[Imc-newsroom] News updates on G8

[Peter Miller]

>From: vincent scotti eirene <notowar at telerama.com>
>To: blast furnace radio <notowar at telerama.com>
>cc: ebb at microradio.net, heidi kellner <heidik at wolfram.com>
>Subject: [imc-audio] genoa, italy / rebellion
>Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:59:36 -0400 (EDT)
>
>
>thatz right the home of columbus
>
>   vincent
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
>From: John McIntosh <jmcintosh at wvwise.org>
>
>
>"Frantz Fanon was correct when he prescribed
>resistance as the best psychotherapy..." -Ahmad A. Rahman, 2001
>
>[At bottom are two quotes on the growing repression. As the USA
>(and the entire world) becomes more and more a fascistic-racist
>prison camp, I must ask, how many people that I know are really
>aware? The answer must unfortunately be: Very few, very few.
>
>Oh yeah, if I lived nearer, I would gladly be on my way to Genoa.
>  -Duff]
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>
>World Desk.
>
>CONTENTS-
>1. ITALY - The battle for Genoa   (Vidal, Guardian-UK)
>2. ITALY - Tension Increasing in Genoa   (vlerner at interpac.net / indymedia)
>3. USA - Herd Mentality and Political Prisoners   (Rahman, The Black World
>Today)
>4. USA - New Technology Allows Orwellian Monitoring   (www.insightmag.com)
>5. QUOTE for the day - Parenti
>6. QUOTE for the day - ARA
>
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>
>1. The battle for Genoa   (Vidal-Guardian UK)
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,523368,00.html
>The battle for Genoa
>Special report: globalisation
>
>John Vidal
>Wednesday July 18, 2001
>The Guardian
>
>The banners are packed, the tickets booked. The glitter and white overalls
>have been bought, the gas masks just fit and the mobile phones are ready.
>All that remains is to get to the parties.
>
>This week will see a feast of pan-European protest. It started on Bastille
>day, last Saturday, with the French unions and immigrants
>
>[Wait a second! Those anti-globalization protest hoppers are supposed to
>all be middle class college kids or punkers. That's what the evening TV
>news and newspapers [[and some friends of mine]] always say. -Duff]
>
>on the streets, the Welsh trampling their last GM crop
>
>[Genetically engineered crops getting stomped. -Duff]
>
>and the first demonstrations in Britain and Germany about climate change.
>It will continue tomorrow and Thursday with environmental and peace
>rallies
>against President Bush, move on to the scandal of refugee holding-centres
>and build at Bonn for the climate talks. But the big one is in Genoa, on
>Friday
>and Saturday, where the G8 leaders will meet behind the lines of 18,000
>heavily armed police.
>
>Unlike Prague, Gothenburg, Cologne or Nice, Genoa is expected to be
>Europe's
>Seattle, the coming together of the disparate strands of resistance to
>corporate globalisation. Should the authorities allow all the protesters
>into the city (and that is doubtful) then some 120,000 people could take
>part in a range of debates, festivities and protest about everything from
>debt to demilitarisation.
>
>If Seattle marked the emerging links between the disparate, frustrated
>movements, then Genoa will show the breadth of European concern. This
>stretches across trade unionists, fringe parties, greens, reds, social and
>religious movements, debt and genetic campaigners and a host of
>non-governmental groups. They will suspend their differences to object to
>what they regard as the injustice of power, growing poverty and the
>direction the world is going.
>
>Neither the protesters nor the authorities know what will happen, but some
>things are predictable. Yes, there will be violence and yes, the mass media
>will focus on it. The world leaders will publicly condemn the head-bangers,
>but gratefully use them as an excuse to ignore the arguments of the rest.
>
>What should seriously concern the G8 is not so much the violence, the
>numbers in the street or even that they themselves look like idiots hiding
>behind the barricades, but that the deep roots of a genuine new version of
>internationalism are growing. This is demonising the global institutions
>and
>there's not much governments can do.
>
>They can't dismiss the protests as single issue affairs, nor can they buy
>them off as they might at home. The charge against them is now too deep. It
>questions the new role of the state, the distribution of capital and the
>trajectory of globalisation while at the same time appealing to the broad
>progressive social conscience.
>
>For the first time in a generation, the international political and
>economic
>condition is in the dock. Moreover, the protesters are unlikely to go away,
>their confidence is growing rather than waning, their agendas are merging,
>the protests are spreading and drawing in all ages and concerns.
