What really happened at Occupy Oakland on Saturday January 28
A firsthand account

For the internet, here’s a first-hand account of Occupy Oakland on 1/28/2012, because the news never tells the full story. I’ll tell you about the street battle, the 300+ arrests, the vandalism, the flag burning, all in the context of my experience today. This is deeper than the headlines. No major news source can do that for you.

The stated goal for the day was to “move-in” to a large, abandoned, building to turn it into a social and political center. It is a long vacant convention center – the only people ever near there are the homeless who use the space outside the building as a bed. The building occupation also draws attention to the large number of abandoned and unused buildings in Oakland.

The day started with a rally and a march to the proposed building. The police knew which building was the target, surrounded it, and used highly mobile units to try and divert the protest. After avoiding police lines, the group made it to one side of the building. Now, this is a very large building, and we were on a road with construction fences on both sides, and a large ditch separating us from the cops. The police fired smoke grenades into the crowd as the group neared a small path around the ditch, towards the building. They declared an unlawful assembly, and this is when the crowd broke down the construction fence. A few people broke fences to escape the situation, others because they were pissed. A couple more fences were taken down then necessary, but no valuable equipment was destroyed. They only things broken were fences.

The crowd decided to continue moving, and walked up the block to a more regular street. We decided to turn left up the street, and a police line formed to stop the march. They again declared an unlawful assembly. The protesters challenged the line, marching towards the police with our own shields in front. The shields, some small and black and a few large metal sheets. The police fired tear-gas as the group approached, and shot less-than-lethal rounds at the crowd. The protesters returned one volley of firecrackers, small projectiles, and funny things like balloons. A very weak attack, 3 officers may have been hit by something but none of them got injured. Tear gas forced many people back. The protesters quickly regrouped, and pressed the line again. This time the police opened fire with flash-grenades, tear gas, paint-filled beanbag shotguns, and rubber bullets.

After the police fired heavily on the protesters, they pushed their line forward and made a few arrests. The protesters regrouped down the block and began to march the other way (followed by police), back to Oscar Grant Plaza.

All of this occurred during the day, but it was that street battle that set the tone for the police response later in the evening. After taking a break in Oscar Grant Plaza, feeding everyone and resting, the group headed out for their evening march. Around 5pm, the group took to the street at 14th and Broadway and began a First-amendment sanctioned march around the city. The police response was very aggressive.

About 15 minutes into the march, the police attempted to kettle the protesters. This march was entirely non-violent; nobody threw shit at the cops and an unlawful assembly was never declared. . This is a very important detail. The march was 1000+ strong, conservatively. The police were very mobile, using 25+ rented 10seater vans to bring the ‘troops’ to the march.

For their first attempt at a kettle, the cops charged the group with police lines from the front and back. They ran towards us aggressively. Us being 1000+ peaceful marching protesters. The group was forced to move up a side street. The police moved quickly to surround the entire area; they formed a line on every street that the side street connected to. Police state status: very efficient. They kettled almost the entire protest in the park near the Fox theater. AFTERWARDS, as in after they surrounded everyone, they declared it to be an unlawful assembly BUT OFFERED NO EXIT ROUTE. Gas was used, could of been tear or smoke gas.

The crowd then broke down a fence that was on one side of the kettle, and 1000 people ran across a field escaping a police kettle and embarrassing the entire police force. It was literally a massive jailbreak from a kettle. The group re-took
Telegraph ave. and left the police way behind.

At this point, I was on edge because I knew the police were not fucking around tonight. Because of the incident earlier in the day, I realized they were effectively treating the peaceful march as a riot. There was not rioting, or intentions to riot, just dancing, optimism, hope, and walking. But clearly the police thought differently, and I knew they would try to trap us again without warning. From the moment I saw riot police running towards are march from both directions, I knew the constitution would not apply in Oakland tonight. The police made that very clear. My friends thought differently, thinking that they would not be arrested for marching. They are currently in jail.

The second, and successful, kettle occurred as the protest was headed back up Broadway, at Broadway and 24th. Again, the police appeared quickly in front of the crowd, as well as a line behind the crowd. This time there was no side street. A few people attempted to escape into the YMCA; some mis-infonformed news reports claim that the YMCA got ‘occupied’. Around 300 people were trapped, mostly young people. At this point I had fallen behind the line of riot police in back of the crowd, and when the kettle was sprung I was on the other side of the police line. I have a policy of avoiding arrest, but I feel like I’ve been striped of some dignity. I’ve seen some shit go down in oaktown, but I’ve always avoided arrest because it was easy. Most mass arrests occur when people choose to break the law (like occupying Bank of America in downtown SF and pitching a tent to send a statement to UC Regent Monica Lozano on BofA’s board – respect). At ‘unlawfully assemblies’, people are usually extracted by a quick attack of 5+ cops, and their often ‘targets’ (previously-identified and profiled protesters). If the crowd is too large, they use tear-gas.

Tonight was different. When I fell behind the group, I knew they were going to arrest a very large number of peaceful protesters without declaring an unlawful assembly at the location. And then they did. I thought this shit was reserved for G20′s and WTO meetings. I felt shame for being intimidated away from my rights. ‘Unlawful assemblies’ feel like a boot stomp on the first amendment, but this was like them wiping their ass with the constitution and force feeding it to me.

300+ were arrested, corralled below the YMCA @ 23rd and Broadway. The only announcement that was made was one I’ve never heard before:

“You are under arrest. Submit to your arrest.”

The 300 protesters were then arrested, one by one. They were ziptied and sat in rows while they waited to be processed. OPD set up an entire processing station behind police lines, where they searched and identified every protester. They were slowly loaded onto buses, including local public AC transit buses. This took about 4 or 5 hours.

Outside the police lines, things were still happening. A group that escaped the trap decided to head back to Oscar Grant Plaza. I do not know how, but they opened the front door to city hall and occupied the building. Opened, as in no window smashing. The move was not meant to be an occupation but more of a show of solidarity to the 300 arrested protesters down the street. When all the people being arrested heard the news, they let out a big cheer…

..At this point I ran to Oscar Grant Plaza. When I arrived there were only 8 riot cops guarding the open front door, but more arrived very quickly. No one was inside the building anymore, but many had gathered in the Plaza. Someone burned an American Flag in front of city hall. I’ve seen the same guy do it before; frankly he’s weird and it’s kind of his thing.

