--- Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2003 12:37:55 -0400 Subject: please consider running this column From: Peggy Miller <pmiller@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> By Peggy Miller Cabinet news reporter pmiller@private If anyone can get this to run in other papers .. please do so. I really believe that Austin is being persecuted because of his politics. (Not exactly a novel thought .. but it still continues to amaze me.) Thanks. Peggy Miller Sherman Austin, 20, is a protestor. It is those protests that may have landed him in prison. The public reason for his imprisonment on Sept. 3, 2003, without access to anyone but lawyers and family, in seclusion under lockdown, is because he was operating a free hosting Web site that had a link to someone elseıs Web site, which had its own link to information on bomb making. It is actually possible that Sherman Austin is in prison because he is currently publicly denouncing specific illegal U.S. activities that supported a military takeover in Chile in September, 1973, on his web site, Raisethefist.com. Others who have been so vocal on this specific military event say they have been persecuted by U.S. investigatory authorities in the past. Austin may be another victim of overzealous authorities wanting to quash public outcry on this and other atrocities they have been involved with in the past. Otherwise, this legal action makes no sense. The law stated that such bombmaking material cannot be distributed for violent purposes. Those fighting for Austinıs freedom, leading educators, lawyers, and writers around the country, point out that there are books on the web, including Amazon.com, that can be purchased on bomb making, and countless links to bomb making information by those clearly intent on violence, who are not being persecuted. Whereas it is unclear is Austin even knew that the bomb making link was even connected to his host website. Austinıs supporters say that Austin is the chosen target of the Justice Department because he is an African American with no financial resources. They say a psychologist, hired by the U.S. Justice system to evaluate him, said he is a gentle individual who poses no threat to anyone. His supporters believe that one reason the actual author of the Web link to bomb making information is not being prosecuted is because that person comes from a conservative, white family of means. Possibly, but it does not seem plausible that Austinıs indirect link to bomb making information was even the real reason for his imprisonment. That military takeover in Chile led to the death of thousands and thousands of innocent people. Other U.S. citizens who have researched and written about such events in the past have been persecuted and physically harmed by U.S. justice authorities and had to flea the country they have said. Why not Sherman Austin? Austin bluntly states on his website that he believes it is those activities, and other wartime activities that he feels were needless, and their resulting deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of children according to Austin, that may have brought about the Sept. 11, 2001 bombing of the New York City Twin Towers. He believes there is a link between the Sept. 11, 1973, U.S. supported takeover in Santiago, Chile, that included the use of airplane bombers, and the Sept. 11, 2001 bombing of the twin towers. It is possible that Austin is right. Whether it was directly the cause or not, the U.S. was covertly involved in that hostile take over of the Chilean government, and those who attempted to investigate it at the time, were physically harassed by FBI agents and they did flea to Mexico. U.S. companies and the CIA were concerned that Salvador Allende, the President of Chile at the time, who was using eminent domain authority to jerk land back from U.S. companies, including Anaconda copper and J.P. Getty, would result in large economic losses. The AFL-CIO was concerned that Allende was eliminating capitalism and shifting the country to socialism. They were opposed to that. Allende said he was hoping to give the land back to the Chilean farmers, believing in the need to try and reinstate small business capitalism for his country. Whether he handled this maneuvering properly is another issue, but a number of U.S. company heads met with U.S. officials to discuss and coordinate activities that would result in the takeover of the government. The resulting deaths in Chile were not a stated goal, but they were a result. That and other such international activities must have engendered hatred and the desire for retaliation among the friends and families of the victims. Just as it did with this country when our Twin Towers were bombed. Austin has been willing to speak up against such activities and it is possible that his very honesty is what has landed him in prison. Even U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, author of the law that requires the Justice Department to aggressively pursue those who write and publish bomb making information, is wondering why the Justice Department is not going after those who are intent on violent use of home made bombs in this country. Unrestricted bomb making is not an activity that should be allowed, for any purposes. But it is possible that the tendency for human beings to mimic behaviors seen on the part of their own leadership could be involved here. When the Chilean coup led to the rule by the then military commander Pinochet, causing mass torture and killings of Chilean and American citizens who happened to be in the country at the time, the United States formally chose to do nothing to help those people who were being slaughtered. Other countries did help, including Britain, Sweden, Norway, and France, working endless, long hours to get as many out of a stadium in Santiago where close to 100,000 had been enclosed and were being mass executed, and out of Chile as quickly as possible. A few U.S. Congressmen at the time, including George E. Brown, Jr. of California, did work to get people out of Chile who were facing death, but otherwise the U.S. was formally silent. This country, like others, has done things that are wrong, sometimes very wrong. We are not alone. Powerful governments throughout history have abused that power. But we wonder why so many our own citizens are actively speaking out against the decision of this countryıs leaders, when we as a government cannot own up to our own atrocities committed in many parts of the world, nor question our own polices more stringently. Many are calling Austin an anarchist. But when has the willingness to call into question very questionable behaviors of our own government been a sign of anarchy? Often such willingness to stand up and question acts of atrocity or of our own administrationıs avoidance of the laws of this country is one of the more courageous demonstrations that a citizen of this country can offer. History has shown that usually such citizens believe most deeply in the rights of this country and the values of a democracy that allows a government to be run by its citizenry. And it is that very belief that engenders the desire to speak out when wrongs have occurred. The right to criticize, the right to speak out and say that something is wrong, continues to be the main tool by which we all can defend this countryıs system of democracy and our basic rights. I have to wonder if it is not that very heroism on Sherman Austinıs part, his willingness to speak out boldly, and somewhat rashly -- but what 20 year old is not rash? -- on U.S. behaviors he finds wrong, is not the real reason that Sherman Austin is in prison today. We need to stop unrestricted citizen bomb making and others acts of terrorism. But it is possible that a more useful method of ending such acts is to change our governmentıs intense misuse of military power for economic gain. How else can we ask our own citizens to curb their tendencies for violence? _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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