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August 03, 2003

"No Fly" List Targets Peaceful Protesters

Okay, this is fascism.

Not the late stages but the early stages, where if it's not stopped, it grows into a cancer.

It turns out the Bush administration used the "no fly" lists to target antiwar protesters, as this report notes:

After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports.

The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.

The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is that the second list has been used to target political activists who challenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning two anti-war activists from San Francisco who were stopped and briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they were on an FBI no-fly list.

The activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, work for a small pacifist magazine called War Times and say they have never been arrested, let alone have criminal records.

I reprint this at length both because of its criminal nature by the Bush administration and because I knew Jan and Rebecca well when I lived in the Bay Area. I suppose I'll be picked up on a "material witness" bond for knowing them soon. And hey, you folks reading this-- You could be next-- the Patriot Act does allow them to check out your reading and Internet habits.

Update: For an illustration of why big business supported the rise of fascism in both Italy and Germany, here's an illustrative post from Baylonian Musings- "those of us in Business Class want to be sure that none of the riffraff back in steerage/Economy Class disturbs our flight."

Luckily, most of the "riffraff" isn't buying Bush's Big Lies and are looking to boot him next year. Yes, Bush will be looking for his Reichstag fire to justify further repression, but hopefully his lies will prevent him being able to pull it off.

Posted by Nathan at August 3, 2003 11:04 PM

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