NOAM CHOMSKY | Aghast at the atrocities committed by US forces invading the Philippines, and the rhetorical flights about liberation and noble intent that routinely accompany crimes of state, Mark Twain threw up his hands at his inability to wield his formidable weapon of satire. The immediate object of his frustration was the renowned General Funston. “No satire of Funston could reach perfection,” Twain lamented, “because Funston occupies that summit himself… [he is] satire incarnated.”

It is a thought that often comes to mind, again in August 2008 during the Georgia-Ossetia-Russia war. George Bush, Condoleezza Rica and other dignitaries solemnly invoked the sanctity of the United Nations, warning that Russia could be excluded from international institutions “by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with” their principles. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations must be rigorously honored, they intoned — “all nations,” that is, apart from those that the US chooses to attack: Iraq, Serbia, perhaps Iran, and a list of others too long and familiar to mention.

The junior partner joined in as well. British foreign secretary David Miliband accused Russia of engaging in “19th century forms of diplomacy” by invading a sovereign state, something Britain would never contemplate today. That “is simply not the way that international relations can be run in the 21st century,” he added, echoing the decider-in-chief, who said that invasion of “a sovereign neighboring state…is unacceptable in the 21st century.” Mexico and Canada therefore need not fear further invasions and annexation of much of their territory, because the US now only invades states that are not on its borders, though no such constraint holds for its clients, as Lebanon learned once again in 2006.

“The moral of this story is even more enlightening,” Serge Halimi writes in Le Monde Diplomatique and CounterPunch newsletter, “when, to defend his country’s borders, the charming pro-American Saakashvili repatriates some of the 2,000 soldiers he had sent to invade Iraq,” one of the largest contingents apart from the two warrior states.

Prominent analysts joined the chorus. Fareed Zakaria applauded Bush’s observation that Russia’s behavior is unacceptable today, unlike the 19th century, “when the Russian intervention would have been standard operating procedure for a great power.” We therefore must devise a strategy for bringing Russia “in line with the civilized world,” where intervention is unthinkable.

There were, to be sure, some who shared Mark Twain’s despair. One distinguished example is Chris Patten, former EU commissioner for external relations, chairman of the British Conservative Party, chancellor of Oxford University and a member of the House of Lords. He wrote that the Western reaction “is enough to make even the cynical shake their heads in disbelief” — referring to Europe’s failure to respond vigorously to the effrontery of Russian leaders, who, “like 19th-century tsars, want a sphere of influence around their borders.”

Patten rightly distinguishes Russia from the global superpower, which long ago passed the point where it demanded a sphere of influence around its borders, and demands a sphere of influence over the entire world. It also acts vigorously to enforce that demand, in accord with the Clinton doctrine that Washington has the right to use military force to defend vital interests such as “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources” — and in the real world, far more.

Clinton was breaking no new ground, of course. His doctrine derives from standard principles formulated by high-level planners during World War II, which offered the prospect of global dominance. In the postwar world, they determined, the US should aim “to hold unquestioned power” while ensuring the “limitation of any exercise of sovereignty” by states that might interfere with its global designs. To secure these ends, “the foremost requirement [is] the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete rearmament,” a core element of “an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States.” The plans laid during the war were implemented in various ways in the years that followed.

The goals are deeply rooted in stable institutional structures. Hence they persist through changes in occupancy of the White House, and are untroubled by the opportunity for “peace dividends,” the disappearance of the major rival from the world scene, or other marginal irrelevancies. Devising new challenges is never beyond the reach of doctrinal managers, as when Ronald Reagan pulled on his cowboy boots and declared a national emergency because the Nicaraguan army was only two days from Harlingen Texas, and might lead the hordes who are about to “sweep over the United States and take what we have,” as Lyndon Johnson lamented when he called for holding the line in Vietnam. Most ominously, those holding the reins may actually believe their own words.

Returning to the efforts to elevate Russia to the civilized world, the seven charter members of the Group of Eight industrialized countries issued a statement “condemning the action of our fellow G8 member,” Russia, which has yet to comprehend the Anglo-American commitment to non-intervention. The European Union held a rare emergency meeting to condemn Russia’s crime, its first meeting since the invasion of Iraq, which elicited no condemnation.

Russia called for an emergency session of the Security Council, but no consensus was reached because, according to Council diplomats, the US, Britain, and some others rejected a phrase that called on both sides “to renounce the use of force.”

The typical reactions recall Orwell’s observations on the “indifference to reality” of the “nationalist,” who “not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but … has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

The basic facts are not seriously in dispute. South Ossetia, along with the much more significant region of Abkhazia, were assigned by Stalin to his native Georgia. Western leaders sternly admonish that Stalin’s directives must be respected, despite the strong opposition of Ossetians and Abkhazians. The provinces enjoyed relative autonomy until the collapse of the USSR. In 1990, Georgia’s ultranationalist president Zviad Gamsakhurdia abolished autonomous regions and invaded South Ossetia. The bitter war that followed left 1000 dead and tens of thousands of refugees, with the capital city of Tskhinvali “battered and depopulated” (New York Times).

A small Russian force then supervised an uneasy truce, broken decisively on August 7, 2008, when Georgian president Saakashvili’s ordered his forces to invade. According to “an extensive set of witnesses,” the Times reports, Georgia’s military at once “began pounding civilian sections of the city of Tskhinvali, as well as a Russian peacekeeping base there, with heavy barrages of rocket and artillery fire.” The predictable Russian response drove Georgian forces out of South Ossetia, and Russia went on to conquer parts of Georgia, then partially withdrawing to the vicinity of South Ossetia. There were many casualties and atrocities. As is normal, the innocent suffered severely.

Russia reported at first that ten Russian peacekeepers were killed by Georgian shelling. The West took little notice. That too is normal. There was, for example, no reaction when Aviation Week reported that 200 Russians were killed in an Israeli air raid in Lebanon in 1982 during a US-backed invasion that left some 15-20,000 dead, with no credible pretext beyond strengthening Israeli control over the occupied West Bank.

Among Ossetians who fled north, the “prevailing view,” according to the London Financial Times, “is that Georgia’s pro-western leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, tried to wipe out their breakaway enclave.” Ossetian militias, under Russian eyes, then brutally drove out Georgians, in areas beyond Ossetia as well. “Georgia said its attack had been necessary to stop a Russian attack that already had been under way,” the New York Times reports, but weeks later “there has been no independent evidence, beyond Georgia’s insistence that its version is true, that Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages.”

In Russia, the Wall Street Journal reports, “legislators, officials and local analysts have embraced the theory that the Bush administration encouraged Georgia, its ally, to start the war in order to precipitate an international crisis that would play up the national-security experience of Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate.” In contrast, French author Bernard-Henri Levy, writing in the New Republic, proclaims that “no one can ignore the fact that President Saakashvili only decided to act when he no longer had a choice, and war had already come. In spite of this accumulation of facts that should have been blindingly obvious to all scrupulous, good-faith observers, many in the media rushed as one man toward the thesis of the Georgians as instigators, as irresponsible provocateurs of the war.”

The Russian propaganda system made the mistake of presenting evidence, which was easily refuted. Its Western counterparts, more wisely, keep to authoritative pronouncements, like Levy’s denunciation of the major Western media for ignoring what is “blindingly obvious to all scrupulous, good-faith observers” for whom loyalty to the state suffices to establish The Truth — which, perhaps, is even true, serious analysts might conclude.

The Russians are losing the “propaganda war,” BBC reported, as Washington and its allies have succeeded in “presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on August 7, which triggered the Russian operation,” though “the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging.” Russia has “not yet learned how to play the media game,” the BBC observes. That is natural. Propaganda has typically become more sophisticated as countries become more free and the state loses the ability to control the population by force.

The Russian failure to provide credible evidence was partially overcome by the Financial Times, which discovered that the Pentagon had provided combat training to Georgian special forces commandos shortly before the Georgian attack on August 7, revelations that “could add fuel to accusations by Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, last month that the US had `orchestrated’ the war in the Georgian enclave.” The training was in part carried out by former US special forces recruited by private military contractors, including MPRI, which, as the journal notes, “was hired by the Pentagon in 1995 to train the Croatian military prior to their invasion of the ethnically-Serbian Krajina region, which led to the displacement of 200,000 refugees and was one of the worst incidents of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan wars.” The US-backed Krajina expulsion (generally estimated at 250,000, with many killed) was possibly the worst case of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. Its fate in approved history is rather like that of photographs of Trotsky in Stalinist Russia, for simple and sufficient reasons: it does not accord with the required image of US nobility confronting Serbian evil.

The toll of the August 2008 Caucasus war is subject to varying estimates. A month afterwards, the Financial Times cited Russian reports that “at least 133 civilians died in the attack, as well as 59 of its own peacekeepers,” while in the ensuing Russian mass invasion and aerial bombardment of Georgia, according to the FT, 215 Georgians died, including 146 soldiers and 69 civilians. Further revelations are likely to follow.

In the background lie two crucial issues. One is control over pipelines to Azerbaijan and Central Asia. Georgia was chosen as a corridor by Clinton to bypass Russia and Iran, and was also heavily militarized for the purpose. Hence Georgia is “a very major and strategic asset to us,” Zbigniew Brzezinski observes.

It is noteworthy that analysts are becoming less reticent in explaining real US motives in the region as pretexts of dire threats and liberation fade and it becomes more difficult to deflect Iraqi demands for withdrawal of the occupying army. Thus the editors of the Washington Post admonished Barack Obama for regarding Afghanistan as “the central front” for the United States, reminding him that Iraq “lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves,” and Afghanistan’s “strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq.” A welcome, if belated, recognition of reality about the US invasion.

The second issue is expansion of NATO to the East, described by George Kennan in 1997 as “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era, [which] may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations.”

As the USSR collapsed, Mikhail Gorbachev made a concession that was astonishing in the light of recent history and strategic realities: he agreed to allow a united Germany to join a hostile military alliance. This “stunning concession” was hailed by Western media, NATO, and President Bush I, who called it a demonstration of “statesmanship … in the best interests of all countries of Europe, including the Soviet Union.”

Gorbachev agreed to the stunning concession on the basis of “assurances that NATO would not extend its jurisdiction to the east, `not one inch’ in [Secretary of State] Jim Baker’s exact words.” This reminder by Jack Matlock, the leading Soviet expert of the Foreign Service and US ambassador to Russia in the crucial years 1987 to 1991, is confirmed by Strobe Talbott, the highest official in charge of Eastern Europe in the Clinton administration. On the basis of a full review of the diplomatic record, Talbott reports that “Secretary of State Baker did say to then Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, in the context of the Soviet Union’s reluctant willingness to let a unified Germany remain part of NATO, that NATO would not move to the east.”

