All About Hypocrisy

The Foley Follies

By GARY LEUPP

I confess to feeling my share of schadenfreude at the fall of Florida Congressman Mark Foley, once chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, and author of the "Foley Provisions" in the Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, accused of sending sexual online messages to former and serving Congressional pages. Here is more exposure of the hypocrisy of the Republican Party, publicly pious, privately prone to the same range of prurient behavior as those its targets. Or at least that's how it looks to many Americans, enraged by Foley's "perverse" behavior. That image will likely weaken an administration that ought---for any reasons at all---to be weakened as much as possible before it tries to nuke Iran. But I want to be fair and objective too, and rational about the sexual issues here, mindful that nuanced opinions aren't popular.

The unmarried Foley has not denied that he is homosexual or bisexual; in fact he's implied that he is, by pointedly declining to comment on that issue since 2003. He supported the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2000. His appearance of hypocrisy stems less from the revelation that he likes males than the fact that he likes rather young males, whom he has contacted through the web, having coauthored legislation to protect children from online predators.

I see two charges here so far. The first is that beginning in August 2005 he sent five emails to a former page who had been assigned to his colleague Rep. Rodney Alexander of Louisiana. The page had sent Foley a thank you card for some reason, maybe including his email address, and Foley had thereafter contacted him after his departure from the page position with messages that inquired about how things were going in general, and what he wanted for his birthday. That last request understandably made the youth uncomfortable, as did Foley's request for a (presumably G-rated) picture of himself. So the ex-page forwarded the messages to Congressional staffers last October, stating, "Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out," and "sick sick sick sick sick." He made it quite clear he did not wish to be the object of the Congressman's affection.

Foley maintained that the exchanges were merely friendly, explaining that he routinely requests photos of former staffers who might wish for letters of recommendation in the future. Republican officials, including Page Chairman John M. Shimkus determined that the letters had been "over-friendly," and House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois has said that he did not view the emails as "sexual in nature." Anyway Foley was ordered to cease contact with the former page. Apparently the emails ended then, and the boy's parents indicated that they did not wish to pursue the matter. According to Rep. Alexander, "They told me they were comfortable with it and didn't want to pursue anything, didn't want to talk about it anymore." Foley for his part insisted he had done nothing "inappropriate." But the youth (unidentified) was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times last November as saying he felt the request for a picture was indeed "very inappropriate."

All the above was reported as of last November, but Foley's follies only became a blockbuster news story last week. (Six weeks before the midterm-elections. Coincidence?) On September 28, ABC News carried specific excerpts from the emailed messages, including:

"did you have fun at your conference..."
"what do you want for your birthday coming up...."
"what stuff do you like to do"
"how are you weathering the [Katrina] hurricane...."
"are you safe"
"send me an email pic of you as well...."

Embarrassing, perhaps, for the Congressman, but indeed explainable as "over-friendly" and indeed, as Hastert has put it, "not sexual in nature." Those journalists referring to these emails as "sexually explicit" must be leading some very sheltered lives.

But then there's the second charge, involving the instant messages. Instant messaging of course differs from email in that people can communicate over the internet in realtime. Some of the reporting has misleadingly conflated the merely over-friendly emails so far revealed with the IMs exchanged between Foley and the pages. The segue, in any case, was smooth. The day after breaking the Foley story (Sept. 29) ABC expanded it, claiming that "after we posted that story online, we began to hear from a number of other pages who sent [copies of] these much more explicit, instant messages. When the congressman realized we had them, he resigned."

In these IMs there's no subtlety; it's just raunchy talk about getting naked and masturbating. ABC has kindly provided excerpts to the public. One of the boys (whom Foley calls his "favorite stud") chats amiably with the Congressman, tells him details about his (heterosexual) activity, tells him how he masturbates, informs him when he has an erection, then says he has to go.

Then there are these exchanges, between the Congressman and one or more pages, revealed by ABC. ("Maf54" = Mark Foley).

Maf54 You in your boxers, too?
Teen: Nope, just got home. I had a college interview that went late.
Maf54: Well, strip down and get relaxed.

Maf54: What ya wearing?
Teen: tshirt and shorts
Maf54: Love to slip them off of you.

Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

The Washington Post reports that Patrick McDonald, a former House page who is now a senior at Ohio State University, says that "three or four" pages from his 2001-02 class received sexually suggestive messages from Foley. You might say that this material is more damning, simply because it is so explicit. On the other hand it also appears quite mutual. It is one thing to receive unsolicited emails and to protest, as the Louisiana boy did, another to engage in ongoing repartee online with someone online. I think it likely that it was widely gossiped among Congressional pages that Rep. Foley was attracted to teenage boys, since he had made advances to quite a few of their number. Those receiving the instant messages seem quite familiar with the Congressman's sexuality, and I think it best not to make too many assumptions yet about their reactions.

Of course even those expressing some mild interest in Foley's advances might well have been grossed out in fact, but playing along with him out of opportunism, out of the desire not to alienate a powerful politician who might be important to their careers. And one could argue that even if they enjoyed the chitchat, it doesn't matter, because they're too young to know what they enjoy or should enjoy and that the exploitation of their vulnerability is an unconscionable use of adult power. But pages are typically high achievers, worldly and sophisticated, and high school students these days in general tend to be sexually active by age 16. No doubt some are gay, and high school students who want experience in the halls of Congress are probably attracted to power. While we probably find a pattern of sexual harassment here, it would be naïve to assume that all the male pages involved feel they were victimized by Foley, take pleasure in his downfall, or see that fall as anything other than a reflection of homophobia.

Foley--if he were to openly acknowledge his sexuality--might declare that he just happens to like (just barely legal if legal-aged) boys, and has engaged them in mutually enjoyable private conversations over the net which are simply nobody else's business. (No one has yet charged to my knowledge that he has had illegal physical intercourse with underage youths. That may come, but I haven't read that yet.) But most seem convinced already that he's guilty of the attempted seduction or at least efforts to corrupt "children." The Republican leadership in Congress, dismayed at how the Democrats are using this, and frightened by the media spin on the story ("may well threaten Republican control over Congress") has decided to throw the book at its formerly esteemed colleague. Hastert, Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri now accuse Foley of "an obscene breach of trust," and declare "[Foley's] immediate resignation must now be followed by the full weight of the criminal justice system." Obviously they want to seem, like the hypocritical French policeman in the film Casablanca, "Shockedshocked!" by the news.

But what, specifically, shocks here? Congressional pages must by current rules be at least 16 years old, the minimum age having been raised from 14 during the last big Congressional page-related sex scandal (in 1983, in which Hastert's Illinois Republican colleague Rep. Daniel B. Crane was involved). In many states, 16 is the age of consent for males, and in some of these, homosexual relations are not illegal. These include Alaska, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. In Hawai'i, consent age is 14. In Washington DC, it is also 16 and there is no law on homosexuality. (In Louisiana, the age is 17 and gay sex is technically still illegal.)

In other words, Mr. Foley could have consensual sex with 16 year old boys in much of the country, including DC. If that's the case, you'd think it would also be legal (however "inappropriate") for Foley to engage in sexual banter over the internet with such boys.

But I don't know, and I don't expect the laws to be logical. I haven't looked closely at the laws that might pertain to this topic. I notice Foley was one of 25 cosponsors of the "Protection of Children From Sexual Predators" Act that became Public Law 105-314 in 1998. It doesn't really address this question of men chatting up 16 year old boys about sex on instant messenger. But among the "Foley Provisions" in H.R. 4472 (the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006), we find a section 1470 that involves the "transfer of obscene material to minors." Does the legal definition of "minor" include all 16 year olds, including those reckoned by state law to have attained the age of consent? And does the IM, "Do I make you horny?" constitute "obscene material"?

