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Our rights are in danger...in case you've been living under a rock

AFSC Joins Nationwide Series of FBI "Freedom of Information" Requests
Group Says ‘Government Has Targeted Groups and Individuals With No Connections to Terrorism for Surveillance’

PHILADELPHIA, PA -- December 6 -- The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international social justice organization, joined a nationwide series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed on Thursday. Citing evidence indicating that the FBI has targeted particular groups and individuals for surveillance — not because they have any connections to terrorism but solely because they have policy differences with government agencies — the Service Committee, including regional offices in Denver, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, joined the American Civil Liberties Union and a host of religious, environmental and civil rights organizations hoping to shed light on the scope of activities.

At a series of press conferences across the country, ACLU officials accused the FBI “Joint Terrorism Task Force” of collecting e-mails and license-plate numbers from peaceful activists. Officials also disclosed documents that show the terrorism task force is spying on people who are politically active in environmental, political and animal-rights issues.

“There is mounting evidence that groups and individuals who exercise their First Amendment rights are being unfairly targeted and scrutinized,” said Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary for the Service Committee, which along with its British counterpart, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 on behalf of Quakers worldwide.

Evidence cited includes:

News reports indicate that FBI agents in a number of states made a concerted effort to conduct surveillance on and interrogate activists who planned to stage peaceful demonstrations at the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

In Denver, local police unlawfully kept intelligence "spy files" on people and organizations involved in legal, peaceful protests
Service Committee staff, and in some cases volunteers, have been visited by the FBI, or followed and trailed by car and helicopter both at home and office

National organizations participating in the effort include the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Greenpeace, the American Indian Movement, and Catholic Peace Ministries.

Since September 11, a general atmosphere of fear has allowed many Americans to accept the gradual erosion of their constitutionally protected rights. Opinion polls show many now believe that the threat of terrorism requires a new way of living, arguably one that grants more and more power to local police and government groups such as the FBI or CIA. The consequences could be tragic.

In the seventies, public exposure of the Pentagon papers, FBI files and other documents gave a glimpse of the vast extent of illegal surveillance, record keeping and disruptive — and sometimes lethal — activity carried on by government intelligence agencies, from the CIA and FBI down to local police, against large numbers of American citizens. In fact, AFSC secured hundreds of federal files detailing government surveillance projects and intelligence documents targeting US peace groups under the freedom of information act during this period.

While public awareness of illegal or misused intelligence has no doubt increased since Watergate and subsequent revelations, a growing number of Americans do not remember the seventies. Today’s thirty-year olds were not even born when massive problems with FBI surveillance surfaced.

The American Friends Service Committee is a faith-based organization working for peace, justice and reconciliation in 22 countries of the world. With national headquarters in Philadelphia and regional offices in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Des Moines, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Pasadena, California; and Cambridge, Massachusetts, AFSC emphasizes people, not politics or ideology – upholding the dignity and promise of every person.

The Service Committee has a long history working for peace, civil rights and social justice issues. Historically, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) have been the subject of suspicion and at times repression and violence because of their refusal to condone or participate in war or preparations for war, and for having come to the aid of those suffering from hostilities, persecution or injustice. Friends worked to assist runaway slaves and in the modern civil rights movement, stood up for worker’s rights and a host of social and economic justice issues.

Since the September 11 tragedies, AFSC has actively supported a No More Victims campaign, which supports justice, healing, and peaceful alternatives to conflict – not war and retaliation. Events have included silent vigils and demonstrations, government petitions that included past Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and discussion forums that include military families and family members of those who perished in the World Trade Center attacks. Currently, its Eyes Wide Open exhibit of combat boots that represent soldiers who have died in the Iraq conflict is traveling across the United States — a stark reminder of the human costs of war.

“Clearly the constitutional right of people to express their views or peaceably assemble is not a criminal offense,” McNish commented. “Trampling upon the Bill of Rights is not the answer to stopping terrorism. As Americans, we need to honor and uphold our constitution by not eroding the very principles upon which our country was founded.”

