Colin Powell's List (Page 2)

In many ways, the State Department's list-making harks back to earlier periods of repression of dissent, from the post-World War I Palmer Raids against socialists and anarchists to the 1950s McCarthyite anti-Communist hysteria. Under the new laws it is illegal to support any group designated as a terrorist organization. The fact that it is illegal for Americans to express solidarity with movements around the world--even odious ones--is shocking enough on its own. But now that President Bush is waging a global "war on terrorism," US attacks against alleged terrorists in the Philippines, Colombia, Somalia, the Middle East or elsewhere are likely to swell the list of designated terrorist groups, if only by sparking new resistance movements. And just as the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1938 soon saw Congressional investigators joining police Red Squads in raids on Communist offices, the terrorism lists could be used to justify federal and state assaults against a wide range of dissident groups. It's not inconceivable, for example, that the antiterrorist hysteria could grow to include a crackdown against protesters in the post-Seattle global justice movement, some of whom have engaged in occasional property damage that could have them designated under the very broad definition of terrorism in the law.

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