Clinton quickly reneged on that commitment, also dismissing Gorbachev’s effort to end the Cold War with cooperation among partners. NATO also rejected a Russian proposal for a nuclear-weapons-free-zone from the Arctic to the Black Sea, which would have “interfered with plans to extend NATO,” strategic analyst and former NATO planner Michael MccGwire observes.

Rejecting these possibilities, the US took a triumphalist stand that threatened Russian security and also played a major role in driving Russia to severe economic and social collapse, with millions of deaths. The process was sharply escalated by Bush’s further expansion of NATO, dismantling of crucial disarmament agreements, and aggressive militarism. Matlock writes that Russia might have tolerated incorporation of former Russian satellites into NATO if it “had not bombed Serbia and continued expanding. But, in the final analysis, ABM missiles in Poland, and the drive for Georgia and Ukraine in NATO crossed absolute red lines. The insistence on recognizing Kosovo independence was sort of the very last straw. Putin had learned that concessions to the U.S. were not reciprocated, but used to promote U.S. dominance in the world.Once he had the strength to resist, he did so,” in Georgia.

Clinton officials argue that expansion of NATO posed no military threat, and was no more than a benign move to allow former Russian satellites to join the EU (Talbott). That is hardly persuasive. Austria, Sweden and Finland are in the EU but not NATO. If the Warsaw Pact had survived and was incorporating Latin American countries — let alone Canada and Mexico — the US would not easily be persuaded that the Pact is just a Quaker meeting. There should be no need to review the record of US violence to block mostly fanciful ties to Moscow in “our little region over here,” the Western hemisphere, to quote Secretary of War Henry Stimson when he explained that all regional systems must be dismantled after World II, apart from our own, which are to be extended.

To underscore the conclusion, in the midst of the current crisis in the Caucasus, Washington professes concern that Russia might resume military and intelligence cooperation with Cuba at a level not remotely approaching US-Georgia relations, and not a further step towards a significant security threat.

Missile defense too is presented here as benign, though leading US strategic analysts have explained why Russian planners must regard the systems and their chosen location as the basis for a potential threat to the Russian deterrent, hence in effect a first-strike weapon. The Russian invasion of Georgia was used as a pretext to conclude the agreement to place these systems in Poland, thus “bolstering an argument made repeatedly by Moscow and rejected by Washington: that the true target of the system is Russia,” AP commentator Desmond Butler observed.

Matlock is not alone in regarding Kosovo as an important factor. “Recognition of South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence was justified on the principle of a mistreated minority’s right to secession – the principle Bush had established for Kosovo,” the Boston Globe editors comment.

But there are crucial differences. Strobe Talbott recognizes that “there’s a degree of payback for what the U.S. and NATO did in Kosovo nine years ago,” but insists that the “analogy is utterly and profoundly false.” No one is a better position to know why it is profoundly false, and he has lucidly explained the reasons, in his preface to a book on NATO’s bombing of Serbia by his associate John Norris. Talbott writes that those who want to know “how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved” in the war should turn to Norris’s well-informed account. Norris concludes that “it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform — not the plight of Kosovar Albanians — that best explains NATO’s war.”

That the motive for the NATO bombing could not have been “the plight of Kosovar Albanians” was already clear from the rich Western documentary record revealing that the atrocities were, overwhelmingly, the anticipated consequence of the bombing, not its cause. But even before the record was released, it should have been evident to all but the most fervent loyalists that humanitarian concern could hardly have motivated the US and Britain, which at the same time were lending decisive support to atrocities well beyond what was reported from Kosovo, with a background far more horrendous than anything that had happened in the Balkans. But these are mere facts, hence of no moment to Orwell’s “nationalists” — in this case, most of the Western intellectual community, who had made an enormous investment in self-aggrandizement and prevarication about the “noble phase” of US foreign policy and its “saintly glow” as the millennium approached its end, with the bombing of Serbia as the jewel in the crown.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to hear from the highest level that the real reason for the bombing was that Serbia was a lone holdout in Europe to the political and economic programs of the Clinton administration and its allies, though it will be a long time before such annoyances are allowed to enter the canon.

There are of course other differences between Kosovo and the regions of Georgia that call for independence or union with Russia. Thus Russia is not known to have a huge military base there named after a hero of the invasion of Afghanistan, comparable to Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, named after a Vietnam war hero and presumably part of the vast US basing system aimed at the Middle East energy-producing regions. And there are many other differences.

There is much talk about a “new cold war” instigated by brutal Russian behavior in Georgia. One cannot fail to be alarmed by signs of confrontation, among them new US naval contingents in the Black Sea — the counterpart would hardly be tolerated in the Caribbean. Efforts to expand NATO to Ukraine, now contemplated, could become extremely hazardous.

Nonetheless, a new cold war seems unlikely. To evaluate the prospect, we should begin with clarity about the old cold war. Fevered rhetoric aside, in practice the cold war was a tacit compact in which each of the contestants was largely free to resort to violence and subversion to control its own domains: for Russia, its Eastern neighbors; for the global superpower, most of the world. Human society need not endure — and might not survive — a resurrection of anything like that.

A sensible alternative is the Gorbachev vision rejected by Clinton and undermined by Bush. Sane advice along these lines has recently been given by former Israeli Foreign Minister and historian Shlomo ben-Ami, writing in the Beirut Daily Star: “Russia must seek genuine strategic partnership with the US, and the latter must understand that, when excluded and despised, Russia can be a major global spoiler. Ignored and humiliated by the US since the Cold War ended, Russia needs integration into a new global order that respects its interests as a resurgent power, not an anti-Western strategy of confrontation.”

Noam Chomsky’s most recent book is Failed States: the Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

By Jyoti Mishra |

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has condemned what he called Russia’s “illegitimate” attempt to change Georgia’s borders last month.Mr Cheney added that Russia’s actions during the recent conflict with Georgia had cast doubt on its reliability as an international partner.
(Source: BBC News)

 

This is the same Dick Cheney that said that the butchering of over one million Iraqis by illegally invading US forces was, in his words, a “major success.” (Source: ABC)

Was Cheney so worried about borders when his country invaded a sovereign, non-aggressor nation, committing a war crime?

But the USA is a proud defender of national borders… when it suits them:

Pakistan has condemned an alleged raid by foreign [US] troops based in Afghanistan which officials say killed at least 15 villagers in a north-west tribal area.The South Waziristan raid would be the first ever ground assault into Pakistan by foreign forces from Afghanistan.

Pakistan says the raid was a violation of its sovereignty. On Thursday a US missile killed at least five people in nearby North Waziristan, officials say.
(Source: BBC News)

 

You won’t see that particular border violation on your telly. There’s not enough time, what with all the anti-Russia hype whipped-up by the warmongers of Washington.

Oh, but we must all follow the US line: Russia BAD, Georgia GOOD. After all, who started the bloodshed in the first place, them Russians, wasn’t it? Umm…

The conflict between Georgia and Russia erupted on 7 August after Georgia tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force.Russian forces launched a counter-attack and the conflict ended with the ejection of Georgian troops from South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia.
(Source: BBC News)

 

Now, that’s strange! The way everything is being reported on the TV news, it’s Russia that are the heartless invaders, trying to chop poor little Georgia into pieces. No doubt, this means the people of South Ossetia HATE the Russians, doesn’t it? Ermmm…

They [South Ossetians] are very clear who they blame: Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region. That effort has clearly backfired. The pro-Russian sentiment I experienced on my last visit four years ago has become far fiercer as a result of this conflict.“They signed a ceasefire, but Saakashvili can start bombing us again any minute,” Lusya said, referring to the OSCE/EU-brokered peace plan between Moscow and Tbilisi.

“Look how many people died here! We can never join Georgia after this. We’ll cope on our own.”

“We were bombed for three days and nights. If Russia had not helped, we would have disappeared,” Lusya’s neighbour Elena said, visibly angry. “Only Russia takes us under its wing. We want to be with Russia.”
(Source: BBC News)

 

So, South Ossetia sees Russia as the saviour and Georgia as the aggressor. That’s a bit different from what good old Dick Cheney, mass-murderer of Iraqis, triumphant bomber of Afghan children says, innit?

One would think, the way every poodle of the USA, sorry, great Western democracy has backed the US that the Russian troops in South Ossetia must be lepers. They must be having as hard a time as the US troops in Iraq. Surely? Hmmm…

Despite international calls for a withdrawal, there is no sign of Russia pulling its troops out of Ossetia. By Wednesday, they had received an order to cease fire, but not to leave.Their presence is popular with many locals, who wave as soldiers drive past in the street. (Source: BBC News)

 

Ahhh, not quite the same as how the Iraqis and Afghans see the US forces in their countries, is it? But then, Cheney manages to accuse Russia of warmongering at the same time as standing on the pile of Iraqi corpses and calling that mission a success! Amazing! This man is some kind of Oscar-level actor, to be able to spout such hypocritical nonsense with a straight face.

Do you remember this?

There is convincing evidence that 60 children and 30 adults were killed in a US air strike in western Afghanistan last Friday, the United Nations says. (Source: BBC News)

Those sixty innocent children that the USA just murdered – is the US government apologetic? Guilty? Filled with remorse? Nope. It just denies it ever happened and, yet again, rubbishes the UN when it suits its purposes. So much for the US’ hand-wringing about naughty Russia and their aggression. And now the US is pumping war funds into Georgia under the guise of aid. Yeah, right.

Again, I am not saying that Russia is good. Russia is, after all, another superpower. All I’m saying is that if you want to find the most destructive, most dangerous, most imperialistic nation on earth, don’t look at Russia.

Look at the USA and their hideous record of murder, torture and kidnapping in Afganistan and Iraq. Nothing Russia has done can match the USA’s evil there.

SchNews | As we predicted (in SchNEWS 644), last weeks protests in Denver outside the Democrat convention were nothing compared to the scenes out on the streets of St Pauls, Minnesota, during this week’s Republican National Convention (RNC). It seems that the thought of another Republican president is just too much to bear, and the Midwest city saw one of the biggest mass demonstrations in the States since the height of anti-war fervour in 2003.

While the world’s media have been fixated on the suitability of Sarah Palin for McCain’s running mate, battles have been raging outside the RNC. The party of war criminals have had to hold their convention protected by unprecedented levels of security.

