NY TIMES– Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

Read more about Explorer Boy Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists.

© 2009 NY TIMES

DEMOCRACY NOW– Last September in St. Paul, Ramsey County prosecutors formally charged eight members of the group RNC Welcoming Committee with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. The criminal complaints reportedly do not allege that any of the defendants personally engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. Instead, authorities are seeking to hold them responsible for acts committed by other individuals during the RNC’s opening days. We speak to one of the defendants, Luce Guillen-Givins, and RNC 8 Attorney Jordan Kushner. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s broadcast by looking at the latest developments in the case of the RNC 8. Last September in St. Paul, Ramsey County prosecutors formally charged eight members of the group RNC Welcoming Committee with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism.

The eight activists are believed to be the first people ever charged under the 2002 Minnesota version of the federal PATRIOT Act. The activists face up to seven-and-a-half years in prison. The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County attorney reportedly do not allege any of the defendants personally engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. Instead, authorities are seeking to hold the eight defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals during the opening days of the Republican National Convention.

In December, Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner, who is also running for governor of Minnesota, added three more felony charges. Combined, the charges could carry a maximum of twelve-and-a-half years in prison.

Luce Guillen-Givins is one of the RNC 8—Luce. She’s also joined by Jordan Kushner, an attorney for the RNC 8. They both join us from Minneapolis.

Luce, when do you go to court?

LUCE GUILLEN-GIVINS: My next hearing is on February 27th in the morning, and it’s a motions hearing on discovery.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are you exactly charged with?

LUCE GUILLEN-GIVINS: I have four felony counts that I’m facing: conspiracy to commit a riot in furtherance of terrorism, conspiracy to commit riot, conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property in furtherance of terrorism, and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property.

AMY GOODMAN: Luce, what were you doing at the Republican convention?

LUCE GUILLEN-GIVINS: Well, at the convention, I was in jail. I had been in jail since the Saturday before. But I did spend more than a year and a half beforehand organizing with a group called the RNC Welcoming Committee. And we were primarily an infrastructural logistical group bringing together a lot of different people for radical protests at the convention.

AMY GOODMAN: Jordan Kushner, there has already been a case that’s gone to trial that we covered, because it involved an FBI informant. That case went to mistral. What is the significance of the two men who were charged in that case? In that case, what was it? A hung jury? And what it means for the RNC 8?

JORDAN KUSHNER: That’s right. It was a hung jury, and technically it doesn’t mean anything for the RNC 8, because there’s no connection whatsoever between the RNC 8 and those people, even though the prosecutor in that case was trying to tie them to the Welcoming Committee.

But the fact that you had people who indisputably had Molotov cocktails and the jury couldn’t agree on convicting them, I don’t think that bodes well at all for the state in this case, where you have people who were locked up in jail while the convention protests were going on, aren’t accused of having or doing anything that could cause any harm to other people, and yet they’re being charged with felony terrorist charges.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Jordan Kushner, the latest information about an FBI informant within the RNC Welcoming Committee that has just come out?

JORDAN KUSHNER: That’s right. He was an FBI informant and actually was an FBI informant in that Molotov cocktail case, too, although he wasn’t called because of the criminal charges of his own that he’s facing. He was arrested for some violent burglary charges in January, where he broke into someone’s house, assaulted two people. And so, he’s facing felony charges right now in Hennepin County over that. He was the most—he’s the principal informant in the RNC 8 case, the main person they’re relying on to accuse them of planning the destruction of property.

AMY GOODMAN: What will it mean for your case, given that he was just charged in a criminal case? I mean, could charges against him be lessened depending on what he said in the RNC 8 case?

JORDAN KUSHNER: Well, we don’t know right now, because his prosecution is at the beginning stages. And, of course, it shouldn’t have any affect. This is something he did on his own, and it’s actually much more violent than anyone that’s involved in the protest is accused of doing. So I think it would be scandalous if they lessened his charges in that case and let him out of committing violent felonies because he’s cooperating against—in a political prosecution against political protesters. And so, we’ll have to see how this dynamic plays out.

AMY GOODMAN: Luce, did you know him? According to the paper this morning, Andrew Darst, thirty years old, spied on anarchists planning disruptions at the RNC, the paper said.

