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November 7, 2001
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
October 30, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
War on Terror
Bad as War on Drugs
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flying
Blind:
The Predator's Problem
Ali Abunimah
Dear Colin
Powell
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November
7, 2001
Greens, Airports and ID Cards
By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Airport
Security Nixes Nancy Oden
Consider what happened to Nancy Oden
in Maine the other day.
Oden's an organic farmer who lives in
Jonesboro, Maine. She's also an organizer for the Green Party
USA. She was on her way to Chicago for a Green Party convention,
got hassled by a National Guardsman at Bangor airport and finally
told she couldn't board her flight. Oden thinks it's because
of a Green Party statement she co-authored that ran in the local
newspaper. The statement calls for universal health care, limitations
on free trade, and a stop to "U.S. military incursions"
including the bombing of Afghanistan. The US Green Party has
labeled the U.S. military actions there an act of "state
terrorism."
Here's how Oden described her experience
to Declan McCullagh, political editor of Wired. "Just a
few weeks ago I had a piece in the Bangor paper. It's on our
website, greenparty.org... I submitted it under my name alone.
It's a fairly radical piece; that's what I do. I'm a political
and environmental activist. "I walked into the Bangor airport.
What I saw was National Guardfolks all over carrying machine
guns... The atmosphere was very tense... This was Thursday...
I went over to the American Airlines ticket counter way down
at the end. Nobody else was there, except the clerk.
"I gave him my name. He didn't even
ask for photo ID. It was almost like they were expecting me.
He put it into the computer. He stayed on the computer a long
time, like 10 minutes. "He put an S on the boarding pass,
for search. He said, 'You've been picked for having your bag
searched.' ... I said to him, 'This wasn't random, was it?' He
said, 'No you were in there to be searched, no matter what.'
I went over to baggage to put my bags through the X-ray and then
went into the boarding area.
"There was this National Guard guy
there. He yells over at me, so everyone can hear, 'Bring your
bags over here.' You know how they are when they're all puffed
up with themselves. He said, 'Hurry up,' so I slowed down some
more. I put my bags on the table. The two women employees were
standing there. I tried to help them with a stuck zipper. He
grabbed my left arm, he started yelling in my face, 'Don't you
know what happened? Sep. 11, don't you know thousands of people
died?' I said, 'You can't do that.' He went to grab my arm, and
I said, 'Don't touch me.' I saw an older airline guy shake his
head, 'No,' and he backed off.
"They did the wand thing, they were
done, and I heard him say real soft, 'Don't let her on the plane,'
like he was talking to himself. Then this little guard guy, it
wasn't enough to stop me, wasn't done with me. He said, 'Come
with me.' I followed very slowly; I sat down for a while. I said
I'm carrying these bags; I need a rest... It's called passive
resistance.
"He went and found the airport police
to come and talk with me. He went and got six other National
Guard guys and they all approached me. Here are these six untrained,
ignorant, don't-know-how-to-deal-with-the-public, machine-gun-armed
young guys in their camouflage suits with their military gear
hanging off of it.
"I looked up and started laughing,
'Is all this for me, guys? What is this about?' There was this
big burly guy, he was in front. He said, 'You didn't cooperate
with the search.' ... I said what he did was grabbed my arm,
and I backed away... He said he only hit your arm. I said even
if that's all he did, he's not allowed to do that. He can't hit
my arm and demand I listen to him. They had the airport policeman
tell me, 'You're not flying out of this airport today.' ... Of
course I had cooperated; why do I care if they search my bags?
... What I didn't like was being singled out because of my political
views. I never made it out of Bangor. I had to turn around and
drive 100 miles back home... The fact that they gave the other
airlines my name... They told me they did that... That's incredible."
Here's a little footnote on sectarianism.
Oden's a member of the Green Party USA, as distinct from the
Association of Green Parties with which Ralph Nader is associated.
