One of the most important consequences of the events of September 11^th 2001 was the loss of numerous civil rights and liberties, and not only in the United States. Western countries, considered the guardians of democracy and human rights, introduced laws that significantly diminished the status of their citizens with respect to the nation and its security forces. Freedom of speech has also suffered.

Jose Padilla is not quite an angel. Before converting to Islam and taking the name Abdullah Al-Mufajir this 31-year old American was for a long time part of Chicago’s milieu. American authorities suspect him of conspiring with the highest elements of Al Qaeda in order to organise a terrorist attack using a radioactive ‘dirty’ bomb.

Padilla was apprehended on May 8^th 2002 at the O’Hara Airport in Chicago. The Department of Justice was under pressure to either charge him or release him. However, they went for a third option, namely they transferred the prisoner to a military base in South Carolina where he is being held as an ‘enemy warrior’.

WAR

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that detaining Padilla is illegal. The case is being tried in court. According to Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, the court’s decision will set a precedent in the United States. He believes that there is good reason to fear that any citizen could all of the sudden be labelled an ‘enemy warrior’ and isolated. This is an extremely dangerous shift in the balance between freedom and security.

Cases such as those of Padilla or Yasser Hamadi, who was apprehended in Afghanistan in 2001 and also detained in a military base, are widely discussed because they concern American citizens. Meanwhile, many foreigners have felt the ‘collateral damage’ of the war against terror, among them citizens of several dozen countries, including minors. The prisoners in Guantanamo Bay live in dismal conditions. They are completely isolated – only International Red Cross is allowed any contact with them. They are in the legal twilight zone, neither treated as criminal offenders, nor as prisoners of war. The Geneva Convention states that some independent organisation shall decide which warriors are eligible for POW status. The case of detainees in Guantanamo Bay has not been subject to any such arbitration. Anne Ste-Marie of Amnesty International is indignant about the way the warriors have immediately been tagged ‘terrorists’. Amnesty believes that the American government is in clear violation of the Geneva Convention, and it demands either that the Guantanamo Bay detainees be tried or that they be released. According to the Convention prisoners of war should be set free once the conflict has come to an end. Yet countless Taliban warriors remain in their little cells despite the fact the war with the Taliban regime has long been over. The problem is that they are prisoners of another war – the war waged against international terrorism. In this conflict the enemy is invisible, and thus the war may go on forever. American authorities are abusing language by broadening the meaning of words in order to justify the cages in Guantanamo Bay.

The prisoners’ fate would probably be no brighter if their cases was to be heard in court. The Bush administration set up ‘military commissions’ which are to decide upon the fate of terrorists independently of the regular legal system. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch describe these as the first step to the abuse of power. The commissions’ verdicts are not subject to appeal to any other independent tribunal. Even though they have not yet been tested, according to the defenders of civil liberties they constitute a major threat.

PATRIOTISM

On September 12^th 2001 US Attorney General John Ashcroft proclaimed that the US will use all means available to destroy the terrorist threat. The man who declared Jesus Christ king over America, who ordered that naked breasts be covered on classical statues symbolising Justice, has a firm morality and keeps his promises. In the post-September 11^th confusion the Bush administration first passed the so-called Patriotic Act which limited courts’ jurisdiction while increasing the power of the police. Then it gave itself the right to decide who is an ‘enemy warrior’ and to detain prisoners without charging them or even allowing them to consult an attorney.

The present law permits that conversations between attorneys’ and their clients can be listened to. The Patriotic Act provides security forces with the right to consult medical records, bank accounts, lists of phone calls made or even library cards of anyone suspected of anti-US activity. The police can search anybody’s house if it proclaims that this may help with an antiterrorist investigation. The suspect may well suddenly disappear, for the Act permits secret arrests. The number of such ‘secret’ prisoners is currently estimated at approximately one thousand. The FBI can control religious or political gatherings at will. This shameful practice was dropped in the seventies when it turned out that the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, had Martin Luther King and other political activists tapped. Some compare the current state of affairs to the era of McCarthyism, i.e. the American version of the Stalinist opinion control. Despite all these measures and the fact that a year has already passed since the anthrax attacks, there has not been a single arrest related thereto.