Former Foley friend Hastert (worried sick, maybe, that he'll be accused of covering up Foley's behavior) now opines that the disgraced Congressman's actions could violate federal law, because they involve interstate communications, and soliciting an underage person for sex online is a federal crime. Indeed if any of Foley's chats were by a legal definition "obscene," and any of the boys legally "minors," the Florida Republican could be hung by his own rope.

* * * * *

Remember Jocelyn Elders, Bill Clinton's first Surgeon-General? In 1994 at a conference at the UN she was asked if adults should promote masturbation among youth as a way to discourage risky sexual behavior. "I think that it is part of human sexuality," she replied very rationally, "and perhaps it should be taught." This of course led to her downfall, as religious fundamentalists rallied against her and a spineless president tried to cut his losses. Oddly enough Mark Foley has been encouraging youthful masturbation, not in the sense the former Clinton official envisioned but as a personal participatory exercise.

Dr. Elders later generated further controversy when she wrote the foreword to Judith Levine's book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (winner of the Los Angeles Times 2002 book prize). In that book Levine declares, "the threat of pedophilia and molestation is exaggerated by adults, who want to deny young people the opportunity for positive sexual experiences. The research shows us that in some minority of cases, young - even quite young - people can have positive [sexual] experience with an adult." Levine and Elders think the topic deserves rational discussion. So maybe Foley in his rehab retreat and his lawyers should read Levine's book with its Elders intro as they prepare a defense against the "full weight of the justice system" whose approach to such issues Foley has himself helped to devise.

Good luck, hypocrites.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

Phoenix Anarchist Coalition: Sending Solidarity Through the Barbed Wire and Bars of Hell

Phoenix Anarchist Coalition: Sending Solidarity Through the Barbed Wire and Bars of Hell

The Phoenix Anarchist Coalition (PAC) political prisoner (PP) support program has been providing financial support for prisoners for five years now, lending support and keeping in contact with the prisoners and their families throughout their incarceration. The PP program began by supporting Richard Williams, a member of the United Freedom Front (UFF), a revolutionary underground organization that carried out armed struggle in support of oppressed people in South Africa, central and south America, as well as in solidarity with the internal displaced colonies within the United States.

PAC supported Richard for four years, from 2001 until his death in late 2005. Richard was serving a life sentence and had been struggling with a number of health problems, two of the worst were caused by his incarceration. A few PAC members had formed close relationships with Richard over the years of letter writing and support, his death was of great loss, not only to PAC, and Richard’s family, friends, and comrades, but to the movement as a whole. Richard, who was a real revolutionary, not only fought alongside and for the people, but lived and died true to his convictions, and never turned his back on the struggle.

PAC has also supported the following prisoners:

Sherman Austin (2003-2004); an anarchist from Los Angeles, Sherman was incarcerated in a federal prison in Arizona for six months. Sherman was convicted of distributing information for bombmaking through his Raise the Fist website, he was released in July 2004. PAC provided monthly financial assistance for Sherman and his mother.

Laro Nico (2003-2006); a member of Phoenix Copwatch, Laro was incarcerated in a county jail for a few months in 2003, and for sixteen months in a federal jail from late 2004, until his release in April 2006. Laro took a plea bargain in November 2004 for possession of an automatic assault rifle, after a very public arrest and lead up to his trial, in which the state was accused of pursuing Laro with a political agenda, which even the judge noted with concern before his sentencing. PAC supported Laro and his family financially for three years, in addition to PAC members spending time with his family, taking care of his kids, and doing chores and household duties around the Nicol house.

PAC now supports two political prisoners:

Matthew Lamont (2006); an anarchist from Los Angeles, Matt was incarcerated in a California state prison from Februrary until June of this year. Matt was on parole after serving time in a state prison in 2003, he was convicted of plotting to attack a southern California Nazi meeting with fire bombs. Matt was released from prison on parole, but was arrested on an alleged parole violation, and also accused of plotting to blow up Big Bear Dam, an allegation he says is not true. PAC is supporting Matt and his partner with monthly financial assistance, even after his release, as the couple had both lost their jobs since his arrest in February, and are getting back on their feet.

Rod Coronado (2006); an anarchist eco-warrior from southern Arizona, Rod was incarcerated in a federal prison in Arizona in August of this year, he is serving an eight month federal sentence. Rod was convicted of sabotaging a state Fish and Game hunt for wild mountain lions in Sabino Canyon, in southern Arizona. PAC provides monthly financial assistance for Rod. While he is serving his federal sentence, he still faces charges for three other crimes:

From Supportrod.org
State Mountain Lion Case
The State of Arizona has filed charges regarding the same incident as the Federal mountain lion case that he is currently serving time for. This case hasn't gone to trial yet.

Federal San Diego Case
Rod was arrested for giving a speech at the Hillcrest LGBT center in San Diego on August 1, 2003. He wasn't arrested until 2 1/2 years later. The FBI argues that he disseminated "information relating to explosives, destructive devices or weapons of mass destruction."

Eagle Feather Case When the FBI, ATF and Pima County Sheriffs raided Rod's house a while ago, they confiscated some feathers that came from an eagle. It is against the law for someone to own these feathers unless they are a native person using them for religious purposes. Rod Coronado is a native Yaqui who is deeply connected to his cultural and religious background.

Rod can be contacted at the address below:
Rodney Coronado #03895000
FCC Florence
PO Box 6900
Florence, AZ 85232

Most recently, PAC raised $50 at an anarchist picnic for SHAC 7 defendant Andy Stepanian, an animal rights activist facing three years in prison stemming from his conviction of “Conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act.” PAC will continue to support Matthew and Rod, and we will also continue to support our brothers and sisters who find themselves in the clutches of the state.

In revolutionary solidarity,
Phoenix Anarchist Coalition
October 2006

www.phoenixanarchist.org
www.supportrod.org

Rules of engagement: Worcester Telegram

Rules of engagement

Activists upping ante in bid to disrupt animal-based research

By Lisa Eckelbecker TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF leckelbecker@telegram.com

Stanley D.T. White’s business sits amid the rolling hills of Hardwick, far from Massachusetts’ bustling cities and business centers.

But that isolation did not insulate him or his company, Capralogics Inc., from a middle-of-the-night raid on Sept. 6 by people claiming to be animal-rights activists intent on disrupting Capralogics’ biomedical business. In fact, the perpetrators’ theft or release of 23 rabbits put Capralogics smack in the middle of an ongoing drama between scientists and sometimes-secret cells of individuals determined to end research on animals.

For Mr. White, the Capralogics president who felt he was operating Capralogics in an ethical manner and in a safe place, the raid on his New Zealand white rabbits was a shock that has him rethinking security measures and questioning whether his industry is facing a time of greater danger.

“We’re still ticking, and we’ve dusted ourselves off and we’re moving forward,” Mr. White said. But “it’s a different world. This is a case of me wondering if the ground rules have changed.”

The answer may be yes. Recent convictions of some animal activists appear to have energized other followers of groups that the government considers extremist.

A spokeswoman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which posted pictures and an account on its Web site purportedly from the Capralogics raid, said the government’s crackdown, in turn, is driving activists deeper underground and away from legal actions. Advocates for scientists, meanwhile, are pushing for tougher laws.

