Today's Stories

September 4-6, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital

George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting

September 3, 2009

Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison

Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban

Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five: Indictment À La Carte

Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons

Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation

Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security

Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?

Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians

Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia

September 2, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Plagues

Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!

Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found

Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan

Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money

Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message

Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security

Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?

Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery

September 1, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy

Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?

Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille

Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This

Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief

Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back

Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews

August 31, 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the SEC's Revolving Door

Anthony DiMaggio
What Obama Isn't Telling You About Afghanistan

Bouthaina Shaaban
Israeli Bodysnatchers

Ray McGovern
The Press and Torture: Covering for Cheney?

Joseph Shansky
Scenes of Resistance in Honduras

Greg Moses
The Dying Dillos of Austin

Brian McKenna
Pig Sacrifice and Swine Flu Panic

David Macaray
The Tender Trap

Brenda Norrell
Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon

Paul Craig Roberts
The Environment Loses a Champion

Beth Sherouse
Why I'm Going to the Big Gay March in Washington

Website of the Day
The Failure of the Left Antiwar Movement

August 28-30, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Teddy Kennedy the Hollow Champion

Joshua Frank /
Jeffrey St. Clair
From the Ledge to the Edge: How Tre Arrow Became America's Most Wanted Environmental "Terrorist"

Steve Early
Kennedy's Sins Against Labor

Michael Hudson
Learning About Financialization the Hard Way

Carl Ginsburg
Bernanke in Obamatime

Saul Landau
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again

Dave Marsh
Trapped Again: Michael Jackson's Crossover Dream

Mike Whitney
Band-Aids for the Recession

Dave Lindorff
Obama's War

José Pertierra
A Decision in the Posada Case

Joe Bageant
Obama's Fake Fight for Reform

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Spies Without Espionage

Lee Sustar
On Strike for Health Care Justice

David Ker Thomson
Life in the 'Shed

David Rosen
The Silent Slaughter: Sex Wars and Nation-Building in Iraq

Alison Weir
Israeli Organ Harvesting

Ron Jacobs
Will There be Free Speech in Pittsburgh?

David Swanson
Bush Tortured

Udi Aloni
An Appeal to Israeli Filmmakers

Charles R. Larson
Children During Wartime

Kim Nicolini
District 9: Science Fiction of the Now

David Yearsley
The Wagner Cult in Seattle

Lorenzo Wolff
Riding the Rails with King Curtis

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Marc Beaudin

Website of the Weekend
The Hidden History of Katrina

August 27, 2009

Andrea Peacock
Bearly Making It: How Many Biologists Does It Take to Count a Dead Grizzly?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Incapacitating the Cuban Five

Ray McGovern
Closing in on the Torturers

Gideon Levy
The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel

Shamus Cook
World Bankers Agree: the Recession is Over ... Maybe

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Gap

Marshall Auerbach
We Already Have a Public Option

Benjamin Dangl
Reclaiming a Continent

Kathryn Gray
The Water Privateers

David Macaray
Please Buy Our Beer (And Join Our Union)

Website of the Day
Stop the Privatization of Ocean Fisheries

August 26, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Leaking Game: Planted News Stories About Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
Getting Away With Torture: Holder's Limited, Modified Hangout

Dean Baker
The Reappointment of Bernanke

Laura Carlsen
The Coup and Honduran Women

Paul Craig Roberts
When the Government Comes First

Laura Raymond /
Bill Quigley
Haiti One Year After the Hurricane

Jordan Flaherty
Still Homeless, Still Struggling in New Orleans

Jonathan Cook
The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque

Robert Bryce
Bamboozled About Energy

Danny Weil
The Future of Charter Schools

Cindy Sheehan
Farewell, Senator Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

Website of the Day
The President's Laugh Line

August 25, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

Danny Weil
The Charter School Hype and How It's Managed

Martine Bulard
China's Wild West

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
The Cuban Five: The Face of Impunity

Bélen Fernández
Why Didn't the Leopard Eat Tom Friedman?

