CONSPIRACY CENTRAL
by Jim
Redden (an Exotic Online xtra)
FOREIGN POLICY POLITICS
America has a new foreign policy. As demonstrated in Bosnia
and Kosovo, the Clinton Doctrine suggests that America should
send military forces anywhere that people are oppressed
because of their ethnic or religious backgrounds. But if
that’s the case, why aren’t American troops being
dispatched to two African countries where far more people
have been “ethnically cleansed” than in the Balkans?
These countries are Sudan and Sierra Leone. According to
recent news reports, nearly two million people have been
killed and at least four million have been displaced during
the 16-year-old civil war that is currently raging in Sudan.
Hospitals, schools and other civilian targets are being
bombed on a daily basis. Meanwhile, in Sierra Leone, more
than 50,000 persons have been killed and one million displaced
over the past eight years. According to Human Rights Watch,
rebel forces systematically murdered, mutilated, and raped
civilians during their January offensive. Entire families
were gunned down in the street, children and adults had
their limbs hacked off with machetes, and girls and young
women were taken to rebel bases and sexually abused. So
far Clinton hasn’t made an issue of the slaughter in
either country.
YOU’RE BEING WATCHED
According to the Irish Times, U.S. and
European governments have reached an agreement to help each
other spy on their citizens. The scheme, called Enfopol,
is currently being considered by the European Union. It
would allow law enforcement officials to eavesdrop on Internet,
fax and mobile phone conversations and will force the communications
providers to foot the bill. Writes the Times: "What
concerns [European Parliament members] is that there is
no clear definition of what constitutes a serious crime,
and that law enforcement officials do not have to obtain
a court order before an interception ... Enfopol will enable
police to track and record email and mobile phone calls
across international boundaries through real-time remote
access points or backdoors. For instance, Internet service
providers must provide police forces with access to their
computer systems so that they can track email traffic. The
agreement also includes a memorandum of understanding between
Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.
So law enforcement officials from any of these states can
eavesdrop on each other's citizens."
WATCH OUT FOR MARTIAL LAW
In what appears to be a carefully-orchestrated
move, the Pentagon is using President Bill Clinton’s
numerous warnings about domestic terrorism to fundamentally
change the role of the U.S. military. Federal law prohibits
military troops from domestic law enforcement operations,
unless the President formally declares martial law. The
Posse Comitatus Act, passed after the Civil War to reign
in the military, bars federal troops from doing police work
within the United States. But now the Pentagon has asked
Clinton to appoint a military leader for the continental
United States. The Pentagon says the appointment is necessary
to respond to the threat of major terrorist strikes on American
soil. The request was made in late January, shortly after
Clinton delivered a series of warnings about domestic terrorism,
including a passage of his State of the Union address. On
January 21, Clinton said it was “highly likely”
that a terrorist group will launch or threaten a germ or
biological attack somewhere in America in the next few years.
The New York Times reported the Pentagon’s request
one week later. White House officials characterize the request
as a minor adjustment of the lines of military authority
and organization. But civil libertarians say such military
power could threaten the privacy and liberty of private
citizens. “The danger is in the inevitable expansion
of that authority so the military gets involved in things
like arresting people and investigating crimes,” said
Gregory Nojeim, legislative counsel for the American Civil
Liberties Union. “It’s hard to believe that a
soldier with a suspect in the sights of his M-1 tank is
well positioned to protect that person’s civil liberties.”
The White House says Clinton has the power to approve the
request without seeking Congressional approval.
DRUG WAR DISASTER
The American Bar Association says the government’s
War on Drugs is a failure. According to a February study
conducted by the ABA, more people are being arrested on
drug charges and sentenced to longer jail terms than ever
before. Among other things, the study found that 1.2 million
people were arrested on drug charges in 1997, a 73 percent
increase over the number of people arrested in 1992. Despite
that, the study says, illegal drug use increased 7 percent
from 1996 to 1997. Myrna Raeder, chairwoman of the ABA’s
Criminal Justice Section, says the statistics suggest the
policy of arrest and incarceration “does not work.”
Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project
in Washington, DC, agrees. He says drug crimes, more than
most other offenses, “are much less affected by tough
sentencing policies.”
MEXICAN PRIORITIES
The Mexican economy is in turmoil, with millions
of people unemployed and daily protests in the capital city.
Despite that the Mexican government recently committed to
spending $400 million to $500 million over the next few
years to fight drugs. The money will go to buy a wide range
of military and law enforcement equipment, including planes,
helicopters, high-speed navy patrol boats, satellite surveillance
systems, radar systems, and hydraulic X-ray devices that
can detect drugs or weapons in any vehicle. The United States
government pressured the Mexican government into developing
and adopting the spending plan. It was announced just weeks
before the March 1 deadline when President Clinton informed
Congress whether Mexico and 27 other countries have fully
cooperated in the War on Drugs. Failing the certification
scorecard could result in financial and other penalties.
Borrowing a phrase from Nazi Germany, Mexican Interior Secretary
Francisco Labastida Ochoa declared “total war against
drug trafficking” on February 4. “This is the
most ambitious anti-drug effort that has ever been undertaken
by our country.”
BIG BROTHER ALERT
Richard Clarke may be the most powerful person
in the Clinton Administration you’ve never heard of.
Clarke is the White House terrorism czar, charged with coordinating
the federal government’s response to all forms of domestic
and international terrorism — ranging from bombings
to anthrax attacks to cyber-sabotoge. Working out of Oliver
North’s old office at the National Security Council,
Clarke has written at least four classified Presidential
directives on terrorism. They helped create the $11 billion-a-year
operation he is now overseeing. In addition, Clarke has
a reserved seat when Cabinet members meet in the White House
on National Security issues, next to Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright and Secretary of Defense William Cohen.
He pushed for the decision to fire cruise missiles at Afghanistan
and Sudan in August, and he is currently coordinating efforts
to capture suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Clarke
is also trying to rally public support for military attacks
on computer hackers. “An attack on American cyber-space
is an attack on the United States, just as much as landing
on New Jersey,” he told New York Times. “I’m
talking about shutting down a city’s electricity, shutting
down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and transportation
systems. You black out a city, people die. Black out lots
of cities, lots of people die. It’s as bad as being
attacked by bombs. The notion that we could respond with
military force against a cyber-attack has to be accepted.”
CRIME (LAW) WAVE
Congress is passing so many new criminal laws
that even the American Bar Association is worried about
the growing power of the federal government. In mid-February
1999, an ABA task force chaired by former attorney general
Edwin Meese III said Congress is sometimes pushed to pass
"misguided, unnecessary and harmful" anti-crime
laws out of fear of being considered soft on crime if it
fails to act. The "Federalization of Criminal Law"
report mirrors criticism raised by Chief Justice William
H. Rehnquist in his year-end report on the federal judiciary
in December. Rehnquist blamed the trend on pressure in Congress
"to appear responsive to every highly publicized societal
ill or sensational crime." The report states: "Enactment
of each new Federal crime bestows new Federal investigative
powers on Federal agencies, broadening their power to intrude
into individual lives. Expansion of federal jurisdiction
also creates the opportunity for greater collection and
maintenance of data at the Federal level in an era when
various databases are computerized and linked." The
panel notes with alarm that more than 40 percent of all
federal criminal laws enacted since the Civil War have been
passed since 1970. Federal criminal justice expenditures
grew by 317 percent from 1982 to 1993, compared to a 163
percent increase on the state level. The number of Federal
prosecutors increased from 3,000 to 8,000 over the past
30 years. And, of 59,242 Federal charges filed against individuals
in 1997, over 25 percent were for a single offense —
drug trafficking. Several new federal laws, "championed
by many because they would have a claimed impact on crime,
have hardly been used at all," the task force found.
It cited laws dealing with drive-by shootings, interstate
domestic violence, failure to report child abuse and murder
by escaped prisoners. "There is no persuasive evidence
that federalization of local crime makes the streets safer
for American citizens," the report concludes.
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