Rarely Seen Video of U.S.-style water torture in action

Former president of the National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, commented on recent statements by two GOP presidential candidates who created a stir by defending waterboarding:

[Herman] Cain said, “I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique,” which is what the Bush administration used to call its policy of torture and abuse. [Michelle] Bachman declared, “If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information for our country.” And after the debate, Mitt Romney’s aides told CNN that he does not think waterboarding is torture.

Cohn notes at the end of her article, "Unfortunately, during his hearing to be confirmed as CIA director, David Petraeus told Congress there might be occasions in which we must return to “enhanced interrogation” to get information. Alarmingly, that comment signaled that the Obama administration may return to the use of torture and abuse." Petraeus was confirmed as the new CIA director last August on a 94-0 vote of the U.S. Senate.

Evidence of Torture in the Obama Administration

Despite President Obama's own comments criticizing Cain and Bachman's statements, Cohn points out that Obama's own nominated candidate for CIA director is willing to support waterboarding and the other torture techniques designated "enhanced interrogation" during the Bush/Cheney regime. But there's no "unfortunately" about it. The Obama administration does support torture, but it does so in the old-fashioned U.S. way, through official and/or plausible denial.

But anyone who looks at what the U.S. does, rather than what it says, will know that the torture never ended. Waterboarding may or may not have been ceased, but in the U.S. official Army Field Manual on interrogation, numerous commentators have found clear evidence of the use of torture, including use of debilitating isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, manipulation of phobias, use of drugs, and other "techniques." Some of these techniques, such as use of isolation and sleep deprivation are limited to supposed "illegal" combatants, such as those captured in the "war on terror," as discussed in the AFM's Appendix M (PDF).

The use of controlled suffocation, such as in the water torture used in the video below, was documented to be endemic across the field of Defense Department operations in a series of articles published at Truthout.org recently. Also published at Truthout was an analysis of the possible use of "dryboarding", another suffocation torture technique that may have been used by U.S. interrogators and implicated in the deaths of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006.

"Dryboarding"

The "dryboarding" hypothesis was developed by Almerindo Ojeda at the University of California at Davis’s Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas. Ojeda is also principal investigator for the Center’s Guantánamo Testimonials Project. He discovered that Ali Saleh Al-Marri, a purported Al Qaeda "sleeper" agent, who was held for years in solitary confinement at the Navy Brig in Charleston, North Carolina, like fellow domestic internee and U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, had been tortured by having a sock shoved stuffed in his mouth and then having his lips taped shut with duct tape. Al-Marri almost suffocated.

Ojeda noted that all of the dead supposed suicides at Guantanamo had socks stuffed in their mouths or down their throats.

Scott Horton, who wrote an award-winning article on the Guantanamo "suicides," noted in a recent review of Ojeda's work that socks were not allowed for prisoners at Guantanamo. He added:

The “dryboarding” disclosures do not resolve the questions about the Guantánamo deaths, but they give rise to important new questions about interrogation practices that may also have been used at Guantánamo. They also further justify the call for a thorough and independent investigation of the three deaths and underscore the severe credibility issues with the government’s claims about “suicides.”

The investigation of the Guantanamo "suicides" by Horton and Seton Hall University School of Law, Center for Policy and Research (PDF) was the subject of a slur campaign in the media last May, with Horton's article in particular attacked by former Bush Administration officials. Then, strangely, Adweek writer Alex Koppelman and his former Salon.com collaborator Mark Benjamin, jumped in to defend Guantanamo Defense Department authorities' version of events.

Links to the Torturers

The following video was posted at both LiveLeak.com and You Tube, and provides "a glimpse of what went on during interrogations of [Afghan] insurgents by Jonathan Idema," who worked in conjunction with NATO forces in Afghanistan "counterterror" operations.

Idema is a controversial figure. He was arrested by Afghan authorities in July 2004 in Kabul, where according to a New York Times report, he had been holding eight men prisoner. Some of these men "said they were kicked and beaten, had scalding water poured on them, and had their heads repeatedly dunked in a bucket of water." Idema was pardoned by Afghan President Karzai in March 2007. He had claimed all along that he was working at the behest of U.S. authorities. The U.S. denied this, though admittedly he did work with international forces on counterterrorism operations.

In a well-documented examination of his career at Wikipedia, Idema's connections with U.S. Special Forces is dissected. Idema's various disgraces and problems with the military never kept him from working at various times with U.S. Special Forces, and interestingly, he has been connected to private contracting firms associated with the "war on terror," including Star America Aviation Company, Ltd. (SAAC).

One of the latter company's executives is retired Major General Jack Holbein, a former leading commander at U.S. Special Forces Command. SAAC is linked to a shell company, Isabeau Dakota, Inc., that listed Idema's father as president and sole officer, in that both are registered as corporations by the same individual, William L. London, who appears to be an attorney in Sanford, North Carolina. There is some evidence, given the connections noted in his Wikipedia entry, that Idema served as an off-the-record asset or operative of U.S. Special Forces.

Major General Holbein was listed in the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) report on detainee abuse (large PDF) as one of the recipients of the Defense Department's interrogation-torture proposal developed by James Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen at Joint Personnel Services Agency (JPRA). Holbein was then Chief of Staff at U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), and JPRA was under command authority of JFCOM at that time. The implication of the SASC report is that Holbein and others helped send the torture proposal up the chain of command.

JFCOM was disbanded last August, "the first time a Defense Department combatant command has been dissolved" one news account explained. According to the article, by Hugh Lessig at The Daily Press:

The military is keeping the core mission of JFCOM: training the military to operate and fight together. But instead of maintaining a separate four-star command and all the overhead it entails, personnel will report directly to the Joint Staff.