August 24, 2009

Danny Weil
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse

Neve Gordon
Stopping the Apartheid State
Boycott Israel

John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why Has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras?

Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer

August 21-23, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo

Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election

Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President

Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick

M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead

No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon

Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another

Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die

David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island

Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers

Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!

August 20, 2009

Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy

Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies

Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn

Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics

August 19, 2009

David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President

Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There

Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns

John Ross
Three Amigos Summit

Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

Weekend Edition
September 4-6, 2009

The Case of the Biodevastation 7

What the Police Won't Apologize For

By DON FITZ

In early September, St. Louis police will send an apology for their illegal arrest of biodiversity activists.  Be assured that it will not mention their role in destroying public dialogue on dangers of genetically contaminated food. 

On August 24, 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Eastern Missouri announced that the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners would pay $13,500 to each of four anti-genetic engineering activists for violating their first and fourth amendment rights and would apologize to them for police actions in May, 2003. [1]  That was when several hundred people gathered to protest the World Agricultural Forum [WAF] and hold the 7th Biodevastation Gathering to expose the racist use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

But the letter of apology is highly unlikely to address the most serious aspects of the repression.  Do not expect the letter to say anything about helping to consolidate control of world agriculture and throwing 1 billion people off of small farms.  Don’t look for the letter to mention the role of police in attempts to force genetically contaminated food on Africans with immuno-compromised health.  And don’t be surprised if the letter contains not a word about St. Louis police entering into a conspiracy with Monsanto, the FBI and corporate media to eliminate public discussion of the potential threats of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

St. Louis police were not stand-alone players.  As Daniel (digger) Romano wrote in the August 31 St. Louis Post-Dispatch “…Allied Intelligence [is] the private security agency hired by the WAF and its principle player, Monsanto, the biotech giant.  Allied Intelligence told police ‘50,000 anarchists’ were coming to St. Louis to riot and wreak havoc on the city.” [2]

The police apology will certainly misdirect attention onto its own illegal and repulsive behavior of May, 2003: warrantless entry into a home where a woman was subjected to “an unlawful and humiliating strip search,” a second warrantless entry under the false claim of the building being condemned, and arresting several activists for “riding a bicycle without a license,” a crime which did not exist. [1]

Under the FBI Eye

Preparations for the Biodevastation 7 Gathering started in 2002 when Jim Scheff, an organizer for the Missouri Forest Alliance, called to tell me that the WAF would be meeting in St. Louis the upcoming year.  He suggested that Biodevastation, which had been held in five cities after beginning in St. Louis in 1998, return to Monsanto’s home town so that people coming to WAF could hear a different view of biotechnology.

Documents obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that the FBI was deeply involved in scrutinizing many documents that I wrote for the event, including emails from my computer.  The ACLU judged the FBI reports to be some “of the most troubling documents we received.” [3]

A November 2005 cover letter from the FBI refers to “Subject: GATEWAY GREEN ALLIANCE/01012000 TO PRESENT,” indicating that we had been in FBI sights for years.  [4] Its first memo on “Counterterrorism” asserted that “The WAF was created to provide a continuing, neutral arena for the discussion of world agriculture…” Counterposed to the “neutral” WAF, the memo warned of “issue-specific terrorist groups…which oppose…the bio-engineering of plants and animals.”  [5]

What particularly worried authors of the memo was that “organizers from the Gateway Green Alliance, a local affiliate of the Green Party USA, have joined with member of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis and are attempting to label the WAF as a ‘forum on environmental racism’ in an attempt to lure African-American groups.” [5]  (The authors probably meant to say “Biodevastation” rather than “WAF.”)

