Monthly Archives: March 2021

Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old NSA whistleblower who leaked a byzantine collection of classified documents, insists that the US government is building an architecture of oppression. While it has not yet become a reality, the capabilities of the security state are astounding, as Snowden notes.

Similar rhetoric has been recently used by Brian Jenkins, a man at the other end of the spectrum. A counter-terrorism expert and high-level consultant, Jenkins helped create the first database of international terrorists in 1971. In an interview with Slate, Jenkins remarked: "What we have put in place is the foundation for a very oppressive state."

Both of these characterizations of the sprawling national security apparatus acknowledge that the tools are in place, as Jenkins puts it, but the oppressive state is not yet fully formed. However, the two men indicate that a capricious turnkey response to a crisis, or the contrasting policies of a newly elected leader, for example, could easily undermine basic democratic freedoms and create a tyrannical regime.

Here are five ways that an "architecture of oppression" has already grown publicly and been normalized since September 11, 2001.

1. The Patriot Act

The big daddy of reactionary power grabs, the Patriot Act was put before Congress on a rare fast-track by Attorney General John Ashcroft just nine days after September 11. It was passed in a whirlwind of jingoistic fervor with only two hearings in the House and none by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) was the only senator who voted against it.

The Patriot Act made a variety of significant changes to law. It defined or redefined terrorism, domestic terrorism, cyberterrorism, and established or modified existing laws that indict those crimes. The powers of the US Attorney General and the Secret Service were expanded to eliminate barriers to investigating terrorism. Surveillance abilities were enhanced including weakening restrictions on wiretapping and other stored communications like voicemail. The power of the Treasury Department to regulate financial transactions and importantly foreign corporate or personal transactions was also broadened in an effort to crack down on financing terrorism.

It is the jewel in the crown of state repression, and has been used to criminalize an entire generation of political dissidents, whether they be environmental activists who were rebranded eco-terrorists, hacktivists who became cyberterrorists, or international solidarity activists who were accused of material support for terrorism.

2011 saw numerous reports that the government had used the Patriot Act in 1,618 drug cases, and only 15 terrorism cases. It has long been known as the Kitchen Sink approach to National Security but the governments abuse of the intentions of these provisions is astounding.

The Patriot Act is central to understanding how the NSA is conducting its dragnet surveillance. Critics have pointed out that PRISM, one of the secret programs exposed in Snowdens leaks, allows the US government to collect and store metadata directly from the servers of companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. It is clear that communications with individuals outside of the US are subject to this collection process, along with more conventional data gathering, like the filtering and collecting of data running across fiber-optic cables. However, the extent to which this affects the Internet communication of all US citizens is unclear.

The program has been enabled by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA. A legal framework for surveillance, FISA was inspired by the findings of the Church Committee in order to give Congressional and Judicial oversight to domestic surveillance programs. It was a reform brought about after the nefarious disclosure that President Nixon had been spying on political organizations and activists in violation of the 4th Amendments requirement of probable cause. But in 2001 FISA was expanded by the Patriot Act under the Bush administration and renewed again by the Obama administration in December 2012 with bipartisan support.

A contentious clause and one at the heart of the NSA surveillance scandal, Section 215 of the Patriot Act modifies FISA to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies unfettered access to business records which the Patriot Act defines as any tangible thing. This generous wording leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It is the governments legal justification for collecting cell phone records from Verizon and, given the pliability of the phrase, may be applicable to the PRISM program as well.

The Patriot Act also lowers the threshold for the approval of surveillance requests by a secret court created by FISA. More than 20,000 applications for data have come before the court since 2001, and only 11 have been denied. It appear that this judicial oversight amounts to little more than a formality and does not serve as a serious check on the power of law enforcement.

2. Killing US Citizens and the Use of Drones

There is no legal framework for the targeted assassination of US citizens without due process. In an address last month, Obama acknowledged for the first time what the world has known to be true thanks to courageous reporting: that in the span of one month, three American citizens were killed by drone strikes in Yemen in 2011. One of those killed, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was just 16 years old.