The former JFCOM functions remaining in Hampton Roads include those related to joint training, developing new concepts and doctrine, experimentation and what the military calls "lessons learned."

A Tale of Two Videos

The video below is from As Sahab, a supposedly Al Qaeda linked media outlet, though reposted at LiveLink, and apparently was discovered in the raid on Idema's Afghanistan headquarters in Kabul in 2004. (Other As Sahab videos of torture have been aired by ABC news, and posted at You Tube.) Whether or not Idema was working directly for the Americans or not, the video provides a sickeningly vivid display of the kind of water torture during interrogation that has been documented previously as used by U.S. forces. (See here and here.)



The refusal by either the Obama administration or the U.S. Congress to hold torturers accountable, or to eliminate the torture embedded in the Army Field Manual, means that the torture program continues. It may be more hidden, but it operates nevertheless continuously. While the U.S. puts out propaganda about its "humane" treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere (see this story by Jason Leopold on the latest video issued in the U.S. propaganda effort), the real truth is hidden as much as possible.

The cozening of torturers, and the successful continuation in one form of the U.S. torture program has found its domestic analogue in the vicious state repression being unleashed upon the reform-minded protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Indeed, the attacks on peaceful protesters demonstrates as much as the history of the torture program that the U.S. government is not an entity to be bargained with, and that new political forms must arise to challenge the social and political status quo. Their first demand must be an end to state violence against peaceful protest.

Rep. Rogers: Kidnapped Argentinian Babies Distract From Fight Against Al Qaeda

How nice that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican Congressman from Michigan, and 206 of his House GOP colleagues live in a country where political opponents are not disappeared, tortured, or murdered in the dead of night, their children stolen to be brought up by the very intelligence officers that disappeared them.

So maybe Rogers didn't appreciate the criminal absurdity of his comments to the Washington Post on Friday May 13, after a House vote defeated a proposed amendment by Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey (NY) on the declassification of U.S. intelligence files regarding the 1976 Argentine generals coup and the bloody seven year dictatorship that followed. According to the Post, Rogers "said declassifying them would distract U.S. spies from the fight against al-Qaida."

A similar Congressional vote for declassification of documents related to Chile, in a 1999 amendment by Rep. Hinchey, which passed, led to the release of over 24,000 documents, and to accelerated investigations and prosecutions of state crimes in Chile. But the GOP, which voted largely on party lines to defeat the amendment on declassification of documents related to Argentina, made this vote into a bogus stand in support of the "war on terror."

The vote comes only weeks after a trial has opened in Argentina, placing into the dock two former Argentine dictators, Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, for literally stealing babies during what has become known as Argentina's "Dirty War." A recently released document available via National Security Archive shows that the Chilean intelligence attaché to Buenos Aires estimated the number of dead and disappeared in Argentina as over 22,000 between 1975 and 1978 (original document PDF).

The Jurist summarized the baby stealing case against the dictators:

The two are accused in 34 separate cases of infants who were taken from mothers held in clandestine torture and detention centers, the Navy Mechanics School and Campo de Mayo army base. The case was opened 14 years ago at the request of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and includes as defendants five military judges and a doctor who attended to the detainees. The trial is expected to hear 370 witnesses and last up to a year. With the help of the Grandmothers' DNA database, 102 people born to vanished detainees have recovered their true identities.

This is not the first trial of the criminal leaders of the former Argentine junta. Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was sentenced last year to life in prison for crimes against humanity. And just recently a former agent of the Argentine Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE), Miguel Angel Furci, was arrested and charged with human rights abuses, including kidnapping and torture. His trial starts this June. And there have been others brought up on charges and/or convicted as well.

The baby stealing charges are a particularly sickening part of the Dirty War history. As an AP story explained it, "the existence of babies belonging to people who officially no longer existed created a problem for the junta leaders." So the solution was to falsify documents and arrange "illegal adoptions by people sympathetic to the military regime." According to the indictment, there were hundreds of such "adoptions."

American Complicity: You Can Run But You Can't Hide

The U.S. support for the Argentinian junta and Dirty War was part of a larger program known as Operation Condor, which operated throughout the Southern Cone, and was responsible for death squads and torture and a reign of terror throughout Latin America, as the right-wing operations spread northward into Central America in the 1980s.

Even though the U.S. government still seeks to hide documents implicating U.S. intelligence and other state agencies from complicity in the terrible crimes in Argentina, some documents have been released over the years. There's a goodly collection of them at the National Security Archive website.

The documents include a formerly secret transcript of Henry Kissinger's staff meeting during which he ordered immediate U.S. support for the new military regime, and Defense and State Department reports on the ensuing repression. The Archive has also obtained internal memoranda and cables from the infamous Argentina intelligence unit, Battalion 601, as well as the Chilean secret police agency, known as DINA, which was secretly collaborating with the military in Buenos Aires.

The documents record Washington's initial reaction to the military takeover. "I do want to encourage them. I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States," Secretary of State Kissinger ordered his staff after his assistants warned him that the junta would initiate a bloodbath following the coup. According to the transcript, Kissinger's top deputy on Latin America, William Rogers, told him two days after the coup that "we've got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long."

Regarding that last quote, what Rogers actually said in full, according to the transcript (PDF) of Kissinger's March 26, 1976 staff meeting, and following upon a discussion of how the regime would need U.S. financial support: "I think also we've got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long. I think they're going to have to come down not only on the terrorists but on the dissidents of trade unions and their parties."

Kissinger then tells Rogers, who suggests the U.S. might want to hold off on recognition of the junta, that he wants to "encourage" the generals: "I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States." Rogers then rushes to assure him his reasoning wasn't humanitarian, but simply that he was concerned about "public posture."

