=By= Anna Feigenbaum

From the Force Science Institute in Mankato, Minnesota to the ecological reserve outside Rio de Janeiro that houses Condor Non-Lethal Technologies’ police training center, the “use of force” industry has grown into a worldwide marketplace. Beginning on October 9, Hoffman Estates will host the five-day conference of the Illinois Tactical Officers Association, or ITOA. To greet them, a coalition of community groups and organizations from the Chicago area are assembling under the banner #StopITOA. These diverse groups, including AFSC-Chicago, CAIR-Chicago, Assata’s Daughters, Black Lives Matter-Chicago, the Arab American Action Network and War Resisters League, argue that government officials should prioritize spending for human needs not for militarization and violence.

Racial and ethnic fears and prejudices are deeply bound up in law enforcement anxieties over control and their use of excessive force. The coalition organizing around the ITOA conference are particularly concerned about this year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, who is a regular talking head on Fox News known for his Islamophobic rhetoric, and was a consultant to Donald Trump. According to a recent expose by journalist Sarah Lazare, among other extremist claims, he has argued for the tracking and monitoring of Syrian refugees.

Speakers like Gorka “depend on and nourish cultures of fear,” said Jesse Solomon of the War Resisters League. “This fear preys on a growing vulnerability across many marginalized communities and is then used to justify militarism and policing, leaving people’s actual needs unaddressed.”

Why protest SWAT conventions?

The ITOA conference brings together tactical officers and first responders from across the state of Illinois, as well as further afield. This includes special response teams (that are usually referred to under the umbrella term SWAT) from the Illinois State Police and the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System, as well as SWAT from major cities and nearby states.

With workshops, keynote speakers and product exhibition halls, these conferences serve as a site for use of force training, knowledge exchange and business transactions. While many community organizations and the Police Executive Research Forum agree that courses in de-escalation and social work could improve policing, the trainings on offer at these tactical conferences focus on weapons skills development and promote combative mindsets that see community streets as battlegrounds. Exhibiting vast arsenals of military-grade guns, Tasers and riot control gear, the ITOA conference begs the question: Is this really what the country needs right now? As Solomon explained, these conferences are sites “that market masculinity, defense industry solutions and militarized mentalities.” In a time of tension, anger and mistrust, should use of force be what the police are peddling?

What funds this use of force industry?

Brimming with public-private partnerships, events like the ITOA conference and the use of force industry more broadly are largely supported by taxpayers through government grant and funding schemes.

“Police militarization conventions and SWAT trainings are happening 365 days a year, all over the world,” Solomon said. “In the United States, they are where the arms industry meets law enforcement and emergency response, with the federal government footing much of the bill.”

One of these schemes, the Pentagon’s much-debated 1033 program, was set up in the 1990s to transfer disused military equipment to law enforcement agencies. The program facilitated police departments in small and large cities, universities and even schools in receiving everything from armored helicopters to assault rifles. By late 2014, over $5 billion in equipment had been transferred from the military to law enforcement agencies before President Obama set restrictions on the program.

In addition to this hardware funding program, there are also schemes that provide money for use of force training, including Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative, or UASI. This funding program “assists high-threat, high-density Urban Areas in efforts to build and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism.” For 2016, $580 million was earmarked for 29 “high threat, high-density” areas, with 25 percent of that funding designated for training.

By parceling out millions for counter-terrorism initiatives, civil service agencies (including the police and other emergency services) are encouraged to frame their funding needs in militarized terms and to enroll their officers in high conflict-based training. According to Hoda Katebi, communications coordinator for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, such training can contribute to the use of excessive force on people of color in the community.

“Just two months ago CAIR-Chicago filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against members of the Chicago Police Department on behalf of a young female Muslim student,” Katebi said. “She was physically attacked, publicly strip-searched and humiliated, and falsely arrested, among other abuses. One of the officers involved in this case professed to have received counter-terrorism training.”

In some states local organizations like Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System, or ILEAS, work as a clearinghouse for national government funding and equipment management and transfers. Supported by this Homeland Security money, the ILEAS works with over 95 percent of officers and deputies in Illinois and doles out funding to more than 900 organizations. In addition to the $15 million of SWAT equipment it has purchased, ILEAS funds officers and departments to partake in conferences and trainings.