One thing to note is the police arrested to wrong part of the protest. Most people arrested were young peaceful types. Aggressive protesters, and anyone with a record, are usually very good at avoiding arrest. Point being, back at the plaza opportunists began their work. I saw some young ‘jugalos’ spray-painting a wall with “jugalos for life” shit and then take photos next to it. They were just young and stupid kids; some good protesters cleaned it up later in the night. Some CBS and FOX news crews forced to leave the scene, with people spanking their van. They had already gotten the footage of someone burning an American Flag in front of city hall, so their work was done. The crowd was angry about what happened, and milling around the plaza and downtown area. At one point, the first of the 9 busloads of protesters drove past 14th and Broadway. People cheered for the ones inside, and chased it down, slamming on the sides of the bus. None of the other buses came past the plaza. There is about 30 police in the immediate area, 20 in front of city hall and 10 near 14th and broadway. Clearly they were stretched thin, and did not expect the city hall incident. Mutual aid been called it; I saw cops from Oakland, Alameda County Sheriff, Pleasanton, and Berkeley.

I walked back down to the 300 arrests in progress to try and get some information or spot my friends, but all I could do was wait and watch from behind the police line. My phone died. Not much happened, a lot of waiting and talking with people who also had friends on the other side. People included one French women who talked about how in France this would never be tolerated, and a teacher of one of Oakland’s 10 schools being closed who was out on his birthday ‘for the kids’. Eventually, I decided I needed to charge my phone, get on the internet, and figure out where and when my friends will be released. Siting down on BART was great after a long day of walking.

I got home and viewed OakfoSho and PunkboyinSf on Ustream to stay posted. OakFoSho filmed the entire arrest from above, I was able to look for my friends from his stream. All props to that guy. I saw that with the new development at Oscar Grant Plaza, they had to call in mutual aid from San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo. They declared the 14th and Broadway an unlawful assembly and slowly dispersed the dwindling crowd. No tear gas this time!

Now that this incident is on-record, I’m gonna get a little sleep, then go pick up my friends from jail.

If you only remember one detail be it this: Tonight’s mass arrest occurred without a dispersal order. No law was broken. The only order given was: “You are under arrest. Submit to your arrest.” 300 peaceful protesters walking down a street were trapped and arrested unlawfully.

A note about police militarization: I saw some big guns and scary gear tonight. Alameda County Sheriff seems to have an endless budget for that shit. But tonight I saw something much scarier, that I’ve never seen before. First, I saw that the police have a printed profile books of protesters. I saw a cop flipping through pictures with descriptions, talking about who on their list they’ve seen today. When resting in Oscar Grant Plaza, a cop was filming the plaza from a rooftop in an adjacent building. They’re always filming, some have cameras on their bodies now, but this was clear spying and sophisticated intelligence gathering and analysis. Second, a very large tank on wheels, with a water cannon on top, rolled on scene. Someone said it was called a “grizzly”, but I can’t find a photo anywhere. help? It was massive, and I stood right next to it before they brought it behind police lines. It was a hardcore, modern urban tank. The police are funded and prepared to use a water cannon on protesters, if need be. Know that.

The thing about Occupy, and especially Occupy Oakland, is it refuses to exclude. We are the 99%, and we mean it. The homeless and disenfranchised were welcome in the camp from day 1. The crime rate in Downtown Oakland went down, and some people finally had a safe place to sleep. Idealistic youth, google techies, students, teachers, parents, children, poor, homeless, workers, all coming together. It rekindled hope for a lot of people. Occupy changed the conversation. The idea is more important than any one protest. An idea cannot be stopped. It is no longer about occupations; instead, it’s about bringing people together. The 99%, all with their own problems and concerns, have brought their collective attention to the root of the forces preventing them from making a better world.

A lot of the people arrested today were my peers…a lot of young people and students. For us, the occupy movement can’t be diminished or co-opted…it’s bigger than occupy. I will seek the changes I marched for tonight until I win or die. It is the task of my generation, worldwide, to return power to the people. Governments around the world are quickly realizing that our generation will not back down. This is bigger than ‘occupy’, this is bigger than one country, one problem, or one protest. The people want their world back. We are fighting for our future, and we are winning.

Edit: Forgot to add this context – The Oakland PD will soon be taken over by the Feds because of their poor conduct and inability to change: http://www.baycitizen.org/policing/story/judge-strips-power-oakland-police/

Original: http://networkedblogs.com/tiQ7f

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Occupy

At the end of November New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg boasted to an audience at MIT that the NYPD (New York City Police Department) infamous for its attempted removal of the original OWS camp was his ‘own personal army’… “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.”

At the end of the month, Occupy Wall Street protesters joined with a group of South Korean activists outside the South Korean mission in New York to rally against the so-called free trade deal between the two countries. South Korean organiser Kim Dong-Kyun said, “The FTA is a trade agreement that benefits the one percent of Korea and the U.S., therefore it will bring pain to the 99 percent of America and the 99 percent of Korea. That is why we are doing this with the Occupy Wall Street people from both countries.”

Students at the University of California, Davis, and other campuses called a general strike In December to protest tuition rises and the brutal misuse of pepper spray in a peaceful protest last month.

• Economy

In November Jefferson County (Alabama) filed the biggest municipal bankruptcy in US history. After failing to refinance its debt of nearly US$4 (£2.6) billion, it becomes the most recent of a trail of other communities unable to continue to operate financially. Ironically, Jefferson County reached its present critical financial position after scheming with Wall Street investors to finance the rebuilding of a broken sewer system using interest rate swaps with JPMorgan.

At the very end of November the governor of the state of Michigan, Rick Snyder, authorised a takeover of the city of Flint by staff whom he picked; he cited a financial emergency. THis makes Flint the fifth Michigan municipality to come under state-appointed management. Former Flint mayor Michael Brown is now the city’s new financial manager.

• Racism

The ‘case’ for war against Iran is slowly but surely being made by the US state. Believing they have a right to go anywhere and do anything to advance the privilege and the power of the North American élite, its figurehead, Obama, was clear when he said in mid-November: “The sanctions have enormous bite and enormous scope. And we’re building off the platform that has already been established. The question is, are there additional measures that we can take? And we’re going to explore every avenue to see if we can solve this issue diplomatically. I have said repeatedly, and I will say it today: We are not taking any options off the table.”

