This is not good. It's the
intrusion of some kind of weird right wing orthodoxy into the rights and common
practices of citizens. When I next visit the US, will I see all houses
painted the same color, lawns trimmed to exactly the specified height, and all
men in brushcuts?
However, Canada may not be far
behind. A seventy-five year old woman was sentenced to prison recently
because she refused to sign a piece of paper forbidding her from protesting
logging operations. That was in British Columbia, which could as easily be
part of the US as of Canada.
Ed Weick
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 5:28
PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Cloak and
Dagger
What did you expect?
Logic? This is not a logical man but a fanatic as is
GWB. To treat them as less is delusional.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 3:45
PM
Subject: [Futurework] Cloak and
Dagger
Assault
on Free Speech? Selective judicial zealotry? Ulterior political motives?
Third World dictatorship? No, Ashcroft at war. Holy McCarthyism, Batman! -
KWC
Students,
Nuns and Sailor-Mongers, Beware
Atty. Gen.
Ashcroft is pulling out all the stops to prosecute
protesters.
By
Jonathan Turley, October 17, 2003 in the Los Angeles Times
Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George
Washington University.
It has lain dormant in the darkest
recesses of American law for 125 years, but this month Atty. Gen. John
Ashcroft introduced critics of the administration to his latest weapon in
law enforcement.
In a Miami federal court, the attorney general
charged the environmental group Greenpeace under an obscure 1872 law originally intended to end the
practice of "sailor-mongering," or the luring of sailors with liquor and
prostitutes from their ships. Ashcroft plucked the law from obscurity to
punish Greenpeace for boarding a vessel near port in Miami.
Not only
is the law being used to prosecute one of the administration's most vocal
critics in an unprecedented attack on the 1st Amendment, but it appears to
be part of a broader campaign by Ashcroft to protect the nation against free
speech, a campaign that has converted environmentalists into
"sailor-mongers" and nuns into terrorists.
The case against
Greenpeace started with a protest in April 2002. The activist group was
leading an international effort to stop the illegal importing of mahogany.
It believed that a ship, the APL Jade, was engaging in this illegal trade
and decided to conduct one of its signature demonstrations to protest the
Bush administration's failure to stop the imports. In clearly marked boats,
Greenpeace followed the ship. Two of its members boarded the vessel about
eight miles outside the Miami port, carrying a banner that read "President
Bush, Stop Illegal Logging."
Such
protests are common, and the
two activists wore Greenpeace jackets, identified themselves as Greenpeace
members and allowed themselves to be arrested. They ultimately pleaded
guilty to a misdemeanor and were released. The wood was unloaded and
everyone seemed satisfied.
Everyone, that is, except Ashcroft.
Fifteen months after the incident, the Justice Department filed an
indictment in Miami against the entire Greenpeace organization under the
1872 law, a law that
appears to have been used only twice.
A New York
court in 1872
described
the law as both "inartistic and obscure." An Oregon court in
1890
described
the purpose of the law as preventing "the evil" of "sailor-mongers [who] get
on board vessels and by the help of intoxicants, and the use of other means,
often savoring of violence, get the crews ashore and leave the vessel
without help to manage or care for her."
Of course, there did not
appear to be many sailors on the APL Jade being lured out to join
Greenpeace. But proceeding against two protesters on trivial misdemeanor
charges wasn't enough for the Justice Department. So it decided to treat
Greenpeace activists not as protesters but as sailor-mongers.
Greenpeace now could lose its tax-exempt status — a potential death
knell for a large public interest organization. A conviction could also
force Greenpeace to regularly report its actions to the government. Such a
prospect must secretly delight many in the administration who see the group
as an ever-present irritant. After all, it was Greenpeace that held the
first demonstration at the president's ranch after his inauguration, causing
a stir when activists unfurled a banner reading "Bush: the Toxic Texan.
Don't Mess With the Earth."
Since that time, Greenpeace has waged a
continual campaign against Bush's environmental record. Ashcroft's
jihad against
free speech, however, is not limited to environmentalists. Consider the case
of three Dominican nuns. Last year, Sister Ardeth Platte, 66, Sister Jackie
Hudson, 68, and Sister Carol Gilbert, 55, participated in a peaceful
demonstration for nuclear disarmament.
As part of the protest, the
three nuns cut through a chain-link fence around a Minuteman III missile
silo. There is only a light fence because the missile is protected by a
110-ton concrete cap that is designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. The
nuns proceeded to paint crosses on the cap and symbolically hit it with
hammers. They then knelt, prayed, sang religious songs and waited for
arrest. The most the government could allege in terms of damage was
$3,000.
However, the Ashcroft Justice Department wanted more than
compensation and a common misdemeanor. It charged the nuns with
obstructing
national defense, which
subjected each to a potential 30-year prison term. When the government
pushed the court to impose sentences of as much as eight years, the judge
refused. However, the judge found, as alleged by the government, that the
three nuns had put military personnel "in harm's way." Accordingly, he
imposed on them sentences ranging from 2 1/2 years to 3 1/2
years.
The administration has pursued a similar zero-tolerance policy
in other cases. It has been accused of using unconstitutional
"trap-and-arrest" tactics to
suppress protests in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of journalists,
bystanders and student protesters were arrested en masse without a warning
or an opportunity to disperse. They were then left hog-tied in holding areas
for as long as 20 hours, with their hands bound to their ankles.
The
Greenpeace case is particularly chilling because of the extraordinary effort
to find a law that could be used to pursue the organization. The 1872 law is
a legal relic that must have required much archeological digging through law
books to find.
It is also notable that other organizations have not
faced such attacks. For example, in this same judicial district in Florida,
the Cuban
American group Democracy Movement organized
a protest in which members sailed into a government-designated security
zone. Although the members were charged, the organization was not.
Similarly, other groups viewed favorably by the administration — such as
anti-abortion groups — have not been subject to criminal indictments of
their organizations for such protests.
The extraordinary effort made
to find and use this obscure law strongly
suggests a campaign of selective prosecution — the
greatest scourge of the 1st Amendment.
Greenpeace was engaged in a
classic protest used by countless organizations, from those of the civil
rights movement to anti-abortion groups. It is a way for citizens to express
their opposition by literally standing in the path of the government. None
of these organizations contest the right of the government to punish them
for trespass or even criminal misdemeanors. Indeed, they view such
punishment as a badge of honor.
However, Ashcroft is now seeking
symbols of his own: The image of a major environmentalist organization
placed on probation or nuns being sent to jail is clearly meant to send a
chilling message from the man who once accused his critics of aiding and
abetting terrorists. Unless
deterred by Congress or the courts, Ashcroft will continue his campaign to
protect Americans from the ravages of free speech. If he succeeds, it will
not be sailors but free speech that will be shanghaied in
Miami.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-turley17oct17,1,7018434.story
also at
Common Dreams @ http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1017-06.htm
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