“Congress, specifically, and I think the public, generally, is very concerned by the escalation of these attacks, particularly the manner in which they’re conducted, particularly the harassment to the point that people fear for their safety and the safety of their families,” said Frankie L. Trull, president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for responsible animal research. “I don’t think the extremists are a lot of people, but they’re aggressively hostile.”

It’s impossible to be sure how many animals are used in research in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 1.1 million animals were used in 2004, the lowest total in 31 years, according to the most recent data available. That included 89,031 animals in Massachusetts. But the USDA, which regulates and inspects animal facilities, does not count mice and rats, which some researchers estimate may represent 90 percent or more of all animals used in research.

Researchers use animals when developing new treatments or medical devices because the experiments answer questions about what a drug or device may do to the body, but also what the body will do to the drug or device. Under U.S. law, institutions that do animal research must create an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee to evaluate the research.

“We need to understand more and make medical advances for humans and animals, and one of the primary ways to do that is to use animals in research,” said Dr. Karl A. Andrutis, director of the teaching and research resources division and the attending veterinarian to all animals used in teaching and research at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in Grafton. Although some people disagree with that on a philosophical basis, he said, “I think there have been enough advancements made to justify the use of animals.”

Advocates point to Nobel Prize-winning work on viruses, genes and organ transplants that used everything from worms to dogs. But for more than 40 years, researchers have also been pressed to replace, reduce and refine their use of animals, an agenda known as “the three Rs” that was first articulated in the 1959 book, “The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique.”

The three Rs, which in 1993 were woven into a law covering National Institutes of Health activities, calls on scientists to work smarter so they replace animals with other tests, reduce the numbers of animals used and refine procedures to minimize pain and distress. Scientists say that for the most part, the best research happens when animals are free of pain and fear.

“I believe that the awareness that the three Rs has created has had an impact, and clearly the animal advocacy world has been raising awareness in the scientific community,” said Dr. Alan M. Goldberg, a toxicology professor and director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. “Reduction and refinement indicate that animal use is still necessary and appropriate. It’s just, let’s do that in the most appropriate way, get the most out of the experiment.”

Some advocates for animals, however, say the three Rs are tools and the ultimate goal remains the elimination of all harmful animal research.

“Given the current polarization on these issues, the sensitivity surrounding them, some people read that and think we want politicians to declare animal research illegal tomorrow,” said Martin L. Stephens, vice president of animal research issues for the Humane Society of the United States. “This is a long-term view that will be realized largely through the three-Rs approach and technological innovation.”

Animal activism is nothing new. Massachusetts passed one of the earliest U.S. laws against animal cruelty. But some activism has become more destructive and intimidating.

Both the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, or SHAC, came to the United States after launching in continental Europe and the United Kingdom. The Animal Liberation Front claims to have no centralized organization and describes its activists as people who work anonymously alone or in small groups to release animals, damage property and disrupt businesses and institutions without causing harm to animals or people. SHAC has focused on action against Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company that performs animal testing.

The FBI, in congressional testimony, has designated “extremist movements such as the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty” as one of the nation’s most serious domestic terrorism threats.

On its Web site, the Animal Liberation Front Web offers tips on how aspiring animal activists can get started.

“That’s easy,” one account on the Web site says. “Come up with your own plan! Really. It’s not as hard as you think.”

Tips include suggestions on whom to admit to a cell, how to keep funding secret, how to scout a target and develop an escape strategy, and the importance of briefing donors on racketeering and terrorism laws.

Camille Hankins, a spokeswoman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which she said is separate and unrelated to the Animal Liberation Front, bristles at the description of animal-rights activists as terrorists.

“When you say that, it depends on whose point of view you’re looking at it from,” she said. “From the animal’s point of view, the terrorists are the people holding the scalpel.”

Some in the research community say animal-rights extremists have staged protests at individuals’ homes, vandalized cars and houses, and threatened companies and people that do business with targeted researchers. In one of the most notorious cases, a managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences was attacked in 2001 outside his English home by three people wielding bats.

More recently, a University of California at Los Angeles researcher said in August he was abandoning his research on primates because of harassment by animal-rights activists. Activists attempted to firebomb a different UCLA professor’s home.

Earlier this year, six people labeled the “SHAC 7” were convicted in New Jersey of terrorism and Internet stalking under the Animal Enterprise Terror Act. The individuals who claimed responsibility for the Capralogics raid said online that they did so in solidarity with the SHAC 7.

Although convictions might seem likely to deter further actions, Ms. Hankins said things may not play out that way.

“This kind of thing has a chilling effect on above-ground activity,” she said. “A good number of people are going to look to go underground. Why put yourself in a position where you’re a visible target of the government?”

On the other side, some are advocating for even tougher tools for law enforcement. The Foundation for Biomedical Research is backing legislation that would tighten rules about interstate activity, legislation the Humane Society opposes partly because its says it threatens legitimate advocacy. Congress also gave law enforcement additional wiretapping powers for animal activism investigations when it reauthorized the Patriot Act.

“Extremists are everywhere. They do strike. It’s up to law enforcement to protect these research labs,” said Dennis L. Guberski, chairman of Biomedical Research Models Inc. of Worcester, which develops rats for research, including rats used in studies on childhood diabetes. Activists “have the right to disagree. They do not have the right to be extreme.”

In Massachusetts, institutions have supported their researchers, but some scientists who work with animals prefer to keep a low profile, said Alan B. Dittrich, president of the Massachusetts Society for Medical Research. Yet regulatory oversight of labs means that some information about animal research is publicly available on the Internet and through Freedom of Information requests.

“Rather than sort of exposing themselves, they just stay below the radar,” Mr. Dittrich said. “But the truth is, if you work with animals in research or in production and an activist wants to damage you, they’ll find out about you.”

Mr. White of Capralogics said one of the painful aspects of the raid on his business was that he has long argued that his humane treatment of animals gave him better-quality products.

Capralogics produces polyclonal antibodies for researchers and diagnostic products. Scientists send substances such as proteins to Capralogics, and workers inject the immunogens into rabbits, sheep or goats. Over time, the animals build up antibodies in their blood to the foreign immunogen. Capralogics workers then take blood from the animal, remove the antibodies from the blood and purify them. Red cells can be transplanted back into the animals.

Mr. White thinks a soured business relationship with a UK entity may be behind the raid on his property, which he said the FBI is investigating. But he is revamping security at his sprawling farm, where goats and sheep wander through pastures and barns.

“You end up making a series of compromises and making the most prudent decisions,” he said. “It has changed a lot of little things. Right now it’s down to personal security. It’s one thing, business is business. But now I have to worry about my kids.”

The Animal Liberation Front’s Web site suggests its followers are committed, even if their acts do not stop animal research.

“We have to look at every individual action as a steppingstone to a final solution,” said Ms. Hankins.

Contact business reporter Lisa Eckelbecker at leckelbecker@telegram.com.

Nadia Winstead Grand Jury Update.

Great news! My hearing went really well, better than expected.
Judge Illston stated at first that she was inclined to deny our motion
for disclosure of unlawful electronic surveillance. She heard
arguments from both sides. She seemed irritated at what the
government had provided as a response to our motion and started to
question by what means had I been called as a witness in the first
place. Because the government has not been asked to provide or file
this information they did not answer. Judge Illston said she needed
more time to decide on the motion and stated that she will contact us
for another hearing.

