WAGING WAR ON DISSENT

A Report by the Seattle National Lawyers Guild WTO Legal Group

and the Center for Study of Domestic Militarization
ANNIVERSARY EDITION • NOVEMBER 30, 2001

Police State
Targets the Left
By Jim Redden
The sound of breaking glass signaled a dra-
matic change in the focus of the government’s
political surveillance programs in late 1999.
After spending most of the decade spying on
the right wing neo-Patriot movement, law en-
forcement agencies abruptly shifted gears and
declared brick-throwing anarchists to be the
newest threat to the American way of life. By
the dawn of the new Millennium, the govern-
ment was running COINTELPRO-style opera-
tions against a coalition of radical labor, envi-
ronmental, and human rights organizations
opposed to corporate control of the global
economy. Police were photographing sus-
pected activists and entering license plate num-
bers in their computer databanks. Undercover
operatives were infiltrating meetings and dis-
rupting protests. Even the Pentagon was in-
GEORGE HICKEY

volved, dispatching its Delta Force anti-terror-

ism commandos to identify and secretly vid-
eotape suspected leaders. By early August, calls
were underway for a full-blown federal investi-
gation into the movement, raising the specter
of a government-orchestrated Green Scare Police use chemical agents on demonstrators. Not only were protesters and bystanders injured, so were police. At least one
along the lines of anti-Communist witch-hunts officer exposed to these chemicals experienced heart problems, according to SPD reports.
of the 1950s.