LUCE GUILLEN-GIVINS: I did know him. He was an active part of the Welcoming Committee for a number of months before the convention, and he was somebody that I saw and spoke to on a regular basis.

AMY GOODMAN: For those who are watching TV, we had just showed a picture of Brandon Darby. Now, Brandon was the self-confessed FBI informant when documents came out showing—was in the other case of the two young men who were charged whose case went to—ended up with a hung jury, so they face another case.

Luce, you’re the—your case, it’s believed that you’re the first people to be charged under the Minnesota version of the USA PATRIOT Act that was passed in 2002. The significance of this, as we wrap up?

LUCE GUILLEN-GIVINS: I think the significance is that this is one more step in the process of criminalizing dissent. Of course, people were outraged when the PATRIOT Act passed in the first place. And then state versions were passed across the country. And it’s significant anywhere that people would be prosecuted as terrorists for involving themselves in political dissent of any nature. And, of course, it’s not about necessarily agreeing with our politics or toeing any sort of party line. It’s the fact that we do have a right to protest. Any prosecution under a PATRIOT Act or any similar legislation infringes on those rights.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Luce Guillen-Givins, one of the RNC 8. They face trial now. Jordan Kushner, attorney for the RNC 8.

GREEN IS NEW RED– When four animal rights activists were arrested under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, it was unclear how prosecutors would proceed, and what specific accusations the activists would face. Now, the government indictment, available here for the first time, makes it strikingly clear that prosecutors intend to use terrorism laws to target First Amendment activity.

The “AETA 4,”—Joseph Buddenburg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stumpo—have been indicted for “conspiracy” to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. As justification of the charge, the indictment lists three specific acts:

-A protest on October 21, 2007, at an animal researcher’s home. The government says this amounts to “threats, criminal trespass, harassment and intimidation.” In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that on this date “protesters trespassed onto Professor Number One’s front yard and rang his doorbell several times. The group was making a lot of noise and chanting animal rights slogans (“1, 2, 3, 4 open up the cage door; 5, 6, 7, 8, smash the locks and liberate; 9, 10, 11, 12, vivisectors go to hell”)…”

-A protest on January 27, 2008, at an animal researcher’s home. The government says this amounts to “threats, harassment, and intimidation.” In the criminal complaint, the FBI said that on this date approximately 11 individuals demonstrated at the homes of multiple researchers. “At each residence, the individuals, dressed generally in all black clothing and wearing bandanas over their nose and mouth, marched, chanted, and chalked defamatory comments on the public sidewalks…”

-Use of the Internet. They allegedly “used the Internet to find information on bio-medical researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz.”

Even more telling, though, is what is not listed in the indictment. In the criminal complaint and the FBI press release, the government mentioned the above allegations along with two other incidents—the only two incidents even approaching a “gray area” between protected speech and illegal conduct.

At one protest attended by the defendants, a researcher “struggled with one individual and was hit with a dark, firm object,” according to the FBI. (February 24, 2008)A stack of fliers titled “Murderers and torturers alive & well in Santa Cruz July 2008 edition” was found at a local coffee shop, Café Pergolesi. The fliers said “we know where you live we know where you work we will never back down until you end your abuse” and listed home addresses and telephone numbers. The FBI used video surveillance to allegedly link the flier distribution to the defendants. (July 29, 2008)

Now, to be very clear, the details in an indictment aren’t the final word in any criminal case. They never reveal too much of the prosecution’s hand. They do, however, lay the backbone of the government’s case and put the prosecution’s best foot forward.

Omitting the most controversial, potentially-illegal activity, and instead focusing on protests that involved chalking slogans and chanting, sends a very clear message of where this is all heading. This case and others like it are not about underground groups like the Animal Liberation Front, they are not about “violence,” they are not about the real potential for violence.

They are about using the “War on Terrorism” to chip away at basic First Amendment rights and criminalize dissent.

© 2009 GREEN IS THE NEW RED

NEW YORK TIMES– The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.

The government is using its expanded authority under the far-reaching law to investigate suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders, federal officials said.

Justice Department officials say they are simply using all the tools now available to them to pursue criminals- terrorists or otherwise.

But critics of the administration’s antiterrorism tactics assert that such use of the law is evidence the administration is using terrorism as a guise to pursue a broader law enforcement agenda. Justice Department officials point out that they have employed their newfound powers in many instances against suspected terrorists.

