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Haiti: Marchers Shot at Battle Commemoration

Weekly News Update on the Americas | November 23, 2014

At least four demonstrators were wounded in the northern Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas on Nov. 18 when counter-demonstrators opened fire on an opposition march commemorating the anniversary of the 1803 Battle of Vertières, which marked the final defeat of French forces trying to regain control of Haiti. The several hundred marchers had reached the neighborhood of Delmas 32 and were about to turn back toward downtown Port-au-Prince when they were met with a hail of rocks. The marchers responded with more rocks, and the police used tear gas against the attackers. The gunfire started a little later. Two people were hit in the neck, one in the knee and one in the side; all four were taken away for medical care. The police said they recovered more than a half-dozen 9 mm caliber cartridges from the site. The marchers dispersed after the attack.

Some protesters reported seeing a lifeless body lying near a motorbike, and protest organizers held a press conference on Nov. 21 to charge that three people had been shot dead and that police agents had taken their bodies away. The authorities denied the charge, and reporters noted that the press conference didn’t include relatives of the three people said to be missing.

The Nov. 20 march was largely sponsored by opponents of President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) and included groups associated with the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004). Populist senators John Joel Joseph and Moïse Jean-Charles and legislative deputy Arnel Bélizaire were among the politicians present [see Update #1204]. According to the online news service AlterPresse, the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), which is associated with the leftist labor organization Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), also participated, but the union’s “demands against the presence of United Nations forces in the country [and] for a decent minimum wage…were drowned out by the anti-Martelly slogans.” The Martelly opponents were especially incensed because of an opinion piece by Communication Minister Rudy Hériveaux posted on Martelly’s blog on Nov. 17. Entitled “The Cockroach Syndrome,” the article described anti-government protesters as “roaches” who “trot around in a disgusting folklore in the streets to try to assault the government.” Hériveaux is a former FL senator and until a few years ago led a faction of the party [see Update #1083]. (AlterPresse 11/19/14, 11/21/14)

In related news, two opposition leaders arrested after an Oct. 26 protest, Rony Timothée and Byron Odigé [see Update #1240], have been placed in isolation in the National Penitentiary, according to the daily Le Nouvelliste. Meanwhile, attorney André Michel, who frequently represents opposition figures [see Update #1232], was ordered to appear on Nov. 17 before investigative judge Lamarre Bélizaire, who is charging him with property destruction in connection with an Oct. 17 demonstration. Michel refused to attend, saying Judge Bélizaire had no authority to order his appearance. (AlterPresse 11/17/14, 11/21/14)

November 25, 2014 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

What Really Happened to the Wobblies

By STAUGHTON LYND | CounterPunch | November 21, 2014

wobbliesThe Wobblies are back. Many young radicals find the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the most congenial available platform on which to stand in trying to change the world.

This effort has been handicapped by the lack of a hard-headed history of the IWW in its initial incarnation, from 1905 to just after World War I. The existing literature, for example Franklin Rosemont’s splendid book on Joe Hill, is strong on movement culture and atmosphere. It is weak on why the organization went to pieces in the early 1920s.

Eric Chester’s new book, The Wobblies in their Heyday:  The Rise and Destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World during the World War I Era, fills this gap. It is indispensable reading for Wobblies and labor historians. One way to summarize what is between these covers is to say that Chester spells out three tragic mistakes made by the old IWW that the reinvented organization must do its best to avoid.

Macho Posturing

Labor organizing flourished during World War I because of the government’s need for a variety of raw materials. Among these were food, timber, and copper. Wobbly organizers made dramatic headway in all three industries. At its peak in August 1917 the IWW had a membership of more than 150,000.

Nine months later, Chester writes, “the union was in total disarray, forced to devote most of its time and resources to raising funds for attorneys and bail bonds.”

This sad state of affairs was, of course, partly the result of a calculated decision by the federal government to destroy the IWW. But only partly.

According to Chester another cause of the government’s successful suppression of the Wobblies was that during and after the Wheatlands strike in California hop fields in 1913 some Wobblies threatened to “burn California’s agricultural fields if two leaders of the strike were not released from jail.”

For years, Wobbly leaders had insisted that sabotage could force employers to make concessions, Chester writes. But what Chester terms “nebulous calls for arson” and “macho bravado” only stiffened the determination of California authorities not to modify jail sentences for Wobbly leaders Ford and Suhr.

Chester finds that there is no credible evidence that any fields were, in fact, burned. But after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, this extravagant rhetoric calling for the destruction of crops apparently helped to convince President Wilson to initiate a systematic and coordinated campaign to suppress the Wobblies.

Efforts to Avoid Repression by Discontinuing Discussion of the War and the Draft

International solidarity and militant opposition to war and the draft were central tenets of the IWW.  Wobblies who had enrolled in the British Army were expelled from the union. At the union’s tenth general convention in November 2015, the delegates adopted a resolution calling for a “General Strike in all industries” should the United States enter the war.

What actually happened was that general secretary-treasurer Bill Haywood and a majority of IWW leaders agreed that the union should desist from any discussion of the war or the draft, in the vain hope that this policy would persuade the federal government to refrain from targeting the union for repression. At the same time, the great majority of rank-and-file members, with support of a few leaders such as Frank Little, insisted that the IWW should be at the forefront of the opposition to the war.

Self-evidently, what Chester terms the IWW’s “diffidence” was the very opposite of Eugene Debs’ defiant opposition to the war. When Wobbly activists “flooded IWW offices with requests for help and pleas for a collective response to the draft,” the usual response was that what to do was up to each individual member. Haywood, Chester writes, “consistently sought to steer the union away from any involvement in the draft resistance movement.” Debs notwithstanding, however, the national leadership of the Socialist Party like the national leadership of the IWW “scrambled to avoid any confrontation with federal authorities.” Radical activists from both organizations formed ad hoc alliances cutting across organizational boundaries.