Our eyewitness claims that what was different about this policing was the sheer scale of the repression, surveillance and infiltration in the weeks leading up to and during the convention. The $50 million campaign saw 35,000 law enforcement officers out on the streets – and this doesn’t include the National Guard or FBI agents. Independent media and journalists were also targeted.

Last Friday, before the convention started (Sept 1st-4th), armed riot police raided targets including the Convergence Center of the RNC Welcoming Committee in central St Paul, the meeting place and hub of the protests. Occupants were ordered to lie on the ground while laptops were taken and anything which could be used to demonstrate, including banners and several buckets, was confiscated.

Twelve were arrested and eight, alleged leaders, are under the ominous charge of ‘Conspiracy To Riot In Furtherance Of Terrorism’ — which carries a maximum seven and a half year sentence. The search warrant for this raid was supported by affidavits from police informants who had infiltrated the RNCWC, and alleged that the group intended to kidnap delegates, use explosives, and sabotage airports in St Pauls. This was all cheap talk in the pub evidently, as there is nothing to corroborate these allegations.

Other places raided over the weekend included Eyewitness Video — a group who film and monitor civil liberties. By Wednesday, after a second raid, their landlord kicked them out.

The FBI also raided a house in Minneapolis housing the free food people, Food Not Bombs, with four arrested on ‘probable cause’ for conspiracy to riot. The warrant claimed they were looking for improvised incendiary devices, and seized what they took to be a bucket of what they called ‘weaponised urine’. No it wasn’t the soup they were going to serve up the next day, it was actually just grey water being saved to use in the toilet.

And all this before the protests had even begun.
The convention — and protests — started on Monday with a large ‘permitted’ march. Some 25,000 were out in force, but so were the heavily tooled up SWAT police. Affinity groups organised to take different sectors of the city, but many were stopped from reaching their meeting points, and were detained with ID taken. The intention was to block the road to the RNC’s venue, The Xcel Center (DSEi memories anyone?), and apparently the police helped by blocking the road themselves.

Around a thousand-strong ‘Anti-Capitalist Bloc’ peeled off the march to take direct action — initiating some argybargy and window smashing… and were met with riot police, gas canisters and concussion grenades.

After day one, over 300 protesters were in the county jail. Reports from those who got out tell of extreme abuse within the cells, with many held beyond the time limit before they must be charged or released. A protest and vigil has been maintained since outside the jail, despite a belligerent police and National Guard presence.

In a move that should’ve generated more media attention than it did, journalist Amy Goodman, anchorwoman of the DemocracyNow.org internet/radio/tv programme, was arrested on Monday along with her producers — who despite carrying press badges were held on riot charges.

The next day, Tuesday, in the teeth of amassed police, was the Poor Peoples’ March For Our Lives — of around 15,000 – for the homeless, veterans, immigrants. The police demanded the march end by 7pm, and when it didn’t, waded in with batons, horses and motorbikes ramming the crowd, as well as firing tear gas, pepper spray and flash bombs. Snatch squads grabbed individuals, beating and tasering them. A city centre concert was pulled.

On Wednesday, protest continued, and further raids took place. Coaches taking delegates into the Xcel Center had be re-routed off the Minneapolis freeway system because people were throwing 40lb bags of cement off the overpasses onto them. Our reporter claims it was impossible to walk around near the centre with any sort of camera, given the tight control over media images of the protests. That night Rage Against The Machine performed an explosive gig — following on from their performance at Democrat convention protests in Denver the week before – with the audience surrounded by riot police. After their show over 100 were arrested.

Inside the Xcel Center, Thursday (4th) was the big day that John McCain gave his acceptance speech. Outside, the ruck continued, featuring a host of themed protests including a school kids ‘Walk Out Of Class’ rally. As the empty applause rattling around the Xcel Center died down, conservatives all around the country should have been comforted that the number of non-believers arrested outside during the week numbered over 400.

This year was the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democrat convention, which shared parallels with the 2008 Republican convention: a mass demonstration against a party convention — riding on a wave of anti-war ferment — which was met with unprecedented repression by a brutal, paranoiac and deeply unpopular US state. Only this year had added kevlar body armour.

See also http://twincities.indymedia.org

* www.protestrnc2008.org *

Civil rights activists have called for an investigation of police shootings in a Los Angeles-area city where four people have been killed since May.

The latest was Sunday when a 56-year-old homeless man was killed by Inglewood officers who said he appeared to be armed and refused orders to raise his hands, the Los Angeles Times reported. The gun tucked into Eddie Felix Franco’s waistband proved to be a toy.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Roundtable, spoke Monday at the place where Franco was killed.

“This is a small city,” Hutchinson said. “It has a small police department, and when you have this number of shootings in such a short period of time, that just leaves so many questions.”

In May, a 19-year-old man was killed and two other young men wounded by police officers who mistakenly thought they had weapons. In July, police fatally shot a 23-year-old alleged gang member and, in a separate incident, killed a 38-year-old man who allegedly pointed a gun at officers responding to a call about a domestic dispute.

The shootings are being investigated by the Office of Independent Review, a county agency, but Hutchinson and others want a federal investigation.

© 2008 United Press International, Inc.

By William John Cox | Although Americans have access to the greatest selection of information sources in the world, including books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cable, and the Internet, the frequency of the news cycle has increased to the point where we have forgotten that our president and vice president have committed horrendous war crimes, or we may have missed the fact as it flashed by.

Most of us may have been fleetingly aware in 2006 that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were lying to us about their reasons for the Iraq War, which caused the murder and maiming of tens of thousands of our American troops and the waste of billions of our tax dollars. We elected a majority of Democrats to Congress to hold them accountable; however, the Democratic leadership immediately announced that impeachment was off the table and it has been business as usual ever since.

Recently, there has been a flood of new evidence clearly proving beyond any reasonable doubt that our president and vice president, along with others, conspired to engage the United States in an unnecessary and illegal war and repeatedly and deliberately lied to the American people about the true facts of the matter. Most specifically, the president committed felonies when he lied to Congress about his justification for ordering the attack on Iraq which resulted in the murder of all who have died in his fraudulent “War on Terrorism.”

As governor of Texas, Bush executed 152 people, including Karla Faye Tucker, a born-again Christian, whose plea for clemency caused Bush to purse his lips in a false smirk of desperation and to whimper, “Please don’t kill me.” Under the “Felony Murder Rule,” known in Texas as the “Law of the Parties,” if a person commits a felony and someone dies during the course of the felony, all parties to the felony are guilty of murder irrespective of which one actually does the killing.

There is strict liability under the rule, even if the death is accidental or unintended. Almost 20 percent of all murder prosecutions result from the rule, and a significant number of Bush’s 152 executions involved criminals who had engaged in felonies where the actual killing was done by others.

Not only has the president escaped all accountability for the serial murders he committed during his phony “War on Terrorism,” he recently asked Congress to further aid and abet his crimes by acknowledging “again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

We now know to a high degree of certainty who the slaughterers are. The only remaining question is whether the murderers will escape justice.

The crime

Title 18, Section 2 of the U.S. Code says, “Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.” Section 1111 defines murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought” and specifically holds that murders perpetrated by any kind of “willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing” are murders “in the first degree. Any other murder is murder in the second degree.”

If Bush willfully and deliberately misled Congress into authorizing him to engage in an unlawful war in which American troops and Iraqis were killed, he is guilty of murder. Not only would such killings be premeditated, but they would also be the legal result of his lies to Congress.

Title 18, Section 1001 prohibits anyone from “knowingly and willfully” making “any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” in “any matter within the jurisdiction of the . . . legislative . . . branch of the Government.” Felony prosecution under the statute was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1955, and a violation of the statute is a crime.

Bush lied to Congress on a number of occasions. Most specifically during his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, Bush told the following lies to Congress:

â–º “The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.”â–º “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

â–º “Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction.”

â–º “With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region.”

â–º “And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.”

â–º “We seek peace. We strive for peace.”

 

 

Ignoring the reports of UN inspectors that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush ordered its invasion on March 20, 2003 because: “the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised” and Iraq “has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.” When Bush deceptively ordered American troops to invade Iraq, he and his co-conspirators not only became war criminals under international law, they became murderers of all those who died as a result of their felonious conduct.

It can now be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Bush was deliberately lying about his justification for war against Iraq, and as of today 4,151 American soldiers and perhaps as many as a million Iraqis have become his victims.

The evidence

Bush’s conspiracy of deception held for several years, but on May 1, 2005, the Times of London published the first of the so-called “Downing Street Documents.” The documents informed us that Bush, irrespective of the lies he was telling at the time, was already committed to going to war with Iraq as early as 2002.

Calling the evidence of weapons of mass destruction “thin,” the British memos documented that “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s secret intelligence service later said that the Bush administration buried British information about the lack of WMDs.

We also learned that both the CIA and the State Department attempted to keep Bush from referring in his 2003 State of the Union Address to Saddam’s attempted purchase of “yellowcake” uranium from Niger. Indeed, the unsubstantiated allegations were later found to be a complete hoax based on a crude forgery disseminated by Sismi, the Italian intelligence service.

It has been revealed that Michael Ledeen, a representative of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans, had been in Rome at the same time gathering intelligence to support military intervention in Iraq and that the Sismi’s director later met with Stephen Hadley, Bush’s deputy national security advisor, after the CIA rejected his initial overtures.

Additional evidence has been provided by Pultizer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind in his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind reveals that Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the head of Saddam’s intelligence service, was secretly reporting the true status of Iraq’s WMDs to the British.

Habbush informed the British (and the Bush administration) in January 2003 that there were no WMDs in Iraq. When CIA Director George Tenet told Bush about Habbush’s information, Bush replied, “Well, why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?”

Rather than using Habbush to provide Saddam with effective disinformation, to arrange Saddam’s removal, or to even make operational use of the valuable intelligence, the U.S. terminated further communication with Habbush, paid him $5 million to keep quiet and resettled him in Amman, Jordan. Officially, Habbush is still wanted by the U.S. and there is a $1 million reward offered for his capture.

Further evidence that Bush had official knowledge that there were no WMDs in Iraq was provided by Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, in autumn 2002. He passed information through a French government official that Iraq’s “WMD program” was actually a ruse to ward off Iran and other foreign enemies.

Sabri was paid at least $200,000 by the CIA and French intelligence to provide documents about Saddam’s WMDs; however, Bush rejected Sabri’s intelligence as worthless when CIA director George Tenet tried to tell him about it on September 18, 2003. According to a senior CIA officer, “Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.”

Sabri received safe passage to Cairo during the first days of the Iraq invasion and is presently enjoying a comfortable retirement teaching journalism in Qatar.