The training and equipment awarded to law enforcement agencies often does not match their size or the reality of crime in their community. Using school shootings and terror attacks as justification for always being prepared for the worst 365 days a year, small departments, rural towns, universities and schools are buying up both equipment and use of force training. Jonathan Blanks from the Cato Institute’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project said that the problem comes “when officers get new toys.” Because SWAT or tactical equipment is expensive to maintain, police wanting to keep their toys must justify the expense, so they create opportunities and use them for things like minor drug raids. “This feeds a warrior mentality that can fuel aggressiveness and antagonism when deployed in a community,” Blanks said.

The College of Lake County Police Department, where ITOA Vice President and SWAT trainer Ed Mohn is commander, sees very few violent offenses occur, yet dozens of hours of heavily armed training were provided to staff in 2015. The amount of time devoted to firearm training at the college was much greater than training in trauma or other kinds of community and social services that police are far more likely to be called out to deal with, especially in an educational setting with young people.

Who profits off police violence?

This public money for equipment and training funnels out of government budgets into the pocketbooks of private corporations and “use of force” entrepreneurs. Like many major events in other industries, tactical officer conferences and expos receive corporate sponsorship. This year the ITOA conference in Illinois is primarily sponsored by Safariland Training Group.

Under various company names, Safariland has long been in the police equipment business. Begun as a body armor company in 1964, the company expanded in the mid-1990s under the leadership of Warren B. Kanders by purchasing other equipment suppliers. By the early 2000s, Kanders’s company was a major player in the national and international police markets, offering a “one stop shop” for outfitting and arming police forces. In 2008, the company was purchased by British military contractor BAE Systems, but was quickly sold back to Kanders in 2012. The period between 2008 and 2012 saw a number of corruption lawsuits against the company. Since 2012 Kanders has continued to expand the now rebranded Safariland Group.

By offering branded trainings at tactical officer conferences, companies like Safariland are able to showcase and demonstrate their weapons. Much like testing out apps that are offered exclusively by Apple or Android, this pairing of weapons demos and trainings is designed to create brand loyalty and lock customers in. Commercial benefits, like on-the-day purchase discounts, loyalty card schemes and insider updates are just as prevalent, if not more so, in the police weapons business as they are in other industries.

In addition to primary sponsorship from the Safariland Training Group, the ITOA conference will also host a number of other for-profit businesses that sell tactical weapons and equipment. Among them are Sage Control Ordinance and Sage International, which sells weapons like tear gas and rubber bullets, alongside their range of enhanced battle rifles. Also present will be Ultimate Training Munitions, a British company partnered with the NRA that specializes in non-lethal “safety” ammunition for weapons training. While this focus on less-lethal products might look at first glance like an alternative to excessive force culture, companies like Ultimate Training Munitions are instead a breeding ground for increased violence, allowing for wider usage of guns through less-lethal training. This is why it is beneficial for the NRA to partner with them.

Because these corporate-police business deals often take place beyond the public eye, connecting the dots between private interests and police use of force can be difficult. Journalist Matt Stroud began following these money flows for his project Official Police Business, which collects data and journalism “about the companies selling technology and weapons to cops — and the machinations police officials go through to squeeze those products into police budgets.”

According to Stroud, “If no one’s paying attention to the particulars of those sales pitches — or monitoring the resulting business deals — corruption can result, as well as dangerous weapons ending up on the belts and in the cruisers of police officers all over the country.”

Use of force training

There are also independent and small business trainers. It is common for ex-military officers who went into police work to become members of SWAT teams and tactical squads. Other times, officers with security or athletic backgrounds might choose this route. Some of these officers go on to become tactical trainers. These trainers can lead courses locally, nationally or internationally, depending on what certifications they have. There is a wide array of certification courses available to police, from hand-to-hand combat techniques to specialized rifle equipment.

As in other industries, training can come with both social and financial benefits. Trainers are often well-respected, travel a lot, get offered additional speaking and writing opportunities as “thought leaders.” Most importantly, they get paid fees in addition to their usual salaries. And decause officers are civil servants, they have set contract hours, opening up time for working second or even third jobs. ITOA trainings on offer include active shooter drills, “urban tactics” for city-based sieges, a variety of rifle and pistol trainings, less-lethal certifications and use of force warrant servicing.

Always on duty?

