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State Violence

Israel Arrests Child With One-Third Of His Skull Missing

February 28, 2018 Ali Abunimah, Electronicintifada.net , ,
Israeli occupation forces raided the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in the predawn hours of Monday in the latest episode of Israel’s premeditated revenge campaign against the Tamimi family. They detained Muhammad Fadel Tamimi, the 15-year-old boy shot in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet at close range and seriously injured by Israeli forces in December. Bassem Tamimi, the father of detained teenager Ahed Tamimi, wrote on Facebook Monday morning that a large force of Israeli soldiers armed with weaponized bulldozers and skunk water raided homes in the village during the night and detained 10 people. Six of those arrested were children, the youngest aged 14, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. They included Muhammad’s 17-year-old brother Tamim. Bassem said that Muhammad Fadel Tamimi’s detention put the child’s life at risk.

Palestinian ‘Beaten To Death’ In Custody By 20 Israeli Troops

February 24, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net , , , ,
Security camera footage shared online and picked up by local media showed the soldiers hitting the 33-year-old repeatedly in the head, stomach and back. A Palestinian man died Thursday after a brutal confrontation with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank that the Palestinian Authority condemned as a "cold-blooded execution" after security camera footage showed at least 20 soldiers beating and kicking the man after being shot. In the footage posted on social media and carried by Israeli news sites, the troops could be seen kicking and striking a man shortly after shooting him, identified by Palestinian officials as Yassin Omar Serda, after detaining him in the town of Jericho. The Palestinian Information Ministry said about 20 soldiers had administered a "heavy beating" to Serda, especially on his stomach and back. "The Information Ministry views (his) martyrdom ... shortly after his arrest a cold-blooded execution," it said.

Argentina’s Government Tries To Suppress Anti-Austerity Protests

February 22, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net , , , ,
Argentina’s main worker unions, social movements and human rights groups have planned a massive protest in Buenos Aires to oppose President Mauricio Macri’s economic policies, layoffs, the recent pension reforms, judicial persecution of social leaders, and other intended labor reforms. A series of actions and mobilizations against the austerity measures started on Feb. 15. The various groups, including the General Confederation of Labor (3 million members) and the Argentine Workers’ Central Union (1.5 million members) and the Association of State Workers (roughly 250,000 members) will arrive downtown at noon on Wednesday. Transport union leader Hugo Moyano, will address the crowd. The union called Camioneros (or truckers) has roughly 200,000 members and is reported to have the capacity to paralyze the country.

2018 Begins With US Police Reign Of Terror

February 2, 2018 By Niles Niemuth, Wsws.org , , ,
While largely ignored by the mass media, the reign of terror by police officers continues to rage across the United States. The entire state apparatus, from local cops to immigration agents, has been unleashed by the Trump administration to beat, maim and kill with impunity. During a speech to hundreds of uniformed officers last July, Trump urged the police to not be “too nice” and to treat detainees “rough.” The Justice Department has at the same time ended the toothless pretense of federal oversight over a handful of police departments put in place by the Obama administration. In the year since Trump was sworn in as president, at least 1,223 people have been killed by police. Since the beginning of 2018, according to killedbypolice.net, 3.5 people have been killed on average every day.

Honduran Anti-Fraud Protesters Clamor For Justice As State Killings Continue

January 26, 2018 Sandra Cuffe, Towardfreedom.com , ,
Virgilio Yareth Ávila loved to sing. The 16-year-old high school student also played drums at his church. That’s where he was headed on a Monday afternoon last month. Ávila left the simple family home and walked up to the gravel road to cross the highway that bisects the town of Agua Blanca Sur, 10 miles south of El Progreso, Honduras. Minutes later, gunshots rang out. Ávila’s mother started running up the road after her son. When she reached the highway, she found one of her older sons weeping in anguish. Police had opened fire on residents blockading the highway as part of ongoing nationwide protests against election fraud. Ávila had been shot in the head. “He was still breathing, but in my heart I knew I was going to lose him,” Ávila’s mother told Toward Freedom. As she approached, she asked police not to shoot.

Coalition Seeks To Hold Police Accountable For Use Of Force

January 3, 2018 Wakíƞyaƞ Waánataƞ (Matt Remle), Lastrealindians.com , ,
Olympia, WA – On December 28th, 2017 a broad coalition of police accountability activists turned in over 355,000 signatures for ballot measure I-940, known as De-escalate Washington that if passed would allow police to be prosecuted for unjustified use of deadly force, to the Washington Secretary of State to qualify for consideration. The effort was driven by family members who have lost loved ones to police violence in Washington State, largely from the Native and African American communities. The Puyallup Tribe, in particular, was a driving force behind I-940.  Last year, Puyallup Tribal citizen Jacqueline Salyers was murdered by Tacoma police.  Salyers was pregnant at the time of the shooting.

