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May 7th, 2008
Why are the presidential candidates—and so many counterterrorism experts—afraid to say that the Al Qaeda threat is overrated?
Christopher Dickey
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 9:32 AM ET May 6, 2008
Michael Sheehan is on a one-man mission to put terrorist threats into perspective, which is a place they've rarely or ever been before. Already you can see it's going to be a hard slog. Fighting the inflated menace of Osama bin Laden has become big business, generating hundreds of billions of dollars for government agencies and contractors in what one friend of mine in the Washington policy-making stratosphere calls "the counterterrorist-industrial complex."
But Sheehan's got the kind of credentials that ought to make us stop and listen. He was a U.S. Army Green Beret fighting guerrillas in Central America in the 1980s, he served on the National Security Council staff under both President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, and he held the post of ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism from 1998 to 2000.
In those days Sheehan was among that persistent, relentless and finally shrill chorus of voices trying to warn the Clinton administration that Osama bin Laden and his boys represented a horrific danger to the United States and its interests. Days after the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors, experienced analysts like Sheehan at the State Department and Richard A. Clarke at the White House were certain Al Qaeda was behind it, but there was no support for retaliation among the Clintonistas or, even less, the Pentagon.
--MORE--
NYT Again Excludes Critics From Iraq War Discussion
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Source:
Sometime in the last 24 hours, the Office of the Secretary of Defense quietly uploaded all 8,000 pages of docs used by the NYT in its expose of the military analyst/sock puppet scandal:--MORE--
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/
I'm sure there are further revelations in these raw documents......
Tomgram: William Astore, Coming Down to Earth
[Note for Tomdispatch Readers: Think of this dispatch, in TV terms, as counterprograming. While much of America sits, couch- and Earth-bound, checking out the latest 24/7 bout of Democratic primary coverage, Tomdispatch soars into the heavens on the wings of historian and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William J. Astore. No couch-potatoes we. And while I'm at it, let me recommend a website. For those of you interested in keeping up with the latest developments in techno-war, there is only one place to go: Wired Magazine's Danger Room run by Noah Shachtman.]
Once upon a time, when it came to weaponry in space, "the final frontier" was left largely to the USS Enterprise and early Trekkie cultists (myself among them). Ever since the Reagan era, however, R&D for all sorts of exotic space weaponry to be employed against "enemy" satellites or used against enemies on Earth, has been on the drawing boards, in development, and in the dreams of aerospace enthusiasts.
We've just passed the 25th anniversary of President Reagan's March 23, 1983 "Star Wars" moment, when he tacked three unforgettable paragraphs onto a speech calling for greater defense spending against the Soviet threat. He challenged the "scientific community" to undertake a vast research and development effort to create an "impermeable" antimissile shield in space that would render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." While the purest of presidential fantasies in itself, it marked the beginning of a quarter-century long race to weaponize space, to take what the Air Force regularly refers to today as "the high ground."
Now, of course, we have an Air Force Space Command and a President who has signed a National Space Policy "that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone 'hostile to U.S. interests.'" Though you'll find many explanations for the urge to develop space weaponry and dominate that high ground, it's hard not to believe that a set of deep fantasies aren't involved. Weaponizing space, after all, combines the urge to take that "frontier" (even if it's a vacuum and there are no redskins); the urge to be or play God -- to embrace, that is, the delusion that what you can't control from close up, street by street, or village by village, you can somehow control from unbelievably far away; and perhaps the urge to be young and male. (Space wars! Yippee! I saw it in the movies!) Of course, as with so much else in our militarized world, there's also the prosaic, if profitable, urge to spend prodigious amounts of money, fund cutting-edge projects, direct future research, and triumph in interservice rivalries. All of this Astore takes up soaringly in the following piece. Tom
The Air Force Above All
Dominating the Air, Space, and CyberspaceBy William J. Astore
When I first joined the Air Force, its mission statement was straightforward: to fly and fight. The recruiting slogan was upbeat: the Air Force was "a great way of life," and the ROTC program I enrolled in was the "gateway to a great way of life."