While many use of force gurus train officers to take on a combatant attitude in everyday duties, a look at what is happening inside police culture suggests a different story needs to be told. Reluctance to address the traumas associated with the violence of police culture has resulted in what police studies researchers call an epidemic of off-duty violence, abuse, alcoholism, depression, PTSD and suicide.

These kinds of tactical trainings and the promotion of a warrior mentality produce police who are “always on duty.” As ITOA founding member and president Jeff Chudwin wrote for ITOA News in 2013, “I have always taught that ‘off duty, does not mean off watch.’ Keep your gear close to hand, always armed with spare ammo, and a plan.”

An eight-month-long investigation by the Chicago Tribune in 2008, found that one in every four police shootings occurred off duty. More recent data from the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project suggests that little has changed, with over 40 percent of recorded reports of police misconduct in 2015 occurring off duty.

“We are trying to point out the number of people killed by police off duty,” said Debbie Southorn, the Wage Peace program associate AFSC-Chicago. “Many of these shootings involve police lies and cover-ups and no real consequences for the cop involved.”

Authoritarian training styles and repeated training exercises in the use of coercive force are also linked to a “spillover” of violence at home. Police have much higher rates of domestic and child abuse in the family than the general population. While empirical data is limited due to the failure of law enforcement to monitor its crimes or provide public figures, a major study conducted by the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing in the early 2000s suggested that the rate of domestic abuse in policing is up to four times higher than the national average, with 40 percent of families experiencing abuse of some kind. More recent data from criminologist Philip Stinson and his team’s research, as well as from the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, suggest that at least one in every five cases of police crimes are for domestic and family abuse.

Silent circles of trauma?

This spillover of abuse from training to the streets to inside the home is linked with depression and PTSD. In the recent book “Police Suicide: Is Police Culture Killing Our Officers?” Ron Rufo, a long-time Chicago police officer and advocate for reform in police training, reports that for every one officer killed in the line of duty, three take their own lives.

Reflecting on this epidemic of violence within police culture, campaigners both inside and outside of law enforcement have long argued that the suppression of emotion and emphasis on eliminating weakness in order to always be in control can have damaging and violent effects on officers, their loved ones and the communities they serve. “The training tactics that are presented to new recruits,” Rufo argues, are designed to keep them alive on the streets. But this combination of survival skills, a control mentality and a belt full of loaded weapons, can leave an officer, “unable to survive his own distorted emotions and crumbling sense of well-being.”

While the problem of PTSD and suicide in military veterans is now openly discussed (due to the ceaseless activism of organizations after the Vietnam War), it is still seen as largely taboo to mention the effects of trauma in relation to policing, violence and use of force. This current reluctance to confront excessive force not only as a problem of institutionalized racism and violence, but as a psychological epidemic, limits the ability for any real change to occur.

Challenging use of force cultures

While the talking heads on TV rarely pause to take account of this complexity, the public spotlight now on police violence offers a moment of opportunity. People are paying real attention to the voices calling for new approaches to police use of force.

The coalition of groups that will be protesting the conference in Hoffman Estates are calling for the community to #StopITOA. Southorn says there are many ways to get involved and support the movement, whether it is by donating time for support work or taking part in a range of pressure-based actions. “Folks can share our campaign memes, read up on the issue, contribute to the #SWATStories project, submit to the #noSWATzone zine against police militarization, sign the petition and join the call-in day,” she said.

Whether advocates endorse police reform or rally for abolition, for real change to occur these use of force cultures must be made visible. Campaigners are connecting the dots, making links between the killings of unarmed black men, the aggressive SWAT raids of migrants’ homes and corporate-sponsored tactical training conventions like ITOA. Between warrior mentalities and the untreated PTSD and family abuse that spills over at home.

The ITOA conference is just one event in this international use of force industry. “Our organizing to end these trainings requires collaborating city to city,” Solomon said. “Across communities, with an array of tactics and political views, we are demanding shifts in funding, and real solutions to our many crises.”

These forms of nonviolent resistance go beyond calling for policy and legislation reform, to confront the financial, social and emotional problems with policing. “The culture of policing as violent and aggressive, on and off duty, reminds us that we need to reimagine safety and push for massive divestment from policing and the use of force industry,” Southorn said.