Thanks to everyone who was able to come, it meant so much to me to
have people behind me showing their support and disgust for this
backward grand jury.

Please try to get the morning off to come out and support Ariana on
the 5th. She came to my hearing to support me and when she got up to
go to the bathroom, two FBI agents, sitting in the audience, ran after
her to re-subpoena her for Oct. 5th -when she has already been
notified by her attorney of this date.

in solidarity, nadia

***************************************************************
Resist Grand Juries!
http://www.fbiwitchhunt.com

Free all Political Prisoners!
http://www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk/
http://prisonactivist.org/

Free Jeffrey Luers!
http://www.freefreenow.org

Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Progrom

ANTI-SEMITISM & THE BEIRUT POGROM Fredy Perlman Escape from death in a gas chamber or a Pogrom, or incarceration in a concentration camp, may give a thoughtful and capable writer, Solzhenitsyn for example, profound insights into many of the central elements of contemporary existence, but such an experience does not, in itself, make Solzhenitsyn a thinker, a writer, or even a critic of concentration camps; it does not, in itself, confer any special powers. In another person the experience might lie dormant as a potentiality, or remain forever meaningless, or it might contribute to making the person an ogre. In short, the experience is an indelible part of the individual’s past but it does not determine his future; the individual is free to choose his future; he is even free to choose to abolish his freedom, in which case he chooses in bad faith and is a Salaud (J.P. Sartre’s precise philosophical term for a person who makes such a choice [The usual English translation is “Bastard”]). My observations are borrowed from Sartre; I’d like to apply them, not to Solzhenitsyn, but to myself, as a specific individual, and to the American cheerleaders rooting for the State of Israel, as a specific choice.

