Mike Whitney: November marks the 10th anniversary of the WTO demonstrations in Seattle. Can you explain why you went even though you knew you might be harassed, gassed, beaten or arrested?

Jeffrey St. Clair: I had no intention of being harassed, gassed, beaten, shot at or arrested. This was Seattle after all. The police don’t act that way in the Emerald City. I didn’t particularly want to go, but Cockburn couldn’t be budged from Petrolia. The Turtles and Teamsters theme turned me off. Many of the groups behind the “official” protest had prostrated themselves at the feet of the Clinton Administration for seven years as they hacked away at the foundations of the environmental, labor and human rights policies that had been in place since the Great Society without so much as a whimper of protest. It had all the hallmarks of another Potemkin protest by the politically neutered progressive bloc. But there were rumblings from the underground that a more impolite demonstration might erupt on the streets. I wanted to show up just in case. Besides, there was an exhibition of paintings by my favorite American artist Morris Graves showing in town. In the end, Graves had to wait.

MW: What groups participated in the demonstrations and was there a common-thread that tied them together?

JSC: The French philosopher Michel Foucault quipped, “It’s resistance that unites us.” So it was in Seattle. If there was a common thread that united Earth Firsters, anarchists, Longshoremen and even wheat farmers from the Great Plains it was resistance against the machinery of government, from the WTO to the Clinton administration to the Seattle Police Department. In the end, this strange melange included even the people of Seattle as they were indiscriminately brutalized by their own cops. The street protests were organized (if you can call it organized) by the Direct Action Network and the Ruckus Society, along with some independent operators such as the Black Bloc. But the over-reaction of the Seattle cops did more to swell the size and intensity of the protests than any of those groups. It was a unique convergence of forces and circumstances that created a one-of-a-kind spectacle that even the Situationists might have enjoyed.

MW: Most people have only heard the media’s version of the events (along with the endless footage of the attack on the Starbuck’s store) Can you explain what the media “got wrong” in their coverage?

JSC: You can’t expect the corporate media to critique global capitalism, can you? In the end, I didn’t think the media coverage of the Seattle demonstrations was that terrible. Of course, the media made no attempt to understand what was driving the protests, but that would have required them to get out on the streets and interview people as concussion grenades were exploding overhead–not something the business press, assembled for the WTO, was comfortable doing. The media certainly globalized the protests and made those street battles an inspiration to activists around the world. I don’t mind seeing those images of Starbucks and Niketown getting whacked. In the end, I think the media, particularly the Seattle media, turned against the cops–at least what I was able to watch in my cramped motel room at the King’s Inn. Give the Black Bloc their due. By smashing a few windows in advance of the WTO, they largely preempted any coverage of the phony labor/green parade and rally and got the cameras out on the streets where they belonged.

MW: 5 Days that Shook the World, the book that you co-authored with Alexander Cockburn and photographer Allan Sekula, is a classic of radical journalism. But I’m afraid it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Apart from the riveting storyline and the high-octane prose, there’s quite a bit of information here that would interest antiwar protesters and civil libertarians. It looks like many of the repressive measures that people associate with the Bush era, actually had took root during the Clinton administration; extralegal surveillance, preemptive arrest, and the rise of paramilitary-type law enforcement. What did Seattle teach you about repression in America?

JSC: The WTO protests exposed what many of us had been writing about for years: the militarization of policing in America. The images of cops dressed in black storm-trooper gear, firing concussion grenades, plastic bullets and tear gas at protesters, business people and shoppers on the streets of America’s most self-consciously progressive (and white) city revealed how thoroughly infected the nation’s police forces had become with these brutal tactics and anti-constitutional measures. Of course, none of this would have come as a surprise to the residents of South Central Los Angeles, where these tactics had been a daily fact of life since at least the tenure of Darryl Gates in the 1980s. But now the traumas of black America had shown up on the streets of one of America’s whitest cities. The Clinton administration had proved with lethal force it was more than willing to trample basic constitutional guarantees at Waco in the horrific and totally unjustified raid on the Branch Davidians, where more than 100 people were burned to death. Of course, at the time few progressives sympathized with Koresh and his followers and many of them defended the actions of the FBI and ATF, even after watching those women and kids go up in flames. It’s also worth noting that the Waco raid saw the Clinton administration trample the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited domestic operations by the US military.

It’s now been proved that the Delta Force had a hand in the Waco catastrophe. Again liberals were mute on this constitutional incursion by Clinton. Then after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Clinton pushed congress to pass the Counterterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was a precursor of the Patriot Act. This law widely expanding policing powers, set up the noxious Joint Terrorism Task Forces, where the FBI set up shop with local cops, and became to criminalize various kinds of dissent and protest. Seattle revealed the maturation of these tactics to middle-class and liberal America.

MW: The book takes a few jabs at liberals (like Medea Benjamin) and Big Labor who didn’t really lift a finger to disrupt the WTO meetings. How do explain the willingness of liberals and labor to roll over and let the corporations decide how they think the world should be divided up? Do you think the Iraq war protests would have been more successful had they used the tactics of WTO demonstrators rather than ambling sheep-like through city-centers waving signs and mooning for the cameras?

JSC: It’s no surprise that the big environmental groups and big labor didn’t try to disrupt the WTO meetings or even come to the aid of the street protesters as they were being brutalized by the cops. All they really wanted was a seat at the negotiating table, even if they knew they were going to get creamed in the negotiations. These groups barely stood up to Reagan and Bush I. They were silly putty in Clinton’s hands, willing to swallow, and at times, even defend every betrayal, from NAFTA and the destruction of welfare to logging in ancient forests. Medea Benjamin is a different story. She wanted to claim ownership of street protests but didn’t want to be tarred by elements that made her funders and friends in the media uncomfortable. Her defense of Niketown was outrageous, but entirely predictable. Witness her recent statements urging a limited, modified pull-out from Afghanistan. She thrives on media stunts, and in order to continue to be a quotable source (even by Bill O.) she needs to distance herself from the more radical elements, in this case, a few black kids helping themselves to some overpriced, sweatshop produced Nike footware liberated by the Black Bloc. It was a pathetic performance.

I don’t think the Seattle experience can or will be repeated. You can only take the ruling class off guard once every few decades. The greatest protest against the Iraq war was done by a single person: Cindy Sheehan and her lonely vigil outside Crawford, Texas. The failure was in the anti-war movement’s inability to capitalize on Cindy’s courageous stand. This illustrates–along with the failure to run the Bush crowd out of town after Katrina–of the deep institutional impotence of the American left, a paralysis that has become even more pronounced in the age of Obama.

MW: “Jeffrey St. Clair’s Seattle Diary” (chapter 2) is just a great read. Can you explain the mood of the crowd and the fear you must have felt when the helicopters were buzzing overhead and the small army of truncheon-wielding robocops were clearing the streets and dragging hundreds of protesters off to jail?

JSC: I wasn’t frightened. It was an altogether exhilarating experience. But then again I didn’t get hit in the head with a plastic bullet or locked up in a stifling bus for 20 hours. A little tear gas now and then is good for the soul.

MW: Here’s the final entry to your “Seattle Diary”:

I walked out on the street one last time. The acrid stench of CN gas still soured the morning air. As I turned to get into my car for the drive back to Portland, a black teenager grabbed my arm. “Hey, man, does this WTO deal come to town every year?” I knew how the kid felt. Along with the poison, the flash bombs and rubber bullets, there was an optimism, energy and camaraderie that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

What was achieved in Seattle that week in 1999?

JSC: It was an inspirational week. Seattle proved that after swallowing seven years of crap from a Democratic regime it was possible for some progressives to awaken from their hibernation and express in a direct and confrontational way their anger with their political masters. It showed that resistance is not only possible, but that it can also be fun. The movement is in repose once again. But, who knows, it make reawaken any time in the next seven years….

Notes on WTO demonstrations by Alexander Cockburn:

“As we wrote at the time, You can take state power by surprise over twenty or thirty years, and state power spends the next two or three decades making sure it won’t happen again. See May/June ‘68 in Paris. The next big anti-WTO rally after Seattle was in Washington DC and as JoAnn Wypijewski reported for CounterPunch after that rally, the Maryland/DC cops had orders to shoot to kill if necessary. You can chart the fanatic vigilance of the state by the near impossibility of demonstrating within eyeshot of Bush or Cheney. There were several instances of people in wheel chairs and a sign, awaiting the Royal Progress of W or C, being hauled off to distant wire pens, there to exercise their First Amendment rights. Jeffrey and I were at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles in the summer of 2000 and the armed police presence was beyond belief, with squads of motor bike cops regularly roaring along the sidewalks. It took the arrival of a black president in the White House to persuade the police that it was okay to have a man with a revolver strapped to his leg to demonstrate at an Obama town hall meeting with a sign quoting Jefferson on the need to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.

Of course one’s tendency is to think that a hugely exciting event like the Seattle Days is the beginning of something — but alas, Seattle was more epilogue than overture. The organized left fell apart in the Clinton years and hasn’t effectively reconstituted itself since. In fact in the US the left as an energetic intellectual and political force is nearly dead, engorged by the Democratic Party. Of course there are those who fight on – like us here at CounterPunch, and the fact that we have a large and loyal audience across the world for our stuff encourages us to believe there’s life in the Old Mole still.”

Taking a page from America’s political police force, the FBI, the British state is beefing-up an ever-growing watch list of “domestic extremists.”

As we know, that trend has taken on a Kafkaesque life of its own here in the heimat. Secrecy News reports that during a Q&A last year with the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller told the panel that each day between March 2008 and March 2009, “there were an average of more than 1,600 nominations for inclusion on the [Terrorist] watch list.”

With this in mind, The Guardian published a series of extraordinary reports that revealed the mass monitoring of legal political activities by British citizens by the secret state.

Investigative journalists Paul Lewis, Rob Evans and Matthew Taylor provided chilling details how police and corporate spies “are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases.”

Are these activists part of a shadowy network of al-Qaeda “sleeper cells” or environmental saboteurs intent on bringing Britain to its knees by targeting critical infrastructure?

Hardly! According to The Guardian, a “hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor ‘domestic extremists’,” one that stores this information “on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime.”

Three national police units responsible for combating domestic extremism are run by the ‘terrorism and allied matters’ committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo). In total, it receives £9m in public funding, from police forces and the Home Office, and employs a staff of 100. (Paul Lewis, Rob Evans and Matthew Taylor, “Police in £9m scheme to log ‘domestic extremists’,” The Guardian, October 25, 2009)

That’s a lot of boodle to spy on antiwar activists, environmentalists, arms’ trade opponents and the state’s usual suspects–anarchists, socialists and labor militants.

As the journalists point out, the phrase “domestic extremism” is not a lawful term. In fact, the widespread use of the term is a demonstration of how powerful constituencies have perverted law, thus creating their own all-embracing interpretation of the role of protest in a democratic society.

Indeed, senior officers “describe domestic extremists as individuals or groups ‘that carry out criminal acts of direct action in furtherance of a campaign. These people and activities usually seek to prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy, but attempt to do so outside of the normal democratic process’.”

Needless to say, that covers a lot of ground and under these fast and loose standards, it is clear that police intelligence agencies and their political masters are seeking to criminalize long-established forms of citizen action such as demonstrations, sit-ins, public meetings and strikes.

Among the newspaper’s revelations we discover that the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), housed at a secret London office, is a giant database of “protest groups and protesters in the country.”

NPIOU’s brief is “to gather, assess, analyse and disseminate intelligence and information relating to criminal activities in the United Kingdom where there is a threat of crime or to public order which arises from domestic extremism or protest activity”.

Chock-a-block with information gathered by Special Branch officers, corporate spies and paid infiltrators attached to the Confidential Intelligence Unit, ACPO’s national coordinator Anton Setchell told the publication that intelligence collected in England and Wales is shunted to NPIOU which “can read across” all the forces’ intelligence and regurgitate what are called “coherent” assessments.

Additionally, Lewis, Evans and Taylor reported:

• Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked via a nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras.

• Police surveillance units known as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers, record footage and take photographs of campaigners as they enter and leave openly advertised public meetings. These images are entered on force-wide databases so that police can chronicle the campaigners’ political activities. The information is added to the central NPOIU.

• Surveillance officers are provided with “spotter cards” used to identify the faces of target individuals who police believe are at risk of becoming involved in domestic extremism. Targets include high-profile activists regularly seen taking part in protests. One spotter card, produced by the Met to monitor campaigners against an arms fair, includes a mugshot of the comedian Mark Thomas.

• NPOIU works in tandem with two other little-known Acpo branches, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Netcu), which advises thousands of companies on how to manage political campaigns, and the National Domestic Extremism Team, which pools intelligence gathered by investigations into protesters across the country. (The Guardian, op. cit.)

Why would British police target law-abiding citizens exercising their right to protest the depredations of the capitalist order?

Because they can! With a logic that only a policeman’s mother could love, Setchell told The Guardian: “Just because you have no criminal record does not mean that you are not of interest to the police. Everyone who has got a criminal record did not have one once.”

And there you have it: Precrime washes up on Blighty’s fabled shores!

Merchants of Death and the Secret State: Best Friends Forever!

As if to underscore the point that the business of government in the UK, in the United States, indeed everywhere, is business, the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU) “helps police forces, companies, universities and other bodies that are on the receiving end of protest campaigns.”

Created by the Home Office in 2004, NETCU’s Superintendent Steve Pearl told The Guardian New Labour was “getting really pressurised by big business–pharmaceuticals in particular, and the banks–that they were not able to go about their lawful business because of the extreme criminal behaviour of some people within the animal rights movement.”

But as with all things relating to “security,” once our minders get a taste of what can be gleaned by deploying new technologies, mission creep inevitably follows. Seamlessly traversing the narrow terrain between “animal rights’ extremism” and environmental campaigners, Pearl told the newspaper that the Green movement has now been brought “more on their radar.”

But greens and antiwar activists aren’t the only ones making an appearance in the “domestic extremist” database. What with enterprising capitalist grifters, pardon, defense corporations, making a killing on a planet-wide scale, it should come as no surprise that the scandal-tainted arms manufacturer, BAE, would be keen to get a handle on who might object to their grisly trade.

Indeed, one of the “domestic extremists” listed on the police spotter card as “target X” was in fact “an alleged infiltrator from the arms company BAE.”

According to The Guardian Martin Hogbin “was national co-ordinator for the Campaign against the Arms Trade. He was later accused of supplying information to a company linked to BAE’s security department, but denied the allegation.”

With billions of pounds at stake, Europe’s largest arms manufacturer continues to be caught-up in a decades’ long bribery scandal that spans continents.

And New Labour under Bush’s poodle, former Prime Minister Tony Blair and current PM Gordon Brown, have done everything in their power to suppress BAE’s prosecution by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office. As the World Socialist Web Site reported earlier this month:

Labour has operated a revolving door between powerful companies, financial consultants and Whitehall, under the guise of bringing entrepreneurial expertise into the civil service, giving the major companies enormous lobbying power. Following pressure from BAE, Rolls Royce and Airbus, the government put a stop to the Export Credit Guarantee Department’s attempts to introduce stronger anti-bribery measures. It took a judicial review to get them reinstated.

The late Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary, famously wrote in his memoirs, “I came to learn that the chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden door to No 10. Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE.” (Jean Shaoul, “Britain: BAE Systems faces prosecution for bribery,” World Socialist Web Site, October 5, 2009)

That “revolving door” between the secret state, arms manufacturers and the police campaign against protest is spinning ever faster.

When campaigners from the Smash EDO activist group sought to shut down an arms factory near their home, they were in for a shock.

EDO, an American arms’ firm gobbled-up by defense and communications giant ITT Corp. in 2007, reportedly for $1.8 billion according to Washington Technology, pledged to “unite EDO’s business with its own sensing and surveillance capabilities.”

ITT Corp. ranked No. 11 on the publication’s 2009 “Top 100″ list of prime federal contractors with some $2.5 billion in total revenue.

ITT is a piece of work itself. According to Anthony Sampson’s book The Sovereign State of ITT, one of the first American businessmen to pay homage to Adolf Hitler after the Nazis’ 1933 seizure of power was none other than Sosthenses Behn, ITT’s powerful CEO.

During the 1970s, the firm funded the far-right newspaper El Mercurio, the CIA’s propaganda arm that was instrumental in the overthrow of Chile’s democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. Documents published by The National Security Archive, revealed the close collaboration between ITT and the CIA “to rollback the election of socialist leader Salvador Allende.”

But that’s all in the past, right? Think again!

Smash EDO avers that “EDO’s military products include bomb racks, release clips and arming mechanisms for warplanes. They have contracts with the UK Ministry of ‘Defence’ and US arms giant Raytheon relating to the release mechanisms of the Paveway bomb system.” Needless to say, the firm’s “products” have been used in facilitating imperialist massacres of civilian populations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

One can see why EDO and parent ITT would be keen on gagging protesters who object to war crimes.

The Guardian reports that the firm, with the assistance of “Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden (nicknamed TLC by activists) has been accused of gagging protesters’ right to demonstrate. The former Household Cavalry officer’s favourite legal weapon is the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act. Numerous companies have hired Lawson-Cruttenden and other City lawyers to injunct protesters under the act, a law originally introduced to protect vulnerable women from stalkers.”

Under British law, protesters who defy draconian high court injunctions can be jailed for up to five years if they break the terms of the court orders.

Lawson-Cruttenden, who claims to have influenced the drafting of the law, obtained an injunction against Smash EDO in 2005 after the attorney worked with Sussex police to frame a statement that would be beneficial to his client, EDO, which claimed the demonstrators had been “intimidating and harassing” company employees.

But as documents obtained by The Guardian show, Lawson-Cruttenden “developed extensive links with many of the police forces across England and Wales to assist with the policing of injunctions”.

Although a high court judge criticized the attorney for obtaining confidential police material, after being hired by EDO he “continued to acquire secret police papers even though the high court judge in the case had ruled that he was not entitled to them, as they were irrelevant.”

Undeterred however, Lawson-Cruttenden obtained assistance from “the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (Netcu) which targets ‘domestic extremists’. The head of Netcu, Superintendent Stephen Pearl, has testified for a number of firms which have obtained injunctions.”

The Guardian revealed that private emails “show that Inspector Nic Clay and Jim Sheldrake of Netcu gave Lawson-Cruttenden the names and contact details of officers at two other police forces as he was ‘keen’ to obtain statements about the activities of the campaigners at a third firm.”

Pearl denied that NETCU had provided assistance to EDO and told the newspaper: “Let me make this quite clear: Netcu, or me, were not involved in the EDO injunction in any way.”

When his mendacious statement was exposed by a close reading of the documents, in an obvious climb-down a NETCU spokesperson claimed there had been a “misunderstanding” and that the unit “had not given evidence for the injunction.” Translation: police had “only” leaked the information to a high-priced corporate attorney who did the dirty work.

The firm lost, the injunction was lifted and the company was forced to pay court costs for the Smash EDO protesters.

Despite this minor victory the secret state, fully in cahoots with giant multinational corporations responsible for the current capitalist economic meltdown, endless imperialist wars of conquest and accelerating environmental destruction will continue to index and target citizens who object to capitalism’s systemic criminality.

It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens that were adopted long ago in the occupied territories, where soldiers are regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians.

According to David Cohen, the national police commissioner, the unit was established two years ago after an assessment that there was “no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community”. He said that, in addition, undercover agents had been operating in East Jerusalem for several years to track potential terrorists.

Israel’s Arab leaders denounced the move as confirmation that the Arab minority was still regarded by the police as “an enemy” – a criticism made by a state commission of inquiry after police shot dead 13 unarmed Arab demonstrators inside Israel and wounded hundreds more at the start of the second intifada in 2000.

In a letter of protest to Israeli officials this week, Adalah, a legal rights group, warned that the unit’s creation violated the consitutional rights of the Arab minority and risked introducing “racial profiling” into Israeli policing.

Although the police claim that only Arab criminals are being targeted, Arab leaders believe the unit is an expansion of police efforts to collect information on political activists, escalating what they term a “climate of fear” being fostered by the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Awad Abdel Fattah, general secretary of the National Democratic Assembly party, whose activists are regularly interrogated by the police even though the party is represented in the national parliament, said there was strong evidence that undercover units had been operating in Arab communities for many years.

“The question is, why are the police revealing this information now? I suspect it is designed to intimidate people, making them fear that they are being secretly watched so that they don’t participate in demonstrations or get involved in politics. It harms the democratic process.”

Secret agents disguised as Arabs – known in Hebrew as “mista’aravim” – were used before Israel’s founding. Jews, usually recruited from Arab countries, went undercover in neighbouring states to collect intelligence.

The Haaretz newspaper revealed in 1998 that the secret police, the Shin Bet, also operated a number of mista’aravim inside Israel shortly after the state’s creation, locating them in major Arab communities.

The unit was disbanded in 1959, amid great secrecy, after several agents married local Arab women, and in some cases had children with them, in order to maintain their cover.

But the mista’aravim are better known for their use by the Israeli army on short-term missions inside Arab countries or in the West Bank and Gaza, where they have often been sent to capture or kill local leaders.

Famously Ehud Barak, the current defence minister, was sent to Beirut in 1973 disguised as an Arab woman to assassinate three Palestinian leaders.

More recently, however, the army’s mista’aravim have come to notice because of allegations that they are being used as agents provocateurs, especially in breaking up peaceful protests by Palestinians in the West Bank against the separation wall.

In April 2005, during a demonstration at the village of Bilin, north of Jerusalem, Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers were revealed to be mista’aravim. They were filmed blowing their cover shortly afterwards by pulling our pistols to make arrests. The army later admitted it had used mista’aravim at the demonstration.

Palestinians claim that stone-throwing by mista’aravim is often used to disrupt or discredit peaceful demonstrations and justify the army’s use of rubber bullets and live ammunition against the protesters in retaliation.

Last week Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of the parliament, warned other legislators of the danger that mista’aravim police officers would adopt similar tactics: “Such a unit will carry out provocations, in which the Arab public will be blamed for disorderly conduct.”

