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Title: United State of Emergency
Author: Zakk Flash
Date: 9 March 2012
Language: en
Topics: dissent, Obama, HR 347, state of emergency, Patriot Act, NDAA, ACTA, First Amendment, fascism 
Source: Retrieved 18 September 2012 from http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20120309092057635

Zakk Flash

United State of Emergency

United State of Emergency: Outlawing Dissent

By Dr. Zakk Flash

During the 1967 Six Day War, a series of strict emergency laws were

enacted across the Arab World, most notably in Egypt and Syria. Police

powers became absolute while constitutional rights were suspended; any

non-governmental political activity such as street demonstrations,

rallies, protests, and organization of dissident political groups was

quickly crushed by the iron fist of dictators. The laws were called

temporary defensive measures, emergency acts that would be lifted once

the nation was safe again.

The laws were simply left in place. The rulers of Egypt and Syria,

content with their power, decided to concede nothing to their citizens.

Tens of thousands of people found themselves imprisoned for extended

periods of time, simply for demanding the principles of democracy

already encoded in their constitutions or being critical of the

government. The emergency laws provided these autocratic regimes with

the authority to force their will onto to their people without

opposition.

Under a president deemed worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, the will of

the authoritarian tyrant caste is being written permanently into

American law.

H.R. 347/S1794, otherwise known as the “Federal Restricted Buildings and

Grounds Improvement Act of 2011,”passed unanimously in the House and

receiving only three negative votes in the Senate, makes it a felony—a

crime defined by the federal government as punishable by death or

imprisonment in excess of one year—to “enter or remain in” an area

designated as “restricted.” The law makes no exception for demonstrators

who unknowingly gather outside of federally-designated free-speech

zones; you may not have willfully or knowingly done anything other than

exercise your free speech and free assembly rights, but if you “in fact”

“[impede] or [disrupt] the orderly conduct of Government business or

official functions,” you’re going to prison. And since Obama’s ink dried

on the

National Defense Authorization Act of 2012

and America was declared a battleground, you could be held indefinitely.

These laws would have made Martin Luther King, Jr., and other Civil

Rights luminaries felons subject to indefinite detention.

When, and if, demonstrators get released from incarceration, they will

continue to suffer the long-term legal consequences termed by

prisoner-rights advocates as “civil death.” Felons are barred from

multitude vocations, associating with certain people or even living in

particular areas, ineligible to serve on a jury or receive government

assistance, and even denied the right to elect their own public

servants. As of 2008, over 5.3 million people in the United States are

currently left without the right to vote because of felony

disenfranchisement. A sure-fire way of controlling political opposition

is to deny it the ability to participate in political life.

Restricted areas spoken of in HR347, interpreted under existing law and

court precedents, include any “building or grounds where the President

or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be

temporarily visiting” and “a building or grounds so restricted in

conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national

significance.” This definition, kept intentionally broad and vague,

allows anti-protest measures to be applied at the whim of the political

elite. Already in Chicago, Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel presides over

crippling restrictions on public activity brought as a result of the

upcoming NATO conference—and the simultaneous anti-globalization

protests—on May 20–21^(st), 2012.

While the laws were called a temporary response to the G8 summit taking

place in Chicago alongside the NATO conference, the Obama White House

made a

last minute decision

to move G8 to the presidential compound at Camp David, a restricted

military installation. The laws in Chicago will remain. Draconian laws

enacted in the name of national defense in the

Other Civil War

are nothing new.

On September 14, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a national

emergency due to the terrorist attacks of three days earlier. The

National Emergencies Act of 1976 requires the President to renew this

state of emergency on an annual basis if he wishes it to remain in

effect; Bush renewed it every year he was in office and Obama has

continued the trend.

The United States has been in a declared

state of national emergency

for the last 11 years.

According to Harold Relyea, a specialist working for the American

government in the Congressional Research Service, the president “may

seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize

commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize

and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation

of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways,

control the lives of United States citizens.”

Combined with

Patriot Act measures

enacted by Congress under George W. Bush and extended by Obama, these

laws provide a framework of surveillance and control only dreamed of in

some Orwellian nightmare.

The nature of neoliberal globalization virtually ensures that fascist

cartels will force their monopolies onto unwilling nations or unknowing

populations; plurilateral agreements like the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade

Agreement, or ACTA, are created in secret by leaders of a select handful

of the wealthiest countries and designed with the intention of forcing

them upon developing nations. ACTA includes provisions that

profoundly restrict fundamental rights and freedoms

, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy. It

also severely restricts generic drug creation and use in underdeveloped

countries. They are nonnegotiable.

