ABC "Homeland Security" Series Propaganda for Xenophobic Policies

ABC announced a new TV series "Homeland Security USA", premiering Jan. 6, which is supposed to be a reality show that is produced with the Giant Helping Hand of Homeland Security, which certainly wants and needs lots of entertainment-style propaganda. According to this NYT article:

In an announcement Thursday, ABC said the production "has been given unprecedented access to the agencies," including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.

But this isn't about anti-terrorism efforts. This is about immigration.

The show will spotlight the work of border patrol officials who work on land, sea and air to keep the United States secure.

Secure from what, or whom?

Migrants, perhaps? Migrants from where, I wonder?

When news of the series emerged in May, the show was named "Border Security USA." Although the name has evolved, the show will still focus on the border patrol mission.

Although it's been compared to cable's "Ice Road Truckers" & "Deadliest Catch" as a sort of "spotlight this interesting job" thing, in reality it's propaganda for the most aggregious human-rights-violating branch of the Federal government. Sort of like Montsanto or Shell Oil saying: "we're people, too." That's always the PR plan of choice when polluting, human-rights-smashing, otherwise-slimy organizations want to "clean up" their "profile": just show the "human" side. Always, every company has "Real People" doing "positive" work for a "purpose".

The producers know what they're doing.

The executive producer, Arnold Shapiro, acknowledged at the time that the show was meant to portray Homeland Security in a good light.
"I love investigative journalism, but that's not what we're doing," he told The Reporter in May. "This show is heartening. It makes you feel good about these people who are doing their best to protect us."

And what could be wrong with that?

Well, it just happens that there are issues with what we are being "protected" against. Against migrants from Mexico? And what threats do they now pose? Are they "hurting" our economy? And if that's the reason, why don't we expel some of those nasty banks with their toxic assets that are doing much more to drag the economy into the tank?

Why don't some of these "people" try "doing their best" to get rid of the real threats to the United States? Like the law-breaking, torture-condoning, human-rights-degrading secret policies of the Cheney/Bush administration and their cronies. Like hiring a special prosecutor to make that administration, especially the Angler (Dick Cheney) face the consequences of their actions.

If the immigration "threats" were merely considered civil, then this would be a job-highlighting light-hearted adventure series. But when they are considered criminal, it makes this a propaganda series for the agency assigned the task of making migrant-type work as deadly, dangerous, and dead-end as humanly possible. Good luck, farms and factories, finding any employees with half the work ethic of most of your current, "threatening", but yet cooperative, Latino workers.

Btw, you're not gonna find anybody. Until then, though, this series needs to die a fast, scandalous death. First, Homeland Security is charged with too many contradicted tasks. Immigration should all be under one roof as it used to be, not the "enforcement arm" under the same wing as the anti-terror task forces and other 911-inspired bureaucracies-in-funding. Not to mention FEMA. Since when is disaster relief a "security issue". It implies the public itself poses some kind of threat. And if nature poses a threat, is the DHS then posed to "protect" us from "acts of God"? Why don't we put the heads of several religions in charge then, if that's the case? The whole organization is wrong-headed, and needs an overhaul.

In the face of these issues, not to mention the issues of excessive force and excessive punishment against migrants from Mexico in particular, this show is in really bad taste at best, and encourages more anti-migrant public sentiment on the other. All we need is more emotion to make a rational Immigration Bill all the more impossible to achieve.

All we need is more propaganda to vilify populations that already are practically under siege, right? Anyone who's sick of this, join this Facebook group and maybe we can show ABC there's more to entertainment than promoting borderphobia.

Am I Not Human? When Security Trumps Compassion

In considering human rights abuse for the "Am I Not Human?" campaign, instead of focusing on one group, I will explore a number of examples of a pattern that appears in such abuse, and one America, as well as other powerful nations, must come to grips with: the conflict between security and compassion, between looking at others outside one's "group" as fellow human beings, or as threats.