In a court filing earlier this month, a lawyer for the Justice Department, Paul E. Werner, argued that despite not being approved by the judge, the killings were legal because the President and the Attorney General said they were legal. The Attorney Generals statement last month that the use of remotely piloted aircraft and the targeting of Anwar Al-Aulaqi were subject to 'exceptionally rigorous interagency legal review' and determined to be lawful -- along with the Presidents statement that those actions were legal -- only support the conclusion that those actions were lawful, and certainly were not clearly established to be unconstitutional in 2011.

The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights recently issued a joint response to the governments admission to the killings. The government continues to insist that the courts have no role in evaluating the legality of its actions. But the executive branch cannot simply declare the killings lawful and attempt to close the book on that basis. A federal judge, not executive officials examining their own conduct, must determine the constitutionality of the government's actions.

It appears that President Obama and Attorney General Holder have no intention of backing down from the precedent set by the killing of US citizens. President Obama has said that drone strikes responsible for killing civilians will haunt us as long we live, but nevertheless indicated that the program would go on. According to the New America Foundation, since the drone program began in 2004, more than 550 civilians have been killed.

3. Cracking Down on Activists

Activism used to be the way people voiced their grievances to elected officials and the powerful, but recent government crackdowns on peaceful protest have demonstrated that in this country, now more than ever, dissent is being criminalized.

Take the case of an 82-year-old nun and two peace activists in Tennessee. In June 2012, early in the morning, the three Catholic protesters gained access to a nuclear power plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They cut through several layers of fencing, unopposed by security personnel. Once inside the fence, they unfurled banners, spray painted anti-nuclear slogans and prayed together. They were soon arrested, and their civil disobedience was complete. Fast-forward to a year later. The seemingly innocuous protest has been deemed by Federal Prosecutors an act of sabotage against the US government. The three were convicted of a number of weighty felonies and currently await their sentencing in September.

In Oregon, frustrated lawmakers have resorted to calling some peaceful environmental activists terrorists. Thanks to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in 2004, this is nothing new. But what is new is trying to slander a peaceful civil disobedience tactic -- tree-sitting -- with the language of terrorism. Will Potter explains: On April 29, two bills passed the Oregon House that would hit tree sitters and non-violent protesters with felonies and mandatory minimum sentences. A representative in the Oregon House, Wayne Krieger, has led the charge against environmental terrorists and says "there's been a 30-year reign of terror by these people having no respect for the rights of others."

Lets not forget about the widespread surveillance of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activists that has recently come to light. Documents released by the FBI in December 2012 reveal that the the law enforcement agency investigated OWS as domestic terrorists. Furthermore, a report released in May 2012 by the Center for Media and Democracy sifted through thousands of pages of redacted government documents and made a number of startling findings. Fusion centers funded by the Department of Homeland Security, which pool intelligence information between federal and state law enforcement, dedicated vast resources, innumerable hours, and taxpayer funds to monitor OWS. The CMD report also details the FBIs use of a secret program called Operation Tripwire which was initially developed to catch domestic terrorists using informants from the private security sector.

Then there is Jeremy Hammond. The hacktivist pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the hack of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, in December 2011. Thousands of private emails were released through WikiLeaks, revealing the extent of the involvement of private security firms in matters of US national security and counterterrorism. Hammond took responsibility for this and some eight other hacks of defense contractors/law enforcement websites. He said he was also relieved, after being in jail for more than a year without being convicted of a crime, to say that he worked with Anonymous.

Hammond, like Snowden, was troubled by the undemocratic nature of the intelligence world, specifically the way the US government embraces outsourcing to private security firms, which as early as 2006 were said to do 70% of US intelligence work. These for-profit corporations have no public or government accountability for their actions, and are often involved in illegal behavior, which the Stratfor hack proved.

In a statement released after his plea, Hammond, like Snowden, invoked his moral imperative to act: I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right.

4. Prosecuting Whistleblowers

The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other previous administration combined. Since 2009, Obamas Department of Justice has used the Espionage Act, an archaic law drafted during World War I, to prosecute six whistleblowers: Thomas Drake, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, John Kiriakou, Shamai K. Leibowitz, Jeffrey Sterling and Pfc. Bradley Manning.