The IWW General Executive Board, meeting from June 29 to July 6, 1917, was unable to arrive at a decision about the war and conscription, and a committee including both Haywood and Little, tasked to draft a statement, likewise failed to do so. In the end, Chester says, “the IWW sought to position itself as a purely economic organization concerned solely with short-run gains in wages and working conditions.”

Disunity Among IWW Prisoners Fostered by the Government

The reluctance of the Wobbly leadership to advocate resistance to the war and conscription carried over to a legalistic response when the government indicted IWW leaders. Haywood urged all those named in the indictment to surrender voluntarily and to waive any objection to being extradited to Chicago. In the mass trial that followed, the defendants were represented by a very good trial lawyer who was also an enthusiastic supporter of the war and passed up the opportunity to make a closing statement to the jury.  Judge Landis’ superficial fairness deluded Wobs into hoping for a good outcome.

The jury took less than an hour to find all one hundred defendants guilty of all counts in the indictment.  Ninety-three received lengthy prison terms.  Judge Landis ordered that they be imprisoned in Leavenworth, described by Chester as “a maximum-security penitentiary designed for hardened, violent criminals.”  Forty-six more defendants were found guilty after another mass conspiracy trial in Sacramento.

Thereafter, Chester writes, the “process of granting a commutation of sentence was manipulated during the administration of Warren Harding to divide and demoralize IWW prisoners.”  The ultimate result was “the disastrous split of 1924, leaving the union a shell of what it had been only seven years earlier.” Executive clemency, like that granted to Debs, was the only hope of the Wobblies in prison for release before the end of their long sentences.  President Harding rejected any thought of a general amnesty, obliging each prisoner to fill out the form requesting amnesty as an individual. The application form for amnesty contained an implicit admission of guilt. The newly-created ACLU supported this process.

Twenty-four IWW prisoners opted to submit a form requesting amnesty. A substantial majority refused to plead for individual release. More than seventy issued a statement in which they insisted that “all are innocent and all must receive the same consideration.”  The government insisted on a case-by-case approach.  Fifty-two prisoners responded that they refused to accept the president’s division of the Sacramento prisoners, still alleged to have burned fields, from the Chicago prisoners. Moreover they considered it a “base act” to “sign individual applications and leave the Attorney General’s office to select which of our number should remain in prison and which should go free.”

Initially, the IWW supported those prisoners who refused to seek their freedom individually. Those who had submitted personal requests for presidential clemency were expelled from the union. In June 1923, the government once again dangled before desperate men the prospect of release, now available for those individual prisoners promising to remain “law-abiding and loyal to the Government.” This time a substantial majority of the remaining prisoners accepted Harding’s offer, and IWW headquarters, in what Chester calls “a sweeping reversal,” gave its approval.

Eleven men at Leavenworth declined this latest government inducement. In addition, those who were tried in California did not receive the same offer.

In December 1923 the remaining IWW prisoners at Leavenworth including twenty-two who had been convicted in Sacramento were released unconditionally. The damage had been done. Those who had held out the longest launched a campaign within the IWW to expel those who had supported a form of conditional release. There were accusations against anyone who had allegedly proved himself “a scab and a rat.” When a convention convened in 1924 both sides claimed the headquarters office and went to court. An organization consisting of the few hundred members who had supported the consistent rejection of all government offers “faded into oblivion by 1931.”

Conclusion

It is not the intent of brother Chester’s book, or of this review, to trash the IWW. This review has dealt with only about half of the material in the book, for example passing by the story of Wobbly organizing in copper, both at Butte, Montana and Bisbee, Arizona. Moreover, any one who lived through the disintegration of SDS, SNCC and the Black Panthers is familiar with tragedies like those described here.  The heroism of members of all three groups who were martyrs, such as Frank Little, Fred Hampton, and the Mississippi Three (Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner), remains. The vision of a qualitatively different society, as the Zapatistas say “un otro mundo,” remains also.

What it seems to me we must soberly consider is what practices we can adopt to forestall disintegration when different members of a group make different choices. Hardened secular radicals though we may be, we can learn something from King Lear’s words to his daughter Cordelia: “When you ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down and ask of you forgiveness.”

Staughton  Lynd  is an American conscientious objector, Quaker, peace activist and civil rights activist, tax resister, historian, professor, author and lawyer. Staughton Lynd’s most recent book is From Here to There: the Staughton Lynd Reader.

November 21, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Economics, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Support for justice in Palestine soaring on US campuses

ALRAY | November 20, 2014

New York – A student-led movement taking shape on U.S. college campuses have seen a growing number of young activists organizing around solidarity with Palestine.

The Students for Justice in Palestine organization, one of the major solidarity coalitions, now has more than 110 active chapters in the U.S. and the number is growing.

The movement enjoys the backing from those with a wide array of political thought and a support base that significantly grew after Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” and “Operation Protective Edge” assaults on Gaza in 2008-09 and this summer respectively.

According to Aman Muqeet of the organization’s National Steering Committee, Israel’s summer offensive affected all of those who are in solidarity with the Palestinian people. “It has strengthened our resolve and commitment to the work we do.”

Operation Protective Edge began July 7 and lasted for 51 days; it killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Palestinian health officials. More than 10,000 others were reported injured.

“Also, it has empowered us because we have seen an unprecedented amount of support from the international community,” Muqeet said. “Musicians, actors, and public figures voicing support for Gaza, corporations distancing themselves from Israeli crimes; consumers joining the Palestinian-led call for a boycott of Israeli goods and corporations that support Israel; millions of people around the world taking to the streets to demand justice.”

He says public opinion in the U.S. and the West shifted significantly after Israel’s summer assault.

“The Protective Edge massacre has brought the realities of a brutal colonial empire to the fore … On campuses, students are more informed than they were in the past and are keeping up with the developments.”

An Oct. 24 report by the New York-based Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League reported a dramatic increase in the number of pro-Palestine events scheduled on U.S. campuses since the massacre.

