THUG AMERICA

YASIR AFIFI is a twenty year old student, and an citizen of the United States. His father happens to be Egyptian. He found a tracking device on his car. The FBI admitted that it "belonged" to them. They wanted it back. And the FBI thug who was speaking to him allegedly said, "We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate."

A perverse United States judge says secret electronic surveillance of United States citizens is legal. But no judge can make what the FBI thug said other than criminal.

"We're going to make this much more difficult for you IF you don't cooperate": that statement is an overt threat of violence. It is attempted extortion.

An FBI thug ought to go to jail. His superiors who ordered the spying should be charged too, but the perverse judge has at least temporarily made that impossible.
Spying on citizens is legal, he says. But he hasn't made extortion or attempted extortion legal.

Is the United States a "police state"? Have we taken over from the old Soviet Union?

Since when is it a crime in the United States for a citizen to be an Arab, or a Muslim? Racial discrimination has been illegal since 1964: which means that cops can't harass or arrest black people because they are black or white people because they are white, or Jews because they are Jews, or Muslims because they are Muslims. Or Arabs or Arab-Americans because they are Arabs or Arab-Americans.

The United States has become a Discrimi-Nation again. It is sad, shameful, oppressive, threatening, frightening. And we are all scared to say anything. It seems that even our president is afraid to say anything: even though all United States citizens are his people: black people (African, African-American, etc.), white people (Indo-Europeans--both Caucasian and those from northern India--, Arabs, Berbers), yellow people(Chinese, Japanese, South-East Asian, Mongol, Eskimo), red people (native North and South Americans), Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindua, atheists of any color or race or tribe or origin.

Even women, left-handed people, albinos, the physically handicapped, old people, young people, mentally handicapped people, homosexuals, long-haired people, and people who don't belong to the NRA: all of us citizens are fully-entitled and should be fully-protected under law and by our president. By our congress, too, and by our courts. Even by law enforcement agencies, and rogue organisations like the FBI, CIA, and NSA.

What went wrong? How did we become a police state without a dictator? How did the rule of law disappear? George I. Q. 0. Bush suspended (illegally) the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus, and president Obama has not undone that arrogance of power. And it has long been true that, at lower levels, the United States is a police state.

Are you afraid of policemen and sheriffs? Yes: because SOME of them are bad, evil. Do you contribute to your local law enforcement officers' "benevolent fund"? The officer who calls says that if you donate money, you will get a decal for your car that will identify you as a "friend"--and you know what that means. Do you report that criminally extortionist call to your local district attorney? Of course not.

We have known for years that the CIA and NSA commit murder all around the world--"to preserve American liberty." And none of us ever object. None of us ever say that the United States should not murder.

Right now we have a twenty-one year soldier in solitary confinement for exposing military crimes. He has been in solitary confinement for nearly five months, while our corrupt system of justice tries to find out what crime they can charge him with. Awkwardly, both United States civil law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice make concealing knowledge of felony offenses itself a felony. Thus Bradley Manning is not a criminal; he exposed criminal acts.

We run a concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. We have been holding men prisoner there, some of them for nine years, but none of them have been charged with a crime. Guantanamo is the crime. We are the criminals. But none of us says anything.

And most likely we will say nothing about what happened to twenty year old United States citizen Yasir Afifi. We will just hope that it doesn't happen to us: which means that we--all of us, me included--are moral cowards.

Morality has nothing to do with sin, or sex. "Moral" is a word for how we live together. And when we don't live together, when each of us hides and avoids social responsibility--our responsibility to each other--then we are immoral.

Unless we defend Yasir Afifi--and Bradley Manning, and the people in our illegal camp at Guantanamo Bay, and the people somewhere in this world that the CIA or the NSA will murder tonight or tomorrow--: unless we defend them, we are immoral.

Bert Hornback