To Protect and Serve?
By Randall Amster | New Clear Vision | February 9, 2011
On January 25, 2011, people gathered in cities across America to demonstrate against the ongoing harassment of peace organizations and individual activists by law enforcement agencies. In particular, these “solidarity actions” were focused on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had served subpoenas and raided the homes of people involved in anti-war and international solidarity work in Minneapolis and Chicago in late September 2010. From Boston to Los Angeles, activists rallied at federal buildings, collected petition signatures, distributed pamphlets, and peacefully demonstrated on street corners as part of the “National Day of Action to Stop FBI Repression and Grand Jury Witch Hunts.”
In Chicago, over 350 people assembled in front of the Dirksen Federal Building to protest U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s decision to subpoena 23 antiwar activists and order them to appear in front of a grand jury. In Minneapolis, more than 100 people swarmed the sidewalk at the downtown Federal Building, waving signs that read “Opposing war is not a crime” and “Hands off free speech,” denouncing the infiltration of their groups with undercover agents, and stating that they will not cooperate with the grand juries even if it means going to jail. Actions large and small were held in over 50 cities across the nation in a show of solidarity for peace activism and against official harassment.
Perhaps the most curious — and potentially revealing — episode among these many actions played out in Memphis, Tennessee. In a bizarre twist, the small group that had assembled there on January 25th was visited by the FBI and local law enforcement, ostensibly to warn them about their own event and stating that they were there for the activists’ own safety. A local media outlet reported on the episode:
“When a police SWAT team and an FBI anti-terrorism squad showed up Tuesday at a Memphis church where peace activists were staging an event, a scene reminiscent of the turbulent 1960s ensued. The activists, members of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center who oppose the war in Afghanistan, characterized the encounter as police intimidation and a case of illegal surveillance. FBI and Memphis Police Department representatives countered it was all a misunderstanding. They said they were there to protect the activists from potential harm by extremists who might oppose their views.”
Interestingly, the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center (MSPJC) had planned no public demonstration as part of its activities that day, but were merely holding a small meeting of about a dozen people to fill out forms under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to investigate the extent to which activists in their community may have been under surveillance, infiltration, or other forms of potential intimidation. The media release sent out by the MSPJC stated that the event was being held to “demand an end to FBI harassment of peace, anti-war and solidarity activists.” In response, according to the MSPJC’s Director, it appears that the agents and officers were in fact sent to the event to monitor and intimidate the group. As reported by local television station WREG:
“Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin says officers routinely patrol demonstrations. He says this time officers stayed, even though they weren’t supposed to sit on the scene. Godwin blames the confusion on miscommunication, and he stresses the MPD is in no way monitoring the activities of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center. Jacob Flowers has his doubts about the intentions of both the FBI and the MPD. He says he’s been the director of the center for six years, has held several protests and marches, but has never seen the type of law enforcement presence he saw Tuesday. ‘We have never had the MPD TACT squad follow us along, so we find it to be a coincidence that on the night people were here filling out forms to ask for their files to be released by the MPD and the FBI, they choose to send an entire tactical squad to sit on us.’”
MSPJC’s Organizing Coordinator Brad Watkins told the local ABC News affiliate that “it’s a clear intimidation tactic. If they want to protect us and there was a threat against us, then wouldn’t a smart thing [to] do [be] to let us know from whom or if there was a threat against us? We had no communication from MPD, they just showed up and surrounded the church.” Watkins added that the scene (which was captured in a short online video) involved “a total ridiculous amount of law enforcement presence claiming that they are here for our protection — but to protect us from who?” A subsequent blog entry noted that Watkins had posted in real-time on Facebook: “Just had a visit from the FBI … they claimed that they wanted to alert me that some Anti-war activists were planning something around my building…. I paused and tried not to laugh. When I said, ‘Uh, yes sir, these are the offices of the Mid-South PEACE and Justice Center’ … they promptly left.”
While all of this was unfolding, it was later learned that sheriffs had entered at least two homes of “progressive Memphis area activists” earlier that day, “citing (but not showing) warrants for individuals” and going “room to room with guns drawn for a ‘failure to appear’ charge in traffic court.” On his blog, Watkins observed that calls came into the center about police activities of “checking warrants at the DeCleyre Co-op near the University of Memphis … and local socialist, social justice and anarchist orgs have reported harassment and warrant checks all going down today. Yet MPD claims these events are all unrelated.” While local media have generally reported the day’s events as merely a “misunderstanding,” Watkins remains adamant that “this is about intimidation and abuse of law enforcement powers.”