There were 75 events scheduled since the beginning of the 2014-2015 academic year, which started in late August or early September at most American universities, the report said. That number marks a 114 percent increase compared with the same period last year.

“Israel has done an excellent job of demonstrating to the international community the lack of regard it has for civilians, justice, and human rights,” according to Muqeet.

Brooklyn College has a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Organizers there say their aim is to raise awareness about the human rights violations being committed by Israel against the Palestinians and to build solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice, freedom, self-determination and the right of return.

The group’s president, Sarah A. Aly, says the chapter has received more requests during the current academic year from students who want to join the chapter when compared to last year.

“Our membership is very diverse and we work with non-Muslim groups on a regular basis on campus, such as the Latino and black clubs as well as DreamTeam and LGBT club,” she said.

The group finds connections between Israeli actions in Gaza and the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

“We do draw the parallels because the struggles that communities of colors face in the U.S. are connected to the Palestinian struggle in many ways. We fully support the people in Ferguson and all those fighting for justice and liberation. One of our members was in Ferguson to show support for them and the support for Palestine she received while she was there was very evident.”

Brown’s death set off mass protests, which have since continued at various levels around the country.

Muqeet says the Students for Justice in Palestine stands in solidarity with not just Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, but all victims of racial violence.

Their fourth annual national conference’s opening keynote featured author Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou speaking on “From Ferguson to Palestine: Resisting State Violence and Racism.”

Israel has traditionally been a close ally of the U.S., and has been assisted since its founding with substantial amounts of American financial and military aid.

What young activists believe to be a “lack of objectivity” from the U.S. government toward Israel’s massacres is also adding to the rise in the number of students who support for the Palestinian cause.

“When students see this, they ask questions and they want to learn more, and effect positive change which will bring an end to the human rights violations and occupation of Palestine, and end U.S. military support for Israel’s occupation and human rights abuses,” Muqeet said.

“So, I anticipate a steady growth of students that support justice in Palestine.”

November 20, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Medical associations throw support behind Guantanamo nurse who refused to force-feed

Reprieve | November 19, 2014

Medical groups including the American Nurses Association (ANA) have come out in support of a nurse who refused to force-feed a hunger-striking Guantanamo detainee.

The nurse’s refusal to carry out the practice – which is banned by, among others, the World Medical Association – was revealed by a client of international human rights NGO Reprieve in a letter to his lawyer at the charity.

The ANA wrote last month to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel arguing that the nurse should not be punished for his ethical decision not to force-feed hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo. The unnamed nurse had his deployment cut short after his refusal to force-feed and the military is now considering whether to discharge him honourably, dishonourably, or allow him to continue to serve out the two remaining years of his service. If he is discharged the nurse, who has already served 18 years in the military, will not receive his service, his pension and possibly his veterans’ benefits.

148 men remain detained without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay. Last summer a mass hunger strike by detainees, peacefully protesting their indefinite detention, brought force-feeding to the world’s attention. In a recent landmark case a US federal judge recently ordered the US government to release video tapes of Reprieve’s client, Abu Wa’el Dhiab, being force-fed. The US government is expected to appeal the decision.

Cori Crider, Strategic Director of Reprieve and attorney for men in Guantanamo, said: “The video footage I have seen shows the grim reality of force-feeding at Guantanamo Bay. In refusing to force-feed, this nurse did nothing other than stand by his professional ethical obligations that have served him well throughout a long career – as the American Nurses Association has rightly recognised. The DOD must not persecute this man for doing the right thing.”

November 19, 2014 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | | Leave a comment

Venezuela and Russia to Cooperate to Stabilize Price of Oil

teleSUR | November 17, 2014

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Rafael Ramirez met with the Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak in order to discuss potential strategies the two countries could implement in order to stabilize world oil prices. The visit by Ramirez is part of his tour of oil-producing countries in anticipation of the meeting of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna on November 27.

In an interview with teleSUR, Ramirez stated that the two ministers agreed on the need for oil producing countries to have closer coordination in order to preserve the price of oil. “During our comprehensive meeting we exchanged points of view on things we could do in the immediate future in order for us to maintain the price of oil and preserve for our people the income from natural resources.”

The price of oil has dropped 30 percent since June, negatively affecting the amount of income going into government coffers. Ramirez stated that this drop in the price of oil can be attributed to several factors such speculators and the sanctions placed on Russia and Iran. He stated that there is an over-production as a result of oil extracted via the environment-damaging hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, method out of the United States, which has flooded the market with an extra million barrels of oils this year.

Ramirez earlier met with the Iranian Oil Minister, Biyan Namdar Zangane, the two agreed to present a proposal at the upcoming OPEC meeting that would stabilize the price of oil at $USD100 a barrel.

Venezuela and Russia are important oil-producing countries, together with Iran, their oil policies have important effects on the world oil market.


Russian and Venezuelan State Companies Close Oil Deal

teleSUR |November 17, 2014

Russian state oil company Rosneft has signed a deal with the Venezuelan government which will see the state entity import 1.6 million tonnes of oil and 9 million tonnes of oil derivatives from Venezuela’s state owned oil company, PDVSA.

The agreement was finalised in a meeting between Rosneft CEO, Igor Sechin, and Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Rafael Ramirez, earlier on Monday. Ramirez is currently on an international tour, meeting with other oil exporting countries and particularly member-states of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) in order to stabilize the falling price of oil. Russia will be his last stop after visiting Algeria, Qatar and Iran.

“I would like to note the growing volume of cooperation in the oil sphere between Russia and Venezuela. Thanks to Venezuelan … minister of foreign affairs Rafael Ramirez, as well as PDVSA’s new CEO Eulogio del Pino for supporting the new projects,” commented Sechin.

Following the announcement, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, also revealed that the two countries had agreed to coordinate a “special meeting” of OPEC and non OPEC countries as a result of Ramirez’s visit.