Also in the Middle East, a US Army sergeant, Calvin Gibbs, was convicted in November of leading the ‘kill team’ in Afghanistan which murdered civilians keeping their body parts for sport. Yet, Gibbs avoided an automatic life sentence; he will be eligible for parole after eight years.

In late November Latino voters in Arizona recalled (removed from office by vote) one of those responsible for that state’s anti-immigration law, Russell Pearce. He’s the first Arizona state senator ever to lose power this way and must step down immediately. Pearce’s Senate Bill 1070 requires police to investigate the immigration status of people they have lawfully detained.

Nationally, vile and vindictive proposals along not altogether dissimilar lines are afoot: Even though it may not pass both houses, and Obama has promised to veto it, provisions in the Pentagon spending bill (the National Defense Authorization Act) would expand drastically the government and military’s powers to detain those with opinions different from the state’s own indefinitely. For instance, the military could jail anyone whom it considers a ‘terrorism suspect’ (not someone convicted, but suspected, note) – anywhere in the world. And without charge or trial.

The intention is to extend the definition of what the military regards as its ‘battlefield’ – to any and every country in the world, including inside the United States. Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First comments, “In this case, we’ve seen the administration very eagerly hold people without trial for 10-plus years in military detention, so there’s no reason to believe they would not continue to do that here. So we’re talking about indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens, of lawful U.S. residents, as well as of people abroad.”

Louis Further

References:
Human Rights First: www.humanrightsfirst.org

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Bradley Manning was imprisoned for allegedly leaking more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables and two war footages to Wikileaks, including the July 2007 video that showed Americans gunning down Iraqi civilians in Baghdad from an Apache helicopter – among the victims of which were two Reuters journalists and two injured children.

This is the first time that Manning has been produced in any kind of judicial court. He has been slapped with 23 charges, the most serious of which is “giving intelligence knowingly to the enemy” – the ‘enemy’ being Wikileaks. The charge is serious because, if convicted, it carries the death penalty, although prosecutors have declared that they will not seek this ultimate punishment. They are seeking instead a punishment of life without parole.

The proceedings themselves, according to reports trickling out, would do a Stalinist regime proud, as they are tightly controlled, with several restrictions being placed on attending journalists. Live coverage is forbidden. The chargesheet itself has been released for the first time. Manning’s civilian defence lawyer, David Coombs, has raised several issues of unfair treatment with the investigating officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Almanza.

Firstly, according to reports, out of 48 defence witnesses requested by Coombs only two (another 10 are shared with the prosecution) have been allowed; whereas all of prosecution’s witnesses – many  of whom as mentioned above were on Coombs’ list as well – have been granted.

Secondly, judge Almanza himself has worked for the prosecution in the US Department of Justice, which is currently pursuing its own case against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Coombs asked Almanza to step down (the official term being ‘recuse’) citing conflict of interest. The demand has been rebuffed. Almanza will continue to preside over the hearings termed as Article 32, named after the article in the Uniform Code of Military Justice that lays down the procedure for such a hearing.

The outcome of the pre-trial hearings will be referred to a higher military authority in Washington DC, who will then decide if Manning should face a full court martial.

Brief Background to the Case
Private Bradley Manning, a US intelligence analyst, based around Baghdad during the Iraq war, was arrested in May 2010 and briefly held in a detention centre in Kuwait. Since July 2010 he has been held at a prison in Quantico, Virginia. This period of imprisonment has also included solitary confinement, and according to several reports along with that of Amnesty, severe psychological abuse.

The US prosecutors, either back then or at present, have not been able to demonstrate any links between Manning and Julian Assange, except the much-touted online chat. The chat took place between Manning and a hacker named Adrian Lamo to whom Manning is supposed to have revealed his minimal association with Assange and his act of leaking sensitive information. Lamo himself had had former links with Wikileaks, and he promptly delivered the information he is supposed to have received to the state officials.

So, the only real source of evidence the prosecutors have, from what we know so far, is the chat log and Lamo’s claims.

It’s all about realpolitik
Meanwhile, US’s true interest seems to be in Wikileaks. At present, the Department of Justice is trying to pursue Assange, to get him on charges of ‘conspiracy’. Observers say that the ploy might be to break Manning psychologically and get him to testify against Assange. At the moment Assange is fighting his extradition to Sweden on charges of rape and sexual assault. His supporters claim that these are trumped up charges. Assange is currently staying at a friend’s house in the UK.

There seems to be some basis for thinking that the United States government is trying ‘divide and rule’ technique with Assange and Manning, for Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, has complained that she has not been given full access to the Manning hearing, and is treated instead like the general public. This means that if the hearings go into the confidential mode, Robinson like other members of the public, will be asked to leave as well, despite her client’s indirect involvement in the case.

Public support for Bradley Manning
Manning, however, has been hailed as a ‘hero’ by all his supporters – and there are quite a few of them. Supporters held a vigil and a rally on December 16th and 17th outside the gates of Forte Meade. The attendees included general supporters, the Bradley Manning Support Network organizers, the Occupy protesters who came in coaches from New York and Washington, Iraq Veterans Against the War, as well as the Vietnam war whistleblower, Dan Ellsberg.
_

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Economics

What some even inside the United States are seeing as a global movement was first manifested in New York from mid September as ‘Occupy Wall Street’. Within a few days, similar protests (at the greed and corruption of the 1% at the expense of the 99%) took place in Austin, Boston, Chicago, Knoxville, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and other north American cities. The website Occupy Together, the effective clearing house for the movement, at press time claimed parallel actions in 1,324 cities.

The State and its élite obviously took it seriously – after a week or so of ignoring, then attempts at ridicule. Increasingly large numbers of people have been arrested and abused. On October 1st (when the disproportionately high number of more than 700 demonstrators was arrested) and 5th police tactics were particularly appalling. These included mass beating, confiscation of equipment, deception about routes for marches, taunting and other forms of violence. Videos posted online show police pepper-spraying groups of young women, for example, while they were surrounded by a police netting.

Despite the mass arrests, the camp continues… the views of one protester, ‘Jason’: “People are realising that we are all one and that is our governments that work against us to keep everyone down. That’s how the one percent gets away with it, is by dividing us up and people not realising that we are all one and that’s what this movement is about.”