Twitter & FB Reward Military Violence Over Small-Time Threats

January 3, 2018 By Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com , , , ,
In December 2017, Twitter released new rules against violence and physical harm. Included in those rules is a focus on “Accounts that affiliate with organizations that use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes…This policy does not apply to military or government entities…” As an example then, when the U.S. dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in our arsenal (sickly nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs or MOAB) on Afghanistan, corporate media couldn’t get out their praise fast enough. Be it referring to Donald Trump as presidential or the Fox News show Fox & Friends playing footage of the bomb dropping to Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue,” the clear cut and grotesque promotion of large scale violence was blatant. And according to Twitter, totally fine.

Beyond Prisons: Crisis At McCormick Correctional Institution

November 1, 2017 Brian Sonenstein, shadowproof.com , ,
By Brian Sonenstein for Shadow Proof - Journalist Jared Ware interviewed people incarcerated at McCormick Correctional Institution in South Carolina regarding the ongoing crisis there for a special edition of Beyond Prisons. McCormick has been on lockdown for weeks. At the end of September, incarcerated people reported officials were withholding drinking water and engaging in excessive force after a water main broke outside the facility. For three days, people on the inside reported they did not have drinkable water. This caused tensions in the facility to boil over into multiple incidents, which were met with more repression by prison staff. Incarcerated people feel staff are intentionally trying to provoke them to justify worsening brutality and repressive conditions. One man was reportedly shot with rubber bullets multiple times after leaving the shower. He has been transferred to another facility after he was taken the prison’s medical center. On Monday, October 30, advocates reported people had briefly taken over the restrictive housing unit and set fires before returning to their cells. Few news outlets have covered the crisis from the perspective of people on the inside, instead relying exclusively on reports from corrections officials, who claim the violence was a product of unruly prisoners and staff shortages. This claim has been used to justify the lockdown as well as the presence of riot squads and officers from nearby prisons.

Our Ever-Deadlier Police State

October 24, 2017 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com , , ,
By Chris Hedges for Truth Dig - None of the reforms, increased training, diversity programs, community outreach and gimmicks such as body cameras have blunted America’s deadly police assault, especially against poor people of color. Police forces in the United States—which, according to The Washington Post, have fatally shot 782 people this year—are unaccountable, militarized monstrosities that spread fear and terror in poor communities. By comparison, police in England and Wales killed 62 people in the 27 years between the start of 1990 and the end of 2016. Police officers have become rogue predators in impoverished communities. Under U.S. forfeiture laws, police indiscriminately seize money, real estate, automobiles and other assets. In many cities, traffic, parking and other fines are little more than legalized extortion that funds local government and turns jails into debtor prisons. Because of a failed court system, millions of young men and women are railroaded into prison, many for nonviolent offenses. SWAT teams with military weapons burst into homes often under warrants for nonviolent offenses, sometimes shooting those inside. Trigger-happy cops pump multiple rounds into the backs of unarmed men and women and are rarely charged with murder.

The Empire Comes Home

October 24, 2017 Danny Sjursen, www.huffingtonpost.com , ,
By Danny Sjursen for The Huffington Post - It was 11 years ago next month: my first patrol of the war and we were still learning the ropes from the army unit we were replacing. Unit swaps are tricky, dangerous times. In Army lexicon, they’re known as “right-seat-left-seat rides.” Picture a car. When you’re learning to drive, you first sit in the passenger seat and observe. Only then do you occupy the driver’s seat. That was Iraq, as units like ours rotated in and out via an annual revolving door of sorts. Officers from incoming units like mine were forced to learn the terrain, identify the key powerbrokers in our assigned area, and sort out the most effective tactics in the two weeks before the experienced officers departed. It was a stressful time. Those transition weeks consisted of daily patrols led by the officers of the departing unit. My first foray off the FOB (forward operating base) was a night patrol. The platoon I’d tagged along with was going to the house of a suspected Shiite militia leader. (Back then, we were fighting both Shiite rebels of the Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgents.) We drove to the outskirts of Baghdad, surrounded a farmhouse, and knocked on the door. An old woman let us in and a few soldiers quickly fanned out to search every room. Only women ― presumably the suspect’s mother and sisters ― were home.