Mr Abdel Fattah said there were widespread suspicions that mista’avarim officers had been operating for years at legal demonstrations held by Israel’s Arab citizens, including at the protests against Israel’s winter attack on Gaza. He said they were often disguised as journalists so that they could photograph demonstrators.

He said a woman activist from his party had been called in by the police for interrogation after a demonstration last year in the Arab town of Arrabeh. “The officer told her, ‘I know what you were saying because I was standing right next to you’. And he then told her exactly what she had said.”

In his testimony to a government watchdog, the police commissioner, Insp Gen Cohen, said he had plans for the unit “to grow” and that it would solve a problem the police had in infiltrating Israel’s large Arab communities: “It’s very hard for us to work in Umm al-Fahm, it’s very hard for us to deal with crime in Juarish and Ramle.”

Several unnamed senior officers, however, defended their role in monitoring the Arab community, claiming the commissioner was wrong in stating that the use of mista’aravim inside Israel was new. One told Haaretz: “Existing units of mista’aravim have operated undercover among this population for about a decade.”

Orna Cohen, a lawyer with the Adalah legal group, said the accepted practice for police forces was to create specialised units according to the nature of the crime committed, not according to the ethnicity or nationality of the suspect.

She warned that the unit’s secretive nature, its working methods and the apparent lack of safeguards led to a strong suspicion that the Arab minority was being characterised as a “suspect group”. “Such a trend towards racial profiling and further discrimination against the minority is extremely dangerous,” she said.

Comments two years ago from Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, have raised fears about the uses the police unit may be put to. He said the security services had the right to use any means to “thwart” action, even democratic activity, by the Arab minority to reform Israel’s political system. All the Arab parties are committed to changing Israel’s status from a Jewish state to “a state of all its citizens”.

Mr Abdel Fattah said: “This is about transferring the methods used in the West Bank and Gaza into Israeli to erode our rights as citizens. It raises questions about what future the state sees for us here.”

On January 16, 2007, 10 year old Abir Aramin was walking home from school with her sister and two friends, but instead of having milk and cookies that afternoon; she was shot in the head with a rubber bullet by the Israeli Border Police and after three days on life support Abir’s struggle ended but not the struggle for justice her parents have been seeking ever since.

In 2007, I reported that Avichay Sharon, of Combatants for Peace stated, “Over the past 2 years, the Israeli Border Police and IDF forces have been creating provocations near the school district of Anata [which] has become a part of the daily routine for the children. Ever since construction started on the separation barrier surrounding Anata, the jeeps have been roaming the streets especially near the schools and shooting grenades and tear gas along with rubber bullets.

“Many children have been injured in the past by these brutal actions of the soldiers and on January 16th it became deadly. As in many other cases the police replied that the soldiers were shooting in response to stones thrown at them by children. Even though all the evidence and witnesses stated that no stones were thrown that day” the prosecution dismissed the Aramin family’s case, claiming lack of evidence.

Bassam Aramin, Abir’s father and co-founder of Combatants for Peace said, “I’m not going to lose my common sense, my direction, only because I’ve lost my heart, my child. I will do all I can to protect her friends, both Palestinian and Israeli. They are all our children.”

When Bassam Aramin was 17 he was sentenced to 7 years in an Israeli prison for belonging to the then-outlawed Fatah movement. Although he had been beaten by soldiers in prison, he decided that he would not become a prisoner of hatred.

The “Combatants for Peace” are Palestinians and Israelis, who had all been involved in perpetuating the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom. All decided to put down their guns and work together in the good fight for peace through nonviolent actions and by raising voices of conscience as they seek to create political pressure on both Governments to end the violence and end the military occupation of Palestine.

Elhanan wryly reported that Abir’s parents “live under a cruel occupation and they have experienced all it has to offer: exile, imprisonment and the killing of their small daughter Abir by a rubber bullet that was allegedly fired from the rifle of a Border Guard soldier who was sitting in an armoured jeep and thrust the barrel of his rifle through the opening that was allegedly designed for that purpose and allegedly aimed and fired at the head of the girl who was standing beside her sister at a kiosk, allegedly buying candy during the break between the first class and the second.

The projectile was removed from under the girl’s body and transferred to the authorities. The eyewitnesses, as well as the Border Guard soldiers, testified that there was no alleged danger to their lives and that the shooting was done – if it was done – in contravention of instructions. Two pathologists testified that it was probable that the fracture in Abir’s little skull could allegedly have been caused by a rubber bullet. The attending physician at the Hadassah hospital said that it was not a live bullet. The video of the reconstruction of the incident was not given to the defence counsel or to the court, because the soldiers who allegedly carried out the shooting, that is, who thrust the barrel of the rifle through the opening that had been made especially for that purpose, aimed and fired at the head of the girl Abir, were featured in the recording.

Counsel for the State, stammering, unprepared and unkempt, stood like a platoon commander in charge of new recruits with her back to the public and refuted the allegations: So they found a projectile. So what? Who knows how long it had been lying there? So people gave testimony, so what? They (those Arabs) can say anything, does that make it testimony? So nobody was throwing stones at that spot, so what? On a nearby street stones were thrown. If you were in my place, she laughingly says to Michael Sfard, Aramin’s attorney you would have made morsels of them by now.

Judge Beinish reminds Sfard – twice – that there have been such incidents in the past and that soldiers have rarely been put on trial or even indicted, so it would be best to just forget it… But Salwa and Bassam Aramin have no choice but to seek justice in an Israeli court. They demand that the truth come to light in a court of the occupiers – of the killers.

I nearly shouted for the drowsy judges – Beinish, Arbel, Frocaccia – to find a spark of humanity, of motherly feelings, within themselves and to look into the eyes of Salwa, who never stopped crying, and at Bassam’s ashen face, and to say: the High Court of Justice sympathizes with you over the death of little Abir. They didn’t.

Elhanan also noted that Jean-François Lyotard wrote that the perfect crime is not only the killing but also the suppression of the testimony and the silencing of the voices of the victims. And the greatest injustice is to compel the victims to seek justice in the court of their tormentors.

In March of 2006, I visited Anata refugee camp and have been tormented by my memories ever since.

Israel erected their thirty foot high concrete apartheid Wall at the boys high school where 780 Palestinian adolescents, share a slab of cement about the square footage of a basket ball court; their only ‘playground’.

A resident refugee informed me that on a daily basis, “The Israeli Occupation Forces show up when the children gather in the morning or after classes. They throw percussion bombs or gas bombs into the school nearly every day! The world is sleeping; the world is hibernating and is allowing this misery to continue.”

A moment later, a teenage boy approached me as I was taking photos and asked me my name and where I was from. I cringed admitting I was American, for “financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations.”¹

On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice/ICJ, ruled 14-1 that The Wall was illegal and it must come down and also that compensation should be paid to all who had been affected.

The ICJ Judges also decided 13-2 that signatories to the Geneva Convention were obliged to enforce “compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law” and the U.N. General Assembly also passed a resolution 150-6 supporting the ICJ’s call to dismantle the wall.”²

Less than five minutes by car from Anata, one can enter into the Orwellian Disney Land of lush green grounds called the Pizgat Ze’ev settlement.

All the settlements/colonies in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

I was sick at heart as I traveled through the colony and counted three playgrounds and a swimming pool.

I wondered how many USA tax dollars helped to build them, and outraged over the injustices of Walls and military occupation that American money provides against the indigenous people of that land.

Within fifteen minutes after leaving Anata, as I stood next to a playground in Pizgat Ze’ev, a barrage of gunshots issued from the refugee camp and my guide informed me that the Israeli soldiers were showering the refugees with gun fire and terror- another normal daily occurrence for them.

I lost it and sobbed uncontrollably, and imagined the Magdalena when she could not find her Lord.

And then I thought how Jesus cried buckets of tears over Jerusalem when he “saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you had only known what would bring you peace but it is hidden from your eyes.’” — Luke 19:42

Lady Justice, the Roman Goddess of Justice, an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems, is depicted wearing a blindfold to indicate that justice should be meted out objectively, not based in favor of- or against- ethnicity, power, or weakness, but on blind impartiality.

Perhaps it is a case of cold hearts in 21st century Jerusalem that has rendered the Justices of the Israeli High Court with eyes blind to their injustices.

1. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Jan/Feb. 2007.
2. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2009.

According to a federal lawsuit (Morrow v Tenaha) filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, there was “no legal justification” for what happened next. Morrow was stopped by Tenaha Deputy Marshall Barry Washington and asked to step out of his car. Deputy Washington then searched Morrow’s car.

Then Deputy Washington was joined at the scene by Shelby County Precinct Four Constable Randy Whatley who searched the car with a dog.

Following two searches of his car, Morrow was asked by Deputy Washington if he had any money, and he said yes, he was carrying about $3,900 in his wallet. Deputy Washington promptly seized $3,969 from Morrow, confiscated his two cell phones, and arrested him for “money laundering.”

“Washington had no reason to believe Plaintiff Morrow was guilty of money laundering,” says the federal lawsuit.

“Defendants Washington and Russell told Plaintiff Morrow they would hold him prisoner and prosecute him for money laundering unless he would agree to forfeit the $3969. Under this duress and these threats, Defendants Washington and Russell coerced Plaintiff Morrow to execute documents memorializing the forfeiture, and released him, and warned him to not hire a lawyer or try to get his money back.” The “money laundering” charges were subsequently dismissed.

Morrow is a black African American and the lead plaintiff in a case involving eight motorists who claim they were stopped and stripped of their cash for no other provocation than driving or riding through Tenaha while black. The cars they all drove were either rented or displayed out-of-state license plates.

On August 13, 2007, Deputy Washington lifted $50,291.00 from two black African Americans from Washington D.C. and Maryland who were traveling through Texas together.

“Washington threatened Plaintiffs with charges of money laundering and lengthy sentences if they would not execute documents allowing the seizure or if they otherwise contested the seizure,” says the lawsuit. “Washington did not charge Plaintiffs with any criminal offense, nor did he have legal justification to do so.”

On June 11, 2008, Deputy Washington confiscated $13,000 from a black African American from Wisconsin.

“Washington threatened to bring money laundering charges against Plaintiff, and to prosecute him on those charges, if he did not execute documents permitting Defendant Washington’s seizure and forfeiture of the money,” says the lawsuit. “Under this coercion, Plaintiff signed the documents.”

On April 18, 2007, Deputy Washington stopped and detained another pair of black African American motorists, Linda Dorman and Marvin Pearson, both from Ohio. While under detention they were questioned by Shelby County District Attorney Investigator Danny Green. He asked them if they had any money. According to court documents Dorman and Pearson admitted to having $4,500, but after Green confiscated the cash under the usual coercive threats, he handed them a receipt for only $4,000. No charges against Dorman or Pearson were ever filed.

Jennifer Boatwright is a white woman from Texas, but on April 26, 2007 she was driving down Highway 59 near Tenaha with Ronald Henderson, a black African American. They were stopped and detained by Deputy Washington, then questioned by Washington and D.A. Investigator Green.

“Green threatened to bring money laundering charges against Plaintiffs Boatwright and Henderson and to take their children and put them in foster care if Plaintiffs would not sign papers prepared by Defendant Green to authorize the seizure,” says the lawsuit. “Under coercion, Plaintiffs Boatwright and Henderson complied.” They handed over $6,000 in cash. No charges were ever filed against them.

“Now, under Texas law, if you are pulled over and accused of a real crime, police are permitted to take money and other valuables that you might have used in your crime, or received from your crime,” explains CNN correspondent Gary Tuchman in a May, 2009 blog post at AC360.

As Tuchman explains, the forfeiture law is intended to take bad money and put it to good use, but after an extensive public information request, the CNN team discovered that District Attorney Lynda K. Russell has collected an estimated $3 million in forfeiture funds to purchase such things as $195 for Tootsie Pops, Dum Dums, and Dubble Bubble that she contributed to a poultry festival, $524 for a popcorn machine and popcorn, $400 for barbecue catering, and at least two checks totaling $6,000 to a local Baptist church.

“But this one, this check, really stands out,” reports Tuchman in an archived transcript of the story. “This is the check the DA wrote for $10,000 and paid directly to police officer Barry Washington for what are described as investigative costs.”

With camera rolling, Tuchman asks Russell and Washington for comments, but they both refuse on account of pending litigation. In federal court documents the defendants deny the charges, claim to have no knowledge of alleged facts, claim immunity as officials, and ask that the case be dismissed.

Republican D.A. Russell was elected by 53 percent of the vote against a Democrat opponent in 2000, according to official numbers posted by the Texas Secretary of State. In 2004, she increased her general election share to 59 percent against her predecessor, Democrat Karen S. Price, who tried to stage a comeback after a failed effort to get elected in 2000 as a Republican District Judge. In 2008, D.A. Russell ran unopposed. No one that year could have made a campaign issue of the federal suit that was filed after the Spring primary but before the Fall general election.

During the summer of 2009, lawyers battled over discovery motions. Plaintiffs are trying to certify a class action lawsuit and therefore want volumes of video and documentation well beyond the eight named cases. On August 20, Federal District Judge T. John Ward largely granted ACLU requests for more materials and clarified the legal path to possible class action certification.

On the defense side, attorneys argued that they should be allowed to discover “travel itineraries, calendars, journals, or other documents reflecting schedule and/or any travel; all credit card bills/receipts; all receipts for hotel, gas, meals, rental cars; and photographs from any trips and of any items seized.” Judge Ward agreed, but only if the records were “readily available.”

Lawyers for the police and D.A.’s office also wanted plaintiffs to turn over bank records, income tax returns, and employment records; in an apparent attempt to revisit the “money laundering” charges that were never filed in the first place. It was a scary request supported by scary argumentation:

“In other words,” argued lawyers for the Shelby County law enforcement establishment in their federal filings, “even if the initial traffic stop lacked probable cause, the forfeiture action could proceed and the State could still meet its civil case burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence and the property could still be forfeited.”

The authority the cops were seeking was chilling. They could stop people for no reason, take their cash, spend it, meanwhile filing no charges of wrongdoing. All the while, the authorities of East Texas or wherever could count on a federal court order that would allow them to go after the banking, tax, and employment records of their innocent victims if they tried to get their money back. Judge Ward denied those parts of discovery.

The discovery motions also revealed that collection accounts were not always well kept. One front-line collector argued that he kept bulk numbers only and could not provide evidence of how much money was taken on any single occasion. To get your money back from these actors, they may demand that you prove it’s not contraband and then prove how much they took.

But these East Texas law enforcers are not finished grasping at bizarre license to ply their trade as the cash cops of Highway 59. D.A. Russell now seeks to use the forfeiture funds to pay for her defense. In early October, the ACLU filed a brief with the Texas Attorney General’s Office to prevent the forfeiture funds from being spent to defend alleged abuse of forfeiture powers.

“Even if it were determined that, under other circumstances, the District Attorney should be permitted to use forfeited assets to pay for legal representation, such an action in this case should be prohibited because it would give the appearance of impropriety,” argues the ACLU brief.

“The Plaintiffs claim the funds were taken illegally. To permit the District Attorney to use them would suggest that law-breakers may profit from ill-gotten gains, the very problem that the asset forfeiture law was created to prevent.”

Cash is a lucrative temptation. Empowering officials to take cash money from passing motorists and give it to attorneys who can help them keep it is a plain recipe for placing law enforcement powers in the hands of highway forfeiture gangs.

Take the case of Elliot Madison. The 41-year-old anarchist was arrested in Pittsburgh September 24 at the height of G20 protests.

Madison, a social worker and volunteer with The People’s Law Collective in New York City, was busted by a combined task force led by the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) and Pittsburgh’s “finest.” The activist was charged with “hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime,” according to The New York Times.

Did the cops uncover a secret anarchist weapons’ cache? Were Madison and codefendant, Michael Wallschlaeger, a producer with the radio talk show “This Week in Radical History” for the A-Infos Radio Project, about to detonate a “weapon of mass destruction” during last month’s capitalist conclave that witnessed the obscene spectacle of our masters avidly conspiring to impoverish billions of the planet’s inhabitants?

Hardly! In fact, Madison and Wallschlaeger’s “crime” was to set up a communications center in a hotel room that alerted demonstrators to movements by the police, who after all, had viciously attacked protesters–and anyone else nearby–with heavy batons, tear gas and a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), a so-called “non-lethal” weapon.

Kitted-out with police scanners, computers and cell phones, the intrepid activists used a Twitter account to assist protesters eager to elude a thrashing by some 5,000 heavily armed camo-clad cops who had sealed-off downtown Pittsburgh to keep the area safe–from the First Amendment.

National Lawyers Guild on-scene legal observers reported an “unwarranted display and use of force by police in residential neighborhoods, often far from any protest activity.” According to the civil liberties’ watchdog group:

Police deployed chemical irritants, including CS gas, and long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) in residential neighborhoods on narrow streets where families and small children were exposed. Scores of riot police formed barricades at many intersections throughout neighborhoods miles away from the downtown area and the David Lawrence Convention Center. Outside the Courtyard Marriott in Shadyside, police deployed smoke bombs in the absence of protest activity, forcing bystanders and hotel residents to flee the area.

Later, while some protests were ending, riot-clad officers surrounded an area at the University of Pittsburgh, creating an ominous spectacle that some described as akin to Kent State. Guild legal observers witnessed police chasing and arresting many uninvolved students.

Among other questionable tactics, officers from dozens of law enforcement agencies lacked easily-identifiable badges, impeding citizens’ ability to register complaints. (National Lawyers Guild, “National Lawyers Guild Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement at the G-20,” Press Release, September 25, 2009)

The Times reported that after his arrest the FBI raided the home that Madison shared with his wife, Elena, and conducted an exhaustive 16-hour search of the premises seizing computers, books and a poster (horror of horrors!) of the old mole himself, Karl Marx.

Criminalizing the First Amendment

“Anyone can tweet, but the truth is, sometimes speech can be criminal,” John Burkoff, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

By that standard, anyone who has the temerity to question the legitimacy of a system that drives millions into poverty, wages preemptive war to secure (steal) other people’s resources, destroys the environment or uses “speech” to oppose said crimes against humanity–and cheekily urges others to do the same–is, by definition, guilty, in “new normal” America.

Witold Walczak however, the legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union told the Post-Gazette, “investigating the government and broadcasting information about it would seem to be a constitutionally protected communication.”

The ACLU director elaborated, “If the police want to communicate privately, there are certainly ways to do that, and police radios are not one of those. How can it be a crime? It’s not a secure communication.”

The good professor had another take on the matter and told the Post-Gazette, “Were they sending it to people simply to protest, or to commit further crimes?”

“Further crimes”? What crime? Oh yes, legally protesting the depredations of the capitalist system, that crime!

That such a statement can be uttered by a purported legal expert is rather rich with unintended irony. Burkhoff’s maneuver to cast the best possible light on repressive police operations is all the more absurd given the fact that none other than the Obama administration’s State Department had stepped-in and pressured Twitter to forego a service upgrade, and downtime, just scant months earlier.

But context as they say, is everything. Champions of other people’s freedom (particularly when they are geopolitical rivals), the State Department intervened and told the instant messaging service in no uncertain terms that Iranian protesters relied on Twitter to monitor police movements in Tehran and other cities as protests over disputed elections took center stage in the Islamic Republic.

The New York Times reported back in June that the U.S. State Department “e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.”

According to Reuters, “Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran’s internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result.”

Twitter said in a blog post it had delayed the firm’s planned upgrade because of its role as an “important communication tool in Iran.”

A day earlier, President Obama had said he believed “people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed”–in Iran.

Message to the American people: Official enemy: Twitter good! Official friend (grifting multinational corporations and the criminals who do their bidding in Washington): Twitter bad! How’s that for an imaginative interpretation of the “new media paradigm”!

“Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not”

Echoing the execrable logic of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, America’s premier political police force, the FBI, executed a search warrant on Madison that authorized agents to look “for violations of federal rioting laws,” according to the Times.

Madison’s attorney, Martin Stolar, told the Times that “he and a friend were part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20.” Denouncing the raid, Stolar averred that “there’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.”

On October 2, Stolar argued in Federal District Court in Brooklyn “that the warrant was vague and overly broad. Judge Dora L. Irizarry ordered the authorities to stop examining the seized materials until Oct. 16, pending further orders,” the Times reported.

This is not the first time however, that the secret state has sought to curtail text messaging by activists during large-scale demonstrations.

In 2008, as a result of the heavy repression of legal protests–and subsequent lawsuits by victims–during the far-right Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004, lawyers representing N.Y.’s “finest” demanded that M.I.T. graduate student Tad Hirsch and the Institute of Applied Autonomy, the inventors of TXTmob, turn over all “text messages sent via TXTmob during the convention, the date and time of the messages, information about people who sent and received messages, and lists of people who used the service,” The New York Times reported last year.

The FBI however, already possess the technological ability to hack into Wi-fi and computer networks as Wired revealed in April, citing internal Bureau documents released to the magazine under a Freedom of Information Act request.

According to a follow-up story by the publication, the Bureau’s Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit, CEAU, has deployed software called a computer and internet protocol address verifier, or CIPAV, that is “designed to infiltrate a target’s computer and gather a wide range of information, which it secretly sends to an FBI server in eastern Virginia.”

Antifascist Calling reported in 2008, that when a whistleblower, security consultant Babak Pasdar, stepped forward and blew the lid off the Bureau’s massive telecommunications’ surveillance network, the agency’s so-called “Quantico circuit” in Virginia, he revealed that major wireless providers, including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, had handed the state “unfettered” access to the carrier’s wireless networks, including billing records and customer data “transmitted wirelessly.”