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

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Currently listening : The Platform By Dilated Peoples Release date: 23 May, 2000

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QUOTATIONS AND QUOTED TEXTS

"Take the idea that Saddam Hussein is a monster about to conquer the world--widely believed, in the United States, and not unrealistically. It was drilled into people's heads over and over again: he's about to take everything. We've got to stop him now. How did he get that powerful? This is a small, third-world country without any industrial base. For eight years Iraq had been fighting Iran. That's post-revolutionary Iran, which had decimated its officer corps and most of its military force. Iraq had a little bit of support in that war. It was backed by the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, the major Arab countries, and the Arab oil producers. It couldn't defeat Iran. But all of a sudden it's ready to conquer the world. Did you find anybody who pointed that out? The fact of the matter is, this was a third-world country with a peasant army. It is now being conceded that there was a ton of disinformation about the fortifications, the chemical weapons, etc. But did you find anybody who pointed it out? No. You found virtually nobody who pointed it out. That's typical." - Noam Chomsky "Media Control"

"...the issue is whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives, and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they're supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home. We end up serving as a mercenary enforcer state, hoping that others are going to pay us to smash up the world. Those are the choices. That's the choice that you have to face. The answer to those questions is very much in the hands of people like you and me." - Noam Chomsky "Media Control"

“There are growing domestic social and economic problems, in fact, maybe catastrophes. Nobody in power has any intention of doing anything about them. If you look at the domestic programs of the administrations of the past ten years-I include here the Democratic opposition-there's really no serious proposal about what to do about the severe problems of health, education, homelessness, joblessness, crime, soaring criminal populations, jails, deterioration in the inner cities - the whole raft of problems... In such circumstances you've got to divert the bewildered herd, because if they start noticing this they may not like it, since they're the ones suffering from it. Just having them watch the Superbowl and the sitcoms may not be enough. You have to whip them up into fear of enemies. In the 1930s Hitler whipped them into fear of the Jews and gypsies. You had to crush them to defend yourselves... You frighten the population, terrorize them, intimidate them so that they're too afraid to travel and cower in fear. Then you have a magnificent victory over Grenada, Panama, or some other defenseless third-world army ... There's always an ideological offensive that builds up a chimerical monster, then campaigns to have it crushed. You can't go in if they can fight back. That's much too dangerous. But if you are sure that they will be crushed, maybe we'll knock that one off and heave another sigh of relief.” – Media Control

“In a strange sense, the U.S. government's arsenal of weapons and unrivalled air and fire power makes terrorism an all-but-inescapable response. What people lack in wealth and power, they will make up with stealth and strategy.

In this restive, despairing time, if governments do not do all they can to honor nonviolent resistance, then by default they privilege those who turn to violence. No government's condemnation of terrorism is credible if it cannot show itself to be open to change by to nonviolent dissent.” – Arundhati Roy

“When non-violent resistance is shut down by governments, then by default, that act privileges violence.” – Arundhati Roy

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” - Howard Zinn

“Of course there is a difference between an overtly communal party with fascist leanings and an opportunistically communal party. Of course there is a difference between a party that openly, proudly preaches hatred and a politics that slyly pits people against each other.
But the legacy of one has led us to the horror of the other. Between them, they have eroded any real choice that parliamentary democracy is supposed to provide. The frenzy, the fairground atmosphere created around elections, takes center stage in the media because everybody is secure in the knowledge that regardless of who wins, the status quo will essentially remain unchallenged…whatever they say during elections or when they’re in the opposition, no state or national government and no political party—right, left center, or sideways—has managed to stay the hand of neo-liberalism. There will be no radical change from ‘within.’
…The targets of the dual assault of neo-liberalism and communal fascism are the poor and minority communities. As neo-liberalism drives its wedge between the rich and the poor…it becomes increasingly absurd for any mainstream political party to pretend to represent the interests of both the rich and the poor, because the interests of one can only be represented at the cost of the other.” – Arundhati Roy “How Deep Shall We Dig?”

“Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time—it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, for the past two decades neoliberalism has been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center and much of the traditional left as well as the right. There parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public-at-large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic and parasitic government that can never do good even if well intended, which it rarely is. A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near sacred aura. As a result, the claims they make rarely require defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs.
…The economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global environment, and unstable global economy and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy.
…Neoliberalism…is indeed ‘capitalism with the gloves off.’ It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power on every possible front, and as a result, make it increasingly difficult to challenge business—and next to impossible—for nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces to exist at all.” – Robert W. McChesney from the Introduction of Noam Chomsky’s “Profit Over People”

Currently watching : Africans in America Release date: 01 August, 2000

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Resources for you to use

Znet: A community of people committed to social change

Common Dreams News Source: Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community

Fact Check: Holding Politicians Accountable

Institute for Public Accuracy

Alternet: The Mix is the Message

Democracy Now!

Act Now to Stop War and End Racism

American Civil Liberties Union

Music for America: Music and Other Social Causes

Punk Voter

Code Pink: Women for Peace

Resource Center for the Americas: Working for Human Rights in the Global Economy

The Left Side of the Brain is Bigger

The Council on American-Islamic Relations

International Court of Justice

United Nations

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Addicted to War

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch
Iraq Occupation Watch

A Girl in Iraq’s Personal Blogging Website: Baghdad Burning

BBC

The Hindu: India’s National Newspaper

Al Jazeera English version

Guardian Unlimited

The Jerusalem Post

Palestine Chronicle

Independent Media Center
Kenya Times
Misleader information
Center for Economic and Social Rights

LIBRARY

"War Talk" by Arundhati Roy

"Profit Over People" by Noam Chomsky

"Media Control" by Noam Chomsky

"Race Matters" by Cornel West

"Democracy Matters" by Cornel West

"Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James W. Loewen

"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn

"A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America" by Ronald Takaki

"Power Politics" by Arundhati Roy

"An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire" by Arundhati Roy

"The Common Good" by Noam Chomsky

"Secrets, Lies and Demcracy" by Noam Chomsky

"The Umbrella of U.S. Power" by Noam Chomsky

"Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World" by Benjamin Barber

"Addicted to War : Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism" by Joel Andreas

"First World, Ha Ha Ha!: The Zapatista Challenge" by Elaine Katzenberger

"You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train : A Personal History of Our Times" by Howard Zinn

"The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them" by Amy Goodman, David Goodman

"The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy" by Arundhati Roy, David Barsamian

Currently listening : Revolutionary 2 By Immortal Technique Release date: 18 November, 2003

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Steps you can take to create positive change

I will just keep adding them in the comments section.

Currently reading : The Conscious Consumer: Promoting Economic Justice Through Fair Trade By Rose Benz Ericson Release date: April, 2002

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Is something wrong with the world? - Some Background

"You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain, but you feel it... -- that there's something wrong with the world."

Morpheus, The Matrix, Warner Bros, 1999

Hello, Neo.

Is something wrong with the world?

The Jan/Feb 2003 edition of Adbusters magazine included this letter from a reader:


I was visiting Jersey City, New Jersey, on September 11, 2001. I saw a jumbo jet slam into the World Trade Center. I walked down to the Hudson, eight blocks away, and stared gaping as both towers crumbled before my eyes.

From that moment on, I started to question everything. I started reading, desperately seeking answers to explain why the world had suddenly gone crazy. I couldn't seem to find the answers in the usual places.

Needless to say, I eventually found the answers.... I was shocked.....

So I decided to make some changes. Today, one year later, I am an activist....


His story is a lot like mine, except my crisis came in April 2000. And I had to find the answers, just like he did. I found, to my everlasting shock and awe, that what I was struggling against was not just a single misconception but a whole network of myths in my head.

It took a long time. But by the time the planes hit, I had a pretty good idea why "they hated us." (And it wasn't because of "our freedom," as you may have guessed.)

And then I knew I had to build this site.
Do you have questions, too? Maybe I can save you a few months.