This is the second oil exportation agreement to be signed between Rosneft and PDVSA, with the first having been negotiated in the May 2014 St. Petersberg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Russia and Venezuela already have a number of joint oil projects operating in Venezuela, as well as a series of other bilateral agreements.

November 18, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Redefining “Imminent”

How the U.S. Department of Justice Makes Murder Respectable, Kills the Innocent and Jails their Defenders

By Brian Terrell • Voices for Creative Non Violence • November 17, 2014

Political language can be used, George Orwell said in 1946, “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” In order to justify its global assassination program, the Obama administration has had to stretch words beyond their natural breaking points. For instance, any male 14 years or older found dead in a drone strike zone is a “combatant” unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving him innocent. We are also informed that the constitutional guarantee of “due process” does not imply that the government must precede an execution with a trial.  I think the one word most degraded and twisted these days, to the goriest ends, is the word “imminent.”

Just what constitutes an “imminent” threat? Our government has long taken bold advantage of the American public’s willingness to support lavish spending on armaments and to accept civilian casualties in military adventures abroad and depletion of domestic programs at home, when told these are necessary responses to deflect precisely such threats. The government has vastly expanded the meaning of the word “imminent.” This new definition is crucial to the U.S. drone program, designed for projecting lethal force throughout the world. It provides a legal and moral pretext for the annihilation of people far away who pose no real threat to us at all.

The use of armed remotely controlled drones as the United States’ favored weapon in its “war on terror” is increasing exponentially in recent years, raising many disturbing questions. Wielding 500 pound bombs and Hellfire missiles, Predator and Reaper drones are not the precise and surgical instruments of war so effusively praised by President Obama for “narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among.” It is widely acknowledged that the majority of those killed in drone attacks are unintended, collateral victims. The deaths of the drones’ intended targets and how they are chosen should be no less troubling.

Those deliberately targeted by drones are often far from conflict zones, often they are in countries with whom the U.S. is not at war and on some occasions have been U.S. citizens. They are rarely “taken out” in the heat of battle or while engaged in hostile actions and are more likely to be killed (with anyone in their vicinity) at a wedding, at a funeral, at work, hoeing in the garden, driving down the highway or enjoying a meal with family and friends. These deaths are counted as something other than murder only for the curious insistence by the government’s lawyers that each of these victims represent an “imminent” threat to our lives and safety here at home in the U.S.

In February 2013, a U.S. Department of Justice White Paper, “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or an Associated Force,” was leaked by NBC News. This paper sheds some light on the legal justification for drone assassinations and explains the new and more flexible definition of the word “imminent.” “First,” it declares, “the condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

Before the Department of Justice lawyers got a hold of it, the meaning of the word “imminent” was unmistakably clear. Various dictionaries of the English language are all in agreement that that the word “imminent” explicitly denotes something definite and immediate, “likely to occur at any moment,” “impending,” “ready to take place,” “looming,” “pending,” “threatening,” “around the corner.” Nor has the legal definition of the word left room for ambiguity. After World War II, the Nuremberg Tribunal reaffirmed a 19th-century formulation of customary international law written by Daniel Webster, which said that the necessity for preemptive use of force in self-defense must be “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” That was in the past. Now, any possible future threat – and any person on earth who arguably might pose one – however remote, can satisfy the new definition. As far as the Justice Department is concerned, an “imminent” threat is now whomever an “informed high-level U.S. government official” determines to be such, based on evidence known to that official alone, never to be made public or reviewed by any court.

The breadth of the government’s definition of “imminent” is murderous in its enormity. It is all the more ironic that the same Department of Justice will also regularly define the word so narrowly as to convict and imprison law abiding and responsible citizens who act to defend the innocent from genuinely imminent harm by the actions of the U.S. government. On example especially relevant to the issue of killing by drone is the case of the “Creech 14.”

After the first act of nonviolent resistance to the lethal use of unmanned and remotely controlled drones in the United States took place at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada back in April, 2009, it took more than a year before the 14 of us accused of criminal trespass had our day in court. As this was the first opportunity for activists to “put drones on trial” at a time when few Americans were aware they even existed, we were especially diligent in preparing our case, to argue clearly and cogently, not in order to keep ourselves out of jail but for the sake of those who have died and those who live in fear of the drones. With coaching by some fine trial lawyers, our intention was to represent ourselves and drawing on humanitarian international law, to offer a strong defense of necessity, even while we were aware that there was little chance that the court would hear our arguments.

The defense of necessity, that one has not committed a crime if an act that is otherwise illegal was done to prevent a greater harm or crime from being perpetrated, is recognized by the Supreme Court as a part of the common law. It is not an exotic or even a particularly unusual defense. “The rationale behind the necessity defense is that sometimes, in a particular situation, a technical breach of the law is more advantageous to society than the consequence of strict adherence to the law,” says West’s Encyclopedia of American Law “The defense is often used successfully in cases that involve a Trespass on property to save a person’s life or property.” It might appear, then, that this defense is a natural one for minor infractions such as our alleged trespass, intended to stop the use of drones in a war of aggression, the crime against peace that the Nuremburg Tribunal named “the supreme international crime.”

In reality, though, courts in the U.S. almost never allow the necessity defense to be raised in cases like ours. Most of us were experienced enough not to be surprised when we finally got to the Justice Court in Las Vegas in September, 2010, and Judge Jensen ruled in lockstep with his judicial colleagues. He insisted at the onset of our case that he was having none of it. “Go ahead,” he said, allowing us to call our expert witnesses but sternly forbidding us from asking them any questions that matter. “Understand, it is only going to be limited to trespass, what knowledge he or she has, if any, whether you were or were not out at the base. We’re not getting into international laws; that’s not the issue. That’s not the issue. What the government is doing wrong, that’s not the issue. The issue is trespass.”