According to Pasdar’s sworn affidavit, Verizon provided the FBI with with real-time access to who is speaking to whom, the time and duration of each call as well as the locations of those so targeted.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the San Francisco-based civil liberties’ watchdog group, has posted Madison’s motion and his attorney’s supporting declaration on their web site. It makes for very interesting reading indeed! According to the search warrant obtained by FBI Special Agent Edward J. Heslin from the U.S. District Court, the FBI were allowed to seize:

Computers, hard-drives, floppy discs and other media used to store computer-accessible information, cellular phones, personal digital assistants, electronic storage devices and related peripherals, black masks and clothing, maps, correspondence and other documents, financial records, notes, ledgers, receipts, papers, photographs, telephone and address books, identification documents, indicia of residency and other documents and records that constitute evidence of the commission of rioting crimes or that are designed or intended as a means of violating the federal rioting laws, including any of the above items that are maintained within other closed or locked containers, including safes and other containers that may be further secured by key locks (or combination locks) of various kinds. (Honorable Viktor V. Pohorelsky, Magistrate Judge to FBI Special Agent Edward J. Heslin, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, Search Warrant, Case Number M-09-962, September 26, 2009)

Madison’s attorney, Martin Stolar averred that “a number of documents and other properties” seized by the FBI have “nothing to do with the governments investigation into what the search warrant characterizes as violations of ‘federal rioting laws’.”

According to Stolar “the seized items include political writings, notes, political associates and ideas, materials protected by the attorney-client and social work privileges, as well as property belonging to other persons residing in the premises which have no connection to any pending or contemplated criminal investigation.” Stolar declared that “the illegality of the search is in the overbreadth of the seizures and the vagueness of the term ‘federal rioting laws’.”

In other words, driftnet surveillance of American citizens is the norm for our secret state minders; an unambiguous sign of America’s slide into an extra-constitutional police state.

Fusion Centers: Leading the Charge

While Madison and Wallschlaeger’s arrest came as a result of actions undertaken by the Pennsylvania State Police, one cannot rule out that (a) informants had tipped off the cops to the pair’s activities, (b) CEAU had penetrated protest organizer’s computer net and therefore, were well aware of what the duo were up to, or (c) through some combination of the above, the FBI and presumably, their local fusion center allies, alerted PSP who then conducted the raid and shut the anarchist’s communications center down.

Federal Computer Week noted September 30, that the Department of Homeland Security “is establishing a new office to coordinate its intelligence-sharing efforts in state and local intelligence fusion centers,” and that the secret state’s new “Joint Fusion Center Program Management Office will be part of DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis.”

Among other things, the publication revealed that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the new office will:

• Develop ways to assess threats and trends by gathering, analyzing and sharing local and national information and intelligence through fusion centers.

• Coordinate with state, local and tribal law enforcement leaders to ensure that DHS is providing the correct resources to fusion centers.

• Promote a sense of common mission and purpose at fusion centers through training and other support. (Ben Bain, “DHS established new office for intelligence-sharing centers,” Federal Computer Week, September 30, 2009)

Since Bushist–and now, Obama–securocrats designated fusion centers “a central node for the federal government’s efforts for sharing terrorism-related information with state and local officials,” the federal government has pumped some $327 million in taxpayer-funded largesse into these spooky “public-private partnerships.”

In Pennsylvania for example, the Criminal Intelligence Center (PaCIC), is described by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) as a “component of the Pennsylvania State Police.”

Washington Post investigative journalist Robert O’Harrow Jr., the author of No Place to Hide, revealed that “Pennsylvania buys credit reports and uses face-recognition software to examine driver’s license photos” and have “subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans’ locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like.”

One can only wonder whether these or other intrusive surveillance tools, including the CEAU’s CIPAV software were deployed against Madison and Wallschlaeger prior to their Pittsburgh arrest.

But gathering information on fusion centers is often an exercise in Kafkaesque futility. Investigative journalist G.W. Schulz reported that when the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) attempted to obtain information from the Colorado Information Analysis Center on that state’s fusion center, they ran into a brick wall.

CIAC spokesperson Lance Clem refused to release what should be public documents to CIR claiming that releasing the records would be “contrary to the public interest” and “not only would compromise [the] security and investigative practices of numerous law enforcement agencies but would also violate confidentiality agreements that have been made with private partner organizations and federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.”

As of this writing, it cannot be determined with any certainty what role the Pennsylvania Criminal Intelligence Center played in repressing G20 protests. However, if past fusion center practices in Denver and St. Paul during last year’s Democratic and Republican National Conventions are any guide, their management of pre-G20 intelligence along with their federal partners, was in all probability considerable.

One lesson that can be gleaned however, from the federal witch hunt targeting activists Elliot Madison and Michael Wallschlaeger, is that dissent in post-9/11 America, as during the COINTELPRO-era of the 1960s and ’70s, has been criminalized.

There one of us, Max Obuszewski, spoke over the gate speaker system with barely visible guardhouse personnel in an attempt to deliver a letter to President Obama (a blown-up copy of which we also carried with us and which we had all signed) requesting to meet regarding our opposition to the US invasion of Afghanistan. Several weeks before the NCNR had sent the original of that letter to the President, but had received no response.

After a few minutes of conversation between Max and the disembodied voice from the guard shack, we got nowhere. We then did a die-in there on the sidewalk in front of the pedestrian and vehicle entrances to the White House. One by one, after we each made a brief unscripted statement about why we were there, we lay down motionless and silent for the next fifty minutes. My own statement was along the lines of I was “dying” because of concern that the US was losing its soul due to its brutal invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and its complicity in last winter’s Israeli invasion of Gaza.

From about 12:40 to 1:30 pm, we lay “dead,” but undisturbed (except for the extremely loud nearby construction machinery on Pennsylvania Ave). Police stood guard and established a yellow “crime scene” tape cordon around us. No police addressed us or ordered us to move.

For about two hours thereafter our group remained on the sidewalk along the iron fence in front of the gates and the guard shack. Our demeanor was neither raucous nor threatening; it was rather like that of folks waiting for an appointment. There was no chanting. During those two hours Max and maybe two or three others had several brief and seemingly courteous conversations with various higher-ranking police officers. The officers sought to cajole us into leaving the area.

One whom I heard speak encouraged us to leave, seeking our cooperation since, he claimed, his arrest resources were stretched thin. Although we couldn’t see them, dozens of other demonstrators were being arrested back in the postcard zone. The officer said we wouldn’t be arrested even if we stayed there all night. (Given the intense noise from the machinery it was very difficult to hear the police or Max’ report backs, or even to discuss our options.)

Outside the “crime scene” tape perimeter and standing on Pennsylvania Ave, about eight or ten of our supporters were keeping an eye on the situation. Some took photos or provided us with plastic bottles of water. At one point an officer confiscated a bottle that had been tossed to us. At times we were prevented from speaking to supporters across the crime scene tape. But at other times the incommunicado wasn’t enforced.

We could see various organized movements of groups of police and police vehicles including a couple of vans – presumably to take us to jail. For a time about a dozen bicycle police lined up in front of us across the northern perimeter of the “crime scene” by the curb on Pennsylvania Ave. preventing further communication with our supporters.

A couple of times police officers passed through us and into the White House grounds. Although we often sat or stood around both the pedestrian and vehicle gates, we didn’t impede anyone’s coming and going.

A force of maybe 20 policemen assembled on the broad sidewalk to the west of us just outside the “crime scene” tape. Some held plastic handcuffs. When it appeared that arrest was imminent, we all stood in a circle, held hands and sung two or three songs. But no arrest occurred. We resumed our informal clustering around the gates. After awhile those police left the area and were replaced by another uniformed group. These had Secret Service badges.

One of our group reported that he overheard an officer say we were about to be “pushed” out of the area. Several of our group then reclined on the sidewalk. Soon the Secret Service approached, and with no explanation or warning, began grabbing and pushing us west along the sidewalk beyond the crime scene perimeter. I was both grabbed and pushed. If I hadn’t been nimble, I would have had to trample those reclining on the pavement.

Some of those on the ground were dragged away. I heard a small older woman who was being manhandled tell the officer that she had a bad leg. Nonetheless he continued pushing her. A few minutes later I saw that she was wearing an Ace bandage around her knee. While a few of our group didn’t get to their feet, none of us physically resisted or defended ourselves in the face of this unprovoked assault.

Reflections

I would urge that the October 5 Action legal team vigorously pursue a formal complaint. Over the years I have been arrested various times for nonviolent anti-war protests in the White House postcard zone. Yet I have never encountered police violence there. This Secret Service violence is a menacing precedent – one that best be nipped in the bud.

The Secret Service needs to learn it can’t impair or endanger U.S. citizens exercising our Constitutional right of assembly and our right to petition the government regarding grievances. At no time did I hear an order – whether from the city police, the park police or the Secret Service — to leave the vicinity. The Secret Service gave us no warning before they began their assault. I don’t recall hearing them say anything before they got physical.

The Secret Service might claim we were resisting arrest or that we were ignoring a lawful order to move. But that would be false. There needs to be clearly understood, court-enforced guidelines to prevent law enforcement agencies using violence against peaceful citizens. Rogue behavior must not be tolerated. Law enforcement agencies need to learn that they above all must respect the law.

The rough stuff risked injury and fomented disorder. Fortunately for everyone involved and despite rather severe provocation, everyone in our group maintained his or her commitment to nonviolence.

The authorities seemed reluctant to arrest us: perhaps they had orders to minimize arrests so as to limit the national and international publicity regarding the extent to which U.S. citizens oppose the recurring U.S. invasions of Middle Eastern nations.

1. Prior to our affinity groups’ leaving the “postcard” zone, a dozen or so mounted police deployed themselves along the iron fence between the zone and the White House grounds. Entering from the west they herded demonstrators away from the fence and toward Pennsylvania Ave. Without provocation, and as I was conforming to their order to move, a passing mounted policeman kicked me just below my rib cage. I wasn’t injured, but I understand that if a citizen even so much as touched a DC policeman, s/he could be charged with a felony.

Waged relentlessly since 9/11, it continues unabated under Obama for the same political advantage George Bush sought by stoking fear to be used as a pretext to wage imperial wars and crack down ruthlessly at home with police state efficiency — today against Muslims, Latino immigrants, environmental and animal rights activists, and street protestors, tomorrow against anyone voicing dissent.

Najibullah Zazi: The FBI’s Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, an FBI press release announced the indictment of Najibullah Zazi, an Aurora, CO-based legal US resident from Afghanistan on a conspiracy charge “to use weapons of mass destruction (explosive bombs) against persons or property in the United States” based on allegations that he “received bomb-making instructions in Pakistan, purchased components of improvised explosive devices, and traveled to New York City on September 10 in furtherance of his criminal plans.”

He was also charged with knowingly and willfully making false statements to the FBI regarding international and domestic terrorism. In addition, the indictment alleges that he and others traveled in interstate and foreign commerce and used email and the Internet to carry out his “criminal plans.” If convicted, Zazi faces a potential life sentence even though he’s likely another victim of police state justice in Washington’s war on Islam.

New York Times writers David Johnston and Scott Shane called it “One of the Most Serious (Cases) in Years based on documents filed against Zazi that “he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb – hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid — and in doing so, Mr. Zazi took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects.” He made his purchases at a beauty shop, hardly the sort of venue for terrorist supplies.

Hydrogen peroxide is a common bleaching agent and mild disinfectant. Acetone is an inflammable organic solvent used in nail polish remover, making plastics and for cleaning purposes in laboratories. Hydrochloric acid is used in oil production, ore reduction, food processing, pickling, and metal cleaning. It’s also found in the stomach in diluted form.

Zazi’s indictment alleges that he learned explosives techniques at a Pakistani Al-Queda training camp, that he stored nine pages of “formulations and instructions” on his laptop regarding the chemicals he bought for “the manufacture and handling of initiating explosives, main explosives charges, (and) explosives detonators and components of a fuzing system,” and that he planned to attack New York commuter trains or another major target on the eighth 9/11 anniversary, even though he built no bombs and the chemicals he bought can be freely purchased over-the-counter by anyone.

Nonetheless, Jarret Brachman, author of Global Jihadism and a government terrorist consultant, said despite more details to be learned, the case was “shaping up to be one of the most serious terrorist bomb plots developed in the United States,” one resembling the London July 2005 underground attacks.

On July 7, 2005, multiple mock terror drills occurred at the same time as the transit system attack. In addition, other UK and American mock drills took place on the same day and exact time as actual “terror” attacks. On the 9/11 morning, in fact, at the same time the twin towers were struck, the CIA in Virginia was running “a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.” Described by the administration as “a bizarre coincidence,” the media never mentioned it. The story was buried and forgotten, and no investigation followed,

Karen Greenberg, executive director of New York University’s Center on Law and Security called other post-9/11 prosecutions “fantasy terrorism cases,” yet, citing scary ingredients, preemptively sees Zazi as “the case the government kept claiming it had but never did,” even though conclusive evidence is absent, Zazi denies involvement in a terror plot, and by law he’s innocent until proved guilty.

Even the Times acknowledges that:

– veteran counterterrorism investigators admit that important facts remain unknown, including whether Zazi selected a specific target, date, and recruited others to help;

– no operational bomb exists, according to DOJ officials; and

– it’s unclear why a Colorado-based man drove to New York without the chemicals he bought at home, perhaps indicating they were for another purpose, not terrorism.

Yet US prosecutor Tim Neff told a Denver federal judge that Zazi “was intent on being in New York on 9/11 (and that he) was in the throes of making a bomb and attempting to perfect his formulation.” He called circumstantial evidence a “chilling, disturbing sequence of events” pointing to a possible terror attack, but where’s the bomb and what’s the motive?

Others Arrested and Charged with Zazi: The FBI’s Second Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

An earlier September 20 FBI press release announced two others arrested with Zazi “on charges of making false statements to federal agents in an ongoing terror investigation” — his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi and Ahmad Wais Afzali.

“Each of the defendants has been charged by criminal complaint with knowingly and willfully making false statements to the FBI in a matter involving international and domestic terrorism.” If convicted, Afzali and Zazi’s father face up to eight years in prison. His son may be incarcerated for life, yet the FBI admits that:

“It is important to note that we have no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack,” nor can they find a bomb.

In other words, none exists nor evidence of a motive or plan to detonate one, yet the FBI arrested and charged three men on dubious suspicions and got highly-charged media reports to suggest “a big one” was imminent.

It’s typical of how the Justice Department operates — shoot, ready, aim. In other words, first arrest, charge, and generate fear through the media, then invent a plot, concoct evidence to prove it, indict suspects, bring them to trial, and intimidate juries to convict because no one wants terrorists in their neighborhood even though the likelihood is virtually nil.

The September 20 press release merely added that:

On August 28, 2008, “Najibullah Zazi flew to Peshawar, Pakistan from Newark International Airport via Geneva, Switzerland and Doha, Qatar. CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) records further reflect that (Zazi) traveled from Peshawar to John F. Kennedy International Airport on or about Jan. 15, 2009.”

“On September 10, 2009, New York City Police Department (NYPD) detectives met with defendant Afzali (a Flushing, NY resident), whom the NYPD had utilized as a source in the past,” suggesting that the DOJ will use him against the younger Zazi and offer leniency if he cooperates — a familiar tactic to frame other innocent victims and show how law enforcement is removing “bad guys,” targeted for political advantage.

Zazi’s Background

According to the New York Times, he was born on August 10, 1985 in a small Eastern Afghanistan village. In 1991 or 1992, his family moved to the Peshawar area of Pakistan — “ground zero in the US jihadist war and home to many Al-Queda operatives,” according to the DOJ.

In the early 1990s, Mohammed Zazi, his father, came to Flushing, New York, drove a cab, worked 12-hour shifts, lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and prayed at the nearby Hazrat Abu Bakr Mosque. The younger Zazi was much like others in his high school, but he did poorly in his studies and dropped out before graduating. According to his step-uncle, Mr. Rasooli, “He was a dumb kid, believe me,” but tried to make enough money to help his father.

He worked as a coffee cart vendor on New York streets, and said he drove back to New York to clear up related issues. According to an old customer, Imran Khan, he was back at his regular spot on the morning of September 11, 2009. Khan and others saw him joking and laughing with some old regulars, not heading off to detonate bombs.

In addition, an acquaintance named Rahul recalled Zazi saying about the 9/11 attacks: “I don’t know how people could do things like this. I’d never do anything like that.” Other friends agreed that he abhorred violence and called terrorism at odds with the teachings of Islam. He was a devout Muslim, grew his beard long, and occasionally wore tunics instead of more Western-style clothes.

On a 2006 trip to Pakistan, he married and hoped later to be able to afford to bring his new wife to America. Each year, he flew back to see her, including on August 28, 2008, the FBI-announced trip in its press release. Two months after he returned the following January, he filed for bankruptcy and moved to Colorado to live more cheaply and be close to an aunt and uncle in Aurora.

He worked as a shuttle van driver at Denver International Airport, applied for a limousine license, underwent an airport background check, then drove a van for the Big Sky Company and later ABC Transportation. In July, 2009, his parents left New York and joined him.

On September 25, New York Times writer Michael Wilson headlined his story, “From Smiling Coffee Vendor to Terror Suspect,” and said:

“according to federal investigators, (Zazi worked on bomb materials) in a hotel suite he rented in Aurora,” but unexplained was how he could afford it on his small income along with his regular apartment. Yet, investigators “say chemical residue they found in the kitchen there indicates he tried to heat up the beauty supplies (he bought) to help convert them in a bomb.” But unexplained was how someone called “dumb” would be smart enough to make bombs for potentially the “biggest terror case since 9/11,” according to CBS News. In federal court on September 29, he pleaded not guilty to all charges, but was held without bail pending trial

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi: The FBI’s Third Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, an FBI press release “announced today that Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19, (was arrested in downtown Dallas) and charged in a federal criminal complaint with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction… after he placed an ‘inert/inactive’ car bomb” near a 60-story office tower. “Smadi, a Jordanian citizen in the US illegally… repeatedly espoused his desire to commit violent jihad and has been the focus of an undercover FBI investigation.”

He “made clear his intention to serve as a soldier for Usama Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and to conduct violent jihad. Undercover FBI agents, posing as members of an al Queda ’sleeper’ cell, were introduced to Smadi, who repeatedly indicated to them that he came to the US for the specific purpose of committing ‘Jihad for the sake of God’… against those he deemed to be enemies of Islam.”

On September 27, James C. McKinley, Jr. headlined his New York Times story, “Friends’ Portrait of Texas Bomb Plot Suspect at Odds With FBI.” They called him an extremely outgoing young man, who smoked marijuana and drank beer with his friends in the complex where he lived. He did endless favors for them, held barbecues, and baby-sat for neighborhood children.

He also went to local dance clubs featuring Arabic techno music, and at home, had friends over to watch action movies on his widescreen TV. A Ms. Deloach said He “came here because it was really strict out there in Jordan. He wanted freedom.” According to McKinley:

“That no one here suspected (him) of hating Americans suggests he was either an extremely talented undercover terrorist or a troubled young man at war with himself, going out of the way to befriend Americans he lived with while, the authorities say, plotting to kill thousands of people when he surfed radical Islamic chat rooms online.” Or perhaps he’s neither of the above, just an ordinary person justifiably angry about Washington’s war on Islam but not plotting a terror bombing to retaliate.

According to his father in Jordan:

The charges against his son are “completely fabricated and in our family we never condoned terrorism.” He added that his other son Hussein, aged 18, was also arrested in California, apparently related to Hosam’s case. They both entered the country legally in 2007 on student visas.

The Smadi case is a typical FBI sting, much like others designed to entrap unwitting victims, this time with undercover agents, other times with paid informants usually charged with crimes and offered leniency for their cooperation.

One of many earlier cases involved the “Fort Dix Five” — innocent Muslim men convicted of conspiracy and other charges related to plans to kill as many soldiers as possible on the Army base, a ludicrous charge but it stuck. Described as “radical Islamists,” the media played along and the result was predictable even though there was no plot and no crime, just a familiar FBI sting operation to entrap them, then intimidate a jury to convict.

According to Anthony Barkow, former federal prosecutor and current executive director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University’s School of Law:

“A person (often) is entrapped when he has no previous intention to violate the law and is persuaded to commit the crime by government agents.”

Further, US conspiracy law prosecutions can be based on such thin evidence that former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once said it “constitutes a serious threat to fairness in our administration of justice.” According to other legal experts, it let’s prosecutors target people they don’t like, want to convict to set an example, or simply show government is removing dangerous terror threats. Today, most often they’re Muslims or environmental or animal rights activists, and virtually never is a charged suspect guilty. Yet they’re usually convicted and sentenced to hard time in federal prisons — the fate now awaiting Smadi and the others when their cases come to trial.

Daniel Patrick Boyd: The FBI’s Fourth Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, the FBI announced a “Superseding Indictment in Boyd Matter Charg(ing) Defendants with Conspiring to Murder US Military Personnel (and) Weapons Violations.

Last July 27, dozens of heavily armed Swat and hostage rescue team members arrested Boyd and six other men (the so-called North Carolina 7) on terrorist-related charges, claiming they “conspir(ed) to provide material support to terrorists (and to) murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad” plus other related charges.

The DOJ also alleged that “Boyd is a veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan who, over the past three years, has conspired with others in this country to recruit and help young men travel overseas in order to kill.” No evidence was cited, just baseless accusations then trumpeted by the media and others on the far right.

The new indictment includes “all of the charges alleged in the original indictment of July 22, 2009 (plus) new (ones) against three defendants, Daniel Patrick Boyd, aka ‘Saifullah,’ Hysen Sherifi, and (Boyd’s son) Zakariya Boyd, aka ‘Zak.’” New accusations claim the three men:

conspir(ed) to murder US military personnel (and to do it) Boyd undertook reconnaissance of the Marine Corp Base located in Quantico, Va., and obtained maps of the base in order to plan an attack on Quantico. (He) possessed armor piercing ammunition, stating it was ‘to attack the Americans.’

It’s the same ludicrous charge made against the Fort Dix Five defendants — the preposterous idea that a few men planned to wage war on the US Army. For Boyd and the others, to do it against the Marines, especially at a time of heightened awareness about possible terrorist attacks with military police alerted to prevent suspicious individuals, notably civilians, from getting through base security. Yet, that’s precisely what the new indictment charges, and, if convicted, the men face potential life sentences for offenses they don’t plan to commit.

But according to Attorney General Eric Holder:

“These additional charges hammer home the grim reality that today’s homegrown terrorists are not limiting their violent plans to locations overseas, but instead are willing to set their sights on American citizens and American targets, right here at home,” including the Army and Marines.

