Tag: John Ashcroft

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Arresting George W. Bush

I know what you’re thinking: you can’t arrest the President of the United States!

Here’s my idea. I want to set up a camp on Manitoulin Island (that’s up there north of Tobermory, if you didn’t know where it was) with a bunch of cages and holding cells and guard dogs. Then I’ll get a couple of friends and go down to the White House and arrest George Bush and Tom Delay and John Ashcroft and Condoleeza Rice, and take them there and lock them all up.

If the Secret Service tries to stop us, we’ll inform them that George Bush is a threat to peace and good order and commerce and must be locked up.

If they ask what proof we have, we’ll tell them that we don’t need any proof. Do they really expect us to wait around for Bush to commit a nefarious act before locking him up? Not in today’s post-0303 world. I mean, March, 2003, the date of the invasion of Iraq.

If he wants to call his lawyer, we’ll inform him that, sorry, he doesn’t get access to a lawyer until we’re good and ready to let him have access to a lawyer.

If he says, what about my rights, we’ll laugh our heads off. Your what? Hoo haw! It’s all right for those pansy liberals like Ted Kennedy and John McCain to talk about rights– but we’re in a war. This is a war on our nation and our values. It is a war on common sense and good taste and my personal happiness. If I sit around and wait for pansy legislatures to provide me with the correct legal frame-work and documentation in order to proceed with arresting the most dangerous man in world…

And after they admit that we are fully vetted legally, and we get them up to Manitoulin Island and into the compound…. we bring out the water-boarding equipment and cattle prods and electrodes.

Honestly– I just want to hear what they have to say.

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Another Deadly Fearsome Mighty Horrifying Scary Frightening Enemy of America

Meet Mr. Purna Raj Bajracharya from Nepal.

Mr. Purna Raj Bajracharya is a Buddhist. We know that Buddhists are normally harmless, but not Mr. Bajracharya. Mr. Bajracharya was spotted in New York video-taping offices in which some FBI agents, under the every-watchful scrutiny of the relentless John Ashcroft, were determinedly rooting out every last vestige of terror activity in the U.S. Mr. Bajracharya claimed he was a tourist.

The other images on his video included a pizzeria.

The FBI immediately snatched up Mr. Bajracharya and locked him in a 9 foot by 6 foot cell for three months. The lights were kept on 24 hours a day. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches is the only possible explanation. Some prisoners in this detention centre in Brooklyn were stripped and beaten. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches.

And then. And then they realized that perhaps Mr. Bajracharya was a Buddhist from Nepal taking video of New York to show to his esteemed family back home.

So they put him into an orange jumpsuit, shackled his arms and legs, and hauled him off to the airport. Mr. Bajracharya begged to be allowed the dignity of wearing his own clothes. The FBI said no. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches– that’s why.

This is how we treat the innocent. Even the FBI admits that Mr. Bajracharya is innocent. It doesn’t matter. Under George Bush, the unthinkable is now not only acceptable, but required: the innocent can be locked up, abused, assaulted, and humiliated with complete impunity.

You don’t care, do you. Because you are white and middle class and you don’t have an accent. You are safe in America in 2004. Because you are not Mr. Bajracharya. Because you can sing your anthems, wave your flags, and march in your parades, with no shame for your government’s rank hypocrisy.

I am enraged at this treatment of an innocent man.  The FBI agents responsible should be fired and charged with abusing their authority and jailed  for at least 90 days in a 6 by 9 foot cell.

The FBI’s behavior is not merely outrageous.  It deserves the term “fucking outrageous” because it is.  It is emblematic of the monstrous failure of the current government to uphold the basic principles of decency and justice that make the world livable for most of us.

It’s hard to bring myself to even address the issue because it is so overwhelmingly obvious to me that you would think that any sane person would agree: if the FBI really insists on arresting people without the slightest grounds for suspicion, could they not at least treat them well until they have completed their investigations?

This treatment of Mr. Bajracharya is police brutality. It is abuse. It is oppression. It is the act of a police state. It is the ultimate expression of George W. Bush’s vision of Amerika. And I have yet to hear or read of a single Christian Bush supporter who feels that it is wrong or immoral to do it.