Instead of informing the military, Secretary of State Powell, or Congress about Sabri’s high-quality intelligence, the CIA rewrote the report of his debriefing into an opposite falsehood stating that Saddam was “aggressively and covertly developing” nuclear weapons and that he already had chemical and biological weapons. The restructured report was then passed on to British intelligence to share with Prime Minister Blair.

During the same period, Saad Tawfik, an electrical engineer in Iraq, was identified by the CIA as a “key figure in Saddam Hussein’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.” His sister lived in Cleveland and was recruited by the CIA to meet with her brother in Iraq and to obtain details about the program. Tawfik told her the program was completely abandoned in 1991 and there were no centrifuges or nuclear weapon facilities. The CIA obtained similar results from 30 other former Iraqi WMD experts who also told relatives the same thing.

Evidence of Bush’s consciousness of guilt can be found in Ron Suskind’s report of the White House’s subsequent attempt to create a fraudulent justification following the invasion of Iraq and the failure to find any WMDs. The White House ordered the CIA to forge a backdated letter purportedly sent from Habbush to Saddam.

The resulting handwritten forgery dated July 1, 2001 talked about Saddam buying yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaida. Fortuitously, the phony letter also mentioned that 9-11 ringleader Mohammad Atta was in Iraq at the time being trained by al Qaida terrorist Abu Nidal for an upcoming righteous mission.

Since the CIA is prohibited by law from engaging in covert activities intended to influence the U.S. political process, public opinion, policies, or the media, the forged letter was leaked through an aide to Ayad Allawi (a member of the Interim Governing Council and British intelligence informant) in Baghdad to an English journalist.

Con Coughlin, who has previously served as a conduit for British intelligence, wrote a front-page story in London’s Sunday Telegraph on December 14, 2003 headlined, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’” As intended, the story was picked up and recycled by the U.S. media, including William Safire and Tom Brocaw, who treated the letter as genuine.

Suskind quotes two former CIA officers, Robert Richer and John Maguire, as witnesses to the forgery. Although both officers now deny any role in fabricating the false letter, Suskind states his interviews with them were tape recorded. On one recording, Richer is heard telling Suskind how Tenet assigned him to deal with the fabricated letter: “What I remember is George saying, ‘We got this from’ — basically, from what George said was ‘downtown.’” After Suskind says, “Which is the White House?” Richer says, “Yes. . . . I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.”

When asked about the forgery, Tenet said, “There was no such order from the White House to me nor, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from the CIA ever involved in such effort.” Suskind calls such statements “part of George’s memory issue.”

On December 14, 2004, Bush engaged in yet another coverup. He rewarded Tenet with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Bush said that Tenet’s “tireless efforts have brought justice to America’s enemies and greater security to the American people.”

Accountability

Impeachment. On May 10, 2006, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi stated she was not interested in pursuing impeachment of President Bush; however, she has subsequently said that “If somebody had a crime that the president had committed, that would be a different story.”

On December 8, 2006, then-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; however, her bill expired with the 109th Congress. McKinney is presently the Green Party’s nominee for president.

On November 6, 2007, Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to impeach Vice President Cheney.

On June 10, 2008, joined by Congressman Robert Wexler as cosponsor, Kucinich introduced a resolution of impeachment against President Bush listing 35 articles. The matter was referred to the Judiciary Committee by the House of Representatives; however, Speaker Pelosi refused to allow any hearings on the resolution.

On July 15, 2008, Congressman Kucinich introduced a new resolution of impeachment of President Bush limited to a single count stating that “President Bush, in violation of his oath of office, deceived Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq weapons of mass destruction to fraudulently obtain support for the authorization of use of force against Iraq and to commit troops to combat in Iraq.” The matter was again referred to the Judiciary Committee.

A hearing was held on July 25, 2008; however it was limited to “Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations.” Although Kucinich and others were allowed to testify, the question of impeachment was “not on the table.”

President Bush’s approval rating is around 28 percent; however, Congress’ rating, perhaps because of its inability or refusal to impose any accountability on President Bush and his co-conspirators, is just 18 percent and falling.

Impeachment is the only Constitutional way to stop a corrupt or insane president from defying the Constitution and becoming a dictator. A new president will be inaugurated on January 20, 2009, just 142 days from now. It is unlikely that Congress can or will act in that time; however, that refusal to act will surely go down in history as one of the greatest failures of our democracy.

Criminal Prosecution. It is generally assumed that a sitting president is immune from criminal prosecution while in office; however, following President Clinton’s impeachment acquittal by the Senate, the special prosecutor impaneled a grand jury to hear the same evidence and to seek an indictment once he left office. Clinton avoided indictment by entered into a plea bargain one day before he left office requiring him to publicly admit his false testimony, to surrender his law license and to pay a fine of $25,000.

Inasmuch as Attorney General Michael Mukasey serves at the pleasure of President Bush, it is highly unlikely that the current Justice Department will seek an indictment of Bush for the crimes he has committed while in office. However, given the fact that there is no statute of limitations for murder, a future Attorney General appointed by a different president may be more inclined to investigate and indict Bush and his co-conspirators for their criminal behavior.

One does not need to be a trial lawyer to review the preceding paragraphs and to identify the actual witnesses who could be called to testify, either before Congress or in a criminal trial. It is quite easy to say something like “to the best of my knowledge” to a journalist; it is much more difficult to equivocate under oath during vigorous questioning in criminal proceedings or to hide behind the Fifth Amendment.

Pardons. A president’s power to pardon is essentially absolute and is without legal review; its only constraint is the threat of impeachment. With impeachment “off the table” and with the holidays and the end of the president’s term approaching, the likelihood of mass pardons increases. There is a family precedent. With less than a month remaining in his term in 1992, President Bush’s father pardoned Caspar Weinberger, his former Secretary of Defense, and five others for the crimes they committed during the Iran-Contra fiasco.

The political pardons by Bush Sr. cancelled one conviction, three pending guilty pleas and two pending trials. Weinberger’s trial, which included charges of lying to Congress, was scheduled to commence within days of the pardon. The trial would have produced “evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.” By issuing the pardons, Bush Sr., who had refused to turn over his own “highly relevant contemporaneous notes,” avoided being called as a witness to testify under an oath about how he had come to be “out of the loop.”

The Constitution prohibits a president from interfering with the impeachment process; however, it is unclear if Bush can pardon his own crimes to avoid criminal prosecution. One scenario being circulated is for Bush to issue pardons to everyone conceivably subject to criminal prosecution arising out of their service in his administration, including Vice President Cheney, and for Bush to then resign from office. President Cheney could then pardon “former President” Bush for any and all crimes he committed while in office.

International Law. In one of his last official acts, President Clinton signed the “Rome” treaty establishing the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands to prosecute individuals accused of mass murders, war crimes, and other gross human rights violations. The treaty became effective on July 1, 2002; however, one of President Bush’s first acts was to “unsign” the treaty on behalf of the United States.

Even though George Bush rejected the jurisdiction of the International Court, the court has not rejected jurisdiction over him. Accordingly, while the United States can refuse to arrest and extradite a former president charged with war crimes, the treaty has been signed by 139 other sovereign nations and ratified by at least 107, all of which are legally committed to prosecuting war criminals whenever their own country refuses to or cannot do so.

Thus, while Bush may presently enjoy cutting brush in Crawford, Texas, his ability to vacation overseas might be severely curtailed in the future during his retirement years. Moreover, depending upon who the president is at the time charges are brought against Bush by the International Court, the United States could hand over Bush to the court for prosecution.

Summation

From childhood, George Bush displayed a disturbing lack of empathy. “Slapped around” by his mother as a boy, Bush enjoyed blowing up live frogs by putting firecrackers in their mouths and shooting at his brother with a BB gun. As he grew older, Bush presided over and defended the branding of pledges to his fraternity at Yale using red-hot wires and cigarettes; he became addicted to alcohol; he was arrested for drunk driving and he abused illegal drugs.

During the Vietnam War, Bush avoided military combat and was absent without leave from his stateside reserve assignment for more than a year. Using his father’s influence to gain political office, he smirked, giggled, and displayed other inappropriate behavior in response to the most serious of subjects.

Untreated, Bush’s sociopathy evolved as he achieved command of the most powerful military on earth and used its weapons to commit mass murder. Whenever a roadside IED explodes in Iraq and another American soldier dies, every time another wedding party is mistakenly bombed and children die, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney commit murder. Are we not willing accomplices if we continue to allow these crimes to continue?

Those whom we empower by our vote to either serve us in Congress or to lead our nation as president have a duty to use the power we give them to ensure accountability for its abuse. They have a duty to focus and to maintain attention on the most egregious and deadly violations of our laws and to not allow murder to go unpunished. They have a duty to do whatever it takes to make such crimes the headline of every newspaper and the lead of every radio, television and cable news program during every news cycle until such time as the murderers who occupy our nation’s highest offices are held fully accountable.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

William John Cox is a retired supervising prosecutor for the State Bar of California. Acting as a public interest, pro bono, attorney, he filed a class action lawsuit in 1979 on behalf of every citizen of the United States petitioning the Supreme Court to order the other two branches of the federal government to conduct a National Policy Referendum; he investigated and successfully sued a group of radical right-wing organizations in 1981 that denied the Holocaust; and he arranged in 1991 for the publication of the suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls. His 2004 book, You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency is reviewed at yourenotstupid.com, and his political writings are collected at thevoters.org. He can be contacted at u2cox@msn.com.

© 2008 William John Cox

By Matthew Rothschild | Infiltrations, false arrest, preventive detention, suppression of dissident media–these are the hallmarks of authoritarian rule. Right here in America.

The repression going on up in St. Paul is outrageous.

Police raided a half dozen people’s homes over the weekend and detained people before they’d even done anything.

“Conducting mass arrests and raiding meeting places of innocent Americans exercising their constitutional right to express political dissent are antithetical to the fundamental values of our democracy,” says Anthony Romero, head of the ACLU.

Mike Whelan had invited independent observers from the group LegalWatch to stay in his duplex, as Lindsay Beyerstein reported for firedoglake.com.

At about 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, police surrounded his house with automatic weapons drawn. “One of my roommates said, ‘I want to see a warrant,’ and she was immediately detained,” Whelan told Beyerstein. He said the officers were wearing black uniforms and driving nondescript vans.

“You figure this would be going on in South Africa, or Russia, not in Saint Paul,” he said.

Here is an account from another house that was raided.

Police also swarmed a bus carrying members of the group Earth Justice.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force actively recruited area residents to infiltrate local protest groups.

