mintpressnews--2020-08-25--Tomato Gardeners: The Latest Victim in the Government’s War on Drugs

A journal entry from a California resident describes the government ’ s aerial searches for marijuana plants : Backyard gardeners , beware : tomato plants have become collateral damage in the government ’ s war on drugs , especially marijuana .
In fact , merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property , or in a greenhouse on your property , or shopping at a gardening store for gardening supplies—incredibly enough—could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by the courts .
After shopping for hydroponic tomatoes at their local gardening store , a Kansas family found themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of a multi-state , annual campaign dubbed “ Operation Constant Gardener , ” in which police collected the license plates of hundreds of customers at the gardening store and then investigated them for possible marijuana possession .
By “ investigated , ” I mean that police searched through the family ’ s trash .
( You can thank the Supreme Court and their 1978 ruling in California v. Greenwood for allowing police to invade your trash can . )
Finding “ wet glob vegetation ” in the garbage , the cops somehow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was marijuana .
In fact , it was loose-leaf tea , but those pesky details don ’ t usually bother the cops when they ’ re conducting field tests .
Indeed , field tests routinely read positive for illegal drugs even when no drugs are present .
According to investigative journalist Radley Balko , “ it ’ s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to .
A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage , chocolate chip cookies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , tortilla dough , deodorant , billiard ’ s chalk , patchouli , flour , eucalyptus , breath mints , Jolly Ranchers and vitamins.
” There ’ s a long list of innocent ingredients that could be mistaken for drugs and get you subjected to a raid , because that ’ s all it takes—just the barest whiff of a suspicion by police that you might be engaged in criminal activity—to start the ball rolling .
From there , these so-called “ investigations ” follow the usual script : judge issues a warrant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data , cops raid the home and terrorize the family at gunpoint , cops find no drugs , family sues over a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights , and then the courts protect the cops and their botched raid on the basis of qualified immunity .
It happens all the time As Balko reports , “ Police have broken down doors , screamed obscenities , and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers , hibiscus , ragweed , tomatoes , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happened with all five . )
” Surely , you might think , the government has enough on its hands right now—policing a novel coronavirus pandemic , instituting nationwide lockdowns , quelling civil unrests over police brutality—that it doesn ’ t need to waste time and resources ferreting out pot farmers .
This is a government that excels at make-work projects in which it assigns at-times unnecessary jobs to government agents to keep them busy or employed .
In this case , however , the make-work principle ( translation : making work to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expense ) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on exploratory sorties every summer—again at taxpayer expense—in order to uncover illegal marijuana growing operations .
Often , however , what these air and ground searches end up targeting are backyard gardeners growing tomato plants .
Just recently , in fact , eyewitnesses in Virginia reported low-flying black helicopters buzzing over rural and suburban neighborhoods as part of a multi-agency operation to search for marijuana growers .
Oftentimes these joint operations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Army National Guard .
One woman reported having her “ tomato plants complimented by the 7 cops that pulled up in my yard in unmarked SUVs , after a helicopter hovered over our house for 20 minutes this morning.
” Another man reported a similar experience from a few years ago when police “ showed up in unmarked SUV ’ s with guns pulled .
Then the cops on the ground argued with the helicopter because the heat signature in the ‘ copter didn ’ t match what was growing.
” Back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spotted what police thought might be marijuana plants .
Two days later , dozens of city officials , SWAT team , police officers and code compliance employees , and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment , including helicopters and unmanned flying drones , descended on The Garden of Eden , a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington , Texas , for a 10-hour raid in search of marijuana that turned up nothing more than tomato , blackberry and okra plants .
These aerial and ground sweeps have become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the government ’ s multi-million dollar Domestic Cannabis Eradication Program .
Local cops refer to the annual military maneuvers as “ Eradication Day.
” Started in 1979 as a way to fund local efforts to crack down on marijuana growers in California and Hawaii , the Eradication Program went national in 1985 , right around the time the Reagan Administration enabled the armed forces to get more involved in the domestic “ war on drugs.
” Writing for The Washington Post , Radley Balko describes how these raids started off , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helicopters : The area ’ s larger growers had been put out of business ( or , probably more accurately , had set up shop somewhere else ) , so by the start of the second campaign in 1984 , CAMP officials were already targeting increasingly smaller growers .
By the end of that 1984 campaign , the helicopters had to fly at lower and lower altitudes to spot smaller batches of plants .
The noise , wind , and vibration from the choppers could knock out windows , kick up dust clouds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ running the operation made no bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using .
They considered the areas they were raiding to be war zones .
In the interest of “ officer safety , ” they gave themselves permission to search any structures relatively close to a marijuana supply , without a warrant .
Anyone coming anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment , usually at gunpoint .
Right around the same time , in the mid-1980s , the federal government started handing out grants to local police departments to assist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drugs.
” These grants ( through the Byrne Grant program and COPS program , both of which started to be phased out under George W. Bush , only to be re-upped by Barack Obama ) could be used to pay for additional police personnel , equipment , training , technical assistance and information systems .
However , studies show that while these federal grants did not improve police effectiveness or drug deterrence , they did incentivize SWAT team raids .
From a “ war on drugs ” to SWAT raids on vegetable gardens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government ’ s war on marijuana , the emergence of SWAT teams , the militarization of local police forces through the federal 1033 Program , which allows the Pentagon to transfer “ vast amounts of military equipment—machine guns and ammunition , helicopters , night-vision gear , armored cars—to local police departments , ” and the transformation of American communities into battlefields : as always , it comes back to the make work principle , which starts with local police finding ways to justify the use of military equipment and federal funding .
Each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 14 and $ 18 million funding helicopter sweeps and police overtime to help the states track down illegal marijuana plants .
These sweeps are even being carried out in states where it ’ s now legal to grow marijuana .
The sweeps work like this : Local police , working with multiple state agencies including the National Guard , carry out ground and air searches of different sectors .
Air spotters flying overhead in helicopters relay their findings to police on the ground , who then carry out a search-and-destroy mission .
Mark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drones will make these kinds of aerial missions even more common .
For the most part , aerial surveillance is legal .
As Arthur Holland Michel writes for The Atlantic : “ When it comes to law enforcement , police are likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special permission .
Under current privacy law , these operations are just as legal as policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking or driving through a neighborhood.
” There have been a few notable exceptions .
In 2015 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surveillance from a low-flying helicopter conducting an aerial search for marijuana by state police and the national guard was illegal under the U.S. Constitution .
The court reasoned that “ when low-flying aerial activity leads to more than just observation and actually causes an unreasonable intrusion on the ground—most commonly from an unreasonable amount of wind , dust , broken objects , noise , and sheer panic—then at some point courts are c and require a warrant before law enforcement engages in such activity .
The Fourth Amendment and its prohibition against unreasonable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Philip Cobbs ’ case , helicopter spotters claimed to have seen two lone marijuana plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree on the Virginia native ’ s 39-acre family farm .
Cobbs noticed the black helicopter circling overhead while spraying the blueberry bushes near his house .
After watching the helicopter for several moments , Cobbs went inside to check on his blind , deaf 90-year-old mother .
By the time he returned outside , several unmarked police SUVs had driven onto his property , and police ( ten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carrying semi-automatic weapons and shouting unintelligibly , had exited the vehicles and were moving toward him .
Of course , it was never about the two pot plants .
What the cops were really after was an excuse to search Cobbs ’ little greenhouse , which he had used that spring to start tomato plants , cantaloupes , and watermelons , as well as asters and hollyhocks , which he planned to sell at a roadside stand near his home .
The search of the greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cobbs with misdemeanor possession of marijuana for the two plants they claimed to have found .
Eventually , the charges were dismissed but not before The Rutherford Institute took up Cobbs ’ case , which revealed that police hadn ’ t even bothered to secure a warrant before embarking on their raid of Cobbs ’ property—a raid that had to cost taxpayers upwards of $ 25,000 , at the very least—part of their routine sweep of the countryside in search of pot-growing operations .
Two plants or two hundred or no plants at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A SWAT team targeted one South Carolina man for selling $ 50 worth of pot on two different occasions .
The Washington Post reports : The SWAT team “ broke down Betton ’ s door with a battering ram , then fired at least 57 bullets at him , hitting him nine times .
He lost portions of his gallbladder , colon , bowel and rectum , and is paralyzed from the waist down .