Added June 2006: where is the outcry from those who claim that the “Christian” Mr. Bush has “restored” ethics and integrity to government? How dare you claim you vote for Bush because he stands for Christian values, and then turn your back on Mr. Bajracharya?

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John Ashcroft Captures an Actual Terrorist!

John Ashcroft, Attorney-General of the United States, has announced many, many arrests of people he claims are terrorists. If you check into these stories, you will find that most–if not all– of these arrests are actually of individuals who are guilty of nothing more than being suspiciously Arabic.

But lo and behold, the top law enforcement officer of the United States of America has finally arrested a bona fide terrorist, a man with actual bombs, guns, remote-controlled detonators, and a load of cyanide. Yes, John Ashcroft has finally caught himself an actual living, breathing, sweating terrorist.

And you aren’t going to hear much about it.

Why? Because the terrorist’s name is William Krar. Not Arabic at all. And he is no associate of Osama Bin Laden. Mr. Krar is a good old-fashioned all-American White Supremacist. Where’s the fun in that?

Doesn’t fit the official White House narrative does it? Doesn’t play well to the heart-land, does it, which sometimes holds to it’s bruised bosom the heartless souls of patriots like Timothy McVeigh, who may have gone a little astray, but, after all, grasped the essential dialectic of our time. No no no– America’s enemies are out there, they are not us, they don’t look like us.

There are persistent rumors that a “olive-skinned” man was seen in the Ryder Truck with McVeigh the day of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Now Krar and his cyanide.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times reports that an FBI spokesman asked an industry group for help dealing with the top domestic threats today: eco-terrorists and animal rights activists.

Stirring, isn’t it? Osama Bin Laden and Heather Graham at the same fund-raiser.

It’s spin. You don’t hear about Krar because the Bush administration needs you to believe that we need to spend $200 billion demolishing a two-bit dictator in Iraq to feel safe. The Bush Administration doesn’t want you to believe that you might end up being safer if a well-managed domestic police force was doing it’s job properly instead of chasing illegal immigrants or pot-smokers.

Krugman also reports that John Ashcroft is using every government data base available to search for terrorists. Every data base except one: the one that contains information about people who applied for gun permits.

To use that information, Ashcroft believes, would be to violate Americans’ civil rights.

If you’ve stopped laughing by now at the idea that John Ashcroft cares about anybody’s civil rights, read on: it is utterly amazing that the press has little or no curiosity about these stories. It’s waiting for signs that Bush will lose the election, before lining up their potshots.

Then we will hear how they had always known that Ashcroft was just a little over the top.

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Homeland Insecurity: the Lashkar-i-Taiba

The Lashkar-i-Taiba is a militant Islamic group that has been fighting the occupation of the Kashmir by India.

I don’t really care about the Kashmir at this point. It’s another one of those names like Beirut and Northern Ireland and Jerusalem that evoke, for me, the long tired endurance of vindictive human folly.

The point is that until 9/11, the United States didn’t much care about them either. It was not illegal to belong to the Lashkar-i-Taiba, just as it is not illegal to belong to the Labour Party in Britain, the Green Party in Germany, or to be a personal friend of General Augusto Pinochet.

Just as it is not illegal to own guns, in the enlightened United States of America. The Republicans, in fact, just tried (and failed) to make it illegal to believe that gun companies should ever be liable for anything at all.

But the ever-vigilant Department of Homeland Insecurity found out about 11 Moslem men who like to play paintball. They were arrested. They were questioned. Astonishingly, they turned out to be Moslem! Astonishingly, they had belonged to Lashkar-i-Taiba. They had belonged to Lashkar-i-Taiba before the government decided it was illegal to belong to Lashkar-i-Taiba.

You would think that someone with common sense would say, it wasn’t illegal to belong to Lashkar-i-Taiba at the time they belong to it. Let’s give them a warning about the terrorist nature of this organization and let them go.

