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November 8, 2001
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
Resources:
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
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Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
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Peter Linebaugh on
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Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
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by Douglas Valentine
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November
8, 2001
The Smearing of
Nancy Oden
Screwing the Greens?
By Mitchel Cohen
For the last few days, a letter written by Walt
Sheasby of California has been making the rounds in which the
author discounts and seeks to discredit the ordeal faced by Green
Party USA co-coordinator Nancy Oden at the Bangor Maine International
airport. A press release issued by GPUSA reported the story:
"'An official told me that my name had been flagged in the
computer,' a shaken Oden said."
Without bothering to check with Oden,
Sheasby termed Oden's statement a "fib", and therein
severely hindered gathering the support that Oden (and many others)
need. He wrote: "Nancy Oden was apparently not barred because
of a computer check, but because she did not comply with standard
screening for weapons."
How did Sheasby arrive at this conclusion?
Did he call Nancy Oden? Did he even call the FBI and ask about
the existence of such a list of individual activists?
Sadly, the answer is no. He relied solely
on a public relations official's denial to a Bangor newspaper,
which read: "She [Oden] was uncooperative during the screening
process. ... Obviously if they can't submit to screening, [Federal
Aviation Administration] regulations require that they not be
allowed to board the plane."
From this, Sheasby concluded: "it
appears that her [Oden's] name was not flagged by a computer
search of potential terrorists or their supporters."
Is Sheasby really that gullible?
In fact, Oden was targeted as soon as
she gave her name to pick up her ticket. She was told this was
NOT a random procedure. A uniformed soldier with automatic rifle
started lecturing her about terrorism. Oden -- a woman alone
at the airport surrounded by armed military men -- was indeed
searched, as were her bags. She was deemed "clean."
Nevertheless, as has occurred in numerous venues across the country,
she was banned from her flight, and from ALL flights from that
airport.
Sheasby knew all of this but omitted
it from his report, choosing instead to rest his case on the
spin of a corporate flak -- a statement Sheasby knew to be wrong.
Why did Sheasby do this, and cast doubt
about Oden's story at a time when she most needed support? And
why did a few people who should know better accept and repeat
Sheasby's smear, without investigating for themselves?
One person who refused to accept Sheasby's
report is Fred Myers, an antiwar activist and Green in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. Myers, who is often critical of Oden and the Green
Party USA, nevertheless had the integrity to challenge Sheasby's
account. He wrote:
"Wait a minute.... This doesn't
add up. Why was she not allowed to board the flight? If she allowed
the completion of the search of her person and baggage, then
what grounds were there to deny her right to fly?
"Furthermore, the Bangor Daily article did indeed say that
agents would not confirm or deny that her name is on a list.
... [T]here's no denying the last point in the Bangor article:
If she did something wrong, then she should be charged. If not,
then denying her right to fly is absolutely unjustified. And
posting a headline implying she 'fibbed' is quite sleazy to say
the least."
Another person who did her homework is
Amy Goodman, host of the "Democracy Now" radio show.
Unlike Sheasby, Goodman made the appropriate calls and featured
a phone interview with Nancy Oden on her show. Oden explained
how the whole incident started at Bangor airport. She said she
gave her name and the ticket agent immediately recognized it
and did not even ask for additional identification.
Many rank-and-file greens have expressed
their outrage at the treatment of Oden, first at the hands of
the authorities and secondly by Sheasby and his faction. Sure,
there are many worse things happening in the world. But they
all start somewhere. This is one such instance.
So Sheasby has now issued another statement.
Without in any way apologizing for the harm he caused, he reverses
field and now writes that he ACCEPTS the fact that Oden was indeed
barred, as she reported, from getting on an airplane to Chicago
to attend the GPUSA national board meeting because of her political
work -- this, after 4 days of bombarding listserves asserting
the contrary. But, peering once again into his crystal ball,
Sheasby now claims that the military barred Oden because of her
involvement with anti-genetic engineering work, not her antiwar
activity.
Oden's name "is certainly familiar
to the authorities in Maine," he argues, "and the association
with the corn field incident [in which Oden defended activists
who had torn out genetically engineered corn at an experimental
field at the University of Maine] may be the precipitating cause
of her victimization. It now does not appear that her connection
with Greens/Green Party USA had anything to do with her harassment
at the airport, but it does seem that her other activities had
brought some unwanted attention."
Uh, excuse me, but who can know this
for sure, and WHO CARES? The point is that Oden (and many people,
including other Greens) are being targeted because of their politics.
"Oden had announced the day she
planned to fly out, and of course everybody concerned knew which
airport and her destination in advance," writes GPUSA gadfly
Paul Prior, whose website
has been instrumental in questioning the bombardment of Afghanistan,
the connections between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens, and
the quest to control oil in Asia."
The Green Party USA, which has for years
condemned US's gluttonous reliance on oil and which has organized
around its program for shifting energy consumption to one based
on sustainable and renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.), has
been very active in opposing the bombardment of Afghanistan.
You can view GPUSA's oil-related antiwar statements by linking
to http://www.greenparty.org.
"In fact," Paul Prior continues,
Oden's "opposition to military presence in the Mideast is
public at http://www.greenparty
.org/911.html. She has enemies and the party has enemies.
Nobody doubts the party has informants in its ranks and that
they have an inside line to airport security and anybody else
they need in intelligence. Anyone who would use that incident
to try to discredit her and the party is only helping the fascist
takeover," Prior rightly scolds.
Just this week, the FBI has finally admitted
to having arrested 1,147 people under the new anti-terrorism
laws for "crimes" having nothing whatsoever to do with
terrorist attacks. Not a single one of them is charged with any
connection to the Sept. 11 horror.
Among the organizations the FBI admits
to targeting is the anti-globalization Reclaim the Streets, which
is actually listed as a terrorist group on the FBI's lists.
Many activists are learning for the first
time that the FBI is actually compiling and distributing lists
of American citizens -- some are called "terrorist profiles,"
others are more explicit lists -- and people have reported many
instances at airports (and elsewhere) in which their civil liberties
have been violated. It is often by someone "in charge"
abusing their authority; at other times it occurs because they
"fit" a profile; and still other times it happens because
their name appears on one of the FBI's lists.
The Oden case exposes some of this; it
serves as a wakeup call to all Greens and others to put their
sectarian differences aside and work to restore the Bill of Rights.
With more than a thousand people in jail, no one knows who or
where they are. The FBI is not releasing their names, nor are
they charged with any terrorist-related crimes. Most are charged
with overstaying their visas by a few weeks. And others are just
picked up for "breathing while looking Arab." The situation
is outrageous, and we need to expose what's really going on.
Nancy Oden's situation is but the harbinger of far more repressive
times to come, unless we act quickly and stand united.
Mitchel Cohen
is a member of the Brooklyn Greens and Green Party USA.
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