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	Workers Vanguard No. 961	2 July 2010

As Obama Ramps Up Attacks on Civil Liberties

Supreme Court Decision Shreds First Amendment Rights

On June 21, the U.S. Supreme Court shredder took another big chunk out of the Bill of Rights. In a 6-3 decision, the high court of U.S. capitalism upheld the prohibition on “material support to terrorism” in a case brought by the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), civil rights activist Ralph Fertig and other groups and individuals. The plaintiffs had wanted to advise the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on how to appeal to the United Nations in regard to their struggles against the genocidal wars waged by the U.S.-supported Sri Lankan and Turkish governments against the oppressed Kurdish and Tamil national minorities. They also sought to engage in political advocacy on behalf of Tamils and Kurds and train LTTE members in appealing for tsunami-related relief. In Orwellian “War is peace” fashion, the Court deemed such activity “material support to terrorism.”

There should be no misunderstanding of the danger the Court decision represents for any who seek to engage in political dissent, social protest or advocacy of the rights of the oppressed anywhere. By the Court’s light, any activity that is considered as giving legitimacy to “terrorists”
—from giving money to Muslim charities to interviewing a guerrilla fighter for the press—would be deemed “material support.” Engaging in such standard liberal fare as appealing to the imperialists’ UN could have gotten the plaintiffs 15 years in prison.

The Supreme Court decision caps a case brought by the HLP 12 years ago. Seeking to avoid prosecution and imprisonment, the HLP had sought a court declaration that their projected activities would not run afoul of the Clinton administration’s 1996 “anti-terror” law, whose wording was so vague that just about anything could be construed as “material support.” The 1996 measure’s reach was extended when the Bush administration’s USA Patriot Act was rushed into law, with overwhelming Democratic support, after the September 11 terror attacks. The “war on terror” declared by Bush, and continued with a vengeance by the Obama White House, has meant imperialist carnage abroad and a move toward unfettered power by the executive branch, relying on a compliant judiciary. As we warned in Workers Vanguard No. 770 (7 December 2001):

“The purpose of the new measures is to revive and deepen the broad-ranging repression and intimidation that marked the Cold War McCarthyite witchhunt of 50 years ago. The aim today as then is to coerce the entire population into ideological conformity, with the government wielding the spectre of seemingly pervasive ‘Islamic terrorism’ as a surrogate for Communism.”

The Court’s decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, affirmed that once the government alleges “terrorism,” it can violate any Constitutional right in the interest of “national security.” As for the claim that the “material support” proscription violated the HLP’s First Amendment right of speech, Roberts ludicrously “explained” that they could say whatever they want on behalf of a group designated terrorist—just not to a member of the group or in consultation with any of them! Regarding the right of association, Roberts declared that the law does not bar someone from joining such a group—you just can’t discuss anything with a fellow member!

Roberts did not deem it worth mentioning that exercising the right of association by joining a group on the Feds’ “terrorist” list carries with it the “right” to be targeted for assassination by the government. Earlier this year, the Obama administration took the unprecedented step of adding a U.S. citizen to the government’s official assassination targets: Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to be an Al Qaeda operative hiding in Yemen. Months before this was made official policy, on 28 October 2009 the FBI carried out the execution-style killing of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, leader of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, described as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group” (See “Feds’ Detroit ‘Terror’ Kill,” WV No. 954, 12 March).

The Court’s ruling constitutes an ominous attack on the civil liberties of us all. It bolsters the repressive powers the capitalist state employs against perceived opponents of racist capitalist rule. We pointed out shortly after the September 11 attacks that the “anti-terror” measures would be used against labor, blacks and immigrants on issues far removed from the pretext for which they were adopted. We cited as precedents the “anti-fascist” 1940 Smith Act, which was first used to imprison Trotskyists and, later, leaders of the Communist Party, and the 1980s RICO “anti-racketeering” laws, which supposedly targeted “organized crime” but were largely used to break strikes and exert government control over unions like the Teamsters.