Not in your lifetime! And miss the opportunity to let the public know how you, the mighty Bush Administration, are stopping terrorists everywhere, dead in their tracks?

Somehow, one of them was “persuaded” to testify that the 11 were, in fact, thinking about something like something that might be construed as “anti-American” or something, and therefore should go to prison for the rest of their lives. The pattern for these trials is always the same: the only witness gets a much lighter sentence in exchange for his testimony against the others.

Would you tell the truth if you had a choice between being charged with very serious offenses that could result in sentences of up to 100 years, or being charged with less serious crimes that could result in just a few years in a jail? Tough choice.

To be specific, Yong Ki Kwon, 28, and Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, testified that they had wanted to fight for the Taliban against the U.S. Since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, where the Taliban was the government, that’s somewhat like taking a couple of German boys from New Jersey in 1944, and putting them on trial for thinking about going home to Germany to join the army. And then sending them to prison for 100 years. Meanwhile, the soldiers that actually did fight against Americans, in Germany, are all released within months of the end of hostilities.

Once again, we have “terrorists” convicted of being terrorists, without the government actually proving– or even claiming to want to prove– that they actually committed any crimes, other than the thought-crimes of being Islamic and foreign.

If Mr. Ashcroft is doing such a fabulous job of rooting out terrorists, how come he has yet to catch a single person actually planning a terrorist attack? Once again, he has nabbed a bunch of Moslems, labeled them “terrorists”, and locked them up, without being able to show that they were actually planning to commit a single crime. In fact, the government admits that it has no evidence that the men were planning any attacks at all in the U.S. Yet, they may well go to prison for 20 – 40 years?!

This is an outrage.

The Men:

Ahmed Abu-Ali (in Saudi Arabia, being sought).
Randall Todd Royer,
Donald Thomas Surratt,
Masoud Ahmad Khan,
Caliph Basha Ibn
Hammad Abdur-Raheem
Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hamdi Mohammed Aatique
Khwaja Mahmood Hasan
Sabri Benkhala

“…one of them, Masoud Ahmad Khan, had a photograph downloaded from the Internet of the FBI headquarters building in Washington.” Along with about 10 million tourists.

You know, the more you read about this case, the more bizarre it appears. The men are charged with training in combat tactics– like about 7 million militia members in the U.S. They heard lectures on the righteousness of “violent jihad” in Kashmir. I’ve probably heard lectures more filled with violent hatred from Christians in North America for Hollywood and liberals.

It is considered sinister that these men had guns. What? Like about 50 million other Americans?

There undoubtedly are real terrorists out there. We can’t catch them. We’re not that smart. We haven’t really succeeded in infiltrating their organizations. So let’s take the people we catch– like these poor 11 schmucks from Virginia– and pin something on them. That’s the truth.

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Homeland Security Theatre

Boy you’ve got to hand it to John Ashcroft and the boys! When it comes to keeping America safe from terrorists, those Department of Justice aces are relentless pit-bulls of righteous vigilance! Already, they’ve succeeded in rounding up hoards of terrifying suspects and locking them up securely to prevent them from destroying Disneyland, Las Vegas, and elementary schools in Orland Park, Illinois!

Okay. Not “hoards” exactly. Four or five, to be more precise. But boy, are those four or five scary! If you care about civil rights in this country.

Take the case of Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan, and Farouk Ali-Haimoud. These monsters were caught red-handed with travelogues, sketches of potential terrorist targets, and, and, and…. well, they were definitely thinking of acquiring deadly weapons like guns, except that would have been quite legal, and airplane tickets, and they almost could have been thinking about trying to buy some gas masks, which surely would have been extremely suspicious!

Elmardoudi was at least “found with a cache of identification documents” (New York Times, June 2, 2003) and a lot of cash. Ah ha! Of course, he has a history of committing credit card fraud, along with the only witness against him, Youssef Hmimssa. That proves he was up to no good! Unfortunately, he was arrested and imprisoned before federal investigators could actually find any evidence of any kind of terrorist activity. But don’t tell me that any Arab with a lot of cash isn’t obviously a terrorist!