US border control has been invigorated. All Arabs are questioned, records made and fingerprints taken. This policy excites numerous protests. International organisations labelled it as ‘racist’, ‘stupid and counterproductive’ as any other form of discrimination.

The United States is sending a very threatening signal. They are acting as if they think they have the right to abuse the law in just cause. This is identical to the terrorist mentality.

The Patriotic Act allows the authorities to know everything about any citizen’s private life, while much of their own activity is strictly confidential. This tendency is slowly spreading across the western world. George Bush is creating a new super-department: Homeland Security. Section 204 of its regulations limits access to all information that is non-confidential but delicate, i.e. that which can in some way be useful to the terrorists. The text is worded in such a way that it allows for practically any infringement on the freedom of speech. Mark Toscott, director of Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy, wrote in Washington Post that such regulations can exclude from public debate any information that may cause problems for the Bush administration, since only they have the right to decide which information can be useful to the terrorists.

PENTAGON’S EYE

In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, allocated 200 million dollars for the development of a new data gathering project – the Information Awareness Office (IAO). Its task is to create a computer program with a global range that would make possible the observation of individual human conduct, detection of suspect behaviour, its analysis and ultimately, identification of potential terrorists. The program is to be implemented world-wide and IAO is to become the intelligence super-agency.

The Office’s emblem is dollar motif, a globe with all continents but America marked and the credo “Sciencia est Potentia”, meaning “Knowledge is Power”. The program being developed by the IAO aims to produce Total Information Awareness (TIA), i.e. a global electronic control system. Pentagon wishes to gather – by means legal or otherwise – all available databases, be they public or private, American or foreign. These shall be supplemented by data provided by a global satellite wire-tap system, the ECHELON, namely radio and telephone conversations, emails, etc. Project’s other goals include the creation of a more efficient system for the gathering of information from building and street cameras, and rapid identification of recorded subjects. All this is to be ready in five years’ time.

The head of IAO is admiral John Poindexter. In the eighties he was at the helm of the “Irangate” affair. He went against a Congress decision and organised a huge scale clandestine transport of weapons for pro-American ‘contras’ in Nicaragua. The profits made went to supplying Iran with arms, despite the fact that the middle-eastern country was at the time an enemy of the United States and subject to a strict embargo. Israel acted as intermediary. The contras’ payment for the received weapons consisted in enormous amounts of cocaine. In 1990, the man now in charge of the IAO was convicted of conspiracy and destroying of evidence. The Costa-Rican government charged him with the masterminding of a huge drug traffic operation. Human rights organisations believe that the Total Information Awareness project may lead to a state where the notion of ‘private life’ will become meaningless.

VIDEO CAMERA PATHOLOGY

In countries such as Singapore, Israel or Great Britain the increase in observed area may lead to a state where every last bit of asphalt will be under constant coverage. In Great Britain up to half a billion pounds is spent annually on such ventures, even though the network already numbers some 1.5 million cameras. Beginning with July 2000 security forces, police, treasury or customs officers have had the right to hack into private computers without a warrant or the owner’s knowledge. They may intercept cell phone calls, examine web sites visited by the user, read his emails, demand SMS content from GSM operators. According to Simon Davis, chairman of “Privacy International”, an organisation for the defence of civil rights, in Orwell’s homeland those rights have hit rock-bottom.

According to the findings of a report by Reporters Sans Frontieres, an international journalist organisation, after September 11^th authorities of western countries imposed total control over the Internet. In the united States the police use an electronic surveillance system called ‘Carnivore’ – a computer program that can scan all data transfers between individual users and their service providers’ servers. Before September 11^th such activity had to be approved by a judge – but not anymore. The police are also attempting to combat email coding programs that ensure secure information transfer. Such programs are now being used by millions of internet users. The FBI has created the ‘Magic Lantern’ – an IT spy program spread in form of a virus and capable of reading user passwords or discovering certain coding mechanisms. In many democratic countries special task forces can intercept billions of emails. It is as if the authorities gave themselves the right to read private letters sent by traditional mail. Before September 11^th such violations of civil rights were unimaginable. Now the status of civil liberties is reminiscent of television’s Big Brother – the sole difference being that there is no way out.