The memo observed that “no specific threats of violence or unlawful protest have been received.”  But its authors were disturbed that “protest organizers” might be “able to successfully promote a racial element to the forum…” [5]

Other FBI counterterrorism documents listed frightening people who hoped to speak at St. Louis, including Vandana Shiva, Percy Schmeiser, Mae-Wan Ho, Brian Tokar, Ignacio Chapela and Michael Hansen. [6]  Any defender of the Public Order must have been horrified to read in the captured documents of the threat to national security posed by the Caravan Across the Continent held in conjunction with Biodevastation: “The Caravan will be a month-long bicycle spectacle covering over 1000 puppet shows, presentations, speak-outs, freak-outs, clown acts, and music…”  It invited “citizens, clowns, puppeteers, bike riders, messengers, farmers” and urged everyone “to bring a bicycle and join the ride!” [7]

The FBI was most traumatized by information that “The May 2003 Biodevastation Gathering will be the cutting edge event defining links between racism and the biotechnology industry.”  Documents monitored by its sleuths uncovered plans for the event to “focus attention on efforts” to use “Food Aide as a weapon of narrow economic interests and to force genetically contaminated food on Africa.” [5]

Luckily, the FBI did not stand alone in efforts to protect good citizens.  FOIA reports confirm that the FBI had “been working with local police agencies to collect intelligence related to the WAF.” [7]  Not content to rely on local police, the FBI proudly documented collaboration with the private sector:

Corporate officials from Monsanto who monitor the Biodev website (www.biodev.org) allege that the speakers at the Biodev conference are against genetic engineering of any type, that they are outspoken critics of Monsanto and are extreme in their views. [7]

A Public Dialogue Cut Short

During weeks prior to Biodevastation 7, there were a few stories about the dangers of GMOs, but St. Louis media focused on police preparation for 50,000 anarchists to invade downtown.  They warned business owners to protect their property. 

Then, on the opening day of Biodevastation 7, the Mother of All Horrors occurred: There was an actual public debate on genetic engineering!  The only St. Louis daily paper, the Post-Dispatch, carried a front page story, “Focus on the future of agriculture.” It had an article describing the corporate view of the WAF on one side and another article reporting on Biodevastation on the other.

Not to worry.  St. Louis police, with backup from the FBI and Monsanto, had worked overtime to ensure that reporting would take a sharp turn.  Shortly after I got to the Gathering site and prepared to coordinate presentations, phone calls began pouring in that demonstrators were being arrested all over town. 

Members of the Flying Rutabaga Bicycle Circus were arrested for the fictitious crime of “riding a bicycle without a license.” About the same time, a building inspector nailed a “condemned” sign on a St. Louis home just before police pushed through the door and arrested those who had been planning to take part in weekend protests.  They were charged with “inhabiting a condemned building.”

Two hours later, police raided the Community Arts and Media Project (CAMP) building, which housed the St. Louis Independent Media Center, Green Party of St. Louis and several other groups, taking more to jail. Sarah Bantz, organizer for Missouri Resistance Against Genetic Engineering (MoRAGE), which was coordinating the demonstration planned at the WAF, was pulled over while driving to give a talk at the Gathering.  Her vitamin A was seized as a possible illegal drug and she was taken to jail for not wearing a seatbelt.

As I tried to make sure that speakers (minus Sarah Bantz) were there, that panels could start on time, and that lunches were on their way, I was called by one reporter after another.  With the lurid drama rivaled only by stories of a US politician whose weenie went where it wasn’t supposed to go, corporate media had turned on a dime.  Dangers of genetic engineering were far from their minds as reporters drooled at the prospect of a story on demonstrator violence.

Police Chief Mokwa egged on the frenzy.  He held a press conference to display the “weapons” seized during the raids: rocks, roofing nails, torches and Molotov cocktails.

By the next day, it became apparent that the rocks were paperweights; the roofing nails were to repair a leaky roof; and the torches were flaming batons of the Bicycle Circus. When the St. Louis Independent Media Center website posted an eyewitness report of a cop putting toilet paper or a rag in a beer bottle, all press reports of “Molotov cocktails” disappeared — as if they had never been mentioned. The “weapons” charges were the first charges dropped against those arrested.