Michael C. Finton: The FBI’s Fifth Top Story for the Week Ending September 25

On September 24, an FBI press release announced that “Michael C. Finton, aka., ‘Talib Islam,’ has been arrested on charges of attempted murder of federal employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) in connection with a plot to detonate a vehicle bomb at the federal building in Springfield, Ill.”

Another FBI sting was involved, again with undercover agents in a scheme now all too familiar, yet the public seems none the wiser.

According to the FBI:

Finton “dealt with undercover FBI agents and confidential sources who continuously monitored his activities up to the time of his arrest. Further, in his alleged efforts, Finton drove a vehicle containing inactive explosives to the Paul Finley Federal Building and Courthouse in Springfield and attempted to detonate them. (He’s) charged… with one count of attempted murder of federal officers or employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction (aka, an inert, FBI-supplied explosive device).” If convicted, he faces possible life imprisonment.

On September 27, New York Times writer Dirk Johnson headlined “Suspect in Illinois Bomb Plot ‘Didn’t Like America Very Much,’” so he planned to blow up part of it. He worked as a fry cook at Seals Fish & Chicken in Springfield, IL and is described by co-workers, according to Johnson, as “cheerful and polite, but unwavering when it came to religion and politics.” So are many people, but that doesn’t make them “terrorists.”

Neighbors in his apartment building called him “mild-mannered” in expressing shock about the charges. A Brandon Jackson said they played chess, card games and watched soccer on television, after which Finton took him out for pizza. Vivian Laster was “baffled” that this “nice young man” was charged with such a plot. Others said he was excited to be a Muslim and occasionally he wrote articles for the Richland Community College student newspaper about campus-related entertainment activities, not the usual topic for a jihadist.

He took the nickname Talib Islam (student of Islam) after converting to the Islamic faith while in prison from 2001 – 2006 on charges of aggravated robbery and battery. The FBI claimed it found a document he wrote about “awaiting a return letter from John Walker Lindh.” Called an “American Taliban,” he was captured, held and tortured in Afghanistan in 2001 based on false charges that he was a Taliban terrorist fighting US forces. In fact, he only arrived in the country four weeks before 9/11 to help the Taliban against the Afghan warlords supported by Washington.

FBI agents arranged a sting to entrap Finton and succeeded like against the Fort Dix Five and many others. Yet according to prosecutors, he “hope(d) that (his alleged attack) would cause American troops to be pulled back out of Afghanistan and Iraq,” said the bombing would be a “historic occasion (to achieve his) biggest dream (of) bringing down the US government,” and that he would be “rewarded for his intentions.”

Yet court papers said he was suspicious about being “set up,” but apparently not clever enough to avoid being manipulated to carry out the alleged plot he’s now charged with. An employee at the federal building in question, a Mr. Meng, was “remind(ed that) there are evil people out there.” True enough, but not the ones he imagines.

Betim Kaziu: The FBI’s Sixth Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, an FBI press release announced “An indictment… charging Betim Kaziu, a US citizen and resident of Brooklyn, with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.”

Allegedly, “in early January 2009, (he) devised a plan to travel abroad for the purpose of joining a radical foreign fighter group and to take up arms against perceived enemies of Islam. Kaziu allegedly boarded a flight at John F. Kennedy Airport on Feb. 19, 2009, and traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where he took steps to continue on to Pakistan to obtain training and other support for violent activities…. (He) also attempted to join Al-Shabbab, a radicalized, militant (pro-Al-Queda) insurgency group (now) designated as a terrorist organization by the United States Department of State.”

In addition, “Kaziu made efforts to travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans to fight against US armed forces (and on multiple occasions attempted) to purchase weapons in Egypt. Untimately, Kaziu traveled to Kosovo where he was arrested by Kosovar law enforcement authorities in late August 2009.” Afterwards, he told his family that he was visiting a friend when the house was raided, and the weapons seized belonged to his friend’s father.

On September 24, Ray Rivera headlined his New York Times article, “Brooklyn Man Is Accused of Trying to Aid Terrorists,” according to an indictment unsealed in Federal District Court. Yet family members expressed shock, his sister, Sihana saying “This is totally unlike him. (He) has a big heart” and was never violent.

Kaziu’s case is similar to the first indictment against Daniel Patrick Boyd and the other North Carolina 7 defendants. The DOJ indictment claimed that from 1989-1992, Boyd got “violent jihad” training abroad and “allegedly fought in Afghanistan” against the Soviets. Then from November 2006 through July 2009, he and the others “conspired to provide material support and resources to terrorists, including currency, training, transportation and personnel” plus other charges.

Federal authorities accused them of “loving jihad, fighting for Allah, and loathing a US military presence at Muslim holy sites.” Self-styled terrorism expert and notorious Islamophobe Steven Emerson highlighted the charges and claimed the FBI “found a fatwa, or religious edict, in Boyd’s house saying Muslims have ‘an individual duty to kill Americans and their allies.’”

Of course, Emerson, others on the far right, and the DOJ are notorious for manipulating, doctoring, or inventing evidence to target innocent Muslims, incite fear, and intimidate juries to convict. The charges against Kaziu are as likely bogus as the ones above and against numerous other victims targeted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence and charity. It’s the wrong time to be Muslim in America and vital to know that we’re all equally vulnerable.

Out of fear of the possibility of a terrorist attack, authorities militarize our towns, scare our people away, stop daily life and quash our constitutional rights.

For days, downtown Pittsburgh, home to the G20, was a turned into a militarized people-free ghost town. Sirens screamed day and night. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies. Gunboats sat in the rivers. The skies were defended by Air Force jets. Streets were barricaded by huge cement blocks and fencing. Bridges were closed with National Guard across the entrances. Public transportation was stopped downtown. Amtrak train service was suspended for days.

In many areas, there were armed police every 100 feet. Businesses closed. Schools closed. Tens of thousands were unable to work.

Four thousand police were on duty plus 2500 National Guard plus Coast Guard and Air Force and dozens of other security agencies. A thousand volunteers from other police forces were sworn in to help out.

Police were dressed in battle gear, bulky black ninja turtle outfits: helmets with clear visors, strapped on body armor, shin guards, big boots, batons, and long guns.

In addition to helicopters, the police had hundreds of cars and motorcycles , armored vehicles, monster trucks, small electric go-karts. There were even passenger vans screaming through town so stuffed with heavily armed ninja turtles that the side and rear doors remained open.

No terrorists showed up at the G20.

Since no terrorists showed up, those in charge of the heavily armed security forces chose to deploy their forces around those who were protesting.

Not everyone is delighted that 20 countries control 80% of the world’s resources. Several thousand of them chose to express their displeasure by protesting.

Unfortunately, the officials in charge thought that it was more important to create a militarized people-free zone around the G20 people than to allow freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or the freedom to protest.

It took a lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU to get any major protest permitted anywhere near downtown Pittsburgh. Even then, the police “forgot” what was permitted and turned people away from areas of town. Hundreds of police also harassed a bus of people who were giving away free food — repeatedly detaining the bus and searching it and its passengers without warrants.

Then a group of young people decided that they did not need a permit to express their human and constitutional rights to freedom. They announced they were going to hold their own gathering at a city park and go down the deserted city streets to protest the G20. Maybe 200 of these young people were self-described anarchists, dressed in black, many with bandanas across their faces. The police warned everyone these people were very scary. My cab driver said the anarchist spokesperson looked like Harry Potter in a black hoodie. The anarchists were joined in the park by hundreds of other activists of all ages, ultimately one thousand strong, all insisting on exercising their right to protest.

This drove the authorities crazy.

Battle dressed ninja turtles showed up at the park and formed a line across one entrance. Helicopters buzzed overhead. Armored vehicles gathered.

The crowd surged out of the park and up a side street yelling, chanting, drumming, and holding signs. As they exited the park, everyone passed an ice cream truck that was playing “It’s a small world after all.” Indeed.

Any remaining doubts about the militarization of the police were dispelled shortly after the crowd left the park. A few blocks away the police unveiled their latest high tech anti-protestor toy. It was mounted on the back of a huge black truck. The Pittsburgh-Gazette described it as Long Range Acoustic Device designed to break up crowds with piercing noise. Similar devices have been used in Fallujah, Mosul and Basra Iraq. The police backed the truck up, told people not to go any further down the street and then blasted them with piercing noise.

The crowd then moved to other streets. Now they were being tracked by helicopters. The police repeatedly tried to block them from re-grouping ultimately firing tear gas into the crowd injuring hundreds including people in the residential neighborhood where the police decided to confront the marchers. I was treated to some of the tear gas myself and I found the Pittsburgh brand to be spiced with a hint of kelbasa. Fortunately, I was handed some paper towels soaked in apple cider vinegar which helped fight the tears and cough a bit. Who would have thought?

After the large group broke and ran from the tear gas, smaller groups went into commercial neighborhoods and broke glass at a bank and a couple of other businesses. The police chased and the glass breakers ran. And the police chased and the people ran. For a few hours.

By day the police were menacing, but at night they lost their cool. Around a park by the University of Pittsburgh the ninja turtles pushed and shoved and beat and arrested not just protestors but people passing by. One young woman reported she and her friend watched Grey’s Anatomy and were on their way back to their dorm when they were cornered by police. One was bruised by police baton and her friend was arrested. Police shot tear gas, pepper spray, smoke canisters, and rubber bullets. They pushed with big plastic shields and struck with batons.

The biggest march was Friday. Thousands of people from Pittsburgh and other places protested the G20. Since the court had ruled on this march, the police did not confront the marchers. Ninja turtled police showed up in formation sometimes and the helicopters hovered but no confrontations occurred.

Again Friday night, riot clad police fought with students outside of the University of Pittsburgh. To what end was just as unclear as the night before.

Ultimately about 200 were arrested, mostly in clashes with the police around the University.

The G20 leaders left by helicopter and limousine.

Pittsburgh now belongs again to the people of Pittsburgh. The cement barricades were removed, the fences were taken down, the bridges and roads were opened. The gunboats packed up and left. The police packed away their ninja turtle outfits and tear gas and rubber bullets. They don’t look like military commandos anymore. No more gunboats on the river. No more sirens all the time. No more armored vehicles and ear splitting machines used in Iraq. On Monday the businesses will open and kids will have to go back to school. Civil society has returned.

It is now probably even safe to exercise constitutional rights in Pittsburgh once again.

The USA really showed those terrorists didn’t we?

In unveiling an unclassified version of the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), Blair asserts he is seeking to break down “this old distinction between military and nonmilitary intelligence,” stating that the “traditional fault line” separating secretive military programs from overall intelligence activities “is no longer relevant.”

As if to emphasize the sweeping nature of Blair’s remarks, Federal Computer Week reported September 17 that “some non-federal officials with the necessary clearances who work at intelligence fusion centers around the country will soon have limited access to classified terrorism-related information that resides in the Defense Department’s classified network.” According to the publication:

Under the program, authorized state, local or tribal officials will be able to access pre-approved data on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. However, they won’t have the ability to upload data or edit existing content, officials said. They also will not have access to all classified information, only the information that federal officials make available to them.

The non-federal officials will get access via the Homeland Security department’s secret-level Homeland Security Data Network. That network is currently deployed at 27 of the more than 70 fusion centers located around the country, according to DHS. Officials from different levels of government share homeland security-related information through the fusion centers. (Ben Bain, “DOD opens some classified information to non-federal officials,” Federal Computer Week, September 17, 2009)

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has encouraged the explosive growth of fusion centers. As envisaged by securocrats, these hybrid institutions have expanded information collection and sharing practices from a wide variety of sources, including commercial databases, among state and local law enforcement agencies, the private sector and federal security agencies, including military intelligence.

But early on, fusion centers like the notorious “red squads” of the 1960s and ’70s, morphed into national security shopping malls where officials monitor not only alleged terrorists but also left-wing and environmental activists deemed threats to the existing corporate order.

It is currently unknown how many military intelligence analysts are stationed at fusion centers, what their roles are and whether or not they are engaged in domestic surveillance.

If past practices are an indication of where current moves by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will lead, in breaking down the “traditional fault line” that prohibits the military from engaging in civilian policing, then another troubling step along the dark road of militarizing American society will have been taken.

U.S. Northern Command: Feeding the Domestic Surveillance Beast

Since its 2002 stand-up, U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and associated military intelligence outfits such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the now-defunct Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) have participated in widespread surveillance of antiwar and other activist groups, tapping into Pentagon and commercial databases in a quixotic search for “suspicious patterns.”

As they currently exist, fusion centers are largely unaccountable entities that function without proper oversight and have been involved in egregious civil rights violations such as the compilation of national security dossiers that have landed activists on various terrorist watch-lists.

Antifascist Calling reported last year on the strange case of Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz and Col. Larry Richards, Marine reservists stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. Maziarz, Richards, and a group of fellow Marines, including the cofounder of the Los Angeles County Terrorist Early Warning Center (LACTEW), stole secret files from the Strategic Technical Operations Center (STOC).

When they worked at STOC, the private spy ring absconded with hundreds of classified files, including those marked “Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information,” the highest U.S. Government classification. The files included surveillance dossiers on the Muslim community and antiwar activists in Southern California.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune which broke the story in 2007, before being run to ground Maziarz, Richards and reserve Navy Commander Lauren Martin, a civilian intelligence contractor at USNORTHCOM, acquired information illegally obtained from the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). This is the same classified system which fusion centers will have access to under the DoD’s new proposal.

Claiming they were acting out of “patriotic motives,” the Marine spies shared this classified counterterrorism information with private contractors in the hope of obtaining future employment. Although they failed to land plush private sector counterterrorism jobs, one cannot rule out that less than scrupulous security firms might be willing to take in the bait in the future in order to have a leg up on the competition.

So far, only lower level conspirators have been charged. According to the Union-Tribune “Marine Cols. Larry Richards and David Litaker, Marine Maj. Mark Lowe and Navy Cmdr. Lauren Martin also have been mentioned in connection with the case, but none has been charged.” One codefendant’s attorney, Kevin McDermott, told the paper, “This is the classic situation that if you have more rank, the better your chance of not getting charged.”

Sound familiar? Call it standard operating procedure in post-constitutional America where high-level officials and senior officers walk away scott-free while grunts bear the burden, and do hard time, for the crimes of their superiors.

Fusion Centers and Military Intelligence: Best Friends Forever!

Another case which is emblematic of the close cooperation among fusion centers and military intelligence is the case of John J. Towery, a Ft. Lewis, Washington civilian contractor who worked for the Army’s Fort Lewis Force Protection Unit.

In July, The Olympian and Democracy Now! broke the story of how Towery had infiltrated and spied on the Olympia Port Militarization Resistance (OlyPMR), an antiwar group, and shared this information with police.

Since 2006, the group has staged protests at Washington ports and has sought to block military cargo from being shipped to Iraq. According to The Olympian:

OlyPMR member Brendan Maslauskas Dunn said in an interview Monday that he received a copy of the e-mail from the city of Olympia in response to a public records request asking for any information the city had about “anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), or Industrial Workers of the World.” (Jeremy Pawloski, “Fort Lewis investigates claims employee infiltrated Olympia peace group,” The Olympian, July 27, 2009)

What Dunn discovered was highly disturbing to say the least. Towery, who posed as an anarchist under the name “John Jacob,” had infiltrated OlyPMR and was one of several listserv administrators that had control over the group’s electronic communications.

The civilian intelligence agent admitted to Dunn that he had spied on the group but claimed that no one paid him and that he didn’t report to the military; a statement that turned out to be false.

Joseph Piek, a Fort Lewis spokesperson confirmed to The Olympian that Towery was a contract employee and that the infiltrator “performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community,” but “it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media.”

In September, The Olympian obtained thousands of pages of emails from the City of Olympia in response to that publication’s public-records requests. The newspaper revealed that the Washington Joint Analytical Center (WJAC), a fusion center, had copied messages to Towery on the activities of OlyPMR in the run-up to the group’s November 2007 port protests. According to the paper,

The WJAC is a clearinghouse of sorts of anti-terrorism information and sensitive intelligence that is gathered and disseminated to law enforcement agencies across the state. The WJAC receives money from the federal government.

The substance of nearly all of the WJAC’s e-mails to Olympia police officials had been blacked out in the copies provided to The Olympian. (Jeremy Pawloski, “Army e-mail sent to police and accused spy,” The Olympian, September 12, 2009)

Also in July, the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks published a 1525 page file on WJAC’s activities.

Housed at the Seattle Field Office of the FBI, one document described WJAC as an agency that “builds on existing intelligence efforts by local, regional, and federal agencies by organizing and disseminating threat information and other intelligence efforts to law enforcement agencies, first responders, and key decision makers throughout the state.”

Fusion centers are also lucrative cash cows for enterprising security grifters. Wikileaks investigations editor Julian Assange described the revolving-door that exists among Pentagon spy agencies and the private security firms who reap millions by placing interrogators and analysts inside outfits such as WJAC. Assange wrote,

There has been extensive political debate in the United States on how safe it would be to move Guantánamo’s detainees to US soil–but what about their interrogators?

One intelligence officer, Kia Grapham, is hawked by her contracting company to the Washington State Patrol. Grapham’s confidential resume boasts of assisting in over 100 interrogations of “high value human intelligence targets” at Guantánamo. She goes on, saying how she is trained and certified to employ Restricted Interrogation Technique: Separation as specified by FM 2-22.3 Appendix M.

Others, like, Neoma Syke, managed to repeatedly flip between the military and contractor intelligence work–without even leaving the building.

The file details the placement of six intelligence contractors inside the Washington Joint Analytical Center (WAJAC) on behalf of the Washington State Patrol at a cost of around $110,000 per year each.

Such intelligence “fusion” centers, which combine the military, the FBI, state police, and others, have been internally promoted by the US Army as means to avoid restrictions preventing the military from spying on the domestic population. (Julian Assange, “The spy who billed me twice,” Wikileaks, July 29, 2009)

The Wikileaks documents provide startling details on how firms such as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), The Sytex Group and Operational Applications Inc. routinely place operatives within military intelligence and civilian fusion centers at a premium price.

Assange wonders whether these job placements are not simply evidence of corruption but rather, are “designed to evade a raft of hard won oversight laws which apply to the military and the police but not to contractors? Is it to keep selected personnel out of the Inspector General’s eye?” The available evidence strongly suggests that it is.

As the American Civil Liberties Union documented in their 2007 and 2008 reports on fusion center abuses, one motivation is precisely to subvert oversight laws which do not apply to private mercenary contractors.

The civil liberties’ watchdog characterized the rapid expansion of fusion centers as a threat to our constitutional rights and cited specific areas of concern: “their ambiguous lines of authority, the troubling role of private corporations, the participation of the military, the use of data mining and their excessive secrecy.”

And speaking of private security contractors outsourced to a gaggle on intelligence agencies, investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed in his essential book Spies For Hire, that since 9/11 “the Central Intelligence Agency has been spending 50 to 60 percent of its budget on for-profit contractors, or about $2.5 billion a year, and its number of contract employees now exceeds the agency’s full-time workforce of 17,500.”

Indeed, Shorrock learned that “no less than 70 percent of the nation’s intelligence budget was being spent on contracts.” However, the sharp spike in intelligence outsourcing to well-heeled security corporations comes with very little in the way of effective oversight.

The House Intelligence Committee reported in 2007 that the Bush, and now, the Obama administrations have failed to develop a “clear definition of what functions are ‘inherently governmental’;” meaning in practice, that much in the way of systematic abuses can be concealed behind veils of “proprietary commercial information.”

As we have seen when the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke in 2004, and The New York Times belatedly blew the whistle on widespread illegal surveillance of the private electronic communications of Americans in 2005, cosy government relationships with security contractors, including those embedded within secretive fusion centers, will continue to serve as a “safe harbor” for concealing and facilitating state crimes against the American people.

After all, $75 billion buys a lot of silence.

Along with Muslims, Latinos are its prime targets, often using militarized unconstitutional tactics against vulnerable, defenseless people. Post-9/11, the Bush administration initiated them, and they continue under Obama.

On May 23, 2007, as a senator, Obama said: “The time to fix our broken immigration system is now. We need stronger enforcement on the border and at the workplace.”

Then on July 8, 2009, Wall Street Journal online writer Cam Simpson said on politicalforum.com: “The Obama administration (today) said it would move forward with a Bush-era program aimed at cracking down on illegal-immigrant workers and their employers, just as Republicans in the Senate are pushing legislation that would mandate a similar move.”

With about 10% of DHS’ $55 billion FY 2010 budget, ICE will continue targeting Latinos at the border, at work sites, and at their homes with some recent examples below:

– in a September 18 press release, ICE’s Miami field office announced it “removed” 423 “criminal aliens from 36 countries” in August, charging them with drugs traffickin, robbery, and various fraudulent activities;

– on September 11, 23 alleged gang members faced deportation after being being arrested in a four-day operation; unmentioned was whether any of them are undocumented;

– on August 25, 15 Latinos were arrested in San Antonio, TX on alleged drugs trafficking charges;

– on August 11, 50 arrests were made on charges of “enter(ing) into sham marriages to gain citizenship,” including those undocumented and their US citizen wives;

– on July 31, 53 alleged South Florida gang members and associates were arrested in a two-day operation; some “were found to be in violation of the immigration law (and) were processed for removal from the United States;”

– on July 31, eight San Francisco area alleged gang members and associates were seized “during a six hour surge;” some were “foreign nationals who are being processed for deportation;”

– on June 30, 116 alleged gang members, their associates and “immigration status violators” were targeted in a five day operation in Houston, Beaumont, and Corpus Christi, TX;

– on June 30 in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, 81 others were arrested; foreign-born ones seized were from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Laos;

– on February 25, 28 “illegal workers” were arrested at Yamato Engine Specialists in Bellingham, WA during an earlier Obama administration raid; and

On February 18, the Washington Post reported that “immigration officers had been raiding targets across Prince George’s and Montgomery counties all night long in search of fugitive and criminal immigrants but only netted a handful.”