>
>No single analysis has drawn all the stands of the debate together. The new
>era may yet throw up its Marx and Engels, a defining manifesto or political
>philosophy. In the meantime, the global protest "movement" is developing
>its
>own language, texts, reference points, agendas, myths, heroes and villains.
>Just as the G8 leaders, world bodies and businesses talk increasingly from
>the same script, so the protesters' once disparate political and social
>analyses are converging. The long-term project of governments and world
>bodies to globalise capital and development is being mirrored by the
>globalisation of protest.
>
>But what happens next? Governments and world bodies are unsure which way to
>turn. However well they are policed, major protests reinforce the
>impression
>of indifferent elites, repression of debate, overreaction to dissent,
>injustice and unaccountable power.
>
>Their options - apart from actually embracing the broad agenda being put to
>them - are to retreat behind even higher barricades, repress dissent
>further, abandon global meetings altogether or, more likely, meet only in
>places able to physically resist the masses. Brussels is considering
>building a super fortress for international meetings. Genoa may be the last
>of the European super-protests.
>
>But the dilemma also extends to the protesters. The wiser activists
>acknowledge that there is a momentum to the protests which no one group can
>control. But, they are asking themselves, what is the point of expending so
>much energy risking lives, trying to get people out of prison and making
>short-lived links with groups they would barely acknowledge at home?
>
>They know the real task is immense - to persuade the majority, create real
>change and unclog the arteries of states that can still dismiss their cause
>with such ease. They also know that time is not on their side.
>
>john.vidal at guardian.co.uk
>
>*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
>is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
>in receiving the included information for research and educational
>purposes.***
>
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>
>2. ITALY - Tension Increasing in Genoa   (indymedia.org)
>
>See the pictures!
>Viviane
>========
>http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=53161&group=webcast
>
>Tension Increasing in Genoa
>
>by indyGenova 4:20am Your Jul 17 ' 01 (Modified on 7:5ám Your Jul 17 ' 01)
>
>Genoa is rapidly becoming to fortress, increasing the barriers and
>restricting demonstrators' access to the red zones.
>
>The police City workers have been busy since yesterday erecting street
>barricades under surveilance. Access to the red zones has not yet been
>denied, but police have been placed in the merging red-yellow areas to keep
>an eye on eventual leak-zones, and to have to clear overview of the
>situation.
>
>The tension in the City is increasing, two also to the fabricated or real "
>unabomber"-style attacks, which have recently occured in random places
>around the town. On Monday morning, to package-bomb was sent to the local
>police station of Saint Fruttuoso, badly injuring the policeman on duty.
>The
>Genoa Social Forum has condemned this act, but has at the same Time also
>taken to stance against the terror strategy that the authorities (perhaps
>the secret services) to are using to criminalise and weaken the cohesion of
>the movement. Police policy is difficult to discern.
>
>In the afternoon after the supposed bomb alarm, to lorry- door was blown
>up.
>During the same afternoon, that area around Carlini Stadium, to where 300
>activists to are currently lodging, was searched two to to bomb threat. To
>small incendiary device was found inside to suitcase, laying in front of
>the
>stadium.
>
>This same morning, several All White women members
>
>[White Overalls, Tutte Bianche, Ya Basta - well-armored/protected groups
>who wear white or light colored overalls or chemical suits (to repel
>pepper
>spray or mace), helmets, padding, gas masks, etc. They are 'autonomists'
>who
>mix Marxism & anarchism and are also influenced by Mexico's Zapatistas.
>-Duff]
>
>to were apprehended by
>policemen on their way out of to shop where they to were buying plexiglass
>as protection material. Police The intention of forces was to confiscated
>the materials. They did not succeeed, but they took one member to the
>police
>station.
>
>The member was denied the right to to lawyer, and his comrades have
>contacted one for him. Unfortunately the lawyer didn' t manage to trace the
>member, as the police had taken him away through to secondary door.The
>police then invented to story of stolen plexiglass and of to denunciation
>of
>the Bianchis from the ownerì of the shop.
>
>This story was used as to pretext for to raid of the Carlini stadium. The
>obvious lie was dismantled by simple receipts obtained from the owner of
>the
>shop.
>
>Altercations and controls to are taking place in different towns across
>Italy. In Turin 20 poilicemen have raided the squats Askatasuna and Ascova.