He also suffered damage to his liver , lung , small intestine and pancreas .
Two of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was partially destroyed .
Another bullet shattered his leg.
” After security footage showed that most of what police said about the raid was a lie , the cops settled the case for $ 2.75 million .
Monetary awards like that are the exception , however .
Most of the time , the cops get away with murder and mayhem .
Literally .
Bottom line : no amount of marijuana is too insignificant if it allows police to qualify for federal grants and equipment and lay claim to seized assets ( there ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guise of fighting the War on Drugs .
SWAT teams carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids every year .
The vast majority of these raids are to serve routine drug warrants , many times for crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana .
Although growing numbers of states continue to decriminalize marijuana use and 9 out of 10 Americans favor the legalization of either medical or recreational/adult-use marijuana , the government ’ s profit-driven “ War on Drugs ” —waged with state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to act like soldiers on a battlefield , all thanks to funding provided by the U.S. government , particularly the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security ( DHS ) —has not abated .
Since the formation of the DHS post-9/11 , hundreds of billions of dollars in grants have flowed to local police departments for SWAT teams , giving rise to a “ police industrial complex ” that routinely devastates communities , terrorizes families , and destroys innocent lives .
No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations , SWAT teams are now increasingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day .
Nationwide , SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances : angry dogs , domestic disputes , improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer , and misdemeanor marijuana possession , to give a brief sampling .
Unfortunately , general incompetence , collateral damage ( fatalities , property damage , etc . )
and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of paramilitary forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the address on the warrant .
In others , they simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building .
In another subset of cases , police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no longer resides .
SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple , sequential raids on wrong addresses or executed search warrants despite the fact that the suspect is already in police custody .
Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs .
Incredibly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sunflowers , fish , elderberry bushes , kenaf plants , hibiscus , and ragweed .
All too often , the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams only increases the likelihood that someone will get hurt with little consequences for law enforcement , even when the raids are botched .
Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives , including children and the elderly .
Usually , however , the first to be shot are the family dogs .
SWAT raids are usually carried out late at night or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the unsuspecting homeowner—especially in cases involving mistaken identities or wrong addresses—a raid can appear to be nothing less than a violent home invasion , with armed intruders crashing through their door .
That ’ s exactly what happened to Jose Guerena , the young ex-Marine who was killed after a SWAT team kicked open the door of his Arizona home during a drug raid and opened fire .
According to news reports , Guerena , 26 years old and the father of two young children , grabbed a gun in response to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , the safety was still on his gun when he was killed .
Police officers were not as restrained .
The young Iraqi war veteran was allegedly fired upon 71 times .
Guerena had no prior criminal record , and the police found nothing illegal in his home .
The problems inherent in these situations are further compounded by the fact that SWAT teams are granted “ no-knock ” warrants at high rates such that the warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless .
This sorry state of affairs is made even worse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essentially done away with the need for a “ no-knock ” warrant altogether , giving the police authority to disregard the protections afforded American citizens by the Fourth Amendment .
Clearly , as I make clear in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , something must be done .
When the war on drugs—a.k.a .
the war on the American people—becomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased , it ’ s time to revisit our drug policies and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Bill of Rights , all the rights you expect to have—when they come in like that , the only right you have is not to get shot if you cooperate .
They open that door , your life is on the line , ” concluded Bob Harte , whose home was raided by a SWAT team simply because the family was seen shopping at a garden store , cops found loose tea in the family ’ s trash and mistook it for marijuana .
“ Our family will never be the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recalling the two-hour raid that had police invading their suburban home with a battering ram and AR-15 rifles .
As The Washington Post reports : Bob found himself flat on floor , hands behind his head , his eyes locked on the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle .
“ Are there kids ?
” the officers were yelling .
“ Where are the kids ?
” “ And I ’ m laying there staring at this guy ’ s boots fearing for my kids ’ lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children are , ” Harte recalled later in a deposition on July 9 , 2015 .
“ They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running upstairs to bust into my children ’ s house , bedroom , wake them out of bed.
” It didn ’ t matter that no drugs were found—nothing but a hydroponic tomato garden and loose tea leaves .
The search and SWAT raid were reasonable , according to the courts .
There ’ s a lesson here for the rest of us .
As Bob Harte @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to us , everybody in the country needs to be afraid.
” Feature photo | An aerial view of a small backyard marijuana garden in Fresno , Calif in 2012 .
Gary Kazanjian | AP John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute .
His new book Battlefield America : The War on the American People ( SelectBooks , 2015 ) is available online at www.amazon.com .
Whitehead can be contacted at johnw @ rutherford.org .

A journal entry from a California resident describes the government’s aerial searches for marijuana plants:
They came again this morning at about 8:00 o’clock. A large cargo-type helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened … I see how helpless and tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government which has turned this beautiful country into a police state … I feel like I am in the middle of a war zone.”
Backyard gardeners, beware: tomato plants have become collateral damage in the government’s war on drugs, especially marijuana.
In fact, merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening supplies—incredibly enough—could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by the courts.
It’s happened before
After shopping for hydroponic tomatoes at their local gardening store, a Kansas family found themselves subjected to a SWAT team raid as part of a multi-state, annual campaign dubbed “Operation Constant Gardener,” in which police collected the license plates of hundreds of customers at the gardening store and then investigated them for possible marijuana possession.
By “investigated,” I mean that police searched through the family’s trash. (You can thank the Supreme Court and their 1978 ruling in California v. Greenwood for allowing police to invade your trash can.) Finding “wet glob vegetation” in the garbage, the cops somehow managed to convince themselves—and a judge—that it was marijuana.
In fact, it was loose-leaf tea, but those pesky details don’t usually bother the cops when they’re conducting field tests.
Indeed, field tests routinely read positive for illegal drugs even when no drugs are present. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko, “it’s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to. A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins.”
There’s a long list of innocent ingredients that could be mistaken for drugs and get you subjected to a raid, because that’s all it takes—just the barest whiff of a suspicion by police that you might be engaged in criminal activity—to start the ball rolling.
From there, these so-called “investigations” follow the usual script: judge issues a warrant for a SWAT raid based on botched data, cops raid the home and terrorize the family at gunpoint, cops find no drugs, family sues over a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, and then the courts protect the cops and their botched raid on the basis of qualified immunity.
It happens all the time
As Balko reports, “Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It’s happened with all five.)”
Surely, you might think, the government has enough on its hands right now—policing a novel coronavirus pandemic, instituting nationwide lockdowns, quelling civil unrests over police brutality—that it doesn’t need to waste time and resources ferreting out pot farmers.
You’d be wrong.
This is a government that excels at make-work projects in which it assigns at-times unnecessary jobs to government agents to keep them busy or employed.
In this case, however, the make-work principle (translation: making work to keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on exploratory sorties every summer—again at taxpayer expense—in order to uncover illegal marijuana growing operations.
Often, however, what these air and ground searches end up targeting are backyard gardeners growing tomato plants.
Just recently, in fact, eyewitnesses in Virginia reported low-flying black helicopters buzzing over rural and suburban neighborhoods as part of a multi-agency operation to search for marijuana growers. Oftentimes these joint operations involve local police, state police and the Army National Guard.
One woman reported having her “tomato plants complimented by the 7 cops that pulled up in my yard in unmarked SUVs, after a helicopter hovered over our house for 20 minutes this morning.” Another man reported a similar experience from a few years ago when police “showed up in unmarked SUV’s with guns pulled. Then the cops on the ground argued with the helicopter because the heat signature in the ‘copter didn’t match what was growing.”
Back in 2013, an aerial surveillance mission spotted what police thought might be marijuana plants. Two days later, dozens of city officials, SWAT team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment, including helicopters and unmanned flying drones, descended on The Garden of Eden, a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, for a 10-hour raid in search of marijuana that turned up nothing more than tomato, blackberry and okra plants.
These aerial and ground sweeps have become regular occurrences across the country, part of the government’s multi-million dollar Domestic Cannabis Eradication Program. Local cops refer to the annual military maneuvers as “Eradication Day.”
Started in 1979 as a way to fund local efforts to crack down on marijuana growers in California and Hawaii, the Eradication Program went national in 1985, right around the time the Reagan Administration enabled the armed forces to get more involved in the domestic “war on drugs.”