The U.S. government is complicit in war crimes that have killed and tortured and disappeared many, many thousands of people, millions going back to Vietnam. But the U.S. population appears to be largely untouched by these crimes, insensate, living in fear, or complacent... it's hard to say. In any case, those in this country, like Rep. Hinchey, and the many fine workers in human and civil rights organizations, will have to keep pounding on these issues.

Note: Eighteen Republicans did vote for Hinchey's amendment, and seven Democrats voted against it. Twenty-three were listed as "Not Voting," including, surprisingly, two liberal Democratic congresswomen from the Bay Area, Zoe Lofgren and Jackie Speier.

Cross-posted from Firedoglake/MyFDL

AlterNet: "Inside Story on Town Hall Riots"

Adele M. Stan has put together an organizational analysis of the right-wing campaigners who are whipping up reactionary, ostensible "grassroots" disruptions at Democratic Party town-meeings on the healthcare reform issue. AlterNet, who published the story, is touting the article as must-reading, and I agree.

See Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America's Dirty Work (a portion of which is excerpted here):

All of the narratives today embraced by the ResistNet, FreedomWorks and the Glenn Beck crowd find their legs in the one-man clearinghouse that is Howard Phillips.

Through his Conservative Caucus, Phillips disseminated the "birther" theory that Obama is not an American citizen, gave right-wing operative Cliff Kincaid an award for researching Obama's alleged socialist roots, and for years has railed against "socialized medicine" -- even arguing that Medicare is unconstitutional and warning darkly of a time when the government might determine who shall live and who shall die.

"[W]hen the supply of medical care is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats," Phillips told a 1997 gathering of his Conservative Caucus Foundation, "and the demand for that care exceeds the supply, then individual human beings created in God's image become price factors in the eyes of medical gatekeepers -- they're not even medical, they're bureaucratic gatekeepers -- who determine medical decisions not on the basis of medical needs, but on the basis of bureaucratic priorities."

Phillips' disdain for feminists is palpable, and his language about LGBT people, routinely labeled on his Web site as "perverts," "homos" and "sodomites" is contemptible. He refers to Planned Parenthood as "Murder Incorporated."

I called Phillips for comment on this article, but he was en route to Mexico where he has convened a press conference to protest the nonexistent North American Union, another right-wing conspiracy theory. (Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is an invited speaker.)

Phillips advanced the career of Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-aborton group Operation Rescue. At one point, it seemed that his U.S. Taxpayer's Party was to Operation Rescue what Sinn Fein is to the Irish Republican Army -- the political wing of a movement steeped in violence. (In Terry's case, the violence was in rhetoric and obstruction designed to incite others to act.)

Conspiracy of Silence

On Aug. 4, Terry, who is seeking to make a comeback with his new organization, Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex, sent out an e-mail blast urging followers to attend health care town halls convened by members of Congress.

Trotting out the trope the that health-care reform bills provide for taxpayer-funded abortions, he urges his followers:

Stir up some dust!

Be "unreasonable!"

In fact, you might want to be a little noisier and a little more intense than you might normally be.

I put it this way: If you were in danger of being murdered, and I could possibly save you at a town hall meeting, how would you want people to behave in a town hall meeting?

At a July press conference, Terry warned of "random acts of violence" that would occur if the health-care bill passed. There would be violent "reprisals against those deemed guilty," he said.

Think Terry's too out on the fringe to matter? Think again. When AlterNet reported that the Supreme Court nomination hearing of Judge Sonia Sotomayor was being disrupted by Terry's followers, not one Republican senator condemned him by name.

When Terry staged a demonstration outside the White House featuring men in Obama masks "whipping" him, not a distancing word was placed between him and the GOP establishment.

And now he is promulgating the false Republican claim that health-care reform will mean socialized euthanasia for the aged.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also has links to Phillips; for seven years, her husband, Todd, claimed membership in the Alaska affiliate of the Constitution Party -- the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, whose convention Palin addressed last year via video.

Every other day, it seems, I receive an e-mail from one right-wing organization or another, warning of the grave consequences of health-insurance reform.

The subject line in an e-mail from Human Events magazine screams at me "Grandmas and babies exterminated by Obama 'health' plan," even as another of its e-mails asks, "Obama birth certificate destroyed?" The anti-gay American Family Association warns: "Liberals seek to silence and demonize those who oppose their socialism."

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council sent a plea for money to finance a television ad that features an elderly couple complaining of the government's denial of surgery for the man while financing abortion with taxpayer dollars.

Think these organizations are not the Republican establishment? Consider that the annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council's PAC will feature former "moderate" GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a keynote speaker.

In the corridors of Washington's K Street lobbying offices, in the district offices of Republican members of Congress, and in the executive suite of one singular mogul, the men of power must be well-pleased with themselves, watching YouTube videos of the mayhem they have unleashed on the rest of us. But they may just get their pound of flesh.

How GOP Plans to Defend BushCo on Torture

I don't have any special source within inner Republican Party circles. Nor do I have any particular new insight into the dynamics of how the GOP works out their policy. What I do have is the statement of the Republican minority opinion on the Senate Armed Services Committee's "supposedly bipartisan" report, Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody. In the minority's mix of apologia and attack, we see the outlines of the GOP game-plan for any investigations into Bush crimes under an Obama administration and a Democratic-majority Congress.

The minority statement is endorsed by only about half of the Republican Senators on the Armed Services committee: Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, James Inhofe, R-OK, Jeff Sessions, R-AL, John Cornyn, R-TX, John Thune, R-SD, and Mel Martinez, R-FL. As you read what follows, consider that all of the above voted for the unanimously released report. According to a Washington Post article at the time, the SASC report was originally "sent to the Pentagon with no dissenting views."

