment is that the universalist project is
brokered by individualism. The universality of human rights, in other
words, can be defended only by the diversity of opinion. Most of the
liberties which permit us to demand the equitable treatment of the human
community - privacy, the freedom of speech, belief and movement - imply a
dissociation from coherent community.

While those who seek to deny our liberties claim to defend individualism,
in truth they gently engineer a conformity of belief and action, which is
drifting towards a new fundamentalism. This is an inevitable product of the
fusion of state and corporate power. Capital, as Adam Smith shows us,
strives towards monopoly. The states which defend it permit the planning
laws, tax breaks, externalisation and blanket advertising which ensure that
most of us shop in the same shops, eat in the same restaurants, wear the
same clothes. The World Trade Organisation, World Bank and IMF apply the
same economic and commercial prescription worldwide, enabling the biggest
corporations to trade under the same conditions everywhere.

Some of those who, in defiance of this dispensation, write their own logos
on their T-shirts are now being persecuted by the state. The pettiness of
its attentions, combined with its ability to scrutinise every detail of our
lives, suggest that we could be about to encounter a new form of political
control, swollen with success, unchecked by dissent. Nothing has threatened
the survival of "western values" as much as the triumph of the west.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

FASCIST CRIME IN THE NEWS:

06) Aryan Nations Figure Guilty On Weapons Charge: Plea bargain drops other
        counts
     Lawrence Budd (Dayton Daily News)
     5 Jan 02

COLUMBUS - The alleged Ohio leader of the Aryan Nations white supremacist
group has pleaded guilty to a single federal weapons charge in exchange for
dismissal of 26 other charges.

U.S. District Judge James Graham convicted Danny W. Kincaid of dealing
firearms without a license from Oct. 7, 2000, to July 2, 2001, when federal
agents raided his home outside Columbus. However, Graham dismissed the
remaining charges, which were based on weapons violations tied to previous
felony convictions in 1965 and 1972, according to court records.
Representatives of the U.S. Attorney declined to comment because Graham has
sealed the court record.

"Documents have been filed with the court sealing all paperwork in
connection with the Kincaid case," said Fred Alverson, spokesman for the
U.S. Attorney's Office in Columbus.

Gordon Hobson, a public defender representing Kincaid, had asked Graham to
dismiss the charges, claiming Ohio restored Kincaid's right to possess
firearms in 1967. On Friday, Kincaid declined comment and Hobson could not
be reached for comment.

Kincaid, 56, of Galena was charged with 16 counts of illegal possession of
firearms in the 10 months leading to his arrest. Ten charges accused
Kincaid of selling the same guns involved in the previous charges to an
informant or undercover federal agent he thought was a convicted felon.

Kincaid's trial had been postponed until February after U.S. Attorney Dana
Peters asked for more time to discuss a plea bargain with Hobson.

Kincaid pleaded guilty to failing to have a license to sell firearms during
a hearing Dec. 21 in federal court in Columbus, according to court records.

It was unclear when Graham intended to sentence Kincaid, identified as "the
Ohio Aryan Nations (AN) leader" in an affidavit filed in July by Tymothy
Burkey, a special agent with the FBI in Dayton assigned to investigate
domestic terrorism.

In the affidavit, Burkey alleged the group's goal is "overthrowing the U.S.
Government and creating all white country in the Northwest part of the
U.S."

"Since the group's inception in the early 1970s, AN members have committed
various crimes to further their goals. Included in these criminal acts have
been armed bank and armored car robberies, murder and explosive and weapon
violations," Burkey said in the affidavit supporting a search of Kincaid's
home.

In September, Richard Butler, founder and long-time leader of the Aryan
Nations, named Dayton native Harold Ray "Butch" Redfeairn heir apparent to
the top spot in the group.

Since then, Aryan Nations leaders have announced plans to move headquarters
to Pennsylvania following the power shift and a court ruling in a civil
lawsuit that cost the group its compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho.

Three weeks after federal agents searched Kincaid's home, Dayton police
detonated a pipe bomb in woods near Centerville Park Apartments in West
Carrollton, which the FBI linked to Kincaid and the Aryan Nations.

Authorities did not identify the man involved in this case.

But David Godfrey, a Montgomery County man, is alleged to have transported
a pipe bomb from his home to Kincaid's home in rural Delaware County,
according to court records.

The bomb was detonated, three days before federal agents raided Godfrey's
Montgomery County apartment, according to Burkey's affidavit in the Kincaid
case.

Godfrey has not been charged in the case, authorities said.

- - - - -

07) Oklahoma man arrested in weapons case
     Richard Green (AP)
     9 Jan 02

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma man has been arrested on weapons charges in an
investigation of a Tennessee resident linked to white supremacists and
accused of threatening a synagogue and having illegal explosives and
firearms.

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Jack Ray Spores, 33, of
Midwest City, on Tuesday evening at the muffler shop where he works in Del
City, FBI special agent Richard Marquise said Wednesday.

Michael E. Smith, 33, was arrested Friday after police said he pointed a
rifle at a Nashville synagogue and led officers on a chase. He later
directed police to a cache of weapons, including a shoulder-fired, anti-
tank rocket, 13 pipe bombs and bomb-making chemicals. A search of his
Nashville apartment revealed 11 live hand grenades, among other weapons.
They also found white supremacist literature, including The Turner Diaries
and various literature from the National Alliance, the Ku Klux Klan and
other hate groups.

A warrant issued out of Tennessee for the arrest of Spores and Smith
accuses them of possessing and making illegal firearms and explosive
devices.

Oklahoma City FBI spokesman Gary Johnson said investigators believe Spores
supplied Smith with illegal weapons and explosives. Johnson said no weapons
were seized when Spores was arrested, but the FBI investigation continues.

Smith has had associations with the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi National
Alliance and possibly other extremist groups, said Doug Riggin, supervisory
special agent with the FBI.

Johnson said investigators are trying to determine whether Spores also has
links to these groups, and the extent to which such groups are operating in
Oklahoma.

Smith came to the attention of authorities after someone noticed him
sitting in his car with a rifle pointed at the Congregation Sherith Israel
synagogue, which is near a school.

Smith left before officers arrived, but police were waiting for him at his
Nashville apartment. Officers said that after they confronted him, Smith
led them on a chase while holding a gun to his head.

The chase ended after a few minutes in a parking lot outside a suburban
pharmacy where Smith's wife works, and police said they found an AR-15
assault rifle, a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol, ammunition and surgical gloves
in Smith's car.

Authorities said Smith lived in Oklahoma City for a time.

                               * * * * *

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.

__________________________________________________________________________

                                FASCISM:
    We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget.
       (No permission required for noncommercial reproduction)

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