>In Bologna and in Rome, houses of various activists have been searched. In
>Milan, as well as in Rome, people have been arrested and searched under the
>pretext of their supposedly possessing drugs, among other reasons.
>
>The situation is tense also at the swiss-italian border, to where to group
>of activist-cyclists on their way to Genoa to were denied entrance. After
>the cyclists' several repeated attempts to cross in an activist train, they
>to were violently kicked off the train. 4 people have been arrested. In
>response to these violations, the group has occupied an empty house by the
>police station and border demonstrators have also occupied the highway.
>
>The situation is getting heavy.
>
>We need you all: join us in Genoa.
>
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>
>[Because they've been indoctrinated so cleverly,
>most Americans refuse to believe there are
>political prisoners in the USA. Are you one of
>those people? -Duff]
>
>3.  Herd Mentality and Political Prisoners   (Rahman, The Black World
>Today)
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 01:33:11 +1200
>From: Janice <Janice_G at free.net.nz>
>Subject: Herd Mentality and Political Prisoners
>
>http://www.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=1052
>
>The Black World Today
>
>July 9, 2001
>
>Herd Mentality and Political Prisoners
>
>By Ahmad A. Rahman
>
>[Adapted from a Presentation at the Chicago Town Hall Meeting
>on Political Prisoners, Malcolm X College, March 1, 2001]
>
>A January 5, 2001, Associated Press article detailed the
>release of Peter Limone after 33 years in prison. Boston
>Superior Court Judge Margaret Hinkle vacated the conviction
>of the 66-year-old man, stating that the FBI had been
>'tarnished' by its actions in the case.
>
>[B.S. The FBI simply carried out its task as political police. -Duff]
>
>For 33 years the FBI
>had withheld information that Limone was innocent. Limone's
>co-defendant, also innocent, had died in prison. At a time
>when the mass media focused on former president Clinton's
>pardoning the allegedly guilty, they directed virtually no
>attention to the horror and hardships faced by Limone, his
>co-defendant, and their families during 33 years spent in
>prison for a crime for which the government knew they were
>innocent. Limone had been fingered by a lying FBI informant
>who was, himself, a multiple murderer for the mob. This case
>of innocent persons languishing, dying in prison when the
>government withholds exculpating evidence bears striking
>similarities to the cases of several political prisoners.
>
>Some persons here this evening who have not had contact with
>the criminal justice system might ask, "How could this be?
>Don't we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
>happiness? Do you mean the government would violate the
>Constitution to deprive innocent citizens of their liberty
>because of their political beliefs?" The Limone case
>illustrates that in criminal cases this is true. What little
>media coverage this case received sought to reduce the
>significance of this crime against Limone as isolated
>episodes of corruption within the Boston FBI. How routine
>this kind of behavior is in the realm of criminal law I
>cannot say. That this has been common for persons with left
>wing politics and who take strong stances against capitalism
>and racism, I can affirm unequivocally. Yet, for many people
>in this country, charges that the government inflicts
>criminal charges and extra-long sentences as a form of
>political repression are either unknown or the cause of
>skepticism.
>
>Before understanding what we must do to counter the power of
>the US criminal justice system as an instrument of political
>repression we need to first understand why it works the way
>it does. Without expounding a long political treatise to
>answer this question, allow me to utilize the familiar
>American cultural metaphor of the cattle drive.
>
>As depicted in old westerns on TV and in the movies, the
>cattle drive and the cowboy are the metaphors for the
>narrative of American economic progress and civil order: The
>moving cattle represent economic progress and capitalist
>profit, if they are delivered to Kansas healthy and on time.
>The herd symbolizes order itself. The cowboys are
>maintaining the progress of the economic system. The
>cowboy's job is to maintain order during the movement of the
>economy toward profits for those who own the herds and the
>meat packing companies. If we see the majority of America's
>working people as this herd and the criminal justice system
>(police, courts, etc.) as the cowboys, we understand why
>maintaining civil order is the cowboy's purpose.
>
>Why extralegal means are viewed as necessary and acceptable
>to maintain law and order is also visible in the cattle
>drive. Recall the drives in which external threats posed a
>danger to the orderly movement of the cattle toward the
>marketplace. Frequently those depicted as threatening the
>system were 'Injuns.' These people of color -- dislocated,
>invaded, aggrieved, starved - were depicted as the
>aggressors against a morally superior civilization and its
>racially superior protectors. Native Americans, Mexicans,
>and outlaw whites (usually depicted as working class 'poor
>white trash') who in some way challenge the system were
>unworthy of anything but 'frontier justice.'
