And yes, there are a whole lot more than five, but here are five recent examples that prove our dystopic future is actually our dystopic present.
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FBI refuses to discuss detention of American Iranian TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi
CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG JANUARY 17, 2019 MARZIEH HASHEMI, MATERIAL WITNESS, PRESS TV
American citizen Marzieh Hashemi is a news anchor for Iran’s Press TV. She has been jailed by the U.S. while on a visit to her family. (Photo from CNN)
The US has jailed prominent Press TV journalist Marzieh Hashemi, an American citizen, apparently as a “material witness”– ‘a charge authorities use when they need a reason to arrest somebody but don’t have one.’ She was visiting family & filming a documentary on Black Lives Matter when she was detained at the St. Louis airport, handcuffed and shackled.
By Alison Weir
The U.S. Justice Department and FBI continue to refuse to comment on the jailing of Marzieh Hashemi, documentarian and news anchor of Iran’s English language station Press TV.
The 59-year-old Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin in New Orleans, is an American citizen. She was in the U.S. filming a documentary on Black Lives Matter and visiting family when the FBI suddenly arrested her.
Hashemi is being held in Washington DC’s Correctional Treatment Facility. According to a Department of Corrections worker she is in court now, but phone calls to DC district courts failed to find her. (information on this will be updated as it becomes available.)
Hashemi was held 48 hours before being allowed to contact her family. She has complained of ill treatment. Authorities forcibly removed her head scarf and took her away in handcuffs.
Her son says he was told that she is being held as a “material witness.”
AP reports that the constitutionality of the material witness law has “never been meaningfully tested,” according to Ricardo J. Bascuas, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law. Bascuas says the government uses it “when they need a reason to arrest somebody but they don’t have one.”
Family in U.S.
Her son, a research fellow at the University of Colorado, told the Associated Press the family has “no idea what’s going on.” He says his mother, a widow, had not been contacted by the FBI before she was detained and would “absolutely” have been willing to cooperate with authorities.
He told AP that his mother lives in Iran and comes back to the U.S. about once a year to see her family, usually working on a documentary as well.
A widow, Hashemi has three children and several grandchildren living in Colorado. Hashemi was arrested in St. Louis, after visiting relatives in the New Orleans area, and was next going to Denver to visit a sick brother.
Hashemi’s brother, Milton Leroy Franklin of a New Orleans suburb, told AP that she had visited to help plan a family reunion. “We all got together, a small celebration, and prepared for the next time she would come,” Franklin said.
Hashemi’s son said his mother “is harassed regularly. Every time she travels using air travel, she is pulled to the side. Each time it’s an hour-long, even two-hour-long interview, interrogation. This has been going on for almost a decade now.”
He said his mother told him she was driving to New Orleans despite a snowstorm in Colorado “just because of the difficulty in air travel.”
The family is trying to hire an attorney, but her son says they’ve had difficulty because she has not been charged with a crime.
Basis of arrest
A U.S. official has said that Hashemi is being detained to use as a bargaining chip to pressure Iran to release Americans it is holding on espionage charges.
CBS reports that some Americans arrested by Iran have similarly “previously been used as bargaining chips” in negotiations with the U.S. Iranians have been suffering from crippling economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. in 2012.
Some U.S. analysts say that arresting an individual to pressure a foreign government can be problematic. Former CIA officer and counter-terrorism expert Philip Giraldi says holding someone “as a hostage under false or dubious legal pretenses is not only ineffective, it will inevitably lead to retaliation in kind when Americans travel to foreign countries.”
According to CBS, “Federal law allows judges to order witnesses to be arrested and detained if the government can prove their testimony has extraordinary value for a criminal case and that they would be a flight risk and unlikely to respond to a subpoena. The statute generally requires those witnesses to be promptly released once they are deposed, however.”
It is unknown what judge ordered the arrest and on what alleged evidence.
Objections
The U.S. arrest of a respected senior journalist, and the abusive treatment she describes, has caused outrage among many Iranians. Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB held a news conference saying: “We will not spare any legal action” to help her. Press TV aired file footage of her anchoring news programs.
Acccording to a Press TV report, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says that because Hashemi’s late husband was Iranian, she is an Iranian citizen. This gives Iran the right to look after her interests.
Zarif said that she is wrongfully imprisoned and that her arrest is a “clear affront to freedom of expression” and “political abuse of an innocent individual.”