Our co-defendant Steve Kelly followed the judge’s instructions and questioned our first witness, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, about his firsthand knowledge of trespass laws from working at the Department of Justice during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Steve specifically guided the witness to speak of “the cases of trespass … of lunch counter activities where laws stated you were not to sit at certain lunch counters” in the struggle for civil rights. Ramsey Clark acknowledged that those arrested for violating these laws had not committed crimes. Steve pushed his luck with the judge and offered the classic illustration of the necessity defense: “A situation where there is a ‘no trespassing’ sign and there is smoke coming out of a door or a window and a person is up on the upper floor in need of help. To enter that building, in a real narrow technical sense, would be trespass. Is there a possibility, in the long run, it wouldn’t be trespass to help the person upstairs?” Ramsey replied, “We would hope so, wouldn’t we? To have a baby burn to death or something, because of a ‘no trespass’ sign would be poor public policy to put it mildly. Criminal.”

Judge Jensen by this time was obviously intrigued. His ruling to limit the testimony to trespass held, but as his fascination grew, so his interpretation of his own order grew more elastic. Over the repeated objections of the prosecution team, the judge allowed limited but powerful testimony from Ramsey and our other witnesses, retired US Army Colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright and Loyola Law School Professor Bill Quigley that put our alleged trespass into its context as an act to stop a heinous crime.

I had the honor of making the closing statement for the accused, which I ended with, “We 14 are the ones who are seeing the smoke from the burning house and we are not going to be stopped by a ‘no trespassing’ sign from going to the burning children.”

Our appreciation for a judge’s extraordinary attention to the facts of the case aside, we still expected nothing but an immediate conviction and sentencing. Judge Jensen surprised us: “I consider it more than just a plain trespass trial. A lot of serious issues are at stake here. So I’m going to take it under advisement and I will render a written decision. And it may take me two to three months to do so, because I want to make sure that I’m right on whatever I rule on.”

When we returned to Las Vegas in January, 2011, Judge Jensen read his decision that it was just a plain trespass trial, after all and we were guilty. Among several justifications for convicting us, the judge rejected what he called “the Defendants’ claim of necessity” because “first, the Defendants failed to show that their protest was designed to prevent ‘imminent’ harm.” He faulted our case for not presenting the court with “evidence that any military activities involving drones were being conducted or about to be conducted on the day of the Defendants’ arrest,” seeming to forget that he had ordered us not to submit any such evidence, even if we had it.

Judge Jensen’s verdict was amply supported by the precedents he cited, including a 1991 appellate court ruling, U.S. v Schoon, that concerned a protest aimed to “keep US tax dollars out of El Salvador” at an IRS office in Tucson. In this protest, the Ninth Circuit ruled, “the requisite imminence was lacking.” In other words, because the harm protested was taking place in El Salvador, a trespass in Tucson cannot be justified. So, Judge Jensen reasoned, burning children in a house in Afghanistan cannot excuse a trespass in Nevada.

The NBC leak of that Department of Justice White Paper wouldn’t happen for two more years (call it suppression of evidence?) and as far as Judge Jensen knew, the dictionary definition of “imminent” was still operant. Even so, had we been allowed to testify beyond the narrow confines set at trial, we would have shown that with new satellite technology, the lethal threat we were addressing there is always imminent by any reasonable definition of the word. Although the victims of drone violence on the day of our arrest were indeed far away in Afghanistan and Iraq, those crimes were actually being committed by combatants sitting at computer screens, engaged in real-time hostilities in trailers on the base, not so far at all from where we were apprehended by Air Force police.

The government does not believe that it needs to have “clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future” to establish an imminent threat and so carry out extrajudicial executions of human beings anywhere on the planet. Citizens who act to stop killing by drones, on the other hand, are required to have specific “evidence that any military activities involving drones were being conducted or about to be conducted,” in order to justify nonviolently entering into government property. The government’s position on this lacks coherence, at best. Even after the publication of its White Paper, the Department of Justice continues to block defendants accused of trespass from even mentioning the fact that they were arrested while responding to an imminent threat to innocent life, and the courts obligingly accept this contradiction.

The defense of necessity does not simply justify actions that technically violate the law. “Necessity,” says West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, is “a defense asserted by a criminal or civil defendant that he or she had no choice but to break the law.” As Ramsey Clark testified in the Las Vegas courtroom four years ago, “to have a baby burn to death because of a ‘no trespass sign’ would be poor public policy to put it mildly.” In a time of burning children, the “no trespassing” signs attached to the fences that protect the crimes executed with drones and other instruments of terror hold no potency and they do not command our obedience. The courts that do not recognize this reality allow themselves to be used as instruments of governmental malfeasance.

There have been many more trials since the Creech 14 and in the meanwhile, many more children have been incinerated by missiles fired from drones. On December 10, International Human Rights Day, Georgia Walker and Kathy Kelly will go to trial in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Missouri, after they peacefully brought their grievance and a loaf of bread onto Whiteman Air Force Base, another in the growing number of stateside remote control killer drone centers.

Two years ago in that same court in a similar case, Judge Whitworth rejected the necessity defense offered by Ron Faust and myself, subsequently sentencing Ron to five years of probation and sending me to prison for six months. It is to be hoped that Judge Whitworth will take advantage of this second chance that Kathy and Georgia courageously offer and exonerate himself and his profession.

November 17, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

South Africa Marikana Massacre Defense Blames Victims

teleSUR | November 13, 2014

The defense team of the South African police who dispersed a demonstration by killing 34 miners on August 16, 2012, said on Thursday that the surviving demonstrators should be charged with treason.

The Marikana Massacre happened after the Lonmin mine workers started a strike to demand better wages.

Prior to the massacre, two police were killed by the miners during clashes outside the Lonmin compound; however, the legal representatives of the miners union asserts that the police were killed by one or two workers and that not everybody was violent or even armed at the time.

Ishmael Semenya, who is representing the South African Police Service (SAPS), says that the miners were planning to attack the police, a state organ, so they should be charged with treason.