Mission statements and slogans are easy to poke fun at and shouldn't, perhaps, be taken too seriously. That said, the people who develop them do take them seriously, which is why they can't be ignored.
Read More >>'CIA operative' buried; mystery remains
Four strange deaths UPDATED!
Don Clark's Big Lie About Roland Carnaby
* May. 6th, 2008 at 6:10 PM
"...the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil...therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one..." - Adolph Hitler
Don Clark's Big Lie About Roland Carnaby
I'll try to make this brief. Being modern Americans, both you and I have short attention spans. That's how stories like the following get memory holed. We don't pay attention.
On April 29, 2008, Roland Carnaby was shot down in the street by the Houston Police Department. The capital crime he committed was running from the cops after a traffic stop.
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Wednesday, 07 May 2008
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
A Barack Obama presidency would certainly be a first - the first time that "most black people will end their historic progressive politics and applaud this country's criminal activity just because the head criminal looks like them." Despite the fact that African Americans overwhelmingly agree with the thrust of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's critique of American society, history and government policies, they will undoubtedly vote in huge majorities for the Illinois senator who has repudiated Wright. "Obama's campaign has been filled with a laundry list of lies" and promises to continue on that track. But, as with Colin Powell's lying, international lawbreaking term in high office, "most black people [will make] excuses for him and for his crimes." Although verbally less bellicose than Hillary Clinton, Obama is no less the warmonger in substance.
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
The United States has always shaped its criminal justice practices to suit and satisfy the imperative to smash African American resistance. When no organized resistance can be found, the system invents it. The Bush administration has outdone the post-Civil War Black Codes, which treated all gatherings of three or more African Americans as potential "conspiracies." To justify police state structures erected in the wake of 9/11, the feds entrapped and twice unsuccessfully prosecuted seven impoverished Miami Blacks on charges of plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower - and are now preparing for a third trial. In San Francisco, local and federal authorities press forward with murder charges against eight former Black Panthers, 37 years after the shooting death of a policeman. The dragnet for Black villains never ends. To listen to this Black Agenda Radio commentary, click the flash player below
05-06-2008
www.roguegovernment.com
Lee Rogers
Nongovernmental organizations and multinational corporations are slowly taking over the functions of government. The elite believe that nation states are outdated and that new regional forms of government must be established. Many of the global elite like Phillip Bobbitt are openly calling for nongovernmental organizations and multinational corporations to take over the role of government. Bobbitt and others have made it clear that they care not about the liberties and freedoms provided to the American people by the U.S. Constitution. This is all part and parcel of the elite’s plan to form a global government. The European Union was the first step and now the elites are attempting to form a North American Union using NAFTA and the Security Prosperity Partnership as its foundation. Although the elites continue to deny that there are plans for a North American Union, why is it that there is a nongovernmental organization called the North American Forum on Integration that is sponsoring yet another mock North American Parliament meeting for students later this month? That’s right, this isn’t the first time they’ve sponsored a mock North American Parliament meeting. What other purpose can be behind this event besides the mass indoctrination of well meaning students?
The mock North American Parliament meeting will last from May 25th – May 30th and take place in Montreal. There is no doubt that this is designed to brainwash students into accepting a North American Union or as the Council on Foreign Relations has called it a North American Community. Below are the stated goals of the mock North American Parliament meeting.
To bring future Canadian, American and Mexican leaders together in order to experience and take part in an international negotiation exercise.
To allow participants to familiarize themselves with the functioning of democratic institutions as well as North American political, economic, environmental and social realities.
To develop the participants’ sense of belonging to North America.
To increase intercultural exchanges and promote the creation of North American academia networks.
To inform the current decision makers of the priorities and concerns of North American youth.
