4strugglemag

Issue 2 - Summer 2004

Iraq, U.S. Elections, Black August: Views, Thoughts, and Analysis from Some of America’s Longest Held Political Prisoners

4strugglemag II, here it is. This issue focuses on three topics. We continue to analyze and critique the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and the accompanying growing police state in the U.S. Several articles (Tom Manning’s, Ron Del Raine’s and Bill Dunne’s) tie in the prisoner abuse going on in Iraq with the prisons in America. Second, 4strugglemag takes a hard look at elections in the U.S., and offers advice for the presidential race. Third, being a summer release, we are including a section on “Black August.” This grassroots month-long commemoration of the New African struggle for justice and liberation is hailed and explained.

We welcome further discussion and analysis. Understanding is important, but taking action in support of your thoughts and beliefs is key. 4strugglemag supports and encourages participation in all anti-war resistance. We especially urge people to let the government, the country, and the world know that Bush’s wars and police state are opposed by millions, by demonstrating at the Republican and Democrat conventions this summer.

The next issue will be out in December after the U.S. elections. In the meantime we’ll keep on struggling—hope you do too.

Dynamic Peace and Justice

Jaan Karl Laaman, editor
#W41514
P.O. Box 100
South Walpole MA
02071 USA

Table of Contents

Jaan Karl Laaman Locked in Solidary Confinement
Imperialist ball and chain............................................................by Bill Dunne
The Iraq War, Occupation Governments
and U.S. Imperialism..............................................by Alvaro Luna Hernandez
In My Time...........................................................................by Tom Manning
Occupation, Prisons, and Torture...................................................by Sumoud
The Good Guys Versus The Bad Guys....................................by Ron del Raine
U.S. Elections, 2004..............................................................by Jaan Laaman
The Danger of the USA Patriot Act................from Revolutionary Worker #1242
Danger During the 2004 Election.............................................by Jaan Laaman
African AIDS Orphan Campaign..............................................by Jaan Laaman
Echoes.....................................by Albert Woodfox, a.ka. Albert Shaka Cinque
Black August: A Celebration of Freedom Fighters...............by Doc Holiday et al.
It Ain’t Over Wit’...........................................................by Ali Khalid Abdullah
In the Eyes of a Young Conscious Puerto Rican on
What Black August Has Meant to Him.................................by Ernesto Santiago
Jasper, TX.............................................................................by Marilyn Buck
Excerpts...................................................................selected by Ojore Lutalo
Prisoners’ Justice Day
Reaction to Kamook and the Arlo Looking Cloud Trial.............by Leonard Peltier
The Trial and Conviction of Arlo Looking Cloud
in the Murder of Anna Mae Aquash.....................................by Barry Bacharach
A.N.S.W.E.R. Action Plan
26 Years of Resistance: Free the MOVE 9
Political Prisoners in the United States.....................................by Jaan Laaman

Jaan Karl Laaman Locked in Solitary Confinement

from Democracy Uprising! A 258-mile march traveling from the Democratic National Convention to the Republican National Convention (www.dnc2rnc.org)

corrected as of 08/03/04)

The DNC2RNC March passed by the walls of the MCI Walpole Maximum Security prison, in Walpole, MA. Street theater was performed concerning the injustices of the prison-industrial complex (immigration, women's rights, political prisoners, eco-terrorism, the drug war, police brutality...) and also the duality of George W. Bush and John Kerry. The DNC2RNC march does not officially support prisoner Jaan Karl Laaman (who, among other actions, was convicted for the bombings of many corporate and government buildings in solidarity with the South African anti-apartheid movement), due to the objections of some marchers. However, the majority of marchers remained at the prison to read statements from the political prisoner and the Ohio 7, as well as a list of demands to the Superintendent of the Walpole prison and Attorney General John Ashcroft concerning the prison system.

Statement from Jaan Karl Laaman

End The War!!! Push Back The Police State!!!

Let me salute you all for being out here today. It is so important that we show the country and the world that many people in the u.s. hate this war and the corresponding domestic police state that is getting stronger and taking ever more human and civil rights away from the public.

The Democrats came to Boston with their nomination show and in the process made parts of the city look like maximum-security prison yards. Their so called free speech zone with its multiple fences and razor wire, looks similar to the recreation pen area of Walpole's segregation unit. Just for wanting to use the subway, people and their bags are being searched, name and identification are demanded. The prisoners behind these Walpole walls are subjected to very similar policies. America is being taken into a war and turned into a police state like never before. We must oppose and resist it.

Within actual prisons, things are getting worse too. Even the official governors commission that recently investigated the Massachusetts Department of Corrections found serious problems, especially in the classification and disciplinary process. There are virtually no education or training programs in Walpole, not even AA or drug counselling.

As a political prisoner, I've been repeatedly denied transfers and kept in a very locked down section of the prison for the past 14 months. My lovely girlfriend, the woman who helps me stay in touch with the world, has been barred from visiting me.

Needless to say, I would so Love to be on your side of these walls, so I could join you in your journey to New York City and the Republican National Convention. I am speaking for all Political Prisoners when I say raise your voices even louder when you go to New York to oppose Bush, his wars and police state. And when you are marching, chanting, we ask you to carry our voices and hopes out there with you.

Freedom is a constant struggle..

Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner Jaan Karl Laaman.

Statement from the Ohio 7

Anti-Imperialist political prisoner, Jaan, was thrown in isolation on Friday afternoon, July 30th, because the institution got wind of this demonstration, and of his statement supporting it. Jaan knew this might happen. It should be noted that, regardless of the consequences, Jaan continues to choose to stand up for what is right. He continues to exemplify how we should all act. He called for more sacrifice unto himself by standing on his principles. And we so respect and admire him for that.

Our full support goes out to you marchers and good weather, healing sustenance and bold spirits to you.

Peace,
Mercedes Scott, Kazi Toure, and the members of the Ohio 7

List of Demands

Jaan Karl Laaman has been held as a political prisoner for nearly twenty years for being a member of an anti-apartheid group that took direct action against an oppressive system. While in prison he has faced severe repression for expressing his political views and for corresponding with supporters on the outside. Laaman was placed into solitary confinement for writing a letter to the DNC2RNC March, a non-violent group marching from the Democratic National Convention in Boston to the Republican National Convention in New York City to support direct democracy. He has been refused visiting rights with his girlfriend for fourteen months. We the undersigned issue the following list of demands to the Warden of Walpole State Prison and Attorney General John Ashcroft:

1. End the de facto racial segregation of American prisons.

2. Freedom to express political views without fear of repression.

3. Freedom to organize prison unions and to bargain collectively.

4. An end to all physical and mental abuse against prisoners.

5. An end to the privatization of prisons and the resultant corporate exploitation.

6. Implementation of rehabilitative and restorative justice programs in place of counterproductive incarceration.

7. An end to prison control units and other cruel and unusual punishment.

8. Direct community involvement in the punitive decision-making process.

9. Freedom for Jaan Karl Laaman to express his political views without fear of reprisal.

10. Access to Jaan Karl Laaman for his loved ones.

11. Release from solitary confinement.

12. Immediate release of Jaan Karl Laaman and all political prisoners.

Please e-mail, write or call:

David Nolan - Superintendent
P.O. Box 100
South Walpole, MA 02071
Phone: (508) 660-8000

John Ashcroft - Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Imperialist ball and chain

by Bill Dunne

The media is full of revelations lately about torture and gratuitous treatment of prisoners by U.S. occupation forces in the U.S. Gulag Archipelago’s newest outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Virtually every new story pushes the beginning of the brutality farther back and expands the scope of its victimization. It is now apparent that from the time the U.S. proxy forces –accompanied by U.S. ‘special’ forces –began taking turf –and prisoners –from the Taliban in Afghanistan and even before the U.S. army entered Baghdad, U.S. captives were carried viciously. ‘Liberation’ for prisoners of the conquerors meant humiliation, long periods chained in “stress” positions, subject to heat, cold, noise, hunger, sleep deprivation, beating, sexual assault, dog bites and death. Further stories will undoubtedly expose more, more perverse and more severe use of torture as an instrument of U.S. policy in the name of “freedom and democracy.” The mechanisms and consequences of the policy have not and will not be made so apparent.

The initial spin on the torture story was that it was just “a few bad apples” among the low level national guard (read: not real) soldiers only recently succumbing to the pressures of war. Their immediate officers were only culpable to the extent of not knowing about it, a peccadillo warranting only reprimands. Higher officers and civilian officials were not culpable at all. But that spin has become another casualty of war as the scandal spins out of control. Not just “a few bad apples” but military police and intelligence units from California, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, and elsewhere, in addition to the Maryland unit whose torture photos front the scandal, have now been revealed as participants. And denials, buck passing and damage control notwithstanding, various intelligence agencies and upper echelon officers and officials, both military and “civilian” have been exposed as setting the conditions for and instigating the widespread use of torture, knowing about it, and at least condoning it.

The Red Cross has complained about the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq since at least last fall, and longer about Afghanistan. As the accommodation that allows it entrée into various prisons requires, it notifies and seeks reforms through the governments operating the prisons. Even the mainstream press has reported that the Red Cross has done so voluminously that even the highest and most removed officials claims that they didn’t know at all lack credibility. The U.S. army’s own investigations –and not just those launched after torture erupted in to public consciousness –greatly expand the length and breadth of terrorism of prisoners. And that is in addition to the testimony now beginning to emerge of the few soldiers to refuse and resist the abuse and that of the victims themselves.

The incessant pressure to at least appear to be getting “intelligence” from captives, most of whom have none to give and some of whom have strong reasons for not giving it, and U.S. agencies’ response to that pressure further betray the fact that torture is resurgent as official U.S. policy. Many circumstances illustrate that fact: the construction of a “law free” prison in Guantanamo Bay; the loosening of CIA’s and FBI’s interrogation rules; secret and incommunicado prisons; “jurisdiction shopping” for torture friendly countries in which to hold “detainees” for interrogation; and the dispatch of Guantanamo Bay’s commanding general to Iraq to improve intelligence gathering not long before the current crop of abuses got rolling, for example. But a policy of torture cannot be openly acknowledged –verily, it must be denied. And such a policy requires the proverbial boots on the ground to implement. The two requirements are mutually exclusive unless the “boots” can be set up to take the beef for the policy.

To do that, the ruling class needs to induce largely young, working class soldiers –who are, for the most part, decent human beings frequently searching only for a way out of poverty and lives limited otherwise by the economic, social, and political tides of late capitalism --to commit anti-human atrocities, to terrorize in the name of fighting terrorism. It must do so without leaving a public trail of encouraging and condoning such behaviour, or a paper trail of written orders, field manuals or requisitions of tools of torture, prisoner records, etc. And it must take the plan and practice of self-executing --i.e. not require visible command and control. The now obviously wide scale of torture and absence of “smoking guns” incriminating policy level officials or officers not only show that the ruling class is doing this, but that it is succeeding at it.

People not pathological do not easily commit atrocities against other people, especially up close and personal. To get them to do so requires that their “people” status be magnified and that of their victims be withdrawn. The military does this by recruiting people who are socially and economically isolated and insecure to some degree and instilling in them a belief that they are valued members of a community and of a team at least, and more like a mythological family. Who has not heard the bombastic and ubiquitous radio ads hawking the military as “ YOUR team” (HU-AH!) in which you can be your best (HU-AH!), all you can be (HU-AH!), a leader (HU-AH!), an army in the company of heroes, etc.

