Posts by Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.

Continuous Police State: Hundreds of Demonstrators Detained at RNC
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Firedoglake on September 5, 2008 at 6:46 AM.

Police detained hundreds demonstrators on the final night of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Approximately 250 people were arrested shortly before John McCain took to the stage to accept the presidential nomination. That's in addition to the 422 people who had already been arrested earlier in the week.

Riot police held approximate 300 people, including journalists and observers for nearly an hour on an overpass spanning Interstate 94. Police instructed the crowd to get on the bridge, then announced that everyone on the bridge was under arrest. 

The Joint Information Center offered conflicting accounts about the status of the assembly permits for last night's gatherings. When I called at 4pm, a spokesman told me that the organizers of the March were slated to march from the capitol, through downtown, around the xCel Center and back to the capitol and that the protest was set to go until 7pm. 

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Media Silent, But Activist Groups Loud About RNC Police Brutality
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Firedoglake on September 3, 2008 at 3:35 PM.

A slideshow by Lindsay Beyerstein of security forces tear-gassing a peaceful Poor Peoples March during the Republican National Convention, Sept. 2, 2008. Set to music by Junior Murvin.

Several activist groups held an outdoor press conference in St. Paul this morning to decry police brutality against peaceful protesters. Last night, police filed tear gas into a peaceful crowd on 7th Street when the group did not immediately scatter upon the order to disperse -- rapid egress was hampered by the fact that the the police had encircled groups of people and locked down intersections at both ends of the block.

The demonstrators were part of the Poor People's March. The March is not affiliated with the anarchist groups whose members destroyed property during a demonstration on Monday. When some anarchist protesters joined the procession, organizers asked them to leave or move to the back. They were concerned that the anarchists might cause trouble or attract unwanted police attention.

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Riot Cops Gas Docile Crowd Outside the RNC
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Firedoglake on September 3, 2008 at 9:31 AM.

Police officers used tear gas on a peaceful crowd that was following instructions in St. Paul on Tuesday evening. In an overwhelming show of force, well over a hundred riot police locked down 7th Street between Wabasha and St. Peter, surrounded protesters in the Poor People's March, media, and bystanders and then proceeded to launch several cannisters of tear gas after the crowd was hemmed in.

The police were clearly in a nasty mood. Shortly before the tear gas started flowing an officer on horseback made his horse lunge at me to force me off a concrete median. The traffic island was public property and nobody said anything to indicate it was off limits. If he'd asked me to move, I would have done so immediately. Luckily, since the intersection was locked down, there weren't any cars coming.

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Hundreds Arrested at RNC Protests
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Firedoglake on September 2, 2008 at 1:40 PM.

As of 10:30 pm last night, 284 protesters had been arrested and booked at the Ramsey County Jail in Saint Paul, MN. The most common charges included obstruction, unlawful assembly, conspiracy to riot, and rioting.

The bulk of the arrests took place late yesterday afternoon. The mass arrests started around 3:00pm when officers dragnetted protesters on Shepherd Road in a park near the river. The officers encircled the protesters and detained them for over an hour. About 50 people were let go, according to Gena Berglund of the National Lawyers Guild, which dispatched between 80 and 90 trained legal observers to monitor and videotape yesterday's protests.

Some of the protesters arrested during yesterday's demonstration in St. Paul began to make their way through the court system today. The first hearings began at 8:00am at the Ramsey County Court. Another round of hearings will begin at 1:00pm.

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Police State RNC: A Nun and Eight Others Swept into Unmarked Van by Cops in Minnesota
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Firedoglake on August 31, 2008 at 12:35 PM.

UPDATE (12:34 PDT):: One of the 9 protesters arrested was a nun, seen being loaded into an unmarked blue van. The 9 were apparently trying to climb a fence near a church.

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UPDATE: ColdSnap is reporting 9 arrests downtown near the Excel center and police massing all over the downtown core.

The National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality have filed an emergency motion to stop the seizure of cell phones and cameras during the RNC.

The groups will hold a joint press conference at Hennepin County Government Plaza to discuss their application for an emergency injunction, according to a tweet issued by the ColdSnap Legal Collective.

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The 6 activists arrested during police raids in advance of the Republican National Convention are being held without charge by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office, the Minnesota Independent reports.

The arrestees are being held on probable cause holds. These holds give the authorities 36 hours to charge them or let them go. Holds are typically used to give investigators more time to gather evidence before filing formal charges.

Holds allow police to charge first and ask questions later. Sometimes that's a good thing. Arrest opportunities are unpredictable. A suspect could slip away in the time it takes to turn a solid suspicion into sufficient evidence to file charges. A probable cause hold buys the police some time to dot the i's and cross the t's.

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Inside an RNC Raid in Minnesota
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Firedoglake on August 29, 2008 at 3:47 PM.