One of the groups affected by the raids was Food Not Bombs, and you can’t find a more nonviolent bunch than that.

Bruce Nestor of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild saw some of the police actions.

“I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns,” he told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.

“The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint.”

Later, of course, the police arrested two producers from Democracy Now and then arrested Goodman, who was trying to ask police about what happened to her employees.

Her producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, are charged with “suspicion of felony riot.”

Goodman, who was acting in her capacity as a journalist, as were her producers, has been charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a peace officer.

Glenn Greenwald of salon.com has been doing an excellent job covering these civil liberties infringement. He notes that the FBI has been involved with local law enforcement. He even provides a photo (see update, deep into his piece).

Infiltrations, false arrest, preventive detention, suppression of dissident media–these are the hallmarks of authoritarian rule.

Right here in America.

By Pioneer Press staff | Local police and Minnesota National Guard units are using a combination of pepper spray, concussion grenades and tear gas on a group of breakaway protesters gathered on Kellogg Boulevard in downtown St. Paul. The group of about 150 protesters, many thought to be with the group “Funk the War,” had been blocking traffic for much of the afternoon.

At least one person – a young man wearing a gas mask, no shirt and a backpack – was taken into custody. He lay down on the street as a group of officers surrounded him and took him away.

Police also escorted a group of 17 mostly black-clad youth across the Robert St. Bridge in an apparent effort to get them out of downtown.

Rubber bullets were fired into a crowd at Seventh and Robert Streets. At Seventh and Jackson, police have more than a dozen people in a parking lot as police handcuff them. Police continued to spray the crowd with pepper spray. More details are to come.

The confrontations continued after a main group of anti-war protesters marching from the state Capitol peacefully reached the Xcel Energy center in downtown St. Paul earlier today.

All day, breakaway groups of protesters roamed throughout downtown, blocking traffic and breaking windows. A group calling itself “Funk the War” temporarily blocked traffic across the Wabasha Street Bridge until mounted police moved them along. Three bus loads of reinforcements joined bicycle and mounted police, gathering at Kellogg and Wabasha, wearing gas masks.

Other reports of violent confrontations and damage to property that occurred before and during the march include:

The exit at Seventh Street off Interstate 94 was blocked by a group of about 10 protesters who chained themselves together with lockboxes. The protesters said they were part of the Pittsburgh branch of the Northeast Anarchist Network. “(The purpose) was to shut down the delegates from getting to the RNC,” one said. The police have officially shut down the exit.
There have been several reports of broken windows, including at 380 Jackson Street, where masked protesters smashed windows on the back side of Galtier Plaza; at Heimie’s Haberdashery, where a glass table was turned over and smashed at Sixth and St. Peter streets; at Macy’s at Seventh and Wabasha, and at the 1st National Bank Building at Fourth and Minnesota streets, where four large ground-floor windows were broken or smashed, apparently by rocks.
There was a Minneapolis police car at Sixth and Wabasha with the windshield bashed in and tires slashed.
Numerous people have been arrested, including: Eight at the corner of Sixth and Wall streets. One threw a paintball at a cop, and the windows of two police cars were broken. Twenty protesters are being arrested at 6th and Wall in Lowertown, St. Paul. The protesters, calling themselves nornc.org, are dressed all in black and wearing bandanas across their faces. They are chanting, “We love you,” and singing as 40 police officers, half in riot gear and half bicycle officers, stand guard as more officers search and handcuff group members.
There have been several reports of tires slashed, including on an SUV, on a coach bus near the Garden Hilton and on a FOX 9 TV truck. The driver of the FOX van chased the protesters on foot but didn’t catch them. Downtown resident Chrles Burmann, 53, watched the incident near Wabasha and Seventh street. “It brings back a lot of memories from the ’60s,” he said. “He just slashed these guys’ tires – it’s a little uncalled for.”
Before the march even began, police fired tear gas into a group of people wearing black clothing and bandanas over their faces. The group had blocked John Ireland by Kellogg and walked down the middle of the road to Twelfth Street, tipping a dumpster as they went. They pulled traffic signs down and threw them in front of police squad cars. Police in riot gear then fired the tear gas at St. Peter and Exchange at about 1:35 p.m.
One protester was asked: “Why are you doing this?”

“You’re writing about it, aren’t you?” he said.

As groups gathered in different areas of downtown St. Paul before the anti-war march began, there was a confrontation between police and a breakaway group of protesters at the intersection of Seventh and Minnesota streets in downtown St. Paul.

Police attempted to direct the crowd up Seventh Street, and protesters attempted to push through police barricades heading down Minnesota.

Shoving ensued, and police discharged a pepper-spray-like substance into the crowd, and held the intersection.

The crowd paused and played music and danced in front of cops, while those who were hit with pepper spray laid down on sidewalks and had their eyes flushed. At least one member of the press was also hit.

Police pushed the crowd up West Seventh armed in riot gear carrying sticks.

As a group of marchers passed the Dorothy Day Center near Seventh Street and Main, they formed a “pit” and began dancing in front of the Center.

When protesters arrived at the main protest area near the Dorothy Day Center, they were met with supporters of the war in Iraq, who carried “Victory Over Terrorism” signs.

The counter-protest was led by Joe Repya, a 62-year-old retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and RNC delegate who volunteered for active duty at age 58.

There were some verbal confrontations, but for the most part the mood of the crowd remained buoyant, dancing to music blasting from a portable speaker.

“They were throwing a lot of words at us,” Repya said. “Nothing I’d repeat in front of female company.”

Protesters wore a variety of garb, from colorful, almost clownish outfits to black bandanas over their faces. Cops wore gas masks and moved down Seventh Street on bikes and horses to push the crowd forward before the breakaway group separated into smaller groups and spread throughout downtown, often running.

Some protesters let out the air in government vehicles, and police seemed to allow them to roam.

Joe, a member of D.C. Students for a Democratic Society, was a part of the breakaway group, which seemed to be led by an impromptu dance and protest organization called “Funk the War.”

“They’ve disrupted the lives of so many people, Iraqis, New Orleaners, they didn’t help them. The least we could do is disrupt their day for a couple of hours,” said Joe, who declined to give his last name.

“The cops are being very aggressive,” he added. “Hopefully, they’ll let us keep practicing our free speech.”

Marcus Washington, a freelance videographer wearing a “Media” badge, said cops sprayed him with pepper spray twice at Seventh and Minnesota streets.

“I grabbed my press pass, a walked forward with my camera toward police just to film them and they maced me,” said Washington, shirtless and whose face was streaked with a liquid used to flush the pepper spray. “I got delerious and blind and fell over. … It’s still burning because I shaved my head and I have tattoos.”

On Seventh Street near Main, eleven local citizens, clad in bright yellow bibs, assembled themselves with a goal of preventing violence by inserting themselves between cops and protesters. They were mostly middle-aged adults and they talked with authorities to let them know their purpose. They wore armbands that say: “I will not hurt you.”

There was a report of tear gas being sprayed into the crowd at Seventh Street and Cedar.

At Eleventh Street and Minnesota, a group of 30 – 40 people, one of whom said they “are with a group of fellow citizens of America practicing Democracy,” wandered in front of cars driving on the street in what appeared to be an attempt to disrupt traffic. About 50 riot police followed the group as it continued to move toward the Capitol.

Reporters witnessed members of the group slash the tires of a FOX news van and let air out of the tires of government mini-vans.

The same group of about 100 people wearing black formed a blockade at Sixth and Cedar streets and overturned traffic routing signs and newspaper boxes and threw them across the road. Traffic is blocked on many downtown streets.

About 2,000 protesters waved peace sign flags and rallied at the state Capitol ahead of the march to the site of the Republican National Convention. Hundreds of police wearing bulletproof vests and carrying batons stood by.

The crowd was far short of the 50,000 that organizers had hoped to attract, but officers in riot gear were stationed along the route of the march to Xcel Energy Center. Police initially estimated the crowd at 10,000, but then revised it sharply downward an hour later.

An anarchist group known as the RNC Welcoming Committee had worked for months on strategies to disrupt the convention. Despite preemptive police searches over the weekend that resulted in six arrests, the group issued a statement Monday saying it was “moving forward with a national call to crash the convention.”

The group was not formally involved in Monday’s march, which was organized by a coalition of antiwar groups.

Police said they were prepared for anything.

“We will not tolerate lawlessness in the city of St. Paul,” St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said. “If you come here to throw rocks, if you come here to throw Molotov cocktails … we will stop you.”

At the rally, speaker after speaker called for an immediate end to the war and more spending on domestic needs, such as providing health care and fixing crumbling bridges.

At the capitol, a group of 200 or so college-age people holding a banner that read “Students for a Democratic Society” began walking the route before the set time of the march. Many wore bandanas around their faces, bracing for the possibility that police would use tear gas.

They soon stopped in front of a couple dozen counter-protesters who were holding signs that read “Victory over terrorism.” The students played the song “Like a Virgin” and performed the “Electric Slide” dance in front of the counter-protesters.

Immigrants, labor groups, veterans, student groups and others gathered for the rally, which was to walk about a mile and a half from the Capitol to the site of the convention and back.

At the rally, a 25-foot-long ice sculpture rose 3 feet in the air and spelled “Democracy.” Some protesters flew kites, waved American and peace-sign flags and carried homemade anti-war signs.

Peace activist Steve Clemens, 47, from Minneapolis said he was disturbed by the number of police.

“But we can’t control that,” said Clemens, who had already been arrested once _ for crossing into a restricted area during a march Sunday.

Alan Rybak, a real estate agent from Lakeville, Minn., stood along the protest route carrying a sign that read “Support Our Troops.”

“I’m here to support our troops and to tell (protesters) to get a job and go home,” said Rybak, a Republican Party activist.

Monday’s larger rally went ahead even as the GOP curtailed the day’s official activities because of Hurricane Gustav.

Police executed a series of raids in the days leading up to the march. One of the six arrested over the weekend on probable cause of conspiracy to commit a riot was released Sunday, according to attorney Bruce Nestor. No charges were filed against the woman, 23-year-old Monica Bicking. The other five remained jailed, possibly until Wednesday, Nestor said.

In the raids, police seized materials including knives, axes, bomb-making materials, maps and anti-war literature.

One man was briefly detained by police Monday morning after a smaller march by about 100 veterans opposed to the Iraq war. Wes Davey, 59, a retired first sergeant from St. Paul, said he was willing to be arrested for his cause. Police first said Davey had been arrested, but spokesman Pete Crum later said he wasn’t.