*** I was one of three small children removed by our elders from a Central European country a month before the Nazis invaded the country and began rounding up Jews. Only part of my extended family left; the rest remained and were all rounded up; of these, all my cousins, aunts, and grandparents died in Nazi concentration camps or gas chambers except two uncles, whom I’ll mention later. A month more and I, too, would have been one of those who actually underwent the rationally-planned scientific extermination of human beings, the central experience of so many people in an age of highly developed science and productive forces, but I wouldn’t have been able to write about it. I was one of those who escaped. I spent my childhood among Quechua-speaking people of the Andean highlands, but I didn’t learn to speak Quechua and I didn’t ask myself why; I spoke to a Quechua in a language foreign to both of us, the Conquistador’s language. I wasn’t aware of myself as a refugee nor of the Quechuas as refugees in their own land; I knew no more about the terrors — the expropriations, persecutions and pogroms, the annihilation of an ancient culture — experienced by their ancestors than I knew about the terrors experienced by mine. To me the Quechuas were generous hospitable, guileless, and I thought more of an aunt who respected and liked them than of a relative who cheated them and was contemptuous of them and called them dirty and primitive. My relative’s cheating was my first contact with the double standard, the fleecing of outsiders to enrich insiders, the moral adage that said: It’s all right if it’s We who do it. My relative’s contempt was my first experience with racism, which gave this relative an affinity with the Pogromists she had fled from; her narrow escape from them did not make her a critic of Pogromists; the experience probably contributed nothing to her personality, not even her identification with the Conquistador, since this was shared by Europeans who did not share my relative’s experience of narrowly escaping from a concentration camp. Oppressed European peasants had identified with Conquistadores who carried a more vicious oppression to non-Europeans already before my relative’s experience. My relative did make use of her experience years later, when she chose to be a rooter for the State of Israel, at which time she did not renounce her contempt toward the Quechuas; on the contrary, she then applied her contempt toward people in other parts of the world, people she had never met or been among. But I wasn’t concerned with the character of her choice at the time; I was more concerned with the chocolates she brought me. *** In my teens I was brought to America, which was a synonym for New York even to people already in America among the Quechuas; it was a synonym for much else, as I was very slowly to learn. Shortly after my arrival in America, the state power of the Central European country of my origin was seized by a well-organized gang of egalitarians who thought they could bring about universal emancipation by occupying State offices and becoming policemen, and the new State of Israel fought its first successful war and turned an indigenous population of Semites into internal refugees like the Quechuas and exiled refugees like the Central European Jews. I should have wondered why the Semitic refugees and the European refugees who claimed to be Semitic, two peoples with so much in common, did not make common cause against common oppressors, but I was far too occupied trying to find my way in America. From an elementary school friend who was considered a hooligan by my parents, and also from my parents themselves, I slowly learned that America was the place where anyone would want to be, something like Paradise, but a Paradise that remained out of reach even after one entered America. America was a land of clerks and factory workers, but neither clerical nor factory work were America. My hooligan friend summarized it all very simply: there were suckers and hustlers, and you had to be dumb to become a sucker. My parents were less explicit; they said: Study hard. The implied motivation was: God forbid you should become a clerk or factory worker! Become something other: a professional or a manager. At that time I didn’t know these other callings were also America’s, that with every rung reached, Paradise remained as unreachable as before. I didn’t know that the professional’s or even the clerk’s or worker’s satisfaction came, not from the fullness of his own life, but from the rejection of his own life, from identification with the great process taking place outside him, the process of unfettered industrial destruction. The results of this process could be watched In movies or newspapers, though not yet on Television, which would soon bring the process into everyone home; the satisfaction was that of the voyeur, the peeper. At that time I didn’t know that this process was the most concrete synonym for America. Once in America, I had no use for my experience of narrowly escaping a Nazi concentration camp; the experience couldn’t help me climb the ladder toward Paradise and might even hinder me; my hurried climb might have been slowed consider­ably or even stopped altogether if I had tried to empathize with the condition of the labor camp inmate I might have become, for I would have realized what it was that trade the prospect of factory work so fearsome: it differed from the other condition in that there were no gas chambers and in that the factory worker spent only his weekdays inside. I wasn’t alone in having no use for my Central European experience. My relatives had no use for it either. During that decade I met one of my two uncles who had actually lived through a Nazi concentration camp. Once in America, even this uncle had no use for his experience; he wanted nothing more than to forget the Pogrom and everything associated with it; he wanted only to climb the rungs of America; he wanted to look and sound and act no differently from other Americans. My parents had exactly the same attitude. I was told that my other uncle had survived the camps and gone to Israel, only to be hit by a car soon after his arrival. The State of Israel was not interesting to me during that decade, although I heard talk of it. My relatives spoke with a certain pride of the existence of a State with Jewish policemen, a Jewish army, Jewish judges and factory managers, in short a State totally unlike Nazi Germany and just like America, My relatives, whatever their personal situations, identified with the Jewish policemen and not with the policed, with the factory owners and not the Jewish workers, with the Jewish hustlers and not the suckers, an identification which was understandable among people who wanted to forget their close encounter with labor camps. But none of them wanted to go there; they were already in America. My relatives gave grudgingly to the Zionist cause and were baffled — all except my racist relative — by the unqualified enthusiasm of second to nth generation Americans for a distant State with Jewish policemen and teachers and managers, since these people were already policemen and teachers and managers in America, My racist relative understood what the enthusiasm was based on: racial solidarity. But I wasn’t aware of this at the time. I was not an overbright American high-schooler and I thought racial solidarity was something confined to Nazis, Afri­kaaners and American Southerners. I was starting to be familiar with the traits of the Nazis who’d almost captured me: the racism that reduced human beings to their genealogical connections over five or six generations, the crusading nationalism that considered the rest of humanity an obstacle, the Gleichshaltung that cut off the individuals freedom to choose, the technological efficiency that made small hu­mans mere fodder for great machines, the bully militarism that pitted walls of tanks against a cavalry and exacted a hundred times the losses it sustained, the official paranoia that pictured the enemy, poorly armed townspeople and villagers, as a nearly omnipotent conspiracy of cosmic scope. But I didn’t see that these traits had anything to do with America or Israel. *** It was only during my next decade, as in American college student with a mild interest in history and philosophy, that I began to acquire a smattering of knowledge about Israel and Zionism, not because I was particularly interested in these subjects but because they were included in my readings. I was neither hostile nor friendly; I was indifferent; I still had no use for my experience as a refugee. But I didn’t remain indifferent to Israel or Zionism. This was the decade of Israel’s spectacular capture and trial of the Good German Eichmann, and of Israel’s spectacular invasion of large parts of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a six-day Blitzkrieg, a decade when Israel was news for everyone, not just for refugees. I didn’t have any unconventional thoughts about the obedient Eichmann except the thought that he couldn’t be so exceptional since I had already met people like him in America. But some of my readings did make me start wondering about my Zionist relative’s racism. I learned that people like the ancient Hebrews, Akkadians, Arabs, Phoenicians and Ethiopians had all come from the land of Shem (the Arabian Peninsula) and had all spoken the language of Shem, which was what made them Shemites or Semites. I learned that the Jewish religion had originated among Semites in the ancient Levantine State Judah, the Christian religion among Semites in the ancient Levantine towns Nazareth and Jerusalem, the Mohammedan religion among Semites in the ancient Arabian towns Mecca and Medina, and that for the past 1300 years the region called Palestine had been a sacred place to the Islamic Semites who lived there and in surrounding regions. I also learned that the religions of European and American Jews, like the religions of European and American Christians, had been elaborated, during almost two millennia, by Europeans and more recently by Americans. If Europeans and American Jews were Semites in terms of their religion, then European and American Christians were also Semites, a notion that was generally considered absurd. If Jews were Semites in terms of the language of their Sacred Book, then all European and American Christians were Greeks or Italians, a notion almost as patently absurd. I started to suspect that my Zionist relative’s only connection to the Zion in the Levant was a genealogical connection traced, not over six, but over more than sixty generations. But I had come to consider such racial reckoning a peculiarity of Nazis, Afrikaaners and American Southerners. I was uneasy. I thought surely there was more to it than that; surely those who claimed to descend from the victims of all that racism were not carriers of a racism ten times more thorough. I knew little of the Zionist Movement, but enough to start being repelled. I knew the Movement had originally had two wings, one of which, the Socialist one, I could understand because I was starting to empathize with victims of oppression, not from insights I gained from my own experience but from books equally accessible to others; the other wing of Zionism was incomprehensible to me. The egalitarian or Left Zionists, as [then understood them, did not want to be assimilated into the European states that persecuted them, some because they didn’t think they ever could be, others because they were repelled by industrializing Europe and America. The Messiah, their Movement, would deliver Israel from exile and guide her to Zion, to something altogether different, to a Paradise without suckers or hustlers. Some of them, even more metaphorically, hoped the Messiah would deliver the oppressed from their oppressors, if not everywhere, then at least in a millennial egalitarian Utopia located in a province of the Ottoman Empire, and they were ready to join with the Islamic residents of Zion against Ottoman, Levantine and British oppressors. They shared this dream with Christian millenarians who had been trying for more than a millennium to found Zion in one or another province of Europe; both had the same roots, but I suspected the left Zionists had inherited their millenarianism from the Christians. The egalitarian Zionists were arrogant in thinking the Islamic residents of Zion would embrace European leftists as liberators, and they were as naive as the egalitarians who had seized state power in the country of my birth, thinking the millennium would begin as soon as they occupied State offices and became policemen. But as far as I could see, they weren’t racists. The other Zionists, the Right, who by the time I reached college had all but supplanted the Left, at least in America, were explicit racists arid assimilationists; they wanted a State dominated by a Race ever so thinly disguised as a religion, a State that would not be something altogether different, but exactly the same as America and the other states in the Family of Nations. I couldn’t understand this, for it seemed to me that these Zionists, who included statists, industrializers and technocrats, were not only racists but also Conversos. Earlier Conversos were Jews in fifteenth century Spain who, to avoid persecution, discovered that the long-awaited Jewish Messiah had already arrived, a millennium and a half earlier, in the person of Jewish prophet Jesse, the Crucified. Some of these Conversos then joined the Inquisition and persecuted Jews who had not made this discovery. The modern Conversos hadn’t become Catholics; Catholicism was not the dominant creed in the twentieth century; Science and Technology were. I thought Jesse had at least affirmed, if only as relics, some of the traits of the ancient human community, whereas Science and Technology affirmed nothing human; they destroyed culture as well as nature as well as human community. It seemed sad that the long-preserved and carefully-guarded specificities of a cultural minority that had refused to be absorbed were to shatter on the discovery that the technocratic State was the Messiah and the Industrial Process the long-awaited millennium. This made the whole trajectory meaningless. The dream of these racist Conversos was repulsive to me. *** It wasn’t until the following decade, when I was over thirty, that my nearness to the Nazi Pogrom began to be meaningful to me. This transvaluation of my early experience happened suddenly, and was caused by something like a chance encounter, an encounter which, also by chance, included an odd reference to the State of Israel. This was the decade when America waged its war of extermination against a people and an ancient culture of the Far East. It happened that I was visiting my Americanized relatives at the same time that my Andean aunt was with them for the first time since their separation. This was the aunt who had respected the Quechua-speaking people, although not enough to learn their language, and had stayed among them when the others left. The conversation among the relatives turned to pious reflections about the uncle who had gone to Israel and been killed by a car after having survived the Nazi concentration camps. My Andean aunt couldn’t believe what she heard. She asked her relatives if they had all gone crazy. The story about the car accident had been told to the children so often that the adults had come to believe it. That man wasn’t killed in an accident, she shouted. He committed suicide. He had survived the concentration camps because he had been a technician employed in applying chemical science to the operation of the gas chambers. He had then made the mistake of emigrating to Israel, where his collaboration had been made public knowledge. He probably couldn’t face the accusing eyes; maybe he feared retaliation. My first response to this revelation was revulsion against a human being who could be so morally degraded as to gas his own kin and fellow-captives. But the more I thought about him, the more I had to admit there had at least been a shred of moral integrity in his final self-destructive act; that act didn’t make him a moral paradigm, but it contrasted sharply with the acts of people who lacked even that shred of moral integrity, people who were returning from the Far East and affirming their deeds, actually boasting of the unnatural atrocities they had inflicted on their fellow human beings. And I asked myself who the others really were, the pure ones who had exposed and judged Eichmann the obedient German. I didn’t know anything about the people in Israel and had never met an Israeli, but I was increasingly aware of the loud American cheerleaders for the State of Israel, and not the Left Zionists among them but the others, my racist relative’s friends. The Leftists had all but vanished in a dark sectarian Limbo no outsider could penetrate, a Limbo that stank almost as strongly as the one that held Messiah Lenin’s and Stalin’s heirs, with sects twisted out of shape by the existence of the State of Israel, ranging from those who claimed their seizure of power was all that was needed to turn the State of Israel into an egalitarian community, to those who claimed the existing State of Israel was already the egalitarian community. But the Left Zionists shouted only at each other. It was the others who made all the din, who shouted at everyone else. And these were explicit about what they admired in the State of Israel; they affirmed it, they boasted of it, and it had nothing to do with the ailing wing’s egalitarianism. What they admired was:

—the crusading nationalism that considered the humanity surrounding it as nothing but obstacles to its flowering;

—the industrial potency of the Race that had succeeded in denaturing the desert and making it bloom;

—the efficiency of the human beings remade into operators of big tanks and incredibly accurate jets;

—the technological sophistication of the instruments of death themselves, infinitely superior to that of the Nazis;

—the spectacularly enterprising secret police whose prowess was surely not inferior, for such a small State, to that of the CIA, KGB or Gestapo;

— the bully militarism that pitted the latest inven­tions of life-killing Science against a motley collection of weapons, and exacted a hundred or a thousand times the losses it sustained.