A New Type of Domestic Warfare

The shift was the direct result of the mas-
sive protests, which disrupted the World Trade
Organization conference in Seattle. Over 50,000
demonstrators jammed the streets, snarling
traffic and preventing WTO delegates from
reaching their meetings. When the authorities
tried to break up the protests, a small group of
the most militant activists struck back, vandal-
izing businesses in the downtown core and
clashing with police throughout the city. Much
like the urban riots of the early 1960s, the in-
tensity of the confrontations caught political
leaders and law enforcement officials off guard,
prompting the most significant change in the
direction of the government’s domestic surveil-
lance operations in the past 20 years.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the FBI
and other domestic law enforcement agencies
focused their political intelligence-gathering
programs on militias and other Far Right orga-
nizations. But, by the summer of 1999,federal
authorities were beginning to look at the emerg-
ing anti-globalization movement. Tipped off that
large numbers of protesters were preparing to
travel to Seattle for the December WTO meet-
ing, the FBI began spying on environmental,
labor and anti-corporate activists. As the Se-
attle Weekly reported on December 23, 1999,
“Sources say ... that police and 30 other local,
state, and federal agencies have been aggres-
sively gathering intelligence on violent and non-
violent protest groups since early summer (FBI
agents even paid personal visits to some activ-
ists’ homes to inquire about their plans).”
Even the military got involved. According
to the Seattle Weekly, the Pentagon sent mem-
bers of the top-secret Delta Force to Seattle to
prepare for President Bill Clinton’s arrival. As
the paper put it, 3the elite Army special force,
operating under its cover name of Combat Ap-
plications Group (CAG), was in Seattle a week
(see POLICE STATE, p. 3)
Paul Richmond, NW Regional Vice Presi-
dent, National Lawyers Guild
“We are up against the strongest, well-
trained militant revolutionary group that
has ever assembled in America...They’re
worse than the brownshirts and the Com-
munist element and the night riders and
the vigilantes.”
– Ohio Governor James Rhodes, speak-
ing in Kent Ohio, May 3 1970, the day be-
fore the shootings
Corporations Calling Protest War
The “War on Terrorism,” “War on
Crime” and “War on Drugs” have one
main thing in common. All of these are
becoming code words for waging war on
civilian populations.
What happened during the Seattle
WTO Ministerial, when the police ex-
posed tens of thousands of people to po-
tentially lethal agents and invaded the
densest population center on the West
Coast north of San Francisco, is that the
Third World got a lot bigger.
In Yugoslavia, almost a year after the
WTO held its historic meeting in Seattle,
thousands of people gathered in the
streets. They were outraged by a few
petty despots who thumbed their noses
at democratic process. Tens of thousands
strong, these outraged citizens stormed a
heavily defended meeting place, braved
tear gas and rubber bullets and shut down
an undemocratic process.
The voices of the establishment in poli-
tics (both major parties and their shared
lists of corporate donors) and the media Again” attitude about Seattle style dem-
(all six outlets) decided this was a cause onstrations here in the United States.
for exalting the power of democracy. The Demonstrations subsequent to Seattle
people had taken to the streets. The people have been met universally with intense
had challenged the tyrants. The people preemptive harassment, chilling levels of
had won. Bill Clinton and Al Gore found surveillance, and an equation of basic First
it a cause for celebration. So did George Amendment rights with acts of terrorism.
W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The reason for these escalating tactics,
Two years ago, something similar hap- more reminiscent of a fascist dictatorship
pened in streets of Seattle. Tens of thou- than a democracy, has to do with the fact
sands of citizens, concerned about an un- that we’re living in a system run not for
democratic institution managed by a few the benefit of freedom, but the benefit of
individuals who thumbed their noses at profit. The rules of the WTO, the FTAA,
democratic process, blocked the streets NAFTA and GATT openly allow human
and shut the despots down. They too rights, environmental protections, restric-
braved tear gas, rubber bullets, and para- tions against child labor to all be chal-
military troops with military rifles and no lenged as “barriers to free trade.” This is
identification. nothing really new. The U.S. government
Ironically, many of the same voices that has overthrown foreign democracies and
trumpeted what took place in Yugoslavia
as a triumph, have expressed a “Never (see NEW TYPE OF WAR, p. 3)
INSIDE
False Police Reports, by Tim Ream, p. 2
New Tanks and Planes, p. 3
Columbine Triggers New Police Tactics, p. 6
Coup d’etat, p. 10
Historical Background of Corporations, p. 13
Signs from the Times, p. 13
The Role of WTO in Corporate World Government, p. 15
Goons Around the Globe, p. 16
Organizing in the Face of Increased Repression, by Starhawk, p. 20
Recommendations, by Paul Richmond, p. 20
False Police Reports Are Part of Police Strategy
by Tim Ream
A disturbing trend is developing regarding
police pre-emptive response to mass protest.
In numerous situations since the protests
against the World Trade Organization in Se-
attle in late 1999, police have issued misinfor-
mation claiming unsubstantiated evidence of
violent plans by protesters gathering for mass
actions. The false information is then used as
a pretext for unwarranted police actions.
The misinformation concerning protester
plans have ranged from chemical weapons to
bomb-making. None of the numerous claims
of violent plans have been substantiated.
Nonetheless, many media outlets appear to
have been predisposed to repeat information
provided by police without fact-checking or
seeking responses from the organizations ac-
cused. The damage to free speech and the mass
protest movement has been extensive.
Introduction
Mass protest of government policies on this conti-
nent is at least as old as the property destruction that
characterized the Boston Tea Party, involving hun-
dreds of activists in 1773. Since the anti-war protest
of the 1960s and anti-nuclear protests of the 1970s, few
instances of mass protest have garnered national me-
dia attention. That situation changed radically on
November 30, 1999 when activists from around the
globe shut down Seattle meetings of the World Trade
Organization (WTO). This story garnered widespread
international attention, fueled further by the violent
police response to peaceful protesters and the decla-
ration of a no-protest zone.
The Seattle Police Department reputation was dam-
aged severely by officers’ lack of control and brutal
response in the streets. In the wake of the protests,
Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper quickly resigned.
Police departments charged with preventing similar
disruptions in their cities since the Seattle actions have
scrambled to find ways to prevent mass protest.
A disturbing pattern of response has appeared over
the next months. It is loosely characterized by three
steps. First, police departments, often in conjunction
with city government, begin a multi-faceted media
campaign designed to make protest organizers appear
to be involved in preparations for violence. Police de-
partments have assembled and distributed collections
of flyers claiming violence, released videos of protest
from other cities, held meetings with individual me-
dia organizations and created a mythic notion of an
organization dedicated to violence and central to the
protest usually identified as “the anarchists” or “the
Eugene Anarchists.”
Once the public is predisposed to expect violence
from activists, the second step in the process involves
a specific claim of evidence suggesting an imminent
act of violence. These claims will later be retracted,
corrected or will simply remain unsubstantiated. They
have included claims of stolen bomb-making materi-
als, a bus load of poisonous animals, a factory to pro-
duce pepper spray, acid filled balloons, a cyanide poi-
soning or the simple fact that known terrorists have
evaded police surveillance and now may be prepared
to act without restraint.
The third step in this tactic follows the second
closely or simultaneously. It involves a police action
publicly justified in the climate of imminent terror-
ism. It has the effect however, of a prior restraint on
free speech and intimidation of those who would
speak their mind against their government. Examples
have included seizing training and puppet making
facilities; seizing training, art and medical supplies;
and seizing hard drives and political literature. Po-
tential protesters have been arrested, beaten and had
bail set at ridiculously high amounts to hold them past
the event around which the protest was scheduled.
2 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT
Recent Examples
Philadelphia Republican
National Convention - August 2000
The Philadelphia Police Department raided a ware-
house where activists were engaged in creating pup-
pets to protest at the Republican National Conven-
tion (RNC). Seventy activists were arrested, materi-
als were seized and the warehouse was shut down.
The police claimed prior to the raid that they believed
that activists were storing C4 explosives. Also, activ-
ists were allegedly preparing weapons in the form of
acid-filled balloons presumably to throw at the po-
lice. The warehouse was claimed to be a staging
ground for both producing weapons and preparing a
riot.
Police also claim to have arrested people associ-
ated with a bus containing small animals, some of
which were poisonous. Police claim that these animals
were to be used to attack delegates of the RNC.
No C4 explosive was found. Nor were any other
weapons or acid found. The bus driver transporting
the animals claims to be a pet shop owner.
Bail was set at amounts that preclude easy release
generally ranging around $15,000. One activist was
held on misdemeanor charges and $1,000,000 bail sub-
sequently reduced to $100,000. This effectively pre-
vented activists from speaking out against the RNC
and the subsequent Democratic National Convention
(DNC) in Los Angeles.
Washington, DC
IMF/World Bank Meetings - April 2000
The day before the mass protest of World Bank and
International Monetary Fund meetings in Washing-
ton, DC police raided a training and art supply ware-
house popularly referred to as a “convergence” space.
Police reports claimed that they found materials for
making Molotov cocktails, a laboratory for mass pro-
duction of pepper spray and bomb-making materi-
als. This, in part, justified arrests that ran to near 1200
people for the week.
In a later retraction, police admitted that the
Molotov cocktail supplies were plastic containers and
rags that smelled of solvents. The pepper spray fac-
tory was nothing more than a kitchen, and bomb-
making materials were limited to simple plastic wa-
ter pipe. All of these materials are consistent with ac-
tivities related to the convergence and art projects.
As a result of police action the infrastructure and
political messages in the form of signs and puppets
were taken by police and did not appear on the streets
or in media coverage. Undoubtedly numerous people
stayed home for fear of associating with violent ter-
rorists utilizing bomb-making factories.
Minneapolis
International Society of Animal
Geneticists July 2000
Several days before the protest was to begin, po-
lice claimed that large quantities of ammonium ni-
trate had been stolen from a nearby storage area and
that unidentified protestors were suspected of in-
volvement. On the day of the major march, police
claimed that a cyanide bomb had been detonated in a
McDonalds restaurant. The FBI called this an act of
terrorism and the local anti-protest law enforcement
action was placed under federal control. The next day
the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, including
hooded officers raided a house where some protest
organizing had taken place. Residents were beaten,
arrested and taken to a hospital. Computer hard drives
and political literature were seized along with less
than an ounce of marijuana and a small amount of
psychedelics. Police at the raid claimed that an un-
dercover agent had warned that residents at the house
wore hunting knives to attack police in the event of
an arrest.
Charges on all but one resident have since been
dropped. Police announced that they now have no
reason to believe that activists were involved in the
ammonium nitrate theft. A health department inspec-
tor said that there was no cyanide threat, the poison
being more concentrated in apple seeds than in the
smoke bomb that fogged the McDonalds. Needless
to say, the retractions did not receive the level of press
coverage of the original actions. Discussion of the eth-
ics of animal genetics received little discussion.
Tacoma Kaiser Aluminum
Lock-out of Steelworkers March 2000
In the wake of the successful alliance built between
labor and environmentalists in Seattle, action was
planned in Tacoma to support the locked-out United
Steel Workers of America. The Direct Action Network,
Steelworkers and more than a dozen other groups al-
lied to call for a weekend of actions. As that weekend
approached, police warned the press and community
leaders of the violence that was likely. They claimed
that “anarchists from Eugene were missing” and ac-
tions at the Kaiser plant could start a chain reaction
and “blow up the whole port of Tacoma.”
In this case, initial scare tactics were sufficient. Steel-
worker leadership backed out of the alliance one week
before the actions and the protest fell apart. No mass
labor-environment action coalition has happened
since.
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene Active Existence - June 2000
A six-week anarchist conference was the subject of
numerous police press releases concerning alleged
threats of violence and the precautions the Eugene
Police Department employed to avert trouble. Police
distributed to the media a portfolio of dozens of fly-
ers spanning five years that they claimed revealed
protesters’ violent threats. They created a video simu-
lation of a dummy police officer burned by a police-
constructed firebomb that anarchists might use.
Two days before the final planned march, police ar-
rested two young men for allegedly burning a truck.
They are currently being held on $900,000 bail and
face 15 to 86 years in prison if convicted.
Conclusions
Mass media and public perceptions are being sys-
tematically manipulated by police departments and
other government agencies faced with upcoming mass
protests in their cities. These manipulations are de-
signed to squelch protest and thereby the message of
dissent. A common thread in the current series of na-
tion-wide protests is a sense that control of govern-
ment is no longer in the hands of common people.
Governments are effectively squashing the challenge
inherent in this message.
Editorial pages and conversations on the street are
full of critiques that protesters are not clear about what
they stand for and seem more interested in violence
than meaningful change. This is as clear a sign as any
that protester voices have been effectively silenced and
police positioning of protesters is carrying the day.
In addition, activists are scared. Anyone who has been
involved in the mass protest movement through a
major event of the last six months has friends who
have been brutalized at the hands of the system. Of
the nearly 2500 protest arrests that have happened
since November 30, 1999, more than three-quarters
have had all charges dropped and only a small per-
centage of arrests have resulted in convictions.
These facts notwithstanding, there is little national
debate on police strong-arm tactics. The reason seems
clear. Despite the injustice activists face for speaking
their beliefs, the public allows these police tactics
because they have been made to fear activists. Unfor-
tunately, the evidence for their fear is the result of mis-
information by these same police agencies. The costs
to police agencies since Seattle are minimal. No chief
has been pressured to resign, no officer has been
charged with misbehavior and requests for special
appropriations in the millions of dollars for gear and
overtime have been granted. When the full range of
political dialogue is no longer tolerated by the gov-
ernment, it will not simply disappear. With debate
stifled, energy for change will instead transform and
move underground. Evidence of a growing movement
of covert acts of sabotage indicate that the movement
underground is picking up steam.
POLICE STATE (cont.)
in advance of the Clinton visit to scope out
possible terrorist acts. Under the control of
the Joint Special Operations Command
(JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the con-
tingent took up residence in a Regrade motel
and fanned out downtown dressed as dem-
onstrators, some wearing their jungle greens.
The preparations didn’t work. Thousands
of protesters overwhelmed the police on the
opening day of the conference, shutting down
the center where the main meetings were
scheduled to be held. The police overreacted
and began pepper spraying and tear-gassing
the protesters who were preventing the WTO
delegates from entering the center. When a
few hours later, a small group of the most
militant protesters retaliated by attacking such
corporate icons as McDonalds, Nike Town,
the Gap and Starbucks, smashing windows,
toppling shelves, spraying graffiti they pro-
vided the justification for a massive police
crackdown.
The mayor of Seattle declared a state of
civil emergency, essentially a local version of
martial law. Washington’s governor called out
300 state troopers and two divisions of the
National Guard to secure the blocks around
the downtown convention site. A “Protest-
Free Zone” was declared around the confer-
ence headquarters, allowing the police to ex-
clude anyone merely wishing to express their
First Amendment rights. Police dressed up
in military-style riot gear chased protesters
through the streets for the next few days.
Thousands of people were sprayed with pep-
per gas, clubbed with ballistic batons, and
shot with rubber-coated bullets and steel pel-
let-filled “beanbag” shotgun rounds. Many of
the victims were innocent bystanders and
business owners who simply didn’t get out
of the way fast enough.
The chaos was broadcast around the
world. TV viewers saw police firing at pro-
testers at point blank range. One cop went
out of his way to kick an empty-handed pro-
tester in the groin. Another cop ripped a gas
mask off a pregnant foreign reporter and
struck her.
Delta Force troops were in the middle of
the confrontations, working to identify pro-
test leaders. Some Deltas wore lapel cameras,
continuously transmitting pictures of rioters
and other demonstrators to a master video
unit in the motel command center, which
could be used by law enforcement agencies
to identify and track suspects, the Weekly
reported.
The WTO conference ended in disarray, a
victory for the protesters and a major embar-
rassment for the Clinton Administration. Four
days later, Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper
resigned in disgrace.
The corporate media immediately fell into
line behind the government, portraying all
anti-corporate protesters as violent thugs to
justify the coming crackdown. Although the
police shot demonstrators with tear gas can-
isters at point blank range, images of black-
clad anarchists smashing windows domi-
nated the post-riot news reports. The Decem-
ber 13 issue of Newsweek linked the anar-
chists to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. 60
Minutes traveled Eugene for a story on the
new domestic terrorists. They came to Se-
attle with violence in their hearts and destruc-
tion on their minds, the CBS News show
warned viewers sternly.
The government’s abrupt shift from right
to left wing activists was accompanied by a
wave of false alarms and bogus reports. A
rumor spread that the Eugene anarchists were
planning to drive up the freeway to Portland
and disrupt that city’s downtown New Year’s
Eve party. The local police went on high alert,
fencing off the site and installing security
gates to detain and search party-goers. The
U.S. Marshals Office opened a number of tem-
porary holding cells in an old downtown fed-
eral building. The FBI set up a command cen-
ter in the basement of the nearby Mark O.
Hatfield Federal Courthouse. Heavily-armed
federal agents gathered in the basement on
(see POLICE STATE, p. 4)
"...(W)e know the direction we must
begin to travel. On land our heavy
forces will be lighter, our light forces
will be more lethal. All will beeasier
to deploy and to sustain..."
President George W. Bush
NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.)
even opened fire on domestic strikers,
before anyone reading this article was
born. It’s merely making what has been
last-ditch standard operating procedure
into an official policy.
Here’s what’s really frightening: if you
examine the plans of those in power, as
we do in this article, you see that they’re
aware that our ecological base is collaps-
ing around us, and will of course take the
economy with it. But their plans aren’t to
stop this, only to keep themselves in
power as the planet goes down the tubes
Recently, there has been an escalation
of the tools and tactics used to wage war
on the U.S. domestic population. It’s re-
sulted in more than half the adult black
male population under 27 being in some
form of detention or parole. If you look
at the more rural populations, the war on
drugs has allowed the police to work with
National Guard units, with helicopters
and automatic weapons. There’s been the
“war on crime” which has turned the
prison industry into our leading growth
industry. The “threat of terrorists” has
prompted unrestricted information access
by the law enforcement, particularly the
federal agencies.
Not only are these increased powers
being used against the poor, but they are
being used against any who practice po-
litical dissent. If you believe the “experts,”
what took place in Seattle during the WTO
Ministerial, and during the other large
demonstrations that have followed, are
prototypical examples of what is being
called “asymmetrical warfare.” Accord-
ing to these “experts,” “asymmetrical war-
fare” is the war of the future. Their re-
ports say the scope has shifted from wars
between nations to warfare between
gangs and political factions. Under asym-
metrical warfare, “wars” on crime, drugs,
and political dissent are all lumped to-
gether. Political dissent and revolution are
looked at as criminal acts based on op-
portunism. The primary field of conflict is
“urban terrain,” or in plain English, cities.
Seattle is being held up as the prototype
of this type of “war.” Incredible tactical,
and even militaristic characteristics are be-
ing attributed to the protesters. This has
led to justifications of sophisticated weap-
onry against these protesters as the new
norm. Remember when you could go to
a demonstration and not expect chemical
agents or rubber bullets? Law enforce-
ment have become ever more ready to use
heavy-handed tactics and potentially le-
thal force. This is true of large demonstra-
tions and it is true of their daily response
when dealing with unpopular people.
During the WTO Ministerial in Seattle
something changed in the U.S., something
fundamental to the way that the govern-
ment of the United States conducted it-
self with its citizens.
During the WTO Ministerial literally
tens of thousands of people many of them
bystanders, many of them elderly, many
of them people with asthma and AIDs,
were exposed to potentially lethal chemi-
cal agents. Heavily armed and anony-
mous police invaded Capital Hill, the
most densely populated area on the West
Coast of the United States north of San
Francisco. People were gassed and shot
world’s resources that are taking place,
from the loss of half the world’s topsoil,
to our ever-diminishing supply of drink-
able water. With the collapse of the
world’s ecology, Kaplan acknowledges,
will eventually come the collapse of most
of the world’s economy. As this occurs,
the poor will continue to grow in raw
numbers and percentage of the human
population. The “global village” will
become divided. Most of it will be ghet-
tos. The privileged few who own most
of everything that can be owned will try
to find ways to hold onto what they’ve
got. They will ride around in armored
at in restaurants, in their cars and in their limousines as they drive from one forti-
homes. What was going on? fied suburban enclave to the next.
The World as Third World – Author Kaplan writes this report from
Fortified Limousines Riding the vantage point of “those of us inside
Through the Global Village the stretch limo,” (p. 44). He analyzes
the changing state of warfare, relying on
One of the best explanations of the prominent military historian Martin Van
dynamic which is creating institutions Creveld, and his book The Transforma-
such as the World Trade Organization, tion of War. Van Creveld describes a new
and the paramilitary presence they inevi- type of warfare, “Asymmetric Warfare”
tably bring with them is The Coming that has already taken the place of war
Anarchy published in the February 1994 between nations. These are the high-
edition of The Atlantic and recently ex- lights of their analysis:
panded into a book. Author Robert
Kaplan describes the plundering of the • War will be more likely to take place
Tanks. Planes and Big Guns
for Asymmetrical War Fun
“Today, wars are small regional conflicts that
increasingly start and end fast. A weapon that can’t
arrive in time for the battle isn’t really a weapon at all.”
“Army’s New Ride,” Scott Gourley,
Popular Mechanics, February 2001.
Indications that the military is retooling in a major
way to fight the “asymmetrical” wars
described by Kaplan, Van Creveld, ERI,
et al are found in the seemingly innocu-
ous publications Popular Mechanics
and Popular Science. Popular Mechan-
ics examines new, light-weight alterna-
tives to the 70 ton Abrams Battle Tank
that can be used in urban terrain and
are transportable quickly to any city in
the world. Popular Science looks at
new types of experimental jet fighters
that are easily transportable and can
land and take off in very limited areas,
like city streets.
Replacing the tank will be an eight wheeled, treadless armored vehicle, much like a
very buffed up version of the “Peacekeepers” seen by our local SWAT teams. The new
weapons, according to author Scott Gourley will travel 60 mph and have the “off road
agility of light armored vehicles.” This doesn’t mean they’ll be lacking in destructive
power. Gourley informs us they will carry 105mm cannons, the original weapon of the
Abrams M1 main battle tank. But where the M1 is too heavy to be used effectively in
urban terrain, the new LAVs (Light Armored Vehicles) can make deliver this firepower to
the crumbling streets of Lebanon, Mogadishu or even Anytown USA.
And not only can these new vehicles move quickly, they can be relocated quickly
too. The department of Defense’s plan is to have combat brigades that can be any-
where in the world, Kosovo or the LA Riots, in 96 hours, and a combat brigade – about
15,000 soldiers, could be there in 120 hours. “We will begin to immediately transform
the entire Army into a more dominant and strategically responsive force,” the article
quotes General Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army as saying.
While Popular Mechanics looks at fun with tanks, Popular Science has fun with
jets. Playing off the recent X-Men movie, author Bill Sweetman calls his article “The
New Generation –X.” Both Lockheed Martin and Seattle’s favorite child, Boeing are
testing a fun new concept called STOVL – Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (get it?).
It appears our armed forces need a fast flying combat aircraft with lots of kill power
that can land and take off from a small area like “a 400 yard stretch of road.”
The development of these Asymmetrical “X” planes are on the fast track. The Penta-
gon is planning to buy 3,000 of these starting in 2008, and to export another 2,000 to our
economic vassals. Sweetman continues, “the winner (between Boeing and Lockheed
Martin) could gain as a trillion dollars including lifetime support costs.” Put another way,
it’s a contract that dwarfs Microsoft.
Clearly both jets and LAVs are designed for the sort of “asymmetrical” combat – a
war against civilian populations - that Van Creveld, Kaplan and ERI describe. That
these systems appear so prominently in popular publications and with so little attempt
to hide their intent, is indicative of the thoroughness and velocity with which these
plans are rocketing forward.
Paul Richmond
Sources:
“Army’s New Ride,” Scott Gourley, Popular Mechanics, February 2001
“The New Generation X,” Bill Sweetman, Popular Science, February 2001
WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 3
NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.)
among groups of people formally consid-
ered civilians. Hence the military must
prepare to wage war upon what are pres-
ently considered civilian populations.
• Future wars will be based on com-
munity survival and environmental scar-
city.
• State armies will shrink, gradually
being replaced by private security.
• Existing distinctions between war
and crime will break down as they have in
Lebanon, El Salvador, Peru or Columbia.
The model put forward by Van Creveld
and supported by Kaplan is also that be-
ing put forward by the Chicago based
Emergency Response Institute (ERI). The
ERI has recently put out several reports
describing what took place in the streets
of Seattle during the WTO Ministerial and
more recently during the World Bank/
IMF protests as examples of “Asymmetric
Warfare.” According to their analysis, what
took place in recent U.S. protests is little dif-
Waco, Texas, 1993
ferent from Somalia, Lebanon, Bosnia or
Panama.
Kaplan’s prescription is to unify intelli-
gence agencies such as the CIA with the
military. This is a dynamic mirrored in law
enforcement circles through programs such
as “community policing” where an inti-
mate knowledge of the community by law
enforcement, is being paired with increased
tactical capabilities
The other factor in Kaplan’s prescription
is acknowledging that as we move to a glo-
bal society, it is the corporations that have
the true power. The natural extension of
this is that it is the rights of corporations,
not nations, much less their populations,
that must be protected.
Understanding this social dynamic
helps explain why during the Seattle WTO
Ministerial, law enforcement protected del-
egates and exposed thousands of Seattle
residents to CS, CN, OC and other poten-
tially lethal agents.
Another factor that puts this in perspec-
tive is that the military itself is an industry
and a source of pecuniary income for the
wealthy few. Despite the fact that it’s been
more than fifty years since the U.S. mili-
tary engaged in all out battle with anything
resembling an evenly matched opponent,
we are still living in a wartime economy.
What saved the U.S. economy from the
Great Depression was World War II. What
kept it going afterwards was the Cold War.
With the end of the Cold War, the military
industrial complex has had to focus on new
targets. Part of this focus has been “terror-
ists.” Part of this has been “the war on
crime.” Part of this has been “the war on
drugs.” Part of this has been the war on
“political extremists.” And as the police
and military become more interchangeable
4 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT
this industry spreads into things like the fed and educated their impoverished
building of prisons where major military communities. The response of the gov-
contractors including Bechtel, the largest ernment was predictably brutal. Simul-
privately held company in the U.S. become taneous military attacks were staged on
builders of prisons. the different headquarters of the Black
Panther organization. In the case of at
Militarizing Main Street USA – least one chapter in Chicago, the chapter’s
The Third World’s Getting a Lot members were surreptitiously drugged
Bigger before the forces of the law broke in and
Another dynamic that must be exam- machine-gunned them as they slept. In
ined to understand what took place dur- South Dakota, members of the American
ing the Seattle WTO Ministerial is the cre- Indian Movement armed with antiquated
ation of an ever-larger paramilitary force rifles designed to hunt small game, faced
to control the domestic population. a well-armed military force that included
The use of a paramilitary force to keep helicopters and armored personnel carri-
political dissidents and even the general ers.
population in line is something puppet • On May 13, 1985 the Philadelphia
dictators in Third World nations have Police ended a long, politically uncomfort-
used for years. It’s allowed them to loot able standoff with the African American
their own countries, put a little bit of back to the land group MOVE. MOVE oc-
money in their pocket, and help the cupied a small row house. Police used tear
world’s wealthiest corporations, the true gas, water canons, shot guns, Uzis, M-16’s,
beneficiaries of WTO type policies (and M-60 machine guns, a 20mm anti tank gun
incidentally, many of the players that and a 50-caliber machine gun. Police filled
brought Hitler into power,) accomplish the home with tear gas and fired over
whatever they feel is needed. 10,000 rounds. When this was insufficient
In practice this has meant such things to force out the people inside, a helicop-
as the murder of outspoken religious lead- ter dropped an incendiary device. The
ers in places like El Salvador, the murder blaze was allowed to spread consuming
of labor leaders in Chile and the whole- not only the MOVE house, but also all 60
sale massacre of populations as in Indo- homes on the block. Eleven people, in-
PHOTO COURTESY OF IMC-SEATTLE/PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
nesia and East Timor. Its also been ap- cluding five children died in the inferno.
plied domestically from time to time, its There were two survivors, one of them an
just not as widely reported. infant who was carried out.
• Under the guise of the “War on
Some Earlier Domestic Drugs” the National Guard was given in-
Paramilitary Police Actions creased powers. These powers enable the
The use of the U.S. military against U.S. Guard to be used routinely against the do-
citizens is a long-standing tradition. The mestic population. Among the areas hard-
following just serve as a few of the better- est hit were the parts of Northern Califor-
documented examples: nia and Southern Oregon called the “Em-
• In 1914, National Guardsmen broke erald Triangle.” Routinely now, people
a strike at a Standard Oil owned Mining in these areas find their homes invaded.
facility in the town of Ludlow. They did Troops in camouflage uniforms, carrying
so by firing machine guns into the tents M-16 combat rifles and supported by he-
occupied by the striking miners and their licopters hold families at gunpoint. Fur-
families. Thirteen people, mostly women niture and other property are destroyed.
and children died, scores more were in- Dogs and livestock are shot. Some of these
jured. (For point of reference, Standard people do grow marijuana. The majority
Oil and its satellites were key players in of them are loggers with nothing left to
the discussions that created GATT, the cut or farmers with nothing profitable left
IMF and the World Bank in the 1940’s. to grow. This has been going on since the
City Bank, now Citicorp, was created as mid 1980’s.
one of Standard Oil’s banks.) • An avowed “White Separatist,”
• In 1932, at the height of the depres- Randy Weaver, found himself and his
sion, a group of starving World War I vet- family laid siege by hundreds of paramili-
erans came to Washington D.C. with their tary agents in his remote, plywood shack.
wives and children in tow. They num- Facing questionable charges from the Bu-
bered more than twenty thousand. They reau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms,
had no work, no food, and no place to live. Weaver had refused to plea bargain his
They hoped that they could collect a bo- charges by infiltrating a “White Separat-
nus promised them by the government ist” organization.Camouflaged snipers
when they’d served their country as sol- who hid in the woods killed his dog and
diers in what had been history’s bloodi- fourteen-year old son. His wife was killed
est war. The U.S. government responded when a sniper’s50 caliber bullet exploded
by sending out four troops of cavalry, four her head as they prepared the son’s body
troops of infantry, a machine gun squad- for burial. For those unfamiliar with
ron and six tanks. Soon the streets of weapons, this is the same caliber bullet as
Washington D.C. were filled with tear gas. that used by the Macaw Indians to kill a
Casualties followed. This domestic force whale. Vicky Weaver’s head exploded with
was led by several who would go on to such force that Randy Weaver was injured
become top military commanders includ- by the flying fragments of her skull.
ing George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower • In Waco Texas, hundreds of armor-
and Douglas Macarthur. clad federal agents laid siege to a half-con-
• In the 1940’s the entire Japanese structed combination church and commu-
population was forced to abandon all their nity center. During the initial siege fed-
worldly possessions and relocate to eral agents broke through doors and win-
camps. Barbed wire and armed guards dows, and helicopters passed overhead
surrounded the camps. It was similar to firing machine guns. Records available
Rex 84 Bravo, the scenario envisioned in later show that the agents only withdrew
the 1980’s by Oliver North for locking up when they ran out of ammunition and
political dissidents in the event the U.S. negotiated a cease-fire and retreat. For
again found itself experiencing dissent long weeks, the members of the religious
during a military conflict. It is also simi- community were subjected to loudspeak-
lar to the militaristic dynamic that cur- ers that blasted sounds of rabbits dying
rently exists on the U.S. Mexican border. in slaughterhouses as they watched the
• In the 1960’s and early 1970’s many corpses of community members killed in
of the most repressed minority groups be- the earlier shoot-out decompose. Tanks
gan to acquire a sense of pride in their circled their property, driving over their
cultures and history. Many of them had vehicles. After some six weeks the facil-
been sent to fight in a pointless war in ity, seventeen children inside, was filled
Vietnam. They came back realizing that with tear gas – a highly incendiary sub-
they were a group of victims being used stance outlawed by the Geneva Conven-
to fight more victims. Groups like the tion, and a favorite tool of law enforce-
Black Panthers developed programs that ment. The plywood structure burned
POLICE STATE (cont.)
New Year’s Eve. Police in full riot gear pa-
trolled the perimeter. None of the anarchists
showed up. The informant was wrong.
Another bogus tip sparked a similar panic
in Tacoma, Washington a few months later.
The local steelworkers union had called for a
March 25 rally at the Kaiser aluminum plant.
Labor and environmental activists from
throughout the Pacific Northwest were plan-
ning to attend. Then Eugene authorities con-
tacted the Tacoma police and reported that
some of the anarchists were allegedly head-
ing their way with a bomb. The police con-
tacted union organizer Jon Youngdahl, who
called off the protest. No bomb-carrying an-
archist was ever found.
Anarchy fever gripped the Portland police
again in late April. A few hundred local activ-
ists were planning a May Day march and dem-
onstration. An unnamed informant told the
police that the Eugene anarchists were com-
ing up to cause trouble. According to one
police report, they have little regard for the
laws of society and were expected to engage
in civil disobedience. Police Chief Mark
Kroeker, a former deputy chief from the Los
Angeles Police Department who had only
been on the job a few months, dispatched
over 150 officers in full riot gear, including
black body armor and helmets with plastic
face shields. Police spent hours chasing dem-
onstrators through the streets, spraying them
with OC, clubbing them with ballistic batons
and shooting them with “beanbag” rounds.
Nineteen people were arrested, mostly on
minor charges. None were anarchists from
Eugene. Kroeker later apologized to the city
council for the actions of his officers.
These incidents occurred as federal au-
thorities were bracing for the next major anti-
globalization protests, set for the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund meetings
scheduled to begin on April 16 in
Washington DC. As the activists began
planning their demonstrations, federal, state
and local law enforcement officials targeted
them. Their meetings were infiltrated, their
public gatherings disrupted, their phones
tapped, and police were posted outside their
homes and offices. Even the corporate me-
dia took note of the harassment. “Some pro-
testers think they are being watched. They are
correct,” the Washington Post reported on
April 1O, quoting Executive Assistant Wash-
ington Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer as
saying, If it’s an open meeting and it says,
‘Come on over,’ then anybody’s welcome.”
Three days later, USA Today reported gov-
ernment agents were going undercover online
to thwart the protesters. “[T]hey have been
monitoring 73 internet sites where the groups
have been exchanging messages to learn
more about their plans. Sometimes, officers
have even gone online posing as protesters,”
the paper said, adding that police were physi-
cally following suspected anarchists through-
out the capitol city. “They have been moni-
toring the movements of nearly two dozen
self-proclaimed anarchists who have arrived
in Washington.”
As a result of this surveillance, all 3,500
DC police officers were put on alert, along
with unknown number of law enforcement
agents from at least 12 federal and state agen-
cies, including the FBI and Bureau of Alco-
hol, Tobacco and Firearms. The authorities
spent over $1 million on new body armor and
bullet-proof shields. They set up three mass
detention centers where arrested protesters
would be taken. They removed 69 mailboxes
where bombs could be hidden.
“They ain’t burning our city like they did
in Seattle,” Police Chief Charles Ramsey told
USA Today. “I’m not going to let it happen. I
guarantee it.”
The authorities started cracking down on
the activists the week before the IMF/World
Bank meetings were scheduled to begin. On
April 13, seven activists driving to a planning
meeting were pulled over and arrested. Po-
lice seized 256 PCV pipes, 45 smaller pipes,
2 rolls of chicken wire, 50 rolls of duct tape,
gas masks, bolt cutters, chains, an electrical
saw, and lock boxes. According to a Wash-
ington Post account of the incident, a Secret
Service agent frisked one passenger, show-
ing him a photo that had been taken of him
earlier.
The police justified the arrests by saying
the materials and tools found in the van were
“implements of crime.” The accusation struck
National Lawyers Guild President Karen Jo
Koonan as absurd. “These activists construct
signs, puppets, sound stages, and other tools
for expressing their political views,” she wrote
in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.
“They were in fact arrested for possession of
implements of First Amendment activity. We
have been told by an MPD officer that the FBI
directed them to make this arrest.”
But the police claim was made a specific
purpose – a purpose that would soon become
clear. It is illegal for the police to spy on any-
one simply because of their political beliefs.
But political activists can be monitored if the
police believe they are planning to commit
crimes, no matter how petty. The police
claimed the items seized from the van were
“instruments of crime” to justify their surveil-
lance. It was a claim that would be heard re-
peatedly in the days, weeks and months to
come.
On the morning of April 15, law enforce-
ment authorities unexpectedly raided a ware-
house that served as the demonstrators’
headquarters. According to eyewitness ac-
counts, the agencies involved in the raid in-
cluded the BATF, the Washington Metropoli-
tan Police Department and the Washington
Fire Department. Saying the warehouse vio-
lated fire codes, the authorities threw all the
activists out and closed the building. Then the
authorities claimed they found weapons in the
warehouse, physical proof that violent crimes
were being planned. According to the police,
the evidence included a Molotov cocktail, bal-
loons filled with acid, and a lab for producing
explosives and pepper spray. In a later retrac-
tion, the police admitted they’d only found oily
rags and a kitchen, but not until after the ware-
house was shut down. Police also kept all the
signs, banners and giant satiric posters un-
der construction inside, depriving the dem-
onstrators of their most effective means of
communicating their causes.
The first mass arrests happened that af-
ternoon when a few thousand protesters took
part in a march against the prison industrial
complex. The police blocked their way, then
isolated and arrested approximately 635 ac-
tivists — far more than the 525 protesters
arrested during a full week of demonstrations
in Seattle — declaring their march illegal.
By the morning of Saturday the 16th, the
police had cordoned off 50 blocks around the
headquarters of the World Bank and the In-
ternational Monetary Fund. “What makes the
situation all the more maddening is that such
actions are apparently being taken based on
the ridiculous view that every protester or
activist is an anarchist time bomb waiting to
go off – a view apparently buttressed by un-
specified police intelligence that may or may
not be true,” reporter Jason Vest wrote in the
online SpeakOut.com website.
The authorities quickly revealed that they
were obsessed with identifying the protest-
ers. Those who provided identification were
fined $50. Those who didn’t were fined $300.
Demonstrators clashed with police dur-
ing the next few days. The federal govern-
ment gave all non-essential employees in
Washington DC the day off on Monday, re-
sulting in a partial government shut-down,
which is far more than the neo-Patriot move-
ment was able to achieve at any point in the
1990s. By the time it was over, even the IMF
had released a communiqué that acknowl-
edged the protesters had made its policies a
matter “of growing public debate.” As the ABC
Evening News reported on Monday, “The
demonstrators outside the building did their
best to be heard. The delegates inside the
building said they got the message.”
The full extent of the government’s sur-
veillance operation was not revealed until May
4, when the Paris-based Intelligence News-
(see POLICE STATE, p. 6)
quickly. Survivors recall that many who
tried to exit the burning structure were
fired upon. Thermal imaging of film taken
during this time, seems to confirm this.
What distinguishes these from what
took place in Seattle is that all these ac-
tions took place against populations that
were marginalized socially, geographi-
cally or economically. During the Seattle
WTO Ministerial this use of military force
was openly applied to a vast middle-class
population in the most densely populated
urban area north of San Francisco. It was
not only an effective way of telling the
people that the rules had changed. It was
setting a precedent about the use of po-
tentially lethal military force against any
population, in effect telling the U.S.
middle class that they too had joined the
Third World.
Say Goodbye to Posse Comitatus
The United States has a protection
against the use of federal troops for civil-
ian law enforcement. The Posse Comita-
tus Act of 1878 makes it a crime to do so.
The intent behind this is that the military
is there to deal with foreign enemies, usu-
ally with a lethal response. Police, by con-
trast are members of the community and
there above all to protect life. The two are
hence incompatible.
Recent legislation enacted as a result
of the “War on Drugs” has changed this.
The lines between police and the military
have become increasingly blurred.
For example 10 USC 375 only limits the
use of military to actual engagement of
troops in the field. This means that that
the most elite “Special Forces” military
units including the Navy Seals Team 6,
Delta Force and the Special Service (SAS)
routinely train both federal and police
SWAT Teams. These “Special Forces” not
only are allowed to conduct trainings, they
can also appear on site and act as “consult-
ants” at every stage of the action, even writ-
ing action plans that supercede those of
their law enforcement counterparts.
Under 10 USC 372, the military forces
can also provide any piece of military
equipment deemed necessary. The only
restriction is that military personnel can-
not operate this military equipment.
Under 10 USC 373, the military are au-
thorized to train the law enforcement on
any piece of their equipment, such as the
tanks that were used at Waco.
Also under recent exceptions created
under the “War on Drugs” members of the
National Guard may be brought in di-
rectly.
FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT)
founder Danny Coulson seems to have
grasped some of the implications of this
blurring of the lines between military
and law enforcement. Then FBI Direc-
tor William Webster and Coulson had
observed an early training session of
Delta Force. Coulson who describes the
FBI’s involvement in the 1973 Wounded
Knee siege as “disastrous” (Coulson, No
Heroes, pp. 136-37) describes the follow-
ing exchange:
“Webster nodded sagely and took a
closer look at the array of guns and
gizmos. There seemed to be something
missing. He turned a puzzled face to
Major General Richard Scholtes, com-
mander of the Joint Special Operations
Command, who oversaw Delta, SEAL
Team Six and other DOD counter terror
activities.
‘I don’t see any handcuffs,’ Webster
said.
‘We don’t have handcuffs,’ Scholtes re-
sponded crisply. ‘It’s not my job to arrest
people.’
Oh? Oh! Webster’s eyebrows curved
like the St. Louis arch as the realization
dawned that once the military was
called in, the situation would most as-
suredly be resolved with bullets, and
there might be no one left to be taken
to jail. It conjured up a nightmare sce-
nario that could make Kent State look
like a picnic.”(Coulson p. 139)
In point of fact, these military units
may be overruling their civilian counter-
parts once called in. Evidence of this is
shown by examination of the testimony
by Attorney General Janet concerning
the disaster that occurred at Waco. Reno
first described the role of the President
as being limited like a World War II gen-
eral who was not expected to exercise
constant oversight. Reno also acknowl-
edged that though the FBI had conceived
the April 19 th assault of the Branch
Davidian’s plywood structure with mili-
tary tanks, the actual implementation
which began a few minutes after the
tanks were first deployed, was the work
of Delta Force. “In effect Delta Force’s
recommendation was carried out.”
(Kopel and Blackmun, No More Wacos,
pp. 84-87)
There is certainly evidence that a
similar dynamic was taking place in Se-
Philadelphia, 1985
attle. Evidence of Federal involvement
in the Seattle Ministerial is there as early
as July 16th article in The Wall Street Jour-
nal. This article quotes SPD spokesper-
son Carmen Best as saying, “The police
department has set up a WTO planning
commission, which is coordinating with
the U.S. Secret Service, the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation, the State Depart-
ment, Federal Emergency Management
Agency, The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms and numerous other law
enforcement types.” (Emphasis added.)
An article in The Seattle Weekly pub-
lished two weeks after the ministerial,
states that Delta Force members were on
the street in civilian garb mingling with
demonstrators. The Delta Force mem-
bers may not have only been in charge
of much of what was going on in the
streets, but according to two sources,
were those who pushed the hardest for
the crackdown that occurred on the
streets. (SW, “Delta’s Down with it.”
Rick Anderson, 12/23/1999, p. 16.) Cer-
tainly the response that occurred on No-
vember 30 where thousands were ex-
posed to chemical agents and almost no
one arrested mirrors Coulson’s and
Webster’s impressions of Delta’s operat-
ing style.
Community leader Harriet Walden,
one of the founders of the group Mothers
for Police Accountability made remarks
to this effect at a community dialogue with
Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper:
After the crackdown began, every
press briefing was held in the federal
building. The local authorities were not
in control.
This conclusion is mirrored by experi-
ence of members of the Seattle chapter of
the National Lawyer’s Guild. NLG attor-
neys received a short letter from Captain
Linda Pierce a few days before the WTO
Ministerial. Captain Pierce’s letter in-
cluded the following acknowledgment:
“While we appreciate your interest in
ensuring individual First Amendment ex-
pression, it is important to note that secu-
rity issues are paramount and are often
dictated by federal agencies responsible
for event security.”
In essence, the letter is saying, what we
locals think or want doesn’t matter. The
Feds are in charge.
What this Portends
What took place in Seattle is part of a
larger trend. Over the last decade is the
capability to wage war on the domestic
population has increased several fold.
Much of the money that went to the
military now goes to National Guard
Units. These units are functionally the
same as the military. They have been
called to serve in Panama and the Persian
Gulf. Arguably the training, level of
equipment and level of recruits they re-
ceive is superior to that of their counter-
parts in the regular military. Indeed many
of these National Guard Units routinely
best their military counterparts in staged
competitions. The difference is that the
National Guard may be used against the
domestic population.
The police too have become milita-
rized. The euphemisms for this are the
“War on Crime” and the “War on Drugs.”
Their result has been a vastly enlarged
police force. This force many more and
newer officers. These officers use weap-
ons with higher capacities, but having
less training and street experience be-
hind them. There has been an increase
in the number of paramilitary SWAT and
SERT units. In large part because this is
where the federal funds are, small town
police forces apply for and receive grants
for SWAT teams, not basic items such as
police cars. One recent academic study
found that nearly 70% of the cities with
populations under 50,000 had paramili-
tary units. For cities with populations
over 50,000 the number jumped to 90%.
And much of the tactics and mindset of
SWAT has become integral to police
training and culture.
Much of this rise in the militarization
of the police has occurred alongside the
growth of something called “Community
Policing.” Discussions of community po-
licing are usually dominated by touchy-
feely terms of “community involvement.”
Neighbors are encouraged to be the eyes
and ears of the police in the community.
They are encouraged to report any “sus-
picious” persons and events and to work
with the police in eliminating these ele-
WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 5

