American Policy Center » 2004 » October
- No Fly Lists, Illegal Aliens and the Ravages of Political Correctness
- Foreign Election Monitors Driven by Leftist Political Agenda
October 18, 2004
By Tom DeWeese
Americans should not feel too secure with the U.S. government’s anti-terror policies because the targeted ones aren’t necessarily the terrorists. The government’s policies are based on the idea that it’s easier to put a net over an entire nation of law-abiding citizens than to take appropriate actions to catch the bad guys.
Maryland Special Education teacher Kathryn Harrington was flying home from vacation a few weeks ago when Tampa, Florida, airport security confiscated her bookmark as a potential weapon. It was an 8.5 inch leather strip with small lead weights at each end. Police said it resembled a weighted weapon that could be used to knock people unconscious. So the 52-year-old teacher was handcuffed, put into a police car, and charged with carrying a concealed weapon. Though later released, she could have faced a possible criminal trial and a $10,000 fine.
The government’s no-fly list is the latest scheme to abuse trusting Americans. A growing number of news reports are detailing the absurd extremes government is willing to put U.S. citizens through in the name of fighting terrorism. Senator Ted Kennedy and singer Cat Stevens aside, there are more than 300,000 names on the no-fly list. Yet, according to comments by some members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, incredibly, the no-fly list doesn’t contain the names of ALL terrorists, just the names of those known to be threats to aviation. If you’re a truck-bomber, apparently your name’s not on the list.
If you are unfortunate enough to have one of those names similar to the few terrorist names that are actually on the no-fly list, then your travel plans become a nightmare of government agents, security guards, and strip searches. Meanwhile, the actual terrorists change their names, use false ID, and walk past you and your tormentors to board the plane.
The government has chosen to target you rather than focus on the bad guys, because using effective police methods isn’t politically correct. Some pressure group might get upset. It’s much less painful for the government to focus on helpless individuals who have no voice. In fact, the government wants to deliberately show force to you in order to convince Americans that it is working to protect you. And so we live in a world of the absurd.
For example, The Wall Street Journal reports that the federal Department of Transportation actually fines airlines who search more than two Arab travelers per flight. That would be profiling and profiling is wrong, says the policy. Yet every single one of the 9-11 hijackers was a male of Middle Eastern descent. Any good police detective knows that to catch a criminal you first must look at those who match the description. Airlines are not allowed to do that. The strict politically correct policy is to ignore the facts and randomly select by computer a certain few passengers to be searched each flight. That way it’s all fair!
The abuse of law-abiding American citizens doesn’t end with no-fly lists. There are now black lists in force for almost every one of our daily transactions. If you buy a car, go to a real estate closing, buy insurance or acquire credit, you will have to first pass through a terrorist name check. A 19-year-old in Kansas had to wait to buy a car because somehow his identity information got linked to that of an al Qaeda terrorist. A Connecticut couple’s house closing was delayed because the husband’s surname matched a name on the list. In both cases innocent Americans, not terrorists, were trapped by government black lists.
The situation will continue to get worse because government is threatening businesses with fines for not complying. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has compiled the main black list containing the names of thousands of individuals and businesses. The list now must be checked by businesses before certain transactions can be completed. The mandates for which transactions must be checked are so broad that businesses are deciding to err on the side of caution, choosing to check nearly every transaction. If the trend continues, it’s not too far fetched to suggest that, eventually, even buying lunch at Macdonald’s could be delayed while the black list is consulted.
Meanwhile, as Americans are subjected to such misdirected policy, the southern border of the nation is wide open. 4,000 illegal immigrants per day walk into the nation. An entire industry operates along the border to bring them in. There are safe houses, camps and transportation systems designed to help them disappear into the countryside. As TIME magazine reports, for the illegals, there are “no searches for weapons. No shoe removal. No photo-ID checks.” Such searches are reserved for legal Americans trying to travel around their own country. And these aren’t just illegals from Mexico. TIME reports that as many as 190,000 are from other countries, including the Middle East.