Questions

In addition to 9-11, a lot of questions just can't be answered with what I believed before. For example:

* Why did we start the Gulf War 1 by saying we were going after Saddam Hussein, the latest Hitler, and end the war leaving him in power?
* Why does the US repeatedly find itself on the side of third world dictators (Saddam, Marcos, Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Batista, Somoza, and others), when we say we believe in human rights?
* Why is the US is the only industrialized country in the world without universal health care? Why do we rank behind so many other countries in infant mortality rates? Why doesn't everyone know this?
* Why do people in Chile consider Henry Kissinger a war criminal?
* Why are working people in the US and Mexico getting it in the neck when Clinton (and others) claimed NAFTA would be so good for the country?
* Why, if our democracy works, why has it been necessary throughout history to march in the streets and even break laws (the Underground Railroad) to make important changes like ending slavery, getting women the vote, reducing workplace dangers, and ending child labor? Why weren't these stories in my high school history books?
* Why did three million people vote for Ralph Nader in 2000, when everyone knew there was no hope of him winning the election? Why were about a million of them Republicans? Why doesn't everyone know that?
* Why is a serious environmental health hazard called "endocrine disruption" common knowledge in Japan, but virtually unknown here?
* How can we explain all this without resorting to space aliens or twelve guys in Argentina using mind control?

We won't be answering all these questions on this site.

But if you're looking for some answers, this is not a bad place to start.

Is Something Wrong With The World? website

Currently listening : Revolutionary 1 By Immortal Technique Release date: 10 August, 2004

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Race In America - Beyond Black & White

PBS Arcticle on Race In America - Beyond Black & White

Currently reading : A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present (Perennial Classics) By Howard Zinn Release date: 01 April, 2003

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This is how media consolidation affects YOU

MfA Issues: Media Consolidation
Posted on Wed, 10/15/2003 - 10:19 Media Consolidation
Don’t think media consolidation is an important issue?

Excessive deregulation and consolidation of media outlets are the reasons:

- Half the public thought Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Half the public thought Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda
- Dissenting voices are either ignored or branded as unpatriotic
- All radio stations play the same songs
- Cds are so expensive
- Recording artists make almost no money from CD sales and have no control over their music
- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing its customers instead of using file sharing to help expose listeners to new artists

Still think media consolidation doesn’t affect you? Keep reading:


America is finally coming around to recognize that the House of Bush consists of manipulative warmongers. The question that we have to ask is why is the American public only now beginning to understand the truth? On February 15, 2003, 10 million people took to the streets and made the largest popular outcry in history. Where was the coverage in the media? When Ambassador Wilson first reported that the Niger Uranium documents were forgeries, where was the press? They were covering the Dixie Chicks - a non-story about a country band who dared to voice their displeasure with the president.

A free, dynamic press should have informed the American public that Iraq was not behind 9-11. A free, dynamic press should have investigated the administration's case for war. People who received their news from independent media on the Internet understood that initiating a war in the already turbulent Middle East would lead us into a quagmire. The problem was that the traditional media did not function critically and chose to give the Bush administration a pass on many of its lies. Despite hundreds of television channels and newspapers, radio stations and record companies, there was very little dissent in the mainstream media, and what dissent did make the headlines was derided by a supposed objective media as unpatriotic. For quite some time now, it has been apparent that we have not had a choice in our media; rather we have had the illusion of choice.

This situation is the direct result of a decade in which many of today's elected officials and media conglomerates were actively working - through deregulation, legislation, censorship, economic bullying, litigation and technological means - to gain tighter control over the content and distribution of ideas in this country. These actions have reduced the diversity, quality and accuracy of local and national news, homogenized radio formats, denied artists new channels of exposure, silenced dissenting points of view in our society, and attempted to crush open technologies that could revolutionize the way we send, receive and produce information.

In order to return diversity and accuracy to our media, and achieve our goal of a greater participatory democracy, we need to fight for an open dialogue in this country, receptive to all points of view. We need to offer up alternative models for the media, and channel all our efforts into these alternatives. Only by standing up to the congressman and conglomerates that control the media will we ever return to a truly open and informed society.

Find out how you can take immediate action on this issue!
www.musicforamerica.org

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