Dr. Anna Feigenbaum is a lecturer in Media and Politics at Bournemouth University. She is a co-author of the book Protest Camps (Zed 2013) and is currently writing a book about the political history of tear gas, forthcoming from Verso in 2015. Afeigenbaum [at] bournemouth.ac.uk. Follow @drfigtree on Twitter.

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[Photo: Would one expect unpoisoned crops to grow from poisoned seeds? (Source unknown)]

=By= Vandana Shiva

For more than a century, a poison cartel has experimented with and developed chemicals to kill people, first in Hitler’s concentration camps and the war, later by selling these chemicals as inputs for industrial agriculture.

In a little over half a century, small farmers have been uprooted everywhere, by design, further expanding the toxic fields of  the industrial agriculture.

In India, a country of small farmers, the assault of the poison cartel has driven millions off the land and pushed 300,000 farmers to suicide due to debt for costly seeds and chemicals. The GMO seeds have failed to control pests and weeds. Instead they are creating super-pests and super-weeds, trapping farmers deeper in debt.

And it is not just farmers who are dying. Our soil organisms and pollinators are dying. Our soils are dying. Our societies are dying. Our children are dying—because of diseases caused by food loaded with toxics.

The introduction of GMOs, by the Poison Cartel, has accelerated the crisis of disease and death. The only reason GMOs are forcibly introduced is to claim patents on seeds – to collect royalties from every farmer, every season, every year. In India more than Rs 50 Billion has illegally been collected by Monsanto, from the cotton farmers of India. Within a few years of illegally entering India, Monsanto started to control 95% of the cotton seed supply. Most of the 300,000 farmers suicides are in the cotton belt.

A patent of life and on seeds is a crime against farmers—who are trapped in debt for costly patented seed.

It is also a crime against nature. The claim, that by adding a gene Monsanto is “making” life, violates the self organising, self-renewing capacity of seed. The crime is further aggravating by pushing out bio-diversity, and spreading genetic pollution through the introduction of GMOs.

These issues are in courts everywhere.

We are now organizing a Monsanto Tribunal, and People’s Assemblies across the world, to put the Poison Cartel on trial at the Hague (14th to 16th October). Alongside the Tribunal People’s Assemblies are being self organised by local communities everywhere.

The Tribunal will both synthesize the existing crimes and violations for which Monsanto+Bayer is in courts across the world— in India, Europe, US, Mexico, Argentina, as well as expand the scope of criminal activity to include the crime of ecocide, the violation of the rights of nature.

Crimes against nature are connected to crimes against humanity.

Corporate crimes have become visible everywhere, the corporations become bigger, claiming absolute power, absolute rights, absolute immunity, deploying more violent tools against nature and people. The People’s Assembly will not just take stock of the past and present crimes. It will look at future crimes with the aim of preventing them. Monsanto is now becoming Monsanto Bayer. Syngenta is merging with Chem China. Dow has merged with Dupont. Movements from India, China, Germany, Switzerland challenging these mergers will be addressing the People’s Assembly and planning future actions.

The process of holding the Poison Cartel accountable is the culmination of 30 years of scientific, legal, social, political work by movements, and concerned citizens and scientists. This is the coalition that has got together to organize the Monsanto Tribunal and People’s Assembly.

The chemical corporations had expected to take over all seed by the year 2000, through GMOs, patents, mergers and acquisitions. But most seed is not genetically modified, most countries do not recognize seeds and plants as corporate inventions, hence patentable. Monsanto’s crimes have become so well known that it now wants to disappear itself through the Bayer acquisition. The Movements against Monsanto have already won. Now we need to shut down the poison cartel.

While GMOs fail, a new generation of genetic engineering based on CRISPR, gene editing, gene drives is being promoted to grab more patents and wreck the planet faster for the benefit of a few toxic billionaires.

And because we built movements to stop “free trade” through WTO—such as the mobilizations in Bangalore, Seattle, Cancun and Hong Kong—corporations are now pushing new free trade agreements, such as TTIP and TPP. The Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) systems in the new agreements are aimed at dismantling our constitutions, our rights, and our democracies.

Corporate rule over the past two decades has led to an economy where 1% of the rich control as much wealth as 99% of humanity. More accumulation of wealth through corporations will lead to the extermination of most people, as their lands and livelihoods, their resources and democracies, are grabbed for profits and control.