Intensive indoctrination of recruits (ironically often involving physical “stress”) convinces them that they are part of a great institution (Army, Navy, America, etc), that they are effective, potent, skilled, valuable to a tight knit group of comrades within the institution with whom they share more than is possible than with people outside the gang --oops! institution --as well as reciprocal loyalty impliedly to the death (for what else is the military about?). Identity is thus inculcated with the organization, with its goals, and fellow members that transcends previous socialization and even former “by the book” rules.

At the same time, the enemy must be diminished, depreciated, disparaged and demonized. The people even possibly on enemy status must be reduced to non-persons, to unlawful combatants, creatures of no or evil values, rag heads, useless eaters. They must be changed from workers and parents and people protecting home and hearth from greedy domestic and imperialist exploiters and oppressors into terrorists, dead enders, remnants of defected and discredited dictatorship, enemies of freedom and democracy and inherently vicious and violent. Beyond legitimizing the “shock and awe” of modern
techno-war, that makes it okay to kick in people’s doors in the dead of night, brutalize and threaten them, ransack their meager and already war ravaged homes, drag thousands of them off to oppressive dungeons. And it makes it okay to torture them. They are, after all, not real people like good Amerikans, might harbour ill intent towards fellow Amerikans, and are dangerous because they are cunning, wily and sly.

With this conditioning and the muddy chain of command over detention operations, unwritten extortions about the importance of“intelligence” and that the “scum bag” prisoners must be “prepared” for interrogation --physically and emotionally weakened to blackmail with photos of their humiliation --find fertile psycho ground. That this pressure is applied in isolation from the larger society -- friends, family, outside involvement --impedes the reality check of social context and conscience. That the pressure comes from superiors and cogniscenti within the organization’s shadowy byways, people “in the know,” privy to secrets of the interrogation room, closer to the inner circle of the gang --organization, I mean! --makes acceding to it attractive. The implication that much worse than what the rank-and-file is being asked to perform is occurring elsewhere in the system that makes the following program acceptable. The dark concrete corners of small hours dungeons and faceless, transient, powerless, isolated sub-human prisoners held against real and imagined needs of the organization makes the opportunity to implement illegal policy.

Throw into the mixture a few “old hands” with the requisite inclinations from the military and civilian police and prison apparatus and the stage is set for scenes like those in the torture scandal pictures. The main movers were former civilian prison guards. Junior guards are further pressured to “do the needful” because they confuse the military and social authority of such seemingly superior participants. They do not want to be seen as unwilling to do the right thing by their organization or comrades or as weak or lame. Being seen thusly is uncomfortable in any situation and especially the relative isolation of a military unit in a foreign occupation. In a war zone, the consequence of resisting peer pressure can be deadly.

Seeing that torturers are made and not born does not absolve those who were made from the responsibility of their actions; it is merely ameliorative. Most soldiers do not and did not succumb to pressures to commit atrocities. Some demanded specific written orders to commit torture, perhaps recognizing they would not be forthcoming. Others undoubtedly acted directly against the abuses. Still other reported the abuses, which went nowhere within the military; it was not until the whistleblower’s photographs became public that the scandal broke. He said the action was compelled because what the pictures showed was “unchristian.” This rejection of torture shows that education and social belief systems are armor --not perfect, but some protection-- against the psychological conditioning that allows torturers to be made. Understanding that they are made, however, shows it is the ruling class that bears the lion’s share of responsibility through its deliberate creation of a plausibly deniable policy of torture. Its manipulations took advantage of the system’s failure of socialization that denied the weak and ignorant the intellectual tools to avoid being duped into atrocious behavior. The existence of such scapegoats, whatever their capability, does not absolve the ruling class of this responsibility --and magnifies it rather than ameliorates it.

These dynamics underlying the torture scandal and more broadly, making the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations so draconian have their analogue in the apparatus of repression. Police agencies create the same increasingly exclusive identification using the same psycho-conditioning tactics the military used to create its torturers. These agencies of repression have become authoritarian structures that increasingly see themselves as “the
thin blue line” outside which everyone is a potential “perp,” comparable to the military’s “green line” in Iraq, outside of which everyone is a potential terrorist. Police hierarchies demand and assume that ever greater powers to spy on (ie. gather “intelligence”), search and impose limitations on and imprison the very people they are supposed to protect, and treat their rights to resist these encroachments as impediments to “fighting crime.” The military similarly devolved from bringing Iraqis and Afghanis “freedom and democracy” to curtailing them as impediments to fighting terrorism. The police apparatus increasingly divorces itself from the society it is supposed to protect and serve by skewing that mission into control and domination, much as the military has switched from “liberation” and reconstruction to occupation and repression.

Moreover, like the military’s discredited spin on the torture scandal, police atrocities are always treated as the depreciations of “a few bad apples.” Never are they reported, let alone explored, in the context of stemming from flawed policies, attitudes and institutional cultures that allow their endless repetition. Unjustified police killings. Tortures of suspects for information and of prisoners just because they are “them” to the police “us.” Falsification of evidence. “Testilying.” Framing defendants. Militaristic repression of popular demonstrations. Confiscation, a.k.a. forfeiture. Brutality. Overreaction. Excessive force. Corruption. Ad nauseam. And a “blue wall of silence” to protect it all. Across the country, instances of these crimes occur repeatedly and frequently, but are denied, downplayed, described as reasonable or at least not improper, or written off as the excesses of “a few bad apples.” And even where some bad-apple status is acknowledged, the agents of repression involved are not held accountable to nearly the same extent as non agents are in similar circumstance, if at all, nor is any culpability assigned to their agencies.

In this light, the danger represented by the U.S. policy of torture and the attendant mendacity exposed in far off places is manifest. In the current atmosphere, it is politically incorrect to criticize the military or its denizens --except for a few lowly “bad apples” who will be sacrificed on the altar of public relations. And even they have defenders --verily more than do the soldiers who did the right thing. Without such criticism to the point of revulsion, however, the torture policy and the context in which it can be largely okay will be returned to the home front; indeed, it is already happening. That will coarsen the society by depreciating personal and social liberties and making violations of them seem less significant or legitimate defense of homeland security instead of violations.

People will leave the military, where such repressive tactics will move laterally beyond the war zones, if not rooted out, for police and prison and other social administrative jobs in the U.S. Many police and prison employees are already in the military as reservists, meaning the legacy of the torture policy will find its way into the domestic apparatus even sooner. And people without military experience will see the message, too. Who will tell them what is okay for a suspected terrorist or anyone who might know anything about one in Iraq is not okay for a suspect in Indiana –or that a terrorist (or anyone who might know anything about one) is worse than a suspected killer, rapist, robber, dope fiend, traffic scofflaw, leash law violator (or anyone who might know anything about one)? Unless they know--and we know-- that torture and repression are anathema to freedom and democracy, the freedom and democracy the military and civilian contractor torturers bring back is likely to resemble that they left in Iraq and Afghanistan.

June 1, 2004

Bill Dunne #10916-086
P.O. Box 091001
Atwater CA
95301 USA

The Iraq War, Occupation Governments and U.S. Imperialism

by Alvaro Luna Hernandez

Oil Emperor Bubba Bush and his fascist ruling class clique have, again, imposed their “Texas-style" colonial war of plunder and occupation against the Iraqi people. The Iraq war has nothing to do with getting rid of a tyrant, nor in bringing "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. It has everything to do with the blood-thirsty military adventurism of U.S. imperialism and its hegemonic rule around the world, in order to privatize Iraq's oil industry and to fatten the bank accounts of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Halliburton and its corporate lackeys.

It is disgusting to see how U.S. imperialism and its ruling class have used the September 11th tragedy to whip-up its coniving "patriotic frenzy" amongst the American people, by playing out the devastation caused by it. The gross human rights violations that occcurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and the occupation government's war crimes against those Iraqi people that resist the occupation, are criminal acts that must not go unpunished. Those who resist the occupation are now characterized as "terrorists" by the colonizers, to justify war crimes and to relieve them of any obligations they have to the colonized under international laws and the Geneva Convention on the treatment of political prisoners and prisoners of war. How many years did it take the world community to break away from the tutelage of racist regimes that recognized Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist" and recognized him as the political prisoner, prisoner of war, that he really was? Such is the modis operandi of the colonizer - to "criminalize" legitimate actions of a resistance movement and its fighters, whose armed actions against the occupying force is justified under international law in that colonialism is a "crime against humanity." Hundreds of us are now imprisoned in U.S. prisons and jails as "Criminals" simply because of our ardent opposition to the policies of U.S. colonialism and imperialism and the fascist-like police state in the United States. Bubba Bush and his fascist clique want to make us think that the "incidents" at Abu Ghraib were isolated and coming from a few "bad apples" and does not represent the core values of what America is all about. What utter hypocrisy and lies! The truth of the matter is that such practices are reflective of the true heart and soul of the criminal nature and history of a dying colonialism and imperialism that must search for its helpless victims in order to cripple them, to suck their blood and to steal their country's natural resources. Imperialism is a vampire-like system. When Bush was the Governor of Texas prison conditions were then, and continue to be to this very day, brutal torture chambers and warehouses of pain and murder, particularly in "administrative segregation" - a prison within a prison - where this writer has been confined for the last 2 years, for resisting the injustices and racism of the prison.

Under Bush's Texas prison watch, these brutal and murderous prison conditions were declared illegal and the pattern of prison-guard brutality against prisoners
was described as a "culture of violence" (Ruiz v. Johnson, 37
F.Supp. 2d 855). Almost all prison employees are military retirees,
not only in Texas but in the United States as a whole. Charles Graner,
Jr. who orchestrated the Abu Ghraib prison crimes in Iraq one half of the CIA, DIA and the military police worked as a state prison guard in Greene,
Pennsylvania. Graners are the "war hero" scumbag darlings of these imperialist war gangsters who personally profit from these wars.

In the 19th century, U.S. colonialism annexed over 50% of the Mexican national territory in its colonial war of plunder and land grabs against the Chicano Mexicano people.

Monstrous war crimes were committed by the "military police," the infamous terrorist police organized in the "Texas Rangers," similar to what is now happening in Iraq, but under the fascist colonial cover of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the uncivilized savages, as they called indigenous people and natives of the original homeland. U.S. imperialism knows no "value system," but the criminal subjugation of its victims into submission through brutal, murderous tortures and death. Such is what happened at Abu Ghraib prison. We refuse to be blinded by the "flowery" sugar-coated words of the colonizer.

The world community must demand that Bubba Bush and his gang of war criminals in the State Department and the Pentagon be put to trial under Nuremberg principles of international law before a world tribunal and be made to pay for their history of war crimes against the Iraqi people, and other historical war crimes against the Chicano Mexicano peoples, their massacre of indigenous tribes and nations, their plantation-slavery system imposed on African Americans and their history of enslavement of internal colonies they keep imprisoned through these same imperialist "values" and cultures of oppression and genocide within the domestic confines of the United States.

We must resist U.S. colonialism and imperialism and demand that the U.S. pull out of Iraq and that the troops be brought home immediately!

May 25, 2004

Alvaro Luna Hernandez #255735
Hughes Unit Route 2, Box 4400
Gatesville, Texas
76507 USA

* for more info on the case of the political
imprisonment of the writer, please visit
www.freealvaro.org.

