Yesterday, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression announced that the bank account of Chicago Palestinian community activist Hatem Abudayyeh, had been frozen. Many suspected the direct hand of the Treasury Department through it’s Office of Foreign Assets Control as the first salvo against Abudayyeh, as a Federal Grand Jury subpoenas him.
But today it was revealed that the bank, Twin Cities Federal, took it upon itself to freeze and suspend Abudayyeh’s account, and that of his wife, Naima. It’s assumed that the bank did so after having been informed in one way or another about the FBI investigation of Abudayyeh and Grand Jury. Today the bank gave the family a check for the amount in the account and told them to get lost.
Whether or not this violates civil rights laws–and it sure looks that way– it’s disgusting behavior by a bank. If you have your money there, or you know somebody who does, you might want to consider putting your money somewhere else.
Here’s the Committee to Stop FBI Repression’s account of the situation.
The MF’R–known in some quarters as the DREAM Act–is back. Although details are still sketchy, Dick Durbin and Harry Reid are scheduled to reintroduce the act at a press conference tomorrow.
Dick Durbin’s official Senate Website has a DREAM Act page, with tomorrow’s date, listing all the great things the DREAM Act will do for America, which, as unlikely as it seems look the same as the last version. At the top of the list?
The DREAM Act would benefit the U.S. Armed Forces. Tens of thousands of highly-qualified, well-educated young people would enlist in the Armed Forces if the DREAM Act becomes law. The Defense Department’s FY 2010-12 Strategic Plan includes the DREAM Act as a means to help “shape and maintain a mission-ready All Volunteer Force.” Defense Secretary Gates, who supports the DREAM Act, says it “will result in improved recruitment results and attendant gains in unit manning and military performance.” General Colin Powell has also endorsed the DREAM Act, saying, “Immigration is what’s keeping this country’s lifeblood moving forward.”
My guess is that this part will be the one aspect that remains completely unchanged. Look for even more reductions of anything beneficial in the parts of the bill meant to guide kids towards college. They already banned undocumented kids from receiving the Pell Grant. I guess they’ll just have to work their way through school. Oh wait…
I’ve had some trouble getting in touch with CodePink since they got to Sacramento, but I have a feeling that this was their shindig:
Protesters marched inside the Capitol rotunda and refused police orders to leave when the building closed at 6 p.m. Police finally cleared the building at about 8 p.m. after arresting 65 people for trespassing, according to the California Highway Patrol. Two to three people were cited for resisting arrest. All were booked into the Sacramento County Jail.
Here’s a link to the video: It looks like the action was coordinated amongst several groups, including teacher’s unions. I’m surprised and heartened at what decent coverage it got, but there is one annoying bit at the end about people being threatened with arrest for doing civil disobedience. That’s just an incredibly stupid statement from what is for all intents and purposes an ignorant teleprompter reader.
Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake reports today on the case of Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian American activist living in Chicago, who has been subpoenaed to a Federal Grand Jury. Abudayyeh’s bank account was frozen on Friday, May 6, by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assett Control.
But it appears that Abudayyeh’s bank account is a domestic one, in his own name. His wife’s bank account was also frozen, although according to Joe Iosbaker, another of the subpoenaed individuals, she is not a target of the investigation. A portion of Gosztola’s interview with Isobaker appears below:
What happened last Friday, Hatem Abudayyeh is one of the 23, Hatem Abudayyeh, whose home was raided. He’s one of the main community leaders among Palestinians in Chicago. His bank accounts were frozen. So, apparently Hatem had gone to the bank on Friday and the ATM didn’t work. He went to the bank on Saturday morning and he learned that not only is his joint account with his wife, their checking account and saving account, not only had they been frozen but his wife has a bank account that is separate from his and her bank account has been frozen by them. I have to tell you I don’t know under what law they could be doing that because she is not a target of this investigation.
[...]
…On September 24th, seven homes in Chicago and Minneapolis and one office of an antiwar committee in Minneapolis were raided by the FBI. The warrants and the subpoenas all indicated that they were looking for evidence of “material support for foreign terrorist organizations.” The fourteen people that were subpoenaed in that group really has one thing in common: all fourteen of them, including my wife and I (our home was raided by the FBI), all fourteen of them had been key organizers in the protest at the Republican National Convention September 1, 2008. The Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, what it was called. Marches that were held were permitted marches.
We didn’t know this on the morning of the raid and it took some time to learn this fact. In fact, we learned it from the office in Chicago, the office of the US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, that the antiwar committee in the Twin Cities had been infiltrated by a law enforcement agent, had been infiltrated the FBI starting in April 2008 in the months organizing for the protest for the RNC. That protest was the largest antiwar protest in the history of the Midwest of the United States. Thirty thousand marched on the RNC on September 1st.
Apparently, that police agent and professional liar didn’t find anything that was indictable. But then, she stuck around for two more years as an undercover cop spying on the antiwar movement. And we believe that it is her lies about us that were the basis for the raids in September and the subpoenas for a Grand Jury.