Repression Of Mutual Aid In Puerto Rico

October 17, 2017 Staff, www.mutualaiddisasterrelief.org , ,
By Staff of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief - Several police vehicles, an armored tactical vehicle, and law enforcement personnel including swat team pointed their guns at relief workers while surrounding and then entering our base of operations in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico in the early hours before dawn of October 16th, 2017. Law enforcement communicated that they were acting from a call that Mutual Aid Disaster Relief volunteers were engaged in “kidnapping”. After checking everybody’s belongings without consent, they forced volunteers out of what was the Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Puerto Rico hub at gunpoint and the threat of arrest. Law enforcement intimidation also included aggressive questioning of our purpose there and whether or not we were protestors or Antifa, had we ever used the raised fist, if we were distributing propaganda, and if we were planning to overthrow the government.

Catalans Strike Over Violent Crackdown On Independence Referendum

October 4, 2017 Staff, www.france24.com , , ,
By Staff of News 24 - Schools and some businesses also shut in a dramatic protest bound to further ratchet up fever-pitch tensions with Spain's central government, as Madrid comes under growing international pressure to resolve its worst political crisis in decades. The Port of Barcelona reduced services to a minimum, and protesters stood on roads and highways across Catalonia, blocking traffic. On the AP7 highway linking Barcelona to France two youths set up a folding table and played chess. Catalan pro-separatist trade unions, schools and cultural institutions called for the stoppage to "vigorously condemn" the police response to the Sunday poll, in which regional authorities confirmed over 90 people were injured. Catalonia's leader said 90 percent of voters backed independence from Spain, but the central government has vowed to stop the wealthy northeastern region -- which accounts for a fifth of Spain's economy -- from breaking away, dismissing the poll as a "farce". In Barcelona the Metro provided only minimum service and passengers travelled for free, while major tourist sites like the city's emblematic Sagrada Familia Church were closed.

New Era Of State Violence In Argentina?

September 12, 2017 Roqayah Chamseddine, www.mintpressnews.com , , , ,
By Roqayah Chamseddine for MInt Press News - The streets of Argentina are boiling over with demonstrations, as thousands of locals demand that the government produce an indigenous activist last seen one month ago when border police forced a group of the indigenous Mapuche off of indigenous land in Patagonia — land unjustly owned by the Italian clothing company Benetton. According to witnesses, 28-year-old Santiago Maldonado was forced into a van by government officials and disappeared, but so far the Argentinian government has denied any involvement. Argentinian demonstrators, including groups like Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo, are increasingly concerned for the wellbeing of Maldonado in light of the nation’s troubled history of state violence. The US-backed military dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla, which plagued Argentina from 1976 until 1983, killed, kidnapped, and disappeared at least 30,000. Backed by Ronald Reagan, Videla and his security apparatus went on to torture and murder thousands more in a right-wing military hellscape. The case of Santiago Maldonado has revived memories of the Argentinian military junta, and suspicion among activists is growing that he has become President Mauricio Macri’s first disappeared victim—nearly 40 years after the end of General Videla’s rule.

Comply Or Die: Police State’s Answer To Free Speech Is Brute Force

July 17, 2017 John W. Whitehead, www.counterpunch.org , , , , ,
By John W. Whitehead for Counter Punch - Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and challenge the status quo. This police overkill isn’t just happening in troubled hot spots such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Md., where police brutality gave rise to civil unrest, which was met with a militarized show of force that caused the whole stew of discontent to bubble over into violence. A decade earlier, the NYPD engaged in mass arrests of peaceful protesters, bystanders, legal observers and journalists who had gathered for the 2004 Republican National Convention. The protesters were subjected to blanket fingerprinting and detained for more than 24 hours at a “filthy, toxic pier that had been a bus depot.” That particular exercise in police intimidation tactics cost New York City taxpayers nearly $18 million for what would become the largest protest settlement in history. Demonstrators, journalists and legal observers who had gathered in North Dakota to peacefully protest the Dakota Access Pipeline reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched by police.

Getting Julian Assange

May 24, 2017 John Pilger, www.dissidentvoice.org ,
By John Pilger for Dissident Voices - Julian Assange has been vindicated because the Swedish case against him was corrupt. The prosecutor, Marianne Ny, obstructed justice and should be prosecuted. Her obsession with Assange not only embarrassed her colleagues and the judiciary but exposed the Swedish state’s collusion with the United States in its crimes of war and “rendition”. Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he would have been on his way to the kind of American torture pit Chelsea Manning had to endure. This prospect was obscured by the grim farce played out in Sweden. “It’s a laughing stock,” said James Catlin, one of Assange’s Australian lawyers. “It is as if they make it up as they go along”. It may have seemed that way, but there was always serious purpose. In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch” foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally. The “mission” was to destroy the “trust” that was WikiLeaks‘ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”. Silencing and criminalising such an unpredictable source of truth-telling was the aim.
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