For the U.S. imperialists—the most dangerous terrorists on the planet—the self-serving designation of “foreign terrorist organization” is elastic and constantly shifting. Although the Islamic reactionaries of Al Qaeda and the Taliban are today at the top of the U.S. hit list, when these forces were throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the U.S. government hailed them as “freedom fighters” against the Soviet Union, whose intervention in that country was unambiguously progressive. The U.S. gave the mujahedin cutthroats billions in aid to kill Red Army soldiers. Washington’s terrorist designation has included the Irish Republican Army and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress during the reign of apartheid in South Africa. Among the “fugitives” on the government’s “domestic terrorist” list today are former Black Panther Assata Shakur, who after surviving a cop assassination attempt escaped prison and found refuge in Cuba, as well as Puerto Rican nationalists and even radical environmentalists.

The Supreme Court ruling is a major triumph for President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, who as solicitor general argued the administration’s case. Kagan, who staunchly advocates expanding the power of the imperial presidency, asserted that an attorney filing a legal brief on behalf of an organization designated “terrorist” would be guilty of providing “material support to terrorism.” This is precisely the fate of leftist attorney Lynne Stewart who, along with her legal assistant Ahmed Abdel Sattar and translator Mohamed Yousry, was convicted of frame-up charges of support to terrorism for her determined legal representation of blind Egyptian sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. At stake in this case is the very right to legal representation.

Obama’s Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Eric Holder, is seeking to increase the 70-year-old Stewart’s sentence to 30 years—i.e., a death sentence. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 15. Free Stewart, Abdel Sattar and Yousry now!

The Court’s ruling hands a powerful weapon to Obama, which, like many others bequeathed by his predecessors Clinton and Bush, he has shown every inclination to use—and then some. Although Obama had always made clear his dedication to carry on the “war on terrorism,” bourgeois liberals and reformist “socialists” fed illusions that his administration would curb the “extremes” of the Bush administration. Many of those who regularly protested against Bush and Cheney barely utter a peep as Obama escalates the attack on our rights. Nearly 200 detainees remain at the torture camp in Guantánamo, with many more imprisoned by the U.S. in even more hellish conditions at the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan. We demand: Free all the detainees now!

The White House has made it clear that it is not about to shut down Guantánamo. It is also expanding government efforts to thwart exposure of the crimes of U.S. imperialism. The Justice Department has invoked “state secrets” to shield the government from lawsuits by America’s torture victims and has greatly stepped up prosecutions for leaks to the press. Among those recently arrested is Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst suspected of passing a video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter firing on Iraqi civilians in 2007 to the Web site Wikileaks.org.

In addition to expanding the hated “no-fly” list, this February Obama signed into law yet another extension of the USA Patriot Act with its provisions of indefinite detention, expansion of secret FBI searches of homes and offices, elimination of formal restrictions on CIA domestic spying, wiretapping and Internet surveillance. Last month, Holder announced plans to seek legislation curtailing the Miranda rights of American citizens held by the cops as “terrorist suspects,” a clear threat to further undermine the right to legal counsel.

As the chief executive of the bourgeois state, Obama’s job is to prosecute U.S. imperialism’s wars and to manage and bolster the repressive apparatus it employs to exercise control of the population at home. Consisting at its core of the cops, military, courts and prisons, the capitalist state is an instrument of organized violence to defend the bourgeoisie’s class rule and profits. The capitalist state cannot be pressured to serve the interests of the exploited workers and oppressed masses but must be shattered through a proletarian revolution that establishes a workers government based on a socialized, planned economy.

The Spartacist League fights to build a workers party that acts as a tribune of the people. In fighting every injustice and every manifestation of social oppression, such a party would, as Lenin’s Bolsheviks did, make the working class conscious of its historic task of bringing down the whole system of exploitation, poverty and war that is capitalism. Join us in this fight!