At the same time increasing numbers of trade unions are officially supporting the movement – the SEIU 1199 healthcare workers and Transport Workers Union members in New York City (attorneys for whom attempted to obtain a temporary federal restraining order to prevent the police from commandeering buses operated by its members to ferry protesters who had been arrested) are just two.

Tony Murphy, of Bail Out the People Movement said: “We’re here to say that the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg has to keep their hands off ‘Occupy Wall Street’… If they want to arrest somebody, they should go down to Wall Street, down to the Stock Exchange and arrest the people who are busy clearing out elderly people from their homes, hurting people’s pensions. These are the people who are really hurting people and should be arrested.”

In a related but separate development, on 8 October an agent provocateur, Patrick Howley, Assistant Editor of the right wing ‘American Spectator’ publication, admitted to deliberately infiltrating a group of activists in order to discredit their movement by running through the lobby of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, provoking guards to use their pepper spray and make arrests. The protest was at a display in the museum of the drone weapons of mass destruction used by US terrorists.

• Poverty

At the same time as the Occupy movement (which is organised along horizontal and non-partisan lines) was gaining momentum, major reports were published revealing just how stark is the (economic) inequality around which the 99%-1% split the occupiers are organising. According to US Census Bureau data, yet more Americans fell below the poverty line in 2010. The nation’s poverty rate rose to 15.1% last year, from 14.3% in 2009 – its highest level since 1993. 2010 also marked the third year in a row in which the rate has increased. Now some 46.2 million people are considered to be in need. What’s more, real median household income last year was US$50,000 (£32,000), a 2.3% decline. The Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire also revealed that the number of children living in poverty in the United States has climbed to 15.7 million, an increase of 2.6 million since the beginning of the recession in 2007. Nearly one in four children under the age of six now lives in poverty. The largest such group is Latino – some 6.1 million Latino children are poor (35%), compared with 5 million white children and 4.4 million black children.

Meanwhile, the official unemployment rate remains 9.1%. Over 14 million people are unemployed; another 8.8 million are working part-time, but seeking full-time work. The unemployment rate for African-American men jumped by one percentage point in August to 18%. That for African-American teenagers rose all of 7.3% to 46.5%.

• Environment

The Government Accountability Office published a report in September advising that the US government has lost nearly three tons of nuclear material that it had shipped overseas. Almost 6,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium cannot now be traced. This is enough to make dozens of nuclear weapons. Then, the National Weather Service reported that Texas experienced the hottest summer in US history this year. Its average of 86.8 degrees from June to August beat Oklahoma’s record of 85.2 set in 1934. That state averaged 86.5 degrees itself this year. The heat has produced the severest drought in Texas since the 1950s and the single driest year since 1895 resulting in an estimated US$5.2 (£3.4) billion in damage from crop losses and massive wildfires.

• Racism

Also in the South, a federal judge in September upheld key portions of Alabama’s racist ‘immigration law’. Chief US District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn backed provisions that would require police to arrest anyone they suspect of being in the country without legal status; prevent courts from enforcing contracts involving undocumented immigrants; and allow state schools to determine the immigration status of enrolled pupils. Small wonder that in Alabama many Latino pupils have actually stopped attending classes since the ruling. At the end of September, for example, almost 2,000 Latino students (about 5%) were absent. Similarly, immigrant rights advocates report many pregnant women are now afraid to go to hospital and victims of crimes won’t call for help.

The ‘Culture of Cruelty’ study from the Arizona humanitarian group, No More Deaths, cites 30,000 cases of human rights abuses in short-term immigration detention between 2008 and 2011… border agents denying food and water to detainees, deliberately separating families, and forcing immigrants to sign removal orders. The report concluded that these abuses meet the international definition of torture.

If you can’t torture them, just kill them: newly released documents show the FBI keeps people on its ‘terrorism watch list’ even if/when they are cleared of terrorism-related crimes. The FBI’s database includes over 400,000 names. Indeed, Wired Magazine reported recently that it had uncovered FBI training materials asserting that “‘mainstream’ US Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathisers, Islamic charity amounts to a ‘funding mechanism for combat’ and that the Prophet Mohammed was a ‘cult leader’”. A graph presented to FBI agents suggests that the more ‘devout’ a Muslim, the higher the likelihood for him or her to be ‘violent’.

It’s easy if you have power: the Obama administration, it’s been revealed, keeps a ‘kill list’ of US citizens who are ‘authorised’ for killing or capture abroad. According to Reuters, a secret panel of government officials decides who can be slain or captured; it then informs the president of its decision. It was this panel (an offshoot of the White House’s National Security Council) which was behind the decision to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a CIA drone attack in Yemen last month without trial or even formal case against him.

Death and cruelty are popular, too: in a recent Republican presidential debate. The CNN’s moderator asked the candidates whether someone who chose to have no medical insurance but contracted a serious illness should be left to die. Gratuitous cheers of “Yeah!” filled the hall. Similarly, Governor Rick Perry was asked about his repeated use of the death penalty in Texas; before he could answer, the audience erupted into sustained applause.

And at government level: WikiLeaks cables show US officials vigorously defended the use of cluster bombs around the world despite the fact that 62 countries have signed an international treaty banning their use, development, and production. In the same vein, the Obama administration has now announced plans to sell US$53 (£34) million worth of military equipment to Bahrain just months after the Gulf state brutally cracked down on Shi’ite protesters. Obama is also building a ring of drone sites from which to target alleged ‘militants’ in Somalia and Yemen. And Libya: Human Rights Watch last month published hundreds of documents indicating collusion between Ghaddafi and the extraordinary rendition program carried out by the CIA and the MI6 in Britain after the 9/11 attacks.

Ever playing the victim, Leon Panetta, US ‘Defense’ Secretary, announced on the ten year commemoration of 9/11 (no such for the war on Afghanistan a month later): “To this day… we pledge to never forget the enemy that made this happen, why we fight them, and why we will never stop fighting them.”

The biter appears to have been bitten: in the first week of October it appeared as though US drone computer systems have been infected by a virus. In the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones every keystroke of the terrorists flying them over Afghanistan and other war zones is being logged.

Finally, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US government has obtained a secret court order forcing Google and the Internet Service Provider, Sonic.net, to hand over information in the email accounts of WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum and disclose every address of those he corresponded with since 2009. Appelbaum has been charged with no crime.