This last boast, which expressed the morality of exacting hundreds of eyes for an eye and thousands of teeth for a tooth, seemed particularly repulsive in the mouth of a cheerleader for a theocratic State where an ethical elite claimed to provide inspired guidance on moral questions; but this will surprise only those uninformed about history’s theocracies. During this decade, the racism, the anti-Semitism, to be more precise, Of these admirers of the State of Israel became virulent. Zion’s expropriated Semites were no longer considered human beings; they were Backward Arabs; only those among them who had been turned into good assimilated Israelis could be called human; the others were dirty Primitives. And Primitives, in the definition given a few centuries earlier by Conquistadores, not only had no right to resist humiliation, expropriation and desolation; Primitives had no right to exist; they only squandered nature s resources, they didn’t know what to do with God’s precious gifts! Only God’s chosen knew how to use the Great Father’s gifts, and they knew exactly what to do with them. Yet even while dwelling on the backwardness of the expropriated, the cheerleaders became paranoid and pictured the pathetic resistance of the expropriated as a vast conspiracy of untold power and nearly cosmic scope. Sartre’s _expression mauvaise foi [The usual English translation is “Bad faith.”] is too weak to characterize the posture chosen by these people, but it’s not my concern to coin another _expression. *** I survived into my forties, thanks partly to the fact that America still hadn’t exterminated itself and the rest of humanity with the high-powered incinerants and poisons with which it was mining [Mining in the sense of setting explosive mines, making earth lethal], or rather undermining, its own as well as other people’s lands. This decade combined what I had earlier thought uncombinable; it combined a barrage of revelations about the Holocaust, in the form of movies, plays, books and articles, with the Pogrom, perpetrated on Levantine Semites in Beirut by the State of Israel. [Written in mid-August, this statement referred to Israel’s invasion and not yet to the Pogrom in the strict 19th century sense perpetrated in September. (Sept 16-18, 1982 ,to be exact)] The revelations touched the Holocaust in Vietnam only mar­ginally; maybe two generations have to pass before such filth is hung out to air. The revelations were almost all about the Holocaust I had narrowly escaped as a child. People who don’t understand human freedom might think the terrible revelations could have only one effect, they could only turn people against the perpetrators of such atrocities, they could only make people empathize with the victims, they could only contribute to a resolve to abolish the very possibility of a repeat of such dehumanizing persecution and cold-blooded murder. But, for better or worse, such experiences, whether personally lived or learned from revelations, are nothing but the field over which human freedom soars like a bird of prey. The revelations about the forty-year-old Pogrom have even been turning up as justifications for a present-day Pogrom. Pogrom is a Russian word that used to refer, in past years that now seem almost benign, to a riot of cudgel-armed men against poorly armed villagers with different cultural traits; the more heavily the State was involved in the riot, the more heinous was the Pogrom. The overwhelmingly stronger attackers projected their own character as bullies onto their weaker victims, convincing themselves that their victims were rich, powerful, well-armed and allied with the Devil. The attackers also projected their own violence onto their victims, construct­ing stories of the victims’ brutality out of details taken from their own repertory of deeds. In nineteenth century Russia, a Pogrom was considered particularly violent if fifty people were killed. The statistics underwent a complete metamorphosis in the twentieth century, when the State became the main rioter. The statistics of modern German and Russian and Turkish state-run Pogroms are known; the statistics from Vietnam and Beirut are not public yet. Beirut and its inhabitants had already been made desolate by the presence of the violent resistance movement of the expropriated refugees ousted from Zion; if the casualties of those clashes were added to the number killed by the State of Israel’s direct involvement in the riot — but I’ll stop this; I don’t want to play numbers games. The trick of declaring war against the armed resistance and then attacking the resisters’ unarmed kin as well as the sur­rounding population with the most gruesome products of Death-Science — this trick is not new. American Pioneers were pioneers in this too; they made it standard practice to declare war on indigenous warriors and then to murder and burn villages with only women and children in them. This is already modern war, what we know as war against civilian populations; it has also been called, more candidly, mass murder or genocide. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that the perpetrators of a Pogrom portray themselves as the victims, in the present case as victims of the Holocaust. Herman Melville noticed over a century ago, in his analysis of the metaphysics of Indian-hating, that those who made a full-time profession of hunting and murdering indigenous people of this continent always made themselves appear, even in their own eyes, as the victims of manhunts. The use the Nazis made of the International Jewish Conspiracy is better known: during all the years of atrocities defying belief, the Nazis considered themselves the victimized. It’s as if the experience of being a victim gave exemption from human solidarity, as if it gave special powers, as if it gave a license to kill. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I can’t keep myself from being angry, because such a posture is the posture of a Salaud, the posture of one who denies human freedom, who denies that he chooses himself as killer. The experience, whether personally lived or learned from revelations, explains and determines nothing; it is nothing but a phony alibi. Melville analyzed the moral integrity of the Indian-hater. I’m talking about modern Pogromists, and more narrowly about cheerleaders for Pogroms. I’m talking about people who haven’t personally killed fifty or five or even one human being. I’m talking about America, where the quest is to immerse oneself in Paradise while avoiding any contact with its dirty work, where only a minority is still involved in the personal doing of the dirty work, where the vast majority are full-time voyeurs, peepers, professors, call them what you will. Among the voyeurs, I’m concentrating on the voyeurs of Holocausts and Pogroms. I have to keep referring to what’s on the screen because that’s what’s being watched. But my concern is with the watcher, with one who chooses himself a voyeur, specifically a voyeur of Holocausts, a cheerleader for death squads. Mention the words Beirut and Pogrom in the same sentence to such a one, and he’ll vomit all the morality inside him: he won’t vomit much. The likeliest response you’ll get is a moronic chuckle and a cynical laugh. I’m reminded of my uncle, the one who wasn’t hit by a car, who at least had the shred of moral integrity to see what others saw and reject it, and I contrast my uncle with this person who either sees nothing at all, or who cynically affirms what he sees, cynically accepts himself. If he’s an intellectual, a professor, he’ll respond with the exact equivalent of the moronic grin or the cynical laugh but with words; he’ll bombard you with sophistries, half truths and outright lies which are perfectly transparent to him even as he utters them. This is not an airy, wide-eyed idealist but a gross, down-to-earth property-oriented materialist with no illusions about what constitutes expropriation of what he calls Real Estate. Yet this real estate man will start telling you that the Levantine Zion is a Jewish Land and he’ll point to a two-thousand year old Title. He calls Hitler a madman for having claimed the Sudetenland was a German land because he totally rejects the rules that would have made it a German land, international peace treaties are included in his rules, violent expropriations are not. Yet suddenly he pulls out a set of rules which, if he really accepted them, would pulverize the entire edifice of Real Property. If he really accepted such rules, he would be selling plots in Gdansk to Kashubians returning from exile, tracts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota to Ojibwas reappropriating their homeland, estates in Iran, Iraq and much of Turkey to homeward bound Indian Parsees, and he would even have to lease parts of Zion itself to Chinese descendants of Nestorian Christians, and to many others besides. Such arguments have more affinity with the moronic chuckle than with the cynical laugh. The cynical laugh translated into words would say: We (they always say We) We conquered the Primitives, expropriated them and ousted them; the expropriated are still resisting, and in the meantime We have acquired two generations who have no other home but Zion; being Realists, we know we can end the resistance once and for all by exterminating the expropriated, Such cynicism without a shred of moral integrity might be realistic, but it might also turn out to be what C.W. Mills called Crackpot Realism, because the resistance might survive and spread and it might go on as long as the Irish. There’s yet another response, the response of the cudgel-armed Defense League bully who thinks the absence of a brown shirt makes him unrecognizable. He clenches his fist or tightens his grip on his club and shouts: Traitor! This response is the most ominous, for it claims that We are a club to which all are welcome, but the membership of some is mandatory. In this usage, Traitor does not mean anti-Semite, since it is aimed at people who empathize with the plight of the current Semites. Traitor does not mean Pogromist, since it is aimed at people who still empathize with the victims of the Pogrom. This term is one of the few components of the vocabulary of a racist through the ages; it means: Traitor to the Race. And here I reach the single element which the new anti-Semite had not yet shared with the old anti-Semite: Gleichschaltung, the totalitarian “synchronization" of all political activity and _expression. The entire Race must march in step, to the same drumbeat; all are to obey. The uniqueness of the condemned Eichmann becomes reduced to a difference in holiday ritual. It seems to me that such goons are not preservers of the traditions of a persecuted culture. They’re Conversos, but not to the Catholicism of Fernando y Isabela; they’re Conversos to the political practice of the Fuehrer. The long exile is over; the persecuted refugee at long last returns to Zion, but so badly scarred he’s unrecognizable, he has completely lost his self; he returns as anti-Semite, as Pogromist, as mass murderer; the ages of exile and suffering are still included in his makeup, but only as self-justifications, and as a repertory of horrors to impose on Primitives and even on Earth herself. I think I’ve now shown that the experience of the Holocaust, whether lived or peeped, does not in itself make an individual a critic of Pogroms, and also that it does not confer special powers or give anyone a license to kill or make someone a mass murderer. But I haven’t even touched the large question that is raised by all this: Can I begin to explain why someone chooses himself a mass murderer? I think I can begin to answer. At the risk of plagiarizing Sartre’s portrait of the old anti-Semite, I can at least try to point to one or two of the elements in the field of choice of the new anti-Semite. I could start by noticing that the new anti-Semite is not really so different from any other TV-watcher, and that TV-watching is somewhere near the core of the choice (I include newspapers and movies under the abbreviation for ‘tell-a-vision’). What the watcher sees on the screen are some of the "interesting” deeds, sifted and censored, of the monstrous ensemble in which he plays a trivial but daily role. The central but not often televised activity of this vast ensemble is industrial and clerical labor, forced labor, or just simply labor, the Arbeit which macht frei. [“Work Liberates”: a slogan posted at the entrance to Nazi slave labor camps.] Solzhenitsyn, in his multi-volumed Gulag Archipelago, gave a profound analysis of what such Arbeit does to a human individual’s outer and inner life; a comparably profound analysis has yet to be made of the administration that ‘synchronizes” the activity, the training institutions that produce the Eichmanns and Chemists who apply rational means to the perpetration of the irrational ends of their superiors.