Kader Arif, the European parliament’s rapporteur for ACTA,

resigned from his position

in January 2012 denouncing the treaty “in the strongest possible manner”

for having “no inclusion of civil society organizations, a lack of

transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of

the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, [and]

exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several

occasions in [the] assembly,”concluding with his intent to “send a

strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable

situation” and refusal to “take part in this masquerade.”

As with other undemocratic measures being passed around the world, HR

347/S1794 is a ruthless and reactionary law designed to eliminate

political and economic dissent.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of

speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to

assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

It is little wonder that HR 347/S1794 has been called by Rep. Justin

Amash (R-MI), one of only three members of Congress to vote against the

bill, the “First Amendment Rights Eradication Act.” While the NDAA seeks

to remove your 4^(th), 5^(th) and 6^(th) Amendment rights, this newest

attack on self-determination is aimed at the heart of 1^(st) Amendment

rights including Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, and Freedom to

Petition.

The Supreme Court ruled in Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 318 (1988), that

protesting outside an embassy was worthy of Constitutional protection,

recognizing that freedom of speech, even if it may interfere with normal

governmental activity “reflects a ‘profound national commitment’ to the

principle” and “‘debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust,

and wide-open.’”

While the right to free speech, assembly, and the petition of grievances

is enshrined in the US Constitution, the right of government to conduct

its business without dissent is not.

In 1783, twenty-four year old William Pitt, then the Prime Minister of

the United Kingdom, was petitioned to change the law based on the

“necessity” to save the East India Company from bankruptcy. His reply

was brief.

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is

the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

The arguments of a tyrannical Congress would have you believe that HR

347/S1794 is a necessity, that demonstrations against the actions of

government and business cause it undue hardship. While the government’s

ability to permissibly restrict expressive conduct is limited by

reasonable time, place, and manner regulations, the restrictions must,

by law, be narrowly tailored to prevent unconstitutional adversity.

HR 347/S1794 flagrantly violates the First Amendment, since it is a

broad and sweeping restriction based particularly on political speech in

a public forum and not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state

interest.

Of course, the crypto-fascists in Congress will argue that protecting

themselves from the sight of the “unwashed masses” is a compelling state

interest. They wouldn’t be incorrect. The nature of power is

self-preserving; by surrounding themselves with a no-free-speech zone,

the State can continue its self-congratulatory paternalism, content in

the false knowledge that they’re “looking out for the little guy.”

The unconstitutional socio-political deprivation embedded in these

authoritarian anti-Occupy laws would arguably be unfeasible without an

almost complete blackout by mass media.

Media and communication play a central, perhaps even a defining, role in

the ability of police-state measures to pass. Where is the outrage over

the state of emergency laws that have gripped this country for almost a

dozen years? How can unelected bankers wrest power from leaders in

Greece, the birthplace of democracy, while the rest of the world fumbles

with “austerity measures” to save their own necks? Consolidation of the

global commercial media system can be easily linked to deregulation in

the name of neoliberal “progress.”That deregulation—and the resulting

monopoly that keeps alternate news sources like

Democracy Now!

And

Al Jazeera English

off the air—has allowed only capitalist rhetoric to flourish.

The business interests that control the mainstream media are the same

that control the United States government. They will allow no dissent as

they continue their war on liberty.

American anarchist Noam Chomsky, long known for his critiques of U.S.

policy, has often written about the “manufacture of consent,” something

propaganda maven (and Freud nephew) Edward Bernays happily called

the art of manipulating people

. In his criticism of the global commercial media system, Chomsky posits

that mass media, as a profit-driven institution, tends to serve and

further the agendas and interests of dominant, elite groups over the

social well-being of entire societies. His writing firmly rejects the

kinds of censorship that HR 347/S1794 proposes.

“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech

for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for

views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech,

that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you

despise.”

What does this mean for us? Simply put, this is not a battle of the Left

versus the moderate Right. This is a direct attack on the United States

Constitution, a charter written expressly to limit the government’s

power over its citizens.

This is a war of the authoritarian oligarchy upon the principles of

democracy.

Around the world, the working and middle classes have risen up against

the duplicity of their governments, the engineering of political

realities by corporate interests, and the social stratification enforced

by capitalist exploitation. In the United States, both Occupy Wall

Street and the libertarian wing of the Tea Party have demonstrated

against the excesses of the US federal government. These protests,

however, have been relatively small compared to the injustice being

perpetrated upon the American people.