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US terror report misses the point
Neocons Admit that "War On Terror" Is a Hoax
Mat 7, 2008
By Peter Chamberlin
The
The projected war on
...that is when the rain of American bombs will begin to fall, but they will rain down upon
Iran is a diversion at this time, even though it too, is being set up for the same sort of Bush/Israeli “Dahlan double-cross,” treatment that was accorded to the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas and all those like him who have collaborated with the forces of occupation. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/featu
Those who cooperate with Bush seal their own fates. Anyone who opposes outright submission to the demands of the would-be dictator is targeted for varying degrees of abuse, or elimination. Corrupted leaders like Abbas and Pakistan’s Musharref, who have sold-out their own people to join the US terror war, find themselves up against US-created opposition forces and an international press allayed against them. It is only a matter of time before the masters enter their favorite watchdogs in a real dogfight.
InThis is the choice that Iraqi Shiites must make (most of the Sunni opposition have already been put-on the American payroll), to defend their freedom and try to save their own family’s lives and then seeing their neighborhoods getting leveled as a result, or in submitting to the US government of Iraq and then receiving a bribe of $2.5 million in aid and reconstruction for Sadr City. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/200
This is similar to the choice that the Iranians are being set-up for, in what is being called, The Iraqi initiative. According to Sec. Defense Gates, it amounts to:
"forcing (the Iranians) to make a choice: Do they want to work with the government of
“As long as US forces continue attacking Shiite militias in
"It's meaningless to have talks on anything with
Petraeus’ “date-stamped Iranian weapons” gambit was supposed to set the stage for an American air strike against Revolutionary Guard training camps in
View Larger Map
According to Chris Floyd in his latest article, “Feeding Moloch,” the
"It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in
The London Times reported that the
“surgical strike on a militant training camp across the border in Khuzestan.”
Neocon mouthpiece (or is it neocon mustache?) John Bolton said that:
“the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do.”
[This camp is one of those cited in the recent Lieberman-Kyl Amendment, when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was named as a terrorist organization, in a prelude to an attack upon IRG and Hezbollah forces.] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r1
This training camp is about 100 miles from the controversial new
“Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, ‘unprecedented in its scope.’
[This] clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq [MEK], the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew050220
The MEK is a terrorist organization, yet it is protected by US forces within
Mr. Cockburn’s report builds on the information provided by Seymour Hersh in 2005 about the American/Israeli use of Sunni terrorists within
If Cockburn is correct, that Bush signed a secret finding around the middle of March, authorizing regime change attacks in
If a local enemy of the US/Saudi/Israeli axis of evil is killed with a car bomb it was probably CIA or Mossad; if it was a suicide bomber it was probably Saudi. This is why most of the suicide bombers in
The recent spate of bombings and assassinations that has been directed at
September 2007 air strike near Deir al-Zor,
January 6, 2008 Five Iranian gunboats threatened US warships
February 1, 2008 Undersea cable-cutting in Persian Gulf and near
February 12 Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah car bomb
February 27
Mar 5 Israeli Forces Enter
Apr 10 USS Typhoon fired warning shots
April 12
April 24
May 2
It is easy to see the American and Israeli interest in the above events, but the Saudi hand is usually hidden by many more levels of duplicitous obfuscation and deliberate media cover-up. Their fellow Sunni tribesmen have been the only ones who have been able to expose secret Saudi involvement in politically-motivated Middle Eastern attacks. A high-ranking defense official in
In
http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edit
Wahhab then blasted Saudi ally Fouad Siniora for launching a “15-year war of economics against the Lebanese people.”
