Death to Civil Liberties done a very good job, there are some problems with the democracy of the campaign. With the steering committee meeting only for one and a half hours on weekdays, few from outside London can partici- pate and there is little time to discuss strategy. This means that the way forward is, in general, decided by the leadership of the SWP. It may well make the right decisions, but as a method it does nothing to develop the politics of the people participating. For a mass movement is not just about building for demonstrations and rallies, it is also about arming people politically, developing their ability to argue and organise. It may be easier to exclude the diffi- cult and the sectarians by trampling over democ- racy, but in the end, political decisions have to be made through discussion and voting, even if this War on Terror: Sam Feeney investigates how the "war on terror" is being used to promote attacks on civil liberties in Britain and in the US, and argues that revolutionary socialists need to develop an alternative conception of justice as part of the fightback. The gulag at Guantanamo Bay, where so-called 'enemy combatants' are held by the US military in flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention for the rights of Prisoners of War, has been the most widely reported travesty of democratic and civil issue_001 autumn, 2003 Socialist. Outlook means some wrong decisions are made. Similar problems were evident at the two Peoples' Assemblies. While resolutions were taken and either passed or rejected, it was clear that there is no structure for these decisions to be acted on; there is no ongoing committee or leadership (apart from the SWP and the Stop the War steering commit- tee). While these problems can be endured while a campaign is moving forward, there will come a time, and that quite soon, when serious discus- sions and democratic decisions will have to be made otherwise the movement will suffer. The antiwar movement in Britain has been an enormous success story, it would be a pity if this was spoiled because of a lack of democracy. rights in this 'war on terror'. In the forthcoming military trials there will be no right to independent legal advice or representation, no jury, and the death penalty may be handed out. This is an affront even to liberal values of justice and fairness. Two years ago the tragedy of 9/11, enabled a little known, rightwing Republican 'non-profit edu- cational organisation', the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), to step into the driving seat of US policy. The PNAC was set up in June 1997; its Statement of Principles was signed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Francis 'end of history' Fukuyama, a certain Jeb Bush, and even the mighty intellectual heavyweight, Dan Quayle!' In its own words, the aims of the PNAC are: increase defence • to spending sig- carry out nificantly US global to responsibilities today and modernise US armed forces for the future: • to strengthen US ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to US interests and 11 ' In his bestseller of last year, Stupid White Men, Michael Moore me- ticulously exposes thes individuals' background
exert its dominance anywhere it damn well pleases • broadening the definition of 'terrorism' so far was open for the Republican right to show the world • classification of POWs (including two US to make public the names of those arrested. By that • endangering a person's life (but not just the life being charged with trespass in a New York shopping • plans to seriously interfere with or disrupt an ' The name USA PATRIOT stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropri- ate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct ' Jim Cornehls 'The USA PATRIOT Act - the assault on civil liberties', Z Magazine Online, July/August 2003, Volume 16, Number 7. 3 Oakland Tribune, May 18, 2003. 4 See the Internet site: LA Indiemedia.org. " Sections 1(1)(b)&(c) of the Terrorism Act 2000 quoted in 'Anti-Terrorism Legislation in the United Kingdom, 2002'. Liberty http://www.liberty-hu- man-rights.org.uk/ resources/publications/ pdf-documents/anti- terrornew.pdf) values; • to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to US security, prosperity, and principles. What this means in practice is a new American military imperialism that can boldly and forcefully in the world. When George Bush Inr took over the White House from Clinton, his election 'victory' was seen by many as illegitimate. But when the Al Qaeda network hijacked those passenger planes and targeted the symbols of US capitalism and milita- rism, the twin towers and the Pentagon, the stage who was still boss. Patriot Act The paralytic fear that swept the USA and the sub- sequent patriotism that was whipped up by the right, enabled the Bush administration to enact one of the most comprehensive assaults on civil liberties in modern history - the USA PATRIOT Act of October 2001. As Jim Cornehls? argues, it is very hard to believe that this long and complex piece of legislation was put together in just 45 days from 9/11 to the day that Bush signed it into law. It was a veritable 'wish-list' of powers that the law-enforcers had been after for years but that would never had withstood the oppo- sition from civil rights groups or the public had 9/11 not provided the perfect opportunity to bring it in. The USA PATRIOT Act is a huge attack on demo- cratic rights in the US, a potential gag for any dis- senter, and a green light to low-ranking law entorc- ers to throw their weight around whilst doing their patriotic duty. Over 1200 people, mainly Muslims and Arabs, were secretly arrested and imprisoned in the course of the 9/11 investigation. It was not until August 2002 that the government was forced time most had been deported or freed. Cornehls also cites examples of a father and son mall after they refused to take off T-shirts with peace slogans on, and FBI agents visiting people who openly questioned or criticised the Bush doctrine. Writing in June's Labour Standard, Jack Heyman, a San Francisco longshore union official arrested at the anti-war protest in Oakland in April (where pro- testers were fired upon by police) shows how the war on terror is being used against labour activ- ists. He quotes Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (since removed from post), 'You can almost argue that a protest against a war against international terrorism is a terrorist act.' Even more chilling, Van Wini.