Earlier, a Baltimore ICE supervisor warned about being well behind “a Washington-mandated annual quota of 1000 arrests per team” and ordered his agents to seize more saying: “I don’t care where you get more arrests, we need more numbers,” and apparently he meant from any street corner, work place, or personal residence. An hour later, 24 Latino men were seized at a nearby 7-Eleven store.

Since established in 2003, Congress appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars to let ICE “bring in tens of thousands of immigrants who have not evaded a deportation order or committed a crime….” Since then, it continued the operation, and, during 2007 and 2008, expanded tactical home entries using militarized agents for illegal warrantless raids without the consent of their owners.

On July 26, the New York Times reported that:

Federal immigration squads with shotguns and automatic weapons (are) forcing their way into citizens’ homes without warrants or lawful consent, shoving open doors and climbing through windows in predawn darkness, pulling innocent people from their beds, holding groggy occupants at gunpoint, (and) taking people away without explanation — after invading the wrong house.

This is a true account of the depths to which the Bush administration sank in its twilight, when immigration enforcement was ramped up to a feverish extreme.

Shamefully, these practices continue under Obama.

A recent New York City Cardozo School of Law Immigration Justice Clinic (IJC) study titled “Constitution on Ice: A Report on Immigration Home Raid Operations” examined the problem in New York, New Jersey, and Long Island from 2006-2008 and included other examples in California, Texas, Massachusetts, Georgia and elsewhere. Researchers documented a nationwide assault on poor immigrant workers, the great majority being Latinos. Many times ICE broke into homes, seizing all occupants “without legal basis.”

IJC discovered a systematic pattern of misconduct “suggest(ing it) may be a widespread national phenomenon reaching beyond” the areas studied. It involves:

• illegal ICE agent entries with no legal authority;
• illegally arresting people randomly, including innocent ones in their bedrooms;
• conducting lawless searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment; and
• making arrests based on ethnicity, race, appearance, and English proficiency.

These police state tactics have no place in a democracy, yet ICE (on its web site) lists dozens of monthly swat-type raids, often against innocent people and their families in their homes. IJC described them this way:

A typical home raid has “a team of heavily armed ICE agents approaching a private residence in the pre-dawn hours, purportedly seeking an individual believed to have committed some civil immigration violation. Agents, armed only with administrative warrants, which do not grant them legal authority to enter private dwellings, then push their way in when residents answer the door, enter through unlocked doors or windows or, in some cases, physically break into homes.”

All occupants are then seized and interrogated with no legal authority, and often “no target is apprehended.” These aren’t random, standard operating procedures in violation of the Fourth Amendment that protects citizens and non-citizens alike. The Office of Detention and Removal (DRO) conducts them cooperatively with the Office of Investigations (OI), charged with investigating national security threats, immigration violations, and various other suspected crimes.

Home raid operations include:

• the National Fugitive Operations Program (NFOP) using over 100 seven-person Fugitive Operations Teams (FOTs) to target individuals for deportation;
• Operation Cross Check focusing on specific immigrant populations or ones working in certain industries like dangerous, low-paying meat packing operations, unattractive to workers able to find safer, better-paying jobs;
• Operation Community Shield (OCS) against suspected immigrant gang members; and
• Operation Predator against suspected immigrant sex offenders.

Most often, high priority targets aren’t seized. Instead, “collateral arrests of mere (suspected) immigration status violators” are made, and since 2006 the numbers expanded eight-fold because of primarily relying on home raids despite their illegality.

On April 15, 1980 in Payton v. New York, the Supreme Court ruled that “The Fourth Amendment… prohibits the police from making a warrantless and nonconsenual entry into a suspect’s home in order to make a routine (criminal or civil) felony arrest.” Such “entry… is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”

Searches are also prohibited. Only an adult resident’s consent permits either or both. Administrative warrants have no authority, and police may only interrogate suspects based on “reasonable suspicion” of unlawful activity. “In addition, agents can never rely solely on the racial or ethnic appearance or the limited English proficiency of an individual to justify a seizure.”

DHS’ own regulations cover these restrictions, and ICE’s Detention and Deportation Officer’s Field Manual states: “Warrants of Deportation and Removal are administrative rather than criminal, and do not grant the authority to breach doors. Thus informed consent must be obtained from the occupant of the residence prior to entering.”

Nonetheless, “empirical data drawn from ICE’s own arrest records (obtained by Freedom of Information Act lawsuits) strongly suggest a significant and disturbing pattern of (agency) misconduct during home raids” during which over 1000 people were seized. The evidence is alarming and shows “an unacceptable level of illegal entries” in clear violation of the law. In addition, most arrest records indicate “no basis for the initial seizure” and a disturbing racial profiling pattern against Latinos.

In recent years, defense lawyers increasingly have used suppression motions to prevent illegally obtained evidence being used. Earlier, they were rare in immigration courts, given the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Lopez-Mendoza (July 5, 1984) that deportation proceedings are: “civil action(s) to determine a person’s eligibility to remain in this country… not to punish past transgressions. (As such) various protections (including suppression motions don’t generally) apply… in a deportation hearing.”

In immigration courts, they’re not standard procedures. Since 2006, however, they’re more often used because the High Court also “reasoned that the exclusionary rule may (apply) in immigration proceedings for egregious and widespread Fourth Amendment violations” even though prevailing in immigration cases remains challenging, expensive, and time-consuming.

Political and Local Law Enforcement Concerns

ICE often requests operational help from local police who complain that Fourth Amendment violations undermine their central crime suppression mission. Political leaders voice similar concerns. New York state Senator Kirstin Gillibrand said she was “appalled by some of the practices I have heard about,” and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano said, “We won’t stand for the violation of constitutional rights and racial profiling” in reacting to city raids.

In September 2007, the Nassau County Police Department pulled out of an operation it agreed to because of “serious allegations of misconduct and malfeasance.” In this case, no warrants were used, not even administrative ones. ICE fraudulently claimed they weren’t needed because consent to enter all homes was received. In response, Nassau County Police Commissioner, Lawrence Mulvey, said:

“In my 29 years of police work, I have executed countless warrants and have sought to enter countless homes. ICE’s claim that they received 100% compliance with their requests to enter is not credible even under the best of circumstances.”

Evidence Suggests a National Pattern of Constitutional Violations

Since 2006, lawsuits have been filed against ICE “in every region of the country — including two large class actions” and several with multiple defendants — all alleging a similar pattern of misconduct.

They pertain to illegally entering private homes as well as other misconduct charges. In March 2009, Jimmy Slaughter, an Arizona DHS officer, filed suit as well, stating:

“I was at home with my wife when the door bell rang. I opened the door and noticed approximately 7 uniformed ICE agents with vests and guns…. I opened the door to look at the paperwork and five agents entered my house…. The agents then told my wife to stand in the center of ‘OUR’ living room. Not once did anyone say they had a warrant.”

Numerous other instances confirm a national pattern of constitutional violations, including:

• unannounced pre-dawn raids;
• illegal entries into private homes, at times forcibly with drawn guns;
• some with administrative warrants; others with none; often with no probable cause or consent;
• unconstitutional searches and seizures;
• all occupants arrested and interrogated;
• commonplace use of excessive force; and
• at times, individuals prevented from calling attorneys.

New York Immigration Judge Noel Brennan ruled on one case saying:

It is hard for me to fathom a country or a place in which we live in which the Government can barge into one’s house without authority from the Third Branch after a probable cause finding. So for all these reasons I find that what is essentially a warrantless search in the meaning of the Fourth Amendment… was an egregious violation, and therefore I suppress all the evidence and order these proceedings terminated.

ICE’s 2006 Policy Changes

Three new memoranda issued dramatic enforcement changes that led to and facilitated nationwide home raids. Fugitive Operation Team (FOT) annual quotas were raised eight-fold (from 125 to 1000 arrests) and didn’t have to include “criminal aliens.”

Another change permitted “collateral” arrests of suspected civil immigration status violators. These actions “incentivized the pattern of unlawful behavior” and put tremendous pressure on ICE agents to deliver. As a result, home raids increased sharply and illegally. Wrongful arrests became common. Easy targets were chosen, including women and children, often at the expense of real criminals remaining at large.

Immigrants are some of “the most vulnerable of populations in this nation’s legal system.” Most are poor, are unfamiliar with the law, and many speak imperfect or limited English. Often those seized have no lawyers, are kept in detention, and are then deported summarily with no ability to pursue justice. In addition, “traditional civil remedies are (often) ineffective deterrents to unlawful ICE home raids.”

IJC Policy Recommendations

Major constitutional issues are at stake making everyone potentially as vulnerable as immigrants. If authorities can get away with constitutional violations against some, they can do it against anyone. That said, IJC recommends the following:

• home raids should only be for criminal arrests or civil ones in cases posing real risks to national security or for persons with violent criminal records;
• judicial warrants should be required, not administrative ones;
• in all cases, “high-level centralized pre-approval in advance of any home raid operation” should be required;
• if judicial warrants aren’t obtained, residents’ consent should be required after informing them “explicitly and clearly” of their right to refuse before entry is made;
• in all pre-dawn and nighttime raids, judicial warrants should be required;
• in all cases, a high-level supervisor should be involved on site;
• home raids should be videotaped;
• ICE agents should be trained on home raid procedures stressing compliance with the law at all times;
• local law enforcement agencies should be apprised of raids and their results;
• they should not be asked to participate in or facilitate lawless activities;
• emphasis should be on arresting dangerous criminals, not collateral ones to meet quotas;
• arrests should be race, ethnicity, and English proficiency neutral;
• agent misconduct should be assessed and properly addressed;
• a clear public complaint procedure should be established; and
• illegally obtained evidence should be disallowed.

Obama Administration’s Immigrant Detention Policies

On August 7, Washington Post writer Spencer Hsu headlined, “Agency Plans to Improve Oversight of Immigrant Detention” in saying the Obama administration intends to “restructure the nation’s much-criticized immigration detention system by strengthening federal oversight and seeking to standardize conditions in a 32,000-bed system now scattered throughout 350 local jails, state prisons and contract facilities.”

Since 1979, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) has represented, protected, and promoted “the rights of low income immigrants and their family members (and) earned a national reputation as a leading expert on immigration, public benefits, and employment laws affecting immigrants and refugees.”

It calls US immigrant detention centers “A Broken System” in a recent report that presents “the first-ever system-wide look at the federal government’s compliance with its own standards regulating immigrant detention facilities… based on previously unreleased first-hand reports of monitoring inspections.”

Annually, over 320,000 immigrants are incarcerated. They face enormous obstacles challenging their detention, and they’re held under conditions “as bad as or worse than those faced by imprisoned criminals.” They’re kept in three types of facilities:

• ICE owned and operated Service Processing Centers (SPCs);
• privately run Contract Detention Facilities (CDFs); and
• Intergovernmental Service Agreement Facilities (IGSAs) holding two-thirds of detainees — mostly state or county jails plus a small number in US Bureau of Prisons or other facilities.

Since 1992, immigrant detentions have increased from 6,259 to 20,000 in early 2006 to the current 31,000 total — a number that continues to grow due to policies discussed above.

NILC learned that detention standards are poorly regulated and that government efforts to monitor compliance have been “woefully deficient and in need of a major overall.” Testimony obtained from ICE employees revealed that monitoring is understaffed. Before inspections, facilities get at least 30 days notice to fix or cover up problems and abuses in advance. Multiple review levels are used, yet headquarters rarely requires violations to be corrected and often gives facilities “higher overall assessments than the review team’s original ones.”

Systemic problems were also uncovered pertaining to annual review procedures and their inadequately identifying and correcting noncompliance with acceptable standards. ICE plans to let private contractors monitor compliance, yet current failures suggest that new management will let a broken system fester and worsen as the detention population grows and overcrowded facilities get further stretched.

Despite repeated calls for reform, greater transparency, accountability, and better controls, “the government has not taken effective measures to ensure that even its nonbinding standards are met.” It shows an appalling indifference to some of the nation’s most vulnerable people, no match against a system in place to repress them.

Currently, numerous violations are systemic, serious, and numerous. They include:

(1) Visitations by family, lawyers and others

Detainee visitations are severely restricted in violation of clear constitutional and statutory rights, especially to free access to counsel and close family members.

(2) Recreation

Standards require safe recreational time for physical, mental and emotional well-being, including for those with special needs or in segregation. Yet they’re routinely denied or offered at the discretion of facility staff. In addition, programs are way inadequate, and many detainees get limited or no access to outdoor recreation and a chance to interact with others in a natural environment.

(3) Telephone access

Many facilities didn’t comply with standards. Monitoring of confidential legal calls was conducted, and restrictive time limits were imposed. Numerous facilities also prevented detainees from contacting courts, consulates, and getting access to free legal service providers.

(4) Access to Legal Material

Immigration law is so complex that good counsel is essential. Yet it’s expensive and few detainees can afford it. Instead they must rely on pro bono help if available or their own resourcefulness. Standards require facilities to have a law library and an adequate environment to research and prepare legal documents. Yet numerous facilities have none, and the limited information on hand is inadequate and outdated. Still other facilities require specific document requests, even though detainees have no way to know what applies to their case.

(5) Group Presentations on Legal Rights

Facilities are required to let authorized attorneys or representatives, on written request, conduct immigration law and detainee rights presentations. Few do it, and individual counseling is also limited.

(6) Correspondence and Other Mail

Most facilities restrict access, monitor incoming and outgoing mail, and confiscate items at times. As a result, confidential correspondence is compromised. At times, identity documents are destroyed. Detainees miss court deadlines, and they’re intimidated from freely sending and receiving mail.

(7) Administrative and Disciplinary Segregation

It’s supposed to be non-punitive isolation to ensure detainee safety or facility security. Instead it’s done punitively for extended periods for even slight rule infractions. Reports also uncovered severe privilege restrictions, unsanitary conditions, and poor health care protection for segregated detainees and the entire facility population.

(8) Disciplinary Policy

They’re supposed to protect detainees from arbitrary disciplinary actions with rules conspicuously posted so they’re known and can be obeyed. Yet most facilities don’t do it.

(9) Detainee Handbook

Facilities are required to develop and make available a “facility-specific handbook” covering policies, rules, and procedures. However, those having them “presented an inaccurate or incomplete picture of facility policy” because important information was missing, erroneous, incomplete, or inappropriate.

(10) Hold Rooms in Detention Facilities

Physical space requirements and design specifications are supposed to be followed and monitored. Yet poor compliance was found, including inadequate toilet facilities and detainees held there too long in violation of rules requiring a maximum of 12 hours.

(11) Detainee Grievance Procedures

They’re to assure detainees can file grievances with uninvolved officers without fear of retaliation. Widespread noncompliance was found, and most often facilities don’t inform detainees of their rights.

(12) Detainee Transfers

Procedures are to protect their security in transit and make a traumatic experience easier, especially when to locations remote from their families. Transfers also interfere with attorney-client relations and harm constitutionally protected due process rights.

(13) Funds and Personal Property

Rules are supposed to safeguard detainees’ money and personal property with written procedures for receiving, processing, storing, and returning them. Evidence showed instances of theft, forfeiture of funds and property, and failure to conduct audits to assure none of this would happen.

(14) Admission and Release

Official procedures protect the health, safety, and welfare of detainees. Most facilities don’t do it, including providing proper medical care and personal hygiene considerations from admission to the time of release.

NILC concluded that “the nation’s immigrant detention system is broken to its core (and) reveals pervasive and extreme violations of the government’s own detention standards as well as fundamental violations of basic human rights and notions of dignity.”

On August 6, the Obama administration announced remedial plans amounting only to a cosmetic fix for a dysfunction system. A day ahead, the New York Times headlined “US to Reform Policy on Detention for Immigrants” and called the effort “an ambitious plan… to overhaul the much-criticized way the nation detains immigration violators, trying to transform it (into) a ‘truly civil detention system.’ ”

According to ICE Assistant Secretary, John Morton, ICE will create an Office of Detention Policy and Planning (ODPP) effective immediately. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said: “This change marks an important step in our ongoing efforts to enforce immigration laws smartly and effectively. We are improving detention center management to prioritize health, safety and uniformity among our facilities while ensuring security, efficiency and fiscal responsibility.”

What’s planned, in fact, is more centralized control and better ways to track, process, incarcerate, and/or deport growing numbers of undocumented immigrants — not treat them humanely as international law and DHS/ICE regulations stipulate.

The Obama administration has expanded and intensified the same harsh Bush administration policies, and ICE’s August 6 announcement signifies nothing more than a cosmetic repackaging of a broken system.

In May, the Obama administration asked Congress for a 30% funding increase to expand the controversial Bush administration Secure Communities program (begun in December 2007) to identify, arrest, incarcerate, and deport undocumented immigrants, mostly Latinos from Mexico and Central America.

In declaring “zero tolerance” for undocumented immigrants, he’ll also keep building the $8 billion virtual border fence, planned for hundreds of miles, and will continue the same harsh Bush administration policies.

On August 4, the Immigrant Solidarity Nework said that despite early pledges that he’d moderate them, Obama “is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.”

They call for “no-nonsense immigration enforcement” followed later in the year or early next year by immigration legislation to create a new bracero program, among other harsh measures, that immigrant rights group oppose. They also include extensive employee paperwork audits, an expanded (and much criticized) program to verify worker immigration status, and greater cooperation between federal and local authorities while rejecting proposals for legally binding rules regarding detention center conditions. Non-binding Bush administration ones still followed hold no one accountable and let detainees be treated harshly under a system described above.

In response to Obama’s decision, the National Lawyers Guild’s Paromita Shah, associate director of its National Immigration Project, said the government is “disregard(ing) the plight of the hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees” by continuing a dysfunctional system. DHS “has demonstrated a disturbing commitment to policies that have cost dozens of lives” and shows an appalling indifference to the fate of defenseless people.

Highlighting the plight of immigrants, the National Immigrant Justice Center’s Mary McCarthy described the current detention system as a “human rights nightmare. The past administration created this, and now we need to dismantle it.” Instead, Obama officials plan to make a “broken system” worse, then harden it with discriminatory immigration reform legislation later in the year. According to University of Houston immigration law Professor Michael Olivas, “We literally have the worst of all worlds,” and nothing is being planned to improve it.

And with ever-more devilish torture tools being dreamed up by the likes of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP), it’s a safe bet that migration from the military to civilian law enforcement agencies will continue at its current break-neck pace.

In this context, San Diego’s East County Magazine and progressive Liberty One Radio reported, ironically enough on September 11, that the San Diego Sheriff’s Department stationed a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) during recent town hall forums.

Manufactured by American Technology Corporation (ATC), the firm’s LRAD 500-x is a dual-purpose device: a powerful hailer and a non-lethal weapon capable of producing ear-shattering sounds highly-damaging to their human targets.

ATC’s technology has been deployed in Iraq as an “anti-insurgent weapon” and off the coast of Somalia to fight off desperate “pirates,” that is, former Somali fishermen whose livelihood has been destroyed by over-fishing by foreign factory fleets and toxic dumping, including nuclear waste, by Western polluters.

No matter, time to break out the sonic blasters!

Developed for the U.S. Navy in the wake of the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, cruise ship Captain Michael Groves “successfully repelled pirates off the Somali coast using non-lethal weapons including an LRAD. Groves has since filed suit against Carnival Cruise Line, claiming he suffered permanent hearing loss as a result,” East County Magazine reports.

The BBC noted in 2005 that the “shrill sound of an LRAD at its loudest sounds something like a domestic smoke alarm, ATC says, but at 150 decibels, it is the aural equivalent to standing 30m away from a roaring jet engine and can cause major hearing damage if misused.”

According to ATC’s web site, “LRAD resolves uncertain situations and potentially saves lives on both sides of the device by combining powerful voice commands and deterrent tones with focused acoustic output to clearly transmit highly intelligible instructions and warnings well beyond 500 meters.”

While the defense establishment and their civilian counterparts dismiss concerns that acoustic weapons pose a danger to their targets, the Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project noted in 2006:

Juergen Altmann, who is conducting an independent scientific assessment of acoustic weapons, has warned that there is risk of hearing damage to people exposed to the beam at ranges of up to 100m. … An added difficulty with ensuring no permanent damage is that some people are more susceptible to noise-induced hearing loss than others and hearing damage can occur at levels below the threshold for ear pain. A report from the US Army’s 361st Psychological Operations Company gives an idea of the powerful effects of the LRAD: ‘During distance tests at 100 meters, the sound was painful to listeners, even with hands held over the ears and ear plugs in’.” (Neil Davison, Nick Lewer, Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project, Research Report No. 8, March 2006, pp. 33-34)

Far from being employed as a means to “reduce casualties,” its actual use lends itself to the opposite effect. In Iraq, for example the U.S. Army’s 361st Psychological Operations Company noted that “The LRAD has proven useful for clearing streets and rooftops during cordon and search, for disseminating command information, and for drawing out enemy snipers who are subsequently destroyed by our own snipers.”

In a civilian setting, one can easily envisage groups of “rioters” being sonically blasted prior to street clearing operations by heavily-armed SWAT teams. Kevin Keenan, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union told East County Magazine:

“It’s very concerning. It is fine for the Sheriff’s Department to have new less-than-lethal weapons, but for their interactions with individuals these still-dangerous weapons need to be used only as substitutes for firearms. They can’t be used as just another tool on the tool belt. As we’ve seen with tasers and pepper spray, these types of weapons are being used to subdue people even though they pose the risk of serious physical harm.”

He added, “Even more concerning is having these weapons for public order policing. I can imagine no situation, or am not aware of any situation that’s ever happened in San Diego County or is likely to happen that would justify using these weapons for public order policing to control a crowd. The main effect of having those weapons at public events is to chill people and chill free speech and free association.” (Miriam Raftery, “Sonic Weapons Used in Iraq Positioned at Congressional Town Hall Meetings in San Diego County,” East County Magazine, September 11, 2009)

I would add however, the purpose of these weapons is precisely to “chill free speech and free association,” thus ensuring compliance to the whims of our capitalist masters.

Research into more “effective” low-cost acoustic NLWs are gathering steam. Wired reported September 1 that a “Tennessee lab primarily responsible for building components for nuclear weapons is branching off into the nonlethal weapons business.”