One of the most obvious cases where this conflict is played out is in the War on Terror. It's easy to simplify the War on Terror as a conflict between Good - us, people who believe and claim they love democracy and freedom - vs. Evil - them, people we claim hate democracy and freedom, aka, the "terrorists".

But if one examines this issue more closely, it's obvious that there's more to it than that. In my last post for this blog campaign, I examined the inhumane treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, and also by those countries who ignore the plight of the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. But many argue that the Palestinians support and foster terrorism, attacks on civilians by suicide bombers in peacetime situations, such as markets or theaters or, famously, the Olympics. The Israelis' treatment of Palestinians, they argue, is directly a consequence of those terrorist acts, which Israel must defend itself and its people against. It's a security issue. The apartheid wall, the collective punishment of entire families in Gaza for the acts of a few, the constant checkpoints, the deprivation of jobs, income, or basic food and other supplies, are all explained as necessary security measures.

The War on Terror was begun after 9/11 as a security measure. Suddenly we were attacked, unexpectedly, by Islamic terrorists, in the most horrific way. To defend ourselves and our country, Bush initiated a war against terror - with a huge backing of popular and congressional support. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the surveillance of all communications coming in & out of the country (as much as that is possible, and with certain perimeters), allowing the torture of terror suspects, the establishment of military tribunals and a detention center at Guantanamo Bay, detaining terror suspects indeterminately without legal recourse, extraordinary rendition, prison ships, the invasion of Afghanistan and ultimately the invasion of Iraq, Somalia and other lesser-known places - all these measures, now widely criticized as violating people's basic human rights, were enacted in the name of security.

Air strikes on targets that may include civilians - not just mistakes, but knowingly - are also allowed in the various battlefields in the war on terror. This is a deliberate calculation to gain the greater "good" - victory in war and then they hope enactment of "higher goals" such as democracy or access to oil - at the expense of the value of human life.

These air strikes have many strategic reasons - such as minimizing the risk to U.S. soldiers. That is all well and good. But it doesn't necessarily remove the "sin" of taking innocent lives. We're talking about children, women, families. These people did not ask the U.S. to invade. They do not understand exactly what's going on. And their support for the U.S. "mission" is shaken every time civilians are killed. Of course, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are killing civilians, too. Their concern for humanity, is touted as the reason for their war. They say the U.S. and Israel kill Muslim women and children, and so these extremist groups justify their attacks as a "defense" of "their people" against the American "aggressors". It's a matter, to them, of "security".

Saudi Arabia is extremely security-conscious. They are run by a sort of "benevolent" Mafia, the Saudi royal family, including thousands of princes, who get the lion's share of the country's substantion income from oil revenues. They use religion to maintain the loyalty of their citizen-subjects, and try to "modernize" their country in order to keep people happy and obedient. But women in Saudi Arabia, as showcased by the case of the girl from Qatif who was sentenced to whipping for being gang-raped, supposedly because she was with a man who was not her husband or brother. Only public outcry caused the King to ultimately pardon her, but without such publicity she would have had to endure punishment for being the victim of a heinous crime.

This is because in Saudi Arabia, women are still largely considered the "property" of their husbands or male relatives, and have few rights, not even the right to drive a car (unlike some other Muslim gulf states, for example). They are not allowed to appear in public except when covered completely from head to foot in black robes. Although many justify this as "Islamic", many more Muslims would disagree. There's nothing in and of itself wrong with head-covering - as long as it's voluntary. But morality-police enforce these laws, and women are severely restricted in their movements, ability to work or do much of anything outside the home, since they must always have a male relative escort. Many women in Saudi Arabia are huge Oprah Winfrey fans, as she discusses issues that women face in a compassionate way, helping some of these women deal with their lives and feel they have a purpose. Sometimes, under these conditions, women wonder if men believe they are in fact human.

Men in Saudi Arabia justify this attitude with what amounts to another security issue. They want to protect their privileged position in society and their ego-pumping "superiority" without the bother of "uppity" women, who pose a huge security risk for such men. Apparently the men do not think compassion for women involves consideration for their personal needs and pride, or just the ability to support themselves in the event their male relatives should die.

