[Leica] Campaign solicits race of Arizona Star photographer, turns away t wo Albuquerque Journal Reporters

[s.dimitrov at charter.net (Slobodan Dimitrov)]

I used to think that the old joke, of the average individual getting a post
card on Monday to come in for a lobotomy willingly on Friday, far fetched.
I'm not so sure of that any more.
S. Dimitrov


> From: George Lottermoser <george@imagist.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Date: Thu,  5 Aug 2004 11:35:18 -0500
> To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Subject: RE: [Leica] Campaign solicits race of Arizona Star photographer,
> turns away t wo Albuquerque Journal Reporters
> 
> B. D. Colen8/4/04
>> The thought that a Presidential campaign would even think to ask the
>> race of a reporter or photographer being assigned to cover an event is
>> appalling - as is the idea that they would want to know how the person
>> was registered as a voter.
> 
> Add to the appalling trends the isolation of of dissent by both parties 
> and I
> believe we have some serious problems.
> 
> Bush Zones Go National
> 
> by JIM HIGHTOWER
> 
> [from the August 16, 2004 issue of The Nation]
> 
> At the 2000 GOP nominating convention in Philadelphia, candidate Bush 
> created
> a fenced-in, out-of-sight protest zone that could only hold barely 1,500
> people at a time. So citizens who wished to give voice to their many
> grievances with the Powers That Be had to:
> 
> (1) Schedule their exercise of First Amendment rights with the decidedly
> unsympathetic authorities.
> 
   (2) Report like cattle to the protest pen at their designated time, and
only in the numbers authorized.
> 
> (3) Then, under the recorded surveillance of the authorities, feel free to 
> let
> loose with all the speech they could utter within their allotted minutes
> (although no one--not Bush, not convention delegates, not the preening 
> members
> of Congress, not the limousine-gliding corporate sponsors and certainly not
> the mass media--would be anywhere nearby to hear a single word of what they
> had to say).
> 
> Imagine how proud the Founders would be of this interpretation of their
> revolutionary work. The Democrats, always willing to learn useful tricks 
> from
> the opposition, created their own "free-speech zone" when they gathered in 
> Los
> Angeles that year for their convention.
> 
> Once ensconced in the White House, the Bushites institutionalized the art 
> of
> dissing dissent, routinely dispatching the Secret Service to order local
> police to set up FSZs to quarantine protesters wherever Bush goes. The
> embedded media trooping dutifully behind him almost never cover this
> fascinating and truly newsworthy phenomenon, instead focusing almost 
> entirely
> on spoon-fed soundbites from the President's press office.
> 
> An independent libertarian writer, however, James Bovard, chronicled 
> George's
> splendid isolation from citizen protest in last December's issue of The
> American Conservative (www.amconmag.com). He wrote about Bill Neel, a 
> retired
> steelworker who dared to raise his humble head at a 2002 Labor Day picnic 
> in
> Pittsburgh, where Bush had gone to be photographed with worker-type people.
> Bill definitely did not fit the message of the day, for this 65-year-old 
> was
> sporting a sign that said: The Bush Family Must Surely Love the Poor, They
> Made so Many of Us.
> 
> Ouch! Negative! Not acceptable! Must go!
> 
> Bill was standing in a crowd of pro-Bush people who were standing along the
> street where Bush's motorcade would pass. The Bush backers had all sorts of
> Hooray George-type signs. Those were totally okey-dokey with the Secret
> Service, but Neel's...well, it simply had to be removed.
> 
> He was told by the Pittsburgh cops to depart to the designated FSZ, a 
> ballpark
> encased in a chain-link fence a third of a mile from Bush's (and the 
> media's)
> path. Bill, that rambunctious rebel, refused to budge. So they arrested him
> for disorderly conduct, dispatched him to the luxury of a Pittsburgh jail 
> and
> confiscated his offending sign.
> 
> At Bill's trial, a Pittsburgh detective testified that the Secret Service 
> had
> instructed local police to confine "people that were making a statement 
> pretty
> much against the President and his views." The district court judge not 
> only
> tossed out the silly charges against Neel but scolded the prosecution: "I
> believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but
> I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
> 
> This was no isolated incident. Bovard also takes us to St. Louis, where 
> George
> appeared last year. About 150 sign-toting protesters were shunted off to a
> zone where they could not be seen from the street, and--get ready to spin 
> in
> your grave, Jimmy Madison--the media were not allowed to talk to them, and
> protesters were not allowed out of the protest zone to talk to the media.
