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

[bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen)]

Nothing is surprising any more. :-(

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org 
[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of 
Slobodan Dimitrov
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 2:02 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] Campaign solicits race of Arizona Star 
photographer,turns away t wo Albuquerque Journal Reporters


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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