The Monsanto Tribunal and People’s Assemblies organised in the Hague are already having repercussions in the International Criminal Court. Since 2002 when the court was set up by the United Nations, it has largely investigated war crimes and genocide linked to conflicts. The court has jurisdiction over the 124 countries which have ratified the Rome statute. It is now widening its remit, to look at destruction of the environment and violation of people’s rights to their resources. The court will also prioritize crimes that result in the “destruction of the environment,” “exploitation of natural resources,” and the “illegal dispossession” of land. It also included an explicit reference to land-grabbing.

The ICC’s policy paper on case selection and prioritization declares: “The office [of the prosecutor] will give particular consideration to prosecuting Rome statute crimes that are committed by means of, or that result in, inter alia, the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources or the illegal dispossession of land.”

Patents on seeds are an illegal exploitation of natural resources which have pushes hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers to suicide. This is a crime worth investigating, and ending.

While courts can investigate crimes of the poison cartel, and this is important for justice, people have the power to change the way we grow our food. That is why hundreds of People’s Assemblies, being organized everywhere, will make commitments to create a healthy future of food and of the planet. From the People’s Assemblies we will launch a boycott campaign, to liberate our seeds and soils, our communities and societies, our planet and ourselves, from poisons and the rule of the poison cartel.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

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[Photo: Impressive array of County Sheriff, Police, and private security protect the interests of DAPL. Credit: Shailene Woodley video.]

=By= Sacheen Seitcham & Amy Goodman

.

DN! Intro

We go to North Dakota for an update on the ongoing Standoff at Standing Rock, where thousands of Native Americans representing more than 200 tribes from across the Americas are resisting the construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which is slated to carry oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oilfields through South Dakota, Iowa and into Illinois. On Saturday, over 100 people, who call themselves protectors, not protesters, were arrested at a peaceful march after they were confronted by police in riot gear, carrying assault rifles. They say police pepper-sprayed them and then arrested them en masse, and discharged rubber bullets to shoot down drones the water protectors were using to document the police activity. We are joined by Sacheen Seitcham, media activist with West Coast Women Warriors Media Cooperative who was arrested Saturday along with more than 80 other protesters and journalists at a construction site for the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in North Dakota with the ongoing Standoff at Standing Rock, where thousands of Native Americans, representing more than 200 tribes from across the Americas, are resisting the construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which is slated to carry oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oilfields through South Dakota, Iowa and into Illinois. On Saturday, over a hundred people, who call themselves protectors, not protesters, were arrested on a peaceful march after they were confronted by police in riot gear carrying assault rifles. They say police pepper-sprayed them, then arrested them en masse. This is footage from the Sacred Stone Camp.

POLICE OFFICER 1: You’re all under arrest!

WATER PROTECTOR 1: Hey!

POLICE OFFICER 1: Back off!

POLICE OFFICER 2: You’re all under arrest!

WATER PROTECTOR 1: Stay together! Stay together! Do not be afraid! Stand your prayer!

WATER PROTECTOR 2: Hey!

AMY GOODMAN: Organizers also say police discharged rubber bullets to shoot down drones the water protectors were using to document the police activity. In response to Saturday’s protest, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said, quote, “Today’s situation clearly illustrates what we have been saying for weeks, that this protest is not peaceful or lawful. … This protest was intentionally coordinated and planned by agitators with the specific intent to engage in illegal activities,” Kirchmeier said. Those arrested face charges including riot, reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.

On Sunday, hundreds of water protectors erected a new frontline camp of several structures and tipis directly on the proposed path of the Dakota Access pipeline. The new frontline camp is just to the east of North Dakota State Highway 1806 across from the site where on September 3rd, over Labor Day weekend, Dakota Access security guards unleashed pepper spray and dogs against Native Americans trying to protect a sacred ground from destruction. The water protectors also erected three road blockades that stopped traffic for hours on Highway 1806 Saturday to the north and south of the main resistance camp and along County Road 134. The group cited an 1851 treaty, which they say makes the entire area unceded sovereign land under the control of the Sioux. The blockades were dismantled late Sunday.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Sacheen Seitcham is an activist and journalist with West Coast Women Warriors Media Cooperative. She was arrested Saturday along with more than a hundred water protectors and journalists at a construction site for the Dakota Access pipeline. And Tara Houska, national campaigns director for Honor the Earth, she’s Ojibwe from Couchiching First Nation.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! OK, let’s first go to Sacheen. You were arrested Saturday. Can you take us through this day? What happened on Saturday?