I recently spoke with MSPJC Director Jacob Flowers about this episode and its aftermath. He said that the FOIA meeting on January 25th was intended as part of the national day of solidarity and to explore potential spying on local peace groups, including the MSPJC, the Progressive Student Alliance, and the Socialist Party. Flowers noted that the MSJPC had been “watched before,” primarily in the 1980s during antinuclear actions and as part of crackdowns on the Sanctuary movement. Despite this history, he said, the MSPJC actually enjoys “good relations” with local authorities, and has cultivated a reputation as a diligent and peaceful organization. “I’ve been here at Mid-South for six years, during which we’ve held street corner protests, marches with hundreds of people, and more,” said Flowers, “and we’ve never had the SWAT team show up before.”
The event that day was small, he noted, with only about a dozen people sitting in a room in a church, filling out forms, and talking about the correlation between nonviolent activism and official harassment. When the FBI showed up at the MSPJC offices with badges displayed, “they told us that they were there to inform us about an antiwar protest that was to be held near our facilities,” Flowers said. Upon being told that this actually was the headquarters of the antiwar organization, one of the FBI agents stated, “I guess this is a waste of our time, then.” Prior to this visit, there had been no notification to the MSPJC of any potential security concerns surrounding their meeting. “They said they were there to protect us, and for our own safety,” said Flowers, “but there was no one there but our group of peace activists.”
The implications are not lost on seasoned activists and organizers like those at the MSPJC. “If they do this to us — people who know how to ‘raise hell’ and get a message out — what are they doing to other, more vulnerable groups and individuals to violate people’s civil rights?” Flowers asked rhetorically. The MSPJC is still awaiting a cogent response, he said, but in the meantime they are taking affirmative steps to prevent similar intrusions in the future. In addition to consulting with local civil liberties organizations, they also went ahead and filed their FOIA forms the day after the FBI “visit” to their headquarters, and have contacted the offices of the Mayor and their congressional representative in an attempt to find answers. More broadly, Flowers sees this troubling event as an opportunity “to make a wider push for community-based policing” and other alternatives to potentially repressive forms of law enforcement.
As a member of the MSPJC posted after the episode, “the progressive community in Memphis is taking this as … a challenge to unite in earnest with struggles in our city against widespread police brutality and daily police oppression. We are determined not to be intimidated.” This echoes the national call to resist harassment of peace groups and nonviolent activists, with upcoming regional organizing conferences recently announced for Chicago, Oakland, Chapel Hill, and New York. Rather than capitulating to intimidation, it seems that activists are taking this as a call to peacefully confront the attempts to break their movements. And perhaps in that, justice will be served after all.
Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., teaches Peace Studies and chairs the Master’s program in Humanities at Prescott College. He is the Executive Director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association, and serves as Contributing Editor for New Clear Vision. Among his recent books are Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness (LFB Scholarly, 2008), and the co-edited volume Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).
February 9, 2011 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Comments Off on To Protect and Serve?
Dismantling Impunity: Campaign to help Palestinian victims of army abuse
9 February 2011 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee is proud to announce a new campaign, the “Dismantling Impunity Fund”. This fund will directly challenge Israel’s culture of impunity surrounding the murder and maiming of Palestinians. The fund will be managed by a committee that will include representatives of Popular Committees and Palestinian human rights organizations.
The Abu Rahmah family will be the fund’s first recipient. The family has lost two of their children, Bassem and Jawaher, to Israeli military violence. Both were murdered while nonviolently protesting Israel’s separation wall, built on their village’s land. The family has filed a civil suit in Israeli courts demanding compensation for Bassem Abu Rahmah’s 2009 murder, in which he was shot in the chest from 40 meters with a high-velocity tear gas canister.
The court is demanding 25,000 shekels ($6,700) as a deposit from the Abu Rahmah family. According to a loophole in Israeli law, Palestinians can be considered “foreigners”. This enables the court to demand an upfront deposit large enough to cover the defense’s legal fees, should the prosecution lose the case. If the family does not submit the money, the court will close the case without hearing it.
Through this loophole, Israel has supported its culture of impunity. Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories are effectively prohibited from filing civil suits against Israel, the Israeli army or individual soldiers. Financial resources are needed to combat this loophole and enable Palestinians to seek legal redress.
Bassem Abu Rahmah was shot in the chest with the same type of canister that critically injured US citizen Tristan Anderson one month prior. After conducting an extensive investigation into Abu Rahmah’s death, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem demanded a criminal investigation be launched. B’Tselem’s findings proved that Abu Rahmah was shot in direct violation of open-fire regulations while acting in a nonviolent manner. Despite video footage and expert testimony to corroborate this, no one has yet been punished or even charged with Bassem’s killing. A civil case is now the option left for the Abu Rahmah family to seek legal redress.