But then a week later, the above Senators released their statement, which then made its way into the pages of the National Review. What happened in that intervening week to make them feel the necessity to issue their statement? And what a statement! It essentially accuses the SASC of aiding and abetting U.S. enemies, and endangering U.S. troops. It is my contention that this is how Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the whole gang will attempt to "defend" themselves if, and when, any investigations of their crimes are proposed or begun.

The GOP Six begin their aggrieved tirade with a stirring invocation to American ideals:

Throughout our history, even in the gravest of circumstances, the United States has embodied the ideals of individual freedom and liberty. This nation adheres to the principle that all detainees in U.S. custody must be treated humanely and in accordance with applicable law.

Well, as they say, from their mouths to God's ears (so to speak).

Their statement continues (and I want to give them a chance to make their argument here, and thereby hang themselves):

The fallacious assertion, made in recent newspaper editorials and other media outlets, that illegal treatment of detainees was an intentional or necessary result of administration policy is irresponsible and only serves to aid the propaganda and recruitment efforts of extremists dedicated to the murder of innocents and the destruction of our way of life....

The implication, however, that this abuse was the direct, necessary, or foreseeable result of policy decisions made by senior administration officials is false and without merit. It is counter-productive and potentially dangerous to our men and women in uniform to insinuate that illegal treatment of detainees resulted from official U.S. government policies.

Administration officials sought to comply with requests from the field for effective interrogation techniques within the legal constraints in place at the time....

While it is well-documented that the guidelines and orders developed by administration and military officials were not followed in a handful of isolated and well-publicized incidents, and that certain techniques were used in areas and by individuals for which they were not authorized, all credible allegations of abuse by U.S. military personnel were and continue to be taken seriously and investigated in painstaking detail. Where applicable, offenders have been charged, tried, and punished under federal law.

Contrary to the lies and wounded patriotism of the GOP statement, the SASC report painstakingly recounts the timeline whereby President George W. Bush and top officials of his administration, the Pentagon and the CIA, introduced and administered a regime of abusive treatment and torture of prisoners. In order to do so, they had to trash fundamental international law, laws to which the United States was not only a signatory, but formerly a champion.

From the Committee report, released by Senator Carl Levin and Senator John McCain:

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody....

Members of the President’s Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed. National Security Council Principals reviewed the CIA’s interrogation program during that period....

The use of techniques similar to those used in SERE resistance training – such as stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, and treating them like animals – was at odds with the commitment to humane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody....

[The Pentagon's] Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) efforts in support of “offensive” interrogation operations went beyond the agency’s knowledge and expertise. JPRA’s support to U.S. government interrogation efforts contributed to detainee abuse. JPRA’s offensive support also influenced the development of policies that authorized abusive interrogation techniques for use against detainees in U.S. custody....

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.

The report also took on the "bad apple" theory of abuse, which was especially relevant to the Abu Ghraib scandal, where the clandestine nature of U.S. abuse was exposed, thanks to a whistleblower, digital photography and the ability to burn CDs. The "bad apple" theory dovetails with more sophisticated psychological research, i.e., that everyday human beings are subject to social pressures and in an abusive context can be easily led to torture. (See articles on Zimbardo's Prisoner experiment, or Milgram's famous obedience experiment, recently replicated.)

As important as these psychological theories are, the abuse at Abu Ghraib was a matter of policy, not character disorder or psychological slippage. The Levin/McCain report concluded that arguments, such as those advanced by the GOP Senators, that the torture was confined to "isolated" incidents, and the perpetrators "charged, tried, and punished," were false:

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO.

The Defense Department had criticized the SASC report, too, at the time of its release. According to a Washington Post story back on December 12, 2008:

A Defense Department spokesman noted that the Pentagon cooperated extensively with the Senate investigation and has taken numerous steps in recent years to ensure the humane treatment of detainees. The steps included a revision of the Army's field manual that establishes the rules for interrogations.

"Any credible allegations of abuse by U.S. military personnel are taken seriously and looked into in painstaking detail," said the spokesman, Bryan Whitman. "If and when applicable, offenders have been punished."

I'd ask my readers to take note of the special place in the Pentagon's narrative of the Army's revision of its interrogation field manual. It's described as one of the "steps" taken "in recent years to ensure the humane treatment of detainees."

The assertion about the Army Field Manual, like those about the adherence to humane standards for treatment of detainees, is a lie. The AFM contains provisions for abusive treatment at variance with humane standards laid down by the Geneva Conventions, including the use of isolation, perceptual deprivation, sleep deprivation, threats, and humiliation. There is not much that separates the AFM in its treatment of prisoners from that proposed by the CIA in its famous KUBARK manual of the early 1960s.

In my next article, I'll dissect further ways in which the struggle against the Pentagon and CIA's use of abusive interrogation techniques now shifts to an assessment of the Army Field Manual, which is being proposed as the new template for all U.S. military and intelligence interrogations.

Also posted at Daily Kos

Charges Dropped Against Democracy Now! Journalists

Good news from a press release at Democracy Now!

The St. Paul City Attorney’s office announced Friday it will not prosecute Democracy Now! journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman also issued a statement Friday that “the city will decline to prosecute misdemeanor charges for presence at an unlawful assembly for journalists arrested during the Republican National Convention.”

Both announcements come two weeks after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention where over 40 journalists were arrested while reporting on protests taking place outside the convention center.

Upon learning of the news, Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman said, “It’s good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public’s right to know what is happening on their streets. There needs to be a full investigation of law enforcement activities during the convention.”

Goodman was arrested while asking police to release Kouddous and Salazar who had been violently arrested while reporting on street demonstrations. After being handcuffed and pushed to the ground, Goodman reiterated that she was was a credentialed reporter. Secret Service then ripped the credential from around her neck.