The second thing to tell you is that the Grand Jury — all twenty-three of us, there were fourteen subpoenaed in September — All fourteen of us refused to appear at the Grand Jury. The US Attorney then subpoenaed nine more people, mostly Palestinian Americans, in December. And those nine all refused to appear at a Grand Jury because we learned that the Grand Jury can indict a ham sandwich. It is not an unbiased process. It is a prosecutor’s dream. You have no right to have your lawyer present. You have no right to see the evidence being presented against you. You have no right to cross-examination of the witnesses. In fact, you have no right to see the witnesses.
We all realized it was just a witch-hunt and refused to participate in it. And there are consequences for that. All twenty-three of us for refusing could actually be imprisoned on contempt of court for refusing to participate in that grand jury.
Call today and Tuesday to demand un-freezing of accounts, end to repression
Call the Office of Foreign Assets Control at 202-622-1649 or 202-622-2420. Demand:
* Unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family
* Stop repression against Palestinian, anti-war and international solidarity activists.
The tempest in a tea cup regarding Tony Kushner’s views on Israel is likely to abate soon, and that’s certainly good news of a relatively new kind. As some may know, Kushner, an award winning playwright best known for “Angels in America”, was recently offered–and then denied–an honorary degree from CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The university’s board apparently and effectively struck Kushner’s name off the list because of what it claimed were his ‘extremist’ views on Israel. Now, following backlash from other luminaries, including progressive favorite and former honorary degree recipient, Barbara Ehrenreich, it looks like CUNY’s board will fold and offer the degree after all. I say this is a new kind of news, because such things usually go the other way.
I previously wrote about Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s obscene and cowardly betrayal of Debra Almontaser, the director of an experimental city school that sought to work Arab language and culture into the curriculum. Almontaser had made the mistake of being captured by a video camera in a positive public statement of support for Palestinians. Behind the scenes, Bloomberg forced Almontaser’s resignation, amid a piranha’s frenzy of attacks by bigoted, but influential, organizations. Perhaps Palestinians and Arabs who also support a just and equitable resolution of the Palestinian Israeli conflict will soon find their mild rebukes of Israel and positive support of Palestinian rights equally supported, though I’m skeptical.
But I don’t want to get into that here. What struck me about this issue, despite the commendable stands by other academics in support of Kushner, was just how mild Kushner’s views really are. Despite the absurd slander of CUNY board member Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld’s recent op-ed “Tony Kushner, an Extremist, Can’t Represent CUNY”, Kushner’s statements and his position on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace, are well within the liberal bounds of mainstream debate on Israel. At least they were as those bounds existed a little over a decade ago. Kushner’s quotes from the very well respected Israeli author Benny Morris, about the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestine in 1948 are now bland historical footnotes in Israeli discourse. Ironically, Morris has taken a radical turn toward the right in recent years, opposing negotiations with Palestinians and supporting military attacks; and yet, he still does not recant his historical work or such terms as “ethnic cleansing”.
Jewish Voice for Peace is also quite mainstream in the Jewish-American continuum of Israeli criticism, joining such other well-regarded entities as the magazine Tikkun, in calling or an end to settlements and an end to military attacks on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Such demands are not very different from the standard, although hypocritical in their case, rubric of the US State Department.
The largest bone of contention concerning Kushner’s involvement with JVN is their use of boycotts against Israel. But this too is mischaracterization. In the first case, JVN’s boycotts are limited to companies that profit from of the Israeli occupation, such as Caterpillar, which creates the hulking mechanical monstrosities that destroy Palestinian homes. JVP does not have a standing boycott of companies that do business with Israel. But Kushner does not even support such a conservative boycott and he has publicly disavowed it, as he did in his response to CUNY, where he stated that boycotts against Israel ignore the realities of “Jewish history and Jewish existence.”
Wiesenfeld’s op-ed is, at its base, slander, lacking quotes or citations of any kind. But his actions and writing have a much more sinister effect on the Israel-Palestine discourse, moving the debate frame increasingly to the right. Wiesenfeld, and bigots like him, make American centrist’s opinions about Israel seem radical. In the new atmosphere created by such McCarthyesque discourse, views that may be further on the left spectrum,–and in line with international law, norms and world opinion–can be made to seem like bloodthirsty anti-Semitism. Having to fight tooth and nail to receive bare acknowledgement that Israeli colonies and Israeli military attacks are immoral and illegal, leaves little time to examine the pitiful excuses for US controlled peace proposals and negotiations. Such processes, which Kushner has supported in the past and will continue to support, institutionalize the worst aspects of the Israeli occupation under a Palestinian Authority imprimatur.
There are, of course, views about the conflict that are motivated by anti-Jewish bigotry which make an honest conversation about the conflict difficult. As a Palestinian I find them repellant, and indeed, more anti-Palestinian, than anti-Jewish in their impact.
But these are far less damaging than the kind of sleazy discourse peddled by Wiesenfeld, and supported by others within the CUNY committee. That’s because when you really look at Kushner’s views, they are little more than the established liberal consensus as it stood at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993. And here we are struggling just to get back to a level of open discourse that led inexorably to rank injustice for Palestinians in the form of Us and Israel dominated peace processes.
Update:
Propagandist extraordinaire, Jeffrey Goldberg, weighs in on this issue in a very clever way, claiming that both Kushner and Wiesenfeld have some fair points. Here’s how Goldberg weighs Wiesenfeld’s claim that Israel could not have practiced ethnic cleansing, because a certain number of Israeli citizens are of Palestinian origin.