Louis Further

References:
Bail Out the People Movement: http://bailoutpeople.org/
Carsey Institute: www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/
Human Rights Watch: www.hrw.org/
No More Deaths: www.nomoredeaths.org/
Occupy Together: www.occupytogether.org/

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A federal court, for instance, has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, for his role in devising policies of torture in Iraq. In mid August the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that two American citizens (Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel) who were tortured at a US military base in Iraq have adequate evidence to suggest that Rumsfeld was personally responsible for their treatment and not entitled to qualify for immunity.

Then a federal jury has also found four New Orleans police guilty of civil rights violations over the shooting deaths of two civilians and the subsequent cover-up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The charges were linked to shootings on the Danziger Bridge that also seriously wounded four others.

Also in the legal arena, though not so encouraging, the Obama administration is drawing criticism for the way in which is has dealt with the case of a married bi-national gay couple in San Francisco who risk being separated by deportation (Obama has already deported more people than Bush). The US Citizenship and Immigration Services has denied immigration benefits to Bradford Wells – actually a US citizen – and Anthony John Makk, an Australian national, who were married in Massachusetts seven years ago. Makk has been ordered to return to Australia.

But in New York City, an 82-year-old resident of Brooklyn who faces foreclosure was allowed to stay in her house in mid August after more than 200 people gathered near its front to block the eviction. Mary Lee Ward has lived in her home for 44 years but is now facing foreclosure as a victim of deceptive and predatory lending practices. “We are not slaves anymore. My grandfather was a slave, but I’m not. And they’re not going to force me to do anything against my will. You gotta put up a hard fight for the faith, and that means the fact that you have to stick with it when you know that you’re right. You know you have the evidence. You know you have the facts. Don’t let nobody walk over you. Don’t let nobody make you a slave.”

Unions
Some 45,000 unionised workers at telecom giant, Verizon, struck for several days last month after negotiations broke down between Verizon and two unions representing the workers (the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers). Verizon tried to cut health and pension benefits for workers and make it simpler for the company to sack workers. The strike was the largest and most significant this year. Verizon, which is the nation’s second largest phone company, earned US$6.9 (£4.2) billion in net income for the first six months of the year – or about a £1,000 an hour.

According to government data the share of the eligible population holding a job declined to just 58%, the lowest since July 1983. The official unemployment rate is 9.1%.

Other revealing official statistics released last month show that by the end of April this year the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had cost an average of US$9.7 (£5.9) billion a month. That’s £8m an hour and roughly the entire annual budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Also protesting were activists blocking the entrance to a US Navy base in Washington state which houses nuclear submarines; the protest was timed to mark the 66th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Then in Arizona, 10 protesters were arrested in mid August after chaining themselves together and blocking a road leading to the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff. They were protesting plans for a ski resort which would use recycled sewer water to make artificial snow on a mountain considered sacred by 13 Native American tribes.

Environment
Protests continue against the Alberta tar sands project which would build a pipeline 1,500 miles from north to south (the Keystone XL pipeline) to deliver tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas. In late August more than 500 people protesting outside the White House were arrested on several separate occasions. Indeed, the protest is being widely described as one of the environmental movement’s biggest and important campaigns for many years. Dr. Sydney Parker of Maryland: “We are here because it’s not just an environmental issue, it’s also a very big health issue and that’s why we’ve come out today and that’s why we’re so committed. So personally I’ve never been arrested before. I don’t do this for fun. I’m here because I think it’s such an important issue that it really demands that kind of action and it demands that level of commitment from myself.”

Meanwhile a new report by Canada’s environmental agency has found that extracting oil from the Alberta tar sands will more than offset emission reductions in other areas. Greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands would triple to 92-million metric tons by 2020. But then Canada’s current conservative government has abandoned more ambitious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The National Climatic Data Center confirmed that July was the fourth-warmest month in US history. In Dallas, for example, the temperature exceeded 100 degrees on 30 of the 31 days in July. This didn’t stop Texan presidential candidate Rick Perry from advocating – along with the teaching of creationism – that climate change be dismissed as a hoax.

Still, if you look at the website WorldNetDaily the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the East Coast on August 23 is the result of the nation’s declining morals… “Washington, D.C. deserves more than the wallop it got today. It needs a much bigger shaking up than it got”. Whereas for rabbi Yehuda Levin “…there’s a direct connection between earthquakes and homosexuality. There was in Haiti, and there is here in New York and Washington, D.C., where they passed homosexual legislation and ordinances”.

Also in political news, far right candidate, Michelle Bachmann, in addition for saying that hurricane Irene was god’s punishment, effectively for those who don’t support the Republicans, has had to deal with reports that one of her staff, Peter Waldron, was arrested in February 2006 in Uganda for possessing a number of assault rifles and ammunition just days before Uganda’s first multi-party elections in 20 years. Another candidate, Mitt Romney, has applied for a permit to bulldoze his 3,000-square-foot, US$12 (£7.3) million beachfront vacation home in California – so as to replace it with one nearly four times its size. A campaign official remarked that the existing home is, “inadequate for their needs”. Romney lives in Massachusetts, but also has vacation homes in New Hampshire and Utah.

Louis Further

 National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html

This article originally appeared in the new monthly October edition of Freedom newspaper see here
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The dawn of a new American uprising, or a formulaic reaction bound to fizzle out?

The belly of the beast, the finance capital of the world’s richest country, is experiencing some uncomfortable rumble. Wall Street (the equivalent of London’s City) has been directly targeted by protesters as the focus of their anger. On 17th of this month around a thousand protesters marched towards Wall Street and the stock exchange in order to occupy it; seeing it blocked by the police they marched around the area and finally settled down in a park nearby, originally called the Liberty Plaza, now called Zuccotti Park. The occupation has now entered a third successive day with participants numbering around 5000 during the day, and hundreds pitching tents at night.

The call for occupation was made by the hactivist group Anonymous in alliance with the culture jammers, Adbusters, as early as July this year. This call-out turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy with even the Department of Homeland Security sending out a warning bulletin on September 2nd to businesses on Wall Street. So, although the initial call-out was for 20,000 people to take Wall Street, it is pleasantly surprising to see it become reality at all. It shows how much animus there is among the vast majority of the people (the working class poor and middle-income groups), and how desperately they need someone – anyone – to provide an avenue for them to take action.