Called the Banshee II, the weapon emits a piercing 144-decibel sound that is designed to be more than just annoying. “It also has a frequency-switching system that pumps your ear drums, so it sounds like there’s a drum beating there,” the inventor tells Knoxnews.com. “You physically feel it in your ear drum.” (Sharon Weinberger, “Nuke Lab Builds ‘Beating Drum’ Sonic Blaster, Wired, September 1, 2009)

While such devices never caught on with the military its inventor, so-called nuke “gadget guru” Fariborz Bzorgi who works at the Y-12 nuclear plant in Tennessee “hopes the Banshee II could have broader applications for law enforcement.”

No doubt they will. As Neil Davison, the author of the recently published “Non-Lethal” Weapons points out, military and police moves towards “effects-based” NLWs are consistent with requirements “for weapons with greater range, more precise delivery, and rheostatic effects from ‘non-lethal’ to ‘lethal’.”

Davison cites the LRAD and other acoustic devices as “the only new technologies that have emerged” in the last several years and pointedly notes that “all these weapons have emerged from the private sector.”

That they have should hardly come as a surprise.

After all as Homeland Security Weekly reported in 2007, “homeland security spending is a massive and highly lucrative new market.” With an expected growth rate between “eight and ten percent annually over the next five years” the publication claims that “the addressable U.S. market over the next five years will be in the range of approximately $140 billion, a 21 percent increase over our five-year estimate made in 2004.”

As the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed, heimat grifting and massive waste go hand in hand:

• Cities and agencies bought things with grant money that would not make California a safer place. One county tried to use anti-terrorism funds for a lawnmower but it was blocked at the last minute. Another county succeeded in buying a big-screen television.

• Dozens of cities and agencies failed to keep adequate records on how they spent the money. In some cases, the poor record keeping resulted in thousands of dollars worth of overpayments to local agencies. In other cases, agencies were unable to find where they stored their own equipment.

• Communities repeatedly bought large and small-ticket items without seeking competitive bids. Federal procurement rules designed to protect the taxpayer weren’t used on millions of dollars in new communications systems, night-vision goggles and bomb-disposal robots. (G.W. Schulz, “Homeland Security Marked by Waste, Lack of Oversight,” Center for Investigative Reporting, September 11, 2009)

While schools go unfunded, infrastructure collapses and affordable health care for all is an unattainable pipe dream, police and intelligence agencies are having a field day–at our expense. Call it part of the “counterterrorism stimulus” package that our corporate security masters are hell-bent on shoving down our throats.

However you slice it, there’s a lot of boodle to be had by enterprising defense and security grifters. Alongside current multibillion dollar outlays for “biodefense” and counterterrorism initiatives by a multitude of state and federal agencies, the development of ever more dubious “non-lethal” weapons, implements for compliance and control during the capitalist meltdown, will enjoy a steady growth curve long into the future.

Known for its “goodbye effect,” the so-called “pain ray” is a “non-lethal” directed energy weapon that repels “rioters” and other disreputable citizens by heating the outer surface of the skin to 130 degrees F. in short, directed bursts. With a range of some 550 yards, the microwave beam can penetrate clothing and its effects have been described by test subjects as nothing less than “excruciating.”

The prospect that American “liberators” would soon be zapping “unruly mobs,” that is, Iraqi citizens objecting to the destruction of their country and the looting of their resource-rich nation by Western (corporate) invaders proved to be a public relations nightmare for the Pentagon.

The Defense Science Board concluded that an ADS deployment was “not politically tenable,” because of a “possible association with torture” if the system were used at detention centers to ensure “compliance” from recalcitrant prisoners.

Last year I reported (see: ‘”Non-Lethal’ Weapons: Where Science and Technology Service Repression,” July 8, 2008), that the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) claimed that ADS “is helping to fill the gap between the ’shout’ and ’shoot’ alternatives faced by our troops.” But standing up ADS in the Iraqi “theatre” was not to be.

However, as readers of Antifascist Calling are well-aware, being an imperialist empire means never to have to say you’re sorry. Time for Plan B!

Coming Soon to the Heimat

According to a blurb on Raytheon’s web site, the commercial version of ADS known as Silent Guardian “is a revolutionary less-than-lethal directed energy application that employs millimeter wave technology to repel individuals or crowds without causing injury.”

Touted as providing a “zone of protection that saves lives, protects assets and minimizes collateral damage” the system is marketed as the ideal tool to “establish intent and de-escalate aggression.” Commercial and military application envisaged for the system “include law enforcement, checkpoint security, facility protection, force protection and peacekeeping missions.” Some “peace,” eh?!

Capitalizing on the profit-rich “homeland security” market, Wired reported that Raytheon has announced an “impending direct commercial sale” of a miniature version of ADS to law enforcement agencies.

This is Active Denial in a box, a 10,000-pound containerized system that can be mounted on a ship, a truck, or a fixed installation. It’s got an effective range of about 250 meters. The beam has a power of around 30 kilowatts. (David Hambling, “‘Pain Ray’ First Commercial Sale Looms,” Wired, August 5, 2009)

While Hambling may believe it “paradoxical” that “the controversial ‘pain beam’ may be more acceptable in the civilian market than in the military,” I’d beg to differ.

Given the empire’s utter contempt for its citizens (witness the despicable “debate” by various grifting congressional factions over what is ludicrously described as health care “reform”–a cynical display of bellying up to the corporatist bar if ever there were one!), why would any sane person not believe that heimat securocrats wouldn’t zap union malcontents during a strike, environmental activists protesting outside a polluting company’s headquarters or an unruly crowd of pensioners demanding their looted savings back from any number of dodgy banks grown fat on TARP funds?

“Tough luck, suckers! Have a ‘taste’ of Silent Guardian!”

No. 5 on Washington Technology’s 2009 “Top 100 List,” of Prime Federal Contractors, Raytheon carries a lot of clout with Congress and the Pentagon. With some $5,942,575,316 in revenue from its defense portfolio, the Waltham, Mass. firm’s major customers include the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Not that being a behemoth isn’t without its pitfalls. According to the Project on Government Oversight’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, Raytheon clocks in at No. 5 as a company with a history of “misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations.”

With some some 17 instances of what POGO characterizes as serious breeches ranging from overcharges, contractor kickbacks, False Claims Act Violations, to violations of SEC Rules, groundwater contamination and racial discrimination, Raytheon has been tagged for some $475.8 million in what the government watchdog group calls it’s “total misconduct dollar amount.”

Not that any of this matters in Washington. According to the Center for Responsive Politic’s OpenSecrets.org database, Raytheon’s Political Action Committee bestowed some $2.4 million in campaign contributions on the best politicians money can buy, with some 55% of the total going to grifting Democrats. A perusal of the recipients of Raytheon largess during the last election cycle provides insight into how the well-greased wheels really spin.

“Liberal” or “conservative,” “dove” or “hawk” it doesn’t matter, just keep those contracts flowing! And when it comes to “homeland security” no expense will be spared!

According to Wired, while the firm believes that Silent Guardian “might have all sorts of applications in law enforcement, prisons and protecting installations,” the firm told the publication that although the system “has attracted widespread interest … it would be premature for us to discuss any sales until contracts are signed.”

Although Raytheon isn’t saying what the price tag for Silent Guardian will cost cash-strapped municipalities staggering under the hammer blows of the current capitalist economic meltdown, most analysts believe the system will cost several million dollars to purchase and maintain.

Not everyone is thrilled however, by the prospect of local SWAT teams zapping citizens with a microwave weapon. Neil Davison, a researcher at the University of Bradford’s Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project in the UK, told Wired “as the costs and size drop, expect police forces to become more and more interested. This is where function creep will become a problem. With current controversies over the misuse of the Taser, the spread of new military weapons technologies to the civilian realm does not seem like a very sensible way to go.”

But “go” it must and most assuredly will.

As I reported in June (see: “Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s a Raytheon Spy Blimp!”), the spread of military technology into the homeland security market isn’t limited to non-lethal weapons.

The deployment of Raytheon’s Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment spy blimp known as RAID, is kitted-out with “electro-optic infrared, radar, flash and acoustic detectors.”

Perfect for spying on antiwar demonstrators from a safe perch in the clouds, the firm’s use of blimps “carrying high-tech sensors to detect threats” will “enable appropriate countermeasures” from law enforcement, according to a company press release. Some 300 RAID airships have already been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More “Venom” from Our Capitalist Masters

Should Raytheon’s “pain beam” not do the trick, Combined Systems Inc. (CSI), a subsidiary of The Carlyle Group, may have just the right product for enterprising homeland security bureaucrats and their corporate partners.

The firm, acquired by Carlyle in 2005, is described in a blurb on Carlyle’s web site as a manufacturer of “branded less-lethal munitions, anti-riot products and other related products that serve the military and law enforcement markets in the United States and abroad.”

Wired reported in late August that “the Marine Corps has issued an urgent request for a powerful non-lethal weapon that can fire volleys of 40mm grenades. And in parallel, the service is launching a push for a more futuristic version of the same weapon.”

One might also add, such a monstrous “non-lethal” system will inevitably have homeland security applications after a bit of tweaking is done to create a scaleable version useful to those who “protect and serve.”

Dubbed the Venom Non-Lethal Tube Munition System (NL/TMS) by CSI, according to the firm Venom “is a modular launching system accepting three cassettes, each loaded with ten cartridges (V-30) or the scaled-down, lightweight and portable version accepting one cassette (V-10). Both versions can be integrated into a variety of fire control systems. Each cartridge is assigned an IP address allowing individual cartridge or desired sequence firing from a fire control panel, communicating via cable or wireless device.”

Unsurprisingly, an assigned IP address can mean only one thing: that Venom is RFID-chipped for inventory control and, as part of the “internet of things” described by researchers Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre in their essential book Spychips every commodity–from breakfast cereal to weapons–have their own web page. Convenient, isn’t it! According to Wired,

Venom is essentially a modern version of the old multi-barreled cannon used to fight off boarders in naval actions, but in non-lethal form. It’s designed for firing at crowds, and many of the munition options contain sub-projectiles to enhance the “shotgun” effect. These include a load of 24 .60 cal hard rubber stingballs, 160 smaller stingballs, foam batons, and “multi flash bang” projectiles. Venom can also fire CS gas projectiles, but these are strictly off-limits for military operations (unless you happen to work for Blackwater). It can also be used for smoke and marker rounds. (David Hambling, “Marines Seek Crowd-Blasting ‘Venom’ Launcher,” Wired, August 24, 2009)

Which just goes to show as I’ve pointed out many times, “what happens in Vegas” certainly doesn’t stay there! This bitter truth is all the more compelling when you consider the tens of billions of dollars at stake as the military market literally bleeds over into the homeland security bazaar; a marketing guru’s wet dream that possesses unlimited horizons.

But let’s understand one inescapable fact about life in the United States, a veritable open air asylum fronting as a democratic republic: we’re so much disposable chaff to be tossed aside by our masters, marginalized when the need arises or violently repressed when all other means have failed.

First, there was the report in the Mexican media on July 29 that an investigation by officials from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into the murder of U.S. independent journalist Brad Will affirmed the conclusions drawn by the Mexican Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) regarding his death. The PGR, contrary to all available evidence, claims Will, shot in Oaxaca in 2006, was killed at close range by a anti-government protester. The media reports raised more questions than they answered. For example, why was the RCMP investigating this, and why, as evident from the reports, did they carry out such a clearly laughable investigation?

These questions and more were answered when Brad Will’s family released a statement soundly debunking the so-called RCMP report. As it turns out, there was no official RCMP investigation. It was merely three retired RCMP officers who did an “investigation” which the Mexican government then presented to the media as an official RCMP report. Today, Physicians for Human Rights – a group that actually did investigate Brad’s murder – issued a press release that similarly called into question the veracity of the ex-RCMPers report. James Stephen, Phil Ziegler and Gary Buerk certainly have some serious rebutting to do if they don’t want to be tarnished as integrity-free hacks-for-hire. Although I’m sure there’s always a market for those types.

The conclusions of another “investigation” regarding Oaxaca were released Tuesday by Mexico’s Supreme Court. They took it upon themselves to investigate the actions of the state and federal governments who brutally repressed the 2006 uprising. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court found the use of force – which left 27 dead and hundreds injured, arrested and tortured – to be legitimate. This is the same court which found the murders and mass rapes by police that occurred in Atenco in 2006 to be unworthy of investigating either.

But one question remains – why all these reports stating how the Mexican state is not at fault for the atrocities of 2006 in Oaxaca? The answer can be found in Plan Mexico, aka the Merida Initiative. The three-year, $1.4 billion aid (mostly military) package to Mexico and Central America has a human rights requirement for Mexico. Yearly, the U.S. State Department must certify Mexico’s respect for human rights and the Congress must approve that certification. If that doesn’t happen, then Mexico loses 15% of the Plan Mexico funds. Of course, Mexico gets the other 85% no matter how many people it tortures and kills, but it could do it much more effectively if it got 100% of the funds.

Also, later this month both Clinton and Obama are to visit Mexico to see how the U.S.’s hegemonic efforts under the tutelage of Felipe Calderon are holding up. The family of Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno – the Oaxacan social activist being framed by Mexico for the murder of Brad Will – is requesting an audience with Obama in Mexico City. The Mexican government would of course rather avoid this and any other scrutiny of its human rights record, while at the same time receiving all the Plan Mexico funds. So the timing of the non-RCMP and Supreme Court reports saying that everything is fine in Oaxaca is no surprise.

However, it appears that their efforts have all been for naught. For while Clinton’s State Dept. dutifully certified Mexico’s human rights record this week, even though human rights complaints have risen 600% under Calderon’s regime, Senator Leahy on Wednesday blocked the certification from being voted upon in the Senate, basically saying he doesn’t believe the State Dept. Maybe Amnesty International got to him. This means that, at least for the time being, the Mexican government will only have 85% of the Plan Mexico funds at its disposal to deploy against the social movements demanding justice and an end to impunity. Which, given that Plan Mexico shouldn’t exist at all, is still appallingly too much.

But that strategy poses an acute problem: The police in the province, who are linked to the local warlord, have committed systematic abuses against the population, including the abduction and rape of pre-teen boys, according to village elders who met with British officers.

Anger over those police abuses runs so high that the elders in Babaji just north of Laskgar Gah warned the British that they would support the Taliban to get rid of them if the national police were allowed to return to the area, according to a July 12 report by Reuters correspondent Peter Graff.

Associated Press reporters Jason Straziuso and David Guttenfelder, who accompanied U.S. troops in Northern Helmand, reported July 13 that villagers in Aynak were equally angry about police depredations. Within hours of the arrival of U.S. troops in the village, they wrote, bands of villagers began complaining the local police force was “a bigger problem than the Taliban.”

The brutality of the Afghan police toward the civilian population in Helmand was no surprise to Ambassador Ron Neumann, who was the U.S. envoy in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. Such abuses, including rape of pre-teen boys, “are part of the larger problem of repression and oppression” in Afghanistan, Neumann told IPS.

Neumann said the problem of police abuses against the population can be traced back to the creation of the national police after the overthrow of the Taliban regime in late 2001. The Afghan police were not created afresh by U.S. and NATO force, Neumann recalls but were “constituted from the forces that were then fighting the Taliban.”

In Helmand province, the police came from the militia of the local warlord, former Mujihideen commander Sher Mohammed Akhunzadeh, a member of the Alizai tribe, who had dominated the province before the Taliban took control of the Pashtun south in 1994. Akhundzada became the governor of Helmand province in 2002.

The rivals of the Alizai in Helmand are members the Ishaqzai tribe, who become influential in the province during the Taliban period, as noted by Antonio Giustozzi in his book Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop, published this year.

The restoration of Akhundzada to power gave the warlord and his militia the opportunity to use the police to take revenge on their Ishaqzai rivals. If you are the police under these circumstances, Neumann said, “you take the people’s land, their women, you steal from them – it’s all part of one package.”

The predatory rule of Akhundzada and his militias was interrupted for a second time when the Taliban took control of large areas of the province in 2008.

The Scotsman’s Jerome Starkey quoted a shopkeeper in the city of Lashkar Gah, not far from the headquarters of the British and U.S. marine contingents in northern Helmand Jul. 16, as saying that the Taliban “were good for the welfare of ordinary Afghans, for poor people like us.” The reason, he explained, was that, “[i]n Taliban times, there was punishment for criminals.”

The British and U.S. forces in Helmand province appear to be unprepared to deal with the popular anger over police abuses. The spokesman for the U.S. 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Captain William Pelletier, told IPS in e-mail that he had “no information about the allegations of misconduct” by police reported to British officers, despite the fact that the Marine brigade’s headquarters in Helmand are right next to those of the British Task Force Helmand.

Pelletier had not responded as of Wednesday to an IPS query about popular allegations to U.S. officers of police abuses in the U.S. area of responsibility in Helmand.

The spokesman for the British Task Force Helmand, Lt. Col. Nick Richardson, asked in an interview with IPS about the grievances voiced by village elders to British officers, said, “We are aware of those.”

He refused to specify what grievances against the police had been aired to the British, but said, “If there is any allegation, it will be dealt with by the appropriate authorities.”

That meant the “the chain of command of the Afghan national police,” Richardson explained.

But the Afghan national police command has little real power over the police in Helmand Province. As of mid-2007 the national police command controlled the appointments of only four of the 13 districts in Helmand Province, according to an International Crisis Group (IGC) study in August 2007. The remaining nine were evidently controlled locally – meaning that the Akhunzada was able to keep his own men in position in most of the districts.

Although the IGC study did not specify which districts were not controlled by the national police command, the districts which are the objects of the U.S.-British military operation in Helmand are especially sensitive because they include the main opium poppy fields in the province.

Akhundzada maintains his power in Helmand in part because of a firm political alliance with President Hamid Karzai.

Karzai was forced by British pressure to remove Akhundzada from office in January 2006, after a British-trained counter-narcotics team found nearly 10 tonnes of heroin in the warlord’s basement.

But Karzai also ensured that Akhundzada retained his full power in Helmand, forcing Akhundzada’s replacement as governor, Mohammad Daud, to accept the warlord’s brother Amir Mohammed, as his deputy. That signaled that Akhundzada was effectively still in control.

Then Karzai began forming what would eventually be called “Afghanistan National Auxiliary Police,” the new recruits for which came straight out of Akhundzada’s 500-man private army and those of other warlords.

By the end of 2006, Karzai had removed Daud, a favourite of the British, because he was free of links with the drug lords. Karzai replaced him with an aged and infirm official who was less likely to refuse to cooperate with Akhundzada.

As recently as September 2008, Karzai was hinting to Afghan MPs that he would have reinstated Akhundzada had it not been for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s threat to withdraw British troops from Helmand if he did.

Helmand province is the epicenter of the Afghan drug industry, which generates an annual income for those who manage it estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at three billion dollars. Much of that income is siphoned off by the local warlords like Akhundzada who protect the drug lords’ operations.

Although poppy fields in Helmand were supposed to have been eradicated under official government policy, large areas of poppy fields owned by wealthy farmers were untouched, as reported last April by the Telegraph.

Ambassador Neumann told IPS he believes the police should be excluded from security responsibilities in the province. It is not clear, however, whether British and U.S. forces in Helmand will prevent the return of the very police who committed crimes against the population in the province.

The U.S. solution appears to be more training. U.S. troops in Aynak sent the police stationed in the local police headquarters out of the province for several weeks of training, replacing them with a unit they had brought with them, according to an Associated Press report.

But British spokesman Richardson told IPS that both the Afghan military and police, who had been absent from the area before the British offensive in Northern Helmand, “are returning to the area bit by bit.”

The facts of the Abu-Jamal/Faulkner case are highly contested, but all sides agree on certain key points: Abu-Jamal was moonlighting as a taxi-driver on December 9, 1981, when, shortly before 4:00 a.m., he saw his brother, William “Billy” Cook, in an altercation with Officer Faulkner after Faulkner had pulled over Cook’s car at the corner of 13th and Locust Streets, downtown Philadelphia. Abu-Jamal approached the scene. Minutes later when police arrived, Faulkner had been shot dead, and Abu-Jamal had been shot in the chest. The bullet removed from Faulkner, reportedly a .38, was officially too damaged to match it to the legally registered .38 caliber gun that Abu-Jamal says he carried as a taxi driver, after he was robbed several times on the job. Further, Amnesty International has criticized the official “failure of the police to test Abu-Jamal’s gun, hands, and clothing” for gunshot residue, as “deeply troubling.” Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence, and today still fights the conviction from his death-row cell in Waynesburg, PA, where he also records weekly radio commentaries, and has now written six books.

Recently, Abu-Jamal had petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the US Third Circuit Court ruling of March, 27 2008, which rejected his bid, based on three issues, for a new guilt-phase trial. One issue was that of racially discriminatory jury selection, based on the 1986 case Batson v. Kentucky, on which the three-judge panel split 2-1, with Judge Thomas Ambro dissenting. Ambro argued that prosecutor Joseph McGill’s use of 10 out of his 15 peremptory strikes to remove otherwise acceptable African-American jurors, was itself enough evidence of racial discrimination to grant Abu-Jamal a preliminary hearing that could have led to a new trial. In denying Abu-Jamal this preliminary hearing, Ambro argued that the Court was creating new rules that were being exclusively applied to Abu-Jamal’s case. The denial “goes against the grain of our prior actions . . . I see no reason why we should not afford Abu-Jamal the courtesy of our precedents,” wrote Ambro.

In his new essay titled “The Mumia Exception,” author J. Patrick O’Connor argues that the Third Circuit Court’s rejection of the Batson claim and of the other two issues presented is only the latest example of the courts’ longstanding practice of altering existing precedent to deny Abu-Jamal legal relief. O’Connor cites many other problems, including the 2001 affidavit by a former court stenographer, who says that on the eve of Abu-Jamal’s trial, she overheard Judge Albert Sabo say to someone at the courthouse that he was going to “help” the prosecution “fry the nigger,” referring to Abu-Jamal. Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe rejected this affidavit on grounds that even if Sabo had made the comment, it was irrelevant as long as his “rulings were legally correct.”