Wiesenfeld argued that Israel never engaged in systematic ethnic-cleansing: “The Jews never did this on a systematic basis. The Jews don’t plan genocide. If there was ethnic-cleansing, how come there are more than a million Arab citizens of Israel today?”
On this issue, both Kushner and Wiesenfeld have good, if partial, arguments. There were instances in which Arab villages in what is now Israel were forcibly cleared of their inhabitants by Israeli forces. On the other hand, these episodes occurred during a war initiated by Arabs, after they rejected the United Nations partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.
How is Wiesenfeld’s disingenous premise that there was no ethnic cleansing, because “there are more than a million Arab citizens of Israel today…” partially supported by Goldberg’s false statement that Arabs started the war? It’s not, obviously. Rhetorical trick number one from Goldberg.
Rhetorical trick number two: sending people, via hot-link, to CAMERA, a notoriously mendacious propaganda organ, to view Kushner’s statement about whether or not the state of Israel should have been created. Of course, there are other places where you could view that statement, such as Kushner’s own letter to CUNY which I linked to above. But how convenient that at the CAMERA site you will find a non-stop eye-bleeding onslaught of falsehoods designed, among other things, to make very mainstream ideas about international law and human rights seem scandalously anti-Jewish. Here is on such falsehood:
He cites as his source [for the claim that Israel practiced ethnic cleansing] Benny Morris, yet Morris himself has written that the fact that ”Israel emerged from the 1948 War with a 160,000-strong Arab minority” undermines charges of ethnic cleansing. Such is the caliber of the playwright’s commentary on Israel and the Palestinians.
Morris however makes no bones about the ethnic cleansing claim, and happily repeats the claim for anyone who’s interested in his disgusting perspective on morality, here in the LA Times
The expulsions, conducted under orders from then-Lt. Col. Yitzhak Rabin, were an element of the partial ethnic cleansing that rid Israel of the majority of its Arab inhabitants at the very moment of its birth. Earlier, in the 1930s and 1940s, a near consensus had emerged among Zionist leaders on the necessity of “transfer.” They believed that it was critical to buy out or drive out the Arab inhabitants from the areas destined for Jewish statehood, both to make way for Jewish immigrants and to remove the Arabs who opposed, often violently, the establishment of such a state…In fact, today — after looking afresh at the events of 1948 and at the context of the whole Arab-Zionist conflict from its inception in 1881 until the present day – I find myself as convinced as ever that the Israelis played a major role in ridding the country of tens of thousands of Arabs during the 1948 war, but I also believe their actions were inevitable and made sense.
Benny Morris:There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing.
Unfortunately for CAMERA, Benny Morris is now a right wing fanatical supporter of every act Israel undertakes in it’s “defense”, and he can no longer be dismissed as a left wing self-hating Jew as he once was in the US, and as other critical historians of Israel such as Ilan Pape, still are.
Illinois has cast the first salvo in the opt-out battle against the S-Comm program, with California looking as if it will follow suit. The Chicago News Cooperative reports that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has officially notified ICE that the Illinois State Police will opt out of the program, just ahead of bills entering the state legislature that would make S-Comm optional for Illinois local police forces if passed.It’s unclear what impact this will have on what is an apparently mandatory participation that ICE insists is still in effect.
California is set to follow suit, with similar legislation regarding local participation in the program. AB 1081 has emerged from committee and is ready for a full vote from the Assembly. San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessy testified as to the negative impact on immigrant communities, and in policing them, for the Assembly Public Safety Committee last week. He posts a withering critique of the program in an Op Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle this week:
The use of fingerprints to initiate immigration scrutiny is of particular concern to victims of domestic violence. In a recent case in San Francisco, a woman called 911 to report domestic violence, but the police arrested both her and her partner. Although no charges were ever filed against the woman, she is now fighting deportation. There should be no penalty for a victim of a crime to call the police.
All it takes is a fingerprint.
It does not matter if the person is innocent because the fingerprints are transmitted to ICE at arrest, prior to criminal court proceedings. ICE’s own data show that 29 percent of people deported because of Secure Communities are classified as non-criminals. The result is often that a child is taken from a parent, or an individual raised since childhood in the United States is deported to the country where he was born but where he has no family and doesn’t even speak the language.
This fear of the arbitrary use of immigration laws is only reinforced when you have a high-ranking ICE official telling law enforcement, “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” This is a quote from James Pendergraph, the former executive director of the ICE Office of State and Local Coordination, who was speaking in 2008 to the Police Foundation’s national conference on immigration issues.
My main criticism of Secure Communities is that it casts too wide a net and scoops up the fingerprints of everyone not born in the United States whether or not they pose a criminal risk…I don’t think people should be deported for a traffic ticket or for operating a tamale cart in the Mission.
For these reasons, I have repeatedly asked ICE to allow the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department to opt out of Secure Communities. ICE has not been forthright or truthful in its responses. First, ICE officials said a local community could “opt out” and even prescribed a procedure. When it became clear that San Francisco, Santa Clara and other jurisdictions were interested in opting out, the ICE officials then reversed course and declared that no one could opt out. ICE also refuses to inform local authorities if the agency has released back into the community those previously arrested.
… Local jurisdictions cannot and should not be lied to and coerced into doing the work of the federal government. Let the feds enforce national immigration laws and leave local law enforcement out of it.