Mohammed Khatib, Coordinator, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee: “From our experience with the Israeli legal system, we do not expect justice from the occupier’s courts. But we do know that a court case brings to light things that the occupation would rather keep in the shadows. By suing, victims of Israeli violence would be extracting both a monetary and political price for the crimes that Israel has committed against them. It is essential to challenge the prevailing culture of impunity, in which Israeli soldiers and settlers murder and maim Palestinians while going unpunished and unquestioned.”
Donate Electronically to the “Dismantling Impunity Fund” by following the link and checking the “Dismantling Impunity Fund” box.
Donate by check: Write checks to “Alliance for Global Justice”, with “CfJS-Dismantling Impunity Fund” in the memo line. Mail checks to:
Alliance for Global Justice
1247 “E” Street,SE
Washington, DC 20003
February 9, 2011 Posted by aletho | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment
BBC – The Ultra Zionists
BBC | February 03, 2011
Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive and disputed areas of the West Bank.
February 9, 2011 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video | 1 Comment
Omar Suleiman: Egypt’s torturer-in-chief threatens to unleash “dark bats of the night… to terrorize the people”
By Paul Woodward | War In Context | February 9, 2011
Lisa Hajjar writes:
Under the Bush administration, in the context of “the global war on terror”, US renditions became “extraordinary”, meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial – but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites – and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did [newly-appointed Vice President, Omar] Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.
In October 2001, Habib was seized from a bus by Pakistani security forces. While detained in Pakistan, at the behest of American agents, he was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly. He was then turned over to the CIA, and in the process of transporting him to Egypt he endured the usual treatment: his clothes were cut off, a suppository was stuffed in his anus, he was put into a diaper – and ‘wrapped up like a spring roll’.
In Egypt, as Habib recounts in his memoir, My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks, immersed in water up to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his interrogator slapped him so hard that his blindfold was dislodged, revealing the identity of his tormentor: Suleiman.
Suleiman’s history should be kept in mind when considering statements he made yesterday. In a thinly veiled threat, he warned that if the protests do not end soon, there will be a coup and “dark bats of the night” will emerge “to terrorize the people.”
February 9, 2011 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment
Israel bombs medical aid warehouse in Gaza
MEMO – February 9, 2011
Israeli aircraft carried out a number of air raids on the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday 9 February, destroying a medical aid warehouse in Gaza City. The raids began shortly after midnight, hitting several places across the Strip, from Jabaliya in the north to the Rafah border with Egypt in the south.
Fires raged through the early hours of the morning as fire-fighters and volunteers tried to salvage medical supplies and aid. The carpenter’s workshop adjacent to the warehouse was also affected by the bombing.
The press spokesperson for the Emergency Services, Abu Adham, said that eight civilians were injured by the Israeli bombs, including two children and three women. The casualties were taken to the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Abu Adham pointed out that there is already an acute shortage of medicines and medical supplies in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing Israeli blockade of the territory. In his assessment, the airstrike targeted the medical warehouse in an attempt to subdue further the civilian population. Israeli F-16 fighter-bomber aircraft also fired two missiles in an empty landfill south-east of Gaza City; no casualties were reported. Two men were injured in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Photo credit – Ma’an Images
February 9, 2011 Posted by aletho | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 1 Comment
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US is a serial nuclear aggressor whose moral bankruptcy threatens world peace
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 28, 2021
More than 60 years ago, American military chiefs were closer than previously known to dropping atomic bombs on China over a relatively minor crisis with the renegade territory of Taiwan. The new revelations came from veteran whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who worked as a nuclear weapons strategist at the Rand Corporation and at the Pentagon during the 1950s and 60s.
Ellsberg was the source of the famous Pentagon Papers which he leaked 50 years ago exposing the official U.S. lies about its criminal involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 70s.
Now at the age of 90, Daniel Ellsberg has dropped another media bombshell – that the Pentagon was ready to attack China and its major cities with nuclear weapons in 1958. The details were published by the New York Times. But it is perturbing that the shocking revelations barely caused a ripple in the U.S. media. There were no editorials condemning the plan which indicates a complacency among the U.S. media bordering on acquiescence towards such criminal action. This complacency is deeply alarming given the present dangers of war stemming from Washington’s provocations towards China and Russia.
It seems incredible that such a monstrous crime in 1958 was being considered fresh from the memory of the horror perpetrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities razed by two U.S. atomic bombs in August 1945 causing the deaths of at least 200,000 mainly civilians. If the Americans had gone ahead with the plan some 13 years later to attack China the death toll would have been in the millions. … continue
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