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested by the Minneapolis Police Department. Charged with conspiracy to riot. Footage from Rick Rowley and Brandon Jourdan.

ST. PAUL — Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.

All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.

On Tuesday, Democracy Now! will broadcast video of these arrests, as well as the broader police action. These will also be available on: www.democracynow.org.

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were arrested on suspicion of rioting, a felony. While the three have been released, they all still face charges stemming from their unlawful arrest. Kouddous and Salazar face pending charges of suspicion of felony riot, while Goodman has been officially charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a “peace officer.”

Democracy Now! forcefully rejects all of these charges as false and an attempt at intimidation of these journalists. We demand that the charges be immediately and completely dropped.

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities’ law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a photographer for the Associated Press.

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism’s top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and the subsequent criminal charges and threat of charges are a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists.

Britain has failed in its duty to stop the US from committing “shameful acts” in the treatment of suspects detained during the war on terror, one of America’s most respected intellectuals Noam Chomsky warns.
 
In an interview with The Independent, Professor Chomsky calls on the government to use its special relationship with Washington to secure the closure of Guantanamo Bay.
 
The emeritus professor of linguistics said that he has heard only “twitters of protest” in the UK asking British “thinkers” to be more conspicuous in their opposition to the erosion of civil rights since the 9.11 attacks on the US.
 
In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, Prof Chomsky, a leading opponent of the Vietnam conflict, has been the most prominent among US intellectuals critical of the war with the Iraq and the treatment of terror suspects sent to Guantanamo Bay and other prison camps around the world.
 
Chomsky’s comments call into question Britain’s political and intellectual will to stand up for the rule of law in the face of actions that have been repeatedly condemned by courts on both sides of the Atlantic.
 
“A country,” says Chomsky, “with any shred of self-respect will be vigilant to ensure that it does not take part in this criminal savagery. Because of the “special relationship,” Britain has a particularly strong responsibility to bar these shameful crimes in any way it can. In whatever respect the relationship is “special”, the UK can use it to bar these shameful crimes.”
 
Asked whether Britain should be doing more to seek the closure of the Guantanamo Bay, Chomsky answered: “Definitely. I’ve seen only twitters of protest.”
 
Professor Chomsky believes that the case against Guantanamo needs to be made more forcefully.
 
“We hardly needed evidence that Gitmo was going to be a torture chamber,” clarifies Chomsky. “Otherwise, why not place “enemy combatants” in a prison in New York? The security argument is not serious. Taking a step back, does the US have the right to hold these prisoners at all? Hardly obvious. In brief, there are plenty of grounds for protest (and action), at varying levels of depth.”
 
His comments have met with broad support from those who have been campaigning for the British government to take a more critical position in its relationship with the Bush administration.
 
Clive Stafford Smith, the lawyer representing British Guantanamo detainee, Binyam Mohamed, said: “Professor Chomsky is right. To borrow from President Clinton, the world is much more impressed by the power of America’s example than the example of American power…A true friend to American would not stand by while President Bush squanders America’s birthright.”
 
Andrew Tyrie MP, chairman of the all party parliamentary group on rendition, said: “The UK Government’s reaction to the US program of rendition: a policy of kidnapping people and taking them to places where they may be tortured, has been inadequate, to say the least. It is scarcely credible that now, despite all we know about rendition and the UK’s involvement in it, the British Government still refuses to condemn this illegal, immoral, and counterproductive policy.”
 
Professor Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog, says that the US must now hand Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba.
 
“The region was taken by a ‘treaty’ that Cuba was forced to sign under military occupation. The US has been violating the terms of this outrageous treaty for decades – e.g., using it for holding Haitians who were illegally captured when they were feeling terror in Haiti. Current use also radically violates the terms of the outrageous treaty. ”
 
Rise of the libertarian socialist
Noam Chomsky, 79, rose to prominence in the field of linguistics during the 1950s by positing new theories on the structures of language. His naturalistic approach to the study of linguistics deeply influenced thinking in both psychology and philosophy. But it was his strident opposition to the Vietnam War which brought him to the attention of a wider American public.
 
Through his adherence to libertarian socialism he became a cheerleader for the dissident left in opposition to many aspects of US foreign policy. Later he described his belief as “the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society”.
 
Professor Chomsky, who lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, has been an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and the “war on terror”. In 2005 he was voted the leading living public intellectual in the Global Intellectuals Poll run by the magazine Prospect. His characteristic reaction to the news of his achievement was: “I don’t pay a lot of attention to polls.”

The Pentagon: Some-Things-Never-Change Department

Tomgram | What a difference four and a half years makes. When I first penned “The Wild Weapons of DARPA,” in March 2004, I was a new TomDispatch writer; the war in Iraq was not yet a year old; the war in Afghanistan had been bubbling for less than two and a half years, and I suggested that “what’s left of the USSR is a collapsed group of half-failed states, while the U.S. stands alone as the globe’s sole hyperpower.” Today, I’m the long-time associate editor of TomDispatch.com; the United States, now far from a “hyperpower,” continues to be bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan with no end in sight in either occupation; and a resurgent Russia, now an energy superpower, has only recently invaded the hardly-failed state of Georgia.

Similarly, at that time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s blue-skies research outfit, still looked young and vigorous. Today, DARPA is beginning to show the stresses of age. The agency turned 50 this year and, as Sharon Weinberger reported at Wired Magazine’s Danger Room last month, “its birthday present appears to be another $100 million in budget cuts, according to a Defense Department document… ” — and this was on top of a $32 million loss the month before.

Still, much remains the same. Despite current budget cuts, the agency is still “both intellectually and financially, a fabulous and alluring gravy train,” and its funding for the life sciences still offers “a fertile area to further the science of death and destruction.” For example, back in 2004, I wrote that “DARPA has been creating insect databases while increasing efforts to ‘understand how to use endemic insects as collectors of environmental information,'” and I asked: “How long until they start thinking about weaponizing insects as well?” Earlier this year, I answered my own question. Not long was the reply. I reported that DARPA was now working to create cyborg insects for surveillance purposes, and — an even more frightening prospect — “that such creatures could be weaponized, and the possibility, according to one scientist intimately familiar with the project, that these cyborg insects might be armed with ‘bio weapons.'”

I wish I could claim some special prescience, but that prediction was a total no-brainer. After all, this is just the way the Pentagon operates, whatever changes or budget cuts come down the pike. Four years later, plenty of people have written about various DARPA projects, but most still fail to ask the most salient question: Why does the U.S. government foster unfettered, blue-skies creativity only in the context of lethal technologies (or those that, indirectly, enhance lethality by aiding the functioning of the armed forces)? Some things never change. Nick Turse, August, 2008

The Wild Weapons of DARPA
By Nick Turse

When, in October 1957, the USSR launched the first man-made earth satellite, the basketball-sized Sputnik, it caught the United States off guard and sent the government into fits. Not only had the Soviets exploded an atomic bomb years before the Americans predicted they would, but now they were leading the “space race.” In response, the Defense Department approved funding for a new U.S. satellite project, headed by former Nazi SS officer Wernher von Braun, and created, in 1958, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to make certain that the United States forever after maintained “a lead in applying state-of-the-art technology for military capabilities and to prevent technological surprise from her adversaries.”

Almost half a century later, what’s left of the USSR is a collapsed group of half-failed states, while the U.S. stands alone as the globe’s sole hyperpower. Yet DARPA, the agency for an arms-race world, seems only to be warming up to the chase. There may be no country left to take the lead from us, the nearest military competitor being China which reportedly had $65 billion in military expenditures in 2002 (compared to our $466 billion according to GlobalSecurity.org) and which, only in 2003, put its first “Taikonaut” into outer space. Undaunted, DARPA continues to develop high-tech weapons systems for 2025-2050 and beyond — some of them standard fare like your run-of-the-mill hypersonic bombers, others more exotic.

In an August 2003 article, Los Angeles Times reporter Charles Piller noted that DARPA has put forth some of the “most boneheaded ideas ever to spring from the government” — including a “mechanical elephant” that never made it into the jungles of Vietnam and telepathy research that never quite afforded the U.S. the ability to engage in psychic spying.

As former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld noted in 1975, “When we fail, we fail big.” Little has changed. According to DARPA’s current chief, some 85%-90% of its projects fail to meet their full objectives. Still, Piller points out, DARPA “has been behind some of the world’s most revolutionary inventions” — “the Internet, the global positioning system, stealth technology and the computer mouse.”

DARPA’s spectacular failure rate and noteworthy successes stem from its high-risk ventures. For years DARPA has funded extremely unconventional, sometimes beyond-the-pale, avant-garde research in all realms of science and technology. It is, perhaps, the most creative place in our vast government for a scientist who wants to stretch his or her mind in adventurous directions and be well paid to do so. If you have a wild idea, DARPA’s the place to try it out. Said Harvard University pathologist Donald Ingber in a 2001 Los Angeles Times article, “DARPA [has] funded things that a lot of people thought were ridiculous, and some that people thought were impossible. They make things happen.”

There’s only one caveat — in one way or another most every project, however mind-stretching, invariably must end, directly or indirectly, in the incapacitation or death of future American enemies.

The projects are often some of the most lethal ever conceived. Over the years, DARPA research has led to a plethora of products designed to maim and kill, among them the M-16 rifle, Hellfire-missile-equipped Predator drones, stealth fighters and bombers, surface-to-surface artillery rocket systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-52 bomber upgrades, Titan missiles, Javelin portable “fire and forget” guided missiles, and cannon-launched Copperhead guided projectiles, to name but a few.

A question seldom asked is why pie-in-the-sky creativity exists unfettered and fostered only in the context of lethal technologies? As the U.S. continues its mad dash into a post-Cold War, one-nation arms race, fears of a missile gap or the menace of a technologically advanced foreign foe drop away as explanations; nor can it just be a generalized fear of falling behind the rest of the world. Look at the state of education in America — in 2002 the U.S. ranked 18th in UNICEF’s list of teenagers in 24 industrialized countries falling below international academic benchmarks. Despite the poor showing, no one is rushing to set up an Advanced Education Research Agency.

According to the CIA’s annually-published World Factbook, “the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels,” yet the Environmental Protection Agency’s “National Center for Environmental Innovation” is a far cry from a DARPA-like entity. It doled out a mere $737,500 in seven state-innovation grants in 2003. DARPA, by comparison, spent about $3 billion on some 200 projects that ranged from space weapons to unmanned aerial vehicles. But just because the government isn’t pouring money into the projects of scientists eager to attack environmental problems doesn’t mean environmental research is of no interest to it. Quite the opposite. DARPA has taken up the torch and is funding a rigorous research program aimed at finding novel ways to weaponize the natural world.