As I wrote the other day, I caught up with Code Pink at the May First Immigrant and Labor Solidarity March in San Francisco on Sunday. Their ambitious and laudable plan was to travel via ferry after the march and head up a Strike Against Budget Cuts and March to the State Capital. I talked to Xan Joi, one of the main organizers of the action, and promised to catch up with her throughout their march. So here’s the first installment of that reporting. They’ve been getting very poor media attention along the way, not surprisingly, so I hope that this can do something to alert folks that these people are out there pounding the pavement with a very well articulated message about ending war and corporate give-aways and investing the dividends in humans and infrastructure back at home.
________________________________
Having traveled from Glenn Cove in support of an indigenous movement there to protect the last shellmound in the area from development, the core group headed to Napa Valley Community College, which is under the threat of heavy budget cuts. Xan pointed out that Napa State Hospital, a mental health facility across the street from the college has also endured severe cuts that have put the lives of both staff and patients at risk [two staff members, according to Xan, have been killed at facility in the last year].
Today, Xan and the others were protesting in front of Bank of America, one of the largest recipients of government largesse over the past few years. One of the main focuses of the group has been to draw attention to the massive giveaways in bail outs to corporations like Bank of America, and the great divide between the wealthy and the working class and poor. The dividends that would be found if just four hundred of the wealthiest Californians paid their taxes at a twenty six percent rate, would provide close to twelve billion dollars for the state.
The human and military cost of the Afghan/Iraq wars to California has been another over-arching theme of the march. Tomorrow the group will travel to Travis Air Force base in Fairfield to draw attention to the cost of war to the state of California. According to Xan, the deployment of the California National Guard cost the state one hundred and fifty eight billion dollars in infrastructure and other costs last year. Xan also drew attention to the human cost in health care for physically and mentally wounded soldiers and in the higher rates of crime that affect returning soldiers.
The demonstration will start at the local high school, where many children of service members and, often, future recruits can be found, before heading out to the base.
By Monday, May 9th, the group plans to reach Sacramento where they will participate in a larger general strike and tent city to protest the misallocation of state resources on war and tax giveaways to the wealthy.
If you want to join the group for the march, or simply hook up with them at one or more of the demonstrations, you can find the route for the demonstration here:www.strikemay2011.com .
You can also get on the group’s listserve or find out more info by sending an email to info@codepink.org.
What can Israel do when the Palestinian Authority does stuff it doesn’t like? Why, it can withhold the money that Israel owes the Palestinian Authority, as America’s papers of record reported today. But wait, you say! How did Israel get control of the Palestinian Authority’s money?
Well, the answer is easy. Despite being considered an autonomous entity, and treated as a foreign power for military attacks, jingo and political posturing purposes, the reality is that the Palestinian Authority has absolutely no control of its own borders in any regard. Even such things as customs fees and taxes are controlled by the government of Israel.
Never one to pass up a possible weapon against the Palestinian people, Israel has used this trick since the inception of the PA as a stealth embargo, turned off and on at will. The capacity is written directly into the lopsided Oslo Accords, which give Israel absolute control over every pore and border in the occupied territories.
Remarkably, it’s not military attacks that Netanyahu’s government seeks to stop by withholding these funds. It’s the diplomatic appeal for world recognition that Abbas’ has waged over the past year, now bolstered by the coalition agreement reached with Hamas last week.
Israel has pulled this trump card often over the past five years, specifically as a weapon to frustrate Palestinian diplomacy–though you won’t see much contextualization of this history in the American media accounts of Israel’s latest underhanded move. The New York Times’ Isabel Kershner mentions it in passing, noting that the outlays “have been suspended for lengthy periods in the past.” But it’s instructive to see why and when these suspensions have occurred over the past five years.
As many have noted for years, what Israel fears more than any “terror” attack, is Palestinian efforts to achieve sovereignty through routes recognized by international law. It’s not clear yet what goal the PA has for its year long diplomatic offensive, but it is pretty obvious that one of the few options after diplomatic efforts have been frustrated is violence. That fact doesn’t seem to bother the government of Israel for some reason.
While these things can often be like parades, it was nice to see the solidarity and connection between the immigration issue and labor, even if there’s been very little articulation as of yet as to how they connect, and how groups can build effective coalitions. Without a total legalization campaign, there’s not really a good way to build solidarity between immigrant groups and labor groups. Whenever there’s some kind of legal restriction on a group of people or social sanction, that group will always be used as a wedge against the next less marginalized group in terms of labor. That’s just the way things have worked out for the last hundred or so years. The odds of any kind of rational immigration policy occurring soon seems dim at best, especially with the corruption and subsequent abandonment of the DREAM act by Democrats. It’s a start, at least, to address the issue of immigration and labor as one that’s inextricably linked.
That message is one that tea-bagging idiots can’t seem to get through their skulls, as their pitiful hate rally of a half dozen at the Civic Center demonstrated. Their insistence on secure borders–an impossibility–and their inability to understand how capital’s reliance on immigration is a fundamental function of their economic system, not some aberration, assures that they’ll be impotently wailing about their vicimization on the sidelines until doomsday. Politicians will always be happy to issue pandering rhetoric, while doing nothing about the problem of borders or jobs. Come on now, people–I don’t care how racist you are, use your heads.