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: What happened on Saturday was completely uncalled for, out of—out of the realm of any understanding of people who exist in this world who are trying to do something good and right. Basically, we had come to a lockdown that was trying to reach—we were trying to stop the construction of the DAPL pipeline that day. And our objective was to go walk with them in prayer and meet with them and to lift them up, to be with them as they were locked down. While we walked, we encountered quite a few police. And basically, they had little ATVs, where they were like dune buggies. They were following us. And then more and more police cars came. We actually had to avoid them by running down a hill into a gully and crossing a small river to go and reach the worksite. And at this point, there had been at least six to eight [inaudible] police cars and many officers on the opposite side of the fence from us. And so, we kept walking so that we could go and meet our objective, be at this worksite and to, you know, really prevent the pipeline from being built on sacred ground, on ancient burial sites where the ancestors are laying and should not be disturbed.

AMY GOODMAN: Sacheen?

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: Sorry. At this point, there had been about two—maybe roughly 200 of us. And we’re walking to the field with banners, singing. There was a lot of ceremony and prayer songs. There was a lot of smudging going on with people with sweetgrass and sage and tobacco. And this police vehicle rolled up beside us and basically said, “You’re all trespassing. You’re all under arrest.” So we kept going, because at this point we knew—too important what we’re doing. We can’t be intimidated or fearful. Regardless of what they do to us, we must continue and do what we are going to do to protect the sacred water, to protect the sacred ground. So we kept walking.

They kept massing more people of their—their cop riot gear. They had their lethal assault weapons, holding them. And, you know, they’re rubber bullets, but, as we know, rubber bullets can also be fatal. They had their batons out and were openly carrying around cans of mace in a threatening manner. And they eventually, as we walked, cut open the fence to come at us. And they started yelling and running towards us and yelling and inducing fear in people. And we were trying to create a sense of, you know, organization, where we were asking people, “Please, stay calm. Everybody, group together.” At this point, they just started being snatch-happy. They were just grabbing people, out of pocket, just, you know, throwing them off to the side. They threw a young woman who was trying to protect a child in the march. They smacked her in the ribs with a baton and, you know, broke it. That’s how forceful they were.

AMY GOODMAN: Sacheen, how were you arrested?

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: I was arrested—basically, the cops tried to tell us to go, and I was arrested, because we were walking away. So, we said, “OK, we’re going to leave. You’ve asked us to leave. You told us we’re trespassing.” And so, we all started walking away. And as we walked, the police came through to the front, and then they surrounded us at the back, creating a circle. They kettled us in. We were arrested for engaging in a riot and criminal trespass.

AMY GOODMAN: How many people, do you believe, have been arrested so far? We see the estimates between 87, around there, that the Sheriff’s Office is saying, to upwards of—CNN is reporting 127. The camp is reporting 140.

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: I’m going to go with the camp’s estimate. While I was being processed in the—we were all in the garage. They had no idea what to do with us. They were completely disorganized. The Sheriff’s Office had us all penned up in the garage for roughly two hours. And there was upwards of more than a hundred people down there.

AMY GOODMAN: What were you charged with?

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: I was charged with criminal trespass and engaging in a riot at DAPL worksite 127.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you ever brought to the Mandan jail?

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: Yes. Yes, I was.

AMY GOODMAN: And were you strip-searched?

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: Yes, I was made to disrobe. At this point, they were very disorganized, and I wasn’t treated, basically, the way other women were. I wasn’t forced to squat or cough. They just basically made me disrobe and then put my clothes back on. But, you know, at that point, there was a lot of other women who shared their stories with me that they were strip-searched, they were forced to squat, they were forced to cough and be treated in that manner.

AMY GOODMAN: And how long were you held?