With the new law breaking down the wall between intelligence and criminal investigations, the Justice Department in February was able to bring terrorism-related charges against a Florida professor, for example, and it has used its expanded surveillance powers to move against several suspected terrorist cells.

But a new Justice Department report, given to members of Congress this month, also cites more than a dozen cases that are not directly related to terrorism in which federal authorities have used their expanded power to investigate individuals, initiate wiretaps and other surveillance, or seize millions in tainted assets.

For instance, the ability to secure nationwide warrants to obtain e-mail and electronic evidence ”has proved invaluable in several sensitive nonterrorism investigations,” including the tracking of an unidentified fugitive and an investigation into a computer hacker who stole a company’s trade secrets, the report said.

Justice Department officials said the cases cited in the report represent only a small sampling of the many hundreds of nonterrorism cases pursued under the law.

The authorities have also used toughened penalties under the law to press charges against a lovesick 20-year-old woman from Orange County, Calif., who planted threatening notes aboard a Hawaii-bound cruise ship she was traveling on with her family in May. The woman, who said she made the threats to try to return home to her boyfriend, was sentenced this week to two years in federal prison because of a provision in the Patriot Act on the threat of terrorism against mass transportation systems.

And officials said they had used their expanded authority to track private Internet communications in order to investigate a major drug distributor, a four-time killer, an identity thief and a fugitive who fled on the eve of trial by using a fake passport.

In one case, an e-mail provider disclosed information that allowed federal authorities to apprehend two suspects who had threatened to kill executives at a foreign corporation unless they were paid a hefty ransom, officials said. Previously, they said, gray areas in the law made it difficult to get such global Internet and computer data.

The law passed by Congress just five weeks after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has proved a particularly powerful tool in pursuing financial crimes.

Officials with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have seen a sharp spike in investigations as a result of their expanded powers, officials said in interviews.

A senior official said investigators in the last two years had seized about $35 million at American borders in undeclared cash, checks and currency being smuggled out of the country. That was a significant increase over the past few years, the official said. While the authorities say they suspect that large amounts of the smuggled cash may have been intended to finance Middle Eastern terrorists, much of it involved drug smuggling, corporate fraud and other crimes not directly related to terrorism.

The terrorism law allows the authorities to investigate cash smuggling cases more aggressively and to seek stiffer penalties by elevating them from what had been mere reporting failures.

November 2007

PROJECT CENSORED– In a startling affront to American freedoms of expression, privacy, and association, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955) passed the House on , by a vote of 404–6. The Senate is currently considering a companion bill, S. 1959. The act would establish a national commission and a university-based “Center for Excellence” to study and propose legislation to prevent the threat of “radicalization” of Americans.

Author of the bill Jane Harman (D-CA) explains, “We’re studying the phenomenon of people with radical beliefs who turn into people who would use violence.”

The act states, “While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States. Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States.”

The act’s purpose goes beyond academic inquiry, however. In a press release Harman stated, “The National Commission will propose to both Congress and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent.”

The act states, “Preventing the potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily accomplished solely through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and can benefit from the incorporation of State and local efforts.”

Harman, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment, also has close ties to the RAND Corporation, a right-wing think tank, which appears to have influenced the bill. Two weeks prior to the introduction of H.R. 1955 on April 19, 2007, Brian Michael Jenkins of RAND delivered testimony on “Jihadist Radicalization and Recruitment” to Harman’s subcommittee.

In June, Jenkins was back before Harman’s subcommittee discussing the role of the National Commission. “Homegrown terrorism is the principal threat that we face as a country and it will likely be the principal threat that we face for decades. . . . Unless a way of intervening in the radicalization process can be found, we are condemned to stepping on cockroaches one at a time,” he stated. In a 2005 RAND report titled “Trends in Terrorism,” one chapter is devoted entirely to a non-Muslim “homegrown terrorist” threat—the threat of anti-globalists.

In an effort to prevent people from becoming “prone to” radicalization, this preemptive measure of policing thought specifically identifies the Internet as a tool of radicalization: “The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens,” says Harman.