The man in charge of securing the border from such an invasion, Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, admits that no law-enforcement officials are looking for the vast majority of the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens thought to be in the country. Hutchinson told The Washington Times, “I don’t think America has the will (to expel them)”, adding, “I think we have too much compassion to tell our law-enforcement people to go out there and uproot those 8 million here.” Apparently Hutchinson has less compassion for legal American citizens who have to deal with their impact on our quality of life and national security. Hutchinson really means politicians don’t have the will to enforce our laws, especially in an election year.
It is politically correct to express compassion for the plight of those who steal into the country under cover of night. It is politically correct to be sensitive to the feelings of those of Middle Eastern decent. It is politically correct to impose black lists, national ID cards, searches of private property without warrants and strip search little old ladies under the excuse of fighting terrorism. But it is NOT politically correct to say these things are a danger to our liberties. Do you feel safer yet?
October 3, 2004
By Tom DeWeese
The U.S. State Department cracked open the door and now the invasion has begun. Foreign election monitors determined to oversee the U.S. election this November seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Even Jimmy Carter has gotten into the act. The bottom line is that the November election is being set up to humiliate the United States and place in doubt the legitimacy of our government.
Those calling for the election monitors, like Democrat California Representative Barbara Lee, argue that the move is necessary in order to “make certain that every person’s voice is heard, every person’s vote is counted.” Eddie Bernice Johnson, the Texas Democrat who is the leader of the thirteen members of Congress who originally started the process by writing to UN. Secretary General Kofi Annan, says “The presence of monitors will assure Americans that America cares about their standing in the world.”
The constant blather about “transparent and fair elections” and the “democratic process” is simply a smokescreen to hide the real purpose of the monitors. They are coming here to impose a political agenda. Virtually everyone involved in the election-monitoring scheme is a radically-active leftist committed to a political agenda that calls for the destruction of national sovereignty by replacing it with global governance. To implement such an agenda in the United States requires a breakdown in the trust of our national and state government institutions. That’s the true mission of the monitors. Consequently, the November election will resemble nothing ever before seen at the polls by Americans.
Consider the players in this game. Secretary of State Colin Powell legitimized the presence of foreign election monitors by inviting the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). A spokesman for the OSCE said the group’s purpose in the election is to “apply political pressure.” That group, headquartered in Vienna, Austria, is led by one of the most corrupt politicians in the United States.
Alcee Hastings, the new president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, will be the man who actually appoints and assigns the group’s election monitors. Hastings was a federal judge who was caught in an FBI sting in the 1980’s for trying to take a $150,000 bribe. He was impeached by a Democrat-controlled Congress that voted 413-3 to oust him. The vote proves there were a lot of Democrats and a lot of fellow blacks who knew just how corrupt Hastings was. This year alone, Hastings is being investigated by both the federal and Florida state elections commissions. Bribery, kickbacks and intimidation are just a few of the tools Hastings uses to control his political fiefdom.
Part of Hastings’ fiefdom is Broward County, Florida, one of the disputed areas in the 2000 election. Though the monitor proponents want to blame Governor Jeb Bush for election problems, it can be confidently speculated that Alcee Hastings had much more to do with choosing some of the corrupt election officials in that county than did the Governor. Hastings has clearly stated that he believes George W. Bush intends to steal the election. Clearly the OSCE is biased with a mission.
Next into the game is a group called Global Exchange. This far left group, headquartered in San Francisco, bills itself as “an international human rights organization dedicated to promoting environmental, political and social justice.” For the record, the term “social justice” was invented by Karl Marx. Global Exchange promotes the radical Sustainable Development agenda of top-down government control over local representation. Its web site supports and praises Fidel Castro as a great humanitarian. Global Exchange hates free enterprise, private property, and cars. It is the poster child for the “think globally — act locally” crowd who were demonstrating outside the Republican national convention in New York City this past August. It should be noted that Global Exchange calls itself a non-governmental organization (NGO). Only the United Nations officially sanctions NGO’s. More importantly, Global Exchange is a private organization with absolutely no standing to bring election observers into this nation.