In My Time

by Tom Manning

I became aware through newspaper photographs that the prison cells built by KBR/Halliburton at Guantanamo Bay [Gitmo] do not have plumbing. That surprised me, considering the price that KBY/Halliburton charged the U.S. tax payers for those cells.

In the early sixties I was a Seabee in the U.S. Navy, stationed at Quonset Point/Davisville, Rhode Island, with Mobile Construction Battalion One [MCB #1].

We were deployed for sea duty, to Gitmo, to build emergency housing for ten thousand Cuban refugees that America anticipated would flee Cuba for the confines of Gitmo, in 1958, when Fidel liberated this Island nation. It took nine months to complete, and was named “Tin City.”

We dredged hundreds of tons of living coral from the ocean in proximity to the base, and deposited it in a lagoon that was enlarged to accommodate the project. The coral was crushed and leveled to form a floor surrounded by cliff-like excavated walls on three sides, with one side remaining open toward the sea.

Then the housing was built, of Quonset huts, which are corrugated tin barrel-like dwellings in groups, or pods, of nine huts; eight sleeping huts with no plumbing surrounding a ninth hut that was supplied with fresh water and sewage. I worked on the plumbing, from digging the supply and waste ditches, then leveling them, to laying in the supply and waste pipes and septic tanks and leach fields. I was on the crews that installed twelve toilets, twelve wash basins and twelve head shower rooms, in each central (9th) hut.

During our time in Cuba, we had to adapt to the blistering heat by working tropical hours; working from 5 in the morning, until 2 in the afternoon, with a half hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks. We further, voluntarily opted to forgo the lunch and 2 breaks so that we could get off the job site by 1 PM, due to the mid-day heat.

Given this personal knowledge of the area, and recognizing the surrounding terrain in the current news photos as the old Seabee/Kittery Beach area, my initial thought was that it would be terrible to be confined in a metal cage there, without adequate water.

Add to that, being at the mercy of young, poorly trained military personnel, for what water you do get, and what toilet access you get.

I have been held in cells during my time in U.S. prisons [24 years, 6 months, at this writing] without water or toilet a number of times. I have been subjected to the whims of whatever guards happened to be working the block on any given shift. I know that having a guard that consistently acts in a proper manner is the exception, not the rule.

While thinking about how to write about these thoughts and observations, concerning water, the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, have come out. And the information and pictures continue to come.

Automatically my mind goes into replay mode.

During my time in U.S. prisons my right knee has been permanently damaged by being stomped on during a cell beating by five guards [Walpole State Prison, Ten Block DSU, 1969]. The leg was up on a bunk while I was on my back on the floor with several guards “monkey piling” me, another guard stomped the knee, hyper-extending it, causing me to pass out from the pain. After that, I only had 15% flex of the knee, until I had it surgically corrected, when I got out of prison in 1971.

Shortly after being captured in 1985, I was body slammed onto a concrete floor while cuffed to a waist-chain, with black-boxed handcuffs and leg irons. That resulted in a fractured hip that wasn’t repaired until 1999 with a total artificial left hip replacement. The Motrin I took for pain in the intervening years gave me ulcers and damaged my kidneys, which now function at less than 50% efficiency. I’ve often had to take iron pills to overcome anemia, caused by internal bleeding, and am currently on calcium pills to make up for the calcium my kidneys are spilling.

My shoulders have both been severely damaged during beatings, while I was cuffed behind my back, during forced blood takings. This resulted in surgery on both shoulders. These joint surgeries on the knee, hip and shoulders, is evidenced by twenty one collective inches of surgical scars, not counting three orthoscopic surgeries.

I have been stun-gunned twelve times in one night, resulting in temporary paralysis of my left side, like a stroke. And then, on two other occasions I was also stun-gunned, once each time.

I have been photographed naked numerous times in Federal prison, and also by NJ State police and the FBI; gratuitously strip searched uncountable times.

Dragged and slung around by leg irons, into walls and up and down stairs.

Strapped to a gurney with my head overhanging the front, and then run through the prison; rammed into every door-frame or door and corners.

Tear gassed in my cell at least six times.

Forced to exit my cell naked, with my fingers laced on top of my head and told by a squad of six ninja-turtle suited guards that if I lowered my arms it would be considered an act of aggression and treated accordingly, while a German Shepherd dog was barking so close to my genitals that I could feel his breath and spittle striking me. Then forced to run down six flights of stairs, like that, with a dog and handler at every landing, shepherding us along.

The group that I was in was then herded into a large visiting room where all 24 of us stayed, naked, from 2 AM, until 8 AM, while our cells were wrecked; our personal property destroyed.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been left in cells for hours while black-box handcuffed and leg ironed; spending as much as 17 and 20 hours in such restraints during transport and waiting delays, with no water and no toilet access. I have numb areas on my hands, wrists and ankles, from this treatment, and from being kept in control unit prisons for years, locked down for 23 hours or more a day; never less than this (6 years in NJ; 3 years at Marion; 3 years at ADX, Florence; and 2 years in Walpole, MA in the 1960’s) for a total of 14 years of lock down.

So pardon my being unpleasantly bemused at the “shocked and amazed” reaction of the U.S. public to this most recent “scandal.” I’ll be interested to see how long “the public’s” attention can be focused on this one. And I invite every prisoner, and ex-prisoner, who reads this to sit down and write out and send out her/his own experiences of imprisonment and abuse. OR, tell of the most memorable abuse you witnessed.

Example: when I was newly arrived at Trenton NJ’s control unit, I heard laughter and whimpering. I looked out of my cell to see a very fat, young white prisoner stretched out on the floor, his arms extended beyond his head, hands cuffed and legs shackled. His shirt was pulled up, off his body, over his head and onto his arms, his pants were down around his ankles, leaving him naked from calves to forearms. Guards were standing on his restraints on both ends, and a baton was protruding from his rectum. Nobody else in the control unit cells was responding. I went nuts, screaming and kicking my cell door. I believe that over my years in MCU, I helped break through the apathy of the prisoners, and have heightened the resistance to such treatment. Of course, the treatment was worsened, accordingly.

But then, I would rather die on my feet than linger on my knees.

The Struggle Continues!

May 10, 2004

Tom Manning #10373-016
Box 1000 Leavenworth Penitentiary,
Leavenworth, Kansas
66048 USA

Occupation, Prisons and Torture

A pamphlet on US/British detention policies in Iraq prepared by Sumoud political prisoner solidarity group (sumoud.tao.ca).

May 2004

The Logic of Occupation

Horrific pictures showing torture of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of US military personnel in Abu Ghraib prison gained world-wide attention in the last few days of April 2004. These photographs, which were broadcast on the US program 60 Minutes and made the front page of newspapers in the US, Britain and Europe, show US soldiers posing alongside naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in human pyramids and forced to engage in sexual acts with each other. One prisoner was shown hooded and draped in a long black cape with electrical wires connected to his hands. He was told, according to his captors, that if he fell from the pedestal on which he was standing he would be electrocuted.

Days after these photos were released British newspapers printed a series of photographs of British soldiers also engaged in torture of Iraqi prisoners. In this case, photographs in the Daily Mirror show an Iraqi being battered with rifle butts, threatened with execution, and urinated on by British troops. During his eight-hour ordeal, the detainee had his jaw broken and teeth smashed. He was later driven from the prison by British troops and hurled off the back of a truck. No one knows if he lived or died (Daily Mirror May 1,2004).

The US and British governments were quick to condemn the photographs, calling them ‘disgusting’ and promising investigations and punishment of the soldiers involved. Both George Bush and Tony Blair insisted that these were the actions of a few bad soldiers, unrepresentative of troop behavior in general.

Facts, however, indicate otherwise. One of the officers responsible for Abu Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, was a high ranking commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade. She told the New York Times that the cellblock where the torture took place was under the direct control of US military intelligence, who, along with the CIA, “were in and out of the cellblock 24 hours a day.” (Aljazeera. Net 2 May 2004). One of the soldiers pictured in the torture photographs claimed that when he questioned interrogation methods he was told, “This is how military intelligence wants things done.” (VOA May 3 2004).

Furthermore, well before the invasion of Iraq, the US government was deliberately transferring detainees “off-shore” to facilitate their torture without the restrictions of US law and public attention. The shocking stories of torture taking place in Guantanamo Bay are a direct result of this practice. The new head of the Iraqi prison system is Major General Geoffrey Miller, who was previously commander of the Guantanamo Detention Center. In fact, a shadowy network of detention centers and torture chambers exist across the globe under the supervision of the Pentagon, CIA and private contractors. James Risen and Thom Shanker of the New York Times describe this as “A global detention system run by the Pentagon and the CIA... a secretive universe... made up of large and small facilities scattered throughout the world ... Officials described the network of detention centers as a prison system with its own unique hierarchy, one in which the most important captives are kept at the greatest distance from the prying eyes of the public and the media. And it is a system in which the jailers have refined the arts of interrogation in order to drain the detainees of critical information.” (New York Times, 18 December 2003).

Reports of torture and mistreatment have been coming out of Iraqi prisons ever since the beginning of the one-year US occupation of Iraq. These reports have been widely corroborated by human rights organizations, journalists and Iraqis themselves.

These facts indicate that torture and abuse are not the actions of a ‘few bad soldiers’. They are conscious and systematic policies applied by the occupying forces. They form one part of a deliberate strategy that is designed to strengthen the continued occupation of Iraq.

This occupation is sustained by a deliberately fostered racism that encourages those in the West to see Iraqis as somehow less than human. “Uncivilized terrorists” who need “democracy” brought to them by the bullets and torture chambers of the US military.

The same strategy is practiced by a different occupying power a few miles to the west of Iraq. The patterns of arrest, detention and torture now evolving under the US occupation of Iraq are strikingly similar to those employed by the Israeli military, police and secret service against the civilian population in occupied Palestine. For the 6000 Palestinian political prisoners currently in Israeli detention, the stories coming out of Iraq are all too familiar.

Iraqi Prisoners Under the US Occupation

Thousands of Iraqis are currently ‘missing’ - disappeared within the vast occupying prison system or, as many fear, killed by US or coalition soldiers following their arrest.

There are five prisons in Iraq whose location is known and at least ten whose whereabouts are secret. The most infamous is the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad where the US photographs released in April 2004 were taken, as well as Al-Kazimah, Ar-Rusafah, a prison at Umm Qasr; and one in An-Nasiriyah.

The number of prisoners in Abu Ghraib is unknown to all except the US military. The Iraqi Occupation Watch estimates around 80,000 prisoners in Abu Ghraib alone, while the occupying forces website lists only 8,500 prisoners. Most of these prisoners are being held for indefinite periods of time without charge (Amnesty International, 18 March 2004).

The US Military Order system, modeled on the Israeli system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, allows the occupying forces to hold prisoners for 90 days without being brought before a judge (CPA Memorandum no.3). The same military order removes the occupying forces from any jurisdiction by Iraqi courts (AI 18 March 2004). In other words, US, British and other occupying soldiers are considered to be completely above the law in their actions - due to a military order that these same forces passed in the early days of the occupation. Iraqi political prisoners are called ‘security prisoners’ by the occupying forces - the same language used by Israel to describe Palestinian political prisoners. These prisoners have no right to a lawyer for their defense nor does anyone else have the right to defend them or follow their cases (Iraq Occupation Watch). Simply put, these prisoners just disappear into the occupation prison system where their location is unknown and they have no contact with their families or any legal support.

