[Peace-discuss] The American Police State by Chris Hedges

[Morton K. Brussel]

We should all be as upset as Chris Hedges. ---mkb

Published on Monday, October 29, 2007 by TruthDig.com
The American Police State
by Chris Hedges
A Dallas jury, a week ago, deadlocked in its deliberations and caused  
a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest  
Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship  
of American democracy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can almost hear Dick Cheney yawn.

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

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

Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for  
nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is  
the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on  
America.“

©2007 TruthDig.com
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