Writing for The Washington Post, Radley Balko describes how these raids started off, with the National Guard, spy planes and helicopters:
The project was called the Campaign Against Marijuana Production, or CAMP… In all, thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them blaring Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as they dropped Guardsmen and law enforcement officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes into the fields of California … In CAMP’s first year, the program conducted 524 raids, arrested 128 people, and seized about 65,000 marijuana plants. Operating costs ran at a little over $1.5 million. The next year, 24 more sheriffs signed up for the program, for a total of 37. CAMP conducted 398 raids, seized nearly 160,000 plants, and made 218 arrests at a cost to taxpayers of $2.3 million.
The area’s larger growers had been put out of business (or, probably more accurately, had set up shop somewhere else), so by the start of the second campaign in 1984, CAMP officials were already targeting increasingly smaller growers. By the end of that 1984 campaign, the helicopters had to fly at lower and lower altitudes to spot smaller batches of plants. The noise, wind, and vibration from the choppers could knock out windows, kick up dust clouds, and scare livestock. The officials running the operation made no bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using. They considered the areas they were raiding to be war zones. In the interest of “officer safety,” they gave themselves permission to search any structures relatively close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint.
Right around the same time, in the mid-1980s, the federal government started handing out grants to local police departments to assist with their local boots-on-the-ground “war on drugs.” These grants (through the Byrne Grant program and COPS program, both of which started to be phased out under George W. Bush, only to be re-upped by Barack Obama) could be used to pay for additional police personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance and information systems. However, studies show that while these federal grants did not improve police effectiveness or drug deterrence, they did incentivize SWAT team raids.
From a “war on drugs” to SWAT raids on vegetable gardens
Connect the dots, starting with the government’s war on marijuana, the emergence of SWAT teams, the militarization of local police forces through the federal 1033 Program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer “vast amounts of military equipment—machine guns and ammunition, helicopters, night-vision gear, armored cars—to local police departments,” and the transformation of American communities into battlefields: as always, it comes back to the make work principle, which starts with local police finding ways to justify the use of military equipment and federal funding.
Each year, the government spends between $14 and $18 million funding helicopter sweeps and police overtime to help the states track down illegal marijuana plants. These sweeps are even being carried out in states where it’s now legal to grow marijuana.
The sweeps work like this: Local police, working with multiple state agencies including the National Guard, carry out ground and air searches of different sectors. Air spotters flying overhead in helicopters relay their findings to police on the ground, who then carry out a search-and-destroy mission.
Mark my words: the use of police drones will make these kinds of aerial missions even more common.
For the most part, aerial surveillance is legal. As Arthur Holland Michel writes for The Atlantic: “When it comes to law enforcement, police are likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special permission. Under current privacy law, these operations are just as legal as policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking or driving through a neighborhood.”
There have been a few notable exceptions.
In 2015, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that surveillance from a low-flying helicopter conducting an aerial search for marijuana by state police and the national guard was illegal under the U.S. Constitution. The court reasoned that “when low-flying aerial activity leads to more than just observation and actually causes an unreasonable intrusion on the ground—most commonly from an unreasonable amount of wind, dust, broken objects, noise, and sheer panic—then at some point courts are c and require a warrant before law enforcement engages in such activity. The Fourth Amendment and its prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures demands no less.”
In Philip Cobbs’ case, helicopter spotters claimed to have seen two lone marijuana plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree on the Virginia native’s 39-acre family farm.
Cobbs noticed the black helicopter circling overhead while spraying the blueberry bushes near his house. After watching the helicopter for several moments, Cobbs went inside to check on his blind, deaf 90-year-old mother. By the time he returned outside, several unmarked police SUVs had driven onto his property, and police (ten in all) in flak jackets, carrying semi-automatic weapons and shouting unintelligibly, had exited the vehicles and were moving toward him.
Of course, it was never about the two pot plants.
What the cops were really after was an excuse to search Cobbs’ little greenhouse, which he had used that spring to start tomato plants, cantaloupes, and watermelons, as well as asters and hollyhocks, which he planned to sell at a roadside stand near his home. The search of the greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato seedling containers.
Nevertheless, police charged Cobbs with misdemeanor possession of marijuana for the two plants they claimed to have found. Eventually, the charges were dismissed but not before The Rutherford Institute took up Cobbs’ case, which revealed that police hadn’t even bothered to secure a warrant before embarking on their raid of Cobbs’ property—a raid that had to cost taxpayers upwards of $25,000, at the very least—part of their routine sweep of the countryside in search of pot-growing operations.
Two plants or two hundred or no plants at all: it doesn’t matter.
A SWAT team targeted one South Carolina man for selling $50 worth of pot on two different occasions. The Washington Post reports: The SWAT team “broke down Betton’s door with a battering ram, then fired at least 57 bullets at him, hitting him nine times. He lost portions of his gallbladder, colon, bowel and rectum, and is paralyzed from the waist down. He also suffered damage to his liver, lung, small intestine and pancreas. Two of his vertebrae were damaged, and another was partially destroyed. Another bullet shattered his leg.” After security footage showed that most of what police said about the raid was a lie, the cops settled the case for $2.75 million.
Monetary awards like that are the exception, however.
Most of the time, the cops get away with murder and mayhem. Literally.
Bottom line: no amount of marijuana is too insignificant if it allows police to qualify for federal grants and equipment and lay claim to seized assets (there’s the profit motive) under the guise of fighting the War on Drugs.
SWAT teams carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids every year. The vast majority of these raids are to serve routine drug warrants, many times for crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana.
Although growing numbers of states continue to decriminalize marijuana use and 9 out of 10 Americans favor the legalization of either medical or recreational/adult-use marijuana, the government’s profit-driven “War on Drugs”—waged with state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear, armed to the hilt, and trained to act like soldiers on a battlefield, all thanks to funding provided by the U.S. government, particularly the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—has not abated.
Since the formation of the DHS post-9/11, hundreds of billions of dollars in grants have flowed to local police departments for SWAT teams, giving rise to a “police industrial complex” that routinely devastates communities, terrorizes families, and destroys innocent lives.
No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.
Unfortunately, general incompetence, collateral damage (fatalities, property damage, etc.) and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of paramilitary forces.
In some cases, officers misread the address on the warrant. In others, they simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building. In another subset of cases, police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no longer resides.
SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple, sequential raids on wrong addresses or executed search warrants despite the fact that the suspect is already in police custody. Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed.
All too often, the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams only increases the likelihood that someone will get hurt with little consequences for law enforcement, even when the raids are botched.
Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives, including children and the elderly. Usually, however, the first to be shot are the family dogs.
SWAT raids are usually carried out late at night or shortly before dawn. Unfortunately, to the unsuspecting homeowner—especially in cases involving mistaken identities or wrong addresses—a raid can appear to be nothing less than a violent home invasion, with armed intruders crashing through their door.
That’s exactly what happened to Jose Guerena, the young ex-Marine who was killed after a SWAT team kicked open the door of his Arizona home during a drug raid and opened fire. According to news reports, Guerena, 26 years old and the father of two young children, grabbed a gun in response to the forced invasion but never fired. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. Police officers were not as restrained. The young Iraqi war veteran was allegedly fired upon 71 times. Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.
The problems inherent in these situations are further compounded by the fact that SWAT teams are granted “no-knock” warrants at high rates such that the warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless.
This sorry state of affairs is made even worse by U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have essentially done away with the need for a “no-knock” warrant altogether, giving the police authority to disregard the protections afforded American citizens by the Fourth Amendment.
Clearly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, something must be done.
When the war on drugs—a.k.a. the war on the American people—becomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased, it’s time to revisit our drug policies and laws.
“You take the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, all the rights you expect to have—when they come in like that, the only right you have is not to get shot if you cooperate. They open that door, your life is on the line,” concluded Bob Harte, whose home was raided by a SWAT team simply because the family was seen shopping at a garden store, cops found loose tea in the family’s trash and mistook it for marijuana.
“Our family will never be the same,” said Addie Harte, recalling the two-hour raid that had police invading their suburban home with a battering ram and AR-15 rifles. As The Washington Post reports:
Bob found himself flat on floor, hands behind his head, his eyes locked on the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle. “Are there kids?” the officers were yelling. “Where are the kids?” “And I’m laying there staring at this guy’s boots fearing for my kids’ lives, trying to tell them where my children are,” Harte recalled later in a deposition on July 9, 2015. “They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running upstairs to bust into my children’s house, bedroom, wake them out of bed.”