Testimony of Prisoners

According to Amnesty International, many Iraqi political prisoners report cases of torture and mistreatment. Methods used by the occupying forces include prolonged sleep deprivation; beatings; prolonged restraint in painful positions, sometimes combined with exposure to loud music; prolonged hooding; and exposure to bright lights. Virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment has been adequately investigated. (Amnesty International, March 18 2004). The list of torture methods reads the same as countless reports of the Israeli prison system.

In the British-controlled prison where the recent photographs that appeared in the Daily Mirror were taken, at least four Iraqis have been killed while in custody (Amnesty International, March 28 2004). Reports of deaths in custody in Abu Ghraib prison and other detention centers are also widespread. In February 2004, a former US marine testified that it was common practice to kick and punch prisoners who did not cooperate.

This soldier was testifying during a hearing into the death in June 2003 of Najem Sa’doun Hattab at Camp Whitehorse detention centre near Nassiriya. Hattab had been beaten and choked by a US marine reservist (Amnesty International, March 18 2004).

Over 1500 Iraqi women and girls are also being held as political prisoners with ages ranging from 12 to those in their sixties (Iraqi Occupation Watch). Many of these female prisoners, like thousands of other Iraqis in detention, are being held solely as a means of pressuring their relatives to turn themselves in. They are, in effect, hostages of the occupying forces.

A range of testimonies from both soldiers and ex-prisoners confirm these patterns of abuse:

“As we took him back he was getting a beating. He was hit with batons on the knees, fingers, toes, elbows, and head... Because it was so hot we put him in the back of a four-tonner truck which has a canopy over it. That’s where the photos were taken. Lads were taking turns giving him a right going over, smashing him in the face with weapons and stamping on him. We had him for about eight hours...You could see blood coming out early from the first ‘digs’. He was pissed on and there was spew. We took his mask off to give him some water and let him have a rest for 10 minutes. He could only speak a few words, pleading ‘No, mister’ . No, mister’” (A British soldier’s report of torturing an Iraqi prisoner. Daily Mirror, 1 May 2004)

Abdallah Khudhran al-Shamran, a Saudi Arabian national, was arrested in al-Rutba in early April 2003 by US and allied Iraqi forces while travelling from Syria to Baghdad. On reaching an unknown site, he said he was beaten, given electric shocks, suspended by his legs, had his penis tied and was subjected to sleep deprivation. He was held there for four days before being transferred to a camp hospital in Um Qasr. He was then interrogated and released without money or passport. He approached a British soldier, whereupon he was taken to another place of detention, then transferred to a military field hospital and again interrogated and tortured. This time torture methods reportedly included prolonged exposure in the sun, being locked in a container, and being threatened with execution. (Amnesty International March 28, 2004)

72-year old Shaykh al-Qubaysi’s was arrested from his house by US soldiers and taken to Abu Ghraib. One evening as he was sitting in his cell, an American woman soldier came in and ordered him to remove all his clothes. She insisted upon it despite his protestations, and then paraded him around in front of the inmates in the prison. (Iraq Occupation Watch)

Photographer Sahib ‘Umran who was held in Abu Ghurayb for three months, describes the US treatment of Iraqis in the prison as “humiliating and degrading.” “They would allow us to bathe only once a month, and that was at four in the morning and in extremely cold water. The American occupation forces also prevent prisoners from going to toilets, just in order to humiliate them.”

Sahib added, “we wore red overalls like those that the prisoners in Guantánamo wear. And even when the weather was extremely cold, the air conditioners would be left running. Food was cold, to say nothing of being spoiled.” He said that the Americans would try to break the morale of the prisoners by claiming that they had killed or arrested members of the prisoner’s family (Iraq Occupation Watch).

Arshad Fadl, 19, says that he was forced to stand on his feet for three consecutive days with his hands in chains and his head in a sack. Throughout this entire period, Fadl says, he was not allowed to drink water, to eat, or even to go to the toilet (Iraq Occupation Watch).

“[19-year old] M. and her mother were taken to the airport for interrogation. M. remembers being in a room, with a bag over her head and bright lights above. She claimed she could see the shapes of figures through the little holes in the bag. She was made to sit on her knees, in the interrogation room while her mother was kicked and beaten to the ground.... After a couple hours of general abuse, the mother and daughter were divided, each one thrown into a separate room for questioning. M. was questioned about everything concerning their family life - who came to visit them, who they were related to and when and under what circumstances her father had died. Hours later, the mother and daughter were taken to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison... A couple of terrible months later- after witnessing several beatings and the rape of a male prisoner by one of the jailors - in mid-January, M. was suddenly set free and taken to her uncle’s home where she found her youngest brother waiting for her. Her uncle, through some lawyers and contacts, had managed to extract M. and her 15-year-old brother from two different prisons. M. also learned that her mother was still in Abu Ghraib but they weren’t sure about her three brothers.” (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/)

The Violence of Occupation

The US and British military and secret services have a long history of promoting and engaging in torture. The US military academy, The School of the Americas (SOA), has for decades been training Latin American military personnel in techniques of torture and ‘counter-insurgency’. British soldiers have pioneered the use of torture against the Irish Republican movement in the north of Ireland.

The logic of occupation demands the use of torture and mass imprisonment as a state-backed policy designed to intimidate and break the morale of an occupied population. Torture is not aimed solely at the victim, but is part of an overall system of control targeting the population as a whole.

Thousands of Iraqis have simply disappeared into the prison system where their whereabouts and conditions are unknown. Reports of torture, violent mistreatment and deaths in custody are well-known to all Iraqis and have been consistently documented by human rights organizations, journalists and websites across Iraq. Thousands of Iraqis are being held as hostages by the occupying forces solely to pressure their relatives. The occupying forces deliberately prevent any outside monitoring of these prisons including visits and other family contact, access to lawyers, journalists and human rights organizations. The occupying forces even refuse to disclose the location of at least ten prisons in Iraq.

The one organization that has visited some of these prisoners - the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - is prevented by its mandate from speaking publicly about the conditions inside the prisons. The ICRC makes closed-door consultations with the occupying forces themselves, in effect politely asking the torturers to stop their torture but promising not to tell the world what they know. The question must be asked - did the ICRC know of the torture that occurs in Abu Ghraib prison?

All those who see the photographs of US and British troops engaged in torture will be rightly disgusted. That young soldiers can take so much delight in these types of abuse that they wish to capture them on film is an indication that the occupation is not only killing Iraqis. It has also killed the humanity of ordinary US and British people who have been enlisted to fight a war on behalf of imperial interests. Endemic to these interests is a vile racism that is integral to sustaining occupation and is internalized by all those who participate in maintaining this system.

We should not forget, however, that this abuse is only a tiny proportion of the violence of the occupying regime in Iraq. The massacres that have taken place in Fallujah and other cities of Iraq by the occupying troops deserve just as much repulsion and horror.

The solution is very simple. The occupation must be ended immediately and those responsible for these crimes brought to justice.

Close Down Abu Ghraib Prison!

Release all Iraqi and Palestinian Political Prisoners!

End the Occupations of Iraq and Palestine!

References:

Amnesty International, Iraq: One Year On the Human Rights Situation Remains Dire - March 18 2004

Iraq Occupation Watch: http://www.occupationwatch.org

Daily Mirror: ‘Shame of Abuse by Brit Troops” May 1 2004

Sumoud (steadfastness in Arabic), is a political prisoner solidarity group established by a group of activists in Toronto, Canada. We campaign primarily around Palestinian political prisoners being held by Israel, of which there are approximately 6000 currently behind bars. We also take up the imprisonment of indigenous, immigrant and racialized people in North America, as well as the role of the prison industrial complex in criminalizing poverty and political resistance. To find out more about Sumoud, establish a Sumoud group in your community and support our work, contact us at sumoud@tao.ca or visit our website at http://sumoud.tao.ca.

For more information on the Iraqi Intifada, visit the following websites:

ZNET: http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm

Anti-War: http://www.antiwar.com

Iraqi Intifada: http://auto_sol.tao.ca

New Standard: http://newstandardnews.net

Al Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net

The Good Guys Versus the Bad Guys

by Ron Del Raine

The higher echelon military officials are “shocked, just shocked” that gambling, er no, torture is occurring in an Iraqi prison. Now that they have been made aware of it, of course they’ll do the right thing, “round up the usual suspects.” In this case just the few bad apples, but not the whole rotten barrel (Casablance, déjà vu?).

Any suggestions that these abuses were systemic, beginning in Afghanistan, will be downplayed. Let’s consign John Walker Lindh’s torture to the forgotten memory hole.

But should we examine the pattern of prisoners’ treatment in the United States and compare it with the Iraqi prisoners’ treatment? Granted, they’re not the same. But of course it’s easier to escape detection for murder, rape and torture during a guerrilla war against foreigners than it would be here at home. Nevertheless, here, there is a similar pattern of brutalities. In California during a recent ten-year span, “correctional officers” have shot and killed 10-13 prisoners inside prisoners, inside segregation, inside cyclone fences. One unfortunate was shot and killed while sitting on the toilet. When the guard was asked why she shot him she replied, “Oh, I just lost it.” Sounds like perfectly justified law and order and reason, eh?

The staged gladiator fights implemented by the hacks, with wagers sometimes offered as to the outcome, the forced celling of youngsters with known habitual rapos, with the predictable results, the deliberate withholding of medical treatment resulting in death, have all been reported in California Prison Focus (2489 Mission #28, San Francisco CA, 94110) and in the L.A. Times. A May 6, 2004 Times article stated, in part:

“The Eddie Dillard case, in which I represented the inmate, revealed a paper trail with respect to one prolific cell rapist responsible for 30 reported incidents of attempted or completed sexual assaults at six different California prisons. Still, the predator was assigned more cellmates…

“No less a figure than Winston Churchill famously said that ‘treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilization of any country.’ If Churchill is right, so, at the moment, are America’s critics?” –Robert L. Bastian, Jr.

The New York Times May 8, 2004 article by Fox Butterfield drew similarities between U.S. and Iraqi prisons, stating in part:

“…In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear pink underwear as a form of humiliation.

“At Virginia’s Wallens Ridge super maximum security prison, newly arriving inmates have been reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and say they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl on their knees…

“In Texas, in a case that began in 2000, a prisoner at the Allred Unit in Wichita Falls was repeatedly raped by other inmates, even after he appealed to guards for help, and was allowed by prison staff to be treated like a slave, being bought and sold by various prison gangs in different parts of the prison.

“The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the while time.” [About a dozen prisoners have died in the U.S. while strapped to these new “restraining chairs.” At a cost of from $1,000 to $1,200 each, they have become increasingly popular in U.S. jails and prisons.]

“The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country’s criminal justice system.”

When Scott Trentadue was bludgeoned to death in the federal transfer prison in Oklahoma in 1995, with blood splattered on the wall ten feet high, lacerations and bruises all over his body, it was ruled a suicide. Since it was so decreed, so it must have been; never mind the question as to how he could have looped a 23-inch noose around his 19-inch neck and tied it to a sloping, smooth light fixture and hung himself (and other cuckoo clock fairy tales). After the prisoncrats offered to cremate the body (say what? how unprecedented, how obliging?), they then shipped it to his brother in Utah covered with make-up. Mistake! His brother, a lawyer, wasn’t one of the brain-bleached, credulous, contended, cud-chewing sheeple. He filed suit and after many years was awarded damages—not for the murder of his brother, but for lack of medical treatment.