Thanks to the miracle of cellular technology, I was able to talk to a homeowner while his home was surrounded by police conducting an RNC-related raid. At approximatedly two-thirty this afternoon, I reached Mike Whelan, a waiter and army veteran, at his duplex at 951 Iglehart Ave. in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Whelan said he'd invited independent observers from the group LegalWatch stay in one half of his side-by-side duplex while they monitored RNC protests.

Whelan described himself as a supporter of the RNC demonstrations, but said he is not affiliated with any particular group. "I want to build a country that's based on good social values," he explained.

When I spoke to him, Whelan was waiting in one half of the duplex with his roommates, Dan and Julian. The three were afraid to go outside because the police were still there. Whelan said he thought that the police were inside the opposite side of the duplex, where the legal observers were staying. "I think they are detaining people," he added.

Whelan, who seemed remarkably calm for a guy whose flower garden had just been trampled by police with drawn automatic weapons, said he'd just returned from a morning of garage sale shopping when the commotion started. That would have been about one o'clock local time. He described what happened:

"About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house," Whelan said. "One of my roommates said 'I want to see a warrant' and she was immediately detained."

"Are they still outside?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, they're still outside," Whelan replied cheerfully, "The streets are blocked off."

"How you did figure out there was a raid going on?" I asked.

"It sounded like people were falling down on my porch," he said, "Cops were running up both sides of the house onto the porch.

Whelan says his roommate, Erin Stalmaker, went out to talk to talk to the police. She asked the officers why they were there. The officers asked why people were running away from them. Erin reportedly told the officers that their drawn automatic weapons probably had something to do with it. She was detained after asking to see a warrant.

"Are you scared," I asked."

"No, I'm a veteran," he said, "I was in the army. I was a military police officer. I wouldn't have done this."

Whelan said it was especially perplexing that the police would target his home.

"There's nothing here," he said, "These are the "checking" people. They're not even going to be in the demonstration. Some are lawyers."

Whelan was watching a large crowd of legal observers gathering across the street, many wearing red or green hats. The police officers he could identify were from St. Paul, but he thought there might be other forces on the scene as well. The officers were wearing black uniforms. Their vehicles were "non-descript" vans, not police cruisers. TV cameras were also on the scene. Whelan couldn't be sure because a tree was blocking his view, but he thought City Council member Melvin Carter had arrived. Whelan called him when the raid started. (Talk about constituent service.)

"You figure this would be going on in South Africa, or Russia, not in St Paul," Whelan said, marveling at the incongruity of it all,"St. Paul is nice."

'Free Speech Zones,' aka 'Freedom Cages,' at the DNC
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Firedoglake on August 25, 2008 at 4:23 PM.

My first assignment at the DNC was to find a designated "free speech zone" aka a "freedom cage." Apparently, there are several around the Pepsi Center. This one is near the corner of 7th St. and Auraria Pkwy, in sight of an amusement park.

The cage is just a parking lot in the baking sun, surrounded by a fine-gauge metal fence.

Street protests are forbidden outside these zones. Every effort has been made to isolate the areas from public view. DNC organizers made a big deal out of the fact that protesters would be allowed to use the parade route.

A "parade route" sounds public, maybe even prominent. In fact, the march takes place inside a semi-opaque corridor of cyclone fencing. Where the cyclone gauge is wide enough to see through, the fencers added green mesh to block out the light. On one side of the corridor is the University of Colorado, which is closed to the public today. On the other side is the security zone around the Pepsi Center.

I followed a Falun Gong marching band through the corridor in the mid-day sun. Between the altitude and the heat, nobody was feeling very well by the time we arrived at the cage.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

More Details on Bush Admin Iraq Forgery Allegations
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on August 7, 2008 at 7:03 AM.

Louis Bayard details Ron Suskind's claim that George Tenet ordered CIA officials Rob Richer and John Maguire to forge a letter from Iraqi security chief Habbush to Saddam Hussein.

The letter was a fictional smoking gun tying Iraq to 9/11.

It's generally accepted that the Habbush letter is a forgery.

The question remains, who forged it? Juan Cole suspects that Habbush forged the letter himself and that the CIA "authenticated" it in bad faith through its asset Ayad Allawi--whom journalist Con Coughlin contacted to vouchsafe the letter's authenticity after it was leaked to him.

What's novel and remarkable is that Suskind got Richer and Maguire to claim on the record that George Tenet ordered them to forge it.

Suskind believes the White House ordered the forgery in response to Joe Wilson's 2003 op-ed debunking many of the administration's lies about Saddam Hussein's alleged attempts to obtain uranium from Niger.

Did White House Officials Pressure the FBI to Blame Anthrax Attacks on Al Qaeda?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on August 6, 2008 at 5:22 AM.

An interesting item from Saturday's New York Daily News:

WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next. [NYDN]

This item relies on anonymous sources. I'd like to a name attached to these claims.

