September 10, 2008

• God damn this cowardly shithole of a nation

  
  Published on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

  Trickle-Down Preemption: Baghdad on the Mississippi

  by Ray McGovern

  Ten days ago, as the nation focused
  attention on the hurricane nearing the Mississippi delta, another storm
  was brewing far upstream in St. Paul, Minnesota -- a storm far more dangerous,
  it turned out, but one by and large overlooked by the Fawning Corporate
  Media (FCM). 

  When I flew into St. Paul on Saturday
  evening, August 30, I encountered a din in local media about "preemptive
  strikes" on those already congregating there to demonstrate against
  the Iraq war and injustice against the poor in our country.  St.
  Paul's Pioneer Press expressed surprise that "despite preemptive
  police searches" and arrests, a group calling itself "the RNC Welcoming
  Committee" was still intent on "disrupting the convention." 

  A headline screamed, "Preemptive
  Arrests of Protesters in Twin Cities."  But it was the article's
  lead that hit home:  "Borrowing from the Bush administration's
  ‘preemptive war' playbook, police agencies in the Twin Cities have
  made ‘preemptive strikes' against organizations planning to protest
  at the Republican National Convention." 

  In the following days I was to see,
  up close and personal, a massive and totally unnecessary display of
  ruthlessness. 

  What struck a bell was that this domestic
  application of the dubious doctrine of "preemption" was totally
  predictable-indeed, predicted by those courageous enough to speak
  out before the U.S. "preemptive" attack on Iraq.  Ironically,
  it was FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley, living in the St. Paul area,
  who warned of precisely that in her hard-hitting letter to FBI Director
  Robert Mueller three weeks before the attack on Iraq.  [Text of Feb. 26, 2003 Letter, published
  March 6, 2003 in NY Times] 

  Confronting Mueller on a number of
  key issues (like "What is the FBI's evidence with respect to the
  claimed connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq?"), Rowley warned of
  the trickle-down effect of "the administration's new policy of ‘preemptive
  strikes'": 

  "I believe it would
  be prudent to be on guard against the possibility that the looser
  ‘preemptive strike' rationale being applied to situations abroad
  could migrate back home, fostering a more permissive attitude on the
  part of law enforcement officers in this country." 

  Rowley called Mueller's attention
  to the abuses of civil rights that had already occurred since 9/11,
  and pointedly warned "particular vigilance may be required to head
  off undue pressure (including subtle encouragement) to detain or ‘round
  up' suspects." 

  Transforming the Police 

  While in St. Paul, I got in touch with
  Rowley, who has been politically active in the Twin City area, and asked
  for her reaction to St. Paul's version of preemption.  This was
  hardly her first chance to say I-told-you-so, but she called no attention
  to her right-on prophesy five and a half years ago. 

  Shaking her head, Rowley simply bemoaned
  how easily the artificial stoking of fear had succeeded in causing the
  "otherwise wonderful community police officers of St. Paul to turn
  on their own peaceful citizens (the surreal insanity we witnessed during
  the RNC)."  She added that, once the Feds, the fusion centers,
  the contractors get into the act, "all the rules go up in smoke." 

  The "preemption" began on Friday,
  August 29, well before the RNC began on Sept. 1. 

  An academic doing research on social
  movement organizations, who for several months has been observing the
  main protesters -- the RNC Welcoming Committee, the Coalition to March
  on the RNC and End the War, and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights
  Campaign -- provided this account: 

  "On Friday evening
  the space in St. Paul that was being rented by the Welcoming Committee
  was raided by riot police, who knocked in the door with automatic weapons
  drawn, forced the 60-70 activists inside onto the floor, handcuffed
  them, then proceeded to confiscate all the banner-making supplies and
  movement literature. 

  "Over the course of
  several hours the cops interrogated, photographed, ran warrant checks,
  and eventually, released everyone one by one.  Then they closed
  down the space for a code violation.  The next morning a city code
  inspector arrived and found no basis for closing the space. 

  "Saturday morning
  was one of escalation and terror.  The Ramsey County Sheriff Department,
  together with the St. Paul police, Homeland Security, and the FBI raided
  four private houses.  At 8:00 AM, dozens of cops in SWAT gear broke
  down the door of one house where about a dozen activists were staying. 
  They were awakened with rifle barrels in their faces and forced to lie
  face down for more than an hour. 

  "The cops stole all
  the computers and other electronic devices in the house, and core members
  of the Welcoming Committee sleeping there were arrested.  It being
  a holiday weekend, those arrested for alleged crimes could not arrive
  in court until Wednesday, at the earliest.  Thus, those trying
  to organize demonstrations will be in jail for the entire time the RNC
  is going on.  Four other houses were raided and dozens of activists
  were detained." 

  The academic who wrote the report appealed
  to those concerned over "this enormous police over-kill" to contact
  the Twin Cities' mayors and demand an end to the "witch hunt." 
  He added, "The people who were arrested were some of the gentlest,
  most dedicated activists I've ever met."  A far cry from the
  "criminal enterprise" described by notorious Ramsey County Sheriff
  Bob Fletcher. 

  Nanette Echols, a resident of St. Paul
  who had been extending hospitality to the visiting protesters, insisted
  they had done nothing wrong.  "In the place they raided on Friday
  night they were showing documentary movies to twenty-somethings in a
  clean, alcohol-free zone after dinner," she said. 