It didn’t matter that no drugs were found—nothing but a hydroponic tomato garden and loose tea leaves. The search and SWAT raid were reasonable, according to the courts.
There’s a lesson here for the rest of us. As Bob Harte concluded: “If this can happen to us, everybody in the country needs to be afraid.”
Feature photo | An aerial view of a small backyard marijuana garden in Fresno, Calif in 2012. Gary Kazanjian | AP
John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].


mintpressnews--2020-08-25--To Capture and Subdue: America’s Theft of Syrian Oil Has Very Little To Do With Money

Near the end of July , one of the most important recent developments in U.S. foreign policy was quietly disclosed during a U.S. Senate hearing .
Not surprisingly , hardly anybody talked about it and most are still completely unaware that it happened .
Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham , Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed that the State Department had awarded an American company , Delta Crescent Energy , with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria .
The area is nominally controlled by the Kurds , yet their military force , the Syrian Democratic Forces ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ auspices and relies on an American military presence to secure its territory .
That military presence will now be charged with protecting an American firm from the government of the country that it is operating within .
Pompeo confirmed that the plans for implanting the firm into the U.S.-held territory are “ now in implementation ” and that they could potentially be “ very powerful.
” This is quite a momentous event given its nature as a blatant example of neocolonial extraction , or , as Stephen Kinzer puts it writing for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vivid throwback to earlier imperial eras , when conquerors felt free to loot the resources of any territory they could capture and subdue.
” Indeed , the history of how the U.S. came to be in a position to “ capture and subdue ” these resources is a sordid , yet informative tale that by itself arguably even rivals other such colonial adventures .
When a legitimate protest movement developed organically in Syria in early 2011 , the U.S. saw an opportunity to destabilize , and potentially overthrow , the government of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its efforts for greater control in the region .
Syria had maintained itself outside of the orbit of U.S. influence and had frustratingly prevented American corporations from penetrating its economy to access its markets and resources .
As the foremost academic expert on Middle East affairs , Christopher Davidson , wrote in his seminal work , “ Shadow Wars , The Secret Struggle for the Middle East , ” discussing both Syria and Libya ’ s strategic importance , “ the fact remained that these two regimes , sitting astride vast natural resources @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rivers , and borders , were still significant obstacles that had long frustrated the ambitions of Western governments and their constituent corporations to gain greater access.
” “ With Syria , ” Davidson wrote , “ having long proven antagonistic to Western interests… a golden opportunity had presented itself in 2011 to oust [ this ] administration once and for all under the pretext of humanitarian and even democratic causes.
” The U.S. , therefore , began organizing and overseeing a militarization of the uprising early on , and soon co-opted the movement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Saudi Arabia , the UAE , and Qatar .
Writing at the end of 2011 , Columbia University ’ s Joseph Massad explained how there was no longer any doubt that “ the Syrian popular struggle for democracy [ has ] already been hijacked , ” given that “ the Arab League and imperial powers have taken over and assumed the leadership of their struggle.
” Soon , through the sponsoring of extremist elements , the insurgency was dominated by Salafists of the al-Qaeda variety .
According to the DIA and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ there was no viable ‘ moderate ’ opposition to Assad ” and “ the U.S. was arming extremists.
” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that “ although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists , ” still “ the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming.
” When ISIS split off from al-Qaeda and formed its own Caliphate , the U.S. continued pumping money and weapons into the insurgency , even though it was known that this aid was going into the hands of ISIS and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ISIS .
U.S. officials admitted that they saw the rise of ISIS as a beneficial development that could help pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give in to America ’ s demands .
Leaked audio of then-Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that “ we were watching… and we know that this [ ISIS ] was growing… We saw that Daesh was growing in strength , and we thought Assad was threatened .
We thought , however , we could probably manage — that Assad would then negotiate.
” As ISIS was bearing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the U.S. was pressing Assad to step down to a U.S.-approved government .
Then , however , Russia intervened with its air force to prevent an ISIS takeover of the country and shifted the balance of forces against the jihadist group .
ISIS ’ viability as a tool to pressure the government was spent .
The arsonist and the firefighter So , a new strategy was implemented : instead of allowing Russia and Syria to take back the territories that ISIS captured throughout the war , the U.S. would use the ISIS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ territories before they were able to .
Like an arsonist who comes to put out the fire , the U.S. would now charge itself with the task of stamping out the Islamist scourge and thereby legitimize its own seizure of Syrian land .
The U.S. partnered with the Kurdish militias who acted as their “ boots on the ground ” in this endeavor and supported them with airstrikes .
The strategy of how these areas were taken was very specific .
It was designed primarily to allow ISIS to escape and redirect itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russia .
This was done through leaving “ an escape route for militants ” or through deals that were made where ISIS voluntarily agreed to cede its territory .
The militants were then able to escape and go wreak havoc against America ’ s enemies in Syria .
Interestingly , in terms of the oil fields now being handed off to an American corporation , the U.S. barely even fought ISIS to gain control over them ; ISIS simply handed them over .
Syria and Russia were quickly closing in on the then-ISIS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a deal between the Kurds and ISIS to give up control of the city .
According to veteran Middle East war correspondent Elijah Magnier , “ U.S.-backed forces advanced in north-eastern areas under ISIS control , with little or no military engagement : ISIS pulled out from more than 28 villages and oil and gas fields east of the Euphrates River , surrendering these to the Kurdish-U.S. forces following an understanding these reached with the terrorist group.
” Sources quoted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that ISIS preferred seeing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the Kurds rather than the Syrian government .
The rationale behind this occupation was best described by Syria expert Joshua Landis , who wrote that the areas of northern Syria under control of the Kurds are the U.S. ’ “ main instrument in gaining leverage ” over the government .
By “ denying Damascus access to North Syria ” and “ controlling half of Syria ’ s energy resources ” “ the U.S. will be able to keep Syria poor and under-resources.
” So , by “ promoting Kurdish nationalism in Syria @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran and Russia the fruits of their victory , ” while “ keeping Damascus weak and divided , ” this serving “ no purpose other than to stop trade ” and to “ beggar Assad and keep Syria divided , weak and poor.
” Or , in the words of Jim Jeffrey , the Trump administrations special representative for Syria who is charged with overseeing U.S. policy , the intent is to “ make life as miserable as possible for that flopping cadaver of a regime and let the Russians and Iranians , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of it.
” This is the history by which an American firm was able to secure a contract to extract oil in Syria .
And while the actual resources gained will not be of much value ( Syria has only 0.1 % of the world ’ s oil reserves ) , the presence of an American company will likely serve as a justification to maintain a U.S. military presence in the region .
“ It is a fiendishly clever maneuver aimed at anchoring American troops in Syria for a long time , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aid the policymakers who hold “ the view that the United States must remain militarily dominant in the Middle East.
” This analysis corroborates the extensive scholarship of people like Mason Gaffney , professor of economics emeritus at the University of California , who , writing in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology , sums up his thesis that throughout its history “ U.S .
military spending has been largely devoted to protecting the overseas assets of multinational corporations that are based in the United States… The U.S. military provides its services @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries and by punishing or deposing regimes that threaten the interests of U.S.-based corporations.
” In essence , by protecting this “ global ‘ sprawl ’ of extractive companies ” the U.S. Department of Defense “ provides a giant subsidy to companies operating overseas , ” one that is paid for by the taxpayer , not the corporate beneficiaries .
It is hard to estimate the exact amount of money the U.S. has invested into the Syria effort , though it likely is near the trillion dollar figure .
The U.S. taxpayer doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but companies that are awarded oil contracts do .
What is perhaps most important about this lesson however is that this is just a singular example of a common occurrence that happens all over the world .
A primary function of U.S. foreign policy is to “ make the world safe for American businesses , ” and the upwards of a thousand military bases the U.S. has stationed across the globe are set up to help protect those corporate investments .
While this history is unique to Syria , similar kinds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s extractive activities in other global arenas .
So , next time you see headlines about Exxon being in some kind of legal dispute with , say , Venezuela , ask yourself how was it that those companies became involved with the resources of that part of the world ?
More often than not , the answer will be similar to how this U.S. company got involved in Syria .