>
>In the Old West of these media myths, cattle rustlers and
>horse thieves and persons who caused stampedes were either
>hanged or gunned down. So absorbed were we in the dramas
>that few of us ever stopped to think, "hey, there are
>thousands of cattle in that herd. Those rustlers only took a
>few cows. For this they get the death penalty?" Nor did we
>question the depictions of Native Americans as unreasonable,
>even though they challenged the trespass on their lands of
>the cattle belonging to cowboys who had killed off their
>buffalo. Native Americans being situated outside the system,
>as neither cowboy nor cattle, removed them from our
>sympathies. Our disbelief in racial and economic injustice
>had already been suspended by skillful manipulation of
>evocative symbols and archetypes of Americana. Especially
>for American men, strength, courage, and masculinity were
>made synonymous with uncritical acceptance and emulation of
>the rough justice and rugged individualism of the cowboy.
>
>Those persons presently and in the past who take stances
>against the status quo have stepped outside the herd. By
>doing so, the government forces charged to maintain the herd
>views them as not only outlaws, but as persons subject to
>'justice' outside the law. Hence the continuing confinement
>of Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Marshal Eddie Conway,
>of several other former members of the Black Panther Party,
>and scores of activists from other parts of the Black
>Liberation Movement. For a complete list, see the website:
>www. The JericoMovement.com
>
>[And the list of political prisoners grows, from various
>movements: ecology/animal/anti-genetic crop folks, labor
>unionists, anti-poverty groups, peace direct actionists,
>anarchists, socialists, etc.
>And, of course, all Black victims of crack laws are victims
>of racist political hysteria. -Duff]
>
>My direct experience indelibly imbedded in my mind the
>reality of a shadow world where political activists and
>government agents perform a serious game of predator and
>prey outside the vision of non-participants. I understand
>how Peter Limone could wind up in prison for decades and be
>innocent, even though the government produced an eyewitness
>who pointed him out as the triggerman in a murder. When the
>government charged me with the crime for which I would spend
>21 years in prison, the government sent a lawyer to me with
>a message. If I would testify against the leader of the
>Detroit Black Panther Party, identifying him as the person
>their other witnesses said I was, then they would let me go.
>I knew, as did they, that Malik had nothing to do with the
>case. But he was a bigger fish than I was. I would later be
>told about a diagram of the hierarchy of the Detroit
>Panthers hanging on the wall of police headquarters. This
>diagram assigned Malik and me the rank of number one and
>number three respectively.
>
>I turned down the deal and spent decades in prison as a
>result. I often wondered afterward how many defendants
>refused these offers. How many persons are in prison now
>because they were falsely accused by defendants who
>exchanged false testimony for their freedom? Go to prison
>for years or lie on another person and send him to prison in
>your place. How many people chose prison? This is why the
>Limone case struck me so viscerally. The judge accused the
>FBI of knowing for 33 years that an innocent man had been
>wrongfully convicted. This is what we have been saying about
>some political prisoners. Only the prisoners, their
>supporters, and the government know their innocence, or
>their having been setup, entrapped, framed or otherwise
>railroaded. Had not some internal FBI documents become
>available, Limone would have likely died in prison as did
>his co-defendant. Without this same kind of revelation, or
>without their freedom campaigns becoming successful, many
>political prisoners are likely to die in prison.
>
>For the government to belatedly admit wrongdoing in framing
>and falsely imprisoning a man for 33 years has narrow
>implications in a criminal case. To admit doing the same to
>people because they stepped outside the herd and attempted
>to free other persons from the herd, is to admit that
>America locks up people for their political beliefs and
>activism. The broad national and international implications
>of such an admission are weighty. Foremost, America, this
>propaganda beacon of democracy and human rights, would be
>further exposed for talking one talk but walking two walks.
>The already limited credibility of its position of worldwide
>moral superiority, recurrently asserted in the media, over
>China, Iraq and Cuba, for example, would immediately drop
>precipitously.