The legislation authorizes a ten-member National Commission (the Senate bill calls for twelve members) appointed by the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, congressional leaders, and the chairpersons of both the Senate and House committees on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

After convening, the Commission is to submit reports at six-month intervals for eighteen months to the President and Congress, stating its findings, conclusions, and legislative recommendations “for immediate and long-term countermeasures . . . to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism and ideologically based violence.”

This commission has disturbing similarities to the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which was investigated by a US Senate select committee on intelligence activities (the Church Committee), in 1975. The Church Committee found that from 1956 to 1971, “The Bureau [FBI] conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

H.R. 1955 would give the DHS secretary power to establish a “Center of Excellence,” a university-based research program to “bring together leading experts and researchers to conduct multidisciplinary research and education for homeland security solutions.” the DHS currently has eight Centers at academic institutions across the country, strengthening what many see as a growing military-security-academic complex. Harman, in an October 23 press release, stated that the Center would “examine the social, criminal, political, psychological and economic roots of domestic terrorism.”

Hope Marston, regional organizer with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) warns against the danger of vaguely defined terms in this legislation, which, open to very broad interpretation, mirrors a historical pattern of sweeping government repression.

Jules Boykoff, author and professor of politics and government at Pacific University, is alarmed by the circular definition, for example, of “ideologically based violence,” which itself fails to define the terms “threat,” “force,” or “violence.” Boykoff commented that the bill used the terms “extremism” and “radicalism” interchangeably. “The word ‘radical’ shares the etymological root to the word ‘radish,’ which means to get to the root of the problem,” he says. “So, if the government wants to get at the actual root of terrorism, then let’s really talk about it. We need to talk about the economic roots, the vast inequalities in wealth between the rich and poor.”

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union, says of the Act, “Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be ‘extreme.’”

UPDATE BY JESSICA LEE

While civil liberties and religious freedom groups credit independent journalists and grassroots activists with helping to stall the passage of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, some members of Congress continue to push for Internet censorship and racial profiling as necessary to prevent “homegrown terrorism.”

The House of Representatives approved the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act in October 2007 by a 404-6 vote, but widespread opposition forced the Senate to shelve the bill. As of June 1, 2008, no vote was scheduled or expected during the current legislative year.

I became aware of the Act in early November 2007. Other than an article by Lindsay Beyerstein, “Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act,” (In These Times, November 1, 2007), no major media outlet had reported on the bill despite the dangers it posed to civil liberties, privacy, and Muslim and Arab communities in the United States. Nonetheless, I did discover active online discussion about the bill, mainly on blogs and videos posted to YouTube.com.

Isabel Macdonald, communications director for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, commented: “Perhaps due to the symbiotic relationship between corporate media outlets and government officials, the corporate media has shown a consistent aversion to offering critical coverage of the erosion of civil liberties. The independent media—and specifically The Indypendent—played a critical role in breaking the story of this bill, and, through coverage in blogs and on Democracy Now!, keeping the story alive.”

Within a month of The Indypendent article, rallies were held from Maine to California, and numerous civil liberties, religious freedom and American Muslim and Arab organizations issued action alerts encouraging people to contact their congressional representatives in an effort to stop the US Senate companion bill, S. 1959.

According to civil rights lobbyists, the public outcry forced Senate committee chair Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) to put the bill on the backburner. However, Lieberman and committee ranking minority leader Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) continue to claim “homegrown terrorism” by Islamists is a grave menace, and on May 8, 2008, issued their own report, without public backing by other committee members, that warned “the threat of homegrown terrorism is on the rise, aided by the Internet’s capacity to spread the core recruitment and training message of violent Islamist terrorist groups.”

In response, more than thirty civil liberties and religious freedom groups sent a letter to the Senate committee on May 30, expressing concern that the report could impinge on freedom of expression, unjustly target Muslims, and define the Internet as a “weapon.”

A group of organizations representing American Muslim and Arab communities also submitted a letter in response to the report and the Senate hearings charging that they have been largely excluded from the legislative process and that the report relies on a discredited 2007 New York Police Department report that attempts to explain the process of “violent radicalization” of Muslim individuals.

Shortly after issuing the report, Lieberman demanded that Google remove YouTube videos produced by “terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.” Google responded May 19 by removing eighty videos that the company agreed violated YouTube’s Community Guidelines, which depict gratuitous violence, advocated violence or used hate speech. Google, however, refused to meet all of Lieberman’s demands, which included censoring all videos mentioning or featuring groups listed by the US State Department as foreign terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaeda.