The Espionage Act itself is an enigma. It was written by Woodrow Wilsons administration for the purposes of combating a hostile climate both at home and abroad. By most accounts, it merely reiterated many of the laws against espionage that were already on the books. But a more explicit clue to its purpose comes from then Attorney General Thomas Gregory who called the act and the 1918 Sedition Act amendment warfare by propaganda.

"While we are fighting to establish the democracy of the world, we ought not to do the thing that will establish autocracy in America." These words could easily describe our present moment, but they were uttered by Illinois representative Martin Madden at the time of the Espionage Acts passing.

The most egregious prosecution of a whistleblower has been the trial of Bradley Manning. Manning, who leaked thousands of documents to WikiLeaks during the Iraq war, has pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him, which could land him in prison for more than two decades. However, the government is pressing on, prosecuting him for, among other things, espionage and aiding the enemy, a charge which insists that the information Manning leaked had the expressed intent of aiding Al Qaeda operatives.

Aside from Mannings case, the other prosecutions under the Obama administration reflect a serious desire for the administration to maintain secrecy. In fact, four of the prosecutions are for leaking information--in the case of Thomas Drake declassified information--to journalists for stories on domestic, not international, affairs.

But none of this has deterred the most recent round of leaks by Edward Snowden. In fact, those prosecutions might have inspired the leaks.

In an interview with the Guardian, Snowden was asked if the treatment of other whistleblowers had influenced his decisions and actions to come forward. He responded: [NSA whistleblower William] Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers.

5. Prosecuting and Spying on Journalists

Therevelation that the US government obtained phone records of Associated Press (AP) reporters and editors in a probe that took place over a two-month period came as a shock to many. But in the wake of the NSA surveillance scandal, it is now unclear whether this behavior is extraordinary. It fits in with what the NSA leak exposed; it was indicative of the nonchalance of the US government with regard to dragnet surveillance of US citizens, whether they are press or not.

Less than a month ago, the APs president sent a letter to Attorney General Holder expressing his outrage and rebuking the Department of Justice: We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with APs constitutional rights to gather and report the news. While we evaluate our options we urgently request that you immediately return to the AP the telephone toll records that the Department subpoenaed and destroy all copies. A variety of different organizations and periodicals decried the action, from the ACLU to the New York Times. The consensus seemed to be that it was an unacceptable form of intimidation, and everyone was quite shocked.

Revelations about Fox News journalist James Rosen followed the AP story. Rosen was accused of being an aider and abettor and/or a co-conspirator by an FBI agent in connection with a story that he published in 2009, allegedly based on information from a leak. The government obtained a search warrant to access Rosens emails in order to track down the source of the leak. Attorney General Holder later indicated that there would be no prosecution of Rosen. Instead, the Justice Department would focus on those responsible for leaking information, not those disseminating it.

Yet immediately after Glenn Greenwald broke the story of the NSA leaks, the drums in Washington began beating again, seeking his prosecution. Peter King (R.- N.Y.) led the charge, appearing on Fox News and claiming that Greenwald was holding CIA information that he would disclose publicly. Greenwald has denied this allegation, and pointed to Kings hypocritical involvement with the IRA, long considered a terrorist organization by the US government. On Twitter, Greenwald wrote: Only In America can a renowned and devoted terrorism supporter like Peter King be the arbiter of national security and treason.

The first periodical to cast light on his possible prosecution was the New York Times, which published a profile on Greenwald on June 6. The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers, the Times reported, referring to Greenwalds pieces. Later on, the authors write: He said that he had been advised by lawyer friends that he should be worried, but he had decided that what I am doing is exactly what the Constitution is about and I am not worried about it.

Despite Attorney General Holders comments, the matter of prosecuting journalists publishing leaked material seems anything but resolved. Independent journalist John Knefel, who is currently reporting from Guantanamo Bay, told AlterNet: The harder it is for journalists to do their job, the easier it is for the government to operate in secrecy.

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There is a deeply disturbing pattern of escalating infringements on civil liberties that has been normalized, beginning with the Patriot Act and extending to drone warfare, activism, and the surveillance and prosecution of members of the press.