However, lawyer Dali Mpofu, who represents the miners, said that the tension was caused by the police, who failed to advise the demonstrators that they were planning to disperse the rally.

Police assert that the miners, some of whom were armed with spears and sticks, tried to kill them; however, the union legal advisers assert that the police reactions were a result of the anger of their two colleagues’ death.

Mpofu also said that the police acted on political considerations and rushed to end the strike, fearing Julius Malema, a controversial politician who is popular among the poorer sectors of the population, could interfere and worsen the situation.

Malema said he was with the workers and urged them to maintain their strike. He has served in different public positions with the African National Congress party administration, but he was expelled from the party on 2012 over a hate speech accusation.

Now he is commander-in-chief of his new party, the Economic Freedom Fighters.

Both sides’ arguments were submitted this week, marking the final phase of the investigation being carried out by the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, which was ordered by President Jacob Zuma.

November 14, 2014 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Palestinian activists cross separation wall in protest action

Ma’an – 14/11/2014

303511_345x230RAMALLAH – Dozens of Palestinian activists crossed Israel’s separation wall on Friday near Qalandia checkpoint as part of a series of non-violent protest actions to demonstrate solidarity with Jerusalem.

Activists used makeshift ramparts, ladders and cut through barbed wire to climb over the separation wall near Qalandia military checkpoint, which is at least six-eight meters in height.

The action was part of a campaign entitled #On2Jerusalem that was organized by the Popular Resistance Committees.

Coordinator of the popular committees, Salah Khawaja, said they attempted to enter Jerusalem but were prevented from doing so by Israeli forces, who deployed heavily in the area.

Israeli forces used live fire, tear gas canisters, stun grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets to disperse the march.

Dozens of Palestinian activists also gathered near the village of Hizma carrying Palestinian flags and shouting slogans in support of Jerusalem.

Several youths were injured as Israeli forces opened fire at them to prevent them crossing the checkpoint. The activists managed to close the road, with Israeli forces preventing settlers from traveling to the area.

Dozens of activists also demonstrated by the entrance to Maale Adumim settlement waving Palestinian flags.

“They attempted to detain us for carrying Palestinian flags,” Khawaja said. “What we did today was to emphasize that we do not have a choice but popular resistance and clashing with Israel is a part of our fight to stop Israeli crimes against Palestinians”

An Israeli army spokeswoman said there was an “attempt” to cross the wall, without providing further details.

November 14, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

ILWU Struggles 1984-2010, The Struggle Continues

laborvideo

November 12, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Reclaim Armistice Day and Honor the Real Heroes

By Arnold Oliver | Peace Voice | November 10, 2014

More than a few veterans, Veterans For Peace among them, are troubled by the way Americans observe Veterans Day on November 11th. It was originally called Armistice Day, and established by Congress in 1926 to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations, (and later) a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.” For years, many churches rang their bells on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – the time that the guns fell silent on the Western Front by which time 16 million had died.

To put it bluntly, in 1954 Armistice Day was hijacked by a militaristic congress, and today few Americans understand the original purpose of the occasion, or even remember it. The message of peace seeking has vanished. Now known as Veterans Day, it has devolved into a hyper-nationalistic worship ceremony for war and the putatively valiant warriors who wage it.

Here is a news flash. Most of what goes on during wartime is decidedly unheroic, and heroes in war are few and far between.

I have to tell you that when I was in Vietnam, I was no hero, and I didn’t witness any heroism during the year I spent there, first as a U.S. Army private and then as a sergeant.

Yes, there was heroism in the Vietnam War. On both sides of the conflict there were notable acts of self-sacrifice and bravery. Troops in my unit wondered how the North Vietnamese troops could persevere for years in the face of daunting U.S. firepower. U.S. medical corpsmen performed incredible acts of valor rescuing the wounded under fire.

But I also witnessed a considerable amount of bad behavior, some of it my own. There were widespread incidents of disrespect and abuse of Vietnamese civilians including many war crimes. Further, all units had, and still have, their share of criminals, con artists and thugs. Most unheroic of all were the U.S. military and civilian leaders who planned, orchestrated, and profited greatly from that utterly avoidable war.

The cold truth is that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam had nothing to do with protecting American peace and freedom. On the contrary, the Vietnam War bitterly divided the United States, and was fought to forestall Vietnamese independence, not defend it.

Unfortunately, Vietnam wasn’t an isolated example. Many American wars — including the 1846 Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the Iraq War (this list is by no means exhaustive) — were waged under false pretexts against countries that didn’t threaten the United States. It’s hard to see how, if a war is unjust, it can be heroic to wage it.

But if the vast majority of wars are not fought for noble reasons, and few soldiers are heroic, have there been any actual heroes out there defending peace and freedom? And if so, who are they?

Well, there are many, from Jesus down to the present. I’d put Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the list along with many Quakers and Mennonites. And don’t forget General Smedley Butler, who wrote that “War is a Racket”, and even, sort of, Robert McNamara, who came around in the very end.

In Vietnam, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson stopped the My Lai massacre from being even worse.

Another candidate is former U.S. Army specialist Josh Stieber who sent this message to the people of Iraq: “Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.” Ponder a million Iraqi deaths. Chelsea Manning sits behind bars for exposing those and other truths.

The real heroes are those who resist war and militarism, often at great personal cost.

Because militarism has been around for such a long time, at least since Gilgamesh came up with his protection racket in Sumeria going on 5,000 years ago, people argue that it will always be with us. But many also thought that slavery and the subjugation of women would last forever, and they’re being proven wrong. We understand that while militarism will not disappear overnight, disappear it must if we are to avoid economic as well as moral bankruptcy.

As Civil War General W.T. Sherman said at West Point, “I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of war.” We’re with you, bro.

This year on November 11th, Veterans For Peace will bring back the original Armistice Day traditions. Join them and let those bells ring out.

Arnold “Skip” Oliver is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio. A Vietnam veteran, he belongs to Veterans For Peace, and can be reached at soliver@heidelberg.edu.