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Many groups were represented at the march, from UniteHere, the ANSWER Coalition, the Grey Panthers, and AAMEMSA.
I talked to someone from Code Pink, bringing up the tail end of the march from the Mission to Civic Center , who will be participating in their general strike and march to Sacramento. They’re off as I write this, via ferry, to start their 8 day march. I’ll have some reports back from her along the way with any luck, over the next few days.
Many commenters saw the hand of a reluctant Justice Department self-sabotaging prosecutions of Blackwater guards in the Nissour Square Massacre. Be that as it may, the DOJ has successfully revived the prosecutions, one bit of good news from the inept leadership of Eric Holder. From the NYT story last week:
A federal appeals court on Friday reopened the criminal case against four former American military contractors accused of manslaughter in connection with a shooting that killed at least 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
Criminal charges against the former employees of Blackwater Worldwide had been dismissed in December 2009 by a federal judge in Washington, who criticized the Justice Department for its handling of the case and ruled that prosecutors had relied on tainted evidence.
The three-judge appeals panel disagreed with that decision, and sent the case back on Friday, ordering Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court to review the evidence against each defendant individually.
“We find that the district court’s findings depend on an erroneous view of the law,” the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled. The appeals judges called on the lower court to determine “as to each defendant, what evidence — if any — the government presented against him that was tainted as to him,” and whether that was enough to justify throwing out the charges.
The former guards affected by the ruling are Evan S. Liberty of Rochester, N.H.; Donald W. Ball of West Valley City, Utah; and Dustin L. Heard of Knoxville, Tenn., all of whom had served with the Marines before joining Blackwater; and Paul A. Slough from Keller, Tex., who had been in the Army.
A fifth guard had also been indicted, but the charges against him were dropped by the Justice Department before Judge Urbina dismissed the case.
The appeals court ruling was a victory for the Justice Department, which had been bruised by Judge Urbina’s ruling taking it to task for an overzealous prosecution.
“We’re pleased with the ruling and assessing the next steps,” the department spokesman, Dean Boyd, said Friday. Defense lawyers involved in the case did not respond to requests for comment.
The shootings, in the middle of traffic in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, left at least 17 Iraqi civilians dead and set off an anti-American political firestorm in Iraq and an international debate over the role of private security contractors in modern war zones. The Blackwater guards were accused of firing wildly and indiscriminately from their convoy into other cars and at Iraqi civilians. The guards defended their actions, saying they were responding to fire from insurgents.
The Nisour Square shootings became a watershed event in the Iraq war, and led the Iraqi government to demand greater sovereignty and control over foreign contractors operating in the country. The Baghdad government later demanded and won the right to subject foreign contractors to Iraqi law, while the United States government grudgingly began to impose greater curbs on the freewheeling activities of the personnel guarding American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The earlier dismissal of the charges against the guards, who were indicted in 2008, was met with angry protests in Iraq, while Friday’s action pleased some in Baghdad.
“This new decision has brought optimism and happiness back to me,” said Talib Mutlak, who was injured in the Nisour Square shooting. “This is a victory for the blood of martyrs and injured people who were affected by Blackwater.”
There’s a legal analysis here, for those who care about such things. I won’t pretend to understand it all, but I do think that the vehemence shown by the DOJ, and the contrary to conventional wisdom reinstatement of charges, show an Obama regime eager to show that it can go after cronies and corruption, and not just excel in the prosecution of Bradley Manning.
Again, not to make too much of what may be coincidence, but this same week saw the announcement in Politico that the DOJ had dropped charges against Thomas Tamm, who blew the whistle on the Bush regime’s warrantless wiretapping program. But oddly enough, the charges had actually been dropped some time last year. Try as you might, you won’t find anything that triggers the emergence of this story, there’s no direct quote from the DOJ nor from Tamm. The story virtually appears from nowhere with no triggering event in the same week that it’s announced that Manning’s court martial will proceed.
The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, released a statement saying “According to existing U.S. law, such a hybrid government cannot be a recipient of U.S. taxpayer funds because the law stipulates that the PA government must recognize the Jewish state of Israel’s right to exist, among other things. Therefore, in order to implement existing law, the U.S. must end assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”
She criticized Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to reconcile with Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, saying that he has shown that his leadership “is not a partner for peace.”
“If reports are correct, the PA would then be standing with those who want only death and destruction for Israel,” Ros-Lehtinen.
For Congress, a day without threatening to sanction or cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority for some reason or other is like a day without sunshine. But it’s especially hilarious with this ignorant sack of low-wattage bulbs in charge. Ros-Lehtinen just recently campaigned to cut funding to the UN for any activity that was not in the exclusive interest of the US [and, of course, Israel]. I’m looking into the law mentioned here, where apparently aid to the Palestinian Authority is tied into “recognition of Israel’s right to exist” by all parties and individuals in the legislature. Like almost every idea produced by this individual, I have a feeling it’s 90% bigotry fueled fantasy.
Law enforcement officialshave argued that asking police to also act as immigration agents makes witnesses and victims more scared about reporting crimes, which makes their work harder, and which makes communities less safe. The more folks find out about Secure Communities, the more it seems the program’s a misnomer.