Many politicians would have you believe that this is a fair tradeoff for liberty. But Americans are beginning to see the architecture of oppression swelling around them.

This is the moment when it looks like the United States will finally have a conversation about what the post-9/11 world should look like and re-problematize some of the more troubling conclusions weve reached in the past decade. This line of questioning should extend far beyond the bounds of the national security apparatus, and tackle fundamental issues. For example, are we, as a society, prepared to condemn an 82-year-old nun as a serious national security threat and imprison her and her co-defendants for the rest of their lives?

This is a serious question which gets to the heart of some national security dilemmas: political culpability. The protest was harmless, yet some unnamed nuclear experts told the New York Times on August 10, 2012 that it represented the biggest security breach in the history of the nation's atomic complex. So the conviction of the three protesters in Tennessee is more complicated. It created a huge national security embarrassment when the banner-wielding hymn-singing troupe waltzed into the nuclear facility and made it clear that terrorists could have done the same. The US government has chosen to criminalize the agency of dissidents in the decade following 9/11 and create, by way of simile, the parallel between dissent and acts of terror. The protesters are not to blame for the scandal; they were the ones who revealed it to the public.

When asked by Glenn Greenwald about the worst thing that could happen after the leaks came out, Snowden replied: The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They'll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society. But they won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests."

Fortunately, it appears that the conversation has gone viral, and both the US and the world are starting to catch on.

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5 Ways the U.S. Government Has Built 'An Architecture of ...

I want to spend some time talking about . . . a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class Americas basic bargain that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead. I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: making sure our economy works for every working American. Thats why I ran for president. It was the center of last years campaign. It drives everything I do in this office.

President Barack Obama, 12/04/13

Inour last essayin this series on contemporary applications of The Federalist Papers, we argued that the case for limited government is made more difficult in our age because many American leaders, in following William Jamess lead, have been successful in engaging in the moral equivalent of war against the Founders regime. President Obama has been consistently militant in pursuing a progressive domestic agenda during his presidency.

Yet too many within the beltway conservatariat have insisted that the best way to counter militant progressivism is by offering a governing agenda that combines the worst impulses of the Bush Administration: a less militant progressivism at home (prescription drug benefits and No Child Left Behind, not Obamacare and Common Core) with a more militant progressivism abroad (democratizing Iraq and Afghanistan, not rooting for democracy in Syria or Ukraine).

To these folks, such a governing agenda represents a workable conservative alternative because it holds out hope to the American people that progress is just one comparatively sober candidate, one less intrusive policy, one more serious intervention, or one utopian adjustment with teeth away. This so-fancied publicly-acceptable variant of American conservatism is considered astute because it promises a more realistic means to the publics assumed-to-be progressive ends.

And on a personal level, this brand of conservatism is attractive to Progressive alter-egos in that it allows them to remain on the Right side of history and the right side of the political spectrum at the same time. This dual membership has its privileges, since the growth of the post-WWII military-social-industrial-finance-academic complex promises that the surest way to pay off a thirty-year mortgage in a DC-area zip code is to work in a sector of the economy more crony than strictly public or private.

The problem more recently, for those who know better, is that its been difficult if not impossible to achieve a conservative-libertarian consensus in this political environment. But thats changing as the growth of an oppressive state, and the growth of collateral political inequality between insiders and outsiders and rulers and ruled, has made it easier to define whats wrong with American politics. Consider three excellent speeches from this past weeks CPAC convention that give us reason to hope that limited government advocates can reclaim the moral high ground of American politics.

Perhaps the fundamental disputes between todays progressives and their conservative/libertarian critics, then, is the locus of danger to the freedom and prosperity of the American people. In President Obamas analysis, the governments job is to intervene to correct the oppression and inequality imposed by market-based power players, who use their outsized share of economic means to artificially increase the ratio between their own wealth and that of lower and middle class Americans.

Conservatives and libertarians, as demonstrated above, offer two lines of rebuttal. First, they see the results of free exchange as presumptively just and therefore do not assume that differences in wealth (even great differences) are necessarily the consequence of private oppression. Second, they recognize that the power of even the most wealthy individual or corporation is as nothing compared to the power of the government equipped to redistribute that wealth.