Lecce Defendants Update

The following news has just been received from Italy.....

Update Nottetempo

During the hearing held on September 28, six witnesses for the
prosecution made their deposition. The first was Maria Luisa
Lodeserto, the ex-director of Regina Pacis’ sister, who referred to
the fire attack carried out against her home in Lecce on August 19
2005. Then two police officers exposed the usual police reports
concerning the two-year investigation on the Lecce anarchists. Mr
Mondelli‘s deposition followed. He is the expert who ‘studied’
various written slogans and claims of attacks and confronted them
with written diaries seized in the houses of anarchists. In his
report Mr Mondelli had pointed out that it was impossible to
establish any certain connection between the written slogans and the
anarchists’ diaries because he had never seen the original versions
of the slogans but only photocopies. During his deposition, however,
he tried to maintain that his final examination was sufficient to
prove that the anarchists were the authors of the slogans and the
claims under investigation. In fact, he seemed to back up the public
prosecutors’ thesis and made his best not to answer appropriately to
the defence’s counter-examination. Not by chance, this expert used to
work as a police officer.

Finally Cesare Lodeserto, accompanied by two bodyguards, made a
three-hour deposition. During his delirium, this arrogant priest,
torturer of immigrants, said a series of lies and nonsense, which can
be summarised as follows:

-The revolts inside the camp Regina Pacis and the many attempts of
escape were stirred up by the anarchists demonstrating outside. The
priest contradicted himself by maintaining that in the last period
episodes of self-wounding, revolts and attempts of escape were
everyday events (whereas the anarchists’ protests outside the camp
were not).

-The main reason of the protests against the director of the camp was
the charge of embezzlement against the latter (!). He claimed
therefore that the anarchists had no reason to protest against him as
he was then cleared of the accusation. It is true that the court had
cleared him of that accusation, thanks to all his important
protectors, but it is also true that he was sentenced for private
violence and kidnapping against the immigrants imprisoned in the camp
(whom Lodeserto called ‘guests’ during his deposition!). Shame that
he was freed after a few days of house arrest.

-The reason of the struggle against the CPTs only derives from the
Bossi-Fini law on immigration.

-As many ‘guests’ of the detention centre had spent a period in the
Italian prisons before arriving in the camp waiting for the
deportation, it is obvious that these ‘criminals’ were the leaders of
the revolts that continually broke out in Regina Pacis (and that were
stirred up by the anarchists, of course).

The priest was then questioned about a series of specific episodes
concerning revolts inside the camp. In particular, during an attempt
of mass escape that occurred on August 10 2004, Vali, a 29 years old
immigrant from Moldovia, fell down the wall surrounding the camp and
remained paralysed. The defence pointed out how Vali was punched and
kicked by the cops on guard in the camp after he fell down. On the
contrary, the priest claimed that he and his collaborators tried to
help Vali. This is one of the biggest lies the priest told in his
deposition: not only Vali was beaten after he fell down, but he was
also totally abandoned by Lodeserto and his gang. It was thanks to
the solidarity of the local anarchists that Vali was moved in a
special clinic in Bologna, where he is still being treated.

Finally the priest exposed a series of attacks against him, including
the one when a Lecce comrade spitted at him (June 2006). The comrade
was then accused of insulting religion and must face trial on
November 9.

The next hearing will be held on November 23.

Oaxaca Facing Imminent Attack

Forward from Tacoma Leonard Peltier Support Group:

MNN is in complete support of Indigenous people who want to bring about a peaceful resolution to conflicts between them and those governments that have imposed themselves on their land. The people of Oaxaca have attacked no one. Yet human rights violations and threats of violence by Mexican para-military forces are ready to descend on these unarmed Indigenous people. We demand that the President and the government of Mexico immediately stop this impending attack if it hasn't already taken place. Please send emails of your objection to the Mexican government people listed below. Don't forget the Mexican Consultates in the United States (link below). Let's stop this!