Then there’s the recent Florida Valdes case. Correctional officers broke every rib, crushed his testicles, and killed him. The perps were then acquitted, as were the California guards.

After my 14th inter-prison transfer to Lompoc in 2001, I wrote:

PILING ON THE PUNISHMENT

How much is enough? Will it ever stop? How much punishment can one prisoner endure? I don’t know: ask the Bureau of Prisons. But don’t expect an honest answer; their candid reply might well be, “Till death do us part.”

While I was being shuttled hither and yon, here and there, back and forth in yo-yo mode, from one penitentiary to another, in 1999 I heard a NPR broadcast concerning a Latin King prisoner in ADX (super-max) who had been sentenced to an incommunicado term. He couldn’t write, phone or speak to anyone (except the guards and, I believe, his New York lawyer). After a number of years, upon a motion by his attorney, his judge, most kindly, out of the goodness of his heart, allowed him to speak with Ted Kaczynski and Tim McVeigh, but not Ramzi Yousef of the World Trade Center bombing because he was a “member of a gang.” What gang? The Arab gang?

When I noticed a brief mention of this in the New York Times, I wrote the following, with no response:

Benjamin Weiser, Letters to the Editor
RE: The National Public Radio segment on Super-Max prisons of March 11, 1999

Dear Mr. Weiser:

While serving my 209-year sentence in federal prison, I was in Leavenworth in the 1970s with Tommy Silverstein. He was convicted of killing a guard in Marion prison in 1983, while in the Long Term Control Unit. The guard kept destroying his art work, while Tommy was in the “hole” for endless years. [Kelly Marshal pled guilty to killing a guard in Marion in the 1960s after the “correctional officer” destroyed his personal pictures. The Birdman of Alcatraz killed a guard after they denied his visits.]

Silverstein has been kept in a special cell in Leavenworth with TV cameras on him 24 hours a day. He can’t talk to anyone. His food is delivered via a side door by a guard. Evidently he can write to some people as he draws the cover illustrations for the Justice X’Press magazine. He was kept in an underground cell in Leavenworth for some period of time. He has been in his special cage for years.

This might possibly be of some interest to the media.

Very truly yours,
Ronald DEL RAINE

Pete Earley, who wrote “Hot House,” is an author who actually interviews prisoners before writing about them. He was allowed into Leavenworth to film Tommy Silverstein for A&E TV. Tommy was kept in a special underground cell for years; although I’ve been to Leavenworth three times, no one I’ve ever talked to has ever seen this secret, hidden cage. Early reported that he has been denied even a comb or razor and looks like a Neanderthal man.

This treatment is equivalent to being locked alone in your bathroom for 30 years. Only a police state would subject a human being to such psychological torture. Enough! Anyone willing to try to end such barbaric treatment should write to:

Director, Bureau of Prisons
320 First Street NW
Washington DC 20534 USA

Phone 202-307-3250

I should have included two other related incidents, i.e.,

1) After a guard destroyed a prisoner’s Koran in Lompac, he was killed.
2) After a guard mocked a mildly retarded lad over his stuttering in Atlanta, he was killed.

Could one determine the common denominator in these unfortunate incidents?

Today it was reported that the Iraqis, in retaliation for the U.S. troops torturing prisoners, had cut off the head of an American they held. Kill and counterkill; what goes around, comes around; lex talionis (an eye for an eye). But Martin Luther King said that this policy ends up leaving everyone blind.

Meanwhile, as they say, have a nice day.

Ronald DEL RAINE #85462-132
P.O. Box 019001
Atwater CA
95301 USA

Editor’s note: Ronald Del Raine is a long-time jailhouse lawyer who has been in prison since the 1960s.

U.S. Elections, 2004

by Jaan Laaman

4strugglemag, a voice of U.S. political prisoners, has a firmly anti-imperialist outlook, as we continue our work for justice, equality, human rights and a socialist future of freedom. With the U.S. elections looming let me offer some thoughts and recommendations.

Let’s begin very clearly, elections have not and likely will not, bring about fundamental changes in the U.S. They will not usher in the real economic, social and political freedom and justice that so many of us need and hope for. Elections are not inherently good or bad, but certainly everyone should have the right to vote and have their vote be counted.

In America today elections are primarily not a vehicle of real change. In fact they are part of the institutional system that maintains the bourgeoisie, big money elite, corporate control of the political and military/police apparatus of the U.S.A. state. This is done through sharing and alternating control of the state by the Democrat and Republican parties. These two parties closely share fundamental corporate and capitalist principles, especially at the top party levels. In essence they are two sides of one capitalist party. These two parties and the elections they hold are integrally tied into the corporate media, laws and courts, government and electoral officials, and nothing is left to chance. Third parties, particularly if they are not corporate capitalist sponsored, or even maverick candidates of one of the capitalist (Democrat/Republican) parties, are never allowed to seriously campaign or compete. Rather than being a vehicle of change, elections in the U.S. are periodic rituals to legitimatize and strengthen corporate control of the entire U.S.A. state.

This does not mean that all U.S. elections are meaningless or that people looking for real change should automatically boycott or disregard them. We should look at each election and seek ways to advance social and economic justice or perhaps create some space for popular movements and campaigns. Sometimes elections become an expression of popular opposition to war or specific government abuses. Sometimes there are even specific candidates (especially on a more local level) that are actually trying to affect some real issue that is important to the public (for example curbing killer cops, opposing a police state advance, protecting the environment or a neighborhood from corporate greed, etc.). Elections may serve a tactical need and sometimes provide a platform to talk to the people (especially true for leftist 3rd party candidates).

What we as revolutionaries and freedom fighters should not do, is advance any election, even a local one, as “the” way to bring about real change—real freedom and justice. We should never mislead the public into thinking elections will set them free. When we engage in elections and campaigns we must always be honest about the limited or tactical objective. Some elections may give the freedom struggle added space to organize and grow and we should not be afraid to seize such an opportunity. But when we support or work on elections, we should not merge ourselves into one of the two capitalist parties. We should always be honest with the people about why we are involved in the elections and we should mainly work in our own communities to do this.

Turning to the Presidential election, let me identify the most pressing dangers of the Bush government; the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the unending war on terror. These invasions, occupations and ongoing wars are the direct outcome of the Bush government’s explicit policy of pre-emption. The imperialist U.S.A. state has a long history of attacking and invading small countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Lebanon, Mexico, etc.). In the past the government has mainly used some phoney incident or excuse to justify and invasion/war (for example the Gulf of Tonkin incident to begin the Vietnam War). Today the cabal of extreme conservatives at the core of the Bush government have declared a new right to pre-emptively attack any country they choose. This flies in the face of the past 100 years of international law and diplomacy.

U.S. imperialism, as spearheaded by the Bush government, has embarked on an active warlike policy to establish itself as the undisputed sole world empire. Hand in hand with military invasions abroad, is the creation and consolidation of an integrated but federally directed nationwide police state. Manipulating the public’s fear and uncertainty after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush government has successfully laid down the core of a police state in the U.S. They are now in the process of consolidating and expanding it. This is happening via executive mandates, even more reactionary laws, secret detentions, trials including prosecuting aggressive attorneys, the militarization of air travel and now trains and buses, and the continuing attempts to build fear among the public so they will accept all this.

There is a lot of complicity in this drive from local and state officials, both Democrats and Republicans. But clearly the impetus and direction is coming directly from the Bush White House.

There is nothing positive about Bush or his government. I have heard some discussion of the old line that we should let the reactionary policies continue so more people will become alienated. But this is dangerous, since an actual fascist-style police state is growing on top of us. Plus there are already millions of people in the U.S. that are opposed to Bush, that do see and worry about the empire/police state realities in America now.

War and police state reaction are the major issues of 2004.

Democrats are both pro- and anti-war. John Kerry supports the war in Afghanistan, in Iraq and the more nebulous war on terror. We should have no illusions about his pro-war and pro-imperialist stance. It is quite likely that if Kerry does not alter this pro-war position, so he can draw a clear line between himself and Bush’s imperial war policy, he will not win this election.

There are also powerful Democrats who are anti-war and less intent on pushing the police state. Dean, Kucinich, Kennedy and even Al Gore have come out forcefully against at least some of Bush’s war and police state policies. In the Democratic Party’s more grassroots level there appears to be solid opposition to the war in Iraq. There is also worry and opposition to excessive government and police power. More importantly this seems to be a growing trend among the U.S. public overall.

A Democrat/Kerry White House would have some important differences. Again let me preface, I don’t mean this in a revolutionary or fundamental sense. A Kerry or continuing Bush White House would still be the center of imperialism, with a powerful police state domestic apparatus.

Let’s look at some of the Kerry differences:
- a non-Ashcroft “Justice” Department;
- less reactionary federal court judicial nominees, including perhaps three Supreme Court Justices;
- an environmental policy not completely dominated by oil barons and other corporate polluters;
- more room for the anti-war movement to function and grow, and hopefully to be able to speak or even exert some pressure on official policy.

On a smaller but dear to my heart issue, with a Democrat White House the amnesty campaign for U.S. political prisoners will be initiated again. All efforts for Presidential amnesty were curtailed during the Bush years.

Let’s look at third parties in 2004. Nader’s independent effort is of course not winnable. His campaign this year is not building towards a new more viable progressive third party. Personally, from what I’ve heard, I’d rather have Nader than Bush or Kerry, but this is not happening, so supporting Nader does, or at least could help Bush.

The Green Party, Workers World Party and other left third parties, I’m sorry to say, will not have any influence on this election.

I recently heard that the Peace and Freedom Party in California may nominate Leonard Peltier for President. If I was a Cali resident, with a warm heart and a raised fist I would vote for my brother and fellow political prisoner Leonard Peltier. And I would hope this would help his decades-long effort at justice and freedom.

I am not a California voter, so here are my recommendations for the 2004 elections. Vote for John Kerry. But vote for him not as a “loyal Democrat,” vote for him from the street. Make it clear to the public, your friends and family that we don’t see this election as our solution to end the war or bring about necessary major social changes. We do see a Democrat White House as opening up more space and maybe even some influence for the anti-war and social justice movement. We need this space to push to end the war, push to roll back the police state, and push to continue building the popular revolutionary movement we need to bring true justice, freedom and change to America.

July 2004

Jaan Laaman #W41514
P.O. Box 100
South Walpole MA
02071 USA

The Danger of the USA Patriot Act

from Revolutionary Worker, http://rwor.org

In mid-April George Bush traveled to Buffalo, New York to deliver a speech promoting the USA Patriot Act. He chose Buffalo because it is where six young men, U.S. citizens of Yemeni descent, had been convicted of providing "material support" to terrorists. The men had traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan the spring and summer before 9/11 on a religious sojourn which took them through Al-Qaida training camps. When they came back to Buffalo to resume their lives everything had changed. The government--which watched them for over a year--later claimed a threat had been pre-empted, a "sleeper cell" had been broken up. The men were not accused of doing or even planning anything. The “material support" came down to attending the camp and buying uniforms.

