BY KURT NIMMO
In April 2002, Greenpeace activists boarded a commercial ship off the coast of Florida. The ship was transporting mahogany illegally exported from Brazil's Amazon rainforest. The activists unfurled a banner stating: "President Bush, stop illegal logging." The activists did not engage in violence or destroy property. Minor charges against individual activists were settled last year.
Enter US attorney-general John Ashcroft and the justice department.
In July, the justice department filed criminal charges in a Miami federal court against the entire Greenpeace organisation under an obscure 1872 law originally intended to end the practice of "sailor-mongering".
In 1890, an Oregon court described the purpose of the law as preventing "the evil" of "sailor-mongers [who] get on board vessels and by the help of intoxicants, and the use of other means, often savouring of violence, get the crews ashore and leave the vessel without help to manage or care for her".
"This prosecution is unprecedented in American history", complained John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace in the United States. "Never before has our government criminally prosecuted an entire organisation for the free-speech activities of its supporters. If this prosecution succeeds, then peaceful protest — an essential American tradition from the Boston Tea Party through to the modern civil rights movement — may become yet another casualty of Ashcroft's attack on civil liberties."
If convicted, Greenpeace could not only lose its tax-exempt status, but be forced to regularly report its activities to the government. "Such a prospect must secretly delight many people in the US administration who see the group as an ever-present irritant", wrote Jonathan Turley in the October 17 Los Angeles Times. "After all, it was Greenpeace that held the first demonstration at the president's ranch after his inauguration, causing a stir when activists unfurled a banner reading, 'Bush: the Toxic Texan. Don't Mess With the Earth'."
The Bushites are steadfastly opposed to civil disobedience, an honourable form of activism with a long history in the US — from Harriet Tubman's "underground railroad", which helped slaves escape north, to the struggle of women to win the right to vote. Imagine participants of the 1950s Freedom Rides in the South and non-violent protesters against segregation in Alabama being charged as "sailor-mongers".
If Ashcroft and the justice department had their way, there would never have been anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam War, an anti-apartheid movement or non-violent civil disobedience actions against nuclear power in the 1980s. All would have been be criminalised and severely punished.
Imagine Pax Christi USA, the international Catholic peace organisation, losing its tax-exempt status and forced to report to the government. Imagine Detroit's Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton serving time in prison like the three Dominican nuns who were charged with obstructing national defence for painting crosses on a nuclear missile silo (Ashcroft wanted the elderly nuns to spend 30 years in prison, essentially a death sentence).
Last year, Gumbleton urged the Pax Christi national assembly to sign a civil disobedience pledge in opposition to Bush's impending invasion of Iraq. The pledge was sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, the Education for Peace in Iraq Centre, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Lutheran Peace Fellowship, the National Network to End the War against Iraq and Voices in the Wilderness.
In fact, the Bushites have already attacked Voices in the Wilderness, the organisation that took humanitarian aid and medical supplies to the people of Iraq. Ashcroft and the justice department assessed a $20,000 fine against Voices in the Wilderness for violating the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations enforced under the international Emergency Economic Powers Act, which prohibits the delivery of goods and services to Iraq except under special license of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control. "Voices will not pay the fine, and we don't want anyone else to pay the fine for us", said a defiant Kathy Kelly, confounder of the organisation.
Is it possible, due to growing opposition to Bush's USAPATRIOT Act, that the justice department has decided instead to use arcane laws to go after its enemies? Section 802 of the USAPATRIOT Act stipulates that a person or organisation can be considered terrorist if they engage in activity intended "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population" and "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion". Blocking the driveway of a federal building may very well be considered "intimidation or coercion" by the justice department.
Ashcroft and USAPATRIOT have come under increasing fire — and that's why the justice department organised a 16-city tour to "correct misinformation" about the draconian aspects of the law. On the final day of this closed-door, invite-only dog and pony show, more than 1200 demonstrators in Boston and 2500 in New York City made their displeasure known.
Ashcroft and the justice department will likely continue to plumb the depths of out-dated US laws and fashion iron-fisted responses to the environmental and peace movements.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines, organisations such as the American Council of Trustees and Alumni — founded by none other than the vice-president's partner Lynne Cheney and the neo-con senator Joseph Lieberman — and Americans for Victory Over Terrorism will continue to target "groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing", in other words professors, legislators, authors, columnists and activists who exercise their rights under the first amendment to the US constitution and oppose the homicidal madness of Bush and the neo-cons.
[From Counterpunch, <http://www.counterpunch.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 12, 2003.
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