"The orders given by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal are influencing the ground after they influenced politics especially following the sudden attacks launched by MPs Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri against Hizbullah and the opposition... Saudi-funded militias [were staging terror attacks]...This provocation requires that the Saudi ambassador in
The Hariri assassination, like the car-bombing of the investigator of his murder (Internal Security Forces Major Wissam Eid) and all the following hits on pro-Syrian individuals, were blamed on the Syrians. The new manufactured “truth” was then used to create an international outcry for a UN investigation to ferret-out the hidden Syrian. The former chief of
"deep Saudi-Israeli cooperation in Lebanon through David Welch's people, namely the head of the Progressive Socialist Party MP Walid Jumblat, Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, Future Movement chief MP Saad Hariri and the head of the unconstitutional government Fouad Saniora.” http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsD
Bonnet charged that this axis of evil intended to turn
It is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes to the truth that the American terror war has two fronts, the actual war front and the propaganda war being fought on the American home front and in the court of international opinion. It is here on the home front that the war to save freedom will be won or lost. The mainstream media has chosen to wage war against American minds and our Constitution on behalf of the corporate government. Their method of operation is to intercept incoming news about the real war and to flip it, using the new censored or fabricated version in place of the truth We the People must save our freedom of the press by destroying the corporate American press. We do this by ignoring it en masse and targeting the corporate owners’ interests for economic actions. The alternative press has the truth about the war, the destructive failing strategy being followed and the corrupt motives for it. It is up to us freedom-fighters in the antiwar movement to get word of the truth out to those who have been kept in the dark.
The Axis has focused Bush’s bloody desire for a final orgasmic cataclysm upon two potential victims,
To this end, and to allow some flexibility of choice, Bush has quietly passed a series of Executive Orders authorizing the blocking of the assets of anyone who helps, or speaks-out for any of the targeted nations –
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2
David Welch has warned us that it is going to be a very long “hot summer” in the
Contact author: chamberlin_peter@yahoo.com
An Israeli scuffles with members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group who oppose Zionism and call for the dismantling of the state of Israel, a day before the country's 60th anniversary.
During Tuesday’s Democratic Presidential Primary coverage on MSNBC, Chris Matthews and Tim Russert both admit to ignoring the countless gaffes and blunders committed by John McCain.
Download | Play 
Download | Play (h/t Silent Patriot)
This is one of those clips that makes you want to throw things at your tee vee. (please don’t!) Matthews and Russert admit that MSNBC can’t — or refuses to — multi-task. The basic message was this: as long as there is a campaign battle between Obama and Clinton, they MUST ignore John McCain. Russert even admits to being flooded with e-mails about their abysmal McCain coverage, but he tells Democrats to just be patient, when the time is right, they’ll pay attention to the train wreck of a campaign being run by the aging senator from Arizona:
Matthews: …”You think the Democrat warhorses know that as long as there’s a fire going on in one of those rings, the Barack Obama ring, we’re not going to focus much on John McCain’s weaknesses?”
--MORE--May, 07 2008
By Dan Freeman-Maloy
Ben Dunkelman and his "Anglo-Saxon Brigade"
When Ben Dunkelman, only recently returned from the European battlefields of WWII, hosted the JNF-Canada's first annual "Negev Dinner," he had already been approached by Lorna Wingate, widow of the late British Captain, to participate in the looming fight in Palestine. Soon, Dunkelman was juggling management responsibilities at Tip Top Tailors with his tasks as head of the Canadian branch of the Hagana. These included fundraising for weaponry, direct arms procurement, and recruitment for Hagana forces. By the summer of 1948, he was in command of a Brigade actively depopulating Palestinian villages by force - a unit so heavily comprised of recruits from Canada, the United States and South Africa that it came to be known as the "Anglo-Saxon Brigade."
Dunkelman and what was formally known as the Seventh (Sheva) Brigade did, indeed, treat the people of Palestine to that Anglo-Saxon "purity of arms" which so much of the world has come to appreciate, from the Philippines to Kenya, from Vietnam to Iraq. A review of the operations they carried out provides a convenient window into the grim reality of 1948. But before turning to these specific operations, it is necessary to outline the general context within which these operations were executed, and the North American Zionist activities which brought the likes of Dunkelman to Palestine.
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By Jimmy Carter
First Published: May 6, 2008
The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.
This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.
Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank are now imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional ten who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.
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15 Philly police officers taken off street after videotaped beating
Page last updated at 11:40 GMT, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 12:40 UK
US police seen in kicking video
US police are investigating a video showing a group of officers in Philadelphia apparently pulling three suspects out of a car and beating them.