November 10, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Haiti: Protest Leaders Arrested After Marches

Weekly News Update on the Americas | November 3, 2014

Two Haitian human rights groups, the Haitian Platform of Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) and the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), issued a joint statement on Oct. 27 demanding “the release of the political prisoners and the demonstrators arrested illegally” by the government of President Michel Martelly in recent weeks. Police agents arrested 18 demonstrators in Port-au-Prince on Oct. 17 during a march protesting government policies and marking the 208th anniversary of revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ assassination; the police dispersed the demonstration with tear gas and gunshots. After an Oct. 26 march protesting the government’s failure to hold partial legislative elections on that date, the authorities arrested Rony Timothée and Byron Odigé, two leaders in the Patriotic Force for Respect for the Constitution (FOPARC), which backs the Family Lavalas (FL) party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004). In addition to the 20 arrests in Port-au-Prince, police detained three demonstrators in the city of Les Cayes, South department, on Oct. 12 during a protest demanding electricity.

The two human rights groups indicated that the detainees were arrested for their political positions. The government failed to meet the requirement to question the detainees within 24 hours, the groups said, and they expressed astonishment that “accusations of incitation to violence and destruction could be made against demonstrators and opposition activists when no flagrant crime had taken place.” Timothée and Odigé were also arrested in May, on similar charges, but a judge ordered their release a few weeks later [see Update #1224]. On Oct. 30 demonstrators protested the arrests with a march to the prison in Carrefour, on Port-au-Prince’s southwest outskirts, where Timothée and Odigé were thought to be held. A large police group was on hand, backed up by a truck equipped with a water cannon; stores quickly closed, and mothers reportedly snatched children from schools so that they wouldn’t be exposed to tear gas, but the protest ended without any major confrontations. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/29/14, 10/31/14)

November 4, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

A Most Important Book for All Who Study National Liberations

Unfree in Palestine

By Denis Rancourt | Dissident Voice | November 2, 2014

The new book by academics Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay — Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation and Movement Restrictions (PlutoPress, 2013) — is a brilliant achievement, and a landmark in the study of both the ongoing Israel genocide in Palestine,1 and national liberation struggles in general.

At first look the book is simply a well-researched academic treatise, with 693 endnotes, about administrative controls imposed on Palestinians by Israel. It is written in a sober style with great intellectual clarity.

As one enters its pages, however, Unfree becomes a far reaching analysis of the mechanics of a colonial state’s eradication and domination of an indigenous population, that has parallels in other modern states such as Canada.2 And it becomes an incisive description of the psychological and cultural anatomy of the awe-inspiring Palestinian resistance.

The unstated lessons of this book are transportable to any colonial nation state, and the picture is one that exposes the vicious nature of colonialism in the institutional instruments that are used. Despite the balanced and academic approach of the authors, readers will be horrified to learn the minutia of  what Palestinian citizens continue to endure in “the only democracy in the Middle East”, and to learn the history of Israel’s colonialism through the lens of administrative controls.

How has and does Israel contravene international law? Let us count the ways…

… the Hague Regulations, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention, various United Nations Resolutions, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

These legal documents run parallel to another story – that of the largest denationalisation project in modern history. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees describes Palestine as “by far the most protracted and largest of all refugee problems in the world today”.2 In Palestine, the tools of the census, the population registry, and residence permits effectively denationalised a nation. It is one of the greatest ironies that, as nationalism faded in Europe, it waxed in the Zionist movement to Palestine, and as international law opposed denationalisation, denationalisation in Palestine rose ever higher. [p. 20]

One of the most profound chapters in Unfree is the one entitled “Coercion and Collaboration” (Chap. 4). The authors recognize that colonialists always depend on collaborators, and that any colonialist enterprise must implement a strategy for securing collaboration. Israel’s methods to coerce Palestinians to become collaborators in its genocide are violations of the explicit language of international statutes, and are inhuman, as the facts presented demonstrate. The authors always summarize by understating, such as:

The pressure to collaborate is one of the most difficult demands on Palestinians who either need IDs or need to retrieve them. This pressure permeates and is instrumental to the perpetuation of the system of control. [p. 83]

At times, the explicit descriptions of documented Israeli war and occupation crimes overpowers any human reader, such as:

In the first decade after 1948, “curfews became the most common method of controlling Palestinians”.68 Perhaps the best-known incident in this period took place in 1956, in the village of Kafr Qassem. The Israeli army gave only a half hour’s notice to the village leader that a curfew would take effect at sunset. With no way of telling the villagers returning home at dusk, the villagers were surprised to be confronted by armed forces asking if they were from the village. When they said “yes”, 47 men, women, and children were shot dead, one by one, at close range, in the first hour of the curfew alone.69

Defending the premeditated massacre, Brigadier Shadmi had told his forces, “A dead man is better than the complications of detention”. Shadmi and his men eventually served short prison sentences, were formally pardoned, and then promoted to leading roles in Palestinian municipalities and the Dimona nuclear facilities.70 [p. 106]

There are descriptions of routine Israeli interferences with births, and with Palestinian health services in general:

Médecins du Monde reported in November 2003 that Israeli officials had been holding birth delivery kits at the airport for seven months (sent by the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA). The Ministry of Health in Nablus had been waiting for these kits since February 2003. In 2002, when Palestinian needs were greatest after Israeli attacks, Israeli officials at the airport kept medicines for eight months – until one third of them had expired – that had been sent from Germany, the US, and Italy to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees.23 [p. 129]

Some of the introductory summaries to chapters are among the most compelling academic statements on the treatment of Palestinians by Israel, such as:

In the spring of 2002, yellow and purple blossoms covered the fields and trees around Jenin, a Palestinian town named for the fertility of its earth, and known for the largest forested area in the West Bank. But that spring, the forest had a different use. Israeli army forces were sweeping through the West Bank, taking over 8,500 Palestinians from their homes and workplaces and holding them captive in makeshift camps. Around Jenin, the army separated the men aged between about 18 to 50 from the children, women, and older men; then they took the men to the forest: handcuffed, blindfolded, in their underwear; they were forced to kneel or squat in the cold mud, and denied blankets, food, and water.1