= said that "terrorism" included any action that has ar "economic impact? 3 Civil Liberties Under The Attack The following are the main features of the attack on civil liberties in the USA so far: that some actions of civil disobedience (e.g. trespass on US military bases), or anti-capi- talist protests, even industrial action, could be included within the scope of the Act; increasing the powers of state surveillance; : increasing the powers to secretly arrest and jail anyone connected with the investigation of 'ter- citizens) as 'enemy combatants'; • holding deportation hearings in secret; • effect on free speech and political dissent; • the fact these so-called 'special measures' are a consequence of an open-ended 'war on terror', making them effectively permanent. The American Civil Liberties Union has just filed a lawsuit against the federal government this August.* This is the first legal challenge so far to the Patriot Act and to date 143 cities across the US have passed resolutions against what is being described as 'the government's war on the Bill of Rights'. Here in Britain, where the state has years of expe- rience of conducting its own 'war on terror' against republican and nationalist communities in the North of Ireland, civil liberties have also taken a hammer- ing. Pre-dating 9/11, the Terrorism Act 2000 also widens the definition of what is 'terrorism', thereby throwing a net of special powers (arrests, detention with limited and sometimes no access to legal rep- resentation, contact with family, etc.) around a far broader set of actions or threats of action. These can include: • serious violence against a person; • serious damage to property; of the person committing the act; • creating a serious risk to public health and safety; electronic system. To qualify as 'terrorist' these acts must also be 'designed to influence the government or to intim- idate the public or a section of the public' and to promote a 'political, religious or ideological cause S As well as creating a whole new range of offences - including being a member of or "support- ing' or 'furthering the activities of' a proscribed organisation'(twenty-one are listed including Irish. Palestinian, Muslim, Kurdish, Basque, Tamil and
Sikh groups), Amnesty International have expressed concern that that the broad discretion given to the Home Secretary and the vague wording of some of the provisions means that the UK government is now open to pressure from repressive states around the world to proscribe opposition and radical groups. The woolly and vague provision that deals with "meetings' is chilling and endangers political debate. For example, an organiser of a meeting who knows of a speaker's membership of such a proscribed organisation, even if that person is speaking about something completely unrelated, could be subject to these powers. It is also seriously problematic for journalists. Furthermore it is an offence to withhold information knowingly. Stopping people joining or supporting organisations contravenes several Articles of the Human Rights Act. It also fundamentally flouts legal principles such as equality before courts, trial without jury - remember the Diplock courts used in the North of - and reverses the onus of proof so that it lies with the accused to prove their innocence, and makes it a crime to not inform on others. Powers of disclosure of confidential information on citizens have been hugely increased, with the potential for widespread abuse. Medical records, bank statements, school records, tax returns can be pored over by the police and security services even where no crime has been committed or even sus- pected - 'for the purposes of any criminal investi- This can mean current or antici- pated investigations. Similarly the powers of arrest and detention and stop and search have all been substantially increased: the authorities will either not need a warrant or will be able to proceed in the knowledge that a warrant can easily be obtained. The most draconian parts of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 have been those affecting immigration and asylum. non-national whom the Home Secretary 'reasona- bly believes' is a suspected terrorist or a threat to national security may be detained indefinitely. This is internment by another name, just as happened in the North of Ireland. Liberty have produced some excellent resources around the effects and implications of all anti-ter- rorist laws in the UK, including the Anti-terror- ism, Crime and Security Act 2001 that was bounced through Parliament post 9/11. What's next in the war on civil liberties? Last month the Pentagon flagged up a new initia- tive to the media and then quickly shelved it when the response was overwhelmingly negative. The plan was to create a new futures trading market that would trade in risks of terrorist attacks and threats to strategic interests. issue_001 autumn, 2003 Socialist_Outlook This wasn't some wacky little scheme from a high- flying graduate wanting to rocket up the greasy pole. It was just one of hundreds of steps and objectives of a key Pentagon programme - Total Information Awareness, renamed Terrorist Information Aware- ness (TIA) because the former was just too scary for public consumption. This, in the words of the devel- opers, is 'a program of programs whose goal is the creation of a counter-terrorism information architec- ture' that would: • vastly increase the information that can be accessed and shared and make it easily scaled; provide focused warnings within an hour of a automatically cue analysts based on patterns and partial pattern matches found in the data; provide the opportunity for information-sharing, collaboration, and analytical reasoning between analysts so that hypotheses can be tested and decision-makers can effectively evaluate the impact of current or future policies. Vast chunks of the President's budget are being spent on developing the TIA programme. The sort of data that it is intending to use includes medical, financial, communication, shopping, veterinary and biometric data; any and all manner of the traces we leave as we go about our daily lives. Some sci-fi sounding technologies that are being developed include iris recognition. Currently some 130,000 Afghan refugees on the Pakistan border have had their irises photographed