From Hitler's unspeakable atrocities which were justified by a need for security and "superiority", to slavery in the U.S., also justified by the need for "security" and prosperity in the agricultural South, to racist behavior around the world, often justified by the need to "protect" the supposedly "superior" group from some imagined destruction, invasion or "adulteration" by the "other", "inferior" groups, to the latest fear of "terrorists" which title is frequently applied to anyone Muslim... all these represent choices in favor of security and self-protection over compassion and consideration of the rights of others.

Even on a lesser scale, whenever security trumps consideration for the human element, oppression begins, and oppression is the greatest obstacle to true democracy and free society.

First, a free society cannot be created, maintained, inspired or made by force. That means war is out as a means of achieving it. Therefore, the War on Terror is doomed to failure, if its goal is making the world safe for democracy. War cannot make the world safe for anything except war.

Second, excessive infringement on human liberty cannot promote security, if it only acts on rigid, written laws and doesn't have the flexibility to act on the ground in a human way between human beings.

Here's an example of this in Dahr Jamail's lates article as he describes the situation he saw at an airport:

TSA is one of several security gifts from the Bush administration, or rather, from the twisted conjunction of corporate business and state power that oversees and safeguards our "freedom" and "democracy" through an elaborate system of control mechanisms.

Immediately in front of me, an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair was trying to reason with the security guard who was asking him to take off his sandals. "What do you want me to do? I didn't wear socks so you could see my feet since I'm unable to bend over and take off my sandals."

"Sir, you must comply with policy," the guard said in a raised voice, as three other TSA agents moved in behind him, arms folded ominously across their chests, and surrounded the elderly man in the wheelchair who requested their assistance, doing what he could to "comply." None of the guards stepped forward to take off his sandals for him in order to check his feet.

In exasperation he shouted, "I'm asking for help, and you won't do it, so what do you want me to do? What the Hell am I supposed to do? What are you afraid of? I'm an old man in a wheelchair! Are you afraid of my sandals?"

The guards would not allow him through the x-ray until he eventually lowered his voice. We must never upset the status quo, because that is an important pillar of a system that holds change in dread. Do not rock the boat, and don't you dare speak up, lest it indicate that something is wrong.

It requires no crystal ball to see that we are embedded in a system that has no qualms about harassing old men in wheelchairs or making pregnant women walk through x-ray machines. It is the same system that is killing scores of Iraqi and Afghan civilians daily, and killing the planet systemically. It is a system that requires us to be sleepwalkers, rather than alert and sensitive humans.

Sometimes the security-frenzy can taint people on the ground who act as vigilantes, as in this attack by Israeli settlers against Palestinians:

Last night 40 Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the long-suffering Palestinian city of Hebron, throwing rocks, smashing windows and slashing tires. One Palestinian resident reports:

“The stone-throwing tonight was not rioting, it was with intent to kill … Settlers threw stones at us from the fifth floor. I picked one up and it weighed at least a kilo…

“We’re eight families, 60 people in all, and we are constantly threatened … Yesterday huge stones just barely missed two of my cousins. If they had been hit they would have been killed.”

Why not turn to the IDF for protection?

“He claims his family had asked Border Guard officers to form a separation between them and the settlers, but that the latter had continued throwing stones indiscriminately at both parties.

Al-Jabri went on to say that after a settler had threatened to slaughter his entire family he complained to IDF soldiers, but they didn’t respond. “He took out his gun, put it to his mouth, and said, ‘Deir Yasin, Deir Yasin’, referring to the massacre in the village of Deir Yasin in 1948,” he said.

“I was shocked to hear a soldier tell me, ‘There’s nothing I can do, and there’s no use complaining, the settlers and we are one,” al-Jabri added.”

And, indeed, none of the pogromists have been arrested so far, despite many of them undoubtedly being repeated offenders.

In this latter case, the police (enforcers, protectors) and vigilantes unite against the "other" group, who have been branded as a threat, and hence, in security terms, fair game.