Soldiers had written the ID numbers on Palestinians’ wrists with blue ink.2 Then each man was photographed, interrogated with the use of a digital file containing details about his life, and had his ID number written on the back of the photo. Using plastic shackles – described by Amnesty International as a form of torture because they stop blood circulation and cut into the skin – to bind captives’ hands, they blindfolded them, and kept them, “squatting, sitting or kneeling, not allowed to go to the toilet, and deprived of food or blankets during at least the first 24 hours”.3

Majdi Shehadeh was one of over 600 Palestinians taken from Tulkarem refugee camp:

“We weren’t given any food, and when we asked for water they poured it over us. The handcuffs were tight and when the blindfolds were taken off on our arrival I saw some people with hands black and swollen.4″

By 3.30 a.m. they began to shake with cold. Elsewhere, in the Ramallah area, so many Palestinians were taken that the army forced them into a dried-up septic tank for lack of space in the prisons.5 After a day and a half, they were given their first food:

[F]or 10 people we got a tomato and an apple and we shared this. Every six people had a loaf of bread, but a very small one and 200 grams of yoghurt.6

From 1967 to 2006, Israel incarcerated almost 700,000 Palestinians, that is, nearly one-fifth of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza.7

[…]

Harvard professor Sara Roy, whose father carried an identification number imprinted on his arm in the Second World War, was one of those who noticed the connections between these so-called bureaucratic elements during the 2002 mass arrests:

“[W]hat does it mean when Israeli soldiers paint identification numbers on Palestinian arms; when young Palestinian men and boys of a certain age are told through Israeli loudspeakers to gather in the town square; when Israeli soldiers openly admit to shooting Palestinian children for sport; when some of the Palestinian dead must be buried in mass graves while the bodies of others are left in city streets and camp alleyways because the army will not allow proper burial; when certain Israeli officials and Jewish intellectuals publicly call for the destruction of Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings or for the transfer of the Palestinian population out of the West Bank and Gaza; when 46 per cent of the Israeli public favors such transfers and when transfer or expulsion becomes a legitimate part of popular discourse; when government officials speak of the “cleansing of the refugee camps”; and when a leading Israeli intellectual calls for hermetic separation between Israelis and Palestinians in the form of a Berlin Wall, caring not whether the Palestinians on the other side of the wall may starve to death as a result.10″ [p. 160, 161]

Finally, a most fascinating section of Unfree explains the Palestinian spirit and culture of resistance that is termed “sumud“. The following sequence of quotes from Unfree constitutes a description of sumud:

“We Palestinians have learned to lose without being defeated.30″ [p. 172]

Sumud is […] described by Edward Said as “a way of turning presence into small-scale obduracy”,33 in which sheer presence constitutes resistance; it contradicts “the natural behavior expected … exodus and leaving”.34 [p. 172]

The internationalisation of the term sumud is attributed to Shehadeh, who explains that, faced with the two options of “mute submission” or “blind hate”, he would choose the third: sumud.35 [p. 173]

People in difficult conditions like Hani Amer often refer to their children, their families, and all people suffering collectively, as reasons for staying in place. [p. 173]

[Quoting Anthropologist Rema Hammami:]

“In terms of the society’s self-image, this is a society that for more than fifty years has lived in a constant state of dispossession. [It is] an incremental dispossession: it goes on, and on, and on. And the society is extremely strong in terms of survival, in terms of survival strategies. It’s very proud of that as well.

I mean, I think the self-image that most Palestinians have – we all have of ourselves – is that, “We are constant losers. We’re just people, and we just lose all the time. And we lose, but you know what? At the end of the day, they are not going to win. Because we’re stubborn. We’re stubborn bastards, right. I got nowhere else to go. This is my home. They can do what the hell they want. But I’m staying”.41″ [p. 174]

Thus, sumud is a powerful and foundational explanation of the phenomenal Palestinian resistance. Sumud is a psychological alternative to suicidal physical resistance against a vastly more powerful invader, and to fleeing or accepting death. This alternative is made possible by being culturally embedded, and the feasibility of sumud is consistent with the “self-image-incongruence model of individual health” that I have recently described, based on known socio-medical research.3

There is one aspect of Unfree with which I do not agree. In their final chapter, the authors cast sumud as a technique of non-violent resistance. I do not see why the cultural and psychological basis for sumud would have to be inconsistent with a resistance that includes armed self-defence.

In other words, there is no reason, in my view, that sumud is at odds with an armed intifada. Indeed, it seems to me that sumud and armed rebellion are natural partners and supporters of each other, and that neither can survive without the other.

This is important because it is becoming more-than-apparent that nothing short of physical force on the ground will stop Israel in its “cleansing” and “grass mowing” projects. Certainly sumud alone, no matter how noble and admirable, is no match for years and decades more of business as usual in Palestine. Applying the myth of pacifism as a realistic counter to a genocidal maniac nation such as Israel would only ensure the murder of Palestinian society.

Nonetheless, that is a minor interpretational aspect, and Unfree, will be of great benefit to anyone interested in the truth about the so-called “Israel-Palestine conflict”, or interested in resistance struggles in history and in colonized regions (everywhere).

  1. Note: The authors of Unfree do not qualify Israel colonialism as a “genocide”. It is not their goal to establish any legal judgements, but rather solely to factually describe the historic realities on the ground.
  2. See: Rancourt, Denis G., Israel’s Attempted Genocide Must Fail — Lessons from genocide in “Canada”, Dissident Voice, August 2, 2014.
  3. See: Rancourt, Denis G., Self-Image-Incongruence Theory of Individual Health, Dissident Voice, October 26, 2014.

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.

November 3, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

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