>
>Most troublesome for the possessors of state power, the
>general American public could become aware that America
>practices dual sets of behavior based on a duality of
>philosophies. This duality has been visible for those who
>wish to see it from the inception of this country. Back then
>the vaunted 'Founding Fathers' established a republic
>through the initial Lebensraum program known as Manifest
>Destiny. Like the Nazi Lebensraum, Manifest Destiny was the
>agenda of extermination, forced labor, and conquest used by
>a self-appointed 'master race' to usurp an entire continent
>belonging to a people whom they had designated inferior.
>Yet, in Washington D.C. there are mammoth monuments to the
>'heroism' of the committers of these crimes against
>humanity; nowhere does the country acknowledge officially
>that its wealth and prosperity is founded upon a heinous
>legacy of blood.
>
>Toward the end of his life Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
>repeatedly stated that there was a sickness in America's
>soul. "I'm convinced that this hypocritical dualism in
>America's self-image is the root cause of this sickness.
>This dualism permeates the media's portrayal of America's
>origins versus the underlying realities. Hence the
>action-packed distortions of history like 'Mississippi
>Burning.' Police state propaganda shows proliferate on TV:
>LAPD, NYPD Blue, America's Most Wanted, Law and Order, a
>series purporting to portray the 'real FBI,' and other
>programs now too numerous to mention. Although one or two
>episodes might tangentially touch on police corruption, the
>recurring and most dramatically powerful message is that the
>cowboys are necessary to get the herd to the market. There's
>still 'Injuns' (remember the cop movie, 'Fort Apache the
>Bronx'?) and 'poor (working class) white trash' out there
>not playing by the cattleman's rules and in need of frontier
>justice.
>
>In the realm of political 'crimes,' healing this schizoid
>dualism in America's soul requires strong doses of truth.
>The truth can indeed set people free. We activists enhance
>the meaning of our lives when we dedicate ourselves to
>spreading the truth. Too few Americans know that their
>government supported the various so-called 'dirty wars' in
>Central and South America. These anti-communist crusades
>involved the systematic, usage of kidnapping (the
>'Disappeared') rape, torture, and murder to stifle social
>movements for freedom, justice and economic equality for
>workers and peasants. Many perpetrators of these crimes,
>soldiers aligned with the financial elites, received
>counterinsurgency training at the School of the Americas in
>Fort Benning, Georgia. I recall that the US representative
>to the United Nations during the Reagan administration
>declared that authoritarianism -- bloody fascist
>dictatorships -- were preferable to so-called
>totalitarianism, i.e. Cuba under Castro and Chile under
>Allende.
>
>While supporting these dirty wars the US government engaged
>in its own extrajudicial witchhunts against domestic
>proponents of peace, economic equality, and racial justice.
>This brings me to the shadow world of activists today. As
>the police tactics to stop opponents of globalization have
>illustrated for a new generation of activists, opponents of
>the political status quo dance in the dark with the secret
>police.
>
>I was on Pennsylvania Avenue when the limousine carrying
>president-select Bush sped by on Inauguration Day. Crowding
>the sidewalk, opponents of his right wing coup far
>outnumbered the cowboy hat and mink coat crowd that
>celebrated him in the bleachers. Suddenly a squad that
>resembled a SWAT team in full riot gear, clad in black
>facemasks, ran toward us and lined up facing us. They
>pounded their batons in their hands or against shields a few
>times. Then as abruptly as they had come, they about-faced
>and marched in single file back to a truck across the
>street. As Bush's limo neared our spot, a contingent of
>Marines deployed in front of us. They formed the third line
>of offense that we faced. First were two rows of the D.C.
>police and officers from the Virginia and Maryland state
>troopers. As we watched the presidential limo approach, we
>saw in front of it two flatbed trucks. Both were filled with
>a dozen men standing up all clicking cameras at us. Why was
>the secret police taking our pictures? We were simply
>exercising our First Amendment rights.
>
>Bush's opponents had stepped outside the herd and were
>chanting, "Selected, not elected!" "Racist, sexist, you must
>be from Texas!" "f--k Bush!" and "Coup, Coup, Coup d'etat!"
>Unlike the well-dressed Republicans in the bleachers next to
>us, our faces had to be recorded and stored forever in the
>files of the political police. Some of the elders and youths
>in this demonstration had taken their first steps into the
>shadow world.