Of course, throughout the events, the only potential violence discussed was that of demonstrators. When reporters asked me about potential violence, I never hesitated to point out that “There is a real threat of lawlessness when the WAF is controlled by Monsanto, a company that lawlessly trespasses on the land of farmers like Percy Schmeiser, criminally steals samples of crops and violently drops pesticide bombs on their fields to test if their crops are Roundup-resistant.”

Reporters would tell me that that was not what was meant.  They wanted to know if there was a threat of violence during the demonstration set for May 18.  I always responded “Yes, there is a real threat of violence. When public safety is put in the hands of a police chief who has condoned the police murder of over a dozen black youth in recent years, the city should be concerned.”

Predictably, the press had zero interest in reporting on corporate or state violence.  Their prewritten script was to interview one side predicting that demonstrators would be violent and “balance” it with a few seconds of an organizer denying the charge.

Police Attacks

Police attacks on protestors were illegal, traumatic and disruptive to planned events.  Kelley Meister wrote in detail of her ordeal.  The night before her home was invaded, “police had been circling our house relentlessly, following my friends home, and harassing them on the street, and I had feared waking up to the police knocking down my door.” [8]  After breakfast the next morning, a police car pulled up.

Two police officers pushed past me to enter the house, and I asked if they had a warrant.  When they said, “No,” I stated that I did not give them permission to enter my house, and I again asked for a warrant.  The officers told me that a warrant was not necessary because this was a condemned building. [8]

After being arrested and put in a police van, Meister

…watched many cops enter and exit our house, most notably, an officer carrying a piece of art ripped down off the wall from my room.  The cops also stole many other people’s personal items such as journals, posters, props for the circus and puppet shows, welding tools, roofing nails, and all of our bicycles that were in the building.  The bicycles were eventually returned with slashed tires, but most of the other stuff that was stolen is either “missing” or being held as evidence. [8]

When allowed to return home several days later, she found

The house was trashed.  In my bedroom, shelves had been disassembled or knocked over, boxes of oil paints and other art supplies dumped out, my large reading chair was on its side and in the middle of the room, personal items were smashed, and a pile of my clothes that had been dumped from a small cabinet… [8]

Meister and a housemate found “their clothes were drenched in urine,” compliments of St. Louis police. [9]  When it apologizes for “well-intentioned mistakes,” the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners should explain how urinating on clothes is both well-intentioned and a mistake.

What Corporate Media Didn’t Report

By the second day of Biodevastation 7, the mania had died down. The Post-Dispatch was even mildly critical of what it called “pre-emptive” arrests. But the press never returned to a discussion of how genetic engineering threatens human health, pollutes the environment, and prepares for agro-business domination of Africa. What remained was a debate of whether the police had “overreacted.”

Two photographs from the Fall 2003 Synthesis/Regeneration illustrate the bizarre unreality of the police/media fantasy.  The back cover has a photo of the main post office in downtown St. Louis, which was boarded up to protect it from marauding anarchist hordes.  On p. 2 is a photo of a security guard with so little to do at Biodevastation 7 that she is playing with the children of those listening to talks.

Though the PATRIOT Act made crackdowns at events like Biodevastation 7 easier, such actions existed long before 9-11.  The hysteria generated by police departments is reminiscent of “red scares” of the 1920s and phobic reaction to black organizing that white Americans have felt through the centuries. When Jamala Rogers of the Organization for Black Struggle introduced the Environmental Racism panel at Biodevastation 7, the police raids were at the top of the news.  She commented that “You are seeing what black people in St. Louis experience on a daily basis.”

One of the vitally important presentations that police raids knocked out of media attention was that by Mwananyanda Lewanika of Zambia’s National Institute for Scientific & Industrial Research.  The previous year, US trade representatives had bitterly denounced Zambia for rejecting genetically engineered (GE) corn to feed its hungry.  Lewanika traced the origin of hunger in Zambia to the Structural Adjustment Program of the 1990s that “stopped government involvement in agricultural production.” [10]  With government assistance gone, small farmers in southern Zambia could not meet the food needs of their region.  Since there was an abundance of food in the northern part of the country, the West could have helped Zambia improve the infrastructure of roads.