It's telling that Israel refuses to attend the U.N conference on racism, where they reasonably expect they would be castigated for their human rights violations against the Palestinians. But others make a valid point that this is not the only case of racism or denying human rights and should not somehow be showcased to the detriment of help for other oppressed people, such as those in, for example, Myanmar, or even North Korea, both of which nations seek a high degree of security and power concentrated in the hands of a very few.

It seems that militarism often clashes with compassion, and it is that very conflict which played out in the 2008 election, where Barack Obama's election signified to many a mandate for compassion instead of hyper-securityism or militarism that the GOP ended up signifying after the Bush administrations many misadventures. Let's hope this really does become Obama's legacy: the triumph of compassion over fear, which is the only true road to lasting security.

Undocumented Migrants Don't Evacuate Ike, Fear Ice Prisons

Even though there has been a declared "hurricane amnesty" for undocumented workers in Texas, even though the National Weather Service has issued a "certain death" evacuation order, many migrant workers are afraid to evacuate. ICE, the police arm of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), has been known to deport people even after Michael Chertoff assured people they wouldn't be picked up for evacuating. ICE, as migrants will tell you, has a will of its own, an agenda.

An agenda like all of the DHS, where humanitarian considerations often take last place to the heavy-handed mandate for Security, fanned by "patriotic"-labeled mania and panic. So what's happened to those people?

It's happened before. As reported on Democracy Now!:

"...earlier this summer, despite assurances to the contrary from Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, Border Patrol agents kept open checkpoints and apprehended a van of people trying to evacuate from Hurricane Dolly. Last month, many undocumented immigrants in New Orleans did not evacuate during Hurricane Gustav due to deportation concerns."

As one of the Immigration Rights demonstraters at the DNC in Denver said:

In May of this year, ICE went in and rounded up about 300 to 400 workers, and right now the town has become a virtual prison for the women and the children. They can’t leave, and they can’t work.

So the fear is more than just being deported, which is bad enough, but of having whole families imprisoned as they have done in Texas, or of otherwise having their families broken up or being deprived of freedom or means of making a living.

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed David Bacon, author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. When Goodman mentioned the largest immigrant raid in US history just before the Democratic National convention, in which hundreds of people were rounded up, this discussion ensued:

DAVID BACON: That’s right, in Laurel, Mississippi. And then, what got even less coverage was that they took 481 people, and they put them in a detention center in Jena, Louisiana and just sort of left them there— AMY GOODMAN: In Jena.
DAVID BACON: —for two weeks. In Jena, right.
AMY GOODMAN: The Jena Six.
DAVID BACON: Right. In fact, that detention center is probably the biggest single, you know, source of employment for people who live in Jena now. But the problem with those workers is that they were—you know, there was no habeas corpus, there was no bail. There weren’t even any charges against those people for two weeks. It’s kind of like creating, I think, a Guantanamo-style of justice or injustice that’s excused because it’s being directed—you know, ICE mentions the word “illegal,” and then all kinds of things become permissible that they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

Bacon later discusses the government's motivation behind these raids, which have created an atmosphere of fear in immigrant communities.

I think the government has an agenda here. In fact, it’s pretty open. Michael Chertoff keeps saying it over and over and over, and that is that he says we’re going to shut the back door and open the front door. And what that means is that ICE is trying to push for the establishment of new guest worker programs, so that people can come here as workers, but only as workers, without rights, without eventually getting political rights, without becoming citizens, certainly without voting, but whose labor is going to be used in the economy. And so, these raids are a way of terrorizing people and saying to people: don’t think that you’re going to be able to come to the United States; don’t think that you’re going to be able to work in any other way other than through these programs.

So it's about more than simply "protecting our borders" or even "protecting our culture". It's about bringing in people not as equals, not as immigrants, but as a "worker class" who cannot have and enjoy the same rights "the rest of us" do. It's not about documentation or even assimilation, but about keeping the slavery-level work force at the same cheap rates but without the legal hassles.