Given all of this , it perhaps might seem to be too mild of a critique to simply say that this Syria enterprise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conquerors simply took what they wished : the sophistication of colonialism has indeed improved by leaps and bounds since then .
Feature photo | A US military convoy drives the he town of Qamishli , north Syria , by a poster showing Syrain President Bashar Aassad , Oct. 26 .
2019.Baderkhan Ahmad | AP Steven Chovanec is an independent journalist based in Chicago , IL .
His writings have appeared in outlets such as The Hill , teleSUR , Truthout , MintPress News , Insurge-Intelligence , and others .
Follow him on Twitter @ @

Near the end of July, one of the most important recent developments in U.S. foreign policy was quietly disclosed during a U.S. Senate hearing. Not surprisingly, hardly anybody talked about it and most are still completely unaware that it happened.
Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria. The area is nominally controlled by the Kurds, yet their military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was formed under U.S. auspices and relies on an American military presence to secure its territory. That military presence will now be charged with protecting an American firm from the government of the country that it is operating within.
Pompeo confirmed that the plans for implanting the firm into the U.S.-held territory are “now in implementation” and that they could potentially be “very powerful.” This is quite a momentous event given its nature as a blatant example of neocolonial extraction, or, as Stephen Kinzer puts it writing for the Boston Globe, “This is a vivid throwback to earlier imperial eras, when conquerors felt free to loot the resources of any territory they could capture and subdue.”
Indeed, the history of how the U.S. came to be in a position to “capture and subdue” these resources is a sordid, yet informative tale that by itself arguably even rivals other such colonial adventures.
To capture and subdue
When a legitimate protest movement developed organically in Syria in early 2011, the U.S. saw an opportunity to destabilize, and potentially overthrow, the government of a country that had long pushed back against its efforts for greater control in the region.
Syria had maintained itself outside of the orbit of U.S. influence and had frustratingly prevented American corporations from penetrating its economy to access its markets and resources.
As the foremost academic expert on Middle East affairs, Christopher Davidson, wrote in his seminal work, “Shadow Wars, The Secret Struggle for the Middle East,” discussing both Syria and Libya’s strategic importance, “the fact remained that these two regimes, sitting astride vast natural resources and in command of key ports, rivers, and borders, were still significant obstacles that had long frustrated the ambitions of Western governments and their constituent corporations to gain greater access.”
“With Syria,” Davidson wrote, “having long proven antagonistic to Western interests… a golden opportunity had presented itself in 2011 to oust [this] administration once and for all under the pretext of humanitarian and even democratic causes.”
The U.S., therefore, began organizing and overseeing a militarization of the uprising early on, and soon co-opted the movement along with allied states Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Writing at the end of 2011, Columbia University’s Joseph Massad explained how there was no longer any doubt that “the Syrian popular struggle for democracy [has] already been hijacked,” given that “the Arab League and imperial powers have taken over and assumed the leadership of their struggle.”
Soon, through the sponsoring of extremist elements, the insurgency was dominated by Salafists of the al-Qaeda variety.
According to the DIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by 2013 “there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad” and “the U.S. was arming extremists.” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that “although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists,” still “the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming.”
When ISIS split off from al-Qaeda and formed its own Caliphate, the U.S. continued pumping money and weapons into the insurgency, even though it was known that this aid was going into the hands of ISIS and other jihadists. U.S. allies directly supported ISIS.
U.S. officials admitted that they saw the rise of ISIS as a beneficial development that could help pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give in to America’s demands.
Leaked audio of then-Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that “we were watching… and we know that this [ISIS] was growing… We saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage — that Assad would then negotiate.” As ISIS was bearing down on the capital city of Damascus, the U.S. was pressing Assad to step down to a U.S.-approved government.
Then, however, Russia intervened with its air force to prevent an ISIS takeover of the country and shifted the balance of forces against the jihadist group. ISIS’ viability as a tool to pressure the government was spent.
The arsonist and the firefighter
So, a new strategy was implemented: instead of allowing Russia and Syria to take back the territories that ISIS captured throughout the war, the U.S. would use the ISIS threat as an excuse to take those territories before they were able to. Like an arsonist who comes to put out the fire, the U.S. would now charge itself with the task of stamping out the Islamist scourge and thereby legitimize its own seizure of Syrian land. The U.S. partnered with the Kurdish militias who acted as their “boots on the ground” in this endeavor and supported them with airstrikes.
The strategy of how these areas were taken was very specific. It was designed primarily to allow ISIS to escape and redirect itself back into the fight against Syria and Russia. This was done through leaving “an escape route for militants” or through deals that were made where ISIS voluntarily agreed to cede its territory. The militants were then able to escape and go wreak havoc against America’s enemies in Syria.
Interestingly, in terms of the oil fields now being handed off to an American corporation, the U.S. barely even fought ISIS to gain control over them; ISIS simply handed them over.
Syria and Russia were quickly closing in on the then-ISIS controlled oilfields, so the U.S. oversaw a deal between the Kurds and ISIS to give up control of the city. According to veteran Middle East war correspondent Elijah Magnier, “U.S.-backed forces advanced in north-eastern areas under ISIS control, with little or no military engagement: ISIS pulled out from more than 28 villages and oil and gas fields east of the Euphrates River, surrendering these to the Kurdish-U.S. forces following an understanding these reached with the terrorist group.”
Sources quoted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that ISIS preferred seeing the fields in the hands of the U.S. and the Kurds rather than the Syrian government.
The rationale behind this occupation was best described by Syria expert Joshua Landis, who wrote that the areas of northern Syria under control of the Kurds are the U.S.’ “main instrument in gaining leverage” over the government. By “denying Damascus access to North Syria” and “controlling half of Syria’s energy resources” “the U.S. will be able to keep Syria poor and under-resources.” So, by “promoting Kurdish nationalism in Syria” the U.S. “hopes to deny Iran and Russia the fruits of their victory,” while “keeping Damascus weak and divided,” this serving “no purpose other than to stop trade” and to “beggar Assad and keep Syria divided, weak and poor.”
Or, in the words of Jim Jeffrey, the Trump administrations special representative for Syria who is charged with overseeing U.S. policy, the intent is to “make life as miserable as possible for that flopping cadaver of a regime and let the Russians and Iranians, who made this mess, get out of it.”
Anchoring American troops in Syria
This is the history by which an American firm was able to secure a contract to extract oil in Syria. And while the actual resources gained will not be of much value (Syria has only 0.1% of the world’s oil reserves), the presence of an American company will likely serve as a justification to maintain a U.S. military presence in the region. “It is a fiendishly clever maneuver aimed at anchoring American troops in Syria for a long time,” Stephen Kinzer explains, one that will aid the policymakers who hold “the view that the United States must remain militarily dominant in the Middle East.”
This analysis corroborates the extensive scholarship of people like Mason Gaffney, professor of economics emeritus at the University of California, who, writing in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, sums up his thesis that throughout its history “U.S. military spending has been largely devoted to protecting the overseas assets of multinational corporations that are based in the United States… The U.S. military provides its services by supporting compliant political leaders in developing countries and by punishing or deposing regimes that threaten the interests of U.S.-based corporations.”
In essence, by protecting this “global ‘sprawl’ of extractive companies” the U.S. Department of Defense “provides a giant subsidy to companies operating overseas,” one that is paid for by the taxpayer, not the corporate beneficiaries. It is hard to estimate the exact amount of money the U.S. has invested into the Syria effort, though it likely is near the trillion dollar figure. The U.S. taxpayer doesn’t get anything out of that, but companies that are awarded oil contracts do.
What is perhaps most important about this lesson however is that this is just a singular example of a common occurrence that happens all over the world. A primary function of U.S. foreign policy is to “make the world safe for American businesses,” and the upwards of a thousand military bases the U.S. has stationed across the globe are set up to help protect those corporate investments. While this history is unique to Syria, similar kinds of histories are responsible for U.S. corporation’s extractive activities in other global arenas.
So, next time you see headlines about Exxon being in some kind of legal dispute with, say, Venezuela, ask yourself how was it that those companies became involved with the resources of that part of the world? More often than not, the answer will be similar to how this U.S. company got involved in Syria.
Given all of this, it perhaps might seem to be too mild of a critique to simply say that this Syria enterprise harkens back to older imperial eras where conquerors simply took what they wished: the sophistication of colonialism has indeed improved by leaps and bounds since then.