To give a sense of the composition of the crowd, a report by the California Independent Voter Network notes, “There are students, professionals, workers, and unemployed among them. In the crowd, one can find disillusioned Democrats, Ron Paul Republicans, third party and Independent political activists, anarchists and members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, among others.” Protesters describe themselves as being mostly under 30 years of age, over-educated and underemployed or jobless.

There are many interesting aspects to this protest – and instructive for those protesting here in the UK. For example, the occupiers have been and intend to be peaceful, although according to the state police department the protesters have no permit to either hold demonstrations or have spontaneous marches in the area – which they have been doing blatantly so far. As a result of their actions, the police have barricaded Wall Street, shutting it down to all traffic except VIPs and the people who work there. This could already be claimed as a victory for the protesters.

Moreover, the occupiers have no leaders. The camp, reportedly inspired by Tahrir Square, is organized entirely non-hierarchically. Since the occupiers say they intend to remain there for months, they are thinking tactically and already sorting out working groups to manage all the requirements. Again, inspired by the Spanish people’s assemblies, the protesters are holding daily ‘general assemblies’ to discuss and decide political questions, what changes they would like to see, and generally envision a better future for all. People, apparently from all over the world, are donating money for food to be sent to the protesters. Food Not Bombs have also donated food.

Despite all this, the police seem to be quite off-hand in their approach towards the campers.

According to news reports streaming in, most people who are not part of the protest completely sympathize with it, and seem to acknowledge that things need to change. It seems to be seeping into public consciousness that this battle is for the long haul.

Conflicting picture
So, what are their demands? So far, the focus is severely anti-banks and anti-corporates. They seem to want the US to be – to sum up the protesters’ sentiment – ‘restored to the people’. For instance, Adbusters’ slogan is “Democracy Not Corporatocracy”, and to be rid of “the financial Gomorrah of America”, symbolized by Wall Street.

More specifically, they are demanding a presidential commission to be set up to initiate the end of corporate financial influence on American politics (such as through large donations to hand-picked candidates who will then do the corporates’ bidding). The demand is understandable since recently the US Supreme Court declared corporates to be ‘people’ (!) and thus granting them the haloed first amendment rights (of which campaign finance forms one), although it is not clear why the protesters think that the President would do such a thing and undermine his/her own advantage. Unfortunately, these democratic protests, not just in the US but also everywhere else, tend to share this naïve quality of making sharp distinctions between business interests and political interests – distinctions that are fast disappearing.

To illustrate, a group called US Day of Rage has set up a website by the same name and is calling for such occupations and people’s assemblies to be set up in many cities across the country. There appear to be plans to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington DC on October 6 of this year. This website lists its objectives as “free and fair elections”, thus proliferating the idea that if only mega-corporations were removed from the picture, politicians would not become corrupt, and power would be handed back to the people. They say, “Free and fair elections produce the kind of stewardship our nation desperately needs, because they ensure that citizens can influence their destiny, and make genuine contributions to society.”

On the other hand, another website called Occupy Wall Street (whether this is the official group behind the protest or not is unclear) has broader, overtly anarchist tones, even as it seems to support electoral reform. It makes statements such as: “If you agree that state and corporation are merely two sides of the same oppressive power structure, if you realize how media distorts things to preserve it, how it pits the people against the people to remain in power, then you might be one of us.” and, “We call for workers to not only strike, but seize their workplaces collectively, and to organize them democratically.”

Only time will tell which of the above two tendencies can capture popular imagination and become dominant in the near future. Also, at this point it is a matter of speculation if the protesters manage to get large numbers of people angry enough to, say, storm Wall Street, or just degenerate into a tourist curio (much like our parliament square campers) who have the feel-good factor of ‘protest’ but offer no means of self-empowerment or solutions to changing the present state of things.

Article links:

• US Day of Rage
• Occupy Wall Street

The Lansing chapter of the queer anarchists Bash Back! Network have been served a court injunction that permanently prevents them from disrupting religious services anywhere in the United States. The fourteen named individuals are also permanently prohibited from conducting protests on the private property of any place of worship in the United States, or destroying property at any place of worship in the United States. These far reaching measures were recently handed down to the group by the U.S. District Court of Michigan after they staged an audacious protest that the notoriously homophobic Mount Hope Church.

The protest took place in November 2008, when 30 members of Bash Back! Lansing disrupted the Sunday service at Mount Hope Church. According to the group, people dressed in pink and black, equipped with a megaphone, black flags, picket signs and an upside-down pink cross began demonstrating outside the church. A team that had been hiding under the pews in the closed-off balcony dropped a banner and pulled back the curtains to reveal ‘IT’S OKAY TO BE GAY! BASH BACK!’ Another group threw over a thousand fliers to the entirety of the congregation. Queers began making out in front of the pastor. And within a matter of minutes, everyone had evaded the guards and made their escape. According to one media report the protesters also threw condoms, glitter, confetti, and pink fabric. There were no arrests.

The group, who were known for masking up in pink bandannas, declared afterwards “Let it be known: So long as bigots kill us in the streets, this pack of wolves will continue to BASH BACK!”

Past Bash Back! actions include demonstrations in memory of Duanna Johnson, a transwoman who was brutally beaten by Memphis police officers and murdered while in the process of suing the police department, confronting neo-Nazis who were counter-protesting a Pride march in Milwaukee, plus when Nike became the co-sponsors of the Memphis Pride, Bash Back! flyposted along the route of the march condemning Nike’s sweatshop practices and mainstream gay culture before unfurling a banner on the day declaring “Queer Liberation, not Queer Consumerism”.

The network itself has ceased to function in an organised form, although individual chapters continue to exist autonomously. It does however leave behind an interesting legacy. At the time of Bash Back!’s formation in 2007, there were no national organisations or networks specifically for queer anarchists. Points of unity were adopted that emphasised the rejection of capitalism and imperialism and all forms of state power and perhaps most significantly their refusal to condemn actions on the grounds that the state deems it to be illegal ie violent. It was this uncompromising stance, along with provocative images of people masked up holding baseball bats and sledgehammers that earned Bash Back! their fearless reputation for confrontation. The recent court injunction is perhaps the state finally acting on that reputation.