Elmardoudi is alleged to be part of a “shadowy unidentified Muslim terrorist group” (New York Times). Think about that. A “shadowy unidentified” group of TERRORISTS! I bet I made you jump out of your chair. Do you think that you could belong to a “shadowy unidentified group”? What would make someone think that you belong to a “shadowy unidentified” group? Someone who really badly wants you to belong to a “shadowy unidentified” group because they caught you, and it’s very hard to actually catch someone who really belongs to a “shadowy unidentified” group. It’s much easier to attach a group to a suspect you already have than to actually find a “shadowy unidentified” group and arrest someone in it. But that’s the kind of Homeland Security provided to us by John Ashcroft. Arrest somebody, anybody, and make the right noises and then give speeches about how America is now safer thanks to you.

How did they prove Elmardoudi was a member of this shadowy unidentifiable group? Unfortunately, once again, there wasn’t actually any evidence (that’s how shadowy this group was) so we’ll just round up the usual shadowy unidentifiable witness (only one could be rounded up on short notice) to give vague evidence about thinking that he heard them once say something vaguely terroristy. And so Youssef Hmimssa, himself facing charges of visa and immigration fraud– could there be a deal in the works here?– gives his earnest suspicions.

Now as anybody who reads the news already knows, one of the hallmarks of a false conviction (as shown with subsequent DNA testing) is the ubiquitous jailhouse informant who invariably testifies as to something he heard but didn’t happen to record. These informants never seem to provide the government with evidence about, say, the location of the murder weapon, or bloodstains, or the names of real witnesses who might corroborate their stories or have independent evidence to offer. Oh no. They invariably provide only a first-hand account of something they heard but didn’t happen to record or remember until just recently when it was convenient for them, and the prosecutors, to remember it.

It is not even concealed from the public that Judge Gerald Rosen, who is hearing Hmimssa’s case, can lighten his sentence depending on how “forthcoming” he is about the terrorists suspects. Now come on– do you really think the Judge would consider it “forthcoming” of Hmimssa if he were to assert that they were just a bunch of Arabs trying to make a better life for themselves in America? Come on! Seriously?

Ah ha! But then there was the tape! Audio tapes found in their apartment, of someone Arabic that sounded vaguely Salafist and used words like terrorism and war and America! Except that the tape was actually critical of terrorism and Islamic extremism. But why would they have a tape that even mentioned extremism if they weren’t planning to blow something up!

Ah ha! But they had airport badges! Eureka– they must have been planning to hijack airplanes and crash them into Disneyland and Las Vegas! Except that, of course, two of the men worked at a catering company, SkyChef DTW, at the airport. Those insidious terrorists! How sneaky– actually taking jobs as dishwashers at the very location terrorists would be least welcome!

These unfortunate young men just happen to be Arabic and just happen to have been indulging in some shady immigration practices, and just happen to have been caught in a highly politicized witch hunt. They were held without bail for over a year.

The government has to show the public that they are actually doing something about terrorism, and seeing as they haven’t been able to even catch Saddam Hussein, and haven’t even come close to showing that he had anything to do with 9/11 in the first place, and still haven’t caught Osama Bin Laden…. well, these poor boys will have to do for now.

The story is that if the judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial actually has the audacity to require the prosecution to provide evidence, the Department of Justice will transfer the case to a military tribunal. (The government wants to deny the defense access to the only witness against Moussaoui on the basis– of course– of “national security”. The question is, what individual in the United States could be safe from prosecution and conviction under those terms? Not a soul. For a judge to allow this travesty to proceed would be more than a mockery of justice– it would be utterly repugnant to the idea of constitutional government.)

Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 37, and Karim Koubriti, 24, both Moroccans, were convicted of providing material support or resources to terrorists and conspiracy to engage in fraud and misuse of visas, permits and other documents.” NY Times, June 2, 2003.

As you can see from the actual charges, there is no “smoking gun”. In other words, prosecutors did not have evidence that any of the men actually engaged in any “terrorist” activity.

Just a lot of smoke and mirrors, and national public hysteria.