Feature photo | A US military convoy drives the he town of Qamishli, north Syria, by a poster showing Syrain President Bashar Aassad, Oct. 26. 2019.Baderkhan Ahmad | AP
Steven Chovanec is an independent journalist based in Chicago, IL. His writings have appeared in outlets such as The Hill, teleSUR, Truthout, MintPress News, Insurge-Intelligence, and others. Follow him on Twitter @stevechovanec


mintpressnews--2020-08-28--Kenosha Shooting Spurs Social Media Surveillance

The Atlantic Council , an independent policy think tank that focuses on international affairs and is notorious for selling influence to foreign countries , has a sister organization dedicated to promoting “ objective truth as a foundation of government ” by identifying disinformation and “ building digital resilience ” to teach people how to expose “ attempts to pollute the information space.
” The Digital Forensic Research Lab ( DFRLab ) counts on a team of “ digital sherlocks ” ; a group of 32 researchers , analysts and editors who prepare reports on various news narratives , which the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the liberation of Aleppo , Syria , relying on sources like the White Helmets who have been thoroughly exposed by MintPress contributor , Vanessa Beeley .
The DFRLab , which has attacked MintPress and Beeley in its publications as “ anti-Israeli , anti-Saudi , and anti-Western , ” has turned its propagandistic sights to Kenosha , Wisconsin , where 29-year old , Jacob Blake , was shot seven times in the back by police while his children watched sparking mass civil unrest , which resulted in the death of two people and another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ old who , yesterday , was charged of first degree murder by Wisconsin state prosecutors .
The Atlantic Council ’ s “ fake news ” researchers revealed in a Medium post that several armed militia groups in the vicinity of Kenosha , which is only 40 miles from Milwaukee , had coordinated on multiple social media platforms to “ defend ” their city from the violent protests , which had erupted over news of the police shooting .
According to the DFRLab , Facebook , which has partnered with the Atlantic Council before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ choice for self-described militiamen to rile up sympathizers and call on them to “ take up arms ” , posting a number of event RSVPs on their social media pages with titles like “ Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property ” and “ STAND UP KENOSHA !
!
!
!
TONIGHT WE COME TOGETHER.
” The digital sherlocks ’ post contained detailed timestamps of the evolution of these alleged militias organizing over the Internet up to 13 hours before the fatal incident involving Kyle Rittenhouse ; the teen charged for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They identify “ Kenosha Guard ” as the leader of the online call to arms , who was seemingly the most active in trying to gather support together and went as far as to write and publish a letter addressed directly to the Kenosha chief of police , Daniel Miskinis , where he asks that he “ NOT have [ his ] officers tell us to go home under threat of arrest as you have done in the past.
” The detail of the DFRLab ’ s exposition of the alleged militia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is even more striking because practically all of the referenced posts by Kenosha Guard and others were deleted pretty quickly ; most staying up for barley a few hours .
Unless they had been monitoring the armed militia groups on social media beforehand , it is unclear how DFRLab was able to piece together such a robust timeline of events .
More than likely , DFRLabs relied on Facebook ’ s own monitoring and social media surveillance tool called CrowdTangle ( purchased in 2016 ) , which is cited in the Medium post @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data about an InfoWars post on the social media platform DFRLab researchers claim “ amplified the call to arms , potentially encouraging additional people with weapons to attend the event.
” The InfoWars article , which DFRLabs claims could have incited more violence , was one of the first media outlets to cover the armed groups organizing to stop “ looters and rioters.
” The piece calls them “ brave locals ” for coming out to protect private property and filling the gaps left by an “ outnumbered ” police department .
Local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ several armed vigilantes and “ militia members ” were looking to be deputized by Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth , who declined any such requests and told reporters that doing so would create “ a liability to me and the county.
” Perhaps , it was just easier to look away and allow “ Kenosha Guard ” and like-minded cohorts to patrol the streets in an unofficial capacity and dispense with formalities that could come back to bite the Sheriff in the next election .
Black Kenosha resident Ray Roberts , told KOB4 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rural areas [ getting ] in big trucks loaded up with guns and flags and got into town , ” adding that despite violating curfew , police were “ not stopping them.
” Robert ’ s first-hand account betrays the narrative that the DFRLab and others are trying to shape in order to justify censorship and deplatforming , which is actually just another manifestation of America ’ s structural racism and decades of economic disenfranchisement coming home to roost .
Feature photo | In this Aug. 26 , 2020 file photo , police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a fourth night to demonstrate against the police violence in Kenosha , Wis. David Goldman | AP

The Atlantic Council, an independent policy think tank that focuses on international affairs and is notorious for selling influence to foreign countries, has a sister organization dedicated to promoting “objective truth as a foundation of government” by identifying disinformation and “building digital resilience” to teach people how to expose “attempts to pollute the information space.” The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) counts on a team of “digital sherlocks”; a group of 32 researchers, analysts and editors who prepare reports on various news narratives, which the Western media establishment dislikes, such as the liberation of Aleppo, Syria, relying on sources like the White Helmets who have been thoroughly exposed by MintPress contributor, Vanessa Beeley.
The DFRLab, which has attacked MintPress and Beeley in its publications as “anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi, and anti-Western,” has turned its propagandistic sights to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where 29-year old, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times in the back by police while his children watched sparking mass civil unrest, which resulted in the death of two people and another wounded at the hands of a 17-year old who, yesterday, was charged of first degree murder by Wisconsin state prosecutors.
The Atlantic Council’s “fake news” researchers revealed in a Medium post that several armed militia groups in the vicinity of Kenosha, which is only 40 miles from Milwaukee, had coordinated on multiple social media platforms to “defend” their city from the violent protests, which had erupted over news of the police shooting. According to the DFRLab, Facebook, which has partnered with the Atlantic Council before, and Reddit were the platforms of choice for self-described militiamen to rile up sympathizers and call on them to “take up arms”, posting a number of event RSVPs on their social media pages with titles like “Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property” and “STAND UP KENOSHA!!!! TONIGHT WE COME TOGETHER.”
Digital sherlock
The digital sherlocks’ post contained detailed timestamps of the evolution of these alleged militias organizing over the Internet up to 13 hours before the fatal incident involving Kyle Rittenhouse; the teen charged for the killing of two men during the riots. They identify “Kenosha Guard” as the leader of the online call to arms, who was seemingly the most active in trying to gather support together and went as far as to write and publish a letter addressed directly to the Kenosha chief of police, Daniel Miskinis, where he asks that he “NOT have [his] officers tell us to go home under threat of arrest as you have done in the past.”
The detail of the DFRLab’s exposition of the alleged militia members’ activity on Facebook and Reddit is even more striking because practically all of the referenced posts by Kenosha Guard and others were deleted pretty quickly; most staying up for barley a few hours. Unless they had been monitoring the armed militia groups on social media beforehand, it is unclear how DFRLab was able to piece together such a robust timeline of events.
More than likely, DFRLabs relied on Facebook’s own monitoring and social media surveillance tool called CrowdTangle (purchased in 2016), which is cited in the Medium post as their source for impressions and interaction data about an InfoWars post on the social media platform DFRLab researchers claim “amplified the call to arms, potentially encouraging additional people with weapons to attend the event.”
The “real story”
The InfoWars article, which DFRLabs claims could have incited more violence, was one of the first media outlets to cover the armed groups organizing to stop “looters and rioters.” The piece calls them “brave locals” for coming out to protect private property and filling the gaps left by an “outnumbered” police department.
Local news station, KOB4, reported that several armed vigilantes and “militia members” were looking to be deputized by Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth, who declined any such requests and told reporters that doing so would create “a liability to me and the county.” Perhaps, it was just easier to look away and allow “Kenosha Guard” and like-minded cohorts to patrol the streets in an unofficial capacity and dispense with formalities that could come back to bite the Sheriff in the next election.
Black Kenosha resident Ray Roberts, told KOB4 that he could see men from “rural areas [getting] in big trucks loaded up with guns and flags and got into town,” adding that despite violating curfew, police were “not stopping them.” Robert’s first-hand account betrays the narrative that the DFRLab and others are trying to shape in order to justify censorship and deplatforming, which is actually just another manifestation of America’s structural racism and decades of economic disenfranchisement coming home to roost.
Feature photo | In this Aug. 26, 2020 file photo, police stop a car near where protesters gather for a fourth night to demonstrate against the police violence in Kenosha, Wis. David Goldman | AP
Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.