The phrase “Mumia Exception” was first coined by Linn Washington, Jr., a Philadelphia Tribune columnist and professor of journalism at Temple University, who has covered this story since the day of Abu-Jamal’s 1981 arrest. Washington criticizes the Third Circuit’s ruling against Abu-Jamal’s claim that Judge Sabo had treated him unfairly at the 1995-97 Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) hearings, which was another issue the Circuit Court had considered. Citing “the mound of legal violations in this case,” Washington says “the continuing refusal of U.S. courts to equally apply the law in the Abu-Jamal case constitutes a stain on America’s image internationally.”

Launched Campaign Cites Withheld Evidence

The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported that supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal are responding to the March 2009 US Supreme Court ruling by launching a campaign calling for a federal civil rights investigation into Abu-Jamal’s case. The campaign’s supporters include the Riverside Church’s Prison Ministry, actress Ruby Dee, professor Cornel West, and US Congressman Charles Rangel, who is Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. In 2004, the NAACP passed a resolution supporting a new trial for Abu-Jamal, and campaign supporters will be gathering to publicize the civil rights campaign at the upcoming NAACP National Convention in New York City, July 11-16, and to pressure the NAACP to honor their earlier resolutions by actively supporting the current campaign seeking an investigation. Supporters will then be in Washington, DC on July 22 to lobby their elected officials, and in mid-September, they’ll return to Washington, DC for a major press conference.

Thousands of signatures have been collected for a public letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, which reads: “Inasmuch as there is no other court to which Abu-Jamal can appeal for justice, we turn to you for remedy of a 27-year history of gross violations of US constitutional law and international standards of justice.” The letter cites Holder’s recent investigation into the case of former Senator Ted Stevens, which led to all charges against him being dropped: “You were specifically outraged by the fact that the prosecution withheld information critical to the defense’s argument for acquittal, a violation clearly committed by the prosecution in Abu-Jamal’s case. Mumia Abu-Jamal, though not a US Senator of great wealth and power, is a Black man revered around the world for his courage, clarity, and commitment, and deserves no less than Senator Stevens.”

Several campaigns seeking a civil right investigation into the Abu-Jamal case have been launched since 1995, at which time the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was one of many groups that publicly supported an investigation. In a 1995 letter written independently of the CBC, Representatives Chaka Fattah, Ron Dellums, Cynthia McKinney, Maxine Waters, and John Conyers (now Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee) stated, “There is ample evidence that Mr. Abu-Jamal’s constitutional rights were violated, that he did not receive a fair trial, and that he is, in fact, innocent.” Assistant Attorney General Andrew Fois responded to the CBC’s request, and in a September 1995 rejection letter written to Congressman Ron Dellums, Fois conceded that even though there is a five-year statute of limitations for a civil rights investigation, the statute does not apply if “there is significant evidence of an ongoing conspiracy.”

One of the 2009 campaign’s organizers is Dr. Suzanne Ross, a spokesperson for the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition of New York City. Citing Andrew Fois’ letter, Ross argues that the “continued denial of justice to Mumia in the federal courts, as documented by dissenting Judge Thomas Ambro,” is evidence of an “ongoing conspiracy,” and thus merits an investigation. “Throughout the history of this case, we were always told ‘Wait until we get to the federal courts. They will surely overturn the racism and gross misconduct of Judge Sabo,’ but we never got even a preliminary hearing on the issue considered most winnable: racial bias in jury selection, the so called Batson issue.” Ross also criticizes the Third Circuit’s denial of Abu-Jamal’s claim that Judge Sabo was unfair at the 1995-97 PCRA hearings, and considers this denial to be further evidence of an “ongoing conspiracy.” Ross argues that the courts’ continued affirmation of Sabo’s rulings during the PCRA hearings, and Sabo’s ultimate ruling that nothing presented at the PCRA hearings was significant enough to merit a new trial, serves to legitimize numerous injustices throughout Abu-Jamal’s case.

Specifically referring to the issue of withheld evidence, that was central to the case of former Senator Ted Stevens, organizer Suzanne Ross identifies five key instances in Abu-Jamal’s case, where “evidence was withheld that could have led to Mumia’s acquittal.” The DA’s office withheld two items from Abu-Jamal’s defense: the actual location of the driver’s license application found in Officer Faulkner’s pocket; and Pedro Polakoff’s crime scene photos. Then, at the request of prosecutor McGill, Judge Sabo ruled to block three items from the jury: prosecution eyewitness Robert Chobert’s probation status and criminal history; testimony from defense eyewitness Veronica Jones about police attempts to solicit false testimony; and testimony from Police Officer Gary Waskshul.

DA Suppresses Evidence About Kenneth Freeman

In their recent books, Michael Schiffmann (Race Against Death: The Struggle for the Life and Freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal, 2006) and J. Patrick O’Connor (The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, 2008) argue that the actual shooter of Officer Faulkner was a man named Kenneth Freeman. Schiffmann and O’Connor argue that Freeman was an occupant of Billy Cook’s car, who shot Faulkner in response to Faulkner having shot Abu-Jamal first, and then fled the scene before police arrived.

Central to Schiffmann and O’Connor’s argument was the presence of a driver’s license application for one Arnold Howard, which was found in the front pocket of Officer Faulkner’s shirt. Abu-Jamal’s defense would not learn about this until 13 years later, because the Police and DA’s office had failed to notify them about the application’s crucial location. Journalist Linn Washington argues that this failure was “a critical and deliberate omission,” and “a major violation of fair trial rights and procedures. If the appeals process had any semblance of fairness, this misconduct alone should have won a new trial for Abu-Jamal.” More importantly, Washington says, “this evidence provides strong proof of a third person at the scene along with Faulkner and Billy Cook. The prosecution case against Abu-Jamal rests on the assertion that Faulkner encountered a lone Cook minutes before Abu-Jamal’s arrival on the scene, but Faulkner got that application from somebody other than Cook, who had his own license.”

At the 1995 PCRA hearing, Arnold Howard testified that he had loaned his temporary, non-photo license to Kenneth Freeman, who was Billy Cook’s business partner and close friend. Further, Howard stated that police came to his house early in the morning on Dec. 9, 1981, and brought him to the police station for questioning because he was suspected of being “the person who had run away” from the scene, but he was released after producing a 4:00 a.m. receipt from a drugstore across town (which provided an alibi) and telling them that he had loaned the application to Freeman (who Howard reports was also at the police station that morning).

Also pointing to Freeman’s presence in the car with Cook, O’Connor and Schiffmann cite prosecution witness Cynthia White’s testimony at Cook’s separate trial for charges of assaulting Faulkner, where White describes both a “driver” and a “passenger” in Cook’s VW. Also notable, investigative journalist Dave Lindorff’s book (Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, 2003) features an interview with Cook’s lawyer Daniel Alva, in which Alva says that Cook had confided to him within days of the shooting that Freeman had been with him that morning.

Linn Washington argues that, “this third person at the crime scene is consistent with eyewitness accounts of the shooter fleeing the scene. Remember that accounts from both prosecution and defense witnesses confirm the existence of a fleeing shooter. Abu-Jamal was arrested at the scene, critically wounded. He did not run away and return in a matter of seconds.” Eyewitnesses Robert Chobert, Dessie Hightower, Veronica Jones, Deborah Kordansky, William Singletary, and Marcus Cannon all reported, at various times, that they saw one or more men run away from the scene. O’Connor writes that, “some of the eyewitnesses said this man had an Afro and wore a green army jacket. Freeman did have an Afro and he perpetually wore a green army jacket. Freeman was tall and burly, weighing about 225 pounds at the time.” Then there’s eyewitness Robert Harkins, whom prosecutor McGill did not call as a witness. O’Connor postulates that the prosecutor’s decision was because Harkins’ account of a struggle between Faulkner and the shooter that caused Faulkner to fall on his hands and knees before Faulkner was shot “demolished the version of the shooting that the state’s other witnesses rendered at trial.” O’Connor writes further that “Harkins described the shooter as a little taller and heavier than the 6-foot, 200-pound Faulkner,” which excludes the 6’1”, 170-lb Abu-Jamal.

Linn Washington’s 2001 affidavit states that he knew Freeman to be a “close friend of Cook’s,” and that “Cook and Freeman were constantly together.” Washington first met Freeman when Freeman reported his experience of police brutality to the Philadelphia Tribune, where Washington worked. Washington says today that, “Kenny did not harbor any illusions about police being unquestioned heroes due to his experiences with being beaten a few times by police and police incessantly harassing him for his street vending.”

Regarding the police harassment and intimidation of Freeman, which continued after the arrest of Abu-Jamal, Washington adds: “It is significant to note that the night after the Faulkner shooting, the newsstand that Freeman built and operated at 16th and Chestnut Streets in Center City burned to the ground. In news media accounts of this arson, police sources openly boasted to reporters that the arsonist was probably a police officer. Witnesses claimed to see officers fleeing the scene right before the fire was noticed. Needless to say, that arson resulted in no arrests.” Dave Lindorff argues that the police clearly “had their eye on Freeman,” because “only two months after Faulkner’s shooting, Freeman was arrested in his home, where he was found hiding in his attic armed with a .22 caliber pistol, explosives and a supply of ammunition. At that time, he was not charged with anything.” O’Connor and Schiffmann argue that police intimidation ultimately escalated to the point where police themselves murdered Freeman.

The morning of May 14, 1985, Freeman’s body was found: naked, bound, and with a drug needle in his arm. His cause of death was officially declared a “heart attack.” The date of Freeman’s death is significant because the night before his body was found, the police had orchestrated a military-style siege on the MOVE organization’s West Philadelphia home. Police had fired over 10,000 rounds of ammunition in 90 minutes and used a State Police helicopter to drop a C-4 bomb (illegally supplied by the FBI) on MOVE’s roof, which started a fire that destroyed the entire city block. The MOVE Commission later documented that police had shot at MOVE family members when they tried to escape the fire: in all, six adults and five children were killed.

As a local journalist, Abu-Jamal had criticized the city government’s conflicts with MOVE, and after his 1981 arrest, MOVE began to publicly support him. Through this mutual advocacy, which continues today, Abu-Jamal and MOVE’s contentious relationship with the Philadelphia authorities have always been closely linked. Seen in this context, Schiffmann argues that “if Freeman was indeed killed by cops, the killing probably was part of a general vendetta of the Philadelphia cops against their ‘enemies’ and the cops killed him because they knew or suspected he had something to do with the killing of Faulkner.” O’Connor concurs, arguing that “the timing and modus operandi of the abduction and killing alone suggest an extreme act of police vengeance.”

DA Suppresses Pedro Polakoff’s Crime Scene Photos

On December 6, 2008, several hundred protesters gathered outside the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, where Pam Africa, coordinator of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, spoke about the newly discovered crime scene photos taken by press photographer Pedro Polakoff. Africa cited Polakoff’s statements today that he approached the DA’s office with the photos in 1981, 1982, and 1995, but that the DA had completely ignored him. Polakoff states that because he had believed Abu-Jamal was guilty, he had no interest in approaching the defense, and never did. Consequently, neither the 1982 jury nor the defense ever saw Polakoff’s photos. “The DA deliberately kept evidence out,” declared Africa: “someone should be arrested for withholding evidence in a murder trial.”

Advocacy groups called Educators for Mumia and Journalists for Mumia explain in their fact sheet, “21 FAQs,” that Polakoff’s photos were first discovered by German author Michael Schiffmann in May 2006, and published that Fall in his book, Race Against Death. One of Polakoff’s photos was first published in the US by The SF Bay View Newspaper on Oct. 24, 2007. Reuters followed with a Dec. 4, 2007 article, after which the photos made their television debut on NBC’s Dec. 6, 2007 Today Show. They have since been spotlighted by National Public Radio, Indymedia.org, CounterPunch, The Philadelphia Weekly and the new British documentary In Prison My Whole Life, which features an interview with Polakoff.

Since May, 2007, www.Abu-Jamal-News.com has displayed four of Polakoff’s photos, making the following points:

Photo 1: Mishandling the Guns — Officer James Forbes holds both Abu-Jamal’s and Faulkner’s guns in his bare hand and touches the metal parts. This contradicts his later court testimony that he had preserved the ballistics evidence by not touching the metal parts.

Photos 2 & 3: The Moving Hat — Faulkner’s hat is moved from the top of Billy Cook’s VW, and placed on the sidewalk for the official police photo.

Photo 4: The Missing Taxi — Prosecution witness Robert Chobert testified that he was parked directly behind Faulkner’s car, but the space is empty in the photo.

The Missing Divots — In all of Polakoff’s photos of the sidewalk where Faulkner was found, there are no large bullet divots, or destroyed chunks of cement, which should be visible in the pavement if the prosecution scenario was accurate, according to which Abu-Jamal shot down at Faulkner — and allegedly missed several times — while Faulkner was on his back. Also citing the official police photo, Michael Schiffmann writes: “It is thus no question any more whether the scenario presented by the prosecution at Abu-Jamal’s trial is true, because it is physically impossible.”

Pedro P. Polakoff was a Philadelphia freelance photographer who reports having arrived at the crime scene about 12 minutes after the shooting was first reported on police radio, and at least 10 minutes before the Mobile Crime Detection Unit that handles crime scene forensics and photographs. In Schiffmann’s interview with him, Polakoff recounted that “all the officers present expressed the firm conviction that Abu-Jamal had been the passenger in Billy Cook’s VW and had fired and killed Faulkner by a single shot fired from the passenger seat of the car.” Polakoff bases this on police statements made to him directly, and from his having overheard their conversations. Polakoff states that this early police opinion was apparently the result of their interviews of three other witnesses who were still present at the crime scene: a parking lot attendant, a drug-addicted woman, and another woman. None of those eyewitnesses, however, have appeared in any report presented to the courts by the police or the prosecution.

It is undisputed that Abu-Jamal approached from across the street, and was not the passenger in Billy Cook’s car. Schiffmann argues that Polakoff’s personal account strengthens the argument that the actual shooter was Billy Cook’s passenger Kenneth Freeman who, Schiffmann postulates, fled the scene before police arrived.

Robert Chobert’s Legal Status Withheld From Jury

At prosecutor Joseph McGill’s request, Judge Albert Sabo blocked Abu-Jamal’s defense from telling the 1982 jury that key prosecution eyewitness, taxi driver Robert Chobert, was on probation for throwing a molotov cocktail into a school yard, for pay. Sabo justified this by ruling that Chobert’s offense was not crimen falsi, i.e., a crime of deception. Consequently, the jury never heard about this, nor that on the night of Abu-Jamal’s arrest, Chobert had been illegally driving on a suspended license (revoked for a DWI). This probation violation could have given him up to 30 years in prison, so he was extremely vulnerable to pressure from the police. Notably, at the later 1995 PCRA hearing, Chobert testified that his probation had never been revoked, even though he continued to drive his taxi illegally through 1995.

At the 1982 trial, Chobert testified that he was in his taxi, which he had parked directly behind Faulkner’s police car, and was writing in his log book when he heard the first gunshot and looked up. Chobert alleged that while he did not see a gun in Abu-Jamal’s hand, nor a muzzle flash, he did see Abu-Jamal standing over Faulkner, saw Abu-Jamal’s hand “jerk back” several times, and heard shots after each “jerk.” After the shooting, Chobert stated that he got out and approached the scene.

Damaging Chobert’s credibility, however, is evidence suggesting that Chobert may have lied about his location at the time of Faulkner’s death. As noted earlier, the newly discovered Polakoff crime scene photos show that the space where Chobert testified to being parked directly behind Officer Faulkner’s car was actually empty. Yet, even more evidence suggests he lied about his location. While prosecution eyewitness Cynthia White is the only witness to testify seeing Chobert’s taxi parked behind Faulkner’s police car, no official eyewitness reported seeing White at the scene. Furthermore, Chobert’s taxi is missing both from White’s first sketch of the crime scene given to police (Defense Exhibit D-12), and from a later one (Prosecution Exhibit C-35). In a 2001 affidavit, private investigator George Michael Newman says that in a 1995 interview, Chobert told Newman that Chobert was actually parked around the corner, on 13th Street, north of Locust Street, and did not even see the shooting.

Amnesty International documents that both Chobert and White “altered their descriptions of what they saw, in ways that supported the prosecution’s version of events.” Chobert first told police that the shooter simply “ran away,” but after he had identified Abu-Jamal at the scene, he said the shooter had run away 30 to 35 “steps” before he was caught. At trial, Chobert changed this distance to 10 “feet,” which was closer to the official police account that Abu-Jamal was found just a few feet away from Officer Faulkner.

Nevertheless, Chobert did stick to a few statements in his trial testimony that contradicted the prosecution’s scenario. For example, Chobert declared that he did not see the apparently unrelated Ford car that, according to official reports, was parked in front of Billy Cook’s VW. Chobert also claimed that the altercation happened behind Cook’s VW (it officially happened in front of Cook’s VW), that Chobert did not see Abu-Jamal get shot or see Officer Faulkner fire his gun, and that the shooter was “heavyset” — estimating 200-225 lbs (Abu-Jamal weighed 170 lbs).

In his 2003 book Killing Time, Dave Lindorff wrote about two other problems with Chobert’s account. While being so legally vulnerable, why would Chobert have parked directly behind a police car? Why would he have left his car and approached the scene, if in fact, the shooter were still there? Lindorff suggests that “at the time of the incident, Chobert might not have thought that the man slumped on the curb was the shooter,” because “in his initial Dec. 9 statement to police investigators, Chobert had said that he saw ‘another man’ who ‘ran away’. . . He claimed in his statement that police stopped that man, but that he didn’t see him later.” Therefore, “if Chobert did think he saw the shooter run away, it might well explain why he would have felt safe walking up to the scene of the shooting as he said he did, before the arrival of police.”

The Attempts to Silence Veronica Jones

Veronica Jones was working as a prostitute at the crime scene on December 9, 1981. She first told police on December 15, 1981 that she had seen two men “jogging” away from the scene before police arrived. As a defense witness at the 1982 trial, Jones denied having made that statement; however, later in her testimony she started to describe a pre-trial visit from police, where “They were getting on me telling me I was in the area and I seen Mumia, you know, do it. They were trying to get me to say something that the other girl [Cynthia White] said. I couldn’t do that.” Jones then explicitly testified that police had offered to let her and White “work the area if we tell them” what they wanted to hear regarding Abu-Jamal’s guilt.

At this point, Prosecutor McGill interrupted Jones and moved to block her account, calling her testimony “absolutely irrelevant.” Judge Sabo agreed to block the line of questioning, strike the testimony, and then ordered the jury to disregard Jones’ statement.

The DA and Sabo’s efforts to silence Jones continued through to the later PCRA hearings that started in 1995. Having been unable to locate Jones earlier, the defense found Jones in 1996, and (over the DA’s protests) obtained permission from the State Supreme Court to extend the PCRA hearings for Jones’ testimony. Sabo vehemently resisted — arguing that there was not sufficient proof of her unavailability in 1995. However, in 1995 Sabo had refused to order disclosure of Jones’ home address to the defense team.

Over Sabo’s objections, the defense returned to the State Supreme Court, which ordered Sabo to conduct a full evidentiary hearing. Sabo’s attempts to silence Jones continued as she took the stand. He immediately threatened her with 5-10 years imprisonment if she testified to having perjured herself in 1982. In defiance, Jones persisted with her testimony that she had in fact lied in 1982, when she had denied her original account to police that she had seen two men “leave the scene.”

Jones testified that she had changed her version of events after being visited by two detectives in prison, where she was being held on charges of robbery and assault. Urging her to both finger Abu-Jamal as the shooter and to retract her statement about seeing two men “run away,” the detectives stressed that she faced up to 10 years in prison and the loss of her children if convicted. Jones testified in 1996 that in 1982, afraid of losing her children, she had decided to meet the police halfway: she did not actually finger Abu-Jamal, but she did lie about not seeing two men running from the scene. Accordingly, following the 1982 trial, Jones only received probation and was never imprisoned for the charges against her.

During the 1996 cross-examination, the DA announced that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Jones on charges of writing a bad check, and that she would be arrested after concluding her testimony. With tears pouring down her face, Jones declared: “This is not going to change my testimony!” Despite objections from the defense, Sabo allowed New Jersey police to handcuff and arrest Jones in the courtroom. While the DA attempted to use this arrest to discredit Jones, her determination in the face of intimidation may, arguably, have made her testimony more credible. Outraged by Jones’ treatment, even the Philadelphia Daily News, certainly no fan of Abu-Jamal, reported: “Such heavy-handed tactics can only confirm suspicions that the court is incapable of giving Abu-Jamal a fair hearing. Sabo has long since abandoned any pretense of fairness.”

Jones’ account was given further credibility a year later. At the 1997 PCRA hearing, former prostitute Pamela Jenkins testified that police had tried pressuring her to falsely testify that she saw Abu-Jamal shoot Faulkner. In addition, Jenkins testified that in late 1981, Cynthia White (whom Jenkins knew as a fellow police informant) told Jenkins that she was also being pressured to testify against Abu-Jamal, and that she was afraid for her life.

As part of a 1995 federal probe of Philadelphia police corruption, Officers Thomas F. Ryan and John D. Baird were convicted of paying Jenkins to falsely testify that she had bought drugs from a Temple University student. Jenkins’ 1995 testimony in this probe, helped to convict Ryan, Baird, and other officers, and also to dismiss several dozen drug convictions. At the 1997 PCRA hearing, Jenkins testified that this same Thomas F. Ryan was one of the officers who attempted to have her lie about Abu-Jamal.

More recently, a 2002 affidavit by former prostitute Yvette Williams described police coercion of Cynthia White. The affidavit reads: “I was in jail with Cynthia White in December of 1981 after Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed. Cynthia White told me the police were making her lie and say she saw Mr. Jamal shoot Officer Faulkner when she really did not see who did it . . .Whenever she talked about testifying against Mumia Abu-Jamal, and how the police were making her lie, she was nervous and very excited and I could tell how scared she was from the way she was talking and crying.” Explaining why she is just now coming out with her affidavit, Williams says “I feel like I’ve almost had a nervous breakdown over keeping quiet about this all these years. I didn’t say anything because I was afraid. I was afraid of the police. They’re dangerous.” Williams’ affidavit was rejected by Philadelphia Judge Pamela Dembe in 2005, the PA Supreme Court in February 2008, and in October 2008, by the US Supreme Court.