and stored on databases by UNHCR aid workers ostensibly to protect against so-called aid fraud, for example a parent trying to get an extra aid 'kit' by sending a child through the border twice. It would indeed be interesting to see who had charitably donated the state of the art tech- nology needed for such security measures. Last month Home Secretary Blunkett enthusiasti- cally announced that a national ID card, contain- ing biometric data would be piloted in an unnamed market town. By next year ten British airports will also have iris recognition systems. The private sector "partners' behind the ID card pilot are Sch- lumbergerSema and Northrop Grumman Mission System Europe (Alan Travis in The Guardian 27/08/ 03) - whose parent corporations are major players in the global oil industry and US defence industry respectively. This all bears a spooky parallel for anyone who has seen the Steven Spielberg film from 2002, Minority Report, where in Washington DC in 2054 a whole ' Section 17(2) (a) ACTSA new offence of 'pre-crime' is introduced follow- quoted in, 'Anti-terrorism Legislation in the United ing the discovery of the pre-cognitive powers of Kingdom', Liberty, as pattern recognition within the human brain. That above. is it becomes possible to predict which people will commit crimes. Then there is the whole other issue of the coming PATRIOT 2 Act which will deepen and further extend the erosion of civil liberties in the US. 2004
global crisis of capital necessitate it. darity on September 13, 2001: ' Social Justice Against Terrorism - statement issued by Political Committee of Solidariti, International Viewpoint. October 2001, 1:, September 13 2001. ' Lawrence Wilde (1998), Ethical Marxism and its Radical Critics. MacMillan Press. The 'Introduction, Chapter I and half of Chapter ? are reproduced on the excellent weh resource for Marxists - The Marxists Internet Archive: http: //www.marxists.org/ justice and socialist movements. reference/subject/ philosophy/works/en/ wilde.html. EVER GET ¡HE FEELIUC YOU'VE BEEN CHEATED? looks set for an ideological battle around this key policy in the run-up to the Presidential elections Michael Moore's new film, to be released in time for the White House race, will look at the close family links between the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. We should not ignore the possibility that the medium and long-term drip-drip effect of the psychology of the war could potentially create the ideal conditions for totalitarian neo-fascist governments in the cap- italist heartlands of the US and Britain, should the Where do revolutionary socialists socialist future. It is worth remembering what comrades were saying in the aftermath of 9/11. This is part of the statement issued by the American socialist organisation Soli- The repression of democratic freedoms and civil liberties will be limited only by the population's will to resist. For partisans of social justice, now must not be the time to hide, but to stand up for democracy and the values of our struggle - a struggle for a world organized to trull value all human life, rather than profit! Democratic rights and civil liberties lie at the heart of a socialist programme. We stand in solidarity with all those opposed to the war on civil liberties as with those fighting oppression and military occu- pation in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere Bush and Blair set their sights on. The campaign against the global assaults on civil liberties is fundamental to the strategic development of the anti-war, global Marxists have sometimes been criticized by others in the global justice and anti-war movements on the basis that the history of those claiming to be com- munists - given the dreadful legacy of Stalin and his successors, and even the actions of Lenin and Trotsky at times - is far from spotless when it comes to defending democratic rights. To those critics movements we would say that a revolutionary Marxist view of human freedom can only make sense within the context of a truly radical democracy where political and other differences are respected and agreements are reached via open and popular procedures. How we take these ideas into our political practice is also going to be key to the strength of the alli- ances and movements we work in to create a social- ist alternative. We need to be the best facilitators of inclusive, transparent and accountable democratic practices. Not because it wins us brownie points with any liberals, but because such skills and experi- ences. developed within an emerging socialist class consciousness, will be necessary for any sustainable While we condemn indiscriminate terrorist attacks on civilian populations and individuals, revolu- tionary socialists defend the right of oppressed and exploited peoples to resist their oppressors. We defend the principle of reasonable force in selt- defence, including any coordinated and accountable collective defence of rights. Lawrence Wilde? says that Marxist ideas could hold a rich potential for the development of eman- cipatory theory in the twenty-first century. I would argue that if we can create vibrant and engaging debates around Marxist ideas of ethics, alienation, and justice, alongside the development of a practical and socialist programme of key minimal and tran- sitional demands that are rooted in the experience of the working class and its allies in the anti-war and global justice movements, then we can show in practice what the seeds of a revolutionary interna- tional socialist class consciousness are all about. Muslims in particular have so far borne the brunt of the assaults on democratic rights in the US, Britain and worldwide. But as socialists and revolutionaries we are well aware that, along with oppressed people everywhere, as well as global justice campaigners, anti-war activists, environmentalists, trade union- ists, ordinary workers and the unemployed, we are all within the net of potential 'terrorists' in our gov- ernment's eyes. Socialist Resistance is a monthly Marxist paper produced by the Socialist Solidarity Network, the International Socialist Group and other individual activists in the Socialist Alliance, the Global Justice and the anti - imperialist subscription rates are: 1 year for £10 (UK), £10 (Europe) or £20 (other overseas). Cheques made payable to RESISTANCE.Send to PO Box 1109, London, N4 2UU, UK www.socialistresistance.net