The comprehensive immigration bills that we saw in Congress in a lot of ways were labor supply bills. These were bills that were really intended to supply guest workers to industry and then an enforcement program to kind of drive workers into those programs.

So, the difference of opinion, I think in the Democratic Party, especially, is between people who sponsored those programs and other people like Sheila Jackson-Lee, the congresswoman from Houston, who said instead of having a guest worker program, what we need is people to be able to come here with green cards and with permanent residence visas.

And also, the thing I think that she said that was really a pioneering idea, and that was that we also need a jobs program. We need to couple immigration reform with jobs programs. So she said, let’s take the fees that people pay when they’re normalizing their status and use that to set up job creation and job training programs in communities with high unemployment, so that all communities can have some kind of benefit out of these bills. You know, these labor supply bills, comprehensive immigration reform bills, what they do is they pit communities against each other over jobs, over wages and so forth.

Bacon also takes this observation a step further - blaming it on international trade agreements that screw the people on the non-supply-side, the workers and farmers of the world.

NAFTA allowed big US grain companies to dump corn on the Mexican market, which essentially made it impossible for small Mexican farmers to sell their corn that they were growing for a price that would pay for the cost of growing it. So you can’t farm any longer. What do you do? You have to support your family some way. And so, people become part of this migrant stream coming to the United States.
And it’s not just the US. I mean, these structural adjustment programs, trade agreements, it’s happening all over the world. There are 200 million people in the world who are living outside the countries where they were born.

So, you know, Congress passes these agreements, which sort of push people into migration, and then immigration bills, which are essentially trying to ensure that their labor gets supplied to corporations at the lowest possible price and that people have the fewest possible rights.

Where will this end? It would help if people understood the issues better. But as we've seen with Sarah Palin, wisdom and understanding are often trumped by loud aggressive voices and sound-bites that feed into peoples' prejudices. Ultimately, though, what America stands for, or thinks/hopes it stands for - freedom and justice - requires replacing simplistic "patriotism" with higher values that include giving a damn about what happens to our species, our planet, and who, in fact, we are.

Woman Gives Birth Under Torture: Homeland Security Hell

Is Naomi Wolf's predicted "fascist shift" accelerating, using the anti-migrant controversy as another "facilitating issue"?

As The NYT reported Sunday, a simple traffic stop of Juana Villegas, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was nine months pregnant, turned into another case of Homeland Security Hell, of criminalizing poverty or the "crime" of not having "proper paperwork", in this case by torture.

But this was first reported at Political Salsa on June 13th by Tim Chavez, who heard her and described the torture, reminding him of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It seems the war supposedly started to combat terrorism has now come home to torment anyone without the right paperwork: without papers, they're demons...
But is this even more sinister??

And so that - or what? - justifies this:

* A woman, three days before delivery of her fourth AMERICAN child, was wrongly arrested and incarcerated.

* Her water broke while she was in jail; she was transported to Metro General Hospital.

* When the nurse asked her to undress to get into hospital clothes, the sheriff's guard was asked to leave for the moment. He -- yes, he -- refused. So she had to undress in front of him. I don't know about your culture, but in the Mexican culture and Mexican-American culture, that is a highly offensive affront to our women, no to mention our mothers.

* Then, while in labor, she was handcuffed by her wrist and ankle to the bed. I've seen women in labor, and they constantly are shifting positions to try and get some sense of relief, if that is even possible. Now consider the pain if handcuffs prevented your movement.

* Thankfully, the handcuffs were taken off two hours before she delivered. But then she was restrained again in bed a day later. And every trip to the bathroom required leg shackles. When the nurse strongly objected, the sherrif's department stayed absolute. The nurse said the new mother would not be able to clean herself properly with shackles. The sheriff's guard said it didn't matter; he was doing his job.

Didn't we hear that excuse before at Nuremberg? Never forget; we still hardly remember. Our Jewish brothers and sisters deserve better from us.

* It also didn't matter if the baby received the critical mother's milk in its first days of life. The child was removed from its mother, and Ms. DeLaPaz was returned to jail.