Organized labor has tried to make up for their decline in membership and

economic power in recent years by abandoning any pretense of

non-partisan organizing and pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars of

member dues money into the campaigns of Democrats. The opponents of

organized labor are allowed to paint it as a partisan special interest

group in the pocket of the Democratic Party. This has proven to be the

case for far too long. The Democrats, in turn, have taken labor’s vote

as a matter of course and done little to advance the political agenda of

the working class. The vast majority of workers who remain outside of

traditional unions see no use in joining one; management sees

suppression of organization as just another cost of doing business. A

return of radical unionization, exemplified by the Industrial Workers of

the World call to organize the entire working class into One Big Union

to abolish the wage system, would do much to stop the pitting of worker

against worker, allowing for people over profit, cooperation over

competition. The

Preamble to the IWW Constitution

still reflects this.

“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There

can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of

the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have

all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must

go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take

possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live

in harmony with the Earth.”

Organized labor can, and should be, a force to reckon with. It cannot do

so, however, as long as it continues to blindly support a party that has

forgotten the farmers, laborers, labor unions, and minorities that have

made up its traditional base. Regardless of whether organized labor

feels it must undergo a transitional program from capitalism to

participatory economics

, it must divorce itself from unwavering allegiance to the Democrats.

Labor would be more effective supporting individual politicians who

promote a working class agenda, whether they are Green Party,

Libertarians, Social Democrats, or independents.

Civil libertarian organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union,

the First Amendment Coalition, and the Center for Constitutional Rights

have a long history of defending the inalienable rights retained by—as

opposed to privileges granted to—citizens of the United States under the

Constitution. As nonpartisan organizations, they have the ability to

denounce legislators of any camp for transgressions of civil liberties.

It is expected that they will use test cases to undermine the illegal

laws being propagated by the political elite; as part of a diversity of

tactic, these kinds of cases should be applauded, even as the larger

movement forges ahead with broader goals. Embracing different tactics

allows radical proponents of liberty and democracy to work with

mainstream advocacy groups to advance our larger strategy in accordance

with our common goals. The

Saint Paul Principles

provide a framework for that cooperation without sectarian breakdown.

The fiscal conservatives, moderates, and libertarians who make up the

Republican base have seen the party of Lincoln hijacked by social

conservatives like Leo Strauss, who said the “crisis of our time” was a

“permissive egalitarianism” embedded in liberal democracy and

neoconservatives like

Jeanne Kirkpatrick

, who prompted Reagan to give

financial and material support

to pro-Western authoritarian regimes.

Libertarians and fiscal conservatives have little in common with the

state-enforced conservative social policies pushed by the religious

right wing that seems to dominate the Republican Party. The

interventionist war machine driven by neoconservative thought—to say

nothing of the government intrusion into privacy via the Patriot Act,

REAL ID, and

NSA domestic spying program

—runs contrary to principles of state sovereignty and self-determination

held in high esteem by traditional conservatism, principles that Thomas

Paine instilled into American body politic under the phrase “Common

Sense.”

As encroachments on personal privacy and individual liberties continue,

both the Democratic and Republican parties have forgotten their base:

the working and middle class.

Communist Karl Marx borrowed the term “proletariat” as a description for

the working class from the Ancient Roman Empire, whose rulers believed

the only contribution the masses could make to Roman society was the

ability to raise children to colonize new territories. The

crypto-fascist authority today, encompassing both the Democratic and

Republican Parties, continues this view; to capitalists, workers are not

individuals but only the rungs of a ladder designed to lift them higher

on the pyramid scheme of capitalist economics.

The time has come for the American middle and working classes to join

their comrades in the campaign for liberty currently sweeping the globe.

H.R. 347/S1794, rightly nicknamed the “First Amendment Rights

Eradication Act,” has been passed by both chambers of Congress. It now

sits on President Obama’s desk, awaiting his signature. If his

capitulation to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012—and its

promise of indefinite detention—is any indication of his future action,

he’ll sign it.

This issue transcends traditional party politics. Political opposition

will be outlawed immediately. Pro-life rallies will effectively end with

ban on public demonstrations, as well as pro-choice demonstrations. The

government will not hesitate to prohibit any and all organizations it

defines as dissenting or subversive, including alternative parties,

labor unions, veterans’ associations, and others. Occupy Wall Street and

the Tea Party can both kiss the promise of reforming government goodbye.

Congress has already declared America a battleground. They now want to

silence us. It is time to bring the battle home.

________________________________________

Dr. Zakk Flash is an anarchist political writer, radical community

activist, and editor of the Central Oklahoma Black/Red Alliance (COBRA).

He lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

Find more about the

Central Oklahoma Black/Red Alliance

(COBRA) at

http://www.facebook.com/COBRACollective.