Now, California Rep. Zoe Lofgren is demanding an investigation into the Department of Homeland Security’s implementation policies. Lofgren contends that DHS lied to localities about whether or not the program was an optional program. Santa Clara and San Francisco Counties were among a handful of counties that tried to opt out of the supposedly voluntary program. After months of confusion about program policies, they’ve been forced to comply and share fingerprints with federal immigration officials.
“Secure Communities is not voluntary and never has been,” a DHS official told the Los Angeles Times. “Unfortunately, this was not communicated as clearly as it should have been to state and local jurisdictions.”
California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced a bill that would modify California counties’ ICE agreements so that only the fingerprints of people who’ve been convicted of felonies would be cross-checked with immigration databases. It would also protect domestic violence victims and youth from deportation, and most important, make Secure Communities optional for California counties. The bill is scheduled for a committee hearing this week.
Just looking through the Wikileaks Gitmo-Leak and noticing what seems like an inordinate number of foreign national detainees who were in Afghanistan because they pretty much had no place else to go. Obviously, this is little more than anecdotal–because the current list on the Wikileaks website is incomplete and I’ve only read through about fifteen or so of the files available. And, of course, some of this information has already been public for some time. But I think it’s worth noting these cases, all, of course, according to the detainee’s own story as it appears in the Gitmo files [most of this information has been independently corroborated since].
Amhad Bin Saleh Bel Bacha: An Algerian who served in the military, but later ran into trouble with a local Islamic group, traveled to France, where he acquired a fake French passport, and then to London where he applied for political asylum. Denied political asylum, Bel Bacha was apparently destitute and accepted an offer to travel to Afghanistan ahead of imminent deportation, where papers were not necessary to enter. He claims that he was never involved in combat, and indeed, fled into the mountains as soon as hostilities began–the US has no proof that he did. Incredibly, though he is considered of low intelligence value, he is still in Gitmo to this day, demonstrating the completely arbitrary detention rubric there.
Sameur Abdenour: Also from Algeria, Sameur ended up in the UK illegally after being involved in the Bosnian conflict [in subsequent reports, it appears Abdenour had refugee status in Great Britain]. According to his own account, he went to Afghanistan from the UK to “seek a better life”, due to what he considered poor treatment from the UK government and people. Sameur claims he was not involved in any violence towards Americans, nor does the US have any proof that he was.
Khalil Mamut: A Uighur studying abroad, who like others on this list, found himself with nowhere to go. After spending three years in Pakistan, his passport was about to expire, and he claims he would have been tortured and imprisoned in China for his associations in Pakistan. With nowhere to go and no money, he traveled to Afghanistan–the one country in the world at that time which virtually turned no one away–and literally became an indentured soldier of the Taliban. He never saw combat and was arrested by Pakistani officials in a Uighur camp that put up no resistance. Mamut was released, along with several other Uighur prisoners to Bermuda in 2009. The US never claimed to have any evidence against Mamut.
Ahmad Abd al Rahman Ahmad: An ethnic Moroccan Spanish citizen, who was by his own account a petty thief and drug dealer who seems to have become involved in jihad movements for simple lack of opportunity. When given the choice to leave Afghanistan after the events of 9-11, Ahmad chose to leave but was apprehended as he tried to do so. He was in Guantanamo for two years before being transferred to Spanish authorities, where he was tried for links to terror and released for good behavior after three years of a six year sentence in 2007. Which by itself, is simply an incredible indictment of Gitmo.
Ali A Motalib: Motalib’s story may be the most horrendous of these. Motalib served in the Iraqi military, but after going AWOL, was forced to leave the country. He sought asylum in several embassies in Tunisia and even tried to sell Iraqi secrets to a US consul in Pakistan as a way to make money. With few opportunities, and nowhere else to go, it’s not surprising that Motalib ended up in Afghanistan, a literal “wild west” with no passport control or secure borders, looking for a way to support himself. He was a driver and mechanic for the Taliban by his own account–an account which the US does not dispute. In a final irony, Motalib surrendered to unindicted Afghan war criminal, mass murderer and US ally, Abd Dostum. Motalib spent seven years in Guantanamo and was only released in 2009.
Some of these men were stateless, others fleeing from institutionalized injustices in their homelands, or just plain broke and uneducated looking for work. That’s how they ended up in Guantanamo.
What happens when “real people”, like Israelis and Americans, get caught in the crossfire, or are killed in an “escalation of force incident” at a checkpoint by a panicked or psychotic soldier? When it happens to Afghans, Iraqis or Palestinians, it’s collateral damage. Untold thousands–perhaps tens of thousands–of them have already died in such incidents, with little investigation and a flaccid shrug of war machine shoulders. Hey, it’s the cost of doing business, right?
But when it happens to an armed Israeli militia-man? Stop the presses:
According to an IDF initial investigation, three vehicles containing Breslev worshipers entered the tomb in violation of a decree by the IDF’s Central Command prohibiting entry of Israelis into Area A without prior coordination. A verbal confrontation ensued between the worshipers and the Palestinian policemen, who called on them to leave the area. The Breslev vehicles failed to stop at a checkpoint outside of the religious site, the investigation found. The policemen then fired shots in the air. The worshipers tried to flee the area, and their vehicles came under fire, killing Livnat, 24, father of four, and wounding four others.