SACHEEN SEITCHAM: I got to the jail, I would say, roughly around maybe 2:00 in the afternoon, and I was released at 7:00 a.m. yesterday morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sacheen Seitcham, I want to thank you for being with us. Sacheen is a member of the West Coast Women Warriors Media Cooperative. She was arrested Saturday along with scores of other people, both protesters, or, as they call themselves, protectors, as well as journalists, at the construction site for the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. When we come back, we’ll speak to Tara Houska about the overall plan. We called Dakota Access pipeline but weren’t able to get them on. The plan right now—is the pipeline accelerating construction? And then we’ll speak with Shailene Woodley. Shailene Woodley, the actress, who went to the Dakota Access pipeline protests, she was arrested. She was strip-searched, like so many others. Stay with us.

Author Name Bio

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[Large amounts of coal ash in the Neuse River from Duke Energy’s H.F. Lee Plant after Hurricane Matthew. Credit: Waterkeeper Alliance.]

=By= Sue Sturgis

Inches of waste from a coal ash pit found floating on the surface of the Neuse River at Duke Energy’s H.F. Lee power plant upstream of Goldsboro, North Carolina, following record flooding from Hurricane Matthew: 1

Tons of exposed coal ash at the Lee plant: more than 1 million

Number of days that the Lee plant’s ash pits, which contain toxic metals including arsenic and thallium, were submerged by Matthew’s floodwaters: more than 7

Days before the Waterkeeper Alliance announced the spill that Duke Energy issued a press release saying it found only “minor erosion” of the Lee ash pit and claimed that “the amount of material displaced would not even fill the bed of an average pickup truck”: 3

Days after the Waterkeeper Alliance’s announcement that Duke Energy tried to downplay the spill by saying that the waste was a byproduct of burning coal called “cenospheres,” which the company claims are “inert” but which scientific experts say can be toxic: 1

Under North Carolina’s coal ash management law, year in which Duke Energy is scheduled to excavate the coal ash at the Lee plant due to flooding risks: 2028

Number of farm animals killed in the flooding in North Carolina, with their carcasses and waste from inundated industrial barns swept into the floodwaters: millions

Number of North Carolina’s hog lagoons — massive open pits that store the animals’ fecal waste, which can contain heavy metals, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other pathogens — that were inundated, with floodwaters spreading the waste into the environment, according to state regulators: 10 to 12

North Carolina’s rank among pork-producing states, with the industry concentrated in the flood-prone coastal plain: 2

Number of times more likely people of color are than non-Hispanic whites to live within three miles of an industrial hog operation in North Carolina: 1.52

Gallons of raw sewage, which can contain pathogens, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and hormone disrupters, that spilled into Hannah Creek, a tributary of the Neuse, in the largest of several Matthew-related sewage spills from the wastewater treatment plant in Benson, North Carolina: 3 million

Number of Matthew-related sewage spills reported just in the city of Jacksonville, Florida: 70

Before Matthew, number of floods and severe storms causing at least $1 billion in losses in the U.S. so far this year: 12

Number of those catastrophic floods that occurred inland as a result of heavy rain: 4

Of those four catastrophic inland floods, percent that occurred in the South: 100

Factor by which that breaks the previous record of catastrophic floods dating back to 1980: 2

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[Photo: Welcome to Yemen. Freedom Secular site]

=By= David Swanson

Will the Gulf of Tonkin Fit into the Red Sea? Just a geography question. Or maybe it’s a different sort of question.

Do a web search for “USS Mason” and you will find countless “news” reports about how this poor innocent U.S. ship has been fired upon, and fired upon again, and how it has fired back “countermeasures” in self-defense.

But you might stumble onto one article from CNN (don’t watch the totally misleading video posted just above the text) that says:

“Officials Saturday night were uncertain about what exactly happened, if there were multiple incoming missiles or if there was a malfunction with the radar detection system on the destroyer.”

So, was the poor wittle innocent destroyer fired at or not?

The simple but apparently impossible point to grasp is that it does not matter. The United States destabilized Yemen with a massive killing spree known as a “drone war.” The United States armed Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemen with jets, supplied the jets, supplied the bombs (and cluster bombs), refueled the jets midair, provided the targeting information, provided the cover at the United Nations, and deployed its ships to the coast of Yemen as part of its effort to achieve U.S./Saudi power in Yemen through mass murder and devastation. If one group or another or nobody in Yemen fired some harmless shots at a U.S. ship the outcome is the same: zero legal or moral or practical justification to continue or escalate the killing, and zero logic in calling such escalation “defensive.”