What allowed the government to convict these men are sections of a 1996 law dealing with "material support to terrorism"-- a law that has been broadened and strengthened by the USA Patriot Act. That's why Bush went to Buffalo--to make clear that the Patriot Act is a centerpiece of the whole agenda that is the U.S. war on the world. This an ominous signal, and one that demands a deeper understanding of what the Patriot Act is, how it's being used, and what it represents.

The 9/11 Backdrop

It was on October 26, 2001, little more than six weeks after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, that U.S. Congress unanimously passed and the President signed a law conferring extraordinary powers on agents charged with protecting the U.S. empire. The law was called "The United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" (USAPATRIOT) Act.

The Patriot Act emerged in a situation of crisis for the U.S. imperialists. As the former Bush and Clinton anti-terror chief Richard Clarke--who was crisis manager in the White House on 9/11--later put it, the attackers "had proven the superpower was vulnerable."

In the wake of 9/11 the political rulers of the U.S. answered that vulnerability with an escalation of aggression against the world and startling fascist components within its domestic borders. But the passage of the law was more than just a panic response to crisis. It was a "seizing of a crisis" to promote some long-standing needs

The 1996 Law

To understand the Patriot Act it's helpful to look back a few years to when a bomb blast destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. If you'd turned on your TV as news of this first broke you'd have seen pictures of suspected "Arab terrorists" with newscasters insinuating this was an act of foreign terrorism. Of course, the Oklahoma City bombing turned out to be the work of men who came out of an extreme right- wing movement in the U.S. But regardless, the U.S. rulers used it to push through a law they'd already presented in Congress that targeted immigrants and foreign organizations.

The law was named "The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996" (the "Effective Death Penalty" part had to do with putting severe restrictions on prisoners' ability to appeal to federal courts to try and get their sentences--including death sentences--overturned). The Act made it illegal for U.S. citizens (and noncitizens) to provide any material support to lawful political or humanitarian activities of any foreign group designated by the Secretary of State as "terrorist." In explaining this, Georgetown Law professor David Cole said, "People can be punished not for what they do or abet, but for supporting wholly lawful acts of dis- favored groups."

The law also called for the Secretary of State to create a list of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" (FTOs) and the Treasury Department became responsible for blocking funds to those put on the list.

The 1996 law also made it legal to deport immigrants on the basis of secret evidence--evidence the accused could not see, and so could not challenge. The measure in the 1996 law against immigrants presaged the avalanche of moves to marginalize and strip immigrants of any rights within the U.S after 9/11.

All this established major changes in the legal capacity of the government to go after a wide range of groupings and those who sympathized with them, under the catch-all of combating "foreign terrorism." It laid a firm basis for what was to come.

The Use of Material Support Provisions

The Patriot Act broadened the reach of those the government could claim were supporting terrorism and increased prison sentences for such crimes from 10 to 15 years.

It also modified the 1996 law by adding that giving "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists would be illegal. This particular statute has been successfully challenged in a U.S. District Court which termed it "impermissibly vague," but the government is considering an appeal.

With the Patriot Act, the potential reach of the "material support" provisions are wide. David Cole testified at recent Senate Patriot Act hearings that, "It would include a cab driver who gave a ride to the leader of a foreign terrorist organization who is here to testify at the UN. All the government has to prove is that the cab driver knew that the person was a leader of this organization, and that the organization was designated."

But there is more to this. "Material support" allows the government a lot of flexibility in snaring those it politically sets its sights on.

Take the example of Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho. He is currently on trial for "material support" to terrorism for maintaining websites that in turn had links to sites that the government claims supported "jihad." Among those set to testify against him are, according to the Washington Post , "Five men recently convicted in terrorism-related cases in Portland, Oregon, Lackawanna, N.Y., and Northern Virginia." They are supposed to testify that they watched jihadist recruitment videos on one of these websites. In other words some of the very people the government snared in initial "material support" cases are being called to testify (most likely as part of their plea agreements) against others hit with material support charges. The dynamic in place is one of an ever-widening net. No wonder the Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray, testifying before congress, said, "We prefer to be able to charge material support, because frankly...it's a more user friendly statute."

All this raises an even larger danger--the use of such laws to launch a broadside against the leaders and organization of revolutionary forces within the U.S. As a recent RW article about attacks on the RCP pointed out, "A particularly dangerous development has been the attempt by the U.S. government to conflate popular communist-led revolutions
against reactionary governments with movements guided by reactionary ideologies. Thus the U.S. government has officially designated the Communist Party of the Philippines as well as the Communist Party of Peru as "terrorist' organizations. In addition, the U.S. has added the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to a secondary list (of groups not yet `officially designated.')

"President Bush has also issued an executive order blocking financial transactions with a long list of individual organizations--including the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)--that are accused of posing a "terrorist" threat. The significance of this is that `the making or receiving of any contribution of funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of those listed or conspiracy to do so,' is now a serious federal crime. Individuals, organizations, and movements can now be prosecuted for the `crime' of standing with the people of the world, since almost any kind of political support could be construed as `services.' "

Recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the "USA Patriot Act" were instructive on a number of levels. Court challenges to the broader "material support" definitions have created a need for legal "clarification." These hearings, however, far from fundamentally questioning this law, were aimed at figuring out how to fine-tune it .

FISA Courts

The Patriot Act itself is something of a hodgepodge; expanding the reach of earlier laws; qualitatively changing definitions of others and creating whole new categories of repression. There are provisions that allow Grand Jury information--that used to be kept secret (though the grand jury itself has been a coercive instrument to force people to give the government information)--to be shared among the FBI and CIA. There are a multitude of provisions for seizing assets and against money-laundering. And there are provisions, on top of the slew of attacks on immigrants, that create a broad class of non-citizens who can be deported or barred from entry to the U.S. simply for political association or statements.

Some of the most outrageous of the Act's increased surveillance powers is anchored in expanding the reach of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the court that administers it (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).

Under FISA, once the Court approves an FBI surveillance application it can break into someone's house, "execute the warrant" and take stuff without even telling their target. According to David Cole, "Searches and wiretaps under FISA may be kept secret from the target, in many cases forever."
FISA was passed by congress in 1978 amid widespread exposure of rampant government wiretapping, break-ins and dirty tricks--including by the Nixon White House. In other words, in the midst of exposure, and having to officially curtail certain surveillance--a major new mechanism for surveillance was put in place.

FISA was passed ostensibly to protect the country from "agents of a foreign power." Given the U.S. empire is an imperialist superpower with a rabid desire to maintain and expand its grip on large parts of the world, this is no small matter for them. But FISA has also been used many times to label domestic opponents, such as opponents of the Vietnam war and the murderous U.S. wars in Central America, as agents of a foreign power.

The court is secretive. In October 2001 (before the Patriot Act passed), National Public Radio described how "The seven-member [now 11] FISA court operates in the utmost secrecy, with individual judges hearing applications [for wiretaps or searches] in a windowless, bug-proof room inside the Justice Department." The judges are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (William Rehnquist). In all its existence it has never refused an application.

Now with the Patriot Act, the definitions are so broad that the only thing the FBI or Attorney General need do is claim it is relevant to an ongoing investigation. You don't have to be a suspected foreign agent yourself to come under the reach of a FISA warrant. As Viet Dinh (former Assistant Attorney General who helped write the Patriot Act) told Vanity Fair , they only need to say you may possess "evidence relating to an investigation" on terrorism.

One target of FISA investigation reveals the plane this operates on. The progressive attorney Lynne Stewart has been targeted for her work defending the Islamist cleric Abdel Rahman. The authorities turned their sights on Stewart when Clinton was still
president. Over a period of seven years, the government, according to the N.Y. Law Journal made "more than 85,000 audio recordings of voice calls, faxes and computer transmissions " [emphasis RW ] in this investigation.

In 2002, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved all 1,128 applications brought before it--a record number.

Libraries

Another part of the surveillance section of the Patriot Act amends FISA so that the FBI "may make an application requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents and other items) for an investigation." This is in Section 215 of the Patriot Act and it is one of the more widely known and hated parts of the law.

According to the Boston Globe (March 9, 2004), "In a survey last fall of 465 public and 120 private libraries in Illinois by the Library Research Center, seven public libraries reported that they had received requests for information about patrons or circulation records from the FBI, and 17 said other requests came from police and other agencies. Eight said the reason given for the request was a national security investigation."

There has been an enormous amount of outrage on the part of librarians and others against this. Two hundred fifty- three cities and towns across the U.S. have passed the U.S. have passed resolutions in opposition to this Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Bernard Margolis, president of the Boston Public Library, told the Globe , "If I were presented with a Section 215 request, I would give very serious consideration to informing my trustees about that request and consider going public with it." Such a stand would be in violation of the Patriot Act which stipulates that "No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section.

Surveillance, and Beyond

Soon after the Patriot Act was passed, federal authorities started revamping long-standing protocols on when they could launch non-criminal investigation.

In May 2002, Ashcroft amended the Justice Department guidelines to authorize the FBI to "undertake certain types of investigations--monitoring any gathering open to the public, including religious services; visiting Web sites, electronic bulletin boards and chat rooms; and obtaining information from commercial data-mining services--without any reason to believe that those being monitored may be engaged in or preparing for criminal activity." This move freed up the FBI to launch many more investigation.

According to Vanity Fair using the Patriot Act and other laws, "Hundreds of surveillance and bugging operations have been launched since 9/11; 113 emergency authorizations for secret warrants were issued in the first year alone--more than twice the number granted in the previous 23 years." Driving this is an orientation straight out of the film Minority Report. Vanity Fair quotes John Aschcroft in a meeting of top Justice Department people two months after 9/11 saying, "Things are different now. The role of the Justice Department had been altered, its goal now not simply to investigate crimes but to prevent them before they occur."

The Myth of Sunset

There has been a fair amount of media coverage about how the Patriot Act--or at least chief provisions-- will "sunset" in December 2005, giving the impression that much, if not all of the law will lapse. In fact only some of the sections of the Patriot Act dealing with expanded surveillance and the ability to seize records (like library records) are set to expire. Senator Russ Feingold (the only Senator to vote against it) pointed out at the recent hearings, "Most of the Patriot Act is, of course already permanent law. Of the over 150 provisions in the law only 16 provisions are due to expire at the end of 2005."

So when President Bush called for the Patriot Act to be "renewed" in his State of the Union speech in January 2004, he was gaming people, giving the impression the law was in danger of expiring. He did this to both energize his reactionary base to more fully support it, and to push it further.

Against such a backdrop the Justice Department has already drafted provisions for a "Patriot Act II." Among the provisions they'd like put into law are the creation of a DNA database of terrorism suspects, the power to wiretap U.S. citizens for 15 days without a court order (after terrorist attacks), the ability to block bail for terrorism suspects, make secret arrests, and expand the federal death penalty to convicted terrorists. The government would also like to revoke the citizenship of anyone who helps an organization they say is terrorist.

And while Bush and Ashcroft push for a more rabid expansion, John Kerry has made clear he supports the heart of the Patriot Act. Kerry voted for the law, and according to a statement by the Kerry campaign he wants "to improve the Patriot Act." He calls for intensifying information sharing between federal and local police, expanding money laundering provisions, and keeping provisions "that help the war on terrorism."

The Patriot Act (and other laws it stands on), is extremely dangerous. But unfortunately there's a lot of confusion about what the law actually is and its implications. And even some who have done good exposure about how this law takes away people's civil liberties, have proceeded from a certain acceptance of it--on the basis of the need to "keep people safe."

