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Homeland Security Phoenix-Style Denver Police Files Space-Based Imperialism Victory For Judi Bari First Nations Fight Back Presidential Deceits Tobacco Smokescreen When Will Bush Fall? CovertAction Quarterly FALL 2003 NUMBER 75 Contents 2 What Happened to America? Denver Police Spying on Peace Groups 27 Eliot Weinberger Loring Wirbel The Reagan years seem peaceful Preemptive crowd control tactics, and secure compared to the Bush II watch lists and a resuscitated Law era. How did this become the most Enforcement Intelligence Unit raise reactionary in American history? spectres of COINTELPRO. 5 When Will Bush Fall? Direct Action by the First Nations of 30 immanue! Wailerstein Canada Bush is in serious trouble, and not John Moore even Karl Rove may be able to save Canadian troops, resource extraction him this time. industries and northern politics have forced indigenous groups to take drastic defensive actions. 7 Homeland Security and the Phoenix Tobacco Companies and Free Speech 37 Program Lawrence Soley Dougias Valentine Providing a corporate smokescreen The CIA's infamous Vietnam War for censorship evokes ominous con counter-insurgency program has tradictions in America's courts. resurfaced - and is now entrenched in the biggest new federal bureaucracy in history. 14 Recasting Space Supremacy Presidential Deceit 42 Loring Wirbel Philip Wheaton Afghanistan and Iraq... The first two Colin Powell may have a different "space wars"? The assimilation of the rank today than he did in 1968, but Space Command is not as benign as he's providing the same services to it appears. the Bush administration. 21 Snatching Victoiy From the Jaws of Deceit Bhopal Survivors Still Suffer 46 Dennis Cunningham and Ben Rosen feld L o u i s Wo l f Thirteen years of struggling for justice India finally acts to extradite Union has finally paid off for FBI-sieged Carbide CEO. 550,000 Indian citizens Earth First! activists. wait for justice. 2^ Anniversaiy Issue "Congratulations to CovertAction Quarterly on its 25th Annivei^ty and its continuing invaiuable service to truth, peace and justice." - Ramsey Ciark, Esq., Co-founder of International Action Center Contributors: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Ian Barrett, William Blum, Heather Cottin, Dennis Cunningham, Gregory Elich, Angela Garcia, Noelle Hanrahan, Bill Montross, John Moore, Dolores Neuman, Leonard Peltier, James Petras, Ben Rosenfeld, Lawrence Soley, GT, John Ulan, Douglas Valentine, Immanuel Wallerstein, Eliot Weinberger, Philip Wheaton, Nicholas Wilson, Loring Wirbel, Louis Wolf. Pubiisher: Covert Action Publications, Inc. 1500 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Suite 732, Washington, DC, 20005, USA Subscription information: Phone - 202 331 9763; Fax - 202 331 9751; Email - [email protected]. CovertAction Quarterly (ISSN 1067-7232) is published quarterjy by Covert Action Publications, Inc., 1500 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Suite 732, Washington, D.C., 20005, USA, a District of Columbia not-for-profit corporation. Member of the Independent Pr^ Association. Indexed by Alternative Press Index, University Microfilms. Copyright 2003 by CovertAction Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No article may be reproduced, in part or whole, without prior written permission from the editor. Cover Photo: Operation "Ivy Serpent", July 2003 Mashahdah, Iraq, photo credit: APAVide World Photos. ATTENTION SUBSCRIBERS: Send us all address changes. USPS does not forward mis- mailed magazines! Contact us by telephone, email, fax or mail. All information above. NUMBER 75 FALL 2003 CovertAction Quarterly What Happened to America? trffpf Originally published in Vorwaerts, June 2003. In the last fifty years, we have one that has turned the budget surplus collect data on the ordinary activities grown accustomed to governments into a massive deficit through its com of ordinary citizens (credit card whose policies on specific issues may bination of enormous tax cuts for the charges, library book withdrawals, uni be good or bad, but which essentially wealthy (particularly those who earn versity course enrollments) and when institute incremental changes to the more than a million doUars a year) and this is perceived as going too far, they status quo. The major exceptions have increases in defense spending. (And, change the name to "Terrorist been Thatcher and Reagan, but even although Republicans always cam Information Awareness" and continue their programs of dismantling systems paign on "less government," it has cre to do the same things. Millions are list of social welfare seem, in retrospect, ated the largest new government ed in airport security computers as mild compared to what is happening bureaucracy in history: the potential terrorists, including antiwar in the United States under