Livnat will most likely be remembered as a political football launched into the air by his cynical aunt, the ever important Minister of Culture and Sports, Limor Livnat. Livnat wasted not one moment politicizing her nephew’s death. Although she lives in a regime where the similar deaths of unarmed Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints is a common occurrence, Livnat called the death “cold blooded murder” and the PA security officer, a “terrorist disguised as a policeman.” at her relative’s wake.
We’ll see how the American media, and Congressional Propaganda Devices react.
What is US Uncut? That’s a good question. I started out my day on Monday, April 18, with the assumption that US Uncut is a fairly loose collection of organizations, coordinating actions together in a relatively centralized “decentralized” way, as has been common the left for generations now, at least at the local level. I had seen two actions listed in Oakland on the national US Uncut website and I was curious about both because they seemed to have derived from such disparate organizations. One of these, at 2 pm, had its origin with the AFL-CIO, according to the website–a rally in front of Citibank in Downtown Oakland, to protest tax dodging corporations. The other at 9 pm, seemed to have it’s origin with the coalition of Ruckus Society, Brass Liberation Orchestra, and et. al, that had shut down Bank of America on Saturday with a boisterous direct action musical.
I met one of the core organizers for the 2pm event, Charles Davidson, a volunteer with East Bay Move On Dot Org. Davidson hadn’t posted the action on the US-Uncut website of tax weekend/day actions, he didn’t know who at AFL-CIO had, or even what connection AFL CIO had to either US Uncut or the action. Davidson described himself, beyond his affiliation with Move On, as a progressive aligned only loosely with the Democratic party. He drew inspiration from the actions in Tahrir Square, in Egypt and Wisconsin and sees the possibility of similar forces from the netroots, community organizations and union rank and file coming together as a reaction to the financial crisis, but including broader themes of foreign and domestic policy, including American wars. Davidson was critical of the Democratic party: he described in great detail the sign he carried, plastered with the image of Robert Rubin, a creature of the union of corporations and government, incubated in the Clinton and Obama administrations and Citigroup.
The crowd at the event was sizeable for a mid-day action, with at least eighty people crowded onto the sidewalk in front of the Citibank on Broadway. Most of them were in the greyer area of the activist spectrum. Cars and buses honked in support as they passed, as did a fire truck. Even an ambulance, careening around the corner, sirens blazing, managed a honk of support as it passed. Close to the end of the event, organizers—whom I later learned were with SEIU—passed out fliers for yet another event at three thirty at the Bank of America on the Dimond District.
At the Dimond District Bank of America event, about an hour later, I saw many faces from the downtown Citigroup action. Pete Feltman, a graduate divinity student and musician, had heard about the Citigroup event via email, but hadn’t known about the Bank of America action later in the day. His focus, as he described it, was on the basic questions—spending waste on the military and the limitations of an economically inegalitarian world swamped in debt. He felt ambivalent about Move On Dot Org, and complained that they were too reactionary and not pro active enough. While he described himself as part of US-Uncut, he laughed a bit when I asked him what that meant. I think Pete gave the best answer for what became a Sphinxian riddle for the day. Pete said that the label US-Uncut was a positive thing, so long as it gave people the ability to organize, “get people going and give some visibility to the movement”.
That certainly described the way that both I and Pete had come to be at the Bank of America action put on by SEIU and the Alliance for Californians for Community Empowerment (the former California ACORN, now its own non profit organization) on Monday afternoon. In contrast to the Citigroup action, the Bank of America action was far bolder. The plan was to have four activists hold the doors open, as the crowd of around forty demonstrators walked in with banners and noise making devices, with the demand that the manager of the bank accept a document calling for consumer protections against foreclosure practices.
As usual for any idea involving a loose agglomeration of people, Plan A failed immediately. The lone armed guard at the bank, became obsessed with trying to hold the doors closed, his arms stretched out from his wide and bulky body, he nearly succeeded for a few minutes. But eventually, one demonstrator got through here, another there, and he gave up, allowing in the flood.
After occupying the building, and effectively shutting it down, the police arrived. They quite pleasantly agreed to act as mediators, and ask the manager to accept the letter and fax it to the corporate office. She refused. Some politicking went back and forth, but eventually the crowd left and the bank shut its doors.
I spoke to Gus Feldman, one of the coordinators for the action from SEIU Local 1021. He explained that the action had two limited goals: to draw attention to the under-funding of public services even as financial corporations, like Bank of America, foreclosed on mortgages to the very taxpayers subsidizing them through the worst tempest of the financial crisis; and to introduce and lobby for four legislative bills at the state level which would bring accountability to the foreclosure process by charging fees and providing other barriers for profit making when divesting people of their homes. According to those goals, the action was an apparent success, having drawn attention to the crisis in public programs, and the relatively pampered American corporate organisms. But Feldman also noted that the key to a successful campaign was always to allow for escalation. For now, the demonstrators marched in front of Bank of America, its doors closed.
By 9pm, it had begun raining intermittently. Still, I traveled to the Main Oakland Post Office for the 9pm event that had been scheduled on the Us Uncut website. The target of the event was an outdoor Post Office kiosk, open till midnight, accepting returns through the car windows of last minute filers. Unlike the previous events of the day, this was a relatively media-friendly exercise in fliering and pushing US Uncut’s message about tax dodging corporations. It was especially effective for stressed out taxpayers on a rainy tax day Monday—corporations don’t pay taxes, and here you are rushing to the Post Office in the rain to drop off your return!