Article originally appeared in Freedom #7215
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Just as the front age of The Sun screamed, “Al Qaeda’s Massacre, Norway’s 9/11″, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal at first blamed ‘jihadists’ and reported that, “Norway is targeted for being true to Western norms.” Similarly, on the Washington Post website, Jennifer Rubin actually wrote, “This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.”

A somewhat unusual example of racism happened towards the end of June: US authorities refused to allow a Mexican aeroplane to fly over US airspace. A dangerous criminal on board? A known terrorist? No, the prominent Mexican sociologist, Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, on her way to Italy, where she was scheduled to speak. Amazingly, the plane had already taken off when the pilot was notified he could not cross into US airspace. Obviously Gutiérrez Aguilar could do a great deal of harm to Americans from 30,000 with the views she holds – and was not to be tolerated. In 1992 she was arrested, tortured and imprisoned in Bolivia together with elected vice president, Ãlvaro GarcÍa; the charges were later dropped.

The budget crisis continues and – as usual – the working and poor are being obliged to bear the cost: pensions and health care for the elderly are likely to be cut. Never mind, a swathe of corporate profits shot up as second quarter earnings were announced: Caterpillar’s by 44% to US$1 billion (£614,000), General Electric’s by 21% to US$3.75 (£2.3) billion; and McDonald’s by 15% to US$1.4 billion (£860,000). Just as strikingly, a new analysis of US census data shows that the gap in wealth between whites and blacks has grown to its greatest level in 25 years. White Americans now have – on average – as much as 20 times the net worth of African Americans and 18 times that of Latinos. The Pew Research Center reported in late July that the median wealth of white US households in 2009 was about US$113,000 (£68,870) compared with just over US$6,300 (£3,840) for Hispanics and just under US$5,700 (£3,474) for blacks.

Plenty of money – as always – for war, though: an as yet unreleased military investigation showed in July that the US taxpayer continues to fund the Taliban in Afghanistan. A US$2.6 (£1.6) billion contract for transportation implicates eight prime contractors in Afghanistan in criminal enterprises or support for ‘the enemy’. And it happens ‘by accident’ too: a new study currently being prepared by Congress shows how the US has wasted some US$34 (£20.7) billion on private sector service contracts in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 200,000 contractors have been on the US payroll at times in Iraq and Afghanistan – more than the number of US fighting forces

Prison
By early August more than 400 prisoners in California had been on hunger strike for over five weeks. They’re protesting cruel and unusual conditions. The physical condition of dozens of inmates has reportedly deteriorated; some have lost between 20 and 25 pounds. The prisoners are demanding several changes in the prison system to bring them into line with what’s standard in other areas of the country. These include an end to group punishment, denial of food as a punishment, and an end to long-term solitary confinement.

The strike began in the Pelican Bay maximum security prison in the north of the state; it has drawn the support of thousands of prisoners throughout California. Pelican Bay prisoner Todd Ashker explained, “We believe that this is our only option of ever trying to make some kind of positive changes here, is through this peaceful protest of hunger strike. And there is a core group of us who are committed to taking this all the way to the death, if necessary. None of us want to do this, but we feel like we have no other option. And we’re just hoping for the best.”

As if that weren’t enough, prison officials have banned journalists from meeting with the striking Pelican prisoners.

Guns
Freedom reported recently on ways in which the United States is fuelling and promoting the violence in Mexico. Now a new congressional report has determined that at least 122 firearms from a failed US undercover operation have either found their way to be used in crimes in Mexico and/or have been intercepted en route to drug cartels there. In fact, Mexican authorities found AK-47s and other powerful rifles in late 2009 which were later linked to a US ‘sting’ operation. Under the once-secret project, ‘Operation Fast and Furious’, US agents actually encouraged US gun shops to sell thousands of guns to middle people for Mexican drug cartels in an apparent attempt to gain access to senior-level figures within Mexico’s criminal organisations.

Environment
Freedom has reported before on mountaintop removal, the destructive strip mining technique particularly as carried out by Massey Energy. Now, a new report in the peer-reviewed Journal of Community Health shows that among the 1.2 million people in or close to areas where it’s practised in central Appalachia, 60,000 cases of cancer are directly linked to it. So it’s usually people second to profit and dogma. For example the scientist who exposed the threats of climate change to the polar bear, Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist who oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency which has been examining drilling in the Arctic and managed about US$50 (£31) million in research projects has been suspended. While the oil firms continue to wield massive influence, Monnett’s own work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.

Louis Further

Journal of Community Health: http://www.springer.com/public+health/journal/10900
The Pew Research Center: http://people-press.org/

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This article originally appeared in the #7216 edition of Freedom newspaper see here
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Take Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s recently announced candidacy for the Republican 2012 presidential nomination. Not only did she commit several gaffes on television in the days before her much-heralded announcement, misstating historical facts (for example, that the country’s Founding Fathers fought hard to end slavery).
But her platform is also constructed on the dogma of the Christian right… she advises that, if elected, she will insist that creationism be taught in schools; she vigorously opposes abortion. For this leading politician, as the country experiences some of the most severe weather in living memory, climate change is a hoax.

Her part of the country is not unfamiliar with such piercing intellect, though: in late June Wisconsin became the latest state to ban funding for the group Planned Parenthood and its nine clinics state-wide. Never out of the headlines for long for his anti-union, anti-justice antics, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker approved the cuts – ostensibly as part of a bill slashing public spending. Other states seeking to take the same reactionary steps now include Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma and North Carolina. A federal judge in Indiana, though, has issued an injunction against a state law there that would block Planned Parenthood from taking part in Medicaid. Then earlier in June a conservative member of the Wisconsin state Supreme Court (Justice David Prosser) apparently tried physically to choke a fellow justice (Ann Walsh Bradley) during an argument.

Racism
Arizona, of course, has until now made much of the running in anti-immigrant legislation. The state’s superintendent of schools recently ordered Tucson public schools to cancel a popular ethnic studies project or risk losing millions of dollars in funding. But Alabama is close behind: a new measure will require police to arrest anyone whom they suspect might be in the country without legal status; it will also force public schools to determine the immigration status of pupils. Yet the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, has said that he will refuse to let his state participate in the Secure Communities programme, on which Freedom has reported previously. That scheme requires local police to send fingerprints of every person they arrest to the Department of Homeland Security. Patrick is not alone: New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, suspended that state’s involvement while Illinois pulled out in May and Washington and Minnesota have done the same.

