The L.A. Times has an editorial today from George Rupp of the IRC on the horrifying beauracratic screw-up that is the Patriot Act and the Real ID act, in relation to the defintion of terrorism and the 'material support' clause. He offers a few examples of people who have suffered the consequences of the Department of Homeland Security's incompetence.

A Sierra Leonean woman's house was attacked by rebels in 1992. A young family member was killed with machetes, another minor was subjected to burns and the woman and her daughter were raped. The rebels kept the family captive for days in their own home. Homeland Security has placed the case on hold for "material support" concerns because the family is deemed to have provided housing to the rebels. Under this interpretation, it does not matter whether the support provided was given willingly or under duress.

Also, a petition version of the previous 'Letter to the President' is now availabe to be signed online. The petition for "Exemption for Refugees from "Material Support" Prohibition" will be forwarded to the relevent government officials and departments when it has ammassed a reasonable amount of signatures.

A few links:

LIRS Action Alert
Refugees International message form online
Letter from Senators Kennedy and Lieberman to Michael Chertoff

As per my previous post on the "material support" issue, here is a letter that I encourage you to copy and paste and send to the government. You could print it and mail it if you feel so inclined, or fax it, although email is probably easiest. I wonder if one particular method might get more attention than another, but I have no way of knowing. Many computers can send faxes, so I'd recommend giving it a go, because it seems like a fax might be harder to ignore. Either way, just be sure to fill in the appropriate salutation, and add your own name to the bottom so it looks like it came from a real person. Also, feel free to edit any part of the letter as you want, particularly if you are not a U.S. citizen/resident. This is an important issue that effects many nationalities, so everyone should be speaking up about it.
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According to recent news reports, the SPDC's renewed campaign of violence in Karen State has displaced as many as 3000 people in a matter of months. (Counterinsurgency Creates Fresh Wave of Refugees, New Attacks by Burma Displace Over 3,000 Karen)

I mentioned in the previous post that thousands of Karen in Thailand expecting to be resettled in the US have had their cases rejected or put on hold due to the 'material support clause' of the Patriot Act. The KNU, or sub-groups of the KNU have been identified as groups which may be engaging in 'terrorist activity'. Consequently, anyone deemed to have provided support are rendered inadmissable for migration or resettlement in the US. The KNU is the oldest resistance group in Burma, and have a cease-fire agreement with the junta. They have adhered to the tenants of the cease-fire even to their own detriment, as the SPDC doesn't give a flying flip about any agreements they've made with anyone. The following is a statement from the KNU regarding the recent SPDC attacks against the Karen people. There's no clause against providing moral support, is there?    more »

If you closely follow the news relating to Burma, or the US governments policy relating therein, you've probably come across this issue of the "material support clause". More specifically, the issue of this material support clause being used to bar resettlement in the US to thousands of refugees, mainly from Burma and Colombia. But it seems to be news that has been quietly lurking around for awhile, and hasn't really caught on in any mainstream press. I first caught wind of this back in December sometime, from a smart and politically active friend from Burma, but we both had concluded that it was not such a big deal - the idea that Burmese opposition groups could be labeled terrorists seemed so illogical and absurd given the US's support for democratic and ethnic activists there, that we figured it would be sorted out properly in the course of its apparently pending review.   more »