>
>I contend that it is fear of entering this shadow world that
>stops preachers and politicians from speaking out about
>political prisoners. A couple weeks before the inauguration
>over 500 FBI agents marched in front of the White House to
>pressure then-President Clinton not to release Leonard
>Peltier. Some media personalities stated that Clinton would
>have released Peltier had he not feared that the FBI would
>hound him for the rest of his life. These pundits declined
>to take this to the next level and say, "Wow, the FBI can
>intimidate a man as powerful as the president into not
>delivering justice to a political prisoner. Could they also
>be intimidating judges, prosecutors, lawyers, activists,
>politicians, reporters, witnesses, et al.? Are they,
>employees of the misnamed Department of Justice, continuing
>the government's Dirty War by assuring that its imprisoned
>victims never see freedom?"
>
>Activists for freedom and justice need to come to grips with
>why the issue of political prisoners is seldom if ever on
>the lips of the likes of not only civil rights leaders like
>Jessie Jackson and Julian Bond, but also well-known Black
>public intellectuals and academics. Many of these people
>have lived outside the herd for decades. A more pressing
>question arises from cases like Mumia Abu-Jamal (twenty
>years in Pennsylvania prisons) and Marshal Eddie Conway
>(thirty years in Maryland). They were convicted for shooting
>policemen. Might those who cannot bring themselves to
>support their freedom have unconsciously internalized the
>old slave code law, which stated, 'A slave shall not resist
>the correction of his master.'
>
>No matter how wrong or brutal was the punishment, the law
>stated that a slave could not resist. After receiving the
>punishment, if some white person thought that the master had
>been overly cruel to his property, in a few jurisdictions
>this person could file a civil complaint. The complainant
>would have to assert that the master was guilty of cruelty
>to living property, like cruelty to a cow or horse. Those
>rare court decisions against the master resulted in fines
>that were a pittance.
>
>In one incident in Virginia in 1831, the master forced a
>recalcitrant slave into a wooden barrel. Nails were then
>hammered into the barrel, which the punishers then rolled
>down a hill. At no point could the slave legally resist this
>horrific death.
>
>Under the modern interpretation of this law, no black person
>may resist the correction of the police. Many activists are
>much more enthusiastic about protesting the death of the
>murdered Amadou Diallo  [in NYC]  than they are about advocating the
>freedom of Mumia. A black man who died during police
>'correction' we can accept; a black man who survived with
>the policeman dead instead, arouses less enthusiasm. It's as
>if we share in America's schizoid sickness from a Black
>perspective: die a victim of the cowboys and we'll celebrate
>you, come out on top in a battle with them and we'll ignore
>you.
>
>Even activists seem not to be able to ask whether there is
>anything legal that a person can do when the police come to
>'correct' or kill her/him illegally? 'Fleeing and eluding
>the police' is a felony, as is all other resistance. All
>that one can do that is legal is die. One's survivors can
>then sue, which, of course, does not raise the dead. With
>racial profiling so prevalent, these life and death issues
>unfortunately arise quite often.
>
>The cowboy state's denial of life, liberty and the pursuit
>of happiness to 'Injuns,' rebellious white workers and
>intellectuals, and others outside the herd has always been a
>political act. Those persons who have periodically arisen to
>resist this murderous power, survived, and been slammed into
>the cowboys' quarantine for infected cattle (prison) are
>unquestionably political prisoners. For Black activists
>suffering from the schizoid dualism about political
>prisoners, Frantz Fanon was correct when he prescribed
>resistance as the best psychotherapy. The best resistance
>would be to support the freedom campaigns of our fellow
>activists who languish in prison for resisting the
>correction of their would-be masters.
>
>Copyright (c) 2001 The Black World Today. All Rights Reserved.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>BRC-PP-POW: Black Radical Congress - Political Prisoners/Prisoners of War
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Questions/Problems: send email to <brc-pp-pow-owner at egroups.com>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
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>
>4. New Technology Allows Orwellian Monitoring (www.insightmag.com)
>
>http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200108070.shtml
>New Technology Allows Orwellian Monitoring
>
>Dark warnings of Big Brother’s imminent arrival have been made, heard and
>blithely ignored since the 1949 publication of George Orwell’s 1984, a
>novel
>that offered a chilling vision of superstate totalitarianism and
>technological thought control. So one always risks sounding a bit like the
>boy who cried “Wolf!” evoking it again.
>        Yet several recent developments raise questions about the uses by
>government of technologies of potentially (dare we say it?) Orwellian
>intrusiveness. They aren’t, as yet, being used for purposes of mind control
>but, just as ominously, to monitor the movements of a supposedly free
>people, increasingly for the purpose of picking their pockets.