As evidenced by their Vietnam-era mechanical elephant project and a recent grant to researchers developing a robotic canine called “Big Dog” for the Army, DARPA might be said to have something of an animal fetish, reflected perhaps in various projects whose very names evoke the ethos of the wild kingdom. Among them:

WolfPack, a group (pack) of miniaturized, unattended ground sensors that are meant to work together in detecting, identifying and jamming enemy communications;

Piranha, a project to “enable submarines to engage elusive maneuvering land and sea targets”; and

Hummingbird Warrior, a program to produce a helicopter-like vertical take-off and landing unmanned air vehicle (UAV).

The agency also embraces the imagery of the natural environment in its “Organic Air Vehicles in the Trees” project, which sounds downright “green,” though it’s actually a tiny UAV that will fly in the forests, over hills and through cities searching for enemies.

Allusions to the natural world, however, are the least of it. While the military is well-versed in employing all sorts of creatures to do its bidding, from Army guard dogs to Navy dolphins used for locating sea mines, DARPA is keen on branching out from class Mammalia. One way is through its “Bio-Revolution” program which seeks to “harness the insights and power of biology to make U.S. warfighters and their equipment… more effective.”

Willard and His Wild Pals

Killer Bees
After all those years of warnings about sinister African killer bees inexorably heading toward the U.S., DARPA decided to draft bees into military service. In 2002, projects examining the performance of honeybees trained to detect explosives and locate other “odors of interest” were launched. Since then, DARPA has been creating insect databases while increasing efforts to “understand how to use endemic insects as collectors of environmental information.” DARPA says it has already tested “this endemic insect system in key operational demonstrations here and abroad.” How long until they start thinking about weaponizing insects as well? Instead of your plain old, garden variety Stinger missiles, you could have a swarm of missile stingers.

Fly Boys
At the University of Florida, DARPA-sponsored researchers are working on biologically-inspired “eyes” patterned after those of flies. “We think we can use this concept to make smart weapons smarter,” says professor of materials science and engineering Paul Holloway, the project’s lead researcher. It’s a safe bet that a new set of eyes would help, since the current crop of smart weapons couldn’t get much dumber! Despite the pronouncements of U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Timothy Keating who, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, bragged of a military “plan that… reduces to an absolute minimum, if not eliminates, noncombatant casualties,” nothing proved further from the case. While 68% of munitions used in Operation Iraqi Freedom were precision-guided, as opposed to only 6.5% in the 1991 Gulf War, the ratio of civilian to military deaths turned out to be almost twice as high this time around, according to Carl Conetta of the Massachusetts-based think-tank, Project on Defense Alternatives. Are fly eyes the answer? Perhaps… at least until some rogue state develops a fly-paper missile defense shield.

Little Shop of Horrors
In July 2003, DARPA held a workshop to “help researchers in various disciplines self-assemble into teams capable of developing plant inspired actuation systems that will ultimately have application in military adaptive or morphing structures.” What’s on the horizon then? Giant Venus flytrap-inspired fighting vehicles? A brigade of Swamp-Thing warriors?

(Octo)Pie in the sky camouflage
According to the agency’s 2003 strategic plan, “DARPA-supported researchers are studying how geckos climb walls and how an octopus hides to find new approaches to locomotion and highly adaptive camouflage. The idea is to let nature be a guide toward better engineering.” Imagine the ink-squirting, suction-cup-covered frogman of the future!

Remote-Control Robo-Rats
In 2002, DARPA researchers demonstrated that they could remotely control the movements of a rat with electrodes implanted into its brain using a laptop computer. In 2003 and 2004, DARPA’s “Robolife” program researchers will turn their attention to the “performance of rats, birds and insects in performing missions of interest to DoD, such as exploration of caves or covert deposition of sensors.” Militarizing the animal world, however, carries its own risks. Take World War II’s Project X-Ray in which bats with incendiary explosives strapped to their bodies turned on their military masters and set fire to a U.S. Army airfield. Just imagine what an army of Army rats might do! Anybody remember Willard?

The Wildest of Apes

When Captain America throws his mighty shield…
Perhaps the most frightening of DARPA’s weaponized science projects are those that deal with militarily enhancing that most violent of apes — man. In its 2003 strategic plan, DARPA touted the “Enhanced Human Performance” component of its “Bio-Revolution” program whose aim is to prevent humans from “becoming the weakest link in the U.S. military.” Lest rats, bees, and trees become the dominant warriors, Enhanced Human Performance will “exploit the life sciences to make the individual warfighter stronger, more alert, more endurant, and better able to heal.” Yes, what now captivates DARPA researchers once captivated comic-book readers — the dream of creating a real-life Captain America, that weakling-turned-Axis-smashing-super-patriot by way of “super soldier serum.”

Just Say “No” to No Doze, but “Yes” to Endless Combat
The U.S. military has long plied its fighting men with uppers. In Vietnam, medics sated soldiers’ need for speed by doling out government-issue amphetamines. In 2002, U.S. pilots under the influence of Air Force “go-pills” (which Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Jennifer Ferrau calls a “fatigue management tool”) killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight others when they dropped a laser-guided bomb on a Canadian military training exercise in Afghanistan. Today, DARPA’s Continuous Assisted Performance (CAP) program is aimed at creating a 24/7 trooper by “investigating ways to prevent fatigue and enable soldiers to stay awake, alert, and effective for up to seven days straight without suffering any deleterious mental or physical effects and without using any of the current generation of stimulants.”

This is your brain on DARPA…any questions?
DARPA researchers are also at work on the “Brain Machine Interface” (“neuromics”) project, designed as a mind/machine interface, allowing mechanical devices to be controlled via thought-power. Thus far, researchers have taught a monkey to move a computer mouse and a telerobotic arm simply by thinking about it. With arrays of up to 96 electrodes implanted in their brains, the animals are able to reach for food with a robotic arm. Researchers even transmitted the signals over the internet, allowing remote control of a robotic arm 600 miles away. In the future they hope to develop a “non-invasive interface” for human use. Says DARPA, “The long-term Defense implications of finding ways to turn thoughts into acts, if it can be developed, are enormous: imagine U.S. warfighters that only need use the power of their thoughts to do things at great distances.” For years, the U.S. military has been improving its ability to reach out and kill someone. What’s the mantra of the future? Maybe, if you think it, they will die.

Life (and Death) Sciences

Leonard J. Buckley, a program manager in materials chemistry at DARPA’s Defense Science Office, has said, in regard to insect-inspired optics research, “Inspiration from nature…will allow more life-like qualities in the system.” And, says DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker, “We’re interested in investigating biological organisms because they have evolved over many, many years to be particularly good at surviving in the environment… and we hope to learn from some of those strategies that Mother Nature has developed.”

Poor Mother Nature! What hope has she when faced with an over $400 billion dollar defense budget? What can she do when the most powerful impetus for free-thinking scientists to consider her lies in the urge to weaponize her offspring? Under DARPA, the life sciences have become a fertile area to further the science of death and destruction in an effort, in the words of the DARPA Defense Sciences Office, to overcome the “Frailties of Life” to achieve “Super Physiological Performance.” How wonderfully Nietzschean!

Such is the state of government-sponsored innovation in our land. If you’re a researcher in crucial fields and want the time, funding, and latitude to be creative, your work must benefit the Pentagon in its race to make sure that the next Saddam can be, in the words of Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, “caught like a rat” by Capt. Ben Willard of the Army’s rat patrol.

Other than finding new ways of circumventing international law (e.g. bypassing violations of national airspace with space-launched weapons), which the U.S. already does quite well with current technology, or the mountain climber’s mantra “because it’s there,” it’s hard to fathom why the government is still locked in a Cold War-style arms race in a single hyperpower world. The only explanation available lies in the driving will of the ever-expanding military-industrial complex, first named by President Eisenhower back in 1961. This would certainly help explain why we have no educational or environmental DARPAs. For today’s researchers, DARPA is, both intellectually and financially, a fabulous and alluring gravy train, the only agency that puts real money into and rewards creative and maverick thinking. The freedom to dream and create, DARPA’s mandate, is seductive and exceptional and, as such, so dangerous that we have to ask ourselves whether war-making isn’t now America’s most advanced product.

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Adbusters, the Nation, and regularly for Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

Fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for.

By Laurence W. Britt | The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm.

 We are two-and-a-half generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, although constant reminders jog the consciousness. German and Italian fascism form the historical models that define this twisted political worldview. Although they no longer exist, this worldview and the characteristics of these models have been imitated by protofascist1 regimes at various times in the twentieth century. Both the original German and Italian models and the later protofascist regimes show remarkably similar characteristics. Although many scholars question any direct connection among these regimes, few can dispute their visual similarities.

 Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi. This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances.

 For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

 Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.

   1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

   2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

    3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame forfailures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice–relentless propaganda and disinformation–were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and“terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

   4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

   5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.

    6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

    7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

   8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.

    9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

   10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

   11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

   12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

   13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

   14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating an disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.

 Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not.
 

“When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.” – Huey Long

                                Notes:

 1. Defined as a “political movement or regime tending toward or imitating Fascism”–Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.

                                References

                                Andrews, Kevin. Greece in the Dark. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1980.
                                Chabod, Frederico. A History of Italian Fascism. London: Weidenfeld, 1963.
                                Cooper, Marc. Pinochet and Me. New York: Verso, 2001.
                                Cornwell, John. Hitler as Pope. New York: Viking, 1999.
                                de Figuerio, Antonio. Portugal–Fifty Years of Dictatorship.
                                    New York:Holmes& Meier, 1976.
                                Eatwell, Roger. Fascism, A History. New York: Penguin, 1995.
                                Fest, Joachim C. The Face of the Third Reich. New York: Pantheon, 1970.
                                Gallo, Max. Mussolini’s Italy. New York: MacMillan, 1973.
                                Kershaw, Ian. Hitler (two volumes). New York: Norton, 1999.
                                Laqueur, Walter. Fascism, Past, Present, and Future. New York: Oxford, 1996.
                                Papandreau, Andreas. Democracy at Gunpoint. New York: Penguin Books, 1971.
                                Phillips, Peter. Censored 2001: 25 Years of Censored News. New York: Seven
                                Stories. 2001.
                                Sharp, M.E. Indonesia Beyond Suharto. Armonk, 1999.
                                Verdugo, Patricia. Chile, Pinochet, and the Caravan of Death. Coral Gables,
                                Florida: North-South Center Press, 2001.
                              Yglesias, Jose. The Franco Years. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977.