mintpressnews--2020-08-28--“This is How Armed Gangs Operate” Israel Admits its Troops Planted IEDs in a Palestinian Town

A seven-year-old Palestinian boy was walking with his mother just outside the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum a few miles to west of the city of Nablus .
Seeing a strange orange and black package held down with some rocks , the boy approached , thinking it was a toy .
His mother quickly stopped him , summoning a relative to investigate .
Foolishly , the man shook the package and it exploded , injuring his face and hands .
Along the popular path they found another device , this time photographing it and throwing stones at it until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ housed in a metal box used by the Israeli Defense Forces ( IDF ) to store grenades , Israeli outlet Haaretz reports .
That evening , after the images had caused outrage on social media , Israeli military units came and neutralized a third IED they had left on the path .
IDF sources freely admitted that they put the explosives on the commonly used road , doing it to “ create a deterrence , ” because “ riots have regularly occurred ” in the area .
Kafr Qaddum is known as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , suggesting this was done in response to their activism .
Warning signs , written in Hebrew only , were found close to the IEDs .
“ People live there , and children wander around , ” said the injured man , “ it ’ s lucky nothing worse happened.
” “ Even in a place where revenge operations by soldiers have already become routine , soldiers planting improvised explosive devices is exceptional , and it ’ s pure luck that it didn ’ t cause far worse injuries , ” Israeli human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ When this story came to me I did not believe it was true .
But it is , ” said Haaretz ’ s Hagar Shezaf , who covered the story .
Yet despite the fact that she obtained confessions from IDF sources , she entertained the idea that the whole thing was a Palestinian false flag operation .
Needless to say , placing explosive devices in civilian areas is a serious war crime .
However , compared to the weeks-long bombing campaign against Gaza it is currently undertaking , planting some IEDs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media have shown little interest in covering the campaign , reflexively taking the Israeli side when doing so .
Indeed , Canadian broadcaster CBC issued a public apology for using the word “ Palestine ” on air during an interview .
The humanitarian fallout from the bombing is likely worse than the bombing itself .
The only power plant in Gaza has been forced out of action , and Israel is limiting the area to only three to four hours of electricity per day by restricting fuel imports .
Oxfam warns that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ epidemic that authorities will not be able to handle .
Gaza has only 97 intensive care hospital beds , and people ’ s access to clean water has shrunk from 80 to 20 liters per day .
“ People are forced to choose between hygiene and food , ” explained Shane Stevenson , Oxfam ’ s country director for Israel and Palestine .
Malnutrition has also reached the point of crisis , with one third of Palestine ( and over two-thirds of Gazans ) food insecure , according to the World Food Program @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Palestinian children under the age of five showed moderate to severe signs of stunted growth .
The United States holds a huge amount of influence in the region .
However , both political parties appear steadfast in their support for Israeli actions .
Trump has emboldened Netanyahu to announce the annexation of much of the fertile Jordan Valley , while the Democratic ticket seems eager to outdo the president .
“ I pledge to you the Biden-Harris administration will sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel ’ s security , including the unprecedented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama-Biden administration and the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge , ” Harris said at a fundraiser on Wednesday .
On the subject of the IEDs , Haaretz was concerned enough to print an editorial .
“ This phenomenon must be shut down and those responsible punished .
The IDF must make sure there are no more such devices in the area , and that there are no other locations where orange boxes await curious children or their parents , ” they wrote .
Whether the IDF heed their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ photo | Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian town of Yabad near the West Bank city of Jenin , May .
12 , 2020 .
Majdi Mohammed | AP Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News .
After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books : Bad News From Venezuela : Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age : Still Manufacturing Consent .
He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting , The Guardian , Salon , The Grayzone , Jacobin Magazine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and The Canary .

A seven-year-old Palestinian boy was walking with his mother just outside the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum a few miles to west of the city of Nablus. Seeing a strange orange and black package held down with some rocks, the boy approached, thinking it was a toy. His mother quickly stopped him, summoning a relative to investigate. Foolishly, the man shook the package and it exploded, injuring his face and hands.
Along the popular path they found another device, this time photographing it and throwing stones at it until it too exploded.
That device was housed in a metal box used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to store grenades, Israeli outlet Haaretz reports. That evening, after the images had caused outrage on social media, Israeli military units came and neutralized a third IED they had left on the path.
https://twitter.com/LaraFriedmanDC/status/1298623678964432896
IDF sources freely admitted that they put the explosives on the commonly used road, doing it to “create a deterrence,” because “riots have regularly occurred” in the area. Kafr Qaddum is known as a hotbed of protest against the Israeli occupation, suggesting this was done in response to their activism. Warning signs, written in Hebrew only, were found close to the IEDs. “People live there, and children wander around,” said the injured man, “it’s lucky nothing worse happened.”
“Even in a place where revenge operations by soldiers have already become routine, soldiers planting improvised explosive devices is exceptional, and it’s pure luck that it didn’t cause far worse injuries,” Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said.
This is how armed gangs operate, not a regular army. But the action reflects the spirit of the army’s commanders and the government, both of which send the message that Palestinian lives and limbs are fair game.”
“When this story came to me I did not believe it was true. But it is,” said Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf, who covered the story. Yet despite the fact that she obtained confessions from IDF sources, she entertained the idea that the whole thing was a Palestinian false flag operation.
Needless to say, placing explosive devices in civilian areas is a serious war crime. However, compared to the weeks-long bombing campaign against Gaza it is currently undertaking, planting some IEDs is perhaps a minor incident. Western media have shown little interest in covering the campaign, reflexively taking the Israeli side when doing so. Indeed, Canadian broadcaster CBC issued a public apology for using the word “Palestine” on air during an interview.
The humanitarian fallout from the bombing is likely worse than the bombing itself. The only power plant in Gaza has been forced out of action, and Israel is limiting the area to only three to four hours of electricity per day by restricting fuel imports. Oxfam warns that the conditions are likely to spark a COVID-19 epidemic that authorities will not be able to handle. Gaza has only 97 intensive care hospital beds, and people’s access to clean water has shrunk from 80 to 20 liters per day. “People are forced to choose between hygiene and food,” explained Shane Stevenson, Oxfam’s country director for Israel and Palestine.
Malnutrition has also reached the point of crisis, with one third of Palestine (and over two-thirds of Gazans) food insecure, according to the World Food Program, who found that nearly eight percent of Palestinian children under the age of five showed moderate to severe signs of stunted growth.
The United States holds a huge amount of influence in the region. However, both political parties appear steadfast in their support for Israeli actions. Trump has emboldened Netanyahu to announce the annexation of much of the fertile Jordan Valley, while the Democratic ticket seems eager to outdo the president. “I pledge to you the Biden-Harris administration will sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security, including the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation pioneered during the Obama-Biden administration and the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge,” Harris said at a fundraiser on Wednesday.
On the subject of the IEDs, Haaretz was concerned enough to print an editorial. “This phenomenon must be shut down and those responsible punished. The IDF must make sure there are no more such devices in the area, and that there are no other locations where orange boxes await curious children or their parents,” they wrote. Whether the IDF heed their words remains to be seen.
Feature photo | Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian town of Yabad near the West Bank city of Jenin, May. 12, 2020. Majdi Mohammed | AP
Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.


mintpressnews--2020-08-28--Biden’s Campain and the DNC Make a Mockery of Jews, Israel, and of Course, Joe Biden

Joe Biden still carries his support for Israel as though it was a badge of honor .
Reading through his campaign ’ s website , one wonders if the leader of the Democratic Party is in touch with the rest of the country , not to mention the rest of the world .
We are fast approaching a world where support for Israel is viewed as shameful .
Being recognized as a supporter of the violent , apartheid regime known as Israel , should no longer be a source of pride , but rather seen as an accusation .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politicians who stick to the archaic notions of legitimizing and supporting the so-called “ Jewish State.
” Under the title of “ Joe Biden ’ s record of unstinting support for Israel , ” Bide ’ s campaign website features a list of policies and actions that represent his , “ stalwart support for Israel.
” Other statements that can be found regarding this issue on the site include , “ Vice President Joe Biden has consistently made solidarity with Israel.
” He made what with Israel ?
How does one make solidarity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on to say that , “ As President , Joe Biden will continue to ensure that the Jewish State , the Jewish people , and Jewish values have the unbreakable support of the United States.