On the other hand, New York Republican Peter King has begun the second session of his series of House Homeland Security Committee hearings into the ‘radicalisation’ of the American Muslim community. King said, “…the first radicalisation hearing which this committee held in March of this year was met with much mindless hysteria led by radical groups such as the Council of Islamic Relations and their allies in the liberal media, personified by The New York Times.”

Not far away – at New Jersey’s Newark Airport – Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners have been found by a federal report to be deliberately singling out passengers from Mexico and the Dominican Republic for prolonged questioning and luggage searches.

Mexico is more likely to make the news for its dramatic and seemingly far-reaching drugs ‘war’. Now it has emerged in a hearing held by the United States House of Representatives oversight committee that a once secret government operation, called ‘Fast and Furious’ and run by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF, the rough equivalent of HM Customs) encouraged US gun shops to sell thousands of guns to intermediaries for Mexican drug cartels.

Libya
As evidence emerged in the last week of June suggesting that some of the stories of atrocities by the Libyan élite which were used as an excuse for the recent war on that country are either exaggerated and/or fabricated, it also became obvious that Obama rejected the views of senior lawyers at the Pentagon and the Department of Justice when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue his aggression without congressional authorisation after 60 days… under the War Powers Act of 1973, Obama should have terminated or scaled back the mission after May 20. Congressperson Mike Turner (Ohio) meanwhile revealed that NATO commander US Admiral Samuel Locklear has confirmed to him that the United States and NATO forces are actively trying to assassinate Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi in defiance of the United Nations authorisation. Still that’s not really what it’s about: a group of American drilling companies that includes Halliburton stands to make tens of billions of dollars in Iraq under new oil deals.

Enough dollars to deal with arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome and a protrusion in his chest is not what James Verone from North Carolina had. He was made redundant and felt he had so few options that to get himself jailed seemed one of the best. He demanded a dollar from a local bank teller, seated himself quietly and waited for arrest. He says he hopes to remain jailed for three years to continue receiving medical treatment.

Louis Further

References:
Planned Parenthood: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/

Article originally appeared in Freedom #7214
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As we know, that lead to invasions first in Afghanistan (the longest war in US history) and Iraq (one of the bloodiest). And the illegal imprisonment of many innocent people in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. At the end of April, whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks began releasing a mass of several thousand secret documents from Guantánamo which reveal that Bush and Obama knew of the innocence of over 150 people whom they imprisoned there for years without charge. No whooping and cheering about them.

In many of the cases, even senior US commanders concluded that there was no reason for those captured to have been transferred to Guantánamo. An 89-year-old Afghan villager and a 14-year-old boy, for instance. Even the model of wristwatch worn by some of the men pursued in Afghanistan qualified them for incarceration, the documents reveal… a make of watch used as timers for explosives by al-Qaeda. Sami al-Hajj was held at Guantánamo for six years so as to be interrogated about his employer, the Al Jazeera news network. His file said he was sent to Guantánamo in order to ‘provide information on… the al-Jazeera news network’s training programme, telecommunications equipment, and news gathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan.’ As usual with Wikileaks, the news and revelations go almost completely unreported despite the enormity of what they reveal. But they are set to continue; they are factual – reflecting, or containing actual, official documents.

Strike
Better just to kill the people with whom you disagree, say many in the American élite; their lives count for nothing. In addition to starting to seek out all manner of ‘suspected terrorists’ throughout the world and try to kill them without any kind of judicial process, the slaughter by drones in Pakistan continues: in April several such attacks killed dozens; for example, one recently ‘took out’ (to use the current parlance) 25 people in North Waziristan. These included five children and four women. It came two days after a visit to Islamabad by US Admiral Mike Mullen. In the US itself, small protests do continue: 27 people were arrested in late April at a protest against drones that was held at the Hancock Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York. Pilots stationed at that base now fly Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs remotely over Afghanistan. Talk about bravery!

Retired Colonel Ann Wright spoke at a rally before the arrests started: “As a former colonel, as a retired colonel, as a former government official who has been with the government 40 years, I think my greatest public service is now challenging the government and challenging these things called drones. These drones… and you might as well just call them assassination machines, that’s what these drones are used for: targeted assassination, extrajudicial ultimate death for people who have not been convicted of anything.”

War
While no fewer than 44 states are expected to run deficits in 2012, the cost of the killing continues to astound: US$ 1 billion (£606,700) so far to attack Libya alone. The $100 (£60) billion spent on the murdering in Afghanistan (a sum, incidentally, four times the Gross Domestic Product of that country) could fix those domestic deficits. If the funds allocated to the Afghan war alone were returned to the states, thousands and thousands of jobs for teachers and other public employees could be created and saved, while basic services like Medicaid and income support for families in poverty could be kept up. The combined total of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? US$1 trillion – or about £1,000 by every person living in the UK each year.

It’s hardly the money that matters most, though: the United Nations estimates that over 2,700 Afghan civilians were killed in 2010 alone and 1,500 Americans since the start of the war. One third of those deaths were last year. As were a half of all injuries (5,000) to soldiers. This figure masks not only the increased incidence of suicides amongst returning combatants but also the longer term effects, cost and waste with injuries from which those sent to Afghanistan will never recover. They’re statistically more likely to be homeless and convicted of crimes than the rest of the publication.

So maybe the media is pressing all of this home? Not if the response of the White House to The San Francisco Chronicle is anything to go by. The paper recently posted a video of a lively protest against the White House’s treatment of suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning. The threat? To exclude the San Francisco Chronicle from pooled coverage of its events in the Bay Area. Pooled coverage extends details and description of an event to those not able to cover it. Whilst you may think it’s no great loss to miss out on photos from fundraisers, many of those who buy such a paper may be less keen to do so if they know coverage is partial (in either sense of the word).

Murder
Perhaps the American state is more tolerant at home? Not in Texas, for sure: Freedom has reported previously on the shortage of sodium thiopental as the preferred drug to be used in state executions. So in early May pentobarbital and two other drugs were used to murder Cary Kerr, aged 46. Texas became the third US state to do so after Ohio and Oklahoma. Widely known as Nembutal, the drug (chiefly employed to kill animals) acts as a sedative but can also induce severe pain, fear and distress during the quarter of an hour needed to take its lethal effect.

Louis Further

Article originally appeared in Freedom #7210
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