FBI: Don't Spy on Us Say Minneapolis Activists:
"UpTakeVideo | December 23, 2010
It was a declassified FBI document that Lucia Wilkes Smith held up before a crowd of Minneapolis peace activists. It was declassified in name only because nearly every word on the dozen or so pages had been blacked out for national security reasons. 'The first letter I got from the FBI said 'we don't have anything on you', said Wilkes Smith a well-spoken gray-haired woman. She had made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request of the FBI. The American Civil Liberties Union and others had urged her to file the request because the FBI had been spying on anti-war groups in Minnesota prior to and during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul. 'And then another letter came that said 'well we got a few pages, but they're classified'. And then eventually they declassified this and sent it to me.' She held up the dozen or so pages with nearly every word blacked out. For years, the FBI, Homeland Security and other government agencies have been spying on Wilkes Smith and other outspoken opponents of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The FBI even went so far as to send an undercover agent to a neighborhood anti-war meeting in Northfield, Minnesota. This past September, the FBI raided the homes and offices of nine Twin Cities peace activists and carted off computer files, phone records and personal possessions. They also delivered subpoenas to the nine. The same day, the FBI raided homes of other peace activists in Chicago and Michigan. A total of 23 were ordered to appear before a Grand Jury to testify and name the Trade Unionists they had they met with in Colombia especially and in Palestine. Trade Unionists are outlawed in Colombia. The names, if released, could end up on death squad hit list. They kill unionists in Colombia. In Palestine, Israel is always looking for people who have contact with outside activists. The fear is that Colombia or Israel could use the names to cook up more vengeance on activists. Some peace activists may be asked to testify before the Grand Jury in Chicago as early as January 25th. Wilkes Smith isn't one of those subpoenaed, but she knows what it's like to be watched and is helping her friends fight back. This week at a meeting of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, she urged them to file FOIA requests to find out what evidence the government has against them. 'I'm scared and I'm really angry because I think some of my friends and colleagues, they won't just be going to jail. They'll be going to federal prison.' Military veterans opposed to the war offered solidarity with those targeted by the FBI. Wayne Wittman of Veterans For Peace has his own reasons to be wary of the U.S. Government. He was just 16 when World War II ended. He recalled how Nazi Germany would describe events 'exactly opposite of how my government was describing. I soon learned that my government's description was the truth.' Wittman said his confidence in the U.S. government was shattered during the Vietnam war. 'We now know we were lied to, deceived in that war'. 'Any one of us could be a target', said Jennie Eisert,an anti-war organizer helping people fill out the FOIA request forms. 'Join with us to show that that freedom of speech, freedom of association and fighting for justice is not illegal. Demand a halt to the Grand Jury proceedings.' According to the Washington Post , Eisert's words of warning should be heeded by more than those in the room that night. The newspaper says: * The FBI is building a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously. It is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain. * The Department of Homeland Security sends its state and local partners intelligence reports with little meaningful guidance, and state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings. In other words, there is a lot of information being collected that shouldn't be. Former FBI Agent Coleen Rowley who is also part of the peace movement says that having so much junk information in the system makes it harder to spot the real threats.
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Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog
Thursday, December 23, 2010
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Selected Videos
- ***Alnakba [The Catastrophe] - [P1] The Threads of the Conspiracy [P2] Crushing the Revolution
- ***Alnakba [The Catastrophe] - [P3] Ethnic Cleansing [P4] Nakba Continued
- **Al Nakba [La Catástrofe] - [P1] Los Hilos de la Conspiración [P2] Aplastar la Revoución
- **AlNakba [La Catásrofe] - [P3] Limpieza Étnica
- *A Palestinian Woman
- *Azmi Bishara - Interview:
- *Azmi Bishara on Israeli Apartheid
- *Azmi Bishara: The Last Colonial Question
- *Blood & Religion, Unmasking the Israeli State
- *De Facto State of Lawlessness
- *Drying up Palestine
- *Edward Said - On Orientalism
- *Edward Said: Lecture The Myth of 'The Clash of Civilzations'
- *Edward Said: Memory, Inequality and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights
- *Edward Said: Palestine, Iraq and U.S. Policy
- *Francis Boyle - Palestinians and International law
- *From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State 1 - Diana Buttu"
- *From Occupation to Enclosure: Fragmenting the Palestinian State 2 - Amira Hass"
- *George Bisharat - Ending the Palestinian Nakba
- *Ghada Karmi at Yale
- *Ghada Karmi: Why Israel is a Failed State
- *Ilan Pappe - Interview
- *Ilan Pappe - Israel's 1967 Plan for the West Bank and Gaza Strip
- *Ilan Pappe on the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
- *In the Spider's Web
- *Interview: Ghassan Andoni
- *Israel's Secret Weapon (Israel's WMD)
- *Jeff Halper - Israeli Apartheid and the Paths to a Just Peace
- *Jeff Halper- The United States, Israel and the American Jewish Community
- *Jenin Jenin
- *John Pilger - Palestine is still the issue
- *John Pilger - The War on Democracy
- *Landscapes of Occupation in Palestine
- *Muhammad Jaradat & Eitan Bronstein: 1948 and the Right of Return
- *Noam Chomsky - Middle East Crisis
- *Noam Chomsky on Gaza - MIT
- *Norman Fikelstein - The Israel-Palestine conflict: what we can learn from Gandhi
- *Norman Finkelstein speech at Columbia University (3 parts video)
- *Occupation 101
- *Off The Charts - If Americans Knew
- *Palestine Street -1- The Lost Bride
- *Palestine Street -2- The Bride in exile
- *Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the Israel-Palestine Conflict
- *People and The Land: The Story of a People Under Occupation
- *Phyllis Bennis - "Dual Occupations: Iraq and Palestine in Bush's Empire"
- *Rachel: An American Conscience
- *Rashid Khalidi - Palestine: 40 Years of Occupation, 60 Years of Dispossession
- *Rep. Paul Findley Dares to Speak Out -- Again! AIPAC exposed
- *Salman Abu Sitta: Atlas Palestine
- *Salman Abu Sitta: The Geography of Occupation
- *Secret WMD in Israel
- *Technical Error at Beit Hanoun
- *Tegenlicht ('Backlight') A Documentary on the Israel Lobby -
- *The Bases Are Loaded: US Permanent Military Presence in Iraq
- *The Easiest Targets: The Israeli Policy of Strip Searching Women and Children
- *The influence of the Israel Lobby on American foreign policy
- *The Iron Wall
- *The Israeli Wall in Palestinian Lands
- *The Killing Zone
- *The Unrecognized
- *This is Not Your War
- *Wall of Shame
- Watch "If Americans Knew" Videos
- Watch Alternate Focus Videos
- Watch B'Tselem Videos
- watch ISM Videos
- Watch pdxjustice Videos
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