Copyright: Free Inquiry Magazine

By Ruth Conniff | If the all-too-familiar sight of a slightly paunchy Joe Biden jogging to the podium, his white comb-over waving gently in the breeze (think “energy!”) to accept the job as Barack Obama’s Vice Presidential pick wasn’t enough to give you pause, there was the Bidenesque speech that followed. The “change” campaign is now co-chaired by one of the longest serving members of the Senate, who voted for the Iraq war (though he later repented), and who has a hesitant, ponderous style that doesn’t exactly accentuate the new-generation excitement of the Obama campaign.

Obama picked Biden for obvious reasons. Chief among them is the fear of looking weak on foreign policy. He now has an older white guy straight out of the Washington establishment–chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, three decades in the Senate–to back him up. He is also making an obvious play for the ever-elusive white, working class voters who started going Republican in the Reagan era. The Democrats have been trying to recapture them every since. Hence Biden’s heavy use of the words “Scranton” “Irish Catholic” and “kitchen table.” Maybe Biden will reassure these skittish voters. Stranger things have happened. (See Hillary Clinton’s transformation into a working class hero during the everlasting primary season).

But there are dangers in the Biden selection, too. It is, first of all, a defensive choice. Instead of leaning forward with a Tim Kaine, who redoubles Obama’s youth appeal, or a Wes Clark, who is willing to attack McCain by aiming, point blank, at the heart of his campaign–questioning whether his POW experience means he is entitled to sit in the White House–Obama chose someone he can throw in front critics who suggest that he is unready to deal with a foreign policy or national security crisis. Being on the defensive keep the “unready” charge alive. And the contrast between Biden and Obama does not favor Obama. When, in his speech, Biden talked about how amazing it was to see Obama arrive in the Senate and do “historic” work, “reaching across the aisle” to pass ethics reform, it mainly served to remind the audience what a short time Obama has spent there. To say he has accomplished a lot , legislatively, is a pretty big stretch.

Today, as the Democratic Convention begins, the party is making its traditional pitch to voters to suspend their disbelief. It began with an appeal emailed to supporters asking for small donations. There is a snazzy video clip of the nominee and his running mate talking about the small-donor revolution. The campaign, Biden says in the video, “is accountable only to the people.” Pay no attention to those corporate sky boxes.

The candidates look good together standing in front of matching American flags in their dark suits–Obama in a red tie and Biden in a blue one. As they talk in turns, nodding, arms folded, reinforcing each other on the importance of “change” and fighting the Republicans’ “Rove playbook” they seem to have their message together. “Change” is still the theme song. But the tone, as the convention pageant begins, is a little more somber.

A group of 52 local activists today announced a $2 million settlement in their lawsuit against the City of New York. The activists were illegally arrested on April 7, 2003 while protesting against the Iraq war in front of a military contractor’s offices in midtown. The settlement in Kunstler et al v. New York City follows the dismissal in 2003 of all criminal charges brought against these individuals and four costly years of delays by the City in negotiating an end to the civil lawsuit.

“The New York Police Department violated core constitutional rights when it arrested a group of peaceful demonstrators who were lawfully protesting against the commencement of the Iraq war and those who stood to profit from it,” notes Sarah Netburn, attorney with Emery Celli Brinkerhoff Abady LLP, which handled the civil rights case along with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “We are gratified by the City’s decision to compensate these individuals whose targeted arrests were without probable cause and intended to quell future protest in New York City. This lawsuit, and this settlement, vindicates our clients’ rights to assemble and speak their mind free from the fear that they will be punished for their views.”

Attorneys and plaintiffs noted, however, that the City’s decision to drag the case out is part of a long and disturbing pattern by which it attempts to “wear down” plaintiffs to avoid political damage, even at huge expense of tax dollars and City resources. “My question is, why did the NYPD send over 100 police in riot gear, along with vehicles to block the street and disrupt the flow of morning rush hour traffic, all to stop a legal, peaceful protest, when there are far more important matters they could be pursuing? And, why did they fight us in court so doggedly when they knew the evidence proved that we were arrested without any police orders to leave?” asked Ahmad Shirazi, a film editor and grandfather and one of the plaintiffs in the case.

An NYPD videotape of the demonstration depicts a group of demonstrators lined along the sidewalk of West 56th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues — with ample space for pedestrians — who were arrested without any police warning or opportunity to leave. The police arrested 94 people that day.

The arrests took place outside the offices of the Carlyle Group, an investment firm with ties to the Bush family and an extensive portfolio of holdings in the military-defense sector. The police tactics used that day became the model used by the NYPD during the 2004 Republican National Convention held in New York.

At that event, thousands of activists were illegally arrested, jailed and mistreated. Lawsuits related to the police conduct at the RNC are still winding their way through the courts. NYPD officials are now consulting with police departments in Denver and Minneapolis on their plans for the 2008 Democratic and Republican Conventions.

“We hope our victory helps convince the City to stop violating people’s rights as a matter of policy and stop wasting taxpayers’ money doing so,” said Sarah Kunstler, an attorney and filmmaker who is the daughter of the late William Kunstler, noted attorney and civil rights champion. Ms. Kunstler was acquitted after a trial of all criminal charges brought against her. “It should also serve as a reminder that Washington’s illegal war in Afghanistan and Iraq is also being fought at home — against its own citizens and in the name of war profiteers like Carlyle and Halliburton. We intend to continue our resistance until this stops.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. For more information on CCR’s work visit our website at www.ccrjustice.org.

PR Watch | The Center for Union Facts, one of lobbyist Rick Berman‘s front groups, is railing against the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would “allow employees at a work place to unionize as soon as a majority signs cards expressing support to join a union.” Labor rights advocates say the bill is needed, because of employer intimidation and union-busting tactics. Berman’s Center, as the “Employee Freedom Action Committee,” says the bill would allow “union bosses” to “stand over workers’ shoulders and use coercion.”

It’s launched a $30 million campaign, including radio, television, print and online ads and “a substantial grassroots organizing effort.” The “Coalition for a Democratic Workplace,” which is comprised of “virtually hundreds of businesses, chambers of commerce and trade associations,” is also spending millions to defeat the bill. Both groups are targeting Senators “in what they see as key states,” including Maine and New Hampshire. The bill has passed the House and is before the Senate. “The folks behind the ad campaign fear that if Sen. Barack Obama, an Employee Free Choice Act sponsor, is elected president and power shifts to the Democrats in the Senate, the bill will become law.”

By Phil Mattera | In April, I wrote about the efforts of my son Thomas and other students at the University of North Carolina to get UNC’s administration to endorse the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), an initiative that seeks to improve the abysmal working conditions of employees at companies that produce university logo apparel–a big business for schools such as Carolina.

After pressing the matter for many months without getting a response, UNC student activists launched a sit-in this spring at the building containing the office of Chancellor James Moeser. The hope was that Moeser, who was planning to leave UNC, would resolve the DSP issue before departing. The administration tolerated the occupation (with certain ground rules) but dragged its feet on the supplier issue. Finally, on May 2, after the sit-in had continued for 16 days, Moeser announced he would not act on the DSP. This prompted students to occupy his personal office. After police arrived and arrested one activist, most of the protesters left. Those who remained, including Thomas, were eventually arrested and charged with “failure to disperse.” Salma Mirza, the only one who went limp when taken into custody, was also charged with resisting arrest.

Yesterday, the five anti-sweatshop activists had their day in court in Chapel Hill. The charges, all misdemeanors, were heard in Orange County District Court right across from campus on Franklin Street, the main student shopping strip and the place where UNC fans celebrate major basketball victories. District Court normally deals with mundane matters such as traffic violations, so it caused a stir when the five defendants, all wearing blue t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Justice for All Workers,” showed up with their pro bono legal team–led by veteran civil rights lawyer Al McSurely–and supporters who filled the gallery.

The defendants’ plea of not guilty was followed by a three-hour trial presided over by Judge Pat Devine without a jury. The prosecution’s case consisted of the testimony of four police officers and a video of the arrests. As his first defense witness, McSurely called on Mirza, who started to give a detailed description of the sweatshop problem and the campaign to get universities to sign on to the DSP (around 45 have done so). When the prosecution objected, Judge Devine refused to rule the background testimony irrelevant but said that no more than five minutes could be devoted to it. In doing so, the judge made it clear she was taking it for granted that the students were justified in arguing that supplier factories were abusive and that the UNC administration was complicit. The administration, though not a party to the case and not represented at the trial, was in effect being found guilty of enabling worker exploitation.

McSurely’s other objective was to have the charges against the five students dismissed. He sought to do this in several ways: he argued that the exact charge of “failure to disperse” was inappropriate in the circumstances; he elicited testimony from the students that they had never heard a final warning that they would be subject to arrest if they did not leave the chancellor’s office; he had Linda Gomaa, the first to be arrested, testify that she was taken into custody before any kind of warning was given; and he argued that Mirza’s behavior did not constitute resisting arrest.

McSurely also presented a necessity defense, arguing that even if the students technically broke the law, they should be found not guilty because their actions were in pursuit of a higher good. This was buttressed, for example, by the testimony of defendant Tim Stallmann that the university had previously improved the working conditions of the campus housekeeping staff after students staged protests and engaged in civil disobedience.

Judge Devine did not accept any of those arguments. She concluded that the defendants knew they were crossing a line when they moved the sit-in to the the chancellor’s office; that the police adequately warned the students they would be arrested if they didn’t leave the premises; and that Mirza’s behavior constituted resisting arrest. She also rejected the necessity defense, agreeing with the prosecutor that there was insufficient “nexus” between the actions of the students and the ending of worker exploitation.

The judge, however, made it clear she had enormous respect for the five students, each of whom had been called by McSurely to testify about their commitment to social and economic justice. Sarah Hirsch, for example, described her work with Witness for Peace, and Thomas mentioned that he had just completed a ten-week program with a non-profit called Bike and Build, during which he and others cycled across the country and worked on Habit for Humanity-type housing projects along the way.

After the prosecutor indicated the state was not seeking harsh penalties, Judge Devine in effect imposed no sentences at all. Instead, she entered a “prayer for judgment continued,” a procedure–unique to North and South Carolina, it seems–in which there is a finding of guilt but no formal conviction is entered on the defendant’s record.

All parties got what they wanted. The prosecutor got a finding of guilt, the police were vindicated in their actions, and the students got an opportunity to highlight the sweatshop issue in court and ended up with the mildest possible adverse ruling. The only real loser was the UNC administration, whose intransigence on the DSP issue emerged from the trial looking even more unreasonable.