Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright, International Criminals

Once upon a time, I used to cite the FBI's National Crime Information Center database as slightly more reliable than the private police-intelligence databases traded around by the likes of the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit and the MAGIC (Multi-Agency Group Intelligence Conference) program. No longer. On Thursday, Oct. 4, former Army Col. and State Department Ambassador Ann Wright, along with Code Pink organizer Medea Benjamin, were stopped at the Canadian border by Canadian officials, and turned back on the grounds that they were on the NCIC "international criminals" database. This is far more ominous than "do not fly" lists. Independent investigations carried out since the incident, according to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! program, would suggest that the FBI now sees any individual committing civil disobedience on a nationally-prominent issue to be an "international criminal," unable to travel to any country using the NCIC database. This is beyond outrageous. We are now living in the lockdown state, friends.