> 
> Now meet Brett Bursey. He committed the crime of holding up a No War for 
> Oil
> sign when sensitive George visited Columbia, South Carolina, last year.
> Standing amid a sea of pro-Bush signs in a public area, Bursey was 
> commanded
> by local police to remove himself forthwith to the FSZ half a mile away 
> from
> the action, even though he was already two football fields from where Bush 
> was
> to speak. No, said Brett. So, naturally, they arrested him. Asked why, the
> officer said, "It's the content of your sign that's the problem."
> 
> Five months later, Brett's trespassing charge was tossed on the rather 
> obvious
> grounds that--yoo-hoo!--there's no such thing as a member of the public
> trespassing on public property at a public event. But John Ashcroft is
> oblivious to the obvious, so the Justice Department of the United States of
> America (represented in this case by--can you stand it?--US Attorney Strom
> Thurmond Jr.) inserted itself into this local misdemeanor case, charging 
> our
> man Brett with a federal violation of "entering a restricted area around 
> the
> president." Great Goofy in the Sky--he was 200 yards away, surrounded by
> cheering Bushcalytes who were also in the "restricted area."
> 
> Ashcroft/Thurmond/Bush attempted to deny Bursey's lawyers access to Secret
> Service documents setting forth official policy on who gets stopped for
> criticizing the President, where, when and why. But Bursey finally obtained
> the documents and posted them on the South Carolina Progressive Network
> website, www.scpronet.com; they reveal that what the Secret Service did 
> goes
> against official policy.
> 
> Then there's the "Crawford Contretemps." In May of 2003 a troupe of about 
> 100
> antiwar Texans were on their way by car to George W's Little Ponderosa,
> located about five miles outside the tiny town of Crawford. To get to 
> Bush's
> place, one drives through the town--but the traveling protesters were 
> greeted
> by a police blockade. They got out of their cars to find out what was up, 
> only
> to be told by Police Chief Donnie Tidmore that they were violating a town
> ordinance requiring a permit to protest within the city limits.
> 
> But wait, they said, we're on our way to Bush's ranchette--we have no
> intention of protesting here. Logic was a stranger that day in Crawford,
> however, and Chief Tidmore warned them that they had three minutes to turn
> around and go back from whence they came, or else they'd be considered a
> demonstration, and, he reminded them, they had no permit for that. (Tidmore
> later said that he actually gave them seven minutes to depart, in order to 
> be
> "as fair as possible.")
> 
> Five of the group tried to talk sense with Tidmore, but that was not 
> possible.
> Their reward for even trying was to be arrested for refusing to disperse 
> and
> given a night in the nearby McLennan County jail. The chief said he 
> could've
> just given them a ticket, but he judged that arresting them was the only 
> way
> to get them to move, claiming that they were causing a danger because of 
> the
> traffic.
> 
> This February, the five were brought to trial in Crawford. Their lawyer 
> asked
> Tidmore if someone who simply wore a political button reading "Peace" 
> could be
> found in violation of Crawford's ordinance against protesting without a
> permit. Yes, said the chief. "It could be a sign of demonstration."
> 
> The five were convicted.
> 
> The Bushites are using federal, state and local police to conduct an
> undeclared war against dissent, literally incarcerating Americans who 
> publicly
> express their disagreements with him and his policies. The ACLU and others
> have now sued Bush's Secret Service for its ongoing pattern of repressing
> legitimate, made-in-America protest, citing cases in Arizona, California,
> Virginia, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas--and coming soon to a
> theater near you!
> 
> If incarceration is not enough to deter dissenters, how about some
> old-fashioned goon-squad tactics like infiltration and intimidation of
> protesters? In May of 2002 Ashcroft issued a decree terminating a
> quarter-century-old policy that bans FBI agents from spying on Americans in
> their political meetings and churches.
> 
> Not only were federal agents "freed" by Bush and his attack dog Ashcroft to
> violate the freedoms (assembly, speech, privacy) of any and all citizens, 
> but
> they were encouraged to do so. This unleashing of the FBI was done in the 
> name
> of combating foreign terrorists. The Bushites loudly scoffed at complaints
> that agents would also be used to spy on American citizens for political
> purposes having nothing to do with terrorism. While officials scoffed
> publicly, however, an internal FBI newsletter quietly encouraged agents to
> increase surveillance of antiwar groups, saying that there were "plenty of
> reasons" for doing so, "chief of which it will enhance the paranoia 
> endemic in
> such circles and will further service to get the point across that there 
> is an
> FBI agent behind every mailbox."