ANOTHER WAR

On May 12^th 1996 Madeline Albright, then Secretary of State, was being interviewed on CBS. The show’s host, Leslie Stahl remarked: “We have heard that a half million children have died (as a result of sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright answered: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.” She believed that these sanctions prevented Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction. That was the sixth year of the embargo which is still in force today.

Americans destroyed Iraq for the sudden invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Until then Saddam Hussein was – in the eyes of the Americans – a good dictator. Despite the fact that he modelled his rule on that of Stalin and his reign was cruel, he was if fact building a modern state, at least as far as Arab countries are concerned. He invested in industry, successfully fought illiteracy, guaranteed equality for women and combated fundamentalists. Poles are quite well acquainted with another Arab country based on a similar model, namely Tunisia, where the incumbent president receives 99% of the popular vote.

Western countries supported Iraq. In the eighties, during the war with Iran, the United States supplied it with chemical and biological weapons (anthrax). When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 he was convinced that he can still count on US support, arguing that he is simply retaking an Iraqi province appropriated by British colonists. At the time America’s leader was the current president’s father, George Bush. His entire staff wondered how to convince Americans that armed intervention was in fact necessary. Pentagon used all its available influence to persuade the press. In the space of several week Hussein turned from an enlightened ruler to a murderous fanatic who commands the world’s fourth largest army (absolute gibberish). One of Pentagon’s best known hoaxes was the way it convinced the US Congress to agree to an armed response in autumn 1990. Hill and Knowlton, a public relations company working for the Department of Defence, fabricated information that Iraqi soldiers had supposedly massacred 312 Kuwaiti infants by smashing their heads against a wall. There was no filmed evidence but a Kuwaiti girl confirmed in an interview that she had witnessed the slaughter. Only half a year later it turned out that the story was cock-and-bull. The girl was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington. A similar sudden denigration of Iraq is taking place right now, though logistical preparations of a war effort have been underway since George W. Bush was sworn in.

As a result of the sanctions Iraq has literally been brought on its knees. It established decent relations with its neighbours and its army represents a mere 10% of its strength a decade ago and effectively poses no threat to anybody. Despite all this Iraq is shown to be the aggressor. Today, Pentagon’s press releases are prepared by Rendon Group, a famous public relations company which organises press conferences regarded as literary satire by organisations defending freedom of speech. For example in mid-November 2002 the White House accused Iraq of an open violation of a UN resolution, i.e. an attack against American planes patrolling Iraqi airspace. The event took place during the funeral of the victims of a recent bombing by such ‘patrol planes’. What constituted the ‘aggression’ against American bombers was the regular and routinely unsuccessful anti-aircraft fire by Iraqi artillery. The latter is so backward that it has hitherto never succeeded in bringing down any American plane, of which scores have been flying over Iraq for the last ten years, effectuating several bombing raids a month. And in all truth, no UN resolution permits such activity.

By taking over Iraq the United States will usurp world’s second largest oil reserves and calm Israel who has always regarded Iraq’s development with uneasiness. America will create a new Muslim country. Today the embargo prevents Iraq from importing pencils for its school children since pencil leads contain graphite which could be used in the production of weapons of mass destruction. But in fact, it is Israel that remains the sole nation in the Middle East which persistently breaks or rejects UN resolutions (most recently in October 2002), which definitely has weapons of mass destruction and which will not agree to any international control in this respect.

It is simple to manipulate the members of the Big Brother household – they are easily amused by games where they are arbitrarily divided into the goodies and the badies. Many of them shall pay for this game with their freedom or their life, but that’s the price of entertainment.

Tłum. na jęz. angielski - Jan Piotrowski