When Alexander Hamilton addressed the federal governments power of taxation in Federalist 35, he did so with just such a concern in mind. Opponents of the Constitution were arguing that the national governments taxing power should be restricted to only a few specified objects, like tariffs on trade. Hamilton countered by arguing that such restrictions would, ironically, increase the governments power to bring about the twin evils of oppression and unmerited inequality.

A narrowly-defined taxing power would require the government to tax a few objects heavily, turning commerce out of its natural channel and creating artificial winners and losers: winnersall those whose goods were untaxable; losersall those whose werent.

But the trouble wouldnt end there. Within the class of losers, there would be a factious competition to raise the tax rate, say, on tea and lower it on tobacco. All might have to bear a burden, but not equally so, making politics a scramble to unload some of my burden onto you. In such a case, it would be obvious to all that the government had the power to make or break the fortunes of many, and the most conscientious businessman would have no choice but to make sure his lobbyist was as well-connected and persuasive as the next.

As is so often the case in The Federalist, Hamiltons solution to this problema general federal power to taxis not really a solution. That is to say, it provides no guarantee, in this case, that the government wont use the taxing power to oppress or create artificial inequalities. All it does (and all that can be done) is make it possible for the government to avoid these twin evils and tax in the least burdensome wayif it has the will.

Generating such a will, of course, is our challenge today. To the always-present problem of human selfishness, Progressivism adds an attractive moral justification for redistributive taxation, whether through unequal income tax rates or special tax benefits for those engaged in socially-correct enterprises (like building electric cars).

What we need is a set of leaders who dont want to beat Progressives at their own gameto promise better rewards to more powerful (numerous) friends and more satisfying punishments to more isolated enemies. Let them be satisfied with lifting burdens, not reassigning them.

Theyll also need to argue in the spirit of Hamilton, demonstrating that our moral duty and our personal interest are one. We would be glad if large numbers of Americans were to decide suddenly that they want no part in factious redistributive politics for the simple reason its wrong, but it would be wise for us to take, as Madison often put it, auxiliary precautions.

In President Obamas second term, Americans have begun to see, in very obvious, obnoxious, and personal ways, the true bigness of big government. The three horsemen of last years political apocalypse the IRS, the NSA, and the HHShave discredited government as the slayer of (bossy?) bullies and suggested it might be the biggest bully on the block.

These discrete experiences offer an opening for the type of argument leaders like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Rick Perry made at CPAC. Their successand oursin rolling back government oppression will depend on our ability to show that these are no exceptions to the rule, but rather the natural consequence of pursuing artificial equality, putting the livelihood and independence of all Americans at risk.

David Corbin is a Professor of Politics and Matthew Parks an Assistant Professor of Politics at The Kings College, New York City. They are co-authors of Keeping Our Republic: Principles for a Political Reformation (2011). You can follow their work onTwitterorFacebook.

David Corbin is a Professor of Politics and the Vice President of Academic Affairs at Providence Christian College in Pasadena, California. Matthew Parks is an Associate Professor of Politics at The Kings College in New York City. Together, they host the podcast,"DIA-Today: Democracy in America Today."

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The Twin Evils Of Government Oppression And Inequality

District 11 Classified InterviewCapitol's Control Over Districts Through The Hunger GamesWhat is The Hunger Games?

Throughout the book, the readers see the Capitol continuing its psychological warfare with the twelve districts to enforce its laws, regulations and maintain the elite status of the Capitol and its ruling class (i.e. President Snow). The most noticeable propaganda include the Hunger Games. The game was introduced after the Rebellion of the thirteen districts against the Capitol around what used to be North America. As a result, District Thirteen was annihilated, it "still smoulders from toxic bombs", and the twelve surviving districts have to choose one male and one female tribute annually to contend in the games and bring about food and honour to their district.

The Hunger Games serve to control the defeated districts largely in three ways.