“Senator Lieberman stated his belief . . . that all videos mentioning or featuring these groups should be removed from YouTube—even legal nonviolent or non-hate speech videos,” Google said. “YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view.”

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at the Boston-based Political Research Associates, said that he believes Lieberman’s actions are a “political dirty trick” with the motive of trying to push the presidential candidates towards accepting a more aggressive stance in the Middle East.

Organizations leading the effort to oppose the legislation include Defending Dissent Foundation (http://www.defendingdissent.org), the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (http://www.bordc.org), the Center for Constitutional Rights (http://www.ccrjustice.org), the American Civil Liberties Union (http://www.aclu.org), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (http://www.cair.com).

UPDATE BY LINDSAY BEYERSTEIN

The Homegrown Terrorism bill has been bogged down in the Senate since last October. The bill sailed through the House with little public comment but subsequently encountered stiff opposition from across the political spectrum. Until recently, it appeared that civil liberties groups and Muslim civic organizations had successfully blocked the Senate version of the bill.

The bill seemed destined to die in committee—that is, until Sen. Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, signaled his eagerness to revisit the issue by releasing a new report and picking a fight with YouTube.

On May 8, Chairman Lieberman and ranking member Susan Collins (R-ME) released “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat,” a bipartisan report based on hearings before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

Even before it was released to the public, the report drew fire from a coalition of civil liberties organizations spearheaded by the ACLU. The coalition outlined its concerns about the report in a May 7 memo to committee members.

“Our concern is that this focus on the Internet could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet. Indeed, some policy makers have advocated shutting down objectionable websites,” the memo said.

Lieberman reinforced those misgivings on May 19 when he wrote to the CEO of Google (YouTube’s parent company) demanding that an unspecified number of Islamic propaganda videos be removed from the popular video-sharing site. Lieberman alleged in the letter that the clips were the work of a sophisticated Islamic propaganda network discussed in his committee’s recent report. He also claimed that these videos violated YouTube’s community guidelines.

YouTube rules expressly forbid gratuitous violence, hate speech, threats, harassment, and depictions of crimes such as bomb-making. Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to the site daily. Rather than prescreening the content, YouTube relies on users to flag material that violates community standards. Content that breaks the rules is routinely removed.

After reviewing the clips, YouTube refused to remove the bulk of the material flagged by Lieberman’s staff. A handful of clips that violated community standards were taken down, but the rest stayed up.

“Most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech content, were not removed because they do not violate our Community Guidelines,” read a statement issued by the YouTube Team. The statement went on to affirm the right of YouTube users to express unpopular points of view.

Lieberman was not satisfied with the response.

“No matter what their content, videos produced by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda that are committed to attacking America and killing Americans should not be tolerated. Google must reconsider its policy,” Lieberman stated on May 20.

No vote has been scheduled, but Lieberman’s fight with Google has pushed the Homegrown Terrorism bill back into the spotlight. After months of silence, the established media are finally beginning to ask questions about the government’s increasing enthusiasm for monitoring “radical” speech online. The New York Times sharply criticized Lieberman and the bill in a May 25 editorial. The op/ed called Lieberman a “would-be censor” whose efforts to restrict constitutionally protected speech on YouTube “contradict fundamental American values.”

Readers can make their views on the Homegrown Terrorism bill known by contacting their senators and the members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. The two frontrunners in the 2008 presidential race are senators. Now is a good time for voters to pressure the presidential candidates to take clear positions on the Homegrown Terrorism bill. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) sits on the Homeland Security Committee, but did not contribute to the report. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is closely allied with Sen. Lieberman, especially on issues pertaining to terrorism.

UPDATE BY MATT RENNER

A controversial plan to study and profile domestic terrorism was scrapped after popular push back, but the spirit of the legislation lives on in Senator Joe Lieberman’s office.

H.R. 1955, “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007” passed the House in October 2007 with almost unanimous support. The bill immediately came under fire from civil liberties watchdogs because of what many saw as a deliberate targeting of Muslims and Arabs and the possible chilling effect it might have on free speech.

The original bill intended to set up a government commission to investigate the supposed threat of domestically produced terrorists and the ideologies that underpin their radicalization. The ten-member commission was to be empowered to “hold hearings and sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers advisable to carry out its duties.” The bill also singled out the Internet as a vehicle for terrorists to spread their ideology with the intention of recruiting and training new terrorists.