ments. What in fact “Community Polic-
ing” accomplishes is that the police, par-
ticularly the paramilitary police described
above, are given eyes, informants and
unchecked entry into the community.
Portland, Oregon is one of the national
models of “Community Policing.” It has
hosted several national conferences on the
subject and two of its chiefs were among
the three finalists for position of adminis-
tering the allocation of the 100,000 new
police created by the federal crime bill. A
closer look at this program reveals how
closely it is intertwined in the community.
Figures in a study conducted by the Port-
land City Auditor’s office revealed that
under community policing, the number
of patrol cops actually went slightly down,
while the number of those involved in
Tactical Operations went from two to fifty-
six officers in the space of a little over three
years, an increase of some 2800%. Also the
person who was “Lieutenant in charge
of Community Policing” inevitably be-
came the “Captain in Charge of Tacti-
cal Operations.”
Just to clarify, “Tactical Operations” is
the division that runs the paramilitary
team that knocks down doors, dresses in
camouflage, drives armored cars, and car-
ries military type AR-15 combat rifles and
H&K MP-5 submachine guns. This is also
the division of the police that can confis-
cate property. This is part of the “asset
forfeiture” fund mentioned in the 1993
Federal Crime Bill that created 100,000
new police on the streets. “Asset forfei-
ture” refers to property taken through
drug and other crime related seizures by
law enforcement. In effect, the police are
expected to become self-funding through
the confiscation of private property. One
obscure ordinance passed by Portland City
Council enabled this branch of the police
to work with the National Guard to com-
pile a database of property owned in Port-
land under the guise of a “War on Drugs.”
Columbine Triggers
One can find why “Community Polic-
ing” is most relevant to what is now oc-
curring in the U.S. in remarks by one of
the program’s founders. Lee Brown a
former Multnomah County Sheriff, New
York City Police Commissioner and
Clinton Drug Czar wrote this in a history
of “Community Policing” intended for
members of the law enforcement commu-
nity. Brown begins by looking at “short-
comings” to the police response that oc-
curred during the protests of the late
1960’s and early 1970’s:
“ (These shortcomings) came into
sharp focus by the middle 1960’s and
early 1970’s when riots and protests ex-
ploded with rampant regularity across
America…questions were raised about
the apparent inability of police to pre-
vent or at least control such outbreaks.”
(Perspectives on Policing, U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice, September 1989.)
In other words, “Community Policing”
was put into place to answer the question:
how can the police more effectively elimi-
nate dissent, or if that is not possible, con-
trol it.
To place this trend in perspective,
imagine the political furor in the U.S. if
Lee Brown’s remarks on “controlling” dis-
sent, which are not disputed, could be at-
tributed to the domestic policies of say
Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein.
More Cops, Less Training
“Community Policing” also brought
with it a mass of new hires. There is no
POLICE STATE (cont.)
letter carried a story titled “Watching the Anti-
WTO Crowd” which reported that U.S. Army
intelligence units were monitoring the anti-
corporate protesters. Among other things, the
newsletter discovered that “reserve units from
the US Army Intelligence and Security Com-
mand helped Washington police keep an eye
on demonstrations staged at the World Bank/
IMF meetings ... [T]he Pentagon sent around
700 men from the Intelligence and Security
Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Wash-
ington police on April 17, including special-
ists in human and signals intelligence. One
unit was even strategically located on the
fourth floor balcony in a building at 1919
Pennsylvania Avenue with a birds-eye view
of most demonstrators.”
The newsletter also charged that much in-
formation being collected about the protest-
ers was being fed into the Regional Informa-
tion Sharing System computers used by law
enforcement agencies across the country. Ac-
cording to the report, the government is ra-
tionalizing this surveillance by claiming the
protesters are terrorists. As the report put it,
“to justify their interest in anti-globalization
groups from a legal standpoint, the authori-
ties lump them into a category of terrorist
organizations. Among those considered as
such at present are Global Justice (the group
that organized the April 17 demonstration),
Earth First, Greenpeace, American Indian
Movement, Zapatista National Liberation
Front and Act-Up.”
In early May, In These Times confirmed
the government spy operation. The progres-
sive newspaper quoted Robert Scully, execu-
tive director of the National Association of
Police Organizations, as saying that federal,
state and local law enforcement agencies were
“successful in infiltrating some of the groups
... and had firsthand, inside information of
who, when, why, and where things were go-
ing to happen.”
Even before the Washington DC protests
began, organizers began planning to bring
their message to the Republican and Demo-
cratic Presidential conventions, scheduled for
July and August in Philadelphia and Los An-
geles. Police representatives from both cit-
ies traveled to the nation’s capitol for the April
demonstrations, consulting with federal au-

New Police Tactics objective evidence anywhere that sup-

ports that bringing more cops on the street
limits crime. FBI Statistics prove that there
“His ears ringing from gunfire, his uniform damp with sweat, his breath labored and is no correlation with having more police
acrid-tasting from the gunpowder in the air, Officer Larry Layman ran heavily down a and a lowered crime rate. That informa-
hallway toward an insistent pop-pop-pop. A gunman was running through school shoot- tion is being ignored and more and more
ing children, and Layman was chasing him. Layman rounded a corner, holding his gun police are being hired.
in front of him two stiff arms and stopped dead. The gunman stood facing him, with an In most police departments, new re-
arm around a hostage’s neck and a gun held to the hostage’s head. “Drop your gun or cruits have swelled the ranks, and some-
I’ll blow your head off!” the gunman screamed. Layman, a police officer for more than times even form a majority of the police
half his fifty years, had been trained always to drop his gun at a moment like this. Now on the street. In Seattle, as the WTO Min-
he fired. isterial approached, one third of the SPD
“This was only a training exercise. But the point of this training is something had been on the force for less than two
radically new and different, and it is unsettling for Larry Layman, and his fellow offic- years. This flood of new hires has brought
ers in Peoria, Illinois and thousands of other law enforcement officers across the coun- a concern noted by many police com-
try. Historically, the police in the United States have employed a standard response manders and police union leaders, that
when confronted with armed suspects in schools, malls, banks, post offices, and other with the increasing numbers of new re-
heavily populated buildings. The first officers to arrive never rushed in. Instead they cruits, police cannot be and are not being
set up perimeters and controlled the scene. They tried to contain the suspects and called adequately trained.
in a rigorously trained Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. The SWAT team Robert Vernon, Retired Assistant
arrived, assumed positions to keep the suspects pinned down, and negotiated with them Chief of the LAPD writes the following
until they surrendered. SWAT teams stormed buildings only when necessary to save in his book LA Justice:
lives, such as when hostages were being executed one by one. “I also called the (Christopher)
“Today, however, police officers are setting aside traditional tactics. They are being Commission’s attention to our training
taught to enter a building if they are the first to arrive at the scene, to chase the gunman, problem in the LAPD. Our hiring sched-
and to kill or disable him as quickly as possible. This sweeping change in police tactics ule was (and is) controlled completely by
– variously called rapid response, emergency-response, or first responder – is a direct the politicians and the city administrative
result of the shootings that occurred at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado officer…. (T)hese leaders mandated our
on April 20 of last year…. hiring to go from zero growth to adding
“Larry Glick, the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, several hundred in one year. To make
says that Columbine almost immediately became a seminal event in the history of police political points with the people, they ac-
training and tactics. Most of the nation’s 17,000 police agencies, he says, especially the tually began seeing who could add the
roughly 2,000 agencies with fifty or more officers, have instituted new rapid-response most officers to our authorized strength.
training programs in the past year. These programs are intended to train all police The result was that in recent years of
officers not just SWAT teams – to respond swiftly and aggressively if they are among heavy hiring, we hired too many too
the first officers on the scene. Glick’s association, with 37,000 members from 3,500 quickly.
participating agencies, teaches SWAT specialists to retrain their fellow officers, includ- When I joined the department and
ing everyday patrolmen, like Larry Layman….” graduated from the academy, I was as-
signed to work with an 8-year veteran. I
“Shoot to Kill” Timothy Harper, The Atlantic Monthly, October 2,000. soon learned that it took several years of
experience to become an effective officer.
thorities on how to identify and handle the
demonstrators. Federal officials also traveled
to the convention cities, setting up surveil-
lance operations in advance of the arriving
demonstrators.
By late May, the corporate media was
openly writing about the intelligence-gather-
ing operations. Previewing the Republican
convention, the Philadelphia Inquirer said,
“The Secret Service is checking rooftops. The
FBI is monitoring the Internet. And city po-
lice are getting ready to play cat and mouse
with protesters ... ‘Virtually every resource
that the FBI has available will be put into play,’
said Thomas J. Harrington, the assistant spe-
cial agent-in-charge in the FBI’s Philadelphia
office.”
The Reuters news agency confirmed the
FBI’s role in June 2, saying, “The U.S. Secret
Service is running security inside the conven-
tion and at main hotels, the FBI is handling
intelligence and state police are providing
escorts for dignitaries. That leaves Philadel-
phia’s 6,800-strong police department to keep
the streets of the 5th-largest U.S. city safe
for delegates and clear of unruly crowds.”
Throughout June, activists from several
groups reported at least five instances in
which unidentified men were seen photo-
graphing people entering and leaving protest
planning meetings. On June 29, a reporter
with the Philadelphia Inquirer observed two
men dressed in casual clothes watching ac-
tivists arrive for a meeting at the offices of
the Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom. The pair sat on the hood of a
maroon Plymouth, taking pictures of the ac-
tivists as they came and went. Both men re-
fused to answer any questions from the re-
porter. Police spokeswoman Lt. Susan
Slawson flatly denied her agency was doing

6 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT

anything that would violate its policy against
political intelligence-gathering, saying, “[W]e
are in no way violating it. But then the re-
porter traced the license plates on the Ply-
mouth to the police department. Confronted
with proof of his agency’s role in the surveil-
lance operation, department spokesman
David Yarnell reluctantly admitted the activ-
ists were right. “We were watching. We were
making surveillance efforts. It’s just prudent
preparations for anything,” he confessed.
“This is just outrageous,” responded orga-
nizer Michael Morrill “If this is in fact going
on, and city officials are lying about it, I won-
der what else they’re doing.”
Philadelphia police officials openly talked
about having the protesters under surveil-
lance when the Republican National Conven-
tion began on July 31, with Police Commis-
sioner John Timoney specifically saying his
troops were watching “the anarchists.” The
first serious confrontation occurred on Aug-
ust 1, after police unexpectedly raided a ware-
house where activists were painting posters
and building puppets. Before the raid, police
claimed the activists were storing weapons
in the building, in this case C4 explosives and
acid-filled balloon. No explosives, acid or
other weapons were found. But 70 activists
were arrested, and all their signs and pup-
pets were seized.
The raid set off street protests, during
which 15 police officers were injured in
scuffles, and more than 25 police cruisers and
other city vehicles were vandalized by pro-
testers who also overturned dumpsters,
smashed windows, and sprayed graffiti on
downtown buildings. Before the end of the
day, more than 350 people were arrested, in-
cluding 19 who were charged with such felony
offenses as assaults. Most were jailed and
kept imprisoned on high bails. Hundreds were
still behind bars days after the convention
ended, complaining of deplorable conditions
and brutal treatment.
The day after the delegates went home,
Timoney called a press conference and an-
nounced that he and his intelligence officers
had uncovered a vast left wing conspiracy. In
language reflecting the anti-Communist hys-
teria of the Red Scare, the Philadelphia po-
lice commissioner claimed outside agitators
had conspired to cause violence and prop-
erty damage at the convention. He called on
the federal government to investigate this
subversive plot, saying, “There is a cadre, if
you will, of criminal conspirators who are
about the business of planning conspiracies
to go in and cause mayhem and cause prop-
erty damage in major cities in America that
have large conventions or large numbers of
people coming in for one reason or another.”
One of the alleged conspirators was John
Sellers, director of Ruckus Society, a Berke-
ley-based organization that trains political
protesters in civil disobedience tactics. He
was arrested while walking down the street
and talking into a cell phone outside the Po-
lice Administration building. Although all of
the charges filed against Sellers were misde-
meanors, one of them was carrying an “in-
strument of a crime,” the police excuse for
spying on him. His bail was set at $1 million,
far more than all but the most dangerous fel-
ons are required to post.
In seeking the high bail, District Attorney,
Cindy Mertelli produced a 27 page “dossier”
on Sellers. She called him “a real risk of dan-
ger to the community,” noting he had been
“involved in Seattle, a situation with almost
dead bodies.” Although none of the charges
levied at Sellers involved violence or even
vandalism, Mertelli said he “sets the stage to
facilitate the more radical elements and in-
tends to do the same in L.A.,” where the
Democrats were set to meet in early August.
Shortly after bail was set, CBS News was
reporting that Philadelphia police had pin-
pointed the “ringleaders” of the most violent
protests against the Republicans and had
been stalking them throughout the day. Sell-
ers was identified as one of the ringleaders
that were stalked.
“We know they had a list of things they
(see POLICE STATE, p. 8)
NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.) pursuit and stop of Rodney King. Every effort to avoid getting hit. But he wasn’t
moment on the famous videotape is ex- being hit at the time. King wasn’t avoid-
When we shifted into heavy hiring mode plained as examples of the police doing ing blows. He was rolling toward Officer
that wise practice all but disappeared. exactly what they were trained to do. The Wind – he was doing the “Folsom Roll.”
Today it’s not unusual to have a rookie following are some of the more illustra- Any LAPD cop who’s dealt with ex-cons
working with a training officer who has tive examples from Sgt. Koon’s detailed is familiar with the “Folsom Roll.” Pris-
all of 18 months’ experience. The sharper narration: oners at California’s Folsom Prison and
recruits often find themselves working correction units in other states have been
a 1-person car – on their own – near the “After the second TASER King contin- photographed teaching it to one another
end of their probationary period. This ued to right himself. In an instant he was in the prison yard. It’s a technique for dis-
is another reason we’re not adequately on his feet. His arms outstretched, King arming an officer while proned out on the
passing on the principles of police pro- rushed Officer Powell. If he had wanted ground. The idea is to roll into an officer
fessionalism.” (Vernon, LA Justice p. 120) to escape, there were plenty of avenues and tangle up his legs, then reach up and
available. He could have fled across the grab a gun belt and holster while the of-
A similar dynamic pervades the dy- street into the crowd of bystanders, or to ficer is off-balance. Then the officer is
namics of training special units such as his right into the park. But King didn’t downed and the suspect has the weapon.”
SWAT teams. FBI Hostage Rescue Team do that. He chose to collide into Officer (pp. 42-43)
(HRT) founder, Danny Coulson describes Powell, and the two grappled for a split This provides insight into why the of-
a situation in which he was assigned to second. That’s why all of the officers ficers were acquitted the first time – they
handle a prison disturbance with mem- present interpreted it as an assault on a were conducting the entire operation by
bers of several local police SWAT Teams. policeman instead of a chance to escape. the book.
Coulson writes: Powell was terrified; police officers get A similar dynamic took place in one of
“We were asking a lot of the SWAT
agents. We’d had years to practice these Detainees, Port Isabel, Texas, 1990s
skills. These men had days – maybe
hours.” (No Heroes, Coulson, p. 357)
An even worse dynamic seems to have
occurred in Seattle during the WTO Min-
isterial. Many of the police from outside
the Seattle area seem to all available evi-
dence, to have been called in at the last
minute and received no training whatso-
ever on the less lethal weaponry.
What often becomes a substitute for
that training is the preconception that the
officers have when they begin the job.
Usually these preconceptions come from
television and movies. These works of
corporate produced popular fiction fea-
ture continuous images of the police ac-
tively engaging in direct physical acts
such as gun fights and car chases on an
abnormally regular basis, sometimes sev-
eral times a week. Actual officers may go
20 years without a single shoot out, and
are far less likely than convenience store
clerks or tax drivers to have a firearm
pointed at them.
These factors go a long way to describ-
ing the enthusiasm and irregularities dis-
played by numerous officers deployed
during WTO Ministerial. Scenes such as
occurred after the December 1 st labor
march where demonstrators were inexpli-
cably driven from one barrage of tear gas
to another, or in Seattle’s Capital Hill
neighborhood, where less lethal weap-
onry was fired into empty streets, make a
lot more sense in light of these factors.
Consider also that as the training lev-
els are going down, the capacity and le-
thality of the weaponry by these officers
are increasing. Where they once had very
accurate six shot revolvers whose barrels
formed a natural extension of their hands, Internment camp, California, 1940s
the standard issue weapon is now a semi-
automatic 9mm Glock that carries any- scared, too. He defended himself with his the models of “Community Policing.” A
thing from 17 to 30 rounds in a clip. To metal PR 24 baton…” (p.40) Portland Police officer pursuing a suspect
accommodate the extra bullets, the Glock “Then the officers stepped back to fired twenty-seven shots. Gerald Gratton
is built with a diagonal handle, so that the evaluate the effect the blows were having had been observed carrying a gun, which
barrel does not form a natural extension on the suspect. That’s strictly procedure, he immediately dropped. The officer,
of the forefinger when it is clasped in a because it gives the officers an opportu- Douglas Erickson, pursued Gratton
person’s hand, as it would with the stan- nity to determine whether the suspect in- through a residential neighborhood,
dard issue service revolvers. The result is tends to comply. More importantly, the shooting wildly. Since his Glock only car-
that the Glock does not lend itself to be- pause gives the suspect an outlet to avoid ried 17 rounds, he even reloaded his clip,
ing aimed as quickly and accurately as the any further blows by obeying the com- firing more than twenty bullets. Though
older weapons. mand to prone out, hands behind the initially dismissed Erickson was rein-
back. These pauses are known as “pulsa- stated. The official decision to reinstate,
Police Being Trained to View tions” in police language. Yet they are described the pursuit in detail and how
the Public as a Threat interpreted by many viewers of the vid- every move by Mr. Gratton, was a poten-
Also consider that a dominant factor eotape as policemen simply taking turns tial threat to the life of the officer. When
in police training is to have officers as- beating an innocent suspect. That wasn’t Gratton crouched, when he held up his
sume the worst about a person. Police are the case. They were following my orders hands, every move mirrored something
trained to view nearly every movement and strict procedure; deliver the baton that the officer had been trained to re-
that a suspected person makes as a threat. blows, then back off to see what effect spond to as a potentially lethal attack. A
They are also taught to respond to that they’re having on the suspect…” (p.42) more recent example of this sort of shoot-
threat with a necessary amount of force. “…in one of the more tense moments ing is the Diallo shooting in New York.
One of the greatest illustrations of that is captured in stark clarity on the A similar dynamic seems to have ap-
this is found in Sgt. Stacey Koon’s book Holliday videotape, King began rolling plied during the WTO. One of the few of
Presumed Guilty; The Tragedy of the toward Officer Wind. Wind backed the approximately 600 arrestees to make
Rodney King Affair. Sgt. Koon was the quickly away. He knew what was hap- it to trial was Eric Larsen, manager of a
LAPD officer in charge of the pursuit and pening. Rodney King was doing the local cafe, a photographer and a poet. The
arrest of Rodney King on March 3 of “Folsom Roll.” To the casual viewer of videotape of the King County Sheriff’s Of-
1991. In the opening chapter Sergeant the videotape, it appeared as though King fice used in the trial, shows that Larsen
Koon gives a step-by-step analysis of the were rolling away from the officers in an was subjected to several distinct blasts of
WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 7
 pepper spray. King County Sheriffs duti-
fully explained the whys of this. When
Larsen wiped at his eyes, or held out his
hands to block a stream of the spray, or
bent over slightly with his arms at his side,
every one of these was a potential chance
for Larsen to attack the few dozen ar-
mored officers he faced.
Larsen was acquitted of all charges in-
cluding resisting arrest.
Other police videos support this view
of a police force being trained to expect
the worst from the demonstrators. For ex-
ample video of the police training on 11/
19 shows the police divided into two
groups one being the protesters. The “pro-
testers” do things such as hurling large
chunks of debris at the other officers.
There is also a tape provided by one of
the police agencies where they receive a
morning briefing. “They will try to pro-
voke you,” warns their commander.
Most ominous is an assessment hinted
PHOTO COURTESY OF IMC-SEATTLE/PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
is to protect my partner. That’s my main be a wake up call.” (Oregonian 7/21/97, POLICE STATE (cont.)
job.’ This kept coming across – every PDXS Vol. 7, No. 11) More recently,
cop. ‘My main job is to protect my part- Mack has come under fire for his criti- were going to do, and they set about doing
ner and make sure I go home every cism of the Portland Police Bureau’s use it,” Timoney said at an August 2 news con-
night.’ And we had to say: ‘That’s not of “less lethal” beanbag rounds, on May ference, signaling that at least some of his
why we hired you! Implicit in all this is 1st. Mack stated the policies were un- information came from infiltrators. “I intend
that it is a dangerous business. You may sound and being forced on the street of- on raising this issue with federal authorities.
get shot. You may be called upon to ficers from their commanders. He’d also Somebody’s got to look into these groups.”
make the ultimate sacrifice. But I didn’t made these statements about a “Gang Although a judge soon lowered the bail,
hire you to protect your partner. I hired Enforcement Program” to a panel of the local news media immediately embraced
you to protect the public.’ And the more leaders assembled by his police chief: the police version of events. The day after
I thought about it, the more I realized: “When you talk about a popular Timoney’s press conference, the Philadelphia
Something’s switched. Something’s thing, gangs are becoming bigger be- Inquirer congratulated the police for their re-
changed. I didn’t think straint, crediting their excellent intelligence-
I would have given that gathering work. The paper also said that what
answer as a young cop.” appeared to be a spontaneous melee on Au-
The Last Cop in What distinguishes these from what gust 1 was in fact a carefully choreographed
Camelot, Tom Junod, assault, the result of a conspiracy.
took place in Seattle is that all these
Esquire June 2,000, p116. Timoney’s conspiracy theory got a boost
This sort of insularity actions took place against populations when it was embraced by Bruce Chapman,
is something that can that were marginalized socially, president of the Discovery Institute and a
and does pervade to the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Na-
geographically or economically. During
highest levels of police tions Organizations in Vienna. Writing in the
the Seattle WTO Ministerial this use of Washington Times, Chapman claimed several
military force was openly applied to a left wing political organizations had conspired
to cause violence in Seattle, Washington DC,
vast middle-class population in the Philadelphia and Los Angeles, including the
most densely populated urban area Direct Action Network, Global Exchange, the
north of San Francisco. It was not only Rainforest Action Network, the Foundation for
Deep Ecology, and The International Forum

an effective way of telling the people on Globalization, which he described as “an

