Borders closed, "political liberties" attacked

Amerika closed down its illegitimate borders on 
September 11th following the attack on the World 
Trade Center and Pentagon. Every single civilian 
airport in North America was shut down as part of 
the panic. People could not leave or enter 
Amerika. When the borders started allowing folks 
back in, only Amerikans were initially allowed.

One week after the attack, traffic at the San 
Ysidro border crossing between Tijuana and San 
Diego was still held to a trickle. Only eight of 
the twenty-some lanes were open, leading to 
crossing times of seven hours or more. This has 
made it impossible for many people who live in 
Mexico but with jobs in the united $tates to get 
to work. The comparison to the West Bank -- where 
many Palestinians depend on work in Israel, which 
is denied them when Israel shuts down the border -
- is immediate and concrete.

In some cities, e.g. Detroit, a state of emergency 
was called, which included a ban on protests.

Now (September 19th) the Justice Department's 
proposed anti-terrorism law would give the u.$. 
Attorney General the power to lock up and deport 
non-citizens deemed to be "terrorist suspects" 
ITAL without presenting any evidence. END Attorney 
General John Ashcroft already authorized the 
Immigration and Naturalization Service to hold 
ITAL suspected END "illegal immigrants" for two 
days without charge -- in fact, undocumented 
immigrants can already be held indefinitely under 
"extraordinary circumstances."(1)

The government has even started forcing hosts to 
shut down web sites. This week the Rage Against 
the Machine band's messageboard was shut down by 
their host Infopop after receiving calls from the 
Secret Service. The message on RATM.com stated:

"We've just been informed that Infopop, the 
company that hosts the Rage Against the Machine 
messageboard, will no longer donate their services 
to keep this message board running in light of 
repeated phone calls they have received from the 
Secret Service with regards to inflammatory posts 
on several of the forums. We are endeavoring to 
correct the situation and get your free exchange 
of information and ideas up and running as soon as 
possible.

"We thank Infopop for their generosity during the 
past year.

"Tom Morello, JK, and Schu."(2)

At the same time the Federal government is pushing 
use of Carnivore, a surveillance technology that 
intercepts all communications and records sent to 
and from the target of investigation. Within hours 
of the airplanes hitting u.s. buildings last week 
FBI agents were visiting web-based and e- mail 
companies requesting permission to place 
Carnivores on their system. Microsoft's Hotmail 
web-based e-mail service is one target of the FBI, 
according to an employee.

"Hotmail officials have been receiving calls from 
the San Francisco FBI office since mid-(Tuesday) 
morning and are cooperating with their expedited 
requests for information about a few specific 
accounts," the person said. "Most of the account 
names start with the word 'Allah' and contain 
messages in Arabic."(3)

The government is also talking about outlawing 
encryption technology which would make it even 
easier to keep tabs on anti- imperialists. With 
the heightened support for u.$. military action 
and crackdowns on anti-Amerikan activity within 
u.$. borders it is important that activists take 
the expanded surveillance seriously. And all 
activists need to take up the fight to defend the 
limited freedom that we do enjoy in this country: 
The attack on supposedly guaranteed rights to 
privacy and free speech are a direct attack on our 
ability to fight against imperialism.

[This situation is very flexible. The Bush 
administration is likely to propose further legal 
restrictions on civil liberties -- and is likely 
to simply impose some restrictions in practice, 
the law be damned. Check our website 
www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext for updates.]

The popular, knee-jerk reaction on Amerikan 
streets supports a clamp down on civil liberties. 
According to a Los Angeles Times poll, 68% of 
Amerikans approve of "allowing law enforcement to 
randomly stop people who may fit the profile of 
suspected terrorists."(4) More than half approve 
of giving the government increased authority to 
monitor phone calls.

One person told a MIM newspaper distributor, "If 
you want freedom, you have to take it to the Arabs 
that did this. When you get rid of them, we can 
have freedom." A teacher told MIM that the 
students (mostly Black) talked about finding Arabs 
and 'getting' them. So in Amerikans' minds, we can 
have civil liberties if Amerikans are the ones 
perpetrating the massacres, but not when Amerika 
needs to hunt down the internal and external 
enemies of imperialism.

Many radio commentators and those interviewed 
spoke about the need to even give more money to 
the CIA -- as if the billions spent over the last 
few decades stopped the Lockerbie bombing or the 
1998 embassy bombings, as if FBI and CIA agents 
didn't attribute alleged successes like catching a 
bomber at the Canadian border in 1999 to "dumb 
luck."

While inept at "stopping terrorism," the CIA and 
its domestic counterpart the FBI ITAL have END 
been able to murder and terrorize Amerika's 
political opponents, whether that be CIA support 
for coups in places like Indonesia and Chile which 
slaughtered millions, or the FBI's COINTELPRO 
which killed scores of Black Panther Party 
activists.

It is already a commonplace that "America is now 
at war, for the first time in the 21st century."

Get real. Amerika was already at war, murdering 
over 500,000 children in Iraq alone over the last 
decade. The blank check handed to the President to 
"wage war on terrorism" will be used to justify 
Amerika's hot war against the oppressed nations, 
waged to preserve and expand Amerikan political 
and economic hegemony. Watch the House and Senate 
resolutions proposed to increase FBI and CIA 
funding. And watch the decrease in the bourgeois 
media's coverage of documents releasing details of 
CIA involvement in deaths around the world.

Notes: 
1. Washington Post, 19 Sep 2001 
2. 
http://ultimate.infopop.com/~rageagainst/cgi-
bin/search.cgi? action=intro&default=18 
3. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46747,00
.html 
4. Los Angeles Times, 16 Sep 2001