The incident was filmed by a TV helicopter overhead. The officers were responding to reports of a shooting nearby, police said.
Members of the force are said to have been put on edge by the killing of an officer on Saturday during a robbery.
The officer was the third killed on duty in the city in the last two years.
"On the surface it certainly does not look good in terms of the amount of force that was used," Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey admitted, after seeing the video.
--MORE WITH VIDEO--
Info-ops: "Iraqis could attack Israel" and Cole helps move the story along
Michael Gordon of the NYT writes that "Hizbullah trains Iraqis in Iran, officials say", which in one sense isn't unusual, given the the NYT has hosted this genre of unattributed "information operations" stories since the era of Judith Miller and no doubt before that. But notice the reference to "Hizbullah" (meaning Lebanese Hizbullah), and how it is being introduced into the Iraq story. Notice too how American readers are encouraged to swallow the Hizbullah part of the story, and the implications of that.Because here is the spin that Juan Cole puts on the NYT story. He says: "I am suspicious of this story not because it is necessarily untrue (how would I know?) but because it shares with typical Bush administration propaganda the 'gotcha' technique in which questions of proportionality, significance and causality do not arise." "Proportionality"--because the information is based on interrogation of only four captured persons. "Significance"--because given the size of the Mahdi Army, training a few of them in Iran is not that big a deal. And "causality"--same argument, a small amount of this type of training isn't in any sense a decisive thing. He doesn't mention Hizbullah.
Cole says, in effect: Assume the story is true, and ask yourself: so what?
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SIOUX FALLS, S.D.: Former Sen. George McGovern, an early supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race and endorsed her rival, Barack Obama.
***But Obama has won the nomination “by any practical test” and is very close to a majority of the pledged delegates, said McGovern, who is 85. Obama moved within 200 delegates of clinching the nomination with his split decision on Tuesday of a win in North Carolina and a narrow loss in Indiana.
It’s time to unite the Democratic Party, he said.
“Hillary, of course, will make the decision as to if and when she ends her campaign. But I hope that she reaches that decision soon so that we can concentrate on a unified party capable of winning the White House next November,” he said.
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Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, is likely to step down, or at least have his duties as prime minister suspended as bribery allegations against him are probed.
Walid al-Umari, Al Jazeera's Palestine bureau chief reporting from Ramallah, said on Wednesday that some Israeli political sources believe Olmert will step down.
Al-Umari said Israeli police have evidence linking Olmert to bribery. But Israel has imposed a ban on the release of any information about the charges against the prime minister, and the ongoing investigation.
The police are expected to partially lift this ban by Sunday, he said.
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Transitional Federal Government soldiers on their truck in Bur Haqaba, Somalia
© APGraphicsBank
6 May 2008
The dire human rights and humanitarian crisis facing the people of Somalia has been revealed in a groundbreaking new Amnesty International report.First-hand testimony from scores of traumatized survivors of the conflict is included in the report, which exposes the violations and abuses they have suffered at the hands of a complex mix of perpetrators.
These include Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) troops on the one hand, as well as armed groups on the other. For many civilians, there is nowhere to go to escape the violence.
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Mayor Newsom's Israel trip is ill-advised
Ramiz Rafeedie
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Mayor Gavin Newsom's acceptance of an all-expense-paid trip to Israel this week exhibits poor moral and political judgment. The Jewish Community Federation organized the junket ostensibly to connect Bay Area and Israeli business leaders.
Not coincidentally, the mayor's trip overlaps with Israel's 60th anniversary. As such, the visit communicates a powerful message that Israel is a country to be celebrated, economically integrated and politically sustained.
This vision of Israel - like the mayor's itinerary - is dangerously lacking in perspective.
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Condo manager disputes authenticity of suicide notes, clear contradiction between style of letters
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The manager of an Orlando condo building where Deborah Jean Palfrey, also known as the D.C. Madam, owned a unit disputes the alleged suicide notes that were published in the media - after witnessing examples of her handwriting going back years Joe Strizack concludes, "That is not her signature."