* The final injury inflicted upon this CIVIL/MISDEMEANOR offender was the denial of her use of a breast pump to express her milk for the baby and her own comfort. The nurse again strongly objected, but the sheriff's department again played law enforcer, physician and God.

* Ms. DeLaPaz returned to her jail cell in great pain from her swollen breasts. She could not sleep due to the agony.

* Meanwhile, her infant son was taken to a pediatrican. There he was tested and found to have a blood level containing a high measurement of a dangerous chemical that produces jaundice, a yellowing of the skin. My father had jaundice before he died of cancer, so the condition denotes the medical seriousness of the moment.

The child's condition was due to a lack of mother's milk.

When the government can keep a mother from her newborn infant and prevent the baby from being breastfed because of some law, the law itself creates a crime. When being or appearing to be Hispanic leads to criminal investigation after a traffic stop, something is racist and wrong. When xenophobia creates anti-migration laws so draconian they criminalize what was once a civil matter, we end up with Homeland Security Hell.

"Illegal immigration" is violation of paperwork, not an act against another person. It was always civil, until manic Republicans criminalized it. And so human beings are fodder for someone's paranoid insanity-created law. The law itself becomes a source for inhumanity and crime.

Welcome to Homeland Security Hell.

The NYT sees it as a problem created locally by cooperation between local and federal authorities, and didn't specifically call it "torture":

Mrs. Villegas’s arrest has focused new attention on a cooperation agreement signed in April 2007 between federal immigration authorities and Davidson County, which shares a consolidated government with Nashville, that gave immigration enforcement powers to county officers. It is one of 57 agreements, known formally as 287G, that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has signed in the last two years with county and local police departments across the country under a rapidly expanding program.

“Had it not been for the 287G program, she would not have been taken down to jail,” said A. Gregory Ramos, a lawyer who is a former president of the Nashville Bar Association. “It was sold as something to make the community safer by taking dangerous criminals off the streets. But it has been operated so broadly that we are getting pregnant women arrested for simple driving offenses, and we’re not getting rid of the robbers and gang members.”

But in fact it goes much deeper. ICE is the enforcement arm of the DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security). Under the anti-terrorist federal overhaul and the creation of the DHS, there is a mandate to "bring people in" in order to stay funded. This started with Gitmo and renditions and has, as Naomi Wolf predicted, come home to a town hear you. It's the ideology where We Americans are the Good Guys that need to Lock Up the Other Non-Americans, the Bad Guys. It starts with terror suspects, expands into immigrants, and catches stray "liberals" and other "dangerous" types. Soon, as Tim Chavez pointed out,

But beware, if your wife unknowingly is driving through a part of Berry Hill. And with her dark hair and new tan she got at Destin, she may look Hispanic from a distance.

Just pray that she isn't pregnant and about to deliver. Don't let her drive in Nashville after the fifth month of pregnancy just to be on the safe side. For sure, keep her out of south Nashville and ultimately out of the hands of Sheriff Daron Hall's department.

Viewed in light of Naomi Wolf's "Fascist America in Ten Easy Steps", the incident is even more ominous. Carolyn Baker, in her review of Wolf's book The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot discusses this aspect of the overall change in law enforcement techniques, which seems not to be limited to only "287G", as the NYT would like us to believe:

Some of my students who are criminal justice majors tell me that the latest strategies now being taught to police officers are "shock doctrine" techniques which terrorize and intimidate civilians in order to control them. Law enforcement officers are no longer encouraged to "keep a cool head" but to "follow their own instincts" (which usually means their own internal, adrenaline-charged state of terror) and react with full force because it's easier to apologize (or encounter a lawsuit) than to ask permission or risk being killed. Terrified people should not be wearing a badge and carrying a gun, and when they are, a fully terrorized society is guaranteed.

It could be ... Los Angeles? New Jersey? Miami? Omaha? Why not? Every town now has a Joint Terrorist Task Force and an ICE team, looking for some suspects to round up. The rules that apply here are "protect Us." And "lock up Them."

And who are "them"?
Them "R" Us.