” Is there anyone in the Democratic Party who can explain what this sentence means ?
For starters , the so-called “ Jewish State ” is not Jewish and hard as Israel may try to hide it , being “ Jewish ” is not a nationality but a religion .
Most Jewish people live in other countries and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ governed by the State of Israel are not Jewish but Palestinian Muslims .
Under the Israeli apartheid system Jewish people do enjoy privileges that others do not , so one could say it is a state that provides privilege to Jewish people at the expense of others .
That hardly qualifies it as a “ Jewish State.
” Someone in the Democratic Party might also want to explain the “ Jewish values ” that are referenced here .
There are no values that are uniformly espoused by all Jewish people .
Some Jewish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Some are racists and support Zionism and others are not .
Some Jewish people are fine people , some are not .
And finally , it would be nice to know who the ignorant fool is who wrote this stuff for the Biden campaign .
As one reads through the Democratic National Convention platform under the section titled , “ RENEWING AMERICAN LEADERSHIP , ” and the sub-section titled “ The Middle East , ” there is an entire segment on Iran .
Iran , which certainly has influence in the Middle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Middle East .
This reminds me of the Israeli police officer who questioned me after the Israeli authorities learned of my visit to Iran .
The questioning began with : “ Have you visited any hostile Arab countries lately ?
” When I replied “ no , ” the officer angrily asked , “ Don ’ t you consider Iran to be a hostile Arab country ?
” Again I replied , “ no.
” Can it be that both the Israeli authorities and the Dems don ’ t know where Iran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arab nor is it in the Middle East .
When it comes to Israel , the DNC platform is full of contradictions .
Following Biden ’ s personal commitment to Israel , the platform says , “ Our commitment to Israel ’ s security , its qualitative military edge , its right to defend itself , and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.
” The “ Memorandum ” is the foreign aid agreement signed in 2016 which promises Israel an unprecedented $ 38 billion over ten years .
The platform then goes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the worth of every Israeli and every Palestinian.
” As the past one hundred years in Palestine have shown , support for Israel comes at the expense of Palestinian lives .
No one can honestly care for the lives of Palestinians and support Israel ’ s “ qualitative military edge.
” It is that very military that is used by Israel to kill Palestinians .
The Israeli military is part of a larger “ security ” apparatus that is devoted to the oppression of the Palestinian people and the protection of the apartheid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ foolish statement made in the platform , and the one the Dems will likely come to regret more than anything is the following : “ We oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel , including at the United Nations or through the Boycott , Divestment , and Sanctions Movement.
” Opposing the Palestinian call for boycott , divestment , and sanctions against the State of Israel is a mistake of historic proportions .
Rejecting BDS will be remembered as not only cowardly but also as an unwillingness on the part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ justice and freedom in Palestine .
It is reactionary , short-sighted , and likely to have serious political repercussions .
For generations to come , the Democratic Party of 2020 will be remembered as weak on human rights and its blind support for Israel will be used as an accusation both against the Biden-Harris ticket and the Democratic Party as a whole .
The argument made by those who feel that progressives should vote for the Biden-Harris ticket is that they are “ pushable.
” In other words , if activists on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to bring about change from within , Joe Biden as president will listen .
This argument makes the claim that while Biden ’ s record is clear , and while his entire career demonstrates he always supported crimes committed against Palestinians , as president , if pressured he may change .
Before every election , Americans are told that they face a tough choice .
Before every election , Americans are told that the stakes are high , that the results will be close , and that they need to vote wisely .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is more true than ever .
Particularly for progressives , the choice between a far-Right neo-fascist and a middle of the road uninspiring centrist career politician isn ’ t easy .
Good luck to us all !
Feature photo | Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a memorial service for former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington , Oct 6 , 2016 .
Zach Gibson | AP Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem .
He is the author of “ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an Israeli in Palestine , ” and “ Injustice , the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five .
”

Joe Biden still carries his support for Israel as though it was a badge of honor. Reading through his campaign’s website, one wonders if the leader of the Democratic Party is in touch with the rest of the country, not to mention the rest of the world. We are fast approaching a world where support for Israel is viewed as shameful. Being recognized as a supporter of the violent, apartheid regime known as Israel, should no longer be a source of pride, but rather seen as an accusation. “Israel Supporter” is synonymous with narrow-minded politicians who stick to the archaic notions of legitimizing and supporting the so-called “Jewish State.”
Joe Biden
Under the title of “Joe Biden’s record of unstinting support for Israel,” Bide’s campaign website features a list of policies and actions that represent his, “stalwart support for Israel.” Other statements that can be found regarding this issue on the site include, “Vice President Joe Biden has consistently made solidarity with Israel.”
He made what with Israel? How does one make solidarity with another country?
The site goes on to say that, “As President, Joe Biden will continue to ensure that the Jewish State, the Jewish people, and Jewish values have the unbreakable support of the United States.”
Is there anyone in the Democratic Party who can explain what this sentence means?
For starters, the so-called “Jewish State” is not Jewish and hard as Israel may try to hide it, being “Jewish” is not a nationality but a religion. Most Jewish people live in other countries and the majority of the people who are governed by the State of Israel are not Jewish but Palestinian Muslims. Under the Israeli apartheid system Jewish people do enjoy privileges that others do not, so one could say it is a state that provides privilege to Jewish people at the expense of others. That hardly qualifies it as a “Jewish State.”
Someone in the Democratic Party might also want to explain the “Jewish values” that are referenced here. There are no values that are uniformly espoused by all Jewish people. Some Jewish people are religious, others are not. Some are racists and support Zionism and others are not. Some Jewish people are fine people, some are not. And finally, it would be nice to know who the ignorant fool is who wrote this stuff for the Biden campaign.
Democratic National Convention
As one reads through the Democratic National Convention platform under the section titled, “RENEWING AMERICAN LEADERSHIP,” and the sub-section titled “The Middle East,” there is an entire segment on Iran. Iran, which certainly has influence in the Middle East, is not even part of the Middle East.
This reminds me of the Israeli police officer who questioned me after the Israeli authorities learned of my visit to Iran. The questioning began with:
“Have you visited any hostile Arab countries lately?” When I replied “no,” the officer angrily asked, “Don’t you consider Iran to be a hostile Arab country?” Again I replied, “no.” Can it be that both the Israeli authorities and the Dems don’t know where Iran is located geographically? It is neither Arab nor is it in the Middle East.
When it comes to Israel, the DNC platform is full of contradictions. Following Biden’s personal commitment to Israel, the platform says, “Our commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.” The “Memorandum” is the foreign aid agreement signed in 2016 which promises Israel an unprecedented $38 billion over ten years.
The platform then goes on to say, “Democrats recognize the worth of every Israeli and every Palestinian.” As the past one hundred years in Palestine have shown, support for Israel comes at the expense of Palestinian lives. No one can honestly care for the lives of Palestinians and support Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” It is that very military that is used by Israel to kill Palestinians. The Israeli military is part of a larger “security” apparatus that is devoted to the oppression of the Palestinian people and the protection of the apartheid regime.
What is perhaps the most foolish statement made in the platform, and the one the Dems will likely come to regret more than anything is the following: “We oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.” Opposing the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against the State of Israel is a mistake of historic proportions.
Rejecting BDS will be remembered as not only cowardly but also as an unwillingness on the part of the Democratic Party to stand for justice and freedom in Palestine. It is reactionary, short-sighted, and likely to have serious political repercussions. For generations to come, the Democratic Party of 2020 will be remembered as weak on human rights and its blind support for Israel will be used as an accusation both against the Biden-Harris ticket and the Democratic Party as a whole.
A difficult choice
The argument made by those who feel that progressives should vote for the Biden-Harris ticket is that they are “pushable.” In other words, if activists on the ground and within the Democratic Party work to bring about change from within, Joe Biden as president will listen. This argument makes the claim that while Biden’s record is clear, and while his entire career demonstrates he always supported crimes committed against Palestinians, as president, if pressured he may change.
Before every election, Americans are told that they face a tough choice. Before every election, Americans are told that the stakes are high, that the results will be close, and that they need to vote wisely. It may well be that this time it is more true than ever. Particularly for progressives, the choice between a far-Right neo-fascist and a middle of the road uninspiring centrist career politician isn’t easy.
Good luck to us all!
Feature photo | Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a memorial service for former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, Oct 6, 2016. Zach Gibson | AP
Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”