Likewise, speculation — including in the CNN video posted just above its article — that Iran was behind the possibly fictional attacks on the U.S. ship does not matter. The conclusions that can be drawn are identical whether or not such baseless and wishful theories are true.

This is the point of my use of examples of past similar (non)-incidents like the Gulf of Tonkin Non-Incident in my book War Is A Lie. The point is not that because the U.S. military lied about Tonkin it’s likely to be lying again next time (though that’s a fair conclusion). The point is actually completely different. The point is that when you put U.S. ships on the coast of Vietnam and use them to fire on Vietnam, the question of whether anyone ever fires back is not a question of aggression against the United States of America.

Let’s recall what (didn’t) happen on August 4, 1964. U.S. war ships were on the coast of North Vietnam and were engaged in military actions against North Vietnam. So President Lyndon Johnson knew he was lying when he claimed theAugust 4 (non)-attack was unprovoked. And any ordinary person could have known he was lying without awaiting any classified leaks. One simply had to check to see which coast of the United States the Gulf of Tonkin was on. (Same with the Red Sea.)

Had the Gulf of Tonkin Incident happened, it could not have been unprovoked. The same ship that was supposedly attacked on August 4 had damaged three North Vietnamese boats and killed four North Vietnamese sailors two days earlier, in an action where the evidence suggests the United States fired first, although the opposite was claimed. In fact, in a separate operation days earlier, the United States had begun shelling the mainland of North Vietnam.

But the supposed attack on August 4 was actually, at most, a misreading of U.S. sonar. The ship’s commander cabled the Pentagon claiming to be under attack, and then immediately cabled to say his earlier belief was in doubt and no North Vietnamese ships could be confirmed in the area. President Johnson was not sure there had been any attack when he told the American public there had been. Months later he admitted privately: “For all I know, our navy was just shooting at whales out there.” But by then Johnson had the authorization from Congress for the war he’d wanted. There the parallel breaks down, of course, as President Barack Constitutional Scholar Obama cannot be bothered with Congressional authorizations. Yet he still requires a certain level of public tolerance.

In a 2003 documentary called The Fog of War, Robert McNamara, who had been Secretary of “Defense” at the time of the Tonkin lies, admitted that the August 4 attack did not happen and that there had been serious doubts at the time. He did not mention that on August 6 he had testified in a joint closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees along with Gen. Earl Wheeler. Before the two committees, both men claimed with absolute certainty that the North Vietnamese had attacked on August 4.

McNamara also did not mention that just days after the Tonkin Gulf non-Incident, he had asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide him with a list of further U.S. actions that might provoke North Vietnam. He obtained the list and advocated for those provocations in meetings prior to Johnson’s ordering such actions on September 10. These actions included resuming the same ship patrols and increasing covert operations, and by October ordering ship-to-shore bombardment of radar sites (exactly what the U.S. just did in Yemen).

A 2000-2001 National Security Agency (NSA) report concluded there had been no attack at Tonkin on August 4 and that the NSA had deliberately lied. The Bush Administration did not allow the report to be published until 2005, due to concern that it might interfere with lies being told to get the Afghanistan and Iraq wars started.

On March 8, 1999, Newsweek had published the mother of all lies: “America has not started a war in this century.” No doubt Team Bush thought it best to leave that pretense undisturbed.

When the United States was lied more deeply into the Vietnam War, all but two senators voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. One of the two, Wayne Morse (D-OR), told other senators that he had been told by the Pentagon that the alleged attack by the North Vietnamese had been provoked. Obviously any attack would have been provoked. But the attack itself was fictional, and that’s the point people seem to latch onto, missing the more important understanding that it does not matter.

Senator Morse’s colleagues did not oppose him on the grounds that he was mistaken, however. Instead, a senator told him, “Hell, Wayne, you can’t get into a fight with the president when all the flags are waving and we’re about to go to a national convention. All [President] Lyndon [Johnson] wants is a piece of paper telling him we did right out there, and we support him.”

Hell, Swanson, you can’t raise scruples about blowing people up in Yemen when traitors are failing to stand during the National Anthem and Hillary Clinton took big bucks from Saudi Arabia and Boeing into her family foundation to get those jets there and the Democrats are trying to paint Donald Trump as too dovish

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org andWarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
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Had enough of their lies, escapism,
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