This outlook goes along with accepting that the war on Afghanistan was just, the measures implemented to "fight terrorism" necessary, and that the government needs to do more to protect people (even if some civil rights have to be sacrificed). But such thinking is fraught with illusions and can lead to a very bad place.

Bob Avakian spoke sharply to this in his talk with Carl Dix in 2002:

"Both on the moral level, in terms of what stand you're taking--and if you take that stand of ‘protect me any way you will, I don't care what you do to people all over the world’--there is the fundamental immorality or reactionary nature of that, on the one hand, and also just in practical terms it's not going to lead to the result you think it will, because the U.S. imperialists have their own agenda and it's not protecting you. The only thing they care about is maintaining the stability of their rule within the U.S. as a base for their whole international system. They don't care about the safety of the people in the U.S. If they did, their police wouldn't be out shooting down people, particularly in the ghettos and barrios, by the hundreds every year. They wouldn't be brutally attacking any kind of opposition to them. That's not their agenda. That's not what they're concerned about, and it's not what's going to result from all this either."

This is the context the Patriot Act needs to be seen in. It is much more than an intrusive and frightening law that goes to the core of people's privacy or ease of mind--though it certainly is that. Looked at as a whole what exists now is the legal ability to effectively neutralize or criminalize whole categories of individuals or organizations deemed a threat to the dominant power structure and consequently chilling the larger social environment away from any kind of protest or dissent--just when even more opposition is needed. This is a serious situation that demands sober understanding and determined resistance.

Selected Sources

Senate Judiciary Committee, Hearing on Aiding Terrorists, May 5, 2004

"Patriot Act Gets Boost from 9/11 Hearing," Christian Science Monitor , April 19, 2004.

Terrorism and the Constitution , David Cole & James X. Dempsey. (The New Press, 2002)

Enemy Aliens , David Cole. (The New Press, 2004)

Electronic Privacy Information Center, epic.org

"Warning! The USA Patriot Act and Other Dangerous Things," rwor.org ( RW #1206)

Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That ?, Bob Avakian. (Chicago: Banner Press, 1986)

H.R. 3162 The United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism, An Act U.S. Department of the Treasury website

"John Ashcroft's Patriot Games," Vanity Fair , February 2004

"Lynne Stewart's Defense Team Is Dealt a Setback: Government Surveillance Found Properly Conducted," New York Law Journal , September 16, 2003

"Increased Use of Patriot Act in other types of criminal case by law enforcement
authorities," National Public Radio, All Things Considered , January 12, 2004

Against All Enemies , Richard A. Clarke. (New York: Free Press, 2004)

Kerry statement in response to President's Radio Address, April 17, JohnKerry.com

"Reading Over Your Shoulder, The Push is on to Shelve Part of the Patriot Act," Boston Globe , March 9, 2004

"A United Front--Banks vendors and the government work to ensure PATRIOT ACT compliance," Bank Systems and Technology , May 1, 2002

"The Money War; USA Patriot Act," ABA Banking Journal , August 2002.

"New Guidelines on ID Rules Get Warm Industry Greeting," The American Banker , January 13, 2004

"Bush Draws Terrorism Into Campaign," New York Times , April 21, 2004

"Saudi Student's Trial Open in Idaho," Washington Post , April 18, 2004
--------
For more information see: "Bad Moon Rising" RW #1206 and "What's Behind the Attacks on the RCP and What's at Stake" RW #1239, available at rwor.org

This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online,

http://rwor.org.

Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: 773-227-4497

Danger During the 2004 Election

by Jaan Laaman

With the recent news reports (mid-July) that the Bush government is considering postponing the November elections, in case of a new big attack in the U.S., it seemed necessary to run the following article again. It originally appeared in the first issue of 4strugglemag.

Conspiracy theories of history or current events, while often intriguing, primarily lead us astray. Such views get people so concentrated on the "secret schemes and cabals," that we do not recognize or disregard the real problems and enemies in front of us. Having just said all this, let me now raise a rather paranoid possibility.

Early in this 2004 election year, the Democrats vs. the Republicans rhetoric is already loud and negative. Additionally, there are very real popular concerns, especially about the Bush government's invasions and wars and its corresponding growing police state within the U.S. This year we will see large demonstrations and a growing opposition to George Bush and his government. This will be fuelled by the unending reality that more and more U.S. occupation troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will come home in coffins, and even more will come back crippled and maimed.

The President's poll ratings have been dropping. Now that all the original reasons for the invasion and war in Iraq have been proven false, there is a growing mistrust of Bush and his government among more and more Americans. The government has not admitted to its mistakes or misstatements. In fact, George Bush has called for even stronger police state laws and new U.S. troops are being rotated in to occupy Iraq.

What we have witnessed, particularly this winter, is an increasing use of alarms and warnings of danger by the government. The federal color-coded alert warning level was recently elevated for several weeks. Shortly after that, many international flights were grounded, halted or banned because of new government warnings. And just recently much of the U.S. Senate was shut down because of a ricin-poisoned letter that was found in the office of Republican Leader Frist.

All of these events were given huge exposure in the media. Interestingly, each of these official warnings and alerts came on the heels of new critical revelations about the government. The U.S. body count in Iraq passed 500, new terror warnings. Former Treasury Secretary O'Neil's book about Bush's pre-9/11/01 plan to invade Iraq came out; the alert levels were raised. U.S. weapons hunter David Kay resigned and admitted there were no weapons in Iraq, and ricin is found in the Senate. These are just the most recent three events. They could all be coincidences, but at the least it is clear that the timing of government warnings and their release to the media is used to counteract any mounting criticism of Bush and his government.

We need to keep alert to the timing of these warnings and other ongoing news and events. More importantly, as this presidential campaign heats up and if Bush is doing poorly by this summer, the one thing that would give him this election would be a significant attack against the U.S., especially here in America. With the proven deceptive nature of this administration, on top of the murderous history of the CIA and U.S. imperialism in the past 50 years, it is not simply paranoid thinking to worry about an attack being "allowed" to happen, or even "engineered" by some secret U.S. cop or military unit.

Yes, admittedly this is a paranoid worry, but we are dealing with a government and system that easily and repeatedly lied and misled people in this country and in the world as it launched its war on Iraq. The question to ask is, do you feel there are elements in this government that would allow or create an attack against the U.S., to win this election? At the very least, this kind of question needs to be asked. Hopefully in the process of many people raising it, we would also begin to provide some measure of defense against such a despicable act.

Jaan Laaman
jaanlaaman@ziplip.com

African AIDS Orphans Campaign

by Jaan Laaman

The Jericho Movement, since 1998, works for Amnesty and Freedom for all U.S. political prisoners. Early in 2004, U.S. political prisoners and their allies, working through the Jericho Movement, began a year-long initiative to raise funds to buy, collect and distribute school supplies and materials for sub-Saharan AIDS orphans.

Today, there are 11 million AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. Their numbers are expected to reach 20 million by 2010. Between 10-15 million Africans will die of AIDS in the next 6 years. Such a human tragedy is hard to even contemplate.

The school supplies will be distributed by the Jericho Amnesty Movement in conjunction with former U.S. political prisoners and organizations serving AIDS orphans. The Campaign will culminate during the Safiya Bukhari Human Rights Memorial Weekend in New York City, December 10, 2004. The selected recipient organizations will be announced at this event.

People and organizations wishing to endorse or contribute to this Campaign are asked to contact:

Herman Ferguson or Efiya Nwangaza
Jericho Movement National Office
P.O. Box 340084
Jamaica NY
11434 USA
(718) 949-3937
www.thejerichomovement.com

Tax-deductible checks/money orders can be made out to IFCO/Jericho Movement.

4strugglemag does not lightly or often solicit funds, but this Campaign is certainly an effort we encourage readers to support and we thank you for doing so.

Jaan Laaman, editor

Echoes

by Albert Woodfox, a.ka. “A. Shaka Cinque”

Echoes of wisdom, I often hear
A mother’s strength softly in my ear
Echoes of womanhood, shining so bright
Echoes of mother’s wit in darkest night
Echoes of wisdom, on my mother’s lips
Too young to understand what was in a gentle kiss

Echoes of love, echoes of fear
Arrogance of manhood wouldn’t let me hear
Echoes of heartache I still hold close
As I mourn the loss of my one true hero
Echoes from a mother’s womb; heartbeats held so dear
Life begins with my first tears
Echoes of footsteps taken in the past
Echoes of manhood standing in a looking glass
Echoes of motherhood gentle and near
Echoes of a lost mother I will always hear.

For more information about Albert Woodfox’s case, see www.prisonactivist.org/angola.

Albert Woodfox #72148
CCR Upper B Cell 13
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola, LA
70712 USA

Black August: A celebration of freedom fighters

by Doc Holiday et al.

Black August originated in the California penal system in the 1970s. Many significant events in the New African Nation’s struggle for justice and liberation have occurred in August. The commemoration of Black August particularly hails the advances and sacrifices of Black Freedom Fighters.

Following are several pages of authentic information on Black August provided by Doc Holiday, an original comrade of George Jackson and a longtime figure in the Black Liberation and prison struggle. Doc is presently in prison in Marion, Illinois.

History of Black August Concept and Program

The month of August gained special significance and importance in the Black Liberation Movement beginning with a courageous attempt by Jonathan Jackson to demand the freedom of political prisoners/prisoners of war which the Soledad Brothers’ case were the center of attention.

On August 7, 1970 Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain, and Ruchell Magee were gunned down at the Marin County Courthouse Uprising in Attica prison, 1971 in that attempt for freedom. Ruchell Cinque Magee remains the sole survivor of that bid for liberation, he also remains a POW at Folsom prison doing life. Though this rebellion was put down by gory pigs and their agents it was internalized within the hearts and minds of the people on the outside in the larger prison as well as those in the concentration camps (prison), internalized in the same fashion as we honor other heroic African Freedom Fighters, who sacrificed their lives for the people and the liberation.

On August 21, 1971, almost exactly a year following the slave rebellion at Marin County Courthouse, George L. Jackson (older brother of Jonathan Jackson as well as one of the Soledad Brothers) whose freedom was the primary demand of the Marin rebellion, was assassinated at San Quentin prison in an alleged escape put forth by prison administration and the state to cover its conspiracy. Comrade George Jackson was a highly respected and purposely influential leader in the Revolutionary Prison Movement. Jackson was also very popular beyond prison, not only because he was a Soledad Brother, but also because of the book he authored appropriately entitled “Soledad Brother.” This book not only revealed to the public the inhumane and degrading conditions in prison, he more importantly, correctly pointed to the real cause of those effects in prison as well as in society, a decadent Capitalist system that breeds off racism and oppression.

On August 1, 1978 brother Jeffery “Khatari” Gualden, a Black Freedom Fighter and Prisoner of War, captured within the walls of San Quentin was a victim of a blatant assassination by capitalist-corporate medical politics. Khatari was another popular and influential leader in the Revolutionary Prison Movement.

An important note must be added here and that is, the Black August Concept and Movement that it is part of and helping to build is not limited to our sisters and brothers that are currently captured in the various prison Kamps throughout California. Yet without a doubt it is inclusive of these sisters and brothers and moving toward a better understanding of the nature and relationship of prison to oppressed and colonized people.