But that would have made Zambia more independent of the West rather than dependent on it.  So the US offered to donate surplus GE corn.  Zambian scientists replied that (a) GE corn might contain food toxins or allergens, (b) effects would be particularly serious in Zambia since corn comprised up to 80% of the diet, and (c) effects would be most severe on the most vulnerable — the young, old and immuno-compromised, which is a large population in southern Africa.  Though plenty of non-GE corn was available and could have been donated, the US insisted on offering only the corn that was offensive to Zambians and then denounced them for not accepting it. [10]

Marching Onward

By shifting attention to a manufactured threat of terrorism, the hysteria ensured that discussion of efforts to force GE corn on Africa would not reach public awareness.  This puts the six year old belated apology by the St. Louis Police Department (SLPD) in a different light.

The St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners claimed that the raids were a “mistake” even though police acted “with well intentions.” [9]  The 2009 apology spins the myth that the SLPD acted on its own volition.

But the FBI documents paint a very different picture.  They suggest that the most likely course of events was:

A. The Monsanto/WAF/Allied Intelligence troika contacted…

B. the FBI, which contacted…

C. the SLPD, which pumped fantasies to…

D. the St. Louis media, which eliminated a nascent dialogue on GMOs and focused exclusively on the illusory anarchist invasion.

Far from being the key culprit, the SLPD was targeted to take the rap.  It was a pawn in a far bigger game of using genetic engineering to destroy small farmers across the globe. 

Describing police activities during 2003 as “mistakes” continues the campaign of misinformation.  Their attacks were no “mistake.”  They were a vital element in shifting the public eye away from what agribusiness planned for Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Anyone who seriously believes actions by the SLPD were mistakes should let us know how often police departments invade offices such as Monsanto World Headquarters, piss on tuxedos of corporate executives, steal their electronic equipment, tell the press to print front page stories of corporate terrorists, and arrest corporate officers for possession of vitamin A.

If 100% of such police attacks are against those resisting corporate power and 0% of police violence is against corporations, then a reasonable person might conclude that the function of police is to protect corporate power.  This is quite a bit different from accounts of the police being a neutral party that occasionally makes the “mistake” of “preemptive” attacks.

We should applaud each of the plaintiffs against the SLPD receiving $13,500.  But rather than clearing the air, the police apology serves to further mystify the 2003 web of intrigues.  For the corporations that move pawns around, the 2009 apology is merely a tiny step backward in their continuing march to subjugate world agriculture.

Don Fitz is editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought, which is published for members of The Greens/Green Party USA.  If you know of where to find a horde of 50,000 anarchists, please contact him at fitzdon@aol.com

Notes

1. American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. (August 24, 2009). ACLU applauds police apology to protestors. Press Release.

2. Daniel (digger) Romano.  (August 31, 2009). Letter to the Editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. A11.

3. American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. (Janaury 27, 2006).  Letter to Barbara Chicherio and Don Fitz.

4. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (November 15, 2005). Letter to Denise D. Lieberman, American Civil Liberties Union. FOIPA No. 1021258-000.

5. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (April 9, 2003). Counterterrorism memo. Case ID No: 300A-SL-188478.

6. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (May 8, 2003). Counterterrorism memo. Case ID No: 300A-SL-188478.

7. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (April 15, 2003). Counterterrorism memo. Case ID No: 300A-SL-188478.

8. Kelley Meister. (Fall, 2003). Report from the Bolozone. Synthesis/Regeneration, 32, pp. 5–7.

9. Patrick O’Connell. (August 25, 2009). City police apologize for raids in 2003.  St. Louis Post-Dispatch, pp. A1, A9.

10. Mwananyanda Lewanika. (Fall, 2003). The real story behind the food crisis in Zambia. Synthesis/Regeneration, 32, pp. 12–14.

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