It demonstrates the Capitol's schadenfreude characteristics, brutality and willingness to use force/violence to control a group. The Capitol forces tributes to kill each other in ancient gladiatorial manner. The tributes are to fight one another to survive in a large arena and bring glory to their districts. They must kill or be killed. There is no sympathy in the game, but only violence that the population of the Capitol demand. The thought of dieing a bloody death while the "crowd is urging on the killer" is sickening. This disturbing nature of the game is made worse by the fact that all children are eligible for the game "until they reach eighteen". Taking the children, only to lead them to their destruction, destroys the hopes and the futures of the families and the communities of those involved. This is "Capitol's way of reminding" people feel powerless and at their mercy. Simply put, it is Capitols way of saying 'We could have wipe you out and we still can, so you better keep in line'.

It provokes hatred and distrust between districts and its members. The Hunger Games is a highly effective tool to prevent harmony and constructive teamwork. The game itself targets the most vulnerable between and within the districts. Comparatively wealthier industrious districts such as 1, 2, and 4 which are the "Capitol's lapdogs" have "Career Tributes" who are well-fed and better trained solely for the games. These tributes end up winning the game in most of the occasions. The winning district receives rewards in food and look down on the poorer districts whose tributes die bloody deaths. This helps to keep the wealthier districts in line as their schadenfreude is satisfied. Wealthier districts are the subject of hatred among the poorer districts which hardly manage to keep its population fed and starvation is common. For example, District 12, the poorest of all, has only had two victors in the history of the seventy four years of the game.

Hierarchy exists between members of a district as well. People who are poor and cannot afford to put food on the table signs up their child for what is called "Tesserae" who receive a few months worth of gain. However, in return, the child is entered into the draw for the Hunger Games tributes once more. This is in contrast to Madge, the daughter of Mayor Undersee of District 12, who never have to sign up for a tesserae and therefore minimize the chance of being selected for the feared Hunger Games. The mayor has a "passion for strawberries," when the majority of the population of his district are either starving or being, "blown to bits in mining accidents," such as was the case with Katniss Everdeen, who makes living from selling strawberries to the mayor. This unequal distribution of wealth and social statues serves to scatter the individuals of many districts apart from each other. It is an effective measure for Capitol to prevent a future rebellion as the level of hatred that exists between the members of the community that prevents cooperation thus negating any coordinated attacks on the Capitol.

The distrust and division created by the games also takes place on individual levels. Take for instance the people who take "bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn". Not only does these individual members make a mockery and entertainment out of people's misery, they are further dividing the community between those who are affected by the games and those who are not.

What ultimately is created from the Hunger Games is a hierarchy where most of the people in Panem have someone to make fun of or look down on. Apart from District 12, the rest of the people of Panem have other districts to laugh at. Relatively wealthy "lapdog" districts 1,2 and 4 have District 12 which is the "least prestigious, poorest, most ridiculed district in the country". This is crucial when a smaller population has to control a significantly larger population as it prevents people from challenging the ruling class. Why create rebellions and problems when they are already happy with what they have? The Hunger Games, which seem just a violent and sadistic event, that is a crucial tool in aiding the Government, the Capitol, to maintain firm unchallenged control over a 12 districts.

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The Hunger Games - Government Control and Oppression ...

This week the House Education and House College and Workforce Development Committees is moving to vote three mandatory training bills,SB 5044, SB 5227, SB 5228, out of committee, another step in the process of becoming adopted as state law. The bills are,

SB 5044 would require Critical Race Training for K-12 school staff;

SB 5227 would require Critical Race Training for staff in our public colleges anduniversities;

SB 5228 would require Critical Race Training for students in public medical schools, and establish quotas for admission to medical school based on race.

At a public hearing, lawmakers received the following analysis about these bills.

The purpose of Critical Race Training is to divide people into oppressors and victims, based on their race, gender, sexuality and religion. The curriculum lists the institutions in society allegedly responsible for creating oppression: families, religions, schools, the economy and government.

The bills provide a lesson plan that all white heterosexual men are oppressors and certain minority groups are oppressed. In particular Critical Race Training has attacked Jews as privileged, and part of this system of alleged oppression, and by belittling their experience as victims of the Holocaust.

People required to attend Race Critical Training are required to publicly profess their race identities, and then be labelled as either oppressors or oppressed. No account is taken of people of mixed ethnicity, or those who dont want to be labeled based on government policy.