MNN Mohawk Nation News

La Jornada has a live feed running on their site. Please disseminate news however you can.

Here is a list of Mexican consulates in the US and Canada: http://elenemigocomun.net/128
APPEAL FOR NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AID
...there are about 5,000 men wearing army uniforms who are not army, but police, culled from other states...this is a PRI operation, not the federal troops ... The “police” are heavily armed...The attack, code name cicloncinco, was revealed by the same person who informed our friend that there would be a drive-by shooting last night, which came true ... there are already a lot of PRD people gathered in the zocalo, thousands have gathered, apparently including some foreigners including univision and CNN.

Aid is asked for food, water, telephone lines. Only one radio station is still operating... "the city is surrounded".

UPDATE:

Dispatch from a friend in Oaxaca City
October 1, 2006

Things are extremely tense right now...I spent last night at a barricade in Santa Lucia waiting for the military to come. The helicopters and army planes started circling the city yesterday at 4pm. At our barricade the police drove by shooting and when people ran they took one person into custody...They have been shooting at the barricades for 4 months, what’s new is the fact that they have brought in shit tons of military, they are just waiting for the perfect time to strike. For 2 nights now we have stayed up waiting with little cups of coffee and too much adrenaline. We have been waiting for the sound of helicopters and tanks, now that we are anxious, sleep deprived and scared who knows when they will actually roll in.

Many of the barricades have big signs that say “somos listos”. “Listo” equals molotov coctails, rocks and big sticks. I am fearful that the army is more “listo” than APPO and that it is going to be extremely bloody and horrible when they roll in. But APPO isn’t going to fucking give up. Anyhow, keep us in your thoughts and I will keep in touch.

Please support Grand Jury Resister Ariana Huemer!

Grand Jury Demo on Thursday, October 5th!
> Please come support Grand Jury Resister Ariana Huemer!
>
> After a year-and-a-half-long legal battle to protect her rights, Ariana
> Huemer once again has been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand
> jury.
>
> WHEN: Thursday, October 5th, 8:45 a.m.
> WHERE: In front of the San Francisco Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate
> (between Polk and Larkin)
>
> Please join Ariana and her supporters in their stand against this unjust
> grand jury.
>
> Background:
>
> Ariana and several other animal rights advocates were originally
> subpoenaed to testify before a San Francisco federal grand jury
> investigating animal- and eco-liberation activists in late May of 2005.
> After numerous hearings and motions, Ariana appeared before the grand jury
> in January 2006, asserting her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. She
> was granted immunity, but still refused to talk. At the end of the day,
> she was dismissed from the grand jury pending further action, and was
> finally re-subpoenaed in June.

Support Jamil Al-Amin

Support Imam Jamil Al-Amin!

FREE RAP! COMMUNITY REPORT & UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2006

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE TO SUPPORT IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN
(the former H. RAP BROWN)
547 West End Place, S.W. Atlanta, Georgia 30310

The Justice Fund PO Box 93963 Atlanta, Georgia 30377

IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN (the former H. Rap Brown) is still maintaining the highest degree of spiritual integrity, personal dignity, diligence over violations of his HUMAN RIGHTS and perseverance against multi-various forms of indecent, inhuman treatment.

After six and a half decades of experiencing the worst forms of American hypocrisy—discrimination, including four and a half decades of persecution by improper prosecution, climaxing in a sensational trial which produced not a shred of evidence to lead to the unjust conviction and illegal sentence of LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE plus thirty-five years. With over six and a half years of solitary confinement the Imam's response is "They ain't make me ... so they can't break me."

LEGAL

Imam Jamil Al- Amin's Habeas Corpus hearing for the state of Georgia was postponed from June 28, 2006 to October _ ?, 2006. If granted a new trial at least two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000.00) will be needed to assure minimal legal representation for the Imam (contribute to the Justice Fund listed above).

If a new trial is denied that will exhaust the (Georgia) state level of remedies. There are still several legal proceedings for relief on the federal level. Through the building of a genuine struggle and movement for HUMAN RIGHTS and self-determination there exists a multiple of remedies for relief not only for Jamil Al- Amin but also for hundreds of other Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in U.S. jails and prisons.

Imam Jamil Al-Amin has filed a list of grievances against the State Prison at Reidsville, Georgia over conditions and policies that violate his HUMAN RIGHTS. Some of these grievances violate the rights of many prisoners at Reidsville who have started their own momentum towards getting Al-Amin released at least to the general population so that he can serve as Imam and councilor.

MEDIA: LET RAP RAP

The prison is trying to affect a MEDIA BLACK OUT on Imam Jamil. They are not allowing any interviews with known writers, newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, internet services or any other known forms of public information The ICSIJAA is still circulating interviews conducted by The Block Report produced by POCC (Prisoner of Conscious Committee) RADIO and on Prison Radio by Noel Hanrahan (Live from Death Row - Mumia Abu Jamal). We are calling for all "alternative" as well as "mainstream" media institutions to join with us to fight for yours and Mr. Al-Amin's constitutional right to free speech.

GRIEVANCES

IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN is a Political Prisoner who by all International and Human Rights Standards and by all standards of decency and common sense should not be housed and treated in the manner in which he is presently housed and treated. Having filed grievances with the State Prison's process of reviewing and alleviating grievances to no avail, he has subsequently appealed the state prison's findings on these grievances with the U.S. federal courts.

These grievances include:

* Denied basic human rights
* Held in administrative segregation
* Confined to a cell at least twenty-three hours each day. When out of cell being caged in with a fence above his head
* Denied due process: held in administrative segregation since arrival at facility
* Denied religious rights: denied participation in any communal Islamic practice; denied attending salatul jum'ah and to serve as imam to prisoner and employee population at facility.
* Denied legal rights: legal mail is still interfered with in spite of a court order
* Sexual abuse: forced to strip and cavity search in the presence of female employees.
* Attempted assassination: at least three episodes of food poisoning

Register a complaint about above listed grievances. DEMAND AN END TO THE DENIAL OF IMAM JAMIL'S HUMAN AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS!

Write to the Warden Hugh Smith at:
Georgia State Prison
300 First Ave South
Reidsville, GA 30453

Call the warden @ 912-557-7301 or asst. J. Sykes @ 912-557-7707

Write to Commissioner James E. Donald at:
James E. Donald
#2MLK Jr. Drive, East Tower 8th Floor
Atlanta, GA 30344

Call the Commissioner @ 404-656-4593

FREE IMAM JAMIL!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF WAR IN U.S. JAILS AND PRISONS
FREE 'EM ALL!

OCTOBER 4, 2006:

FLOOD THE PRISONS WITH LETTERS AND POSTCARDS

CONGRATULATE THE AMIR, IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN (the former H. Rap Brown) ON SIX AND HALF DECADES OF STRUGGLE

Write to: IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN #1104651
Georgia State Prison
2164 Ga Highway 147
Reidsville, Georgia 30499

MARCH 16, 2007 MARKS SEVEN YEARS SINCE THE IMAM'S PRESENT ORDEAL AND SEVEN YEARS CONTINUOUS INCARCERATION

For more information on Imam Jamil Al-Amin, check out the website:
www.geocities.com/icsijaa/

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Free All Political Prisoners!
nycjericho@riseup.net • www.jerichony.org