[Peace-discuss] Then They Came For The Children

[Lisa Chason]

here's a rather chilling story for anyone who knows teenagers
 

Then They Came For The Children.

By Ted Rall 

04/27/05 - - They've vanished into the netherworld of a Homeland
Security gulag and their story has already disappeared from the
headlines, but the shocking case of two 16-year-old girls from New York
City arrested a month ago ought to inspire outrage among every American
worthy of the name. Since the government's reasons for the girls'
imprisonment could apply to virtually any teenager, it should also spark
fear. 

Like many rebellious teens, I fought with my mother. Local police,
called to my home during at least one particularly impressive clash of
wills and voices, talked us back into the land of the calmly reasonable.
Then they left. 

Like many young people, I was fascinated by morbid, violent subjects.
After I turned in an essay depicting a political assassination from the
killer's viewpoint, my creative writing teacher sent me to talk to my
guidance counselor. After I assured him that I had no desire to knock
off any politicians, he returned me to class. 

A quarter century later, my mom and I are best friends and I haven't
done anything the Secret Service ought to worry about. Right now,
however, two girls from New York City are rotting in a HomeSec prison in
Pennsylvania for doing nothing more than I did--one for fighting with
her parents and writing an essay, the other accused of being her friend.


In early March, the New York Times reported on April 7, one girl's
parents "went to the local police station house" in the Queens Village
neighborhood because "their teenage daughter...had defied their
authority." Things calmed down and the parents, believing their daughter
had been scared straight, asked the NYPD to forget the whole thing. 

It was too late for that. 

Without a warrant, NYPD detectives and federal agents burst into the
girl's home--no wonder they don't have time to look for Osama!--where
they "searched her belongings and confiscated her computer and the
essays that she had written as part of a home schooling program," say
her family. "One essay concerned suicide...[that] asserted that suicide
is against Islamic law." The family is Bangladeshi. They are Muslim.
That, coupled with the mere mention of suicide bombing in her essay, was
enough to put the fuzz on high alert. 

Although she is conservative and devout, the girl and her parents
vigorously deny that she is an Islamist extremist (not that such
opinions are illegal), but this is post-9/11 America and post-9/11
America is out of its mind. 

Based solely on an essay written by one of the two, the FBI says both
girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based
upon evidence that they plan to become suicide bombers." But the feds
admit that they have no evidence to back their suspicions. Nothing. 

"There are doubts about these claims, and no evidence has been found
that such a plot was in the works," one Bush Administration official
admitted to the Times. "The arrests took place after authorities decided
it would be better to lock up the girls than wait and see if they
decided to become terrorists," another told the New York Post. The same
logic could be used to justify locking up any Muslim, or anyone at all.
Heck, maybe that's the idea. 

The Bangladeshi girl, who was homeschooled and wears a veil, says she
never even met her outgoing and more Americanized "co-conspirator" from
Guinea before the cops accused them of plotting to do...something.
Maybe. 

Ted Rall. Visit his website. http://www.tedrall.com/

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