During demonstrations on the first day of the convention police used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were arrested, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.

John Lundquist, attorney for the Democracy Now! journalists, said, “The most notable lapse by law enforcement during the RNC was the record-breaking number of journalists indiscriminately arrested and detained for doing nothing more than performing in the best tradition of reporters who gather the news.”

In the weeks after the journalist arrests, tens of thousands of members of the public contacted St. Paul officials to protest the unlawful arrests of working journalists. Goodman said, “We were deeply moved by the outpouring of support. We thank everyone who called and wrote first to have us freed and then to have the charges dropped. We thank everyone who stood up for press freedom and the First Amendment.”

Democracy Now! Appeals for $$ after RNC Dragnet Arrests

One of America's premier progressive journalists, Amy Goodman, was arrested along with other members of her Democracy Now! crew during the draconian arrests made by the St. Paul police during the recent Republican National Convention. Altogether 818 people were arrested, including the DN journalists and members of The Real Network News. Goodman and her colleagues are appealing for money to help them battle their legal problems and keep their show on the air.

It may sound redundant to say this, but government repression is meant to be repressive. The consequences don't end after the front page headlines are forgotten, but bear down on real human beings with legal bills, financial worries, sponsor jitters, fearfulness for future, career, and family, and a host of other ways in which government repression works to lock down and seal off dissent.

Defending oneself takes money. Putting on a great news program and managing a fantastic website also takes cash. (And if you don't regularly visit the Democracy Now! site, you can bookmark it now, and make it a regular stop.) So read DN!'s appeal, and show they some support. They are there for you; we should be there for them.

After Wrongful RNC Arrests, Democracy Now! Vows to Continue Reporting, Unabated and Unembedded

We need your support.

We hope you had a chance to tune in to Democracy Now!'s extended coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions over the past two weeks. We grilled politicians with tough questions and exposed the backroom corporate suites. We deployed our reporters into the protest-filled streets to broadcast voices of the silenced majority.

And, last week, we came head to head with the $50 million RNC security operation.

This week's arrests of journalists including Democracy Now!'s own Amy Goodman [see video clip above], Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar are chilling examples of how police targeted journalists during the RNC in St. Paul. As you probably know, Amy has been charged with a misdemeanor for intervening to stop the wrongful arrests of her colleagues who face pending felony charges for simply carrying out their journalistic duties.

The world watched as the Twin Cities Police trampled the first amendment. The YouTube video of Amy's arrest has been viewed more than 750,000 times. It was the most watched YouTube video on Tuesday. The story of journalist arrests and charges was covered by media outlets from the LA Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Guardian, Philadelphia Daily News, Denver Post, Associated Press, Editor & Publisher, Salon.com, as well as by local and public radio stations, and by political and news bloggers around the world.

At this time when reporters are being targeted, we rely on your support to continue our unembedded, independent journalism. More than ever, you are the key to protecting our first amendment right to a free and independent press.

As an ally of independent media, you know that government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. We know that too. That's why we refused to let these significant disruptions prevent us from bringing you the kind of the news and information that you expect from Democracy Now! From the streets to the suites to the convention floor, we worked around the clock to broadcast independent, unembedded reporting you can't find anywhere else.

The public has cried out against the flagrant disregard for press freedom demonstrated by Twin Cities police. Thanks to many of you, St. Paul officials have received thousands of email messages and phone calls demanding that they drop all pending and current charges. Our own site received over one million hits this week as people sought out information they could trust. On Friday morning, Freepress.net delivered over 60,000 signatures to local officials demanding the charges be dropped.

Now, we ask for your financial support. After all, donations from thousands of committed viewers and listeners like you are what keeps us independent. Please help keep this critical program on the air. Without you, there would be no Democracy Now!.

Thank you for your continued support.

Democracy Now!

PS - Please forward this appeal to anyone you know who believes democracy depends on a vibrant and free press.

Donate to Democracy Now!
Video of DN! Arrests & Action Alert
Media Coverage of Journalist Arrests at RNC

Fred Thompson's Big Lie to RNC on McCain POW Story

Nothing is more wrenching, more emotionally volatile than the story of prisoners of war, no matter what the country or the cause: the torture they endure (or endured), and the mind-numbing horror of contemplating the inhumanity of those who do the torturing. McCain is playing on his torture history as POW in his run for the presidency. On Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, also-ran former Senator Fred Thompson gave a speech lauding McCain, and describing the suffering of the GOP presidential nominee when he was held as a prisoner by the North Vietnamese from 1967-73.

There is much that could be made of the lies, exaggerations, and ordinary political mischief in Thompson's speech. But one big lie stood out. In his narration of McCain's torture story, he changed one important fact. And since it bears on the larger question as to whether torture "works," it's worth mentioning here.

In his speech, Thompson said the following:

On October 26, 1967, on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam, a surface-to-air missile slammed into John's A-4 Skyhawk jet, blowing it out of the sky. When John ejected, part of the plane hit him, breaking his right leg, his right knee, his left arm and right arm in three places.

An angry mob got to him when he fell to the ground. A rifle butt broke his shoulder. A bayonet pierced his ankle and his groin. They took him to the Hanoi Hilton, where he lapsed in and out of consciousness for days. He was offered medical care for his injuries if he would give up military information in return.

John McCain said, "No".

After days of neglect, covered in grime, lying in his own waste in a filthy room, a doctor attempted to set John's right arm without success and without anesthesia. His other broken bones and injuries were not treated. John developed a high fever and dysentery. He weighed barely a hundred pounds. Expecting him to die, his captors placed him in a cell with two other POWs who also expected him to die.