Further supporting the contention that police had made a deal with White, author J. Patrick O’Connor writes, “Prior to her becoming a prosecution witness in Abu-Jamal’s case, White had been arrested 38 times for prostitution . . . After she gave her third statement to the police, on December 17, 1981, she would not be arrested for prostitution in Philadelphia ever again even though she admitted at Billy Cook’s trial that she continued to be ‘actively working.’” Amnesty International reports that later, in 1987, White was facing charges of armed robbery, aggravated assault, and possession of illegal weapons. A judge granted White the right to sign her own bail and she was released after a special request was made by Philadelphia Police Officer Douglas Culbreth (where Culbreth cited her involvement in Abu-Jamal’s trial). After White’s release, she skipped bail and has never, officially, been seen again.

At the 1997 PCRA hearing, the DA announced that Cynthia White was dead, and presented a death certificate for a “Cynthia Williams” who died in New Jersey in 1992. However, Amnesty International reports, “an examination of the fingerprint records of White and Williams showed no match and the evidence that White is dead is far from conclusive.” Journalist C. Clark Kissinger writes, a Philadelphia police detective “testified that the FBI had ‘authenticated’ that Williams had the same fingerprints as White.” However, Kissinger continues, “the DA’s office refused to produce the actual fingerprints,” and “the body of Williams was cremated so that no one could ever check the facts! Finally, the Ruth Ray listed on the death certificate as the mother of the deceased Cynthia Williams has given a sworn statement to the defense that she is not the mother of either Cynthia White or Cynthia Williams.” Dave Lindorff reports further that the listing of deaths by social security number for 1992 and later years does not include White’s number.

Gary Wakshul’s Testimony Blocked

On the final day of testimony, Abu-Jamal’s lawyer discovered Police Officer Gary Wakshul’s official statement in the police report from the morning of Dec. 9, 1981. After riding with Abu-Jamal to the hospital and guarding him until treatment for his gunshot wound, Wakshul reported: “the negro male made no comment.” This statement contradicted the trial testimony of prosecution witnesses Gary Bell (a police officer) and Priscilla Durham (a hospital security guard), who testified that they had heard Abu-Jamal confess to the shooting, while Abu-Jamal was awaiting treatment at the hospital.

When the defense immediately sought to call Wakshul as a witness, the DA reported that he was on vacation. Judge Sabo denied the defense request to locate him for testimony, on grounds that it was too late in the trial to even take a short recess so that the defense could attempt to locate Wakshul. Consequently, the jury never heard from Wakshul, nor about his contradictory written report. When an outraged Abu-Jamal protested, Judge Sabo replied: “You and your attorney goofed.”

Wakshul’s report from December 9, 1981 is just one of the many reasons cited by Amnesty International for their conclusion that Bell’s and Durham’s trial testimonies were not credible. There are many other problems that merit a closer look if we are to determine how important Wakshul’s 1982 trial testimony could have been.

The alleged “hospital confession,” in which Abu-Jamal reportedly shouted, “I shot the motherf***er and I hope he dies,” was first officially reported to police over two months after the shooting, by hospital guards Priscilla Durham and James LeGrand (February 9, 1982), police officer Gary Wakshul (February 11), officer Gary Bell (February 25), and officer Thomas M. Bray (March1). Of these five, only Bell and Durham were called as prosecution witnesses.

When Durham testified at the trial, she added something new to her story that she had not reported to the police on February 9. She now claimed that she had reported the confession to her supervisor the next day, on December 10, making a hand-written report. Neither her supervisor, nor the alleged handwritten statement was ever presented in court. Instead, the DA sent an officer to the hospital, returning with a suspicious typed version of the alleged December 10 report. Sabo accepted the unsigned and unauthenticated paper despite both Durham’s disavowal (because it was typed and not hand-written), and the defense’s protest that its authorship and authenticity were unproven.

Gary Bell (Faulkner’s partner and self-described “best friend”) testified that his two-month memory lapse had resulted from his having been so upset over Faulkner’s death that he had forgotten to report it to police.

Later, at the 1995 PCRA hearings, Wakshul testified that both his contradictory report made on December 9, 1981 (”the negro male made no comment”) and the two-month delay were simply bad mistakes. He repeated his earlier statement given to police on February 11, 1982 that he “didn’t realize it [Abu-Jamal’s alleged confession] had any importance until that day.” Contradicting the DA’s assertion of Wakshul’s unavailability in 1982, Wakshul also testified in 1995 that he had in fact been home for his 1982 vacation, and available for trial testimony, in accordance with explicit instructions to stay in town for the trial so that he could testify if called.

Just days before his PCRA testimony, undercover police officers savagely beat Wakshul in front of a sitting Judge, in the Common Pleas Courtroom where Wakshul worked as a court crier. The two attackers, Kenneth Fleming and Jean Langen, were later suspended without pay, as punishment. With the motive still unexplained, Dave Lindorff and J. Patrick O’Connor speculate that the beating may have been used to intimidate Wakshul into maintaining his “confession” story at the PCRA hearings.

Regarding Abu-Jamal’s alleged confession, Amnesty International concluded: “The likelihood of two police officers and a security guard forgetting or neglecting to report the confession of a suspect in the killing of another police officer for more than two months strains credulity.”

Conclusion: the DA Still Wants to Execute

“The urgent need for a civil rights investigation is heightened because the DA is still trying to execute Mumia,” emphasizes Dr. Suzanne Ross, an organizer of the campaign seeking an investigation. This past March, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Abu-Jamal’s appeal for a new guilt-phase trial, but the Court has yet to rule on whether to hear the appeal made simultaneously by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, which seeks to execute Abu-Jamal without granting him a new penalty-phase trial.

In March, 2008, the Third Circuit Court affirmed Federal District Court Judge William Yohn’s 2001 decision “overturning” the death sentence. Citing the 1988 Mills v. Maryland precedent, Yohn had ruled that sentencing forms used by jurors and Judge Albert Sabo’s instructions to the jury were potentially confusing, and that therefore jurors could have mistakenly believed that they had to unanimously agree on any mitigating circumstances in order to consider them as weighing against a death sentence. According to the 2001 ruling, affirmed in 2008, if the DA wants to re-instate the death sentence, the DA must call for a new penalty-phase jury trial. In such a penalty hearing, new evidence of Abu-Jamal’s innocence could be presented, but the jury could only choose between execution and a life sentence without parole.

The DA is appealing to the US Supreme Court against this 2008 affirmation of Yohn’s ruling. If the court rules in the DA’s favor, Abu-Jamal can be executed without benefit of a new sentencing hearing. If the US Supreme Court rules against the DA’s appeal, the DA must either accept the life sentence for Abu-Jamal, or call for the new sentencing hearing. Meanwhile, Mumia Abu-Jamal has never left his death row cell.

How You Can Help

Actions are being organized throughout the summer to support the campaign for a federal civil rights investigation, including at the upcoming NAACP convention in New York City, July 11-16. Organizers are focusing particularly on July 13, the day that Attorney General Holder will address the convention. Supporters will then be in Washington, D.C., on July 22 to lobby their elected officials and, in mid-September, they’ll return to Washington, D.C., for a major press conference.

For more information on how you can support the campaign for a federal civil rights investigation, and to sign the online letter and petition to Attorney General Holder, please visit: http://freemumia.com/civilrights.html.

* This article was first published by the SF Bay View Newspaper on June 16, 2009.

Despite that DoD officials removed the offensive section from their educational resources at the urging of ACLU members, the DoD stance is still troubling since a longstanding practice to designate peaceful, law abiding activists as dangerous and treasonable still exists in many government departments and agencies. Indeed the participants of the first antiwar protest against the Vietnam incursion, put together in the mid-1960’s by peaceable Quakers and FOR members after having discussed Gandhi’s Salt March as a model for a nonviolent demonstration, faced government operatives filming them face by face from rooftops as they moved en masse down Broadway to the UN Plaza. (My mother, a pacifist married to a World War II Conscientious Objector, and I, a child at the time of the march, both were in attendance. When the film crew focused on us, she stood tall, faced the agents with their telephoto lens, glared in disdainful defiance and, simultaneously, throw the corner of her coat over my face. Afterwards, she muttered, “How dare they try to intimidate us!”)

This sort of happening in mind, the treatment of Nobel Peace Award winner Aung San Sui Kyi in Myanmar is not necessarily all that different than the response that she’d receive in the USA and, while it’s commendable that American spokespersons publicly object to her most recent arrest, they, certainly, might seem to be a bunch of hypocrites. This is due to the fact that a number of Nobel Peace Award recipients, such as American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), have had difficulties of their own on American soil.

For example, “AFSC’s work, always open and resolutely nonviolent, has been under government surveillance for decades. The Service Committee secured nearly 1,700 pages of files from the FBI under a Freedom of Information request in 1976. These files show that the FBI kept files on AFSC that dated back to 1921. Ten other federal agencies kept files on AFSC, including the CIA, Air Force, Navy, Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service, and the State Department. The CIA has intercepted overseas mail and cables in the 1950s, and some AFSC offices (and even its staff’s homes) have been infiltrated and burglarized in the late 1960s into the 1970s.”

In relation, AFSC associate general secretary for justice and human rights, Joyce Miller, asked, “How can we speak of spreading democracy in Iraq while dismantling it here at home?” She further remarked, “Political dissent is fundamental to a free and democratic society. It should not be equated with crime.”

Add to the AFSC problems, those pertaining to Nobel Peace Award recipient Nelson Mandela, who only a year ago had the designation “terrorist” removed from his name, under protest by the State Department, so that he no longer suffered travel restrictions from the US government. Yet his travel curtailment was not nearly as awful as was Ramzy Baroud’s blockage. He, the editor of Palestine Chronicle, had his US passport seized by a consular officer at an overseas American Embassy. [3] Similarly, Senator Edward Kennedy was, also, flagged by the US no-fly list.

Then again, Ted Kennedy received much less harassment than did Nobel Peace Award winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire after her flight from Guatemala had been directed to Ireland through Houston:

She was probably tired and ready to get back to Belfast, where her attempts to bring about an end to The Troubles in 1976 made her at 32 the youngest Nobel Peace Prize-winner ever. Since then, she’s been given the Pacem in Terris Award by Pope John Paul II, and the United Nations selected her (along with the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Jordan’s Queen Noor and a dozen or so other fellow Nobel Laureates) as an honorary board member of the International Coalition for the Decade.

Unfortunately for Maguire, her flight back home to Northern Ireland was routed through Houston, where none of that meant diddly. Federal Customs officials were far less interested in any of that than they were in a box on the back of the transit form she filled out on her flight.

“They questioned me about my nonviolent protests in USA against the Afghanistan invasion and Iraqi war,” Maguire said later in a statement. ‘They insisted I must tick the box in the Immigration form admitting to criminal activities.

Maguire was detained for two hours — grilled once, fingerprinted, photographed, and grilled again. She missed her flight home. She was only released after an organization she helped found — the Nobel Women’s Initiative — started kicking up a fuss.

On can add to her troubles countless other ones wherein human rights and environmental supporters have been repeatedly hassled for no other reason than that they’re holding views that don’t jive with positions at any number of U.S. government institutions. One needn’t return in time to the McCarthy Era to find many individuals who have been investigated and persecuted for holding vilified opinions. For example, Stephen Lendman, a peace advocate and writer in his seventies with a permanent knee injury that delimits travel, has been repeatedly investigated by the FBI.

At the same time, he is joined by myriad others such as assorted activists in Maryland whose names were put on federal terrorist lists by state police who infiltrated their groups. As such, their perfectly legal activities, freedom of speech and right to unhindered assembly have been criminalized.

Simultaneously, there’s a certain inescapable irony and disingenuous quality presented by the Western government heads who are harshly critical of the Iran crackdown on dissenting citizens while they, themselves, condone similar ironfisted policies in their own lands. Their two-faced position is barely hidden beneath the surface of their mock concern for the well-being of Iranian protesters as they urge their own and allied troops into battle, show little (if any) sincere remorse over the slaughter of masses of civilians that happen in the process and make sure that demonstrators at home are disregarded, denigrated or preemptively rounded up as happened at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Then again, one might find himself in pretty good company if he were singled out as unpatriotic and treacherous for holding viewpoints or undertaking actions that go contrary to the perspectives that a certain hawkish and totalitarian segment of society holds. All the same, every method conceivable might be used to hunt down the offenders and, when taken to the extreme, render their seemingly provocative positions ineffectual by any means possible, including imprisonment and murder.

Anyone who doubts this to be the case needs only to remember about what happened to people like Howard Fast, the slain Freedom Riders Andy Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, the thirteen shot students at Kent State University at which Ohio National Guardsman fired sixty-seven rounds over a thirteen second period, and scores of others who have stood against mainstream policies.

Meanwhile, stigmatizing dissidents is a fairly common practice. As such, “There are 1.1 million people on the [U.S.] Terrorist Watch List and there is a 35 percent error rate, minimum, for that list,” according to ACLU’s Michael German. [6] Furthermore, the overzealous and aggressive surveillance tactics used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to check the public’s e-mails, telephone calls and other communications are the same ones as were in use during George W. Bush’s administration. Likewise, the amount of spying on personal exchanges is as high as it ever was.

In relation to recent claims by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was unintentional, House representative, Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey and Chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, commented, “Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental.” Additionally, the act of tracking e-mailed transmissions and other interactions has seemed in violation of federal law according to lawyers at the Justice Department. Regardless, the practice continues.

At the same time, the decision to designate social activists as troublemakers, while singling them out for intimidation, threats and investigations, carries serious legal and political implications in democratic societies. The further measure of subjecting them to the sorts of difficulties that Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ramzy Baroud, AFSC members and innumerable others have endured is clearly based in xenophobic, paranoid and despotic thinking. It embodies the kind of authoritarian mentality and oppressive activities that one finds in the worst types of tyrannical regimes.

As Harry S. Truman suggested, “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” Due to this fear, are we, then, to all conform with lock step in perverse obedience to the State’s dictates, outlooks and agendas in an increasingly Orwellian milieu? If not, then we must constantly remind ourselves and each other of US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’s vision: “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

Community members continue to demand justice for Grant, an apprentice butcher and the father of a 3-year-old, and an end to police brutality. But to win justice in this case and forestall future repression requires overcoming government resistance and demanding effective community control over the police.

A blatant execution-style killing

Oscar Grant was one of several Black men taken off a train by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officers while appalled passengers shouted for police to stop. Grant was assaulted before being forced facedown onto the platform by one cop, Tony Pirone, while another, Johannes Menserle, shot him at close range.

Black community groups, left organizations, and the Alameda County Labor Council mounted or participated in a series of demonstrations. Some protesters vandalized cars and shop fronts. Over a hundred people were arrested.

Public condemnation, including the militant protests that resulted in arrests, finally forced the authorities to indict Menserle for murder two weeks after the shooting. The rage of the arrestees is fully justified, and they should get amnesty. Oakland has a long history of police murders of young Black men, including the infamous 1968 shooting of “Lil” Bobby Hutton, a 15-year-old Black Panther Party member.

The anger of young Black male protesters interviewed by video blogger Zennie62 leaps off the screen. “It was a modern-day lynching!” one yells. “Black people need to get together, and not just Black people, everybody in Oakland!” says another.

The murder charge itself is almost unprecedented.

As is usual in police brutality incidents, excuses are being manufactured for Menserle after the fact. One flimsy story is that he mistook his gun for a taser. Predictably, Menserle also has big-money support from the BART Police Officers Association, which posted three million dollars for his bail. Pirone, the cop who assaulted Grant and held him down, has not been charged at all.

Again according to pattern, the character assassination of the victim has begun. Like many inner-city Black men, Grant had a police record, but that is irrelevant to the case.

Lives measured differently

On March 21, traffic cops stopped Lovelle Mixon, a Black Oakland man with a parole violation. No doubt desperate, Mixon ended up killing four police before being killed himself.

This event provoked establishment fury and demands for more police and stricter probation requirements. The killing of Oscar Grant took a back seat.

More police, however, are not the answer. The cause of violence in inner-city Black communities is the economic blight and terrible living conditions there. These circumstances generate the despair that sets off violence.

That exploited urban population must be kept down, and that is the reason why cops commit murders like Oscar Grant’s over and over. Under capitalism, it is the job of police to repress poor people of color in order to protect the property of the rich. Inevitably, someone will occasionally lash out against those carrying out the repression, as Lovelle Mixon did.

The whole profit system needs to be overturned. But to oppose injustice and demand relief from abuse right now, an elected civilian review board that is completely independent of the police is worth fighting for. This review board should have full power to conduct its own investigations and subpoena witnesses and have the services of an independent special prosecutor at its disposal. End police brutality!

We do not starve, we are not arbitrarily imprisoned, we may vote, travel and read and write what we wish only because of the political activism of previous generations. Almost all MPs, when pushed, will acknowledge this. Were it not for public protest they wouldn’t be MPs.

Yet, though the people of this country remain as mild and as peaceful as they have ever been, our MPs have introduced a wider range of repressive measures than at any time since the Second World War. A long list of laws — the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, Terrorism Act 2000, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the 2005 Serious Crime and Police Act and many others — treat peaceful protesters as if they are stalkers, vandals, thugs and terrorists. Thousands of harmless, public-spirited people now possess criminal records. This legislation has been enforced by policing which becomes more aggressive and intrusive by the month. The police attacks on the G20 protests (which are about to be challenged by a judicial review launched by Climate Camp) are just the latest expression of this rising state violence. Why is it happening?

Before I try to answer this, let me give you an idea of just how weird policing in Britain has become. A few weeks ago, like everyone in mid-Wales, I received a local policing summary from the Dyfed-Powys force. It contained a section headed Terrorism and Domestic Extremism. “Work undertaken is not solely focused on the threat from international terrorists. Attention has also been paid to the potential threat that domestic extremists and campaigners can pose.” I lodged a freedom of information request to try to discover what this meant. What threat do campaigners pose?

I’ve just been told by the police that they don’t intend to reply within the statutory period, or to tell me when they will.¹ I’ll complain of course, and (in 2019 or so) I’ll let you know the result. But Paul Mobbs of the Free Range Network has found what appears to be an explanation. Under the heading “Protect[ing] the country from both terrorism and domestic extremism”, the Dyfed-Powys Police website repeats the line about domestic extremists and campaigners. “In this context, the Force was praised for its management of the slaughter of what was felt to be a sacred animal from the Skanda Vale religious community in Carmarthenshire.” You might remember it: this Hindu community tried to prevent Shambo the bull from being culled by the government after he tested positive for TB. His defenders sought a judicial review and launched a petition. When that failed, they sang and prayed. That’s all.

Mobbs has also found a bulletin circulated among Welsh forces at the end of last year, identifying the “new challenges and changes” the police now face. Under “Environmental” just two are listed: congestion charging and “eco-terrorism”. Eco-terrorism is a charge repeatedly leveled against the environment movement, mostly by fossil fuel lobbyists. But, as far as I can discover, there has not been a single recorded instance of a planned attempt to harm people in the cause of environmental protection in the United Kingdom over the past 30 years or more. So what do the police mean by eco-terrorism? It appears to refer to any environmental action more radical than writing letters to your MP.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) now runs three units whose purpose is to tackle another phenomenon it has never defined: domestic extremism. These are the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU), the Welsh Extremism and Counter-Terrorism Unit and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Because ACPO is not a public body but a private limited company, the three bodies are exempt from freedom of information laws and other kinds of public accountability, even though they are funded by the Home Office and deploy police officers from regional forces. So it’s hard to work out exactly what they do, apart from libeling peaceful protesters. I wrote a column in December about the smears published by NETCU, which described villagers in Oxfordshire peacefully seeking to prevent a power company from filling their local lake with fly ash as a “domestic extremist campaign.” It also sought to smear peace campaigners, Greenpeace and Climate Camp with the same charge. NETCU’s site went down on the day my column was published and hasn’t been restored since. But we have only patchy evidence of what else these three unaccountable bodies have been up to.

They appear to have adopted the role once filled by Special Branch’s counter-subversion campaign, which spied on Labour activists, including Jack Straw and Peter Mandelson (sadly the spooks failed to bump them off while there was still time). But as Paul Mobbs points out in his new report on Britain’s secretive police forces, today the police appear to be motivated not by party political bias, but by hostility towards all views which do not reflect the official consensus.

Mobbs proposes that mainstream politics in Britain cannot respond to realities such as global and national inequality, economic collapse, resource depletion and climate change. Any politics that does not endorse the liberal economic consensus, which challenges the concentration of wealth or power, or which doesn’t accept that growth and consumerism can be sustained indefinitely, is off-limits. Just as the suffragettes were repressed because their ideas — not their actions — presented a threat to the state, the government and the police must suppress a new set of dangerous truths. By treating protesters as domestic extremists, the state marginalizes their concerns: if people are extremists, their views must be extreme. Repression, in a nominal democracy, cannot operate accountably, so the state uses police units, which are exempt from public scrutiny.

I am sure Mobbs is right. There is no place for dissenting views in mainstream politics. I was told recently by a Labour back-bencher — a respected MP untainted by the expenses scandal – that “if the door was open just an inch to new ideas, I would stay on. But it has been slammed shut, so I’m resigning at the next election.” Our grossly unfair electoral system, which responds to the concerns of just a few thousand floating voters and shuts out the minor parties; the vicious crackdown on dissent within parliament by whips and spin doctors; the neoliberalism forced upon governments by corporate power and the Washington Consensus; the terror of the tabloid press: all combine to create a political culture which cannot respond to altered realities without collapsing. What cannot be accommodated must be suppressed.

The police respond as all police forces do; protecting the incasts from the outcasts, keeping the barbarians from the gate. The philosophy of policing has not changed; they just become more violent as the citadel collapses.

1. E-mail received on 6th May 2009. FOI REF: 263/2009.