Seattle, 1999
at in some of the police reports, that a cer-
tain number of police casualties would
have been acceptable. Even if this was
only a rumor circulating among the po-
lice officers, the fact that it had credence,
as all evidence suggests, is indicative of
the officers’ mindset.
Police Viewing Themselves as
Outsiders in a Hostile Community
What has changed is that police who
were once taught to protect life, are now
focused on making it home from the hos-
tile environments they patrol. It is part of
a larger rubric similar to the changed
training methods in the military that
brought increased killing rates from
American Troops in Vietnam. Once the
enemy is dehumanized it becomes a lot
easier to kill if deemed necessary. Police
come to view themselves as being in a po-
sition analogous to “the lost patrol.”
Trapped behind enemy lines with no one
but each other for support.
The dynamic of police as outsiders, is
revealed in an interview with Philadel-
phia Police Chief Ed Timoney, some short
months before the recent Republican Na-
tional Convention. Chief Timoney de-
scribes a 1994 gunfight he had investi-
gated while a chief in the New York Po-
lice Department. The gunfight had lasted
ten minutes, the police had shot 258
rounds of ammunition. Four people were
killed including an innocent bystander
who was shot by a police bullet. The ca-
sualties also included a pregnant woman
who was left alone to bleed to death in a
nearby restaurant. Timoney states that he
conducted his investigation to determine
how these officers defined their jobs as
members of the police department. What
he found disturbed him deeply:
“She was dying, she was pregnant,
and the cops went out – they ran away.
And the more we spoke to cops the more
we heard, ‘Hey, listen, my main function
that the rules had changed. It was
setting a precedent about the use of
potentially lethal military force against
any population, in effect telling the U.S.
middle class that they too had joined
the Third World.
cause they are popular. I want you to
understand part of the approach we’re
taking may be a reason for that. When
you put a special unit together and spe-
cial uniforms and special cars and call it
organizations. New York’s Mollen Com- “gang enforcement unit,” the little kids
mission, one of the most in depth analy- who are wannabes and are not quite sure
sis of police misbehavior conducted in re- look at it and go these “G’s” these “little
cent years observed that the NYPD had G’d” and “OG’s,” these big guys they
become so concerned with protecting its must be important because the police are
image that it avoided investigating known putting together a special unit to fight
instances of corruption because of the de- them. I want you to think twice about
moralizing effect such investigations making the gang unit bigger and bigger
would have. The commission wrote: and bigger, because what you seem to be
“…the Department allowed its own doing, looking at the stats here is mak-
systems for fighting corruption virtually ing the problem bigger and bigger.”
to collapse. It had become more con- (Statement of Officer Tom Mack to PPB
cerned about the bad publicity that cor- Chief’s Forum, 10/24/94, Portlandian Vol.
ruption disclosures generate than the I, No.3)
devastating consequences of corruption It takes little imagination to apply this
itself. As a result, its corruption controls same dynamic to the relationship between
minimized, ignored and at times con- the authorities and the Anarchists. By
cealed corruption rather than the devas- drawing so much attention to these
tating consequences of corruption groups, members of law enforcement
itself….This reluctance manifested itself have become these groups’ best recruit-
in every component of the Department’s ers. By describing disruptive tactics that
corruption controls from command ac- the demonstrators might use, certain mem-
countability and supervision, to investi- bers of law enforcement make their ap-
gations, police culture, training and re- pearance on the street inevitable.
cruitment.” (Mollen Commission Report Part of Mack’s reticence may stem from
7/7/1994, pp2-3) the increased fatalities that Community
Policing brings with it. For example in
Smart Cops Realize This Puts 1993, annual statistics released by the Fed-
Them in Danger eral Bureau of Investigation show that
The more experienced cops realize that Portland had the third highest per capita
these dynamics ultimately make their shooting rate of citizens by its own police.
own job more dangerous and create un- In 1997, for the first time in almost two
necessary friction in the community. decades, police officers wee fatally shot.
Moreover, these policies may themselves The case of the first officer, Thomas Jeffries
create the very criminals that they are is especially instructive. Jeffries pursued
nominally there to protect the community an armed suspect, who had shot at a child
from. earlier that night. It was late at night, the
Portland Police Officer Thomas area was a residential neighborhood. This
Mack, a representative of the Police Of- was a situation where containment would
ficers Union, has been one of the more have been ideal. Instead, Jeffries, sepa-
candid critics of the effect community rated from his partner, losing whatever
policing has had on officers ability to advantage he had. During his last mo-
perform their jobs. When Portland ex- ments, he crashed through ten-foot
perienced its first fatal shooting of an of- hedges pinning his arms, and alerting the
ficer in nearly two decades Mack made suspect through the rustling of leaves.
remarks to a reporter attributing the This might work nicely on television but
officer’s death to the lack of training of- it was horrible in life. Jeffries was not the
ficers were receiving. He said “it should only PPB Officer to die that year. A few
umbrella group for 55 organizations opposed
to globalization and high technology.”
Chapman said several of the most prominent
organizations were funded by Douglas
Tompkins, who he described as “a business-
man who nurses an intense anger at modern
technology and international trade.” Chapman
ended his piece by calling for a federal inves-
tigation of Tompkins, the organizations, and
“the rioters.”
Although the most serious charges
against Sellers were eventually dropped, pro-
testers faced a similar surveillance and ha-
rassment campaign in Los Angeles. On July
13, the Los Angeles Times printed a guest
editorial by Mayor Richard Riordan, which
warned of violence by “international anar-
chists.” In the piece titled “A Fair Warning to
All: Don’t Disrupt Our City, Riordan said the
protesters coming to town had attended
“training camps where they have learned
strategies of destruction and guerrilla tactics.”
Before too long, the authorities and media
were talking about the protesters in terms,
which had previously been reserved for do-
mestic terrorists. On July 23, the Los Ange-
les Times reported the Secret Service and
other government agencies were warning that
a biological agent might be released in or
around the Staples Center, where the conven-
tion was scheduled to be held. “We have pur-
chased a lot of equipment, specialized masks
and gowns,” said Dr. Robert Splawn, medi-
cal director of the California Hospital Medical
Center, the closest hospital to the center.
The police also began visiting businesses
near the center, showing them videos from
the Seattle protests and advising them to con-
sider boarding up glass walls and windows,
hiring additional security guards, and stock-
ing up on emergency provisions like flash-
lights, food and water. “It’s almost like a tor-
nado,” said LAPD Detective Darryl. “You can
see it coming, but you don’t know where it’s
going to go.”
On August 7, the Southern California
chapter of the ACLU wrote a letter to Police
Chief Bernard Parks and Deputy City Attor-
ney Debra Gonzales on behalf of several
groups coordinating the upcoming demon-
strations, including the D2K Convention Plan-
ning Coalition, the Rise Up/Direct Action Net-
work, and the Community Action Network. In
the letter, ACLU attorney Dan Tokaji com-
plained that police were watching the four-
story protest headquarters building around
the clock, constantly videotaped the building
and recorded license plate numbers of cars
used by protesters. The letter also alleged
police were selectively enforcing traffic laws
near the building, and had repeatedly entered
it with producing search warrants. “They’ve
crossed the line separating legitimate secu-
rity preparations from unlawful harassment

8 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT

that violates protesters” First and Fourth
amendment rights. The mere potential for a
disturbance does not justify the suspension
of our constitutional rights,” the letter said.
When the city didn’t respond, the ACLU
went to federal court on August 11 and ob-
tained a temporary restraining order prevent
the police from raiding the building without a
warrant. In its complaint, ACLU lawyers cited
22 separate incidents of surveillance and ha-
rassment, including random police visits with-
out warrants, low helicopter overflights, and
people being followed and searched after leav-
ing the building. Although U.S. District Court
Judge Dean Pregerson granted the injunction,
he did not bar police from keeping the pro-
test headquarters under surveillance if they
had “probable cause.”
But the injunction didn’t stop the police
from infiltrating the protest organizations. On
August 12, a group called The Youth Are the
Future! We Demand a Better World! held a
meeting Luna Sol Cafe. They were planning
to participate in the next day’s Mumia Abu-
Jamal protest march. Shortly after the meet-
ing broke up, uniformed police officers rushed
through the café’s door and through three of
the main speakers up against a wall. Several
of the meeting’s participates also jumped up
and helped with the arrests, revealing them-
selves to be undercover officers. After check-
ing the identifies of the three activists, the
officers let two go and hauled the third one
away in handcuffs.
By the time the Democratic National Con-
vention began on August 18, federal, state
and local law enforcement agencies were run-
ning an untold number of undercover offic-
ers and other infiltrators among the protest-
ers. The infiltrators included members of the
LAPD’s Anti-Terrorism Division who were al-
ready spying on political dissidents in the Los
Angeles area. As reported by the Los Ange-
les Times, “[S]ome of these undercover of-
ficers met before going out on the streets in
their work clothes: T-shirts and shorts, ban-
dannas, thong shoes and sneakers. They even
are allowed to break department policy by
wearing beards and keeping their hair long.
One wore a ‘Free Mumia’ bandanna, a refer-
ence to a Pennsylvania inmate on death row
for killing a police officer. His face was un-
shaven, his hair tousled.”
Among other things, these “scouts”
mingled with protesters at the various dem-
onstrations, using cell phones to file continu-
ous reports and allowing commanders to
make “real time” decisions on deploying riot-
gear equipped squads around town. Intelli-
gence officers working in several downtown
command posts took information from the
undercover officers, then immediately shared
it with commanders and lieutenants. Police
used tip provided by these infiltrators to jus-
tify arresting 42 animal rights protesters on
August 15. Authorities claimed the protest-
ers had materials that could be used in
“homemade flamethrowers,” a charge
strongly denied by the activists. A Superior
Court judge released 40 of them after a hear-
ing two days later.
“It’s standard operating procedure: infil-
trate and disrupt,” protest organizer Lisa
Fithian told the Times. “They are potentially
trying to incite problems in the midst of our
demonstrations. We’re not doing anything il-
legal; we’re not doing anything wrong.”
The undercover agents helped police ar-
rest hundreds of demonstrators during the
convention. By the time the Democrats went
home, even the protesters were beginning to
concede the snitch-fueled tactics were begin-
ning to hurt the anti-globalization. “Anyone
who has been involved in the mass protest
movement through a major event of the last
six months has friends who have been bru-
talized at the hands of the system,” activist/
journalist Tim Ream wrote in an August 10
dispatch from Los Angeles, noting that nearly
2,500 protesters had been arrested since
November 30, 1999.
But the repression wasn’t merely happen-
ing in America. In recent years, the FBI has
opened more than 40 satellite offices around
(see POLICE STATE, p. 10)
NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.)
months later several officers conducting
a “no-knock” drug bust failed to pay at-
tention to a video camera mounted con-
spicuously outside the door. All three
were shot. For one, a recently married
female officer on her first drug assign-
ment, the shooting was fatal. Another of-
ficer who was her trainer remained in criti-
cal condition for months.
MAKING THE USE OF LETHAL
FORCE MORE PALLATABLE
The Human Aversion to Killing and
Lie of “Non-Lethal” Weapons
“Blank cartridges should never be fired
against a mob, nor should a volley be fired
over the heads of the mob even if there is
little danger of hurting persons in the rear.
Such things will be regarded as an admis-
sion of weakness, or an attempt to bluff,
and may do much more harm than good.”
General Douglas Macarthur, Military
Aid in Civil Disturbances
One of the major things to come out of
the WTO Ministerial Demonstrations in
Seattle was a grudging acceptance of what
are being referred to by some members of
law enforcement as “non-lethal” weaponry.
In demonstrations that have followed
the WTO Ministerial in Seattle, police
seem more prone to using these weapons,
then they were even a short while ago.
• In Mardi Gras in Seattle, hundreds
of revelers in Pioneer Square received
doses of pepper spray for reasons that re-
main unclear at best.
• In Washington D.C, during the
meetings of the World Bank and Interna-
tional Monetary Fund, these weapons
were employed on multiple occasions.
The acceptance these weapons have
gained is illustrated by the fact that many
in the progressive community refer to
these uses with terms such as “sparing”
and “minimal.”
• Two hundred miles to the south of
Seattle, the Portland Police fire “non-le-
thal” bean bag rounds from shotguns,
during a small May 1st street demonstra-
tion. This was a first for the city George
Bush Senior once dubbed “Little Beirut.”
No Normal Person Likes to Kill
To understand the attraction of what are
now being popularly referred to as “non-
lethal weapons,” it is helpful to understand
the basic aversion to killing that is biologi-
cally hard-wired into most of the advanced
life forms on this planet. Most of us who
have been around a television set sometime
in our lives have seen the nature documen-
taries where two members of the same spe-
cies engage in very ritualized combat over
territory, food, sex, etc. Even the most vili-
fied species on the planet have adopted
these sorts of rituals to settle disputes. Pi-
ranhas establish dominance by swatting
each other with their tails. Rattlesnakes
wrestle with each other.
In the human realm these same habits
are reflected in the anthropological docu-
mentaries most of us have also seen,
where the warriors of two primitive
hunter gatherer societies stand in oppos-
ing lines, posture at each other, make loud
noises and the like. When actual weapons
such as spears and bows and arrows are
employed, weapons these people use to
hunt with and are indisputably competent
with, the weapons inevitably miss their
targets. The point is not to kill a member
of one’s own species but to vanquish the
opposition through a show of force.
These same habits and aversion have
directed the way most war has been
fought in most of Western Civilization
including the United States. While the
popular image of warfare is of soldiers on
both sides valiantly fighting slaying and
triumphing over phenomenal odds, these
are usually just tall tales of another primi-
tive society. In nearly every case, the vast
majority of soldiers who behaved compe-
tently in training were unable to kill their
opponents. Firearms and lines of soldiers
seem to have been more often used as
means of intimidation. Most soldiers
would do things such as load and reload
their weapons or fire over their enemies’
heads. A relatively small portion of the
soldiers did the actual killing. These re-
sults are confirmed by numerous ex-
amples in history:
• In studies of the Napoleonic and
U.S. Civil Wars it has been shown that
lines of two hundred to a thousand men
standing thirty yards apart and firing their
muskets at an exposed enemy regiment
produced kill rates of one to two per
minute. For point of reference, these were
weapons that could fire between one and
five rounds per minute and would have
an accuracy rate of 50%. This should have
resulted in a killing rate of hundreds per
minute.
• In World War Two, Army Brigadier
Grant Park, Chicago, 1968
General S.L.A. Marshall worked with a
team of Historians both during and after
the war. They conducted interviews with
literally thousands of soldiers in more
than four hundred infantry companies.
The results they found were consistently
the same: only 15 to 20 percent of Ameri-
can riflemen in combat in World War
would fire at the enemy.
Interestingly it was found that those
who were further removed from their
enemy had far less difficulty killing.
Bombers, and even snipers had a much
higher kill rate then their counterparts
in the infantry who faced their oppo-
nents at close range. (see Lt. Col Dave
Grossman On Killing, 1995; also
Marshall’s studies of World War II and
Paddy Griffith’s studies of infantry kill-
ing rates in the Civil War.)
Making Soldiers into More
Efficient Killers
As members of the U.S. military have
become more aware of these natural ten-
dencies to avoid killing, the training of sol-
diers has been modified to result in higher
killing rates. During Korea, figures gath-
ered by Marshall indicate that about 55%
of U.S. troops were firing accurately upon
the opposition. In Vietnam it is estimated
that 95% of the soldiers fired at their en-
emies. The methods used to accomplish
these higher kill rates were based on de-
sensitization, conditioning and denial.
The training camps of World War II
and these later wars differed dramatically.
Studies of the methods used in these
camps show that use of the term “killing”
was far more a part of the trainer’s ver-
nacular in the later wars. Also the targets
more accurately resembled human beings.
Where once soldiers practiced shooting
bulls-eyes, they now practice on human
shaped targets that pop out at them. Some
of these targets are even filled with jugs
of red liquid to more effectively simulate
a person being killed by a bullet. The
point was to make the killing of what
looked like a human being instinctual and
reflexive.
There are also distancing techniques
through mechanization. It’s easier to kill
another human being if you’re looking
through a simulator, scope, or any sort of
device that makes them look less like a
human being and more like a figure on
the screen. This is why soldiers ranging
from bombers to snipers have never been
plagued with the low kill rates of infan-
try.
Another factor utilized is the use of
pressure from leaders and members of a
group. Two of the most famous experi-
ments in the field of psychology help il-
lustrate the methods used in the training
of soldiers and more recently, police. In
one experiment a person was told that
they would be helping to administer an
experiment. Their job, at the direction of
a person in a lab coat, was to deliver
shocks to a third party. In reality the per-
son administering the shocks was the un-
witting subject. The person in the lab coat
and the person receiving the shocks were
working together. As the experiment pro-
ceeded, the person in the lab coat would
direct the true subject to keep increasing
the level of shocks administered. The
simple mechanism of having an author-
ity figure there, ordering the person on
was enough to make the vast majority of
the subjects continue to administer shocks
long after they were aware that what they
were doing would kill the person.
In practical matters, this resulted in the
“improvement” of having more com-
manders in the field to urge on the troops;
an “improvement” that has recently been
added to many police departments as a
component of “community policing,”
even as we enter a an error of “streamlin-
ing” government through massive cuts.
Another experiment involved group
psychology. Two groups of people were
selected at random. One was told that they
were guards, the others, prisoners. With
no other stimulus, the two groups evolved
distinct behavior patterns. The guards be-
came successively more brutal enforcing
each other’s behavior.
This of course mirrors the sort of closed
group psychology that allowed U.S.
troops to participate in acts that would
have been individually repugnant and
unthinkable to the vast majority as indi-
viduals, events such as the massacre at
Mai Lai. Stories abound of troops shoot-
ing children, raping women, and execut-
ing entire villages. The ugly truth is that
(see NEW TYPE OF WAR, p. 12)
WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 9