But with their help, John McCain fought on. He persevered. [Emphasis added]

Too bad for Fred Thompson that McCain's own narrative of his torture and incarceration is online and available for anyone to read. "It originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S. News & World Report. It was posted online on January 28, 2008."

Truth and Lies

Thompson maintains McCain refused to give up military information to his captors in exchange for medical treatment, despite a broken shoulder, arms, right knee and leg, and also despite being pierced by a bayonet in his ankle and his groin. That's quite a hero, John McCain, to withstand such pain and terror. Except he didn't, and in his own words:

For the next three or four days, I lapsed from conscious to unconsciousness. During this time, I was taken out to interrogation—which we called a "quiz"—several times. That's when I was hit with all sorts of war-criminal charges. This started on the first day. I refused to give them anything except my name, rank, serial number and date of birth. They beat me around a little bit. I was in such bad shape that when they hit me it would knock me unconscious. They kept saying, "You will not receive any medical treatment until you talk"....

They wanted military rather than political information at this time. Every time they asked me something, I'd just give my name, rank and serial number and date of birth.

I think it was on the fourth day that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of a football. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejected from his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood had pooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us -- a man dying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happening to me.

When I saw it, I said to the guard, "O.K., get the officer." An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." [Emphasis added]

A doctor came, but, in this interview, McCain said his physician was "completely incompetent," and that he was only taken to a hospital in the last analysis because it was discovered his father was an admiral. As we shall see, McCain changed the story somewhat in his 1999 autobiography.

An article by Ted Rall earlier this year said this about McCain's shoot-down over Hanoi:

McCain is lucky the locals didn't finish him off. U.S. bombs had killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, many in Hanoi. Ultimately between one and two million innocents would be shredded, impaled, blown to bits and dissolved by American bombs. Now that one of their tormentors had fallen into their hands, they had a rare chance to get even. "About 40 people were standing there," On later recalled. "They were about to rush him with their fists and stones. I asked them not to kill him. He was beaten for a while before I could stop them." He was turned over to local policemen, who transferred him to the military.

Rall also notes that an Arizona Republic article from 2007 covered the issue of McCain's collaboration (I unfortunately could find no original link to the AR article):

After his capture, wrote the Republic, "He was placed in a cell and told he would not receive any medical treatment until he gave military information. McCain refused and was beaten unconscious. On the fourth day, two guards entered McCain's cell. One pulled back the blanket to reveal McCain's injured knee. 'It was about the size, shape and color of a football,' McCain recalled. Fearful of blood poisoning that would lead to death, McCain told his captors he would talk if they took him to a hospital." [Emphasis added]

Giving Up Information

There's also this article from Newsmax, dated November 29, 2005, titled "John McCain: Torture Worked for Me":

In his 1999 autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain describes how he was severely injured when his plane was shot down over Hanoi - and how his North Vietnamese interrogators used his injuries to extract information.

"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate," he wrote.

"I thought they were bluffing and refused to provide any information beyond my name, rank and serial number, and date of birth. They knocked me around a little to force my cooperation."

The punishment finally worked, McCain said. "Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant."

Recalling how he gave up military information to his interrogators, McCain said: "I regret very much having done so. The information was of no real use to the Vietnamese, but the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War orders us to refrain from providing any information beyond our names, rank and serial number." [Emphasis added]

McCain is also on the record having broken under torture in other circumstances, even to the point of giving what he felt was false recantation of his actions as a U.S. pilot.

But this is not really an article meant to document the totality of Senator McCain's torture history. It is an article about historical falsification and the control of narrative by politicians today. It is also an article that I think highlights the mendacity of the McCain of 2008, a man who will let lies like Thompson's be told about him, who will change his position against torture to one that backs Bush's gleeful endorsement of "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA, not excluding waterboarding.

There is even more harm done than the twisting of historical narrative in the service of political opportunism. That happens all the time. But the larger societal debate about torture is often discussed in terms of whether it "works" or not. Does torture produce reliable information? Can torture be reliably used to "break" individuals?

CIA on Whether Torture Works

McCain used to be an honest man. He was on record as saying torture can break a man down. He admits that, even though he tried to minimize the revelations, some information can be obtained via torture. Often enough that information is unreliable, or only partly true. And the CIA is certainly aware that torture is not the best way to get information from a captive. They say as much in their infamous Kubark torture manual:

Psychologists and others who write about physical or psychological duress frequently object that under sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but that their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist. This pragmatic objection has somewhat the same validity for a counterintelligence interrogation as for any other. But there is one significant difference. Confession is a necessary prelude to the CI interrogation of a hitherto unresponsive or concealing source. And the use of coercive techniques will rarely or never confuse an interrogatee so completely that he does not know whether his own confession is true or false. He does not need full mastery of all his powers of resistance and discrimination to know whether he is a spy or not. Only subjects who have reached a point where they are under delusions are likely to make false confessions that they believe. Once a true confession is obtained, the classic cautions apply. The pressures are lifted, at least enough so that the subject can provide counterintelligence information as accurately as possible. In fact, the relief granted the subject at this time fits neatly into the interrogation plan. He is told that the changed treatment is a reward for truthfulness and an evidence that friendly handling will continue as long as he cooperates.

The profound moral objection to applying duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage has been stated. Judging the validity of other ethical arguments about coercion exceeds the scope of this paper. What is fully clear, however, is that controlled coercive manipulation of an interrogatee may impair his ability to make fine distinctions but will not alter his ability to answer correctly such gross questions as "Are you a Soviet agent? What is your assignment now? Who is your present case officer?" [Emphasis added]

In any case, as recent events from Baghram and Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib indicate, the U.S. government certainly doesn't want to release torture from its arsenal. This is what the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which received strong backing from John McCain, was largely about. As to the empirical "success" of torture, we really don't know (unless the secret police agencies of the world open up their archives). But it's important to remember that fear of torture is a better elicitor of information than torture itself, and an interrogator wants something to present to the prisoner that makes that fear seem legitimate, that communicates total control and a dependent status to the captive. (Other interrogators rely on building rapport, a technique the CIA also embraces, while maintaining coercive techniques as part of the interrogator's arsensal.) For better or worse, this is one way to make a person talk, if they do talk or not. And not everyone does.

