Can somebody explain to us why this is legal? US citizens, who have not been charged with any crime, are denied entry into the US. Why should submitting to an FBI interrogation abroad be a prerequisite for being allowed back into their own country? If the US has evidence they forfeited their citizenship by taking military training at a camp in Pakistan, then they can, conceivably, be legally barred. But lacking such evidence, this is just arbitrary abuse of power. Where is the outrcy over this? From the San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 26:

This is how censorship works in the USA: by other names—which, of course, makes it more insidious. An ACLU press release, Aug. 24:

Village Cannot Impose Prohibitive Insurance Requirement as Condition of Free Speech, NYCLU Warns
NEW YORK -- The New York Civil Liberties Union today urged the village of Bellport to drop an arbitrary and unconstitutional requirement that any group wishing to march on the street must purchase $2 million in insurance and indemnify Bellport from liability as a condition of receiving a permit.

The ongoing indigenous uprising in Ontario perculates up into the New York Times, Aug. 17. The Times gets a B for at least including some historical context, but a failing grade for consistency, having largely ignored this crisis for months, and finally slapping it in their "Journal" slot, for off-beat "local color" stories. They could have got an A for historical context if they were more accurate—the Six Nations (also known as the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Confederacy) were officially neutral in the American Revolution, and the campaign of ethnic cleansing that George Washington ordered against them (led by Gen. John Sullivan) was in response to guerilla activity by the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant and his band of partisans—not the Confederacy as a whole. The Times also fails to inform readers that the British had effectively won Indian sympathies by promising to halt settler colonization west of the Appalachians—as we have noted.

A Class Analysis

by George Caffentzis, Metamute

And my coyote, Virgil, said to him when he refused to take me, a living man, over the Acheron to Hell, "Charon, do not be angry, but this undocumented passage has been decided upon in the place where what is wanted always happens. So don't ask any more questions."

—Dante, Inferno, Canto III, lines 94-96.

Introduction: Invisible to Visible

There were more demonstrations in more places with greater participation between March 24 and May Day 2006 than any other six-week period in US history. For a number of days marches of more than half a million people overwhelmed the centers of major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Dallas, halting business, while there were literally hundreds of smaller gatherings in cities like Charlotte, North Carolina; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Salem, Oregon; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Along with the public outpouring of bodies, there were dozens of student walk-outs in high schools around the country as well as a nation-wide immigrants' "general strike" called for May Day that was heeded by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of workers, including truck drivers who shut down the Port of Los Angeles (one of the main supply links in the commodity trade with China, South Korea, and Japan). The demonstrators' demands were amnesty for all undocumented immigrants and the defeat of pending draconian anti-immigrant legislation. In the process, they intermittently stopped or stalled the cycle of production, circulation and reproduction in the US for this six-week period. The slogan of these remarkable demos, whose size consistently surprised both their organizers and the authorities, became "Si Se Puede" ["Yes It Is Possible" in Spanish], implying their awareness of a new political power in the Americas.

The standards for what constitutes a terrorist conspiracy continue to get radically dumbed down. Most Americans don't seem to care, as those targeted invariably belong to some fringe and seemingly extremist sect. In this case, it appears to be an offshoot of Moorish Science, an indigenous American tradition held to be utterly heretical by ultra-orthodox Sunnis of the al-Qaeda variety. However, this has not stopped the mainstream media from (inaccurately) portraying the suspects as linked to al-Qaeda. The June 22 arrest of seven men in Miami's Liberty City district came in a raid by some 20 FBI agents in full-on paramilitary gear. Yet authorities immediately admitted the so-called "conspiracy" seems to be little more than a bunch of bad-ass braggadocio. OK, maybe these guys wanted to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower. But, as we have asked before, is wanting to a crime? As in recent "terrorism" busts in the United Kingdom, federal authorities are rushing to embrace the Orwellian concept of thoughtcrime. Some relevant excerpts from the June 24 Miami Herald coverage (emphasis and interjected comments added):

Our occasional contributor Michael I. Niman writes for his June 15 "Getting a Grip" column in ArtVoice, the alternative weekly in Buffalo, NY:

Anti-Casino or Anti-Indian?

Those of us in Western New York who oppose war need to start paying attention to our own backyard. where community activists and developers are fanning the flames in the US and Canada's ceaselessly rekindling war against the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Six Nations) Confederacy. Flareups are now occurring throughout Haudenosaunee territory. In the north, armed Ontario government forces are engaged in a standoff with residents and supporters of the Six Nations Grand River Reserve on contested land where a local developer is attempting to build a subdivision in the municipality of Caledonia. The three-month-old standoff is moving toward a violent climax as Ontario officials, responding to complaints from non-native residents, are threatening force to remove native protestors.

On June 1, after six months in detention--with much of that time spent in solitary confinement--Seattle Muslim leader Abrahim Sheikh Mohamed gave up his legal battle against deportation. Mohamed was arrested Nov. 14 on immigration violations at Sea-Tac Airport, where he'd just arrived on a domestic flight. For five years before his arrest, Mohamed led prayers as imam of the Abu-Bakr mosque in Rainier Valley, and he is well-respected in the local Somali community. Although he has not been charged with any terrorism-related crimes, FBI agents and other witnesses--including a local restaurant owner--testified at Mohamed's bond hearing last February that the imam had ties to terrorism and was raising money for al-Itihaad a-Islamiya, an alleged Somali terrorist group. More than 200 people rallied in support of Mohamed outside the bond hearing. Immigration Judge Victoria Young concluded that Mohamed was a threat to national security and denied bond.

First from CBS, June 13, via Chiapas95:

LOS ANGELES Dozens of people have been arrested for allegedly violating a court order and obstructing sheriff's deputies from evicting farmers and supporters from a 14-acre urban garden near downtown Los Angeles.