Some Americans have also objected. Laura Petter of Human Rights Watch tweeted: “Material witness statue? Smells of retaliation and harkens back to post 9/11 days when the US grossly abused this statute. US needs to explain now grounds for holding Hashemi and provide process immediately.”
Sarah Leah Whitson, another HRW director, tweeted: “Disturbing allegations about US arrest of #Iran TV journalist Marzieh Hashemi, dubious grounds of detention as “material witness” – urgently need clarity from US government”
Journalist Jarrett Hill tweeted: “I wanna know more about why this Black female journalist has been arrested by the US. Marzieh Hashemi – American born, Muslim television anchor in Iran – was allegedly arrested in St. Louis and taken to DC; only offered pork to eat, stripped of her hijab and photographed. Why?”
UPDATE: Incarceration violates Constitution
In an interview with Press TV, law professor Ricardo J. Bascuas explains that if Hashem is being incarcerated as a “material witness,” the government’s action would appear to be illegal.
Bascuas says that “the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution plainly makes it unconstitutional to detain any witness because, by definition, there is never ‘probable cause’ to believe a witness committed a crime.”
In addition, he said, the Fourth Amendment forbids “unreasonable seizures.”
Bascuas explained: “An unreasonable seizure is one that is irrational or arbitrary — i.e., based on hunches or gut feelings rather than facts. By definition, there is never good cause to believe a witness probably committed a crime. So, the Fourth Amendment plainly forbids arresting a witness.”
Bascuas said “when federal authorities arrest a material witness despite the Fourth Amendment, they are making up the rules as they go… Only the government knows whether a material witness is also a target, a suspect, a person of interest, or just someone they can’t rule out as one of those things.”
He said that the word “material” cannot be precisely defined, giving the government a free hand to arrest just anyone “especially when the ‘proceeding’ is an investigation that only the government knows the contours of.”
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Marzieh Hashemi released!
CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG JANUARY 23, 2019 MARZIEH HASHEMI
Marzieh Hashemi, an American journalist who has been in federal custody for 10 days, has just been released.
Hashemi, a prominent news anchor for Iran’s Press TV, was being held in a prison facility in Washington DC as a “material witness.”
Her incarceration and treatment have elicited objections from both within the U.S. and abroad.
The legality of incarcerating a witness who has not been accused of any criminal activity has been questioned by some law experts who say its violates the Fourth Amendment.
Her family just issued the following statement:
“Marzieh Hashemi has been released from her detention without charge and is
with her family in Washington DC.
“Marzieh and her family will not allow this to be swept under the carpet. They still have serious grievances and want answers as to how this was allowed to happen.
“They want assurances that this won’t happen to any Muslim – or any other
person – ever again.
“Just as America is aware of the harassment of the Black community by the police, America needs to start talking about the harassment of the Muslim community by the FBI.
“Marzieh Hashemi will be remaining in Washington DC for the protest on Friday and calls for all cities across the world to keep their protest.
This was never just about Marzieh Hashemi. This is about the fact that anyone of us, Muslim or non Muslim can be imprisoned without charge in the United States.
“Marzieh will be making comment in due course.”
UPDATE:
CNN has now also reported on this: Iranian Journalist Marzieh Hashemi has been released from US custody
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The three I’s of a police state education: Indoctrination, Intimidation & Intolerance
John & Nisha Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Tue, 02 Aug 2022 11:33 UTC – SOTT net
“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.” — Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes
This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.
Instead of making the schools safer, government officials are making them more authoritarian.
Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.
And instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.
From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:
- draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
- overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
- school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
- standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
- politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
- and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.
Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, the schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.
Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.
Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.
Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.
Look-alike weapons (toy guns — even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water, in some cases getting them expelled from school or charged with a crime.
Not even good deeds go unpunished.
One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.
Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.
Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting.
Indeed, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”
Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.
In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”
Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.
On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”
In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids — some as young as 4 and 5 years old — for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.
Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.
Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.
This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.
Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.
For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).
Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.
These police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.
The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.
So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now — the children growing up in these quasi-prisons — but for the future of this country?
How do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials — all before he reaches the age of adulthood — that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?
Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when, for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?
As we’ve seen with other issues, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.
For starters, parents need to be vocal, visible and organized and demand that school officials 1) adopt a policy of positive reinforcement in dealing with behavior issues; 2) minimize the presence in the schools of police officers and cease involving them in student discipline; and 3) insist that all behavioral issues be addressed first and foremost with a child’s parents, before any other disciplinary tactics are attempted.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.
BIG BROTHER in the 21. Century 