"She could sign her signature a hundred times and it would be identical," Strizack told a local NBC news station. "That is not her signature."
"Strizack looked over the suicide notes, but he questioned if the notes were actually written by Palfrey, and if they were, he thinks they may have been written under duress," according to the report.
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Hillary, in a brilliant move of Rove-ian politics, went on SNL and mocked her treatment in the media -- despite being well connected to a variety of media executives, and being endorsed by thousands of news outlets. Since then, the mass media has given her a blank check.
At this point, it is mathematically impossible for her to win the nomination - even with Michigan and Florida - unless she records 75% wins in the remaining states and scoops up all of the superdelegates. This has never happened. Statistically, she's more likely to die of AIDS before November.
So how does our media report it?
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The Handcuffs of 1968
Forty years after the student protests at Columbia, that radical April day remains etched in memory." />
Glenn Frankel
April 30 , 2008 In April 1968 I was a Columbia University freshman, restless, raw and clinging to fond illusions. So when I saw three men with blackjacks pummel a Spanish-language instructor on the sidewalk and dump his semiconscious body over a hedge in front of Low Library at the center of the campus late one night, my first instinct was to run to the police for help.
It was sometime after midnight on the morning of Tuesday, April 30, and uniformed policemen weren't hard to find. Hundreds of them were taking positions around the campus preparing to evict student demonstrators who had been occupying the university president's office and four other buildings for a week to protest the Vietnam War and other sundry matters. One unit of the leather-jacketed Tactical Police Force, New York City's toughest and tallest officers, was lining up in a neat double row outside one of the entrances to Low. I dashed up to the officer in charge, a silver-haired sergeant who stood a good six inches taller than me. "You've got to send some men over there!" I pleaded, pointing to the nearby hedge. "Some thugs are beating the crap out of my Spanish teacher!"
He didn't move a muscle, didn't say a word, didn't even glance down at me, but just the hint of a smile grazed his lips. He must have thought I was either a particularly sardonic campus comic or just plain stupid. Because everyone else but me seemed to know very well what I was only beginning to realize——those three thugs, and dozens of others roaming the campus that night, were plainclothes officers sent to soften up the area by eliminating protesters and bystanders from the scene to make it easier for the uniformed men to carry out their mission with a minimum of witnesses and resistance.
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The Handcuffs of 1968
Forty years after the student protests at Columbia, that radical April day remains etched in memory.
Glenn Frankel
April 30 , 2008 In April 1968 I was a Columbia University freshman, restless, raw and clinging to fond illusions. So when I saw three men with blackjacks pummel a Spanish-language instructor on the sidewalk and dump his semiconscious body over a hedge in front of Low Library at the center of the campus late one night, my first instinct was to run to the police for help.
It was sometime after midnight on the morning of Tuesday, April 30, and uniformed policemen weren't hard to find. Hundreds of them were taking positions around the campus preparing to evict student demonstrators who had been occupying the university president's office and four other buildings for a week to protest the Vietnam War and other sundry matters. One unit of the leather-jacketed Tactical Police Force, New York City's toughest and tallest officers, was lining up in a neat double row outside one of the entrances to Low. I dashed up to the officer in charge, a silver-haired sergeant who stood a good six inches taller than me. "You've got to send some men over there!" I pleaded, pointing to the nearby hedge. "Some thugs are beating the crap out of my Spanish teacher!"
He didn't move a muscle, didn't say a word, didn't even glance down at me, but just the hint of a smile grazed his lips. He must have thought I was either a particularly sardonic campus comic or just plain stupid. Because everyone else but me seemed to know very well what I was only beginning to realize——those three thugs, and dozens of others roaming the campus that night, were plainclothes officers sent to soften up the area by eliminating protesters and bystanders from the scene to make it easier for the uniformed men to carry out their mission with a minimum of witnesses and resistance.
--MORE--