The source's account seems plausible in light of the Bush administration's extensive record of public deception on matters pertaining to national security.

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McCain Thinks Energy Crisis is a Laughing Matter
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on August 5, 2008 at 12:41 PM.

The Republicans have been handing out tire gages with Obama's name on them. This is meant as a joke because Obama pointed out that the U.S. stands to save more energy from keeping the nation's tires properly inflated than it would from offshore drilling.

The tire gauges are supposed to be a joke. I don't get it. Usually, I can reverse engineer jokes even if they don't make me laugh. This one leaves me at a loss. What's funny about an attractive useful gadget that associates your opponent with his own message?

I can see why the Obama campaign would give out tire gage pumps to donors. That would be making fun of John McCain and the emptiness of his offshore drilling promises.

I can imagine the creative brief. Suggested tagline: McCain's plan falls flat. So, remember to check your tires with this Obama tire gage.

Frank Jones at TIME Magazine thought McCain's wisecrack was funny:

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Private Spooks: Mercenary Intelligence Agencies are Recruiting Journalists
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on August 4, 2008 at 12:15 PM.

A private intelligence outfit busted for infiltrating Greenpeace is now attempting to recruit journalists, PR Watch reports:

Melissa Sweet, a freelance Australian health journalist, reports that she recently received an email from a staffer with the private intelligence company Hakluyt. In it, she was asked if she would like to become part of a "network of well-placed individuals around the world who are able to provide us, very discreetly, with intelligence on specific commercial or political issues that may arise." In particular, they were seeking her assistance for an anonymous "financial institution" client, on "a new project on the new Australian government's healthcare policy -- how realistic their reform ambitions really are," "the role of the private sector" and other matters.

War Profiteer KBR Responsible for Killing at Least 16 Troops
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 31, 2008 at 9:00 AM.

A congressional report released yesterday blames faulty electrical work by contractor KBR for the deaths of at least 16 American troops in Iraq:

The denials leave an accountability problem that may ultimately lead to the Pentagon officials in charge of overseeing KBR.

"Who is to blame for this?" Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), the ranking Republican on the committee, asked Bruni. "Was it the army? Was it the soldier responsible for taking the shower?"

"The responsibility lies with the army," Bruni said after initially dodging the question.

The army, meanwhile, remains uncertain how many soldiers have actually been electrocuted.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, said last month that 13 soldiers had been electrocuted. Last week the Pentagon said the number was 16. Now the oversight committee says it has documents indicating 19 deaths.

At the hearing, Jeffrey Parsons, executive director of the Army Contracting Command, said that the Pentagon is still in the process of investigating the electrocutions. Parsons also noted that Pentagon auditors lack "sufficient skill sets or expertise to perform adequate oversight of electrical work being performed by KBR." [Washington Independent]

KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton until last year, recently won yet another contract for Iraq reconstruction.

Girls Close the "Math Gap"
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 28, 2008 at 9:38 AM.

Fifteen years ago, girls trailed boys by 50 points on SAT math scores. Today, the gap is gone:

But a new study, published in this week's edition of the journal Science, shows the gap has disappeared. Researchers looked at standardized test scores of more than 7 million students, ranging from the second grade to high school junior. Whatever gender differences there once existed between girls and boys in terms of math performance are gone.

"The differences are now trivial," said Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin, who led the research. [ABC]

Science Journalism Tracker elaborates:

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Bob Novak Plows into Pedestrian on K Street, Attempts to Flee the Scene
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 23, 2008 at 1:22 PM.

Journalist Robert Novak plowed into a pedestrian on K Street this morning. Novak said he didn't realize he'd hit the 60-year-old man, but an eyewitness told ABC News that the victim was "splayed on the windshield" of Novak's black corvette and that there was no way that Novak could have failed to realize he'd struck the man. A bicyclist caught up with Novak about a block away from the crash and informed him that he'd just hit someone.

Watch the video. Novak was cited for failure to yield the right of way. I hope they gave him a breathalyser test. He's slurring his words pretty badly, two hours after the accident. Novak starts talking about 55 seconds into the clip, below. At about 1:22, Novak becomes almost unintelligible when the reporters ask him how his victim is doing.

Pay-to-Play: Karl Rove Taking Lead on George W. Bush Presidential Library
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 22, 2008 at 1:50 PM.

Bush crony Stephen Payne was caught on tape offering access to Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice in exchange for donations to the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

True to the president's legacy, the Bush Library will be a $500 million partisan institute housed by Southern Methodist University and administered with tax dollars, but accountable only to the library foundation.

The library is to be the Mother of All Think Tanks. It will reward the truly loyal Bushies with cushy jobs burnishing the legacy of George W. Bush.

Readers will not be shocked to learn that the project is being spearheaded by none other than Karl Rove.