There's ill-feeling between the two groups. When Oden's experience
at Bangor went the rounds, Naderite Greens were quick to belittle
the affair. "Leader of Green splinter group fibs about airport
hassle" was the title on one sneering email forwarded by
Naderite Bill Kaufman of the Manhattan Greens. It went on, "while
the undue harassment of airline travelers is to be condemned,
it does not seem that this incident warrants fears of a major
violation of Constitutional guarantees of free speech, as it
first appeared. The group that Nancy Oden leads is nevertheless
using the incident to draw attention and support to itself."
When we posted Oden's press
release about the incident on our site, along with Declan's
interview with her, we were flooded with emails from angry
Naderite Greens, who smeared Oden in the vilest terms. Lorna
Saltzman denounced her as "Marxist-Stalinist-lentilist."
Another referred to her as a "hysterical woman" who
probably deserved whatever she got. Yet another said that she
wasn't really a political leader but only "an organic farmer
with an axe to grind about genetically engineered crops."
Other Green Party flacks were just glad that their faction of
the party wasn't on a no-fly list and they could continue to
rack up the frequent flier miles.
You'll recall that when a Boston cop
stopped Nader from attending the first debate between Bush and
Gore, his supporters rushed to denounce the breach of Nader's
constitutional rights. Anyone wanting further illumination about
the perils of political sectarianism should watch Python's Life
of Brian, for my money the greatest political movie ever made.
Whether or not Oden's name was in the computer list or whether
the National Guardsman was just being an asshole, you can be
sure she's on some sort of a list now.
Oden is not the only victim of paranoia
in these panicky times. As he related a couple of weeks ago on
this site, our friend Tariq Ali, the noted radical, was recently
hauled off by the polizei in Munich for the crime of having a
book by Marx in his suitcase as he was trying to board a plane
back to London. The fact that he is Pakistani by ethnic origin
probably didn't help. Tariq, whose historical novels are immensely
popular in Germany, reports that the guard searching his bags
became excited at a copy of the Times Literary Supplement, particularly
in the notes Tariq had scribbled in the margin. Then the guard
espied a slim vol, still in its cellophane, titled Karl Marx
on Suicide. That was it. Tariq was hauled off by the guard who
said complacently, "After September 11, you can't travel
with books like this." "In that case," Tariq snappily
replied, "You should stop publishing them or burn them in
full public view. " Finally Tariq pulled rank about his
friend the Mayor of Munich and was put back on his plane.
Further proof of the advantages of reading
Marx. If he'd been properly educated in the Classics, the guard
would have realised that no follower of Marx would believe in
the political efficacy of acts of terror. That was the province
of hateful anarchism, as promulgated by Marx's sworn foe, Bakunin.
We doubt Marx is on the Al-Qaeda reading lists.
That National
ID Card
The last time there was a big
push for a national ID card was back in Reagantime. The notion
was being batted around in one cabinet meeting and, as he later
related the episode, domestic policy advisor Martin Anderson
put up his hand and the Gipper benignly offered the floor. Anderson
said he had a better idea. "Why not just tattoo a number
on everyone's arm." That ended the debate for the timer
being, though like all such instruments of bureaucratic control,
the ID card has always been lurking in the wings awaiting fresh
opportunity, which of course it found with September 11.
Oracle's Larry Ellison has been pushing
the card, as have supposed civil libertarians like Alan Dershowitz,
friend of torture, whom we heard duking it out with Tim Lynch
of the Cato Institute on CNN the other day. Lynch made a principled
case against the idea of the ID card as an intolerable affront
to the Bill of Rights. If it comes to pass, the card probably
won't do much in the way of foiling terrorists, but it will become
a standard tool of law enforcement, like a driver's license,
only worse. These days you can have your driver's license yanked
without due process, for such offenses as showing up on the computer
as a deadbeat dad. No car or truck in many places in this country
means you can't work, unless you're prepared to get caught for
driving without a license and without insurance coverage, which
can get to be heavy.
So suppose, a couple of years down the
road, you show up at an airport without your ID card, you join
the line going through intensive search and interrogation. Or
you have your card, and maybe that misdemeanor conviction for
a demonstration twenty years early shows up, as well as all your
outstanding parking tickets and credit card bills. CP
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