"Mad" Miles
05-13-2007, 01:39 PM
"David Rovics Speaks For Me"
That's the key thing I said when introducing him at New College a few weeks ago.
Here's part of why I said it:
https://www.songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com/
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Pivotal Moment in the Green Scare (https://songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com/2007/05/pivotal-moment-in-green-scare.html)
Bill Rodgers died in a jail cell in Flagstaff, Arizona, fist raised above him, plastic bag over his head, of an apparent suicide, on the 2005 winter solstice. Two weeks before in Prescott, Bill’s baby, the Catalyst Infoshop had been raided by fifteen federal officers and he was taken away.
Bill was essentially accused of destroying corporate property. If he had been arrested for these crimes in, say, an EU country, I’m sure Bill would still be alive today. But the US is not the EU. The prisons of the US are full of nonviolent offenders, and there are special sentences for some of them. Bill knew that in America today, he could do like Jeffrey Luers and go to prison for a very long time. For Bill’s property destruction was politically – ecologically – motivated. Bill apparently chose to end his life rather than spend it in prison.
The last time I saw Bill was at the Catalyst, a few months before his death. We were sitting on (or more like enveloped by) some very old couches and someone was filming an interview for a local Cable Access program, I think. Bill was a couple years older than me, but with twice as much energy. He was small, intelligent, full of vitality, full of both good intentions and actions. He was an unassuming Prescott institution, along with the Catalyst Infoshop.
Bill was part of a sweep of arrests of activists around the US, and more broadly, part of the US government’s efforts to wipe out what it calls “ecoterrorism.” To impose decades-long sentences (Jeffrey Luers was sentenced to a breathtaking 22 years) on people who have harmed no one, people who have essentially committed expensive acts of vandalism -- against the corporations that are destroying our world.
The term “ecoterrorism” was coined by a corporation, by a PR firm from New York. The laws passed by the Congress giving “ecoterrorists” extra decades in prison for their alleged crimes were, of course, like most laws in this alleged democracy, passed at the behest of large corporations.
At the beginning of June Daniel McGowan, Joyanna Zacher, and Jonathan Paul will be sentenced for their alleged crimes of property destruction. Next week, at the federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, a judge will decide whether the “terrorism enhancement” law shall be applied to these cases. If applied, each defendant would receive a mandatory sentence of 20 years on top of whatever other draconian sentence they will otherwise be receiving. In the same way communists were once singled out for special punishment, so now are “ecoterrorists.” It’s the new Red Scare, the Green Scare.
This May 15th court decision comes at an interesting time. Our country is waging an illegal war for oil in Iraq in which over 600,000 people have lost their lives. The ice caps are melting, the oceans are rising, and the federal government is invading oil-rich nations and giving tax breaks to Americans for buying Hummers. Last week, a Cuban man named Luis Posada Carrilles was let back onto the streets of Miami. A free man, though he is known to have killed 73 people by planting a bomb on a civilian airplane in 1976, among many other deadly crimes. And the man responsible for blowing up Greenpeace’s ship in 1985 while it was docked in New Zealand, killing one, is now living in Virginia and selling arms to the US government.
But real terrorists like Posada are not our government’s concern. International law, illegal wars and mass deaths of innocent civilians are just fine. Global warming is just fine. “Ecoterrorists” are the problem, the FBI’s enemy #1, by their own admission. And in September, 2001 what was the FBI’s biggest, most expensive ongoing campaign? Right. Not Al-Qaeda, but the nonviolent acts of property destruction carried out by the Earth Liberation Front.
Of course, Muslims are also the new bogeymen. Just as anyone in the 1980’s who defended the sovereignty of nations in Latin America was called a “communist,” now anyone defending the soverignty of nations in the Middle East are called “terrorists” or “Islamists.” There have even been transparently ridiculous efforts on the part of the State Department to link supporters of Hugo Chavez with Al-Qaeda. In the modern era, you don’t even need to commit a crime or “conspire” (with FBI infiltrators/provacateurs) to commit a crime. You need only open your mouth.
Such is the case with devout Muslim university professor Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who has been in prison in Florida for years now. But this is also true of Sherman Austin, a young man from California who recently served a year in prison because someone posted a crude, easily-available smoke bomb recipe on his website.
And it is terrifyingly true in the case of Rod Coronado, who is being threatened with a 25-year prison sentence for a speech he gave in 2003 in which he answered a student’s question about an action for which he served years in prison in the early 1990’s.
There is a thread running through all of this – the war in Iraq, the criminalization of Muslims in the US and around the world, and the criminalization of environmentalists, particularly those involved with the activities of the ELF. That is, the interests of massive energy corporations. It was due to lobbying efforts by energy companies masquerading as the pseudo-eco “Wise Use Movement” that led Bill Clinton to pass the 1997 law criminalizing speech, under which Rod Coronado is facing his shockingly draconian sentence.
(Snip)
For the rest go the the URL at the beginning of this excerpt. It will be well worth your while. And if you don't weep, just a little as I did at the end, then ...... !?
"Mad" Miles
:burngrnbounce:
That's the key thing I said when introducing him at New College a few weeks ago.
Here's part of why I said it:
https://www.songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com/
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Pivotal Moment in the Green Scare (https://songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com/2007/05/pivotal-moment-in-green-scare.html)
Bill Rodgers died in a jail cell in Flagstaff, Arizona, fist raised above him, plastic bag over his head, of an apparent suicide, on the 2005 winter solstice. Two weeks before in Prescott, Bill’s baby, the Catalyst Infoshop had been raided by fifteen federal officers and he was taken away.
Bill was essentially accused of destroying corporate property. If he had been arrested for these crimes in, say, an EU country, I’m sure Bill would still be alive today. But the US is not the EU. The prisons of the US are full of nonviolent offenders, and there are special sentences for some of them. Bill knew that in America today, he could do like Jeffrey Luers and go to prison for a very long time. For Bill’s property destruction was politically – ecologically – motivated. Bill apparently chose to end his life rather than spend it in prison.
The last time I saw Bill was at the Catalyst, a few months before his death. We were sitting on (or more like enveloped by) some very old couches and someone was filming an interview for a local Cable Access program, I think. Bill was a couple years older than