Critical Race Training includes messages that are hostile to capitalism, claiming capitalism is part of this system of oppression. Families and religion are also condemned. Race trainers tell students they must undo and unlearn what they were taught by institutions of oppression.

Much of the curriculum required by Critical Race Training is untrue, false and destructive. Critical Race Training does not eliminate racism. It does, however, tend to divide society, create suspicion among students and co-workers, lower educator morale, create threats and hostility in the workplace, and make the problem of racism worse.

What is most problematic, though, is that Critical Race Training violates core civil rights protections and undermines friendship and trust that make a caring and tolerant society possible.

Analysis and the experience of other states shows that SB 5044, SB 5227 and SB 5228 would not reduce racial tensions or calm peoples fear of threats, bullying or being cancelled. Instead, the bills would impose a harmful ideology on students that would violate core civil rights protections against hate, inequality and workplace discrimination.

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Lawmakers seek to pass mandatory training bills to divide Washingtonians based on race and sexuality, and then label them as oppressors and victims -...

Zumrat Dawut, a former internment camp detainee who has witnessed first-hand the Chinese governments oppression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), has been a vital source of testimony and other evidence for international governments and media. She has repeatedly testified and reported on the tragedies of the internment camp system, where up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to have been detained since early 2017.

As more evidence has emerged about Chinas policies in the XUAR, Beijing has faced increasing international scrutiny, including from the U.S. government, which in January designated them part of an orchestrated genocide. The parliaments of Canada and The Netherlands last month passed resolutions using similar language. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been orchestrating a propaganda blitz in a bid to refute the claims.

Dawut, who now lives in Virginia with her family, spends much of her spare time searching for video and other evidence about the Uyghur situation on Chinese social mediaoften posted by state media outlets. She then uploads videos to other social media platforms that circulate more widely outside of China, particularly Facebook, where the videos are shared and viewed many times. RFAs Uyghur Service spoke with Dawut about the videos she has found and her motivation in sharing them with the world.

Dawut: I have been benefiting greatly from apps and programs developed by the Chinese government, who believes in what theyre doing. Using these apps, Im collecting videos day and night, looking for proof for the world. Ive been collecting these videos because I think we have to tell the world about whats going on, always with proof for all of our assertions.

People living outside the Uyghur Region cant fully understand whats going on, but we Uyghurs, all of us Uyghurs living abroad, we know. Hashar (corvee labor) has been around since we were all small. In the past, it was the cadres from village brigades and townships who would take people out into the fields to do hashar, to dig streams and till the fields. But if you watch the videos that are currently coming out, police are appearing in these settings. If you look at the videos, you can even see that the police are bringing them to and from the worksites by bus, systematically ... Looking at this, its not even possible to rule out the possibility that the laborers are people who have been brought from camps. If we tell non-Uyghurs about this, we cant fully explain it to them. Were Uyghurall Uyghurs know about this, about hashar. We cant fully explain it in words to non-Uyghurs, that they force Uyghurs to work, that they make us work for free. We cant fully express this, and so Im collecting these videos day and night in an attempt to show the world. Im sharing them on Facebook and other channels.

All of the videos have a value we can take advantage of. Like the one where a girl at school asked if her teachers were going to punish her if she spoke Uyghur. I made that the subject of my search and found it myself. I did the work and then I shared it. I knew I should put something out about it, and that I could not stop my work. I didnt sleep the next night. I stayed up and searched for more videos similar to that one, and I found a video of a child in Kashgar saying that their school doesnt allow them to speak Uyghur, that they have to speak Uyghur in secret since theyre not allowed otherwise. Each of my own children would be able to give interviews about the way children arent allowed to speak Uyghur in school right now, the way theyre punished if they do.

The shares have been very good. [Theyve] been shared a lot. The view count is really high. Many journalists have written news based on information they found on my Facebook wall. Theyve asked me questions about where and how I found the videos, and theyve written some good news articles based on them.

Reported by Mihray Abdilim for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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Im Collecting These Videos Day And Night in an Attempt to Show The World: Former Camp Detainee - Radio Free Asia