> 
> Likewise, in May of last year, the Homeland Security Department waded
> butt-deep into the murky waters of political suppression, issuing a 
> terrorist
> advisory to local law enforcement agencies. It urged all police officials 
> to
> keep a hawk-eyed watch on any homelanders who [Warning: Do not read the 
> rest
> of this sentence if it will shock you to learn that there are people like 
> this
> in your country!] have "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of 
> the US
> government."
> 
> MEMO TO TOM RIDGE, SECRETARY OF HSD: Sir, that's everyone. All 280 million 
> of
> us, minus George Bush, you and the handful of others actually making the
> decisions. You've just branded every red-blooded American a terrorist. 
> Maybe
> you should stick to playing with your color codes.
> 
> Last November, Ashcroft weighed back in with new federal guidelines 
> allowing
> the FBI to make what amount to pre-emptive spying assaults on people. Much
> like the nifty Bush-Rumsfeld doctrine of attacking countries to pre-empt 
> the
> possibility that maybe, someday, some way, those countries might pose a 
> threat
> to the United States, the Bush-Ashcroft doctrine allows government 
> gumshoes to
> spy on citizens and noncitizens alike without any indication that the
> spied-upon people are doing anything illegal. The executive directive gives
> the FBI authority to collect "information on individuals, groups, and
> organizations of possible investigative interest."
> 
> The language used by Ashcroft mouthpiece Mark Corallo to explain this
> directive is meant to be reassuring, but it is Orwell-level scary: What it
> means, says Corallo, is that agents "can do more research." "It emphasizes
> early intervention" and "allows them to be more proactive." Yeah, they get 
> to
> do all that without opening a formal investigation (which sets limits on 
> the
> snooping), much less bothering to get any court approval for their 
> snooping. A
> proactive secret police is rarely a positive for people.
> 
> With the FBI on the loose, other police powers now feel free to join in the
> all-season sport of intimidating people. In Austin, even the Army was 
> caught
> snooping on us. At a small University of Texas conference in February to
> discuss Islam in Muslim countries, two Army officers were discovered to be
> posing as participants. The next week two agents from the Army Intelligence
> and Security Command appeared on campus demanding a list of participants 
> and
> trying to grill Sahar Aziz, the conference organizer. Alarmed by these
> intimidating tactics, Aziz got the help of a lawyer, and the local 
> newspaper
> ran a story. The Army quickly went away--but a spokeswoman for the
> intelligence command refused even to confirm that the agents had been on
> campus, much less discuss why the US Army is involved in domestic 
> surveillance
> and intimidation.
> 
> In California an antiwar group called Peace Fresno included in its ranks a
> nice young man named Aaron Stokes, who was always willing to be helpful.
> Unfortunately, Aaron died in a motorcycle wreck, and when his picture ran 
> in
> the paper, Peace Fresno learned that he was really Aaron Kilner, a deputy 
> with
> the sheriff's department. The sheriff said he could not discuss the 
> specifics
> of Kilner's infiltration role, but that there was no formal investigation 
> of
> Peace Fresno under way. He did insist, however, that there is potential for
> terrorism in Fresno County. "We believe that there is," the sheriff said
> ominously (and vaguely). "I'm not going to expand on it."
> 
> If the authorities think there is terrorist potential in Fresno (probably 
> not
> real high on Osama's target list), then there is potential everywhere, and
> under the Bush regime, this is plenty enough reason for any and all police
> agencies to launch secret campaigns to infiltrate, investigate and 
> intimidate
> any and all people and groups with politics that they find even mildly
> suspicious...or distasteful.
> 
> The attitude of police authorities was summed up by Mike van Winkle, a
> spokesperson for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (another
> spinoff of the Homeland Security Department--your tax dollars at work). 
> After
> peaceful antiwar protesters in Oakland were gassed and shot by local 
> police,
> van Winkle [Note: I do not make up these names] explained the prevailing
> thinking of America's new, vast network of antiterrorist forces:
> 
> You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group 
> protesting
> a war where the cause that's being fought against is international 
> terrorism,
> you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a 
> protest
> against that is a terrorist act. I've heard terrorism described as anything
> that is violent or has an economic impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going
> off and killing people.
> 
> Fond regards,
> 
> G e o r g e   L o t t e r m o s e r,    imagist?
> 
> <?>Peace<?>   <?>Harmony<?>  <?>Stewardship<?>
> 
> Presenting effective messages in beautiful ways
> since 1975
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