George Department of Homeland Security.) demonstrators and pacifists. Critics are Bush - or more exactly, the ruling The Financial Times of England, hard warned to "watch what they say" and junta that tells Bush what to do and ly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized lists of "traitors" are posted on the say. this economic policy as "the lunatics internet. It is unquestionably the most radi taking over the asylum." The war in Iraq has been the most cal government in modem American But more than Reagan- whose poli extreme manifestation of this new history, one whose ideology and cies tended to benefit the rich in gen America, and almost a casebook study actions have become so pervasive, and eral - most of Bush's legislation specif in totalitarian techniques. are so unquestionably mirrored by the ically enriches those in his lifelong First, an Enemy is created by bla mass media here, that the population inner circle from the oil, mining, log tant lies that are endlessly repeated seems to have forgotten what "nor ging, construction, and pharmaceuti until the population believes it: in this m a l " i s . cal industries. At the middle level of case, that Iraq was linked to the attack George Bush is the first unelected the bureaucracy, where laws may be on the World Trade Center, and that it President of the United States, installed issued without congressional approval, possesses vast "weapons of mass by a right-wing Supreme Court in a hundreds of regulations have been destruction" that threaten the world. idnd of judicial coup d'etat. He is the changed to lower standards of pollu Then, a War of liberation, entirely first to actively subvert one of the pil tion or safety in the workplace. portrayed by the mass media in terms lars of American democracy: the sepa Billions in government contracts of our Heroic Troops, with little or no ration of church and state. There are have been awarded, without competi imagery of casualties and devastation, now daily prayer meetings and Bible tion, to corporations formerly run by and with morale-inspiring, scripted study groups in every branch of the administration officials. In a country "news" scenes- such as the toppling of government, and religious organiza where the most significant social the Saddam statue and the heroic tions are being given funds to take changes are enacted by court rulings, "rescue" of Private Lynch. over educational and welfare pro rather than by legislation, the Bush Finally, as has happened with grams that have always been the administration has been filling every Afghanistan, America has received domain of the state. level of the complex judicial system very little news of the chaos that has It is the first administration to with ultra-right ideologues, especially followed the Great Victory. openly declare a policy of unilateral those who have protected corpora It is very difficult to speak of what aggression, a "Pax Americana" where tions from lawsuits by individu^s or is happening in America without the presence of allies (whether environmental groups, and those who resorting to the hyperbolic cliches of England or Bulgaria) is agreeable but are opposed to women's reproductive anti-Americanism that have lost their unimportant; where international rights. meaning after so many decades, but treaties no longer apply to the United Most of all, America doesn't feel like that have now finally come true. States; and where - for the first time in America any more. The climate of mil Perhaps one can only recite the history - this coimtry reserves the itarism and fear, similar to any totali facts, and I have mentioned only some right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive" tarian state, permeates everything. of them here. This is, quite simply, the strikes against any nation on earth, for Bush is the first American president in most frightening American adminis whatever reason it declares. memory to swagger aroimd in a mili tration in modem times, one that is It is the first - since the internment tary uriiform, though he himself - like appalling both to the left and to tradi of Japanese-Americans in World War n all of his most rnUitant advisers - tional conservatives. This junta is - to enact special laws for a specific evaded the \fietnam War. (Even unabashed in its imperialist ambitions; ethnic group. Non-citizen young Eisenhower, a general and a war hero, it is enacting an Orwellian state of Muslim men are now required to regis never wore his uniform while he was Perpetual War; it is dismantling, or ter and subject themselves to interro president.) attempting to dismantle, some of the gation. Many hundreds have been In the airports of provincial cities, most fimdamental tenets of American arrested and held without trial or there are frequent announcements in democracy; it is acting without opposi access to legal assistance-