11/9/2001 This one is messy. Reports have been going back and forth on the case of a political activist detained at an airport in Bangor. I'll give my original writeup, with further remarks appended after newer accounts.
11/4/2001
Didn't get wind of this til this morning: a prominent Green Party organizer was prevented from traveling to a conference where she was to speak by the airport military on Thursday. Why? Apparently because she is a prominent Green Party organizer, it seems. The Greens have been speaking out against this war, and this seemingly puts all their major members on a list--and potentially under house arrest, if this is necessary to prevent them from assembling to talk politics. Oden, the activist, was informed she was no longer allowed to fly anywhere, presumably until further notice.
This woman is not a criminal. She is a political dissident, and a dissident of the most moderate stripe. She organizes against this preposterous bastard war. She is detained by the military. She is not allowed to organize politically.
Let's review. Because there is a terrorist threat, military and law enforcement have been given greater powers, and any checks on their power are being dismantled. Because of the bombardment of Afghanistan, the risk of further terrorist attacks is admittedly heightened. Because of this risk, the freedom of action of the military and law enforcement is so important that any public dissent about their power is unacceptable. Therefore, since we've conveniently deployed all these anti-terrorist forces in our public places and particularly transportation hubs, these forces can lock down these dissidents so they won't endanger our seeming consensus in support of those forces.
Here's a good blow-by-blow analysis of some proposed anti-terrorism legislation to give you an idea what the former governor of Texas and his administration have in mind. Add to that the FBI's recent pouting about not being allowed to use torture.
In my third essay of this series, I suggested that the first of the new law-enforcement powers--snooping of e-mail communications--would be used, in practice, to monitor homegrown dissidents--by which I mean liberals, or at least loud ones. In the fourth essay, I linked to this article comparing the current unelected regime's policies to those of Big Brother, which warned pointedly that the policy of permanent vague war was specifically designed to make us accept permanent vague War Powers.
Now we come to the point. In the time the National Guard and MP personnel have been hanging around the airports and train stations, this is the first action I have heard of on their part: the explicitly unconstitutional detainment of an American political organizer. A leader of the fourth-largest (or is it third, now?) political party in this country.
This is not an accident. This is at least half of what they're there for. The only question remaining is: who's a terrorist? Who's a suspect? Against whom shall all these draconian new powers be used?
We have just gotten the first installment of our answer. A terrorist is a member of a third political party. A terrorist is an anti-war activist. A terrorist is a political dissident. And all of the forces of law being mobilized by a man who is not president are for use in containing these dissidents--the people most likely to point out, even despite the distraction of a war, that we are under the rule of an administration which came to power despite what was very likely a loss in the presidential election.
Go to vote-smart.org to find out who your congressman is, and who your senator is, if you don't know already. (Annoyingly, you'll need to find your nine-digit zip code, but you can do that without leaving the site.)
And write a letter. Don't mistake how crucial this turn of events is! A woman was stopped by armed men, sent by the government, from going to speak to a crowd about her politics. It does not get clearer than that. Let me say it again: armed government agents told a political organizer she was not permitted to organize.
11/8/2001
So that was that. Today I was passed this debunking of the Oden article, and of course I don't want to be whipping up a fuss over nothing.
The chief unresolved question from the original article was what had actually been said by the agents who originally stopped Oden; this Snopes article (apparently quoting an Associated Press piece) suggests that Oden was probably making slight trouble worse by being generally cantankerous, and that maybe the security folks were out of line, and maybe not. Interestingly, it still doesn't resolve the question of how she got stopped in the first place. The FBI and the airport say she was not actually on a list, though, and it seems not implausible that she made that up herself. Then again the new article made no mention of the mysterious cancellation of her reservations in Chicago (though that also isn't particularly effective or necessary in stopping her from speaking, if we suppose somebody was trying to do this).
I'm leaving this piece up because it has some good links and it's an interesting discussion. I will try to get second opinions on every link, especially the ones that are critical to my own arguments, and we'll see how it goes... my apologies if this one was bogus. Here's hoping it was. And that nothing like it happens down the road.
11/9/2001
So, back to the present. The latest account I've had, giving some history, is this article blasting the guy who called the first reports a false alarm. It seems cogent, though damnably lax in backing up its assertions with links. Several articles are referred to that I can't find, or I'd link to them too.
In the end, I'm pretty sure I'm back to thinking an outrage happened. It's seethingly frustrating when what would be a clear case is muddied by the victim's own persnickety behavior, which may be the case here, but leaving that aside, the only question that matters is when and why Oden was prevented from flying. As somebody named Fred Mayer is quoted as saying, Oden ought either to be charged with a crime or allowed to fly: anything in between is unconsitutional and its motives suspect in the extreme.
Activist Brett Axel points out that having a smooth rebuttal ready to go is no great sign of innocence:
BTW: I read the second message and thought, wow, whenever I get fucked like that there's a counter statement standing by to try to discredit me when I point out what looks like is being done. When it's just a little paranoia or jumping to conclusions on my part the accused are surprized, taken aback, and definitly not ready for battle. The follow up added credibility to the original story for me, but then, I've had some first hand experience.Someone needs to write a good essay on arming your mind against being misled. But first someone needs to figure out how to do that.
I'd love to write that essay, but right now I only have enough advice to fill a fortune cookie: never read anything without asking what the writer's profit motive is. We all have them. Sensationalism, and the sometimes astounding distortions that go with it, spring from nothing more obviously sinister than the news agencies' simple desire to sell more papers and pull down higher Nielsens. That's an easy example. Politics may be less easy; each writer has some agenda. It's no use decrying that fact and wishing for objective reporting. Better to try and learn to correct for the lens you're looking through.
With any luck, that wraps it up for this essay. Verdict: the original shrill and melodramatic warning is still in effect. It would appear that our occupying administration is indeed bottling up opposition politics.