After significant public pressure, the bill stalled in the Senate. However, Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT), the current chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, embraced the thrust of the legislation and has been working to push forward some of the goals of the original bill, including an attempt to weed out terrorist propaganda from the Internet.

On May 19, Lieberman sent a letter to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt demanding that YouTube’s parent company Google “immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube.”

“By taking action to curtail the use of YouTube to disseminate the goals and methods of those who wish to kill innocent civilians, Google will make a singularly important contribution to this important national effort,” Lieberman wrote.

Google fired back, refusing to take off material that did not violate the site’s code of conduct. “While we respect and understand his views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” Schmidt said in response, adding, “we believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate, we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds.”

Google removed some of the videos that violated their rules against posting violence and hate speech, but made a point to write, “most of the videos, which did not contain violent or hate speech content, were not removed because they do not violate our Community Guidelines.”

According to civil liberties activists, Chairman Lieberman has been spearheading an effort to censor speech on the Internet. His committee recently released a report titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat,” a report detailing the use of web sites and Internet tools to spread pro-terrorism propaganda.

The report repeatedly blames websites and chat rooms for “radicalization,” calling the websites “portals” through which potential terrorists can “participate in the global violent Islamist movement and recruit others to their cause.” As civil liberties groups have pointed out, the report focuses solely on terrorism seen as associated with Islam.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington, DC, legislative office, said that Lieberman “is trying to decide what he thinks should go on the Internet,” which, she said, “reeks of an interest in censoring all sorts of different dialogs.”

“If someone criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and favors Hamas, should that be censored?” Fredrickson asked.

Links:

“Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat”: http://hsgac.senate .gov/public/_files/ IslamistReport.pdf.

New York Times editorial on Lieberman’s attempt to censor YouTube: http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/05/25/opinion/25sun1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin.

Lieberman’s response to the New York Times editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/opinion/ 25sun1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion &oref=slogin.

COMMENT BY MICKEY S. HUFF, author of Chapter 14

The coverage of this story by these journalists is highly commendable. However, another element that appears to have been censored regarding the possible application of H.R. 1955 and S. 1959, even in the independent and progressive press coverage, is the specificity of possible domestic activists mentioned in the hearings Representative Jane Harman held in Washington, DC. While the aforementioned authors allude to animal rights activists and anti-globalists as potential targets of these bills, none mention 9/11 Truth activists and scholars even though they were mentioned by name in the Harman hearings at the Capitol. (For possible explanations, see Censored 2008, Chapter 7, for more on the propaganda model inside left progressive press.)

Among the claims of those testifying to Congress about the “need” for H.R. 1955 was that anyone who questions the official government line on 9/11 is akin to a terrorist or a material supporter to terrorism. One speaker, Mark Weitzman of the Wiesenthal Center (ironically founded by Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal to educate the public about war crimes), claimed that architects, engineers, and scientists that question the official 9/11 narrative are the same as alleged violent jihadist groups. This was further implied in a Powerpoint presentation in which Weitzman showed architect Richard Gage’s website, http://AE911Truth.org, alongside alleged violent jihadist sites. Gage has criticized the 9/11 official story about the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC7. On the basis of his professional expertise of steel frame buildings, Gage contends the buildings could not have been brought down the way the government has explained and offers alternative theories supported by evidence. Regardless of whether one believes the counterarguments about the events of 9/11, free speech and questioning of the government on such crucial issues should not be criminalized.

This is the latest round of official conflation between terrorists and activists in the US. Is there a proven link between these aforementioned groups? No, there is not. But that didn’t stop people from simply saying so on the public record while providing no evidence. And Jane Harman, Democratic cosponsor of the bill, didn’t ask for any, nor did she invite rebuttal. This is reminiscent of McCarthyism of the Red Scare period of the 1950s.

I originally wrote about this issue here:

http://mythinfo.blogspot.com/2007/11/state-terror-hr-1955-weapon-of-mass.html

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2007112285903892.

For C-Span video footage of the hearing (just after thirty-nine minutes), see:
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product _video_info&products_id=202123-1.

© PROJECT CENSORED 2007