But most do. John McCain did. He is not to be criticized for this. It is only human, and the guilt he feels over it is far worse than any punishment he would merit for such "talking."

2008 Election and the Falsification of History

This leaves us with one glaring question: why did Fred Thompson lie so brazenly about John McCain's experience? The answer seems clear. They cannot handle the truth about torture. They are trying to present a hero-like image of their candidate that resonates with what their supporters know from human nature as gleaned from comic-book movies, video-games, and TV shows like 24, where the hero is beaten and shot repeatedly, but is always able to get back up and take on the bad guy.

Such pandering to the adolescent omnipotent fantasies of the electorate is dangerous. It threatens to cheapen what is a profound human experience -- being tortured -- and just at a time when the government is pushing to legitimate this brazen practice of inhumane criminality. It also sets up a dynamic in the electorate that emphasizes the irrational and the ignorant. It is an attack upon a reasoned discussion of the issues. It is a big lie, and it should be exposed and denounced.

Protest Arrests of Democracy Now! Journalists Covering Republican Convention

Following the arrests yesterday of noted journalist Amy Goodman and two of her producers from Democracy Now! while they were covering the arrests of demonstrators at the Republican National Convention, DN has released an action call for letters and emails to prosecutors in charge. (H/T to MS at Daily Kos)

I strongly urge my readers to write or contact the individuals named in the press release and call for an immediate dropping of all charges against those arrested.

Today it is critical that you make your voice heard in the Ramsey County Attorney and St. Paul City Attorney offices. Demand that they drop all pending and current charges against journalists arrested while reporting on protests outside the Republican National Conventions.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s office is in the process of deciding whether or not to press felony P.C. (probable cause) riot charges against Democracy Now! Producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Please contact Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner by all means possible to demand that her office not press charges against Kouddous and Salazar.

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner
RCA at co.ramsey.mn.us (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org)
651-266-3222

Susan Gaertner for Governor
info at susangaertner.com (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org)
(612) 978-8625
(612)804-6156

The St. Paul City Attorney’s office has already charged Amy Goodman with misdemeanor obstruction of a legal process and interference with a peace officer. Contact St. Paul City Attorney John Choi by all means possible to demand that the charges against Goodman be dropped immediately.

St. Paul City Attorney John Choi
john.choi at ci.stpaul.mn.us (cc: dropthecharges at democracynow.org) (651) 266-8710

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.

IMPORTANT

Be sure to cc: dropthecharges@democracynow.org on all emails so that our team can deliver print outs of your messages to the St. Paul City Attorney and Ramsey County Attorney offices.

The arrest of Nicole Salazar
(Thanks YouTube, and H/T to Dave1942 at Daily Kos)

For those wishing to protest the preemptive arrests made via police invasions of homes in St. Paul, as reported yesterday, the following contacts are via Michael Gass at Docudharma:

Ramsey County contact info:

email: ContactRamseyCounty@co.ramsey.mn.us
tel #: 651-266-8500

Here is who needs to be contacted:

Ramsey County Manager: David J. Twa
Email: david.twa@co.ramsey.mn.us
Phone: 651-266-8000
Fax: 651-266-8039

U.S. Unfolds Gestapo-like Raids at GOP Convention

Amy Goodman reported from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), site of the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2008, Labor Day:

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than a half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of preemptive raids before the Republican convention. The coordinated searches were led by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher but conducted in coordination with federal agencies....

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the FBI is at least one of the "federal agencies" acting in concert with the Minneapolis/St. Paul police departments. A professor at the University of Minnesota has snapped a photo of FBI presence at one of the raids. Many of these police gestapo actions involved two dozen or more riot police entering private homes with guns drawn, handcuffing the residents, and rifling through the house to search computers, and political literature.

Amy Goodman's article continues:

The raids and detentions have targeted activists planning to protest the Republican National Convention, as well as journalists and videographers documenting police actions at protests. Groups directly affected by the raids include Food Not Bombs, the RNC Welcoming Committee, I-Witness Video and Communities United Against Police Brutality.

By late afternoon, Goodman herself was under arrest in St. Paul, and reports were coming in that rubber bullets and tear gas were being used on a crowd at the SEIU Take Back Labor Day concert. The victims are said to include women and children. Meanwhile, a number of those arrested preemptively remain in jail. Bruce Nestor Nestor from the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild explains how the preventative detentions were organized:

The raids were carried out by [Ramsey County] Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who had been arguing for months that there needed to be a stronger law enforcement response, and he was being told that wasn’t necessary. And so, he sent his officers in, after doing intelligence gathering and infiltrating these groups.

And then, really what he did is he took common household items that you would find in any home in Minnesota—a hatchet, rope, glass bottles and rags—attached the label “anarchist” to the people who are living in the homes, and then raise this public fear that the anarchists were threatening violence, public disorder. But really, it’s taking a common household item, something you’d find anywhere, calling it an edged weapon and then attacking people for their political beliefs, that then is used to generate this public fear and keep activists detained...

Both the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality have filed a motion with Judge Mark Wernick asking for "injunctive relief to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.”

Domestic Spying is a Danger to Democracy

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has detailed the role of domestic spying and the use of informants in the run up to the police assaults on demonstrators' homes:

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing....