Peter was there, and he pointed out one of the main organizers for the US Uncut events of the weekend, Leslie Dreyer. She had been inspired, she told me, by an article in The Nation called How to Build a Progressive Tea Party in which Jonathan Hari suggested that people use the model provided by UK Uncut, with their social networking inspired shut-downs of tax dodging corporations. An organizer based in Jackson, Mississippi took the message seriously, and got into contact with some of the organizers from UK Uncut, who loaned him their website model.
Then came the next wave of people like Leslie, who now, having a tangible idea to plug in to, started their own Facebook page for US Un-Cut San Francisco, like dozens of chapters that have started all across the country. Leslie’s model of activism is rooted in the idea of direct action spectacle. The first SF-Uncut action she took on had activists showing up at Bank of America trying to cash checks for 1.5 billion dollars. Business at the bank was slowed and the group made a well-defined point in an easily accepted way. Leslie then posted the action plan on the US Uncut main website, so that other groups could do it—what she called “pre-rolled” action.
Similarly, she pointed to the successful US-Uncut New York/YesMen hoax. The YesMen, on behalf of US Uncut, mounted a faux-GE mea culpa press release vowing to pay its tax debt–some 3.2 billion dollars. The Associated Press fell for it, and the press release made headlines. US Uncut then interviewed tax payers about what they would do with this imaginary budgetary windfall.
By far one of the bolder US Un-cut actions that Leslie has been involved with, was the Ruckus Society/Brass Liberation Orchestra assisted occupation of the downtown San Francisco Bank of America on Friday April 15. Leslie helped organize the flash mob aspect of the event, and the flashmobbers did a “mash up” of Push It, with the words Pay Up, inserted instead. A Youtube clip of the event, had a dual purpose: to document the action, but also to promote other tax weekend events happening in California. The clip has gone viral, and you can see it below:
But still the question “what is US Uncut?” remains difficult to answer, even for those, like Leslie, at ground zero of the nascent phenomenon. Leslie offered that it was a “decentralized movement”, before admitting that the characterization didn’t in fact quite capture the idea.
There are, of course, some obvious weaknesses to the model. Oakland US Uncut isn’t street active as yet, and people logging on to the Facebook page for the San Francisco chapter seemed to be asking for a certain level of top down leadership—which had resulted in the San Francisco based group taking on the Post Office project in Oakland.
The “movement” relies on self-actualization, which is something that, in a leader-centric discourse on movement building seems to frighten people. “There was a call to have a sit in at every state capital…so somebody suggested that the few people organizing just do it,” Leslie said, “and my response was yes, godo that…” Simply put: in this model, if followers aren’t prepared to lead, they may not get a chance to follow either.
At its most fundamental, argued Leslie, US Uncut is a message about tax dodging corporations, “so if somebody co opted it, it would be something else, and we’d keep doing this. And if they co opted it and it was the same thing, then well, fine.” Nothing would stop US Uncut from remaining on target she said, even if other groups tried to co opt the message. A co-opted, but essentially same message, could only amplify the group’s goal. This may be an over-simplification, given the struggles that have developed with the national Tea Party. In essence, however, the message of scurrilous tax dodging corporations is one which both Democrats and Republicans will find difficult to hijack without exposing their own hypocrisy.
Within that message, it seems, lies a hub for various groups that can come together with their own visions and goals, and act within the ether that is US Uncut. More importantly, this hazy agglomeration can accommodate individuals who may not agree with all, or any, of a group’s mission statement. Move On, SEIU, the AFL-CIO, ACCE—none of these groups were actually in control of Monday’s events. Rather, what seemed to have materialized was a synergistic “fifth” group. Though ephemeral and already dissipated by the end of the day, it played an integral role in a direct action that hadn’t appeared on the US Uncut website or on the SF Uncut Facebook page. This was ironically the most aggressive event of the day, and one that may have scared off some of the participants that ended up attending it, if they had known about it ahead of time.
As one demonstrator, who was at all three events told me, he was very distrustful of all the organizations that had been represented through out the day and he was much further to the left than any of them. Regardless, he had made himself a US Uncut tshirt, that was quite well elaborated, even as he cheerily said that he had no idea what the organization was and that it didn’t matter.
That opinion, echoed in one form or another throughout the day, may turn out to be the phenomenon’s greatest strength. People want to get organized and address issues that are affecting them: their diminishing wages; the right to good jobs and affordable housing; the lack of accountability of corporations; the misallocation of government resources. But barriers of ideology, dogma and manifesto often stop them at the gate. There are no such considerations for US Uncut, if Monday is any guide. And many of the problems and frustrations of coalition building seem to have been left out of the process for now.
At this point, perhaps it may simply be most useful to call US Uncut a political action aggregator.
This is some footage I shot of demonstrators storming the doors of Bank of America in Oakland.
Though I gave Leslie credit for things she was involved in, I didn’t mean to give the impression that Leslie alone is behind US Uncut SF. Many people gave their work collectively for the US Uncut actions, and continue to do so. You can find SF Uncut here on Facebook.