>        Remote-control cameras long have had a presence in banks and
>convenience stores, of course, and more recently have been installed in an
>experimental way at intersections and along roadways across the nation as
>automated traffic cops. But as the revenue-raising potential of mechanical
>ticket-issuing systems has become evident, they’ve begun to proliferate,
>raising questions about whether something other than just a concern for
>public safety is at work.
>        Like dozens of other cities, Washington for several years has used
>intersection cameras to snap photos of red-light runners, with only a
>couple
>of idiotic snafus and few objections from the public. But this summer the
>city is moving to install so-called “photo-radar” devices along many more
>roadways. They automatically will issue tickets to automobiles exceeding
>the
>speed limit, and a private contractor, Lockheed Martin IMS, reportedly will
>pocket a hefty $30 or more per ticket.
>        Road-testing an idea it aims to take national, the National Park
>Service has proposed setting up similar surveillance cameras along the
>George Washington Parkway in suburban Northern Virginia, claiming it
>doesn’t
>have the manpower to patrol the roadway. But this has raised the hackles of
>some in Congress, who may not only be guilty of occasionally breaking the
>parkway’s grannylike 40 mph speed limit while rushing to catch a plane at
>Reagan National Airport. They also have legitimate concerns about whether
>it
>denies a motorist due process. Isn’t it just another way for the service to
>raise revenues at the expense of area commuters?
>        “In essence, what these cameras do is turn the duty and judgment of
>law-enforcement officers over to a machine,” House Majority Leader Dick
>Armey of Texas stated in a letter of complaint to Interior Secretary Gale
>Norton. “You can’t argue your case to a machine.”
>        Demonstrating where such technology might be leading, officials in
>London recently announced they would use similar devices beginning in 2003
>to assess automatically a $7 daily fee to autos entering the city, a
>toll-by-remote-control that will raise an estimated $282 million. Singapore
>and several cities in Norway reportedly already have levied such
>“congestion
>charges” on motorists, but London will be the largest metropolis to give it
>a go — at least for now.
>        Tampa, Fla., also recently installed cameras in and around Ybor
>City,
>hub of the town’s nightlife, not to catch speeders or red-light runners but
>to randomly snap pictures of faces in the crowd. The snapshots then will be
>cross-referenced with a computer database of mug shots kept by the police
>and an officer will be dispatched to collar the suspect when a “match” is
>made.
>        As reported here before, the Federal Highway Administration
>currently
>is funding research at several Midwestern universities into ways that
>states
>can use Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites to monitor the movements
>of individual automobiles, with an eye toward eventually taxing motorists
>according to how far and how frequently they drive. The research is of keen
>interest to at least a half-dozen states concerned that existing gasoline
>taxes won’t keep pace with the need for future revenues. They are looking
>for ways to ration congested roadways and force commuters onto mass
>transit.
>        That such technology can track not only where one goes, but also how
>quickly one gets there is shown by the case of James Turner. The
>Connecticut
>resident recently glimpsed the contemporary workings of Big Brother when he
>rented a van for a business trip. The van he rented was equipped with a
>system called AirIQ, which not only tracked the car’s whereabouts by
>satellite but also whether its driver pushed the vehicle above 79 mph. When
>the unwitting Turner exceeded that speed, he automatically was fined by the
>rental company — $450 for three infractions during a round trip between
>Connecticut and Virginia — and the money automatically was deducted from
>his
>bank account.
>        “They took the money out before I returned the car,” a “very
>surprised” Turner told CNN. “I was not aware of what GPS could do. I
>thought
>[the device] was an onboard-navigation system to use when you get lost.”
>Indeed.
>
>*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
>is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
>in receiving the included information for research and educational
>purposes.***
>
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>
>5. QUOTE for the day
>
>"What we have to deal with now is a creep towards fascism in the U.S.
>An increasingly punitive, increasingly racist state that is ever more
>invasive in terms of surveillance and the types of formal and informal
>social control it exercises over all of us. And, frighteningly, this system
>of repression has broad support among the people of America."
>    -Christian Parenti - 2000, author of Lockdown America
>
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>
>6. QUOTE for the day
>
>"The reactionary rhetorical law and order crap that is a staple
>of ruling class propaganda should be dismissed with the contempt
>it deserves."
>    -Anti-Racist Action, Chicago, 2001
>
>                        *****
>
>
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