  Caving In to the Feds 

  The St. Paul City Council?  Only
  one member had the courage to speak out -- Councilman Dave Thune, who
  was particularly enraged that Sheriff Fletcher took action within St.
  Paul city limits: 

  "This is not the way
  to start things off...I'm really ticked off...the city is perfectly
  capable of taking care of such things...This is all about free speech. 
  It's what my father fought for in the war.  To me this smacks
  of preemptive strike against free speech." 

  Thune objected in particular to Fletcher's
  deputies using battering rams to knock down doors, then entering with
  guns drawn, and forcing people to the ground, as they did on Friday
  night. 

  This was the unsettling backdrop as
  I flew into St. Paul on Saturday evening, to speak at the Masses at
  St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church on Sunday morning.

  On Monday, I joined some 10,000 on
  a peaceful march from the Capitol to the Berlin wall of fences and the
  "organs of public safety" arrayed before the RNC convention hall. 
  On the fringes there was some property damage and further arrests. 
  What violence there was bore the earmarks of provocation by the likes
  of Sheriff Fletcher and his Homeland Security, FBI, and, according to
  one well-sourced report, Blackwater buddies. 

  That's right.  Agent provocateurs. 

  Primary targets of the repression were
  the alternative media, including any and all those who might have a
  camera to record the brutality -- as was successfully done at the RNC
  in New York four years ago.  The manner in which Amy Goodman and
  the two producers of "Democracy Now!" were deliberately mistreated
  was clearly aimed to serve as a warning that the rules had indeed gone
  up in smoke -- the First Amendment be damned.  

  Tuesday evening, after speaking at
  the "Free Speech Zone," a fenced-off area surrounded by the organs
  of public safety, I joined the Poor People's march up to the fences
  before the RNC.  I observed no violence at all; yet, the police/FBI/national
  guard/and who-knows-who-else decided they needed to clear the streets. 
  My friends and I narrowly escaped being tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed,
  or worse.  It was an overwhelming show of force -- not to protect,
  but to intimidate. 

  Palin Significance 

  After speaking at a conference at Concordia
  University in St. Paul on Wednesday, I was more eager to watch the Republican
  vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, deliver her acceptance speech
  than to risk the tear gas and pepper spray. 

  The way she dissed community organizers
  was hard to take.  But that would pale in significance, so to speak,
  compared to the way the governor of Alaska proceeded to ridicule the
  notion of reading people their rights.  I had thought that despite
  the distance between Alaska and Washington, the reach of the U.S. Constitution
  and statutes extended that far. 

  Friends tell me I should not have been
  surprised.  But, really!  After the widespread kidnapping,
  torture, indefinite imprisonment, and our cowardly Congress' empowerment
  of the president to imprison sine die anyone he might designate
  an "enemy combatant" -- after all that...well, it seems to me that
  reading a person his/her rights takes on more, not less, importance. 

  Not to mention the massive repression
  then under way right outside the convention hall. 

  It was, it is, a scary juxtaposition. 
  The following day Col. Ann Wright, other members of Code Pink, and I
  went to the jail to offer support to the young people who had been brutalized
  and then released.  They had not been read their rights. 
  Many were camped out on the sidewalk, refusing to leave until their
  friends still inside were also released. 

  Out of the jail came Jason, a well-built
  young man of about twenty years, who needed help in walking.  We
  talked to Jason a while, and he showed us the seven, yes seven, taser
  wounds on his body.  One, on his left buttock, had released considerable
  blood, creating a large stain on the seat of his pants. 

  Resourcefulness 

  The young protesters had some success
  in exposing infiltrators in their ranks.  During confrontations,
  members of the Welcoming Committee, in particular, took copious photos
  of law enforcement officers and then memorized the faces.  This
  tactic worked like a charm in one of the St. Paul parks, when a man
  who looked like a protester -- dark clothes, backpack, a bit disheveled-walked
  by. 

  One of the protesters recognized the
  man's face and searched through her camera until she found a photo
  of the man actually performing the raid on the Welcoming Committee's
  headquarters on Friday night.  The young protesters asked the man,
  and two associates, to leave the park, at which point the three hustled
  into a nearby unmarked sedan. 

  The license plate, observed by a
  Pioneer Press reporter, traced back to the detective unit of the
  Hennepin County sheriff's office, according to the county's Central
  Mobile Equipment Division. 

  Protesters later drove two other men
  out of the day's planned march -- one because he was wearing brand-new
  tennis shoes.  The two left without indicating whether they were
  with the organs of public safety. 

  So there is hope.  Young people
  are smarter than old ones.  It is a safe bet that in the coming
  weeks lots of unwelcome photos will be exposing various agents provocateurs,
  including over-the-hill flat-feet in unmarked cars, as well as young
  Republicans with unmarked tennis shoes.  If those are the kind
  of "sources" upon which the police, FBI, etc. have been relying...well,
  that would be like having Shia reporting on Sunni, or vice versa. 

  The organs of public safety are probably
  not quite so dumb as to be unaware that one cannot expect valid "intelligence"
  from such amateurish antics.  More likely, the attitude is that
  any kind of "intelligence" will do for the purposes of local law
  enforcement and timid public officials cowed by the Feds. 

  Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the
  publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city
  Washington. He is also with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
  Sanity (VIPS), as are Coleen Rowley and Ann Wright.

  The original version of this article appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

  • 10:41 am
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