Yet on September 13th, Global Exchange announced that it had already brought a team of international election monitors into the country. The 20-person “pre-electoral fact-finding team” split into five groups and headed to key battleground states to conduct “investigations” in Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Missouri and Ohio. The teams met with state and local elected officials, held town meetings, talked with community organizations and observed voter registration drives. Another team is scheduled to fan out across the nation in time for Election Day.
One of the leaders of the Global Exchange delegation is Dr. Brigalia Bam, Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa. Unlike the United States, South Africa is considered an emerging, but not stable, governmental system and has held only two successful national elections since 1994. Yet, Dr. Bam promotes herself as an election expert, saying, “Through sharing with Americans the democratic innovations and advances occurring around the world, we hope to bring to light the best practices that may benefit the U.S. political system.” Dr. Bam’s “light” is globalism and “social democracy,” now practiced in much of the European Union and South Africa. Its other name is Socialism.
Other members of the Global Exchange team are from India, Guatemala, the European Union, Canada, Mexico, and a variety of Third World countries and UN international organizations.
Global Exchange said in its September 13th news release that its monitoring team is “non-partisan,” and that they just want to “boost voter confidence.” Such lofty goals don’t coincide with the rhetoric from Global Exchange’s founder, Medea Benjamin. She is currently on a speaking tour of key battleground states with Daniel Ellsberg, an anti-war activist and the man who stole top secret documents from the Pentagon in the 1970’s and released them to the media. Standing on a platform with Ellsberg at an appearance at Lane Community College in Oregon, Benjamin said the possible reelection of President Bush would lead to an escalation of the war in Iraq and an increase of anti-American sentiment throughout the world. She went on to appeal to the crowd to vote for John Kerry.
One final note to confirm the bias and leftist ties of Global Exchange; the group’s news releases are distributed by a public relations firm call Riptide Communications. Riptide’s website describes the mission of the company as one which “provides high quality press and public relations to groups and individuals committed to progressive social change.” Some of the causes and individuals Riptide has represented over the years include anti-war radical actress Susan Sarandon; a campaign to exonerate Alger Hiss of spying for the Soviet Union; attacks on the American tobacco industry; and a wide range of the usual America bashing.
Now, right on cue, former President Jimmy Carter has stepped into the election observation game, claiming that voting arrangements in Florida do not meet “basic international requirements.” For two decades Jimmy Carter has fancied himself as some kind of expert on election observation. In fact, his many intrusions into the elections of sovereign nations have helped to make the practice acceptable. The fact is Jimmy Carter goes into those nations with his own agenda.
That agenda is clearly revealed in his comment about “international requirements.” As a former president, Carter should know that the United States is a sovereign nation that elects its own observers through local and state elections. Unlike most tinhorn dictatorships found around the world, our Republic insures that the American people are in control of their own election process, thus guaranteeing them the power to replace corrupt officials. The only place that process fails to work is in areas where government has gotten too much power and allows a demagogue like Alcee Hastings to control the process. Carter should also know that there are no “international requirements” for elections except in his personal demented vision of a world controlled by an international self-appointed elite. It should be obvious to anyone that Carter, a Democrat, has a bias against George Bush and his comments are designed to add legitimacy to the invading international monitors.
In a final point to complete the circle, the Democrat National Committee has deployed up to 25,000 lawyers to run a “voter protection program.” In other words, the Democrats intend to file a massive amount of lawsuits if things don’t go their way.
Foreign election monitors are pouring into our nation for one purpose; to enforce a political agenda that will affect the outcome of the election. There is nothing open, fair or non-partisan about it. The game plan is simple. The monitors will challenge poll results, the Democrats will file suit and the media will deem the election void. U.S. prestige as the shining beacon of freedom will be tarnished and our ability to govern our own elections, as we’ve done successfully for over 200 years, may be permanently lost. Americans must understand now that their very liberty is at stake. None of these monitors have official standing to do anything in this nation. None should be allowed anywhere near polling places. None should be allowed to see official election documents and any local or stand election official who meets, deals or offers services to the monitors should be thrown out of office. America’s election process does not belong to the international community – yet.