It’s Government by and for U.S. Corporations and Their Values
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune Thursday, January 18, 2001
The inauguration of George W. Bush
as 43d president of the United States con-
firms a fundamental change in the nature
of U.S. government. Government has be-
come the instrument of a segment of
American society: corporate business. It
has become, as others than myself have
already recognized, “America Inc.”
This change has taken place in full
sight and with general consent of the U.S.
electorate. A minority has expressed con-
cern; a small minority has anxiously pro-
tested that this is not the way it was meant
to be; but the overwhelming majority has
been content to see this happen.
One might argue from history — the
19th century Populist movement, the 20th
century progressives and the New Deal –
that the government’s takeover by busi-
ness interests is normal and cyclical, with
a “progressive” or liberal reform counter-
action foreseeable in 2004 or 2008. After
all, Al Gore won the popular vote, and in
the opinion of many he should have won
the Electoral College vote as well. How-
ever, Mr. Gore was a corporate candidate,
too. That is what is new.
There is no alternative. A Gore admin-
istration would have been different from
a Bush administration in its handling of
the so-called cultural issues — race, gays,
feminism, abortion. It would have been
friendlier to labor, but not so friendly as
to alienate business.
It probably would have been more en-
thusiastic about globalization and free
trade than Mr. Bush may actually prove
to be. Its foreign and economic policies
would have been those of the business
interests that supported the Clinton ad-
ministration and profited from having
done so, and which largely financed the
Gore campaign.
What’s Hiding In GW’s Cabinet?
by Robert Lederman
“I’m very good at delegating author-
ity...I’ll surround myself with the best
minds in America”. Exactly who are these,
best minds in America, and where is GW
Bush getting them from?
There is a common thread connecting
all of Bush’s appointees -pharmaceuticals,
oil, Wall Street and the historical connec-
tion between the CIA, major US corpora-
tions and Nazi Germany. If you’ve stud-
ied the Bush family history in any depth
you won’t find many surprises among his
nominations.
Paul O’Neill, the Bush nominee for
Treasury Secretary, is the chairman of
Alcoa Aluminum, one of the nation’s larg-
est toxic polluters. O’Neill owns 1.6 mil-
lion shares of Alcoa, worth more than $50
million. During WWII Alcoa negotiated a
deal with the Nazis and IG Farben to sup-
ply Germany’s war machine rather than
the US military with aluminum. “If
America loses this war,” said then Secre-
tary of the Interior Harold Ickes on June
26, 1941, “it can thank the Aluminum Cor-
poration of America [ALCOA].”
Alcoa is the producer of hundreds of
millions of tons of fluoride. This highly
toxic byproduct of aluminum has been sci-
entifically linked in thousands of medical
studies conducted since the 19th century
to cancer and other degenerative diseases.
In the 1950’s Alcoa arranged to have it
profitably added to our nation’s drinking
water rather than disposed of as toxic
waste. During WWII the Nazis discovered
that by adding fluoride to the drinking
10 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT
Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader said
the two main candidates were
Tweedledum and Tweedledee (who
“agreed to have a battle,” to continue the
quotation). We know what happened to
candidates Buchanan and Nader. If a can-
didate today is not acceptable to the cor-
porate mainstream, he is unelectable. Cor-
porate money determines national policy,
and even foreign policy. Under Mr.
Clinton, industry successfully promoted
the U.S. intervention with helicopters and
arms into the struggle in Colombia. A na-
tional missile defense system, to which the
Bush administration is committed, is an
aerospace industry program, not a na-
tional security program. Most foreign
policy specialists and independent sys-
tems analysts regard it as a technologically
misconceived response to a vastly exag-
gerated threat. Mr. Bush’s supporters are
already promoting a new threat, which
promises to be as costly to counter as
building a shield against rogue missiles.
A congressionally appointed commission
led by Mr. Bush’s pick for secretary of
defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, calls for
measures against the hostile-nation men-
ace to U.S. satellites. It calls for “doctrine,
concepts of operations and capabilities for
space, including weapons systems that
operate in space and that can defend as-
sets in orbit and augment air, land and sea
forces.” This would put American indus-
try in profitable competition with itself,
since the countermeasures to be devel-
oped deal with a threat that no other high-
tech country has any interest in posing.
In the past, weapons development has
tended to be driven by military definitions
of threat. Today the tendency is for indus-
try to promote advanced weapons sys-
tems by marketing novel threats. Corpo-
rate lobbyists drove trade policy during
the Clinton administration. The banana
water in concentration camps they could
make prisoners far more submissive to
authority.
Melquiades R. Martinez, designated
Secretary for Housing and Urban Devel-
opment, is a Cuban refugee who estab-
lished his political reputation by prevent-
ing new housing from being built in con-
servative Orange Co. Florida-claiming it
was a quality of life violation. As chair of
Orange County, Martinez eliminated the
department of community affairs, a civil
rights agency that was set up to give poor
people a voice in local government. It is
probable that Martinez received CIA in-
doctrination after he arrived in the US at
age 15 as part of a government airlift pro-
gram of children whose parents did not
want them to grow up under the Castro
regime.
NJ Governor Christie Whitman is the
Bush designee for the Environmental
Protection Agency. Her massively pol-
luted state hosts some of the world’s larg-
est oil refineries and chemical manufac-
turing plants. Environmental non-expert
Whitman has said she doubts that the gi-
ant ozone hole over the North Pole or glo-
bal warming are actually serious prob-
lems.
Donald L. Evans, the nominee for
Commerce Secretary, is an insider in the
Texas “oil mafia” and is GW’s closest
friend and confidant. He’s also a close
friend, confidant and contributor to one
of America’s biggest recipients of govern-
ment contacts, Halliburton’s Dick Cheney.
war with Europe concerns bananas nei-
ther produced in nor shipped from the
United States. The disabused citizen may
ask what is new about all this. From the
1920s on the U.S. Marine Corps enforced
the Central American interests of the
United Fruit Company. The sober Calvin
Coolidge’s observation that “the chief
business of the American people is busi-
ness” is incontrovertible.
What is new about the situation today
is that a seemingly irreversible mutation
in the American system has occurred. At
some point, quantitative change does be-
comes qualitative change. The point when
that change took place was probably 1976,
when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
money spent in support of a political can-
didate is a form of constitutionally pro-
tected free speech. Moneyed interests now
finance not only the winners of national
elections but also most of the losers.
This is part of the enlarging domina-
tion of American life by business corpo-
rations and their values, which are those
of material aggrandizement, a phenom-
enon accompanied and promoted by the
circuses and gladiatorial contests pro-
vided by the most important U.S. Indus-
try of all, entertainment, which now show-
cases elections and even wars as entertain-
ments. This is a curious outcome for the
United States, whose most powerful hated
display and luxury, practiced severe and
unremitting discipline and considered
man wholly sinful, able to be saved only
by arbitrary grace.
How far America has come from its ori-
gins! How distant its formative beliefs are
from the values that politicians celebrate
on such occasions as presidential inaugu-
rations. The country no longer knows
what it is.
Rev. Floyd Flake, Dubya’s nominee for
Secretary of Education, was the only
prominent African American leader in
NYC to endorse Bush pal Rudy Giuliani,
the racist NYC Mayor who has executed
a seven year long campaign of violence,
harassment and false arrest aimed at Af-
rican Americans. Giuliani’s most memo-
rable quote on education was a proposal
to blow up the entire NYC Board of Edu-
cation.
Last year, to his everlasting credit,
Flake publicly denounced Giuliani as a
mental case. Like numerous GW Bush
aides and advisors, Rev. Flake is part of
the CIA’s Manhattan Institute which mas-
terminded Giuliani’s entire social eugen-
ics agenda. Among the areas Flake is likely
to focus on for Bush is turning public edu-
cation over to religious institutions and
corporations.
Ann M. Veneman, Bush’s appointee for
secretary of agriculture, was deputy sec-
retary for agriculture under President
George Bush. She is known as an advo-
cate for letting corporations exploit pub-
lic land and for widespread distribution
of foods containing genetically-altered
animal genes, viruses, self-contained in-
secticides and bacteria. Bush has said he
wants to open up Federal reserves, na-
tional forests and other pristine areas of
public land to oil drilling, mining and road
construction.
Under Bush stewardship, we could see
corporations running frankenfood farms
(see WHAT’S HIDING, p. 18)
Coup
d’etat
Dear Mr.
Secretary
General:
Help us! Massive election fraud is
taking place in an area that looks like a
banana republic — but is actually part
of the United States of America! We are
sitting here helpless as our leaders ap-
pear unable to do anything about this
stolen election.
On behalf of freedom-loving
people everywhere, I appeal to the
world community and the United Na-
tions for immediate intervention.
There is ample evidence to indicate
that the votes of thousands of our citi-
zens were not counted or, worse, were
given to a man who has a sister named
“Bay.” Further evidence also shows that
hundreds of African American voters
were simply not allowed to vote.
I ask that you appoint humanitar-
ian ambassador/carpenter Jimmy
Carter to head up an official United Na-
tions team of election observers from
Rwanda, Brunei, Bosnia and South Af-
rica and send them to this state we call
“Florida.” They are desperately needed
to oversee the re-count, the hand-count
and any other forms of counting being
conducted by people who apparently
can count.
Remember that guy Milosevic in
Yugoslavia trying to claim victory when
he got the least number of votes? He
would love Florida! Next to watching
greyhound dogs run in circles, election
fraud is South Florida’s favorite pastime
(I am enclosing, for your observer team,
copies of the Miami Herald series on
voter fraud which won the 1999 Pulitzer
Prize).
It appears on the surface that lame
graphic design is at the root of this bal-
lot problem, especially in Palm Beach
County where Jewish votes were given
to a man who always has a nice word to
say about Third Reich.
But even more telling is the situa-
tion in the Daytona Beach area. In that
county, the Socialist Workers Party can-
didate, James Harris, received a whop-
ping 9,888 votes. When your observers
arrive, they will discover that the social-
ist revolution in Daytona Beach is run-
ning a distant third to drunken college
spring breaks and NASCAR racing. In
fact, you will be hard-pressed to find a
single Bolshevik in Daytona Beach, let
alone a decent cappuccino.
What CBS News discovered is that
these 9,888 votes in Daytona Beach for
 Coup that shames America
Continuing unofficial counts reveal the full extent of Al Gore’s lead and the massive abuses that have
put George W. Bush into power
I never thought I would live to see it. vertible abuse is that Bush has won power goes on, offering the US and the world a

samplings
There has been a right-wing coup in the despite losing, and critically he only pulled policy and perspective not wanted by the
United States. It is now clear beyond any off this feat because the Republicans con- majority of Americans. The consensus
doubt that the winner of the Presidential trol the Supreme Court. The Right has view is that within months the whole
election was Al Gore. In Florida the votes subverted pivotal US institutions to win Florida affair will be forgotten, and Bush
are being counted unofficially in a way the power - a campaign of which the discred- will be installed as a legitimate US Presi-

from the Supreme Court would not permit: he was iting and attempted impeachment of dent. I don’t agree. The value of democ-
already 140 votes ahead when counting Clinton was part - and in the process dis- racies is they produce administrations
stopped for Christmas and his final lead graced the legitimacy of US democracy at broadly in tune with the times and will of
promises to be in the thousands. Nation- home and abroad, and undermined con- the people, and thus able to marshal both

press
ally he leads by over half a million votes. ceptions of the rule of law. It is a poor au- consent and the correct policy responses
What has happened is beyond outrage. It gury for the twenty-first century… for the varying crises that hit them.
is the cynical misuse of power by a con- …For all the talk of reconciliation Bush Not so in America. Whether the need
servative élite nakedly to serve its inter- is building a tribal conservative adminis- to respect international treaties abroad or
ests - and all of us should be frightened tration bent on supporting business at the desire to universalise medical protec-
for the consequences. home and asserting US unilateralism tion at home, the US has the man in power
The issue is not George W. Bush’s con- abroad. His next Treasury Secretary has it did not want and whose instincts are
servatism, opponent though I am of what been picked not for his capacity to nego- opposite to those of the majority. This will
Bush plans to do; a democracy only has tiate the US and the world through the prove a disastrous administration for
vitality and political tension if its philoso- minefield of a fragile international finan- America and the world….”
phy and stream of thinking is articulated cial system, but his interest in feathering
and pitches to win elections. The incontro- the nests of corporate America. And so it Will Hutton, The Guardian

the socialist Mr. Harris represented more

than HALF of his ENTIRE 19,310 votes
nationwide! Some might see this a com-
munist plot; election officials in Florida
have tried to pass it off as a “computer
glitch.” I call it fuzzy math.
You should know that the ruler of
this disputed region of our country is the
brother of the presidential candidate
who is benefiting from these shenani-
gans, George W. Bush. He is already be-
ginning to function as the “President-
Elect,” even though he got fewer votes
in the country than his opponent, Al
Gore! The networks had reported that
Gore won the state of Florida, but after
the one Bush (the candidate) made a call
to the other Bush (the governor of
Florida), suddenly the Bush running for
president was ahead.
This must sound very familiar to
you. I know you have had to deal with
“the relatives” before in places like In-
donesia and The Congo, and, hey, who
can blame them? Everyone wants to see
family members do well. But in this case,
the self-declared “President-Elect” is
also the son of the former President who
was dethroned by Gore and his running
mate 8 years ago. Does any of this make
sense? Would it help to know that the
father of the “President-Elect” was also
the head of the CIA? Just so you know
what you are getting into.
Mr. Secretary General, you are al-
ready at the U.N. in New York! Flights
from NYC to Miami leave every 15 min-
utes! Mr. Carter is in the state right next
to Florida! Stop by, pick him up, and tell
him he may need at least his hammer, if
not his nails.
If the state of Florida refuses to
admit your international team of elec-
tion observers, I implore the Security
Council to impose economic sanctions
against this place which calls itself “the
Sunshine State.” The rest of us in
America can no longer tolerate their
rogue operations. Please remember this
is the same state which earlier this year
turned kidnapping into a legal sport
when they refused to return a little Cu-
ban boy to his father. We had to put up
with that circus for nearly eight months.
Thank you for your prompt atten-
tion to this matter. If this kind of thiev-
ery were happening in any other part of
the world, we would have bombed the
crap out of it by now. I am hoping for a
peaceful resolution to this crisis and for
the self-declared “President-Elect” to be
returned to his box seat in Arlington,
Texas.
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
Ebert on the election: Thumbs Down
Now that the adventure is over, it
might be instructive to consider some of
the ideas that seeped into the general con-
sciousness. How and why, for example,
did it become established in so many
minds that Bush was the presumptive
winner and Gore the apparent loser?
What the Republicans did, cleverly,
was to establish effective “memes” in the
minds of the public and the pundits. A
meme, so named by the British evolution-
ist Richard Dawkins, is like a gene, except
that instead of advancing through organ-
isms, it moves through minds. Memes are
simply ideas that demonstrate a high rate
of survival and transmission.
Bush became the “winner” of a dead
heat, in the midst of an incomplete re-
count, when a premature victory was de-
clared on her own unnecessary deadline
by his Florida campaign co-chairwoman,
who also held the crucial post of secretary
of state. Once this bogus “certification”
was final (Ms. Harris signing several cop-
Down The “Memory Hole”
By Daniesha L.
George Orwell wrote of journalists
who would destroy articles which con-
tradicted the prevailing orthodoxy. Of-
ficials working for the “Ministry of
Truth” would throw them down a
“memory hole,” where they would be
burned.
This erasure of history is happening
now — not in government ministries,but
in the corporate controlled newsrooms.
What was ignored by the mainstream
outlets is the FACT that the manual re-
counts throughout the whole of Florida
have shown that G.W. Bush actually lost.
One paper in Florida, the Orlando Sen-
tinel, reported that Gore gained 130
votes in Lake County and in Broward
County alone:
An inspection of more than 6,000 dis-
carded presidential ballots in Lake
County on Monday revealed that Vice
President Al Gore lost a net 130 votes
that were clearly his even in a conserva-
tive GOP bastion that President-elect
Bush dominated as a whole.
The tally of uncounted ballots by
the Orlando Sentinel was the first out-
side review to be completed in any
Florida county since the U.S. Supreme
Court halted a statewide recount on
December 9.
Why was this not reported in any ma-
jor newspaper, or by any major televi-
ies on TV, including a valuable souvenir
for herself), the Republicans referred to it
endlessly as a valid event, even though it
was clearly a shameless ploy to slam the
door before the election escaped. A meme
was born.
The other effective GOP meme was the
mantra, “we counted, and counted again,
and then a third time.” These words were
chanted by Baker and the other Bush
spokesmen until many Americans ac-
cepted them as a form of truth, even
though it is clear that thousands of bal-
lots were never counted at all.
The GOP had no hesitation in making
the dangerous charge that Democrats
were “stealing” the election. This in the
face of plausible evidence that Gore got
more votes in Florida, as he did nation-
ally. Right-wing pundits were stirred to a
frenzy. Ann Coulter accused the Demo-
crats of being “delusional nutcases,”
called the Florida Supreme Court “power-
mad lunatics,” and found that the Demo-
sion news outlet? Periodic checks of the
major outlets (including all those involved
in the recount, namely the Associated
Press, the Washington Post, the Miami
Herald, the Wall Street Journal) show no
interest in the story.
What is even more troubling is the fact
that the Orlando Sentinel has ERASED
THE STORY FROM ITS ARCHIVES. The
story has fallen into the “memory hole”.
It no longer exists. A search of the archives
will find plenty of articles about the re-
count, which go back further than the
above mentioned story. The report on
manual counts in Lake and Broward
County,which showed Gore pulling
ahead, appeared just before Christmas.
A search on the Orlando Sentinel Web
site shows the existence of older stories
about certain foods and drinks named af-
ter the “chads” and after other irregulari-
ties. Stories about the “recounts” and
about “undervotes” are easy to retrieve,
if they are mere “human interest” stories,
or entertaining anecdotes. But the real
story has disappeared down the memory
hole. It cannot be retrieved, and the above
quoted paragraphs were copied before the
Sentinel web site erased them.
This is not uncommon. When CNN
published and broadcast a story on the use
of poison gas by the US military to kill US
deserters in Indochina, the station man-
crats had crossed the “fine line” between
“typical Democrat lies and demonstrably
psychotic behavior.”
The Democrats were just plain
outshouted. And Lady Luck rolled the
dice and gave them the butterfly ballot,
the Jews for Buchanan, the election boards
that took days off, the hired mob to stop
the Dade recount, the disenfranchised
black voters, the illegally franchised mili-
tary and absentee voters, the Bush cousin
to call the election on TV, the Bush co-
chairwoman to rush it through certifica-
tion, and the Bush brother to mastermind
operation fail-safe by the Florida legisla-
ture to certify Bush electors no matter who
won. Even in Vegas they’d be amazed by
luck this rotten; the Miami Herald’s
statisticiansestimated that Gore probably
outpolled Bush by about 23,000 votes.
That’s why it was so important for the
Republicans to stop the count.
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun Times
agers canceled the story, and erased all
record of it on their web site. To this day,
there is no web site which contains the
original CNN story.
The truth about Bush’s election loss in
Florida is “secret knowledge”, unknown
to the vast majority of the American pub-
lic. Excerpts from various letters are cir-
culating the net, which tell the story as
follows:
Media recounts now show Al Gore
would have won a statewide recount of
Florida. Even in conservative Lake,
Hernando and Hillsborough counties,
examination of the ballots by independent
auditors has shown that clear and legal
votes for Gore were not counted. In addi-
tion, tens of thousands of predominantly
Democratic voters were prevented from
having their vote recorded.
But still the major newspapers, net-
works, and cable news stations refuse to
tell the story. Abroad, the story has been
reported in the Guardian and Observer of
London. The facts cannot be hidden, and
are widely known, especially amongst
members of the African American com-
munity, who feel aggrieved by their dis-
enfranchisement. Even though many
people do not have direct access to the
internet, the news has traveled by word
of mouth, and has been conveyed by chan-
nels other than those controlled by the
major media corporations.

WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 11

NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.)
these acts mirror the tactics that Organi-
zations such as the school of the Ameri-
cas and CIA often encourage their train-
ees to take part in, because it demoralizes
and controls the domestic population.
Transferring Military Training to
the Police
The reason this report examines the
training methods of the military in such
detail is that the training methods of the
police have begun to resemble those of the
military, especially as many of these po-
lice units train with and go into action
with those of the military. Police shoot-
ing simulators, enormous video games,
train police to reflexively shoot at human
targets. Police sniper ranges also feature
human figures with exploding heads
filled with red liquid. Police gear includ-
ing night vision goggles, gas masks, all
serve to add another layer of distancing
to what the police are doing.
The police have also utilized what has
been learned from the field of psychol-
ogy’s most famous experiments. Where
government has been cutting middle level
management in nearly every field, the
opposite is true of the police. Instead the
trend has been to increase the number of
field commanders. This of course makes
it more likely that police will be more
likely to perform tasks that they consider
repugnant such as tear-gassing members
of their community.
Consider also the analogy of gangs.
Philadelphia Chief Timoney’s remarks not
withstanding, there are numerous in-
stances of police forming into gangs and
performing acts as despicable as those of
the worst of the troops in Vietnam. The
recent Ramparts scandal is hardly some-
thing new. In New York the Mollen Com-
mission reported officers in the NYPD
forming gangs, taking property from
murder victims, selling drugs and even
going into a brothel, chasing out the johns
and raping the prostitutes. In New Or-
leans one officer was convicted of mur-
dering someone informing on a drug
dealer she worked for. In Portland, a sur-
vey by the city’s Metropolitan Human
Rights Commission found the thing that
members of the city’s minority population
most feared was the police. There are of
course no end to the number of citizens
who have attended forums in the past
year to speak about police abuse, not only
in relation to the WTO but also among the
poor and minorities as well.
In a military campaign these sorts of
tactics can have a demoralizing effect on
the native population. U.S. funded Insti-
tutions such as the School of the Ameri-
cas even train “police” in foreign coun-
tries to inflict these harms upon the do-
mestic population. CIA distributed manu-
als give step-by-step instructions on how
“freedom fighters” can do the same. One
This “Multi-Launcher” can fire as many as eight projectiles
without reloading. It can shoot rubber bullets, batons, chemical
agents, or combinations of these.
12 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT
cannot help wondering if policing eco-
nomically depressed communities has
become an example of what Van Creveld
and Stratton call “Asymmetrical Warfare”
if these patterns of abuses are in some way
deliberate as they are in many third world
regions outside the U.S.?
The Correct Term is “Less
Lethal”
One of the most efficient ways to get
people to be able to inflict pain or harm is
to build up denial mechanisms.
Most of the police in Seattle seemed to
have believed that the weapons they had
weren’t capable of killing anybody. This
is seen by the repeated referral to them as
“non-lethal” rather than “less-lethal”
weapons. The term “non-lethal” was used
in some of the SPD training materials and
in many of the officers’ afteraction reports.
It was even used by SPD Chief Norm
Stamper during WTO related Press Con-
ferences when he first acknowledged
these weapons existence after their use.
Moreover the police officers are even
forced to expose themselves to the effects
of some these weapons. The author of this
report has been giving training videos that
show the police pepper spraying each
other. For most the atmosphere is jubi-
lant, almost like a watching a frat party.
The officers make jokes, and go through
macho posturing routines.
Using these weapons themselves is
probably a huge adrenaline rush. Like
taking part in a furious snowball fight as
a kid, the adrenaline is pumping, the other
side says “ow,” but it’s all in good fun.
The author of this report had the oppor-
tunity of joking with a police officer in-
side the WTO Ministerial doing security.
The officer was asked questions about
how quickly he’d be able to disperse the
delegates with the same weapons he’d
used on the demonstrators. The officer’s
face lit up as he joked about a smoke bomb
here and a concussion grenade there. The
point in relating this is not to condemn
this officer but to realize that these weap-
ons have a powerful intoxicating effect,
especially if one’s been raised on corpo-
rate TV and video games, as so many
have.
The problem is that the term “non-le-
thal” is a misnomer. These products’ manu-
facturers refer to them as “less lethal.”
In essence, these are weapons that can
and have produced many fatal injuries.
These have been documented in their
use during war time, their use as weap-
ons of “civil control” in other parts of the
world including South Africa, Israel and
Ireland and studies of their use domes-
tically as part of law enforcement. (An
Appraisal of Technologies of Political
Control, European Parliament, January
6, 1998.)
Indications are that a large part of the
reason Seattle Police did not consider
these weapons lethal had to do with their
training. This is indicated by their place-
ment in the “use of force continuum.” A
use of force continuum is a guideline that
tells an officer how much force is appro-
priate for a given situation, or put another
way, how much force should be used to
counter a specific type of threat. The
rankings for these weapons provided by
the manufacturer and the SPD in their
training academy are quite different. The
manufacturer rates these weapons in the
same range as use of a gun or other po-
tentially lethal force. The SPD rates them
slightly above a verbal command.
Projectile Weapons
“… Plastic and rubber bullets were
products of British colonial experience in
Hong Kong where the flying teak baton
round became the template for future ki-
netic weapons. The concept was one of a
flying truncheon which could disperse a
crowd without using small arms. They
were however regarded as too dangerous
for use on white people, so in 1969, Porton
Down came up with a ‘safer’ version for
use in Northern Ireland in 1970. Just as
plastic bullets were considered too dan-
gerous for use in mainland Britain until
1985 when they proliferated throughout
the UK’s police forces, so were baton
rounds regarded as too dangerous for the
residents of Northern Ireland but not
Hong Kong. Now plastic bullets have
been deployed in virtually every conti-
nent from the USA to Argentina, to South
Africa…”
– An Appraisal of Technologies of Politi-
cal Control, page 22.
– European Parliament, January 6, 1998.
There were several type of projectile
weapons, used by the police during the
Seattle Ministerial. These projectile weap-
ons included:
• 12 gage pump action shot guns
• 37mm and 40 mm weapons that
fired large versions of what were in the
shot gun shells
Both of these fired a variety of projec-
tiles including:
• 32 caliber rubber bullets
• 60 caliber rubber bullets
• wooden dowels
• leaded weights called “bean bags”
• a variety of chemical agents
There were also CO2 powered launch-
ers that fired individual .69 rubber spheri-
cal projectiles, or “rubber bullets,” at 350+
feet per second.
Additionally, exploding, “less lethal”
grenades released some of these projec-
tiles.
There are two factors that make these
weapons less likely to produce lethal in-
juries. One is that the ammunition that is
propelled is physically lighter than that
of the traditional firearms. The other is
that the explosive charge that propels
these projectiles is not as powerful as that
used for traditional firearms.
In theory, the smaller explosive charge
delivers the projectiles at a slower speed.
This less powerful charge is crucial to
these weapons not producing fatalities. If
a lightweight plastic munition is given a
large enough charge it can easily be lethal.
In fact some of the more popular “cop
killer” bullets are made out of similar
materials to some of the “less lethal”
rounds. They are simply propelled with
enough velocity to penetrate a “bullet-
proof” Kevlar vest – it is similar to the way
that a straw can penetrate a tree or a con-
crete block in a hurricane.
The smaller explosive charge is why
none of these projectiles are dispensed
from semi-automatic type weapons that
rely on the charge’s backfire to cycle the
next round into the chamber. The 37mm
and 40mm mechanically load the next
round in the manner of a revolver. The
pump action shotguns require the user to
manually cycle the next round in to the
(see NEW TYPE OF WAR, p. 14)
POLICE STATE (cont.)
the world. In August 2000, the Central and East-
ern European Review reported that FBI Direc-
tor Louis Freeh and Czech Interior Minister
Stanislav Gross met to discuss launching a joint
operation in advance of the annual meeting of
the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund, set for September 26 in Prague. At the
time, thousands of anarchist, socialists, com-
munists and other left wing European activists
were planning to protest the gathering, and
Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman had de-
clared, “Largest threat to stability in the coun-
try is the extreme left.”
As Freezerbox political writer Ezekial Ford
put it, “The Battle of Seattle, followed by May-
day demonstrations around the world and the
IMF protests in Washington, was a wake up
call to those interested in seeing popular
struggle against the reign of capital stunted or
reversed. We must remember that the 1960s
were viewed by elites not as a flowering of con-
sciousness or a period of liberation for sub-
jected groups, but constituted a ‘crisis of de-
mocracy,’ according to the Trilateral Commis-
sion, the collective voice for elites in the US,
Europe and Japan. Networks of activists in-
volved in the struggle against the investor-cen-
tric model of globalization may become future
targets of state repression, just as they were in
the 60s and 70s. And the FBI is apparently do-
ing the preparatory fieldwork.”
The New Millennium is suddenly looking a
lot like the 1960s.
(The preceding article is a condensed ver-
sion of a chapter from SNITCH CULTURE(ISBN:
0-922915-63-6), a new book by reporter Jim
Redden. It is now available at local bookstores,
from Amazon.com, and from Feral House, 2554
Lincoln Blvd., Suite 739, Venice CALIF 90291.
SNITCH CULTURE retails for $14.95.
Snitch Culture: How
Citizens are Turned into
the Eyes and Ears of the
State, by Jim Redden
In this alarming expose, investiga-
tive journalist Jim Redden examines
how snooping has become so much a
part of American culture that it is prac-
tically a family value, encouraged on
billboards, television, and even in
classrooms. From employees hired to
spy on their coworkers to doctors
forced to disclose medical information,
the U.S. has developed a chilling net-
work for monitoring its citizens. Worst
of all, the information gathered—and
widely disseminated—is often unreli-
able, solicited from paid and anony-
mous informants.
Chapters and case studies cover
such topics as the FBI’s notorious
COINTELPRO operations, the NSA’s
super-secret ECHELON surveillance
system, private intelligence networks,
and the government’s current efforts
to infiltrate and disrupt the growing
anti-corporate globalization movement.
“No one is safe in the Snitch Cul-
ture. Jim Redden has written a scary,
fascinating, and important examina-
tion of the pervasive use and abuse of
informants and snitches in the United
States.”
—Katherine Dunn, author of
Geek Love
List Price: $14.95, Paperback — 320
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December 2000
Snitch Culture can be ordered
through Amazon.com or from Feral
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Venice, CA 90291
Signs from the Times
On page 17 of the Seattle Times, four sol-
diers pose. The assault rifles they carry
are those carried by the King County Sher-
iff and nearly acquired by the University
of Washington Police mere months ago.
There is a slight difference. The soldiers'
weapons have a second barrel capable of
firing tear gas, flash bang grenades, or full
out explosives. Caption:
"Training as part of a more mobile
army, infantry soldiers at Fort Lewis pre-
pare to enter a mock house inhabited by
"civilians" and "the enemy."
On the bottom of the page a soldier
rides a vehicle of similar configuration to
the peacekeeper, but much larger and with
the weaponry of a tank.
Highlights of text:
Army Prepares for New Type
of Battle
Alex Fryer, Seattle Times 2/25/2001
“Ten years after the Persian Gulf War,
a new army takes shape in the shadow of
Mount Ranier. Soldiers at Fort Lewis are
the first in the nation to form a combat
unit with the agility of an infantry force
and the training of a SWAT team.
When operational, the unit will fill a
gap in the traditional U.S. Army, say top
generals.
Soon after the liberation of Kuwait on
February 28, 1991, military planners rec-
ognized that victory depended on the abil-
ity to deploy troops quickly. The war in
Kosvo proved that big tanks couldn't cross
crumbling old bridges or narrow streets.
So two years ago, the top brass ordered
Fort Lewis to lead an operation known as
"transformation." Tanks and heavy ve-
hicles are giving way to light armored
brigades of 7,000 men and women, able
to be anywhere in the world in 96 hours.
Troops in transformation learn police
tactics; how to kick down a door and the
best way to use plastic handcuffs. Explo-
sive grenades on the firing range are
sometimes replaced with flashbang gre-
nades, intended to startle instead of kill.
"The initial training has attracted
worldwide attention. Military observers
from France, Thailand and Japan have
visited Fort Lewis to tour exercises. Ger-
man television has twice sent camera
crews.
Send in the Goons
By Robert Rees
Honolulu Weekly, Feb. 7, 2001
The Honolulu City Council commit-
tees on Transportation and Planning and
Public Safety met jointly on Jan. 31 to dis-
cuss a single agenda item, the plans to
curtail free speech when the Asia Devel-
opment Bank meets in Hawaii at the Ha-
waii Convention Center.
Attending the May 7-11 ADB meeting
will be representatives of 60 owning coun-
tries, 1200 investment bankers and as
many as 400 journalists. The Hawaii Tour-
ism Authority considers hosting the event
a coup, and the HTA's executive director,
Bob Fishman, was on hand to tell the
Council how important it is that Hawaii
"makes a good impression" on these cash-
laden and opinion-leading visitors.
Fishman warned that the opponents of
globalization have learned to utilize inter-
national conferences as venues for ex-
pressing concerns. Hawaii, hungry for
business, was chosen for the ADB confer-
ence because it promised an oasis of se-
curity. To hold up its end of the deal, Ho-
nolulu plans to spend an extra $7 million
Summary: FLEISCHER SAYS
GUARD WILL BE DEALING WITH
DOMESTIC TERRORISM OR
PREVENTING IT
Article:
14 February 2001
White House Report on National
Guard/Domestic Terrorism, Feb. 14
En route back to Andrews Air Force
Base from Charleston, West Virginia Feb-
ruary 14, White House Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer was asked by reporters to flesh
out President Bush's comments at Yaeger
Field on potential changes in the National
Guard. Fleischer offered these remarks:
"The mission of the guard, under his vi-
sion, will increasingly be homeland de-
fense, which means dealing with the con-
sequences of domestic terrorism or pre-
venting domestic terrorism.
"As you know," said the White House
Press Secretary, "in recent years at Olym-
pic events, major events, it's become an
increasingly unfortunate concern of our
government about preventing incidents at
home and protecting American people
from any incidents at home. And the
Guard plays an increasing role in home-
land defense.
"It's a change," Fleischer said. "When
he was in the Guard, it had a different
mission. Homeland defense was patrol-
ling off the coastline. Homeland defense
now unfortunately has taken on a whole
new meaning as a result of terrorism that
can threaten our government." The Press
Secretary declined to comment on a pro-
posal before the Congress to establish a
homeland defense agency that would in-
corporate several agencies now involved
in such duty.
(Distributed by the Office of Interna-
tional Information Programs, U.S. Depart-
ment of State. Web site: http://
usinfo.state.gov)
on crowd control. Rationalized Fishman,
"We are training and developing a police
force for a higher level of proficiency that
makes Hawaii a more attractive place."
Assistant Chief of Police Boisse Correa
assured the Council that "We're on top of
this," but added, "We need more riot
equipment." Correa noted also that "the
National Guard is working with us," and
"all leaves will be canceled."
Correa didn't disclose that the HPD has
asked the state judiciary to cancel all
scheduled court appearances by HPD of-
ficers during the conference, and has ar-
ranged for alternative sites for arraign-
ment and detention of protesters. Further,
as first reported by the Hawaii Chapter
of Refuse & Resist, the City Council is
rushing to pass new ordinances to make
the job of the HPD easier. Says Council
Chair Jon Yoshimura, "We are giving the
HPD additional tools to deal with protest-
ers. These tools are patterned after what
Los Angeles has done."(Among other
things, it will be illegal to wear a mask
"with the intent to commit a crime," po-
lice dogs will be allowed in our parks and
campers will be arrested.)
Historical Background of
Corporate Hegemony
Conflict between democratic ideals and corporate desires is nothing new.
Consider the role price gauging policies of the East India Tea company
played in fomenting the American revolution and it’s obvious that much of
this revolution was about keeping monopoly power, whether by king or cor-
poration, from going unchecked.
The corporations behind the WTO are the same ones that have built the
most corrupt monopolies on the planet. Well over a hundred years ago, the
owners of the same fortunes that still dominate our economy fortunes, called
“robber barons” by the critics of their time, took part in power grabs centered
on the building of the railroads. During these times there were huge financial
scandals that involved funneling enormous sums of money into non-existent
projects. There were also huge give-aways of land and the resources on that
land as part of the railroad construction. This enabled the few families who
profited from the railroads’ construction to build many more industries. These
new franchises included mining operations, timber companies, residential
land developments and banks to finance these operations. Look at the names
of a few of the timber companies created during this time such as Georgia-
Pacific and Louisiana-Pacific and the connection becomes obvious. Families
to profit from this included Morgans, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Mellons.
The power of these corporations was enormous, and because of the increas-
ing power of technology, unprecedented. Before the turn of the century, these
corporations were even granted legal status as human beings. (See Robber
Barons, Josephson; America’s Fifty Families, The Rich and the Super Rich,
Lundberg; Railroads and Clearcuts, Draffan)
The familes themselves, like ancient medieval royalty, made political al-
liance and arranged marriages. After World War I, many of them began to
gather into institutions called “think tanks.” Representatives of the different
fortunes would meet with the leading politicians and academics they funded.
They would discuss ideas for moving forward, and they would come to con-
sensus on ways they could move forward. Working through their members
that consensus would be exported. Politicians would implement it as policy.
Academics, journalists and even some “community leaders” would act as
the politicians’ cheerleaders, creating the appearance of a spontaneous
popular groundswell.
The most influential of these think tanks was the Council on Foreign
Relations. Initially it was born out of the circle of JP Morgan and his banking
empire. As Morgan declined somewhat, that power shifted to a circled domi-
nated by the Rockefeller family whose circle included Citibank, Chase Man-
hattan, and every gas station with a red white and blue logo. Prior to and
during World War II, institutions that were conceived by the Council on For-
eign Relations included NATO, the National Security Council, The Central
Intelligence Agency, The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and
the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. The leaders of these institu-
tions were predominantly officers, board members and major shareholders
of the same few corporations run by the same few families. Since many of
these individuals dominated the cabinets of Presidential Administrations
and both houses of Congress, it was pretty easy to turn these corporate
desires into U.S. government policy. (Korten, When Corporations Rule the
World Ch. 9; Minter and Shoup, Imperial Brain Trust.) —Paul Richmond
Correa did reveal that certain city parks nience rule to the Martin Luther King Jr.
will be shut down. Ostensibly this is to parade financed by the city, or to the Con-
provide staging areas for the HPD in its vention Center itself, neither would exist.
new role, as an occupying army, but it will It's enough to make you want to pro-
have the effect of choking off any oppor- test. In fact, with President Bush possibly
tunity for protesters to legally congregate on hand, the international forum provides
in our public forums. This, in turn, will a grand opportunity for a highly visible
force the protesters to the streets. demonstration on behalf of freedom for
Getting into this spirit of Dr. diversity and dissent.
Strangelove, Transpor-
tation director Cheryl
Soon noted solemnly
that bus routes might
have to be altered. Fur-
ther, intoned Soon, "We
will give out [revised
bus schedules and
routes] only on a need
to know basis."
Of special concern
was Fishman's promise,
"We will not tolerate ex-
cessive inconvenience?"
JOHN AMBROSAVAGE
As a policy, this is an ex-
cuse for stifling free
speech based on con-
tent. In fact, if we ap-
plied Fishman's conve-
WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 13
NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.)
chamber. The problem here is that these
weapons still must have a sufficient
charge to propel the projectiles as far as
they are intended to travel. In practice
what this means is that they are traveling
at much faster speeds when they leave the
muzzle, then when they arrive at the dis-
tance they are designed to hit their targets
at. So if they strike someone at close range,
before they’ve lost velocity, most of these
weapons become potentially lethal.
Though there is some variation with
the many types of cartridges and projec-
tiles used, as a general rule they shouldn’t
be striking anything closer than fifteen
feet, or you’re risking serious injury,
trauma and possible death.
Even at “safe” distances, the manufac-
turer’s guidelines stress that there are lim-
ited areas of the human body that these
projectiles are designed to hit with a mini-
mum expectation of loss of life. These ar-
eas where these weapons can be shot are
limited to the areas of large muscle mass
mostly limited to the buttocks and thighs.
Some of the munitions, such as the car-
tridges with multiple rubber bullets, are
not even intended to be fired directly at
the target. Instead they should be fired at
the pavement in front of a large crowd so
that they will lose velocity as they rico-
chet up and hit their intended targets.
This method is called “skip firing.”
The literature provided by the Armor
Holdings Company, a manufacturer and
distributor of these weapons gives a very
lengthy list of the possible injuries that can
result from these weapons misuse, or even
by chance if used correctly.
Shots to the head can result in:
• “ Concussion – Mild injury to the
brain resulting in short term loss of con-
sciousness and memory, headache and
possibly vomiting.
• “Contusion – Bruising of the brain
tissue or spinal cord, resulting in a loss of
This is one method of dispersing rubber bullets. They can also be
dispersed from 12-gauge shotguns, grenades, and CO2 guns. If they
strike the wrong part of the body or are fired from the wrong distance,
they can kill.
14 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT
There has been an increase in the number of paramilitary
SWAT and SERT units. In large part because this is where
the federal funds are, small town police forces apply for and
receive grants for SWAT teams, not basic items such as
police cars. One recent academic study found that nearly 70%
of the cities with populations under 50,000 had paramilitary
units. For cities with populations over 50,000 the number
jumped to 90%. And much of the tactics and mindset of
SWAT has become integral to police training and culture.
Seattle, 1999
normal brain function to the affected area;
may cause swelling hemorrhage, uncon-
sciousness, and possibly death.
• “Fractures - may result in abrasions,
contusions, lacerations or, (sic) avulsions
to brain and spinal tissue requiring neu-
rological and orthopedic remedies.
a) “Fractures to trachea and/or phar-
cording to available evidence, ever offered
medical treatment by the police. In fact
this is something that is mandated by the
manufacturers, the trainers and the SPD’s
own guidelines. All of these require fill-
ing out a medical report each time a sus-
pect is struck with one of these potentially
lethal rounds. No completed forms of this
type have ever been presented to this
group or to all available evidence to the
Seattle City Council’s WTO Accountabil-
ity Review Committee during their half-
year long investigation.
Training officers from other depart-
ments were appalled at this casual mis-
use of the weaponry. One Los Angeles
Sheriff’s Department Deputy wrote in a
chat line for members of law enforcement,
during a discussion on Seattle:
“As a less lethal weapons tactics in-
structor, I was somewhat concerned with
what I saw.
“Why were officers with less-lethal
weapons engaging suspects while their
PHOTO COURTESY OF IMC-SEATTLE/PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
partners watched? These personnel
should have been behind skirmish lines.
“I also hope that 37mm Stinger rounds
were not being fired into the faces of dem-
onstrators as some still photographs sug-
gest. Shooting these rounds above a
suspect’s waist is only an option at our
agency in deadly force situations. Firing
Stinger ordinance point-blank into
someone’s face escalates the chance of in-
flicting a lethal injury.
“I noticed officers were firing full-auto
pepperball guns in addition to tossing CS
grenades. It was not clear what they were
hoping to gain—crowd dispersal or
shepherding suspects toward an arrest
area? In either case, it seemed like too
ynx that could obstruct the airway. much of a good thing.
b) “Fractures may effect the teeth, jaw, Col. Ijames of the Springfield Missouri
facial bones, nose, sinus cavities and au- PD, a leading trainer and expert on the
ditory organs. subject of less lethal weaponry notes that
at least six fatalities have occurred as a
Shots to the chest can result in: result of the use of these weapons in the
• “Mydrocordial Contusion – Bruis- United States, and an unknown number
ing of the heart and surrounding tissue in Europe. Speaking in a recent training
(thepericarium) resulting in tachycar- session, Ijames told the story of someone
dia, arrhythmia, or weakening of the in Canada who was struck in the chest
aorta or pulmonary artery that could with a leaded weight known as a “bean
result in tearing. bag” round. The lead projectile traveled
• Fractures to the sternum or rib cage through the suspect’s chest cavity into
that may cause hemothorax, pneumotho- their heart. “The subject was DRT – dead
rax, hemmoraghic shock, or diagrammatic right there.”
rupture; all of which are potentially fatal. Ijames also stressed the need for
prompt medical attention with anyone
Shots to the abdomen: who is shot with any of these rounds:
• Depending on the force of the blow, “You can’t see what’s going on inside
the trauma can lacerate the liver spleen, the subject. He may have internal bleed-
rupture the stomach and bruise or dam- ing. If he goes into the drunk tank and
age the kidneys and intestines. dies, you are going to be in trouble.”
These are the instructions provided Only the minutest fraction of the thou-
with the munitions by Armor Holdings sands of people exposed to these less le-
Inc. It is hard to imagine how they could thal weapons during the WTO Ministe-
be more explicit. Yet it seems from an rial, seem to have been given any medi-
overwhelming body of evidence, that cal follow-up by the police.
these warnings were routinely ignored. Additional complications in the de-
Witness statements given to organiza- ployment of these weapons have to do
tions including NLG, DAN Legal and oth- with the very nature of the situations in
ers report police firing both from distances which they are deployed. In essence, the
that are potentially lethal or trauma induc- very nature of crowd control situations
ing, and shooting into parts of the body makes their deployment as practiced in a
that are potentially lethal or trauma induc- training situation, impractical. Simply
ing. This is confirmed in photos and video put, with hundreds, or even dozens of
taken by the press, members of the Inde- people moving around in a close area, it
pendent Media Center and hundreds of is impossible to factor in the distance and
independent citizens. trajectory for each of the people so that
One witness states that an officer the weapon may be fired in a “safe” man-
pointed a large barreled weapon in their ner. This is of course exacerbated with the
direction and shot them. At least one of grenades.
the projectiles seems to have struck them This inability to actually use the weap-
in the eye. Either from the force of the ons in their intended manner is born out
projectile, or as a reaction to the pain, they by studies completed after the extensive
fell back into a large metal box. This per- use of rubber bullets in Ireland. One re-
son suffered partial blindness, continued port compiled by physicians in the early
bleeding in the eye, and the possibility of 1970’s includes documentation of the fol-
a detached retina. lowing as some of the injuries sustained
Another person states that they were from 90 patients who sought hospital
struck in the face by the rubber projectiles treatment after being hit with rubber bul-
and that they made holes as they passed lets:
through the area around their mouth. • 32 fractures of facial bones
Neither of these individuals or any of • 8 ruptured eye globes, all resulting
the others shot with these rounds was, ac- in blindness
 • 3 cases of severe brain damage
• 7 cases of lung injury
• 4 cases of facial disfigurement
This and similar studies have found
that the majority of these injuries were
caused not only by their being pointed at
the wrong parts of the body, but being
fired at far too close a distance. In an-
other study done of 12 fatalities caused
by these bullets, inquests found that six
out of the twelve killed were not in any
way involved in any civil disturbance,
and seven of the twelve were children fif-
teen years or younger.
It was also found, that each time these
Wounded Knee, 1973
weapons were used, they required a stron-
ger response. As was found in a 1987
study conducted by the Richardson Insti-
tute at the University of Lancaster:
“The initial use of water canon thus
gave way to the use of CS gas. This was
augmented by rubber bullets which
were then replaced by the harder hitting
PVC variety, and in greater quantities.
An inaccurate weapon, this grenade combines chemical agents and rubber
bullets. It is of course impossible to predict how it will affect people when
thrown into a large crowd.
Further empirical work suggested…the
resistance they bred led to a successive
deployment of each subsequent and
more violent phase of the low intensity
conflict programme. In effect they bred
the dissent they were designed to ‘fix.’”
(Emphasis added.)
It was based on facts such as these that their
use was banned by the European Parliament
in 1982, and upheld as a recommendation in
1998. (An Appraisal of Technologies of
Political Control, European Parliament, Lux-
embourg, January 6, 1998.)
Chemical Irritant Weapons
“On November 30 I observed police
throw tear gas canisters at non-violent
protesters…downtown. They were
not…(warning) the crowds and people
were taken by surprise. I had to assist an
elderly man momentarily blinded by gas.”
“Around 8’O Clock PM, at my friend’s
apartment on (Capitol Hill) I was inside
The Role of the WTO in a
Corporate World
Government
The WTO was officially established as part of the Uruguay Round Agree-
ment of GATT in January 1995. It now has more than 130 nations.
The WTO was nominally chartered as a dispute resolution organization. The
problem is it is an organization with no real oversight or accountability, and a
process that favors the most powerful corporations. Each country that signs on
to the Marrakesh Agreement (which brought the WTO into existence) gives up
its ability to preserve and enforce its own laws. The WTO is governed by “dispute
resolution panels. Typically, a panel consists of three “trade experts” selected by
the WTO Secretariat from a list created and maintained by the WTO. The quali-
fications to be on the list relate solely to having experience in international trade
relations as an academic or a government official.
A panel member need have no understanding of why a country might heavily
regulate or ban particular products, of the environmental or social concerns
underlying a particular law
Panel members’ inherent bias for trade over governmental interests serves
merely as the background for a system of rules and procedures that sacrifice
the most basic elements of democracy and human rights to a primacy of trade
in commodified goods. At the outset, all submissions to the panel, and the
proceedings themselves, are secret. No one is allowed to participate except
representatives from the participating countries. The WTO denies even the
citizens of a participant country the right to review their own government’s
submissions. The only public result of a WTO panel decision is the opinion of
the panel itself, written by the panel.
In health and safety, a product may be developed and immediately intro-
duced, and may only later be banned or restricted if a country can prove the
existence of health or environmental risks. By then, of course, the worst dam-
age may already have been done.
Second, products must be treated “equally” by a country’s trade laws, with-
out regard for how or where the product was made or harvested. A tee-shirt
made in a sweatshop or by child labor is the same as one made by union
workers. Tuna caught in purse seine nets that kill thousands of dolphins are
the same as those caught by methods that do not endanger dolphins. Eco-
nomic sanctions against an inhumane government, such as the sanctions against
apartheid-era South Africa, are not acceptable under the WTO regime.
Finally, even if a country is able to prove that a product is unsafe, even if a
product is shown to be somehow physically different due to its method of pro-
duction, the WTO Agreement requires that a country use the “least trade-restric-
tive” means to accomplish its non-trade-related (environmental, human rights,
health and safety) purpose. Again money, not safety or effectiveness, is the bot-
tom line.
Once a panel makes its decision, there are only two ways it may be changed.
The losing country can appeal—which means a three-member panel is formed
to review the legal issues addressed by the original panel. Or, the decision can
be overturned by the unanimous vote of every member country of the WTO—
including the country that won the dispute. It is not difficult to understand why no
decision has ever been overturned by that unanimous vote.
Once the decision has been made to subjugate human rights to trade, all
that remains is enforcement. The losing country in a WTO dispute has only three
choices: change its laws in accordance with the dictates of the panel pay mon-
etary sanctions to the winning country, or allow the winning country to impose
retaliatory trade sanctions.
What this means in practice is that any international corporation that was
prohibited from doing what might be reasonably considered a hazardous prac-
tice anywhere on the planet, need only find the government of one country to
come forward and present a complaint on their behalf. A business that pro-
duces a food prepared with dangerous, carcinogenic, or poisonous chemicals
can bring a challenge. So can a corporation that employs eight-year old chil-
dren who work 20-hour days who lived in cardboard boxes. So can the manu-
facturer of flimsy houses that tended to collapse or cars that tended to ex-
plode. Under the regulations of the WTO any protections against these or other
practices could be viewed as barriers to “Free Trade.”
In practice this has meant successful challenges to:
• The U.S. Clean Air Act
• Protections on Dolphins and Sea Turtles,
• Guaranteeing 30 day shelf life for meat
• Banning hormone tested beef
• Labeling of genetically modified food
• Bans on asbestos.
These are the issues that brought tens of thousands of people to Seattle to
protest the WTO Ministerial Meeting. This is why environmentalists, indigenous
peoples, anarchists, labor unions, social justice activists, and church groups
all find common cause against the WTO: because it threatens by the very
structure of its existence every aspect of the values that make human beings
and their relationship with the earth something more than the dull collision of
objects in a dead universe: the inherent value of the ecosystems of the Earth,
and the worth of human beings for their qualities that cannot be bought and
sold.
—Paul Richmond and Eric Nelson
WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 15
NYPD Seeks to
Tighten Rules for
PublicProtest,
ActivistsCryFoul
A little-noticed proposal to amend the
city rules governing parades and rallies
could serve to restrict political dissenters,
critics of the proposal say. Community ac-
tivists and first amendment advocates
complain that the new requirements
would make it harder to hold a protest
than a sports celebration . . . .
“These are direct political attempts to
restrict speech,” testified anti-police-bru-
tality activist Steve Yip. He was one of sev-
eral who argued that a recent rise in po-
litical protest, particularly around the
Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond
police shootings, has triggered a backlash
on the part of an already intolerant ad-
ministration and police department.
Fueling activists’ distrust is a pro-
posed change that would allow police to
deny a permit based on the belief that an
event would involve disorderly conduct
as defined under the city’s penal law. In a
letter to the NYPD’s legal department, the
NYCLU contends that any rule allowing
police to presuppose illegal acts is uncon-
stitutional. It is also an excuse for discrimi-
nation, activists argue, questioning
whether any event other than a political
protest would so trigger police suspicions.
“The target is people of color, people
with AIDS, poor people,” says Puerto
Rican human rights activist Gabriel
Torres. The pending rule would impact
such communities the most, he argues,
because “we are the ones who need to
demonstrate.”
Other, less obviously controversial
proposals have sparked concern, includ-
ing a new restriction that would recognize
only titled “officers” of a “corporation,
organization, or association” as legitimate
permit applicants. Since grassroots groups
usually rely on volunteers and keep in-
formal structures, they would have a
tough time meeting that requirement,says
Brody.
What makes seemingly innocuous
regulations questionable is context, argues
Richie Perez, a lead organizer with the
National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights
and a coordinator of the multiracial
grassroots coalition People’s Justice 2000.
The proposals, he says, cannot be viewed
apart from recent NYPD practices such as
the videotaping and other surveillance of
protesters in violation of a longtime legal
prohibition. The aggregate result is “a
chilling effect on participation,” accord-
ing to Perez. By minimally advertising the
hearing and holding it on World AIDS
Day, fellow critics complain, the city con-
tinues to discourage participation of
dissenters. Chisun Lee, Village Voice
Corporations target
activist groups
In response to the anti-globalization
movement’s numbers and vigilance, mul-
tinational companies and right-wing think
tanks are beginning to take aim at the pro-
testers.
According to a document obtained by
the newsletter Inside EPA, the Sony Cor-
poration has been preparing an “action
plan for counteracting the efforts of sev-
eral domestic and international environ-
mental groups—including Friends of the
Earth, Greenpeace and Silicon Valley
Toxics Coalition” that are involved in a
campaign to hold electronics manufactur-
ers responsible for their toxic waste.
Last summer in Brussels, Belgium,
Sony representatives presented a paper
called “NGO Strategy” to the European
16 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT
Quebec City to pull up
Goons Around the Globe drawbridge to protect
heads of state at summit
Activists charge police with infiltration
By Tom Cohen, Associated Press
January 8, 2001
Activists have accused police of infiltrating their groups before most of the major
protests in the District in April and during the political conventions in Philadelphia
QUEBEC CITY –
The towers and walls built to repel in-
vaders of centuries past are no longer suf-
and Los Angeles this summer. It happened again Wednesday, when activists with the fice for protecting 34 heads of state com-
Justice Action Movement, the umbrella group for Inauguration Day protests, said they ing for the Summit of the Americas in
recognized a man at their meeting as a police officer. “We outed one undercover cop,” April. So another wall will be built, this
Mr. Holstein said. “We booted up a picture of him from the protests in April in a police one of metal fencing around several
parka. He said, ‘That’s not me.’ “ square miles of old Quebec City, says
. . . Activists have made more serious accusations about “agents provocateur” at Houle, of the Royal Canadian Mounted
previous protests and upcoming demonstrations during Inauguration Day. Mr. Hol- Police. Riot police will stand guard along
stein said a new member at an activist meeting about two months ago said, “Let’s take the fence in an old-fashioned show of
a bunch of explosives and block the bridge.” He said the man’s comment was ridicu- force intended to prevent a protest move-
lous among a group with many members who view eating hamburger or wearing ment from disrupting the three-day sum-
leather as violence. mit that likely will be the first foreign trip
Fred Smith, Washington Times for President Bush. It will be one of the
largest security operations in Canadian
Davos: Credibility of meeting history, with a perimeter security fence
similar to the 10-foot wall of metal wire
threatened by policing, say NGOs that surrounded June’s Organization of
American States gathering in Windsor,
Ontario. . . . Preventing street clashes like
Letter of Concern from NGOs at Davos the ones that derailed World Trade Orga-
Unfortunately, the actions of the Swiss authorities have transformed Davos into a nization talks in Seattle in December 1999
“fortress”. In the process, the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression - is the main goal, say police officials at the
guaranteed both by the Swiss Constitution and international standards - has been federal, provincial and local level.
severely restricted.
Even people seeking to attend or participate in an NGO seminar hosted by “Public Organizing Against the FTAA :
Eye on Davos” were arrested. For instance, NGOs present in Davos report that several
people handing out brochures about this seminar to passersby on Davos streets were A Report from Quebec City
detained. A researcher who was travelling to Davos to speak at the NGO seminar was By Chris Dixon
taken off the train by police during a car-by-car check of all trains travelling towards
Davos. Adam Ma’anit was stopped by police on the morning of Friday 26 January What is the FTAA?
while on his way to a forum, organized by nongovernmental organizations taking The Free Trade Area of the Americas
place in Davos parallel to the World Economic Forum. He was stopped at a train sta- (FTAA) would effectively integrate the
tion in Landquart by security forces where he was searched, questioned and photo- nations of North and South America into
graphed before being taken back to the border at Basel. a single free trade bloc. It is being negoti-
The Swiss authorities, by simply banning demonstrations in Davos during the ated under the auspices of the Organiza-
World Economic Forum, have set an ominous precedent for future world gatherings. tion of American States (OAS), which in-
Given Switzerland’s reputation for democracy and inclusive, participatory governance, cludes trade representatives from all 34
certainly the Swiss authorities would not seek to play such a role. countries of the Americas (excluding
Cuba). With the aim of being fully opera-
Police role in terror task force criticized tive by 2005, the FTAA would encompass
800 million people in a potential market
. . . A new task force on domestic ter- at today’s City Council meeting of $19 trillion.
rorism that includes Portland police offic- More than 30 cities across the country Mimicking the North American Free
ers and FBI agents follows a national trend have formed antiterrorism task forces Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and reputedly
to combat terrorism on U.S. soil. that include federal agents and local po- copying key features of the failed Multi-
But some think the wording of an lice. Seattle formed one in September to lateral Agreement on Investment (MAI),
agreement between the city and the FBI thwart such things as white supremacist the FTAA promises more deregulation
is merely window dressing for a newly violence. and privatization while affording global
formed “Red Squad” to infiltrate lawful The FBI also has teamed with police capital ever-greater power and profit-
political protests and their organizers. departments to battle cyber terrorists making potential. This means further con-
The FBI’s budget and number of who could hack into computer systems solidation of corporate power, erosion of
counter-terrorism agents have jumped to do such things as shut down the popular gains, exploitation of resources
significantly each year since 1993, when a nation’s power grid or collide two airlin- and labor in the global South, and dis-
bomb blast rocked New York’s World ers . . . . mantlement of already insufficient envi-
Trade Center and the nation’s psyche. Other federal agencies are also prepar- ronmental protections—all in the name of
(Editors Note – The “terrorists” were later ing. The federal Centers for Disease Con- “free trade.” In other words, it’s the same
found to be trained, encouraged and sup- trol and Prevention has a $155 million old story of colonialism, capitalism, and
plied with explosives by the FBI.) annual bio-terrorism research program imperialism.
Portland’s task force was formed spe- with 100 full-time employees, according What will Quebec City look like in April?
cifically to investigate crimes by extrem- to a September report by Newhouse Snowy and scenic, Quebec City is rela-
ist groups. An agreement between the FBI News Service. The CDC is stockpiling tively small (pop. 500,000), 98%
and the city names the Earth Liberation drugs in case of large-scale exposures to francophone (French-speaking), and over-
Front and the Animal Liberation Front, such things as anthrax and smallpox. whelmingly white. Protestors arriving in
militant environmental groups that have Some say having the police gathering April will be greeted by the largest secu-
claimed responsibility for crimes. intelligence on extremist groups presents rity operation in the history of Canada.
“It’s Big Brother keeping his spying eyes difficult choices for a nation that values Police are promising a 3.8-kilometer se-
on people,” said Spencer Neal, a Portland civil liberties. They caution that the po- curity perimeter around meeting facilities
civil rights lawyer who has filed numerous
lawsuits against the city and police. “I think
tential to cross the line is far too easy.
“The FBI has a long history of spying
and downtown hotels. (Local activists
suggest it will probably be half as large in
they’re going to have a problem.” on political groups,” said Portland attor- reality.) The perimeter will be fortified
Some activists are calling on the City ney Alan Graf of the National Lawyers with a 3-meter fence fixed in concrete bar-
Council to reconsider its approval of the Guild. “They’re identifying people based riers and tipped with barbed wire. In
agreement, or at a minimum, hold a hear- on political ideology and association with preparation, authorities are also empty-
ing in which their opinions can be fully certain groups.” ing out the local prison in order to “make
aired. Several have signed up to be heard Mark Larabee, The Oregonian room” for protestors.
Information and Communications Tech-
toring and contact network” to keep tabs quested by a company or industry group.”
nology Industry Association’s conference
on these organizations. Sony executives have acknowledged
on environmental policy. Sony’s strategic
Inside EPA suggests that this monitor- that the company is monitoring environ-
suggestions included “pre-funding inter-
ing might be carried out by “one of the doz- mental groups. “We are obviously con-
vention” to reduce the financial support
ens of new Internet ‘intelligence’ agencies— cerned about our image,” Mark Small,
that liberal foundations give to environ-
such as the London-based Infonics PLC— Sony’s vice president of environmental and
mental organizations; a recommendation
that monitor chat rooms, e-mail lists, elec- health and safety issues, told the InterPress
that companies ratchet up their capabil-
tronic bulletin boards, online news news service. “If Greenpeace is pushing
ity to quickly respond to environmental
services,newsgroups and other sources of something, we want to be on top if it.”
critics and pre-empt future legislation;
public information for specific data re- Bill Berkowitz, In These Times
and the development of a “detailed moni-
NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.)