So it should be clearly understood that Black August is a reflection and commemoration of history; of those heroic partisans and leaders that realistically made it possible for us to survive and advance to our present level of liberation struggle. People such as: Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Gabril Prosser, Frederick Douglas, W.E. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Paul Roberson, Rosa Parks, M.L. King, Malcolm X, and numerous others in our more contemporary period. It must be further clarified that when we speak of “Culture Development,” we are not advocating Cultural Nationalism and/or merely talking about adopting African names, jewellery, dashikis, etc. Our primary interest lies not only in where we came from, but the nature of “WHY” we were forcefully brought here, understanding the character of “CONTINUOUS” struggle with the recognition that it is a Protracted struggle and developing the necessary lifestyles to guarantee its success.

August 20, 1619—First born Afrikan captives were brought to England’s North
Amerikan colony of Jamestown, Virginia.

August 16, 1768—Charlestown, South Carolina rebellious Afrikan slaves (known as
maroons) engaged British military forces in bloody battle defending
their camp which was a haven for fugitive slaves.

August 30, 1800—Day set for launching Gabrier Prossers revolt. On this day over 1000
armed slaves gathered to endeavor to secure their liberty, however bad
weather forced them to postpone the revolt and betrayal ultimately led
to the crushing of their physical force.

August 21, 1831—Slave revolt launched under the leadership of Nat Turner which lasted
four days and resulted in fifty-one slaveholders and their loved ones
being subjected to revolutionary People’s justice.

August 29, 1841—Street skirmish took place in Cincinnati between Afrikan and Euro-
Amerikan, wherein for five days Afrikans waged valiant struggle in
defense of their women, children and property against brutal racist
terror campaigns.

August 1854 —Delegates from eleven states met in Cleveland at the National
Emigration Convention of the Colored People, to advance the position
that an independent land base (nation) be set up for the absorption of
captive Afrikans in Babylon who wanted to return to Afrika.

August 1, 1856 —North Carolina, fierce battle erupted between fugitive slaves and
slaveholders who sought their capture and re-enslavement. Only recorded casualties was among slaveholders.

August 1860 —Freedom (slave) conspiracy uncovered with the discovery of an
organized camp of Afrikans and Euro-Amerikan co-conspirators in Talladega County, Alabama.

August 2, 1865 —Virginia a statewide conference of fifty Afrikan delegates met to
demand that Afrikans in Virginia be granted legal title to land
occupied during the Civil War. Numerous off-pitch battles ensued during this same month as terrorist mobs moved to evict Afrikans from the land and were met with resistance.

August 17, 1887—Honorable Marcus Garvey, father of contemporary Afrikan
Nationalism was born.

August 1906 —Afrikan soldiers (in service of Babylon) enraged behind racial slurs
and discrimination struck out and wrecked the town of Brownville, Texas.

August 1906 —Niagara Movement met at Harpers Ferry, Virginia and issued W.E. Marcus Garvey
DuBois’ historic manifesto against racist
discrimination in Babylon against Afrikans.

August 1, 1914 —Garvey founds Universal Negro Improvement Association, advancing
the call for Land, Freedom, and Independence for Afrikan people.

August 23, 1917—Afrikan soldiers in Huston engaged in street skirmishes that left more
than seventeen Euro-American racists dead.

August 1920 —Over two thousand delegates representing Afrikan from the four
corners of the earth gathered in New York for the International
Convention of the Negro People of the World, sponsored by UNIA
convention issue a bill of rights for Afrikans.

August 1943 —Slave revolt took place in Harlem as result of a K-9 shooting a brother
defending the honor of Afrikan womanhood. More than 16,000 military and police personnel was required to quell the rebellion.

August 1963 —190,000 Afrikans (250,000 people all toll) took part in the March on
Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King to petition for the extension of the rights and privileges due to them mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

August 1964 —Afrikan launched comparatively large-scale urban slave revolt in the
following cities: Jersey City NY, Paterson NJ, Keansburg NJ, Chicago IL, and Philadelphia PA. These slave revolts were for the most part sparked by either police brutality or disrespect shown toward Afrikan womanhood.

August 16, 1965—Urban revolt took place in Northern Philadelphia.

August 7-8, 1966–--Large-scale urban revolt was launched in Lansing, Michigan.

August 28, 1966—Waukegan, Illinois, urban slave revolt launched in response to police
brutality.

July 30- August 2, 1967 —Urban slave revolt launched in Milwaukee.

August 19-24, 1967-Comparatively large-scale urban slave revolt was launched in New Haven, Connecticut.

August 7, 1970 —Jonathan Jackson killed in firefight while leading the Marin County Courthouse raid. George Jackson

August 21, 1971—George Jackson shot and killed in San Quentin by tower guards.

Black August Program

Most standard history books tend to either play down or ignore New African resistance as a factor in the destruction in the slave economy. On the other hand, when one understands New Africans are still an oppressed nation, the reason for such deception becomes clear. Black August contends that not only was such resistance a factor in the destruction of the slave economy, but New African resistance to slavery continues to inspire New African resistance to national oppression. Herbert Aptheker (the author of “American Negro Slave Revolts”) recounts the personal remark of one New African involved in the civil rights struggle:

“From personal experience I can testify that American Negro Slave Revolts made a tremendous impact on those of us in the civil rights and Black Liberation movement. It was the single most effective antidote to the poisonous ideals that blacks had not a history of struggle or that such struggle took the form of non-violent protest. Understanding people like Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, William Lloyd Garrison etc. provided us with that link to our past that few ever thought existed.”

Black August contends that from the very inception of slavery, New Africans huddled illegally to commemorate and draw strength from New African slaves who met their death resisting. Black August asserts that it is only natural for each generation of New Africans faced with the task to liberate the nation, to draw strength and encouragement from each generation of New African warriors that preceded them. It is from such a rich heritage of resistance that Black August developed, committed to continuing the legacy of resistance, vowing to respond to the destruction of colonial oppression with our George Jacksons, Malcolm X’s, and Fred Hamptons etc.

New African resistance moved decisively into the 1920s and 1930s. Evidence of this was movements like: The African Blood Brothers, The Share Croppers, The Black Bolsheviks, etc. Unduly there is an incorrect tendency to confine the discussion of African Nationalism to the well-known Garvey movement as the sole manifestation of national consciousness. The Garvey movement was the point of the emerging politics of New African resistance.

In labor, national consciousness, (i.e. literature, jazz, art, etc..) in the struggle for the land, in all areas of politics, like a great explosion of previously pent-up National Consciousness took place among New Africans.

The sixties was a further example of New African resistance to national oppression. It should be emphasized here that that struggle of non-violence was at that time a strategy of illegality, of danger, of arousing New Africans to direct confrontation with the colonial oppressor. Whether it was a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter or bus station, the movement deliberately broke the colonial law.

Inevitably the anti-colonial struggle moved to a higher level, growing beyond the initial stage of non-violent civil rights protest. Non-violent civil rights strategy was tried and discarded by New Africans, who found that it was a failure, incapable of forcing an entrenched settler’s colonial regime to change.

Black August purports that it is important to briefly mention such events to counter the colonial propaganda that the riots of the 1960s was due to anger brought on by overcrowdedness and summer heat. Black August asserts that in order for New Africans to arise to the historical task of defending the Nation, it is imperative that New Africans have a historical perspective of themselves resisting colonial oppression.

Black August avers that at a time when the Black Nation is experiencing the destruction of its community through planned gentrification, at a time when the quality of New African life is being blunted through unemployment, prison, drugs, high infant mortality and poverty, the call of New African organization should be one of resistance.

Black August is the antithesis to “celebration” and empty “homage.” Black August attempts to place struggle and sacrifice on center stage. In this respect, Black August summons all progressive people who identify with the legacy of resistance to colonial oppression by actively participating in Black August. Thus during the entire month of

August in commemoration of those Africans who have made the supreme sacrifice for the
cause of African Liberation and reflect upon the significance of those contributions as well as to draw closer to the continuing necessity for resistance, we embrace the following as tenets to be practiced during Black August.

Tenets of the Black August Program

1. A fast which historically has been used as an expression of personal commitment and resistance. Hence, from the sunrise until evening meal we will abstain from eating.

2. We abstain from consuming any type of intoxicants for the entire month of August. The necessity for this should be self-evident for all serious participants of Black August.

3. We limit our selection of television and radio to educational programs, i.e. news, documentaries and cultural programs, etc.

4. During BA we emphasize political and cultural studies for individuals involved in BA. Participants in BA should pair off with someone else you know to study and share knowledge of African Affairs.

5. As an outward expression of BA we wear a Black arm band on the left arm or wrist as a tribute to those Africans who have died as a result of their sacrifice for African Liberation. The arm band can be worn either on the inside or outside of your clothing.

Black August (BA) is a revolutionary concept. Therefore, all revolutionaries, nationalists and others who are committed to ending oppression should actively participate in Black August. Such participation not only begins to build the bridges of international solidarity, but it is through such solidarity that we strengthen ourselves to struggle for victory.

James "Doc" Holiday # 86555-012
P.O. Box 1000
Marion, IL
62959 USA

It Ain’t Over Wit’

by Ali Khalid Abdullah

It wasn’t over when you first
invaded, raped and plundered
the Mother Land,

Committed your vicious sadistic acts
and made a vow to annihilate
the Afrikan man…
sexually abuse the Afrikan woman.

It wasn’t over when you nefariously
conspired and murdered brothas
Prophet Nat, Malcolm, George and Fred.

Our anger must never subside
and should be appropriately
stored within our heads.

And to this day, we REFUSE
to allow it to be over
even with your attempts to murder
brothas Khalfani and Mumia.

You foolishly thought we
forgot when you brutally murdered
brothas Ajamu and Oscar Rowls, Ziyon
and countless others?

You think it’s over wit’
when you have our PP/POWs
locked down in your prisons?
When you have Assata Shakur living in exile
with a bounty on her head?

NO—It ain’t over wit’
until justice prevails!

In the trenches,

Ali Khalid Abdullah #148130
16770 Water Tower Drive
Kincheloe MI
49788 USA

In the Eyes of a Young Conscious Puerto Rican on What Black August Has Meant to Him

by Ernesto Santiago

Black August is a month with many memorable days, a month with history that has and must always be remembered and thought! The youth of 2004 don't know their history never mind knowing anything about Black August. As a Puerto Rican who knows what Black August is I feel that George Jackson must never, never be forgotten!

It's been 33 years since they system murdered George, a young man who found the struggle in Prison who wrote about what he found & how he grew and learned while in prison. I came to prison a young 21. Didn't know anything about Black August, didn't know anything about Political Prisoners or P.O.W.'s. I didn't know about the Indians & what they tried to do to them. I thought thanksgiving was a good thing. I didn't know that Puerto Rico was a colony of the United Snakes. You see they didn't teach me anything about real history; the people’s history in school. They taught me Christopher Columbus was a great man.

My parents were afraid to speak against the system since the United Snakes terrorized them in Puerto Rico when they were young. You see I became conscious in prison and Black August was another wake up call that the system was trying to extinct the conscious back then and is still is trying to extinct us, The People Today.

I feel that August to me might be the most important month of the year! The Revolution has to be started on August! We the people in the spirit of George must show this Capitalist System that there will be no more days on ours side to remember! This System, who has a long history of Oppr