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone.

The police actions in the Twin Cities follow the penning of protesters in Denver at the Democratic Party convention, and the resulting mass arrests and pepper spraying of demonstrators there. From Indymedia:

As the Democratic Party listened to speeches inside the Pepsi Center on the opening day of the convention, a few hundred protesters had gathered to march. The police arrived in riot gear, surrounded the protesters, blocking them in and firing pepper spray into the crowd. Some protesters tried to flee across the park, but they were met by dozens of police officers who boxed them in there, and nearly a hundred people were arrested.

The Denver police actions targeted not only leftists and other anti-capitalist protesters, but included ABC producer Asa Eslocker, seized for, as the Glenn Garvin at the Miami-Herald put it, "the crime of taking pictures of big-ticket Democratic Party donors."

Eslocker's camera crew was on a sidewalk outside Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, shooting video for a series of reports on the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention to air on ABC World News. The hotel told Eslocker to beat it; when he didn't, the cops handcuffed and hauled him off to the slam where he was charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order -- taking pictures of rich plutocrats evidently being against the law in Denver.

From Infomercial to Police State

The preemptive attacks against organizers of protests is a new tactic by the FBI and its police lackeys, upping what was already a serious escalation of repressive measures against lawful protest and demonstration. To put it plainly, they are, as Glenn Greenwald noted, "redolent of the worst tactics of a police state."

I would put it even more finely, they are the actions of a police state in ovo, or in its embryonic, beginning stages. This implies that such actions are not an aberration, but the initiation of sharper era of government repression. The St. Paul raids, as the arrests at the Democratic Convention in Denver, were meant to spike any large scale demonstrations against the two political parties that brought the world a war in Iraq that has killed over 600,000 Iraqis, over 4,000 U.S. dead, and over two million refugees.

One wonders if the raids aren't only meant to quell political protest, but also hide the fact that these giant, expensive party conventions are nothing more now than ersatz infomercials for the two political parties. The mini-drama over the roll call vote for the Democratic presidential nomination -- whether it would include the votes for Hillary Clinton, or not -- played out on the canvas of profound national historical ignorance.

Before 1980, most national conventions featured some kind of battle over a party's nomination, including a roll call of votes. Today, a banal totalitarianism of schmaltzy theme music and branded nominee roll out has replaced the rough-and-tumble of an earlier day of U.S. national party politics. But this is a banality backed by the policeman's truncheon and the informer's sinister ratting out. It is not banality, but the image of blandness in service of a deadly reality.

The reality behind the conventions is revealed in the white phosphorus-torched bodies of Fallujah, the tortured ghost prisoners of Baghram and Abu Ghraib, the now walled-off neighborhoods of Baghdad, and the decaying superstructure of America proper.

It is also revealed by the choice for GOP Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. With nothing to recommend her but her far-right wing credentials -- she opposes abortion for the raped or the victim of incest, she advocates teaching creationism, and, of course, she is for oil drilling in the disputed ANWAR territory in Alaska (while opposing federal protections for polar bears). The Palin nomination clearly shows it doesn't matter who is president, as the ruling powers in Langley, at the Pentagon, and at the board tables of America's energy, finance, and war-making industries, call the shots in the former land of the free.

A small crew of would-be protesters planning not insurrection, but to march with signs and chants against war, globalization, or whatever issue they felt important, were too threatening to the potentates running the United States, so they would have to be tear gassed, pepper gassed, penned in, rounded up and arrested, and finally, their homes invaded to prevent any protest from even taking place.

The simulacrum of democracy in America is now as fragile as the make-up on an aging dowager's face. Even a smile of irony could break the mask of placid self-assurance and smugness that has settled upon U.S. politics. Hundreds arrested at the conventions, and no protest from Barack Obama, or from supposed left-wing Democrats like Kucinich. To hope a Republican politician would speak up would be to invoke a science fiction world.

Hope Talk, War Talk

The war talk about Georgia and Russia, with its manifold lies and posturing, almost guarantees that aggressive U.S. foreign policy will continue, as Obama talks about escalating the Afghan war, and meanwhile, Cheney readies another trip to new NATO would-be vassal states, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine. The "war on terror" means a war on political dissent at home.

A lot of people are putting hope in the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. It is clear that he is not simply a man to be manipulated, as was George W. Bush, or his purported successor, John McCain (and his new running mate, Palin). But everything so far points to a Obama presidency that would try and effect some reforms at home, while engaging U.S. allies abroad to support the American imperial impulse abroad. The more aggressive the latter campaign, the more important quelling protest at home will become. Of course, the ruling powers would prefer a compliant puppet from the GOP ticket, but some within those same ruling circles would prefer someone smart, who has his or her pulse on the population, who wouldn't let the hubris of the rich and powerful go unchecked, and hurdle the U.S. down a reckless road. That's a good way to lose power, as French historians well know.

Those famous clips showing the police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 -- in a city and state run by Democrats, during the presidential administration of yet another Democrat, Lyndon Johnson -- demonstrate that state repression is not the monopoly of one party alone.

All must demand the freeing of those arrested in Denver and St. Paul, and an immediate investigation into who ordered the police abuse.

UPDATE, 9:45pm:

The Washington Post is reporting that after three hours in policy custody Amy Goodman was charged with a misdemeanor and released. Her two Democracy Now! producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, are still being held. Both are said to have been injured. Goodman is quoted:

"I was down on the convention floor interviewing delegates when I heard that two of our producers had been arrested," said Goodman. "I ran down to Jackson and 7th Street, where the police had moved in"....

"They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter."

Democracy Now has published the following appeal, evidently prior to Goodman's release:

Ramsey County Sherrif Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

H/T to Jessical and feline at Docudharma.