the apartment – not even participating in

the events. Watching TV coverage on
Channel 5. Eyes started burning inside
the apartment building. Realized it was
tear gas. I went outside. Police outside. I
complained to police about gas. Police
said, ‘I don’t give a fuck. If you don’t want
something more severe, go back inside
your apartment.’…Gas continued inside
for 2-3 hours. “
“Skin irritation, chest pain…(I) am
asthmatic have heart problem. Was in-
volved in good dose of pepper
spray…could not rest could not breathe.
PHOTO COURTESY OF IMC-SEATTLE/MATT A. EMRICH

Used (respirator) machine (to breathe).”

– From Declarations collected by the
Seattle National Lawyer’s Guild Data Col-
lection Group.
Speaking before a recent panel at the
Environmental Law Conference in Eu-
gene, Dr. Kirk Murphy, a UCLA physician
told those assembled that they were part
of the largest experiment in chemical war-
fare in recent history. The reason Dr.
Murphy was able to make this statement
was that CN and CS gas fall into a sort of
limbo where they are not subject to test-
ing for their effects. They are not classi- Seattle, 1999
fied as weapons of war, though they have
been used in warfare extensively.
Chemical Irritant Weapons were first those in hiding so that machine guns and CS sure, sometimes cause heart failure, so
introduced by Allied forces during carpet bombs could kill them. The CS CS is also a solid that is mixed with py- could be potentially be the cause of the
World War I. They were intended to clear gas doubtless mixed with defoliants rotechnic carrier agent and propelled heart problems experienced by an SPD
out German trenches so that the Allies such as Agent Orange and added to the through a pressurized aerosol. The basic officer mentioned in one of their
could then machine-gun them. It was a literally millions of persons who’s long instructions manuals supplied by the afteraction reports. “Of particular con-
weapon that remained popular with the term injuries may never be understood. manufacturers and the Seattle Police De- cern,” writes Harvard epidemiologist
Allies in the subsequent struggles they (A Higher Form of Killing, Robert Harris partment require that any person or group Howard Hu, “are allegations that expo-
had with their colonies. The RAF and Jeremy Paxman, esp. pp. 9, 44, 194-5, of persons being sprayed with CS gas be sure to tear gas has been associated with
dropped it on the Afghan trenches in the 233.) given an exit path. In Seattle, where dem- increases in miscarriages and still-
1920’s. The French and Spanish used it The effects these substances have on onstrators were, on multiple occasions, births.” Hu has also linked CS to chro-
in Morocco. The book A Higher Form of humans and other living creatures are still trapped between lines of armor clad po- mosomal mutation – changes to the very
Killing provides this summary of the use not understood. A major portion of the lice spraying chemical weapons and structure of a person’s DNA. CS also
and development of tear gas: notion of their safety comes from the be- shouting dispersal orders through Jack in particularly puts people with asthma,
“The Geneva Protocol had laid down lief that they will naturally disperse, so the Box style PA systems, these instruc- diabetes and heart conditions at greater
firm controls over the use of gas in war. that persons will not be exposed to con- tions were violated on repeated occasions. risks. The Journal of the American Medi-
But the use of chemical weapons, like tear centrated doses. This of course does not There is no doubt that these are po- cal Association (JAMA) found that one
gas, by domestic police forces was a mat- happen if the agents are used in a confined tentially lethal substances. In an inves- exposure to respiratory irritants similar to
ter purely for national governments. Both space, or are altered by such factors as tigation of the Israeli Army, the United CS have led to the development of ‘reac-
the United States and Britain had estab- weather. Nations determined that there were doz- tive airways disease syndrome’ – in
lished factories to manufacture CN gas All information provided on the safety ens of deaths resulting from application layperson’s terms this has meant a pro-
after the First World War, and the British of these agents to law enforcement comes of CS on Palestinians in closed spaces. longed cough and shortness of breath.
were soon using the gas against rioters in form the manufacturers themselves. In The substance also killed a large num- The British medical Journal The Lancet
the colonies. The weapon which replaced many ways it is the ultimate WTO dy- ber of children in South Africa under called for CS Gas to be withdrawn from
it, and was used in Vietnam, CS gas, namic, as if the manufacturer of DDT or apartheid. CS has been determined police until more research has been car-
(named after the two American scientists, Thalidomide or Malathion were in charge among other things to raise blood pres- ried into health implications.
Carson and Staughton who discovered it of determining its products safety. The
in 1928,) provides a near-perfect example police rely on the manufacturers of these
of the way in which British chemical war- products for assurances of their safety, and
fare research, despite its commitment to the public in turn relies on police.
purely defensive purposes came to be Compositions of these products all
applied to war.” contain carriers and agents. As with the
Britain realized the shortcomings of other weaponry examined, the lethality of
CN gas in the 1950’s in Korea and Cyprus. each can vary depending upon the
In particular, it was ineffective in control- strength with which it is mixed. Often it
ling “rioters” who had only to close or is the carrier agent the chemical is mixed
cover their eyes to protect themselves with that is the most lethal part of these
from its effects. CS gas had the “advan- weapons. The tests done on these carrier
tage” of producing a far wider range of agents are limited and sometimes nonex-
effects. These effects included making the istent. Frequently the manufacturers
victims’ eyes burn and water, their skin guard the most basic information about
itch, their noses run, and inducing cough- carrier agents as “trade secrets.”
ing and vomiting.
All of the above are complaints, not co- CN
incidentally, made by members of the Se- CN is more commonly known by the
attle Police Department in their afteraction brand name of its most popular brand,
reports. “mace.” During instructions in its use,
The British first tested CS in Cyprus in trainees are told that it is not a gas, but
1958. Buoyed by the success of this, the really small metal barbs contained in a
British continued to use CS ‘in support of carrier agent. According to one manufac-
civil power’ as in when it was deployed turer the propellant in the Def-Tec formula
in Ireland a few years later. used in Seattle added a methylene chlo-
The U.S., under General Westmore- ride a toxic substance used in paint remov-
land, Commander in Chief of Operations ers as a propellant. OSHA classifies me-
in Vietnam, began to use CS Gas as early thylene chloride as a “potential occupa-
as 1965. Because of the deservedly hor- tional carcinogen.” Both methylene chlo-
rendous reputation chemical and gas ride and CN are classified as hazardous
warfare had acquired, the term “tear gas” materials that require notification of re-
was first coined as spin control. U.S. lease. U.S. Army research shows that
Troops were specifically trained to refer methylene chloride is, “reasonably ex-
to CS by that term and that term alone. pected to be a carcinogen.” Both the U.S.
Literally thousands of tons of CS gas Army and NATO have removed it from
were dumped by the U.S. forces on the their arsenals.
Vietnamese. Its purpose was to drive out

WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 17

NEW TYPE OF WAR (cont.)
In violation of basic protocol for safe use of these weapons, chemical
agents were used repeatedly without allowing for escape routes.
OC
OC (oleoresin capsicum, cap-stun or
pepper spray) is made from extract of cay-
enne pepper. The substance gained popu-
larity, because unlike CN gas, it did not
merely incapacitate the person by caus-
ing great discomfort, it caused involun-
tary physical reactions. The fact that it
caused involuntary physical reactions
made more effective on persons on drugs,
persons suffering from psychotic epi-
sodes, and animals such as dogs and
WHAT’S HIDING (cont. from p. 10)
in Yosemite or drilling for oil in the Grand
Canyon.
John Ashcroft, GW’s choice for Attor-
ney General, is a self-styled moral cru-
sader as strongly against abortion as he is
enthusiastic about the death penalty. He
lost his Senate seat in the 2000 election to
an opponent who died during the cam-
paign. Last year, Ashcroft received an hon-
orary degree from Bob Jones University
and is closely aligned with the Christian
Coalition and Pat Robertson. Ashcroft is
also an outspoken fan of Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas. He is known
among lobbyists as an advocate for drug
companies and the automotive industry
and for preventing consumers from suing
HMO’s.
Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., nominated as di-
rector of the Office of Management and
Budget was senior executive of the Eli
Lilly drug company-which Bush’s father
headed from 1977-79. Daniels was also
previously the president of the arch con-
servative think tank Hudson Institute.
Daniels, who advocates strict enforcement
of laws against casual drug users, was
arrested for marijuana possession in 1970.
Secretary of State designee Colin Powell
is a lifelong operative of the CIA/military-
industrial complex. While working for the
Pentagon he helped cover up the Mai Lai
massacre, the contra/arms deal and Gulf
War Syndrome. Powell’s fame derives from
presiding over a war in which US troops
were used as guinea pigs for experimental
vaccines so that they could “safely” fight
George Bush’s friend Sadamn Hussein-
who had been given the go ahead to at-
tack Kuwait after being supplied with
chemical and biological weapons by the
Bush administration. Like many of GW’s
appointees of color, Powell proudly ad-
mits he owes his career in large part to
affirmative action while joining an admin-
istration that considers ending affirmative
action one of its topmost priorities.
Condolezza Rice, Bush’s National Se-
curity advisor was formerly a security ad-
visor under President George Bush and
18 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT
bears, whose nasal systems are different
from humans. Pepper spray was first en-
dorsed by the FBI in 1987 and trickled
down to most of the other law enforce-
ment agencies in the country. Thomas
Ward the director of the FBI’s Quantico
Firearms Training Unit, brought the
weapon into the FBI’s arsenal and wrote
the main study cited by law enforcement
to defend its use.
In February of 1996 Ward pled guilty
to accepting a $57,500 kickback from the
an aide to Colin Powell. She has the job of
explaining the basic elements of foreign
policy to GW, about which Bush admits
to knowing almost nothing. A large part
of her career was involved in administer-
ing the CIA’s foreign policy objectives. She
serves on the board of Chevron Oil-
known as one of the African continents
most violent human rights abusers. A
grateful Chevron recently named an oil
tanker after her.
The emerging profile of the Bush ad-
ministration-moderately conservative and
multi-racial-is a facade. To see their real
agenda one has to examine the
administration’s ideological source-the
Manhattan Institute. GW may cultivate
the image of a plain-talkin’ good ole boy
who prefers barbecuing to making policy,
but virtually every idea presented as cen-
tral to his agenda comes from this elite east
coast institution.
A little background
MI (The Manhattan Institute) was
started in 1978 by William Casey, one of
the top intelligence operatives in US his-
tory. During WWII Casey worked with
OSS chief William Donavan and Allen
Dulles to bring top level Nazi officials to
the US where they were recruited into the
newly-formed CIA, the military, govern-
ment-connected medical research institu-
tions and the media. The stated rational
for importing Hitler’s top intelligence op-
eratives, social scientists and propagan-
dists to the US was that they would be
employed in fighting Communism-ex-
actly what Hitler claimed he used them
for. In reality they were brought here to
help establish fascism in America-a goal
which they are increasingly succeeding at.
Before WWII started Dulles was in-
volved with GW’s grandfather Prescott
Bush on Wall Street where, along with
George Herbert Walker (Prescott Bush’s
father-in-law) they operated banks and
shipping companies that were later de-
clared by the US Congress to be fronts for
the Nazis. In 1942 shortly after the US
pepper-spray manufacturer who was the
leading supplier to the FBI making the
entire certification of the substance suspect.
Some of the harshest criticisms of OC
have come form Prison Guards and Po-
lice Officers, most of who are required to
have it sprayed in their eyes as part of
their training.
OC may have some genuine utility for
law enforcement, for example it does pro-
vide an intermediary use of force that
might not otherwise be available. LA
Chief Willie Williams, for example, states
that had it been available at the time, it
would have been used to contain Rodney
King. But all objective criteria seem to
prove that its use is becoming all too
prevalent.
It is used routinely in prisons not only
to extract troublesome prisoners, but also
simply to quiet them.
In Northern California, it was applied
by swabs to protesters’ eyes. The Court
found that a reasonable person could con-
clude this was excessive use of force.
In Seattle, Philadelphia and other lo-
cations it was used repeatedly at close
range on demonstrators on the street. It
was also used in jail situations that from
some witnesses’ statements, seem to re-
semble third world torture scenes, more
than traditional images of U.S. Justice
Like the other agents, OC has been
linked to numerous fatalities. A 1995
article by the Los Angeles Times noted a
minimum of 61 deaths linked with the
use of OC by police in the U.S.A. A
study by the ACLU in the same year
documented 27 deaths in custody over
a two-year period because of the use of
OC in California alone. (For a further
entered WWII the assets of these Wall
Street companies were seized by the US
government under the Trading With The
Enemy Act.
Dulles was the legal counsel for both
Standard Oil and for Nazi Germany’s I.G.
Farben-one of the world’s largest indus-
trial powerhouses-which was co-owned
by the Rockefeller family-the main
funders of the Manhattan Institute.
The US ambassador to Germany at the
time had this to say about The
Rockefellers, the Bush’s, the Mellons
(owners of Alcoa) and the other wealthy
Americans who were backing Hitler and
promoting Eugenics, or scientific racism:
“A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-
bent to bring a fascist state to supplant
our democratic government and is work-
ing closely with the fascist regime in Ger-
many. I have had plenty of opportunity
in Berlin to witness how close some of our
American ruling families are to the Nazi
regime. . .They extended aid to help Fas-
cism occupy the seat of power, and they
are helping to keep it there.” - William
Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany,
1937.-Facts and Fascism, G Seldes, p. 122
Also, Trading with the Enemy, Charles
Higham, p.167
When IG Farben was broken up after
Germany lost the war its parts became the
top pharmaceutical companies in the
world- BASF, Hoechst, Bayer AG, Agfa-
Gevaert and Cassella AG. Today these
companies, along with Pfizer and Eli
Lilly-which former President George
Bush headed from 1977-1979-are the larg-
est manufacturers of prescription and
over the counter drugs sold in the U.S.
Both the Pfizer and Eli Lilly drug compa-
nies are sponsors of MI.
These oil, pharmaceutical and Wall
Street investment banking elites are the
foundations of the Rockefeller and Bush
dynasties and are the real constituents of
the new Bush administration.
Being a business partner with the Third
discussion of these substances see the ar-
ticles by Terry Allen in In These Times.)
Methods of Dispersal – Varied
and Inaccurate
There are several methods of dispersal
for all of these agents.
There were cartridges fired from the
37mm launchers, and shotguns. These
seem to have been filled mostly with CS
gas, some CN Gas. The police seem to
have used these to fire into the middle of
crowds from a distance. Some of these
cartridges contained combinations of these
and other “less lethal technologies.” For
example, the “barricade rounds” were de-
signed to penetrate a heavy barrier, then
release the chemical agent on the other
Reich posed no problem for Dulles who
became the first CIA director in 1947. In fact,
their relationship with the Nazis and Wall
Street was exactly how Dulles, former Pres.
Bush and William Casey all became CIA
directors. GW’s father was made CIA direc-
tor in 1976. Shortly after creating the Man-
hattan Institute, William Casey was made
CIA director by Ronald Reagan.
In 1954 Casey put together a consor-
tium of investors including top US intelli-
gence experts who had made fortunes on
Wall Street to form Capital Cities. In the
interim, Casey served as Chairman of the
Securities and Exchange Commission from
1969 to 1977. By 1985 Casey’s Capital Cit-
ies had so much cash it was able to buy
ABC (an act that took place shortly after
ABC ran a documentary considered criti-
cal by the CIA) and operate it as a propa-
ganda arm of the US government-which
it continues to be today.
Casey was the top stockholder in ABC
while he was director of the CIA under the
Reagan and Bush administrations. ABC,
CNN and Rupert Murdoch’s rabidly right
wing network FOX were instrumental in
fabricating GW Bush’s illegitimate presi-
dency, the myth that Colin Powell is a hero
and the idea that the Gulf War was a mili-
tary victory-rather than a human and eco-
logical disaster fought solely to benefit the
oil industry.
Many Americans didn’t seem to mind
seeing the CIA ruthlessly manipulate the
political and social fabric of other nations
for the second half of the 20th century.
How they will feel about America being
openly run by the CIA and this circle of
racist corporate gangsters may well deter-
mine the history of the next century.
Robert Lederman 12/23/2000
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics)
ARTISTpres@aol.com (718) 743-3722
for much more detailed info on all of the above
see
http://Baltech.org/lederman/spray/
 Though there is some variation with the many types of
cartridges and projectiles used, as a general rule they
shouldn’t be striking anything closer than fifteen feet, or
you’re risking serious injury, trauma and possible death.
side. Other cartridges combined the re-
lease of the chemical agents with that of
rubber projectiles. Yet others released mul-
tiple containers that dispersed the agents
to minimize the chance that they could be
thrown back at the police.
There were grenades that could be
thrown. These contained similar compo-
nents to the cartridges. Many would scat-
ter “rubber” bullets and chemical agents
simultaneously.
There were paint-ball guns. These shot
rubber containers filled with OC powder.
There were canisters the size of small
fire extinguishers that were carried by of-
ficers. These seem to have been carrying
OC, and sometimes a combination of OC
and CN. The OC was dispersed in both
the form of a mist and in the form of foam
that according to training officers was far
more potent.
There were portable fogger units.
All of these methods of disposal en-
countered problems during the WTO
Ministerial..
Police officers fired at themselves,
dropped canisters at their feet, had gas
blow back at them on the street and in
buses of prisoners, and had at least one
grenade explode in an officer’s hands.
The problems in dispersing these
agents among large crowds were even
worse. There was no way the police could
separate who was being hit with these
agents with any accuracy. They could not
separate the old, the invalids, and the in-
fants. They could not separate out those
with heart conditions, diabetes, asthma or
AIDs. They could not separate the by-
standers from the demonstrators.
And they could not offer the medical
aid they were required to once the gas was
launched in large quantities.
PHOTO COURTESY OF IMC-SEATTLE/PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
“Spin Control”: From Armor Holdings, Inc., training manual for law
enforcement personnel.
Lethal Agents + Inaccurate
Dispersal Techniques =
Bad News
In the months leading up to the WTO
Ministerial, Seattle officials explicitly
played down the use of their weaponry.
Mayor Paul Schell had even encouraged
people to come do their holiday shopping
downtown on November 30th. Speaking
weeks before the WTO Ministerial, he had
stated that downtown would be the saf-
est place in Washington to be that day.
In considering the effects these weap-
ons had, look also at who some of the most
vulnerable people subjected to these
weapons were:
There were children and pregnant
women.
Capital Hill arguably the community
most affected by these weapons of war, is
home to several retirement homes.
Perhaps most vulnerable, were the
people with AIDs, there to protest the
policies of the WTO – an organization that
prevented the manufacture of less expen-
sive treatments and vaccines. These may
have been the people who suffered the
worst effects from these agents. Many
with this stigmatizing disease were forced
not only to take time off of work because
of the effects the gas had on them, but also
to offer explanations to their employers
and acquaintances.
There seems to be at least one fatality
as a result of deployment of these “less-
lethal” technologies during the WTO Min-
isterial.
Key Martin was a long time activist
and video producer. He suffered from
asthma and AIDS. This put him in a
more vulnerable position during the Se-
attle WTO Ministerial. Martin was shot
with rubber bullets and exposed to nu-
From Armor Holdings, Inc., on the prospects for injuries or death from
their “Specialty Impact Munitions.”
merous chemical agents. Some months
after the WTO he developed swelling in
the areas where he was struck. He died
shortly after this. Some of those who
were close to him attributed his recent
death to complications resulting from
the injuries he suffered from these weap-
ons. That Key Martin had these pre-ex-
isting conditions does not make his
death reasonable or even legally justi-
fied. Under the most basic precepts of
tort liability, a defendant takes a victim
as they are.
The implications of Martin’s death are
far reaching. It is well known that those
with AIDs are already in a weakened and
vulnerable state. Consider that among the
leaders of those activist groups the police
had met with were leaders of AIDs groups
including ACT-UP. Perhaps Martin’s
death can be excused as a case of cogni-
tive dissonance. Future deaths cannot be
excused this way. Knowingly using these
chemical agents and other weapons on an
infected population has to be recognized
for what it is, a lethal use of force. It must
also be acknowledged that if these chemi-
cal agents can be expected to be deployed
with minimal warning those suffering
from AIDs have effectively lost their right
to free speech. So too have many of the
elderly and the physically disabled.
Given the numbers of children, old
people and disabled present at this event
the numbers could also have been far
higher and indeed they may be. What has
kept many of these people from coming
out with their stories is that they them-
selves are undergoing feelings of post-
traumatic-stress-disorder usually as-
signed to survivors of wars. The legal
system itself also presents massive
hurdles, hurdles few people have the re-
sources to overcome. Some state frankly,
that they fear retribution.
In the aftermath of the exposure to
these weapons, questions are being raised
about the origin and toxicity of agents that
were employed. Some of these are ques-
tions that may yield quicker answers such
as where did the tear gas used after the
SPD exhausted their initial supply come
from and what was in it?
The other thing to consider is that
many of the effects of these weapons are
simply not known, especially since they
have not been widely studied. Matters
concerning the lethality of these materi-
als may emerge over time as happened
with symptoms associated Agent Orange
and is happening now with the Gulf War
syndrome. Ironically, should this occur,
police officers that were affected may find
themselves in a position similar to that of
the veterans of these wars, relying on the
protesters for information and support.
Ultimately, those in both the military
and in law enforcement must look hard
and honestly at the dynamic that is taking
place in the streets after the Seattle WTO
Ministerial. They must look at the ever
more militarized force they are creating,
the effect it has on the citizens right to free
speech, the effect it has on the safety of
those who enforce the policies and the
effect it is having on the very fabric of
democracy.
There is a moral and legal obligation
to set up long term monitoring facilities
for those who were exposed to these le-
thal substances. This includes protesters,
bystanders and members of law enforce-
ment.
If these modest recommendations can-
not be implemented then it is perhaps
time to openly acknowledge that we have
a government that is there to protect the
rights of its largest corporations and to
further acknowledge that the citizenry has
become a disposable commodity that may
be swept aside with lethal force when it
infringes on that corporate interest.
Paul Richmond is the main author of the
Seattle NLG’s Report on the WTO Ministe-
rial. He served as co-coordinator for the NLG’s
legal observer program during the Ministe-
rial in 1999 and its anniversary in November
2000. He was also a founding member of the
first Independent Media Center established to
cover the WTO Ministerial. He has worked
for over a decade on the issues of police ac-
countability and the militarization of law en-
forcement as both an activist and a reporter.
He returned to school to get a law degree when
he was unable to find an attorney to take these
matters on. He was elected NW Regional Vice
President of the National Lawyers Guild in
November of 2,000.
He plans to establish a center for the
study of the militarization of law enforce-
ment. For other information contact PO
Box 1773, Everett, WA, 98206, or
nopolicestate@yahoo. com or (206) 989-
2673; website: www.nlgseattle.org
Thanks to the hundreds of legal
observers, people who filled out
declarations, and otherwise contrib-
uted information that was used in
this report.
Excerpts from The Washington
Post, The Oregonian, In These Times,
Village Voice, The Guardian, Chicago
Sun Times, The Atlantic, Seattle Times,
Honolulu Weekly, Herald Tribune,
Michael Moore and others are used
in conjunction with applicable fair
use laws.
WAGING WAR ON DISSENT • 19
 Recommendations
This report details the unfortunate trend of militarization in law enforcement.
The problem is obvious. Police are being trained as if they were soldiers. Soldiers
are being utilized as if they were police.
Without another superpower to fight, the military industrial complex, still a cor-
nerstone of the U.S. economy is reaching into law enforcement every chance it gets.
Major military contractors such as Bechtel are making enormous profits from the out
of control prison building industry. Major military research facilities such as Los Alamos
lab are designing many of the new generation of “less lethal” weapons.
Police aren’t Soldiers and Soldiers aren’t Police.
George Bush Senior, former C.I.A. director, destroyer of many democracies and
father of our current, semi-elected President, described the United States as “the po-
licemen of the free world.” What this declaration represented was a series of military
actions and invasions toting democracy, while overthrowing legitimate leaders and
killing literally millions of civilians. George Bush Sr. created more corpses than Pol
Pot’s Cambodian Killing Fields.
The goals and purposes of soldiers and police are incompatible. Police are there to
preserve life. Soldiers are trained to take it.
Yet as we see happening in Fort Lewis Washington, soldiers are being trained for
“policing” functions. Their armament is more mobile. Their weapons and training
specifically targeted for use in heavily populated urban areas.
Police are being trained in a military style. Small towns, college campuses, now
routinely have their own military style units equipped with their own military style
weapons. What is being built is not a force to protect the rights of people, but an
occupying army.
Though these forces have largely been limited in their use to marginalized commu-
nities, the definition of a marginalized community is a moving target.
History has shown that when the use of these tools and tactics get to a certain level
they can no longer be controlled, even by those who put them in place. The CIA, IMF,
the businesses who work with them, think nothing of overthrowing governments and
putting in their own dictatorial puppets – inevitably these dictatorial puppets get out
of control and have to be externally crushed. Yet what happens when the forces used
to crush these puppets gets out of control? The answer is nothing. It’s too late. Hitler,
Mussolini were put in power by big business, yet they themselves devoured many of
the businesses that created them.
Outfitting and training police as if they were members of the military needs to end.
There is no reason for police on college campuses and small towns to be outfitted like
SWAT units. There is little reason for all but the most highly trained specialist to have
these weapons. The incidence that genuinely requires the response of these units is
minimal. The police end up causing more property destruction and death than the
forces they are nominally supposed to contain.
The arms currently possessed by law enforcement need to be evaluated. Esp-ecially
with the influx of new hires and the drop in training that creates. The move to hand-
guns with more rounds needs to be looked at more closely. This report has discussed
the way these higher capacity weapons, particularly in the hands of inexperienced
officers have led to increased numbers of shootings with many more bullets being
fired. Part of the reason these guns gained prominence was fear of drugs such as PCP,
and part of it was talk that police are being outgunned. For the first, PCP has largely
disappeared form the streets. For the second, FBI statistics show you have four times
as many officers killed by their own weapon as anything resembling an assault weapon.
Cops aren’t getting killed because they’re outgunned; they’re getting killed because
they’re getting put out on the street without adequate training.
This report was titled the war on dissent. In closing it’s important to note what
dissent is. Most political struggle is based on survival. As a bottom line, dissent is
often just trying to survive. The black person who can’t drive a car without being
pulled over, or even walk down certain streets, as happens routinely in Seattle, is forced
to dissent. So is the logger who’s got nothing left to cut and finds the only way they
can keep their home is to grow certain herbs in the backwoods, inviting the wrath of
the local sheriff and the national guard. So is the person who crawls into a sleeping
bag in some out of the way place downtown.
The corporate and colonial powers have always responded more brutally the fur-
ther they were operating away from their home base. The sort of actions routinely
performed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the rigging of elections and the open
assassination of opposition leaders, would be almost unthinkable domestically (re-
cent developments in Florida and Cointelpro notwithstanding.) The sort of bombing
perpetrated by the U.S. military on Viet Nam or Iraq, would also in most cases be
unthinkable (MOVE and Waco not withstanding.)
The World Trade Organization policies signaled a change in the way business was
conducted. Prior to the birth of the Ministerial, accusations of labor laws, human
rights, environmental protections all being trashed in the name trade would have been
dismissed as wild-eyed conspiracy theory. This wouldn’t have meant that they weren’t
happening, simply that there was a concerted effort to make them appear untrue. As
is the way with these things, when they go on long enough, there’s an eventual effort
to formalize them as policy. The birth of the World Trade Organization was a way of
the most powerful corporations on the planet saying, sovereignty doesn’t matter, and
we’re going to do what we want.
The Seattle WTO Ministerial signaled a change in the way domestic law enforce-
ment operated. Previously the targets of corporate directed law enforcement were
isolated geographically, or socially. The scale of paramilitary police action in a Capi-
tol Hill, a large, middle class neighborhood, during the evenings of the WTO Ministe-
rial, was a signal that with the shrinking of the middle class, the middle class is now a
legitimate target. In other words, as the middle class shrinks, then to simply survive
as a member of the middle class is to practice dissent.
So as a final recommendation what is needed is people who will stand up not only
for their own rights, but also for the rights of others, even those they may not entirely
agree with. There is a tendency when someone has been labeled a criminal to allow
law enforcement to either figuratively or literally shoot, and have it sorted out later.
Unfortunately, the laws are so stringently written, that better than 98% have probably
broken a federal law. At least that was the number I heard quoted by a DOJ spokes-
person, before the enactment of either the crime bill or the terrorist bill. Doubtless the
number’s gone up.
In the 19th century, the French divided their government into two warring factions.
One was the “left” side or “wing” of the chamber, and one was the “right.” Perhaps as
we move to the 21st Century we can realize the dichotomy is not as much “left” and
“right” as much as it is an ever narrowing top and an ever-expanding bottom.
Paul Richmond
Seattle, Washington

Organizing in the Face of Increased Repression By Starhawk

Since the very first morning of the Se-
attle blockade a year ago, the police forces
of the world have greeted the
antiglobalization movement with a high
level of violence and repression. As the
international movement has continued
on, the repression has fallen into a pattern
discernible from DC to Prague and be-
yond. This pattern involves:
1. A concerted media campaign by the
police and government forces that begins
long before the demonstration, painting
the activists as violent terrorists. All pre-
vious demos are equally characterized as
violent, regardless of the actual facts.
2. Surveillance of meetings, email lists,
phones, listserves, etc.
3. Attempts at pre-emptive control,
which range from mass illegal arrests in DC
the night before the action, shut downs of
convergence centers and IndyMedia cen-
ters, and border closures, to declaring a 5-
kilometer no-protest zone five months be-
fore the planned action in Quebec.
4. Less obvious violence on the street.
Seattle taught them that tear gassing
whole sections of the city was a bad idea.
However, tear gas, pepper spray, beatings,
projectile weapons, water cannon and
concussion grenades, etc. are routinely
used now from Prague to Cincinnati.
5. Random arrests and targeting of
peaceful protestors, while those throwing
rocks are often let go. Maybe nonviolent
protestors are easier to catch? Or maybe
this is a concerted effort to discourage
wider participation in these actions?
6. Use of provocateurs. I am not say-
ing that all who throw rocks are provoca-
teurs. However, there is a growing body
of eyewitnesses and stories of “protestors”
seen one moment throwing a rock at a
window and the next, being sheltered be-
hind a police line to indicate that provo-
cateurs are being used. Along with them,
we can suspect the whole range of fun
cointelpro tactics.
7. Intimidation and brutality in jail,
which reached levels of outright torture
in Prague.
8. Some sporadic attempts to identify
and neutralize “leaders,” i.e. holding John
Sellers of Ruckus on a million dollars bail
for charges that were all later dropped.
What fun! It’s enough to make you
think we’re being effective, especially
when, as in Prague, the protestors still
managed to disrupt the meeting and send
the banksters home a day early.
What can we do about it? Are we
doomed to have these actions become more
and more dangerous, and smaller and
smaller? Or can we succeed in building a
mass movement in spite of repression?
1. The greatest restraint to police vio-
lence during an action is the organizing
and alliance building we’ve done before
the action ever happens. We need to
counter their disinformation campaigns
with our own community outreach, to
leaflet, to talk to people, to go door to door,
to explain to the community what we’re
doing and why long before we do it.
2. We need to build alliances with la-
bor, churches, NGOs, all the groups who
are fighting the same vested interests. We
don’t have to do the same work they do,
we don’t have to change our hairstyles or
analysis to accommodate them, but we do
need to build bridges so that we can call
on them to defend our and their civil rights,
at the border, on the streets or in jail.
3. We need to train and prepare as many
people as possible. The more people have
had a chance to play out a dangerous situa-
tion, to think out possible responses and try
out different tactics, the calmer and more
resilient they’ll be on the streets. Even a few
centered people in a crowd can be enough
to prevent panic and spark an effective
moment of resistance. Trainings need to
stress flexibility and developing a range of
possible responses to widely varied situa-
tions, so activists are prepared in the mo-
ment to make choices about what to do.
4. We also need ever more flexible and
creative tactics. The more we can plan for
orchestrated spontaneity, the harder we’ll
be to stop. For example, in Prague part of
the plan was for smaller marches led by
flags of different colors to break away
from the main march and go in different
directions. While this tactic had been dis-
cussed at open meetings for at least a
month before the action, it still seemed to
confuse the authorities.
5. We may need to focus more on
preparation for surviving jail, for resisting
intimidation and being prepared for inter-
rogation, than on the classic jail solidarity
tactics we’ve used in the U.S. Those tactics
focus on attempting to stay in jail where
our strength of numbers allows us to pres-
sure the system to drop or lower charges,
and helps to protect individuals at risk.
These tactics were developed, however, in
a very different time, when the authorities
often were interested in releasing most and
when jail experiences were often hard and
uncomfortable but relatively decent. At
times those conditions still prevail and that
kind of jail solidarity has been effective in
Seattle and DC. However, if people are
being chained to the wall and beaten, the
focus needs to shift to getting them out of
jail. Solidarity then becomes what people
outside jail do to put political pressure on
the system, from calling on allies, phoning,
faxing and emailing the authorities, to
blockading the jail itself.
6. Organizing an action needs to include
planning post-action and post-jail support,
debriefing, trauma counseling, etc.
7. We need to continue building a
broader, larger movement, to find ways
to encourage participation at varied lev-
els of risk, to support a wide variety of
forms of protest that can mobilize differ-
ent groups of people, to confront the rac-
ism, sexism, classism etc. in our own
groups and reach out to more diversity.
Most of all, we need to clarify our vision
of the world we want to create, so we can
mobilize peoples’ hopes and desires as
well as their outrage. And we need to be
creative, visionary, wild, sexy, colorful,
humorous, and fun in the face of the vio-
lence directed against us. ■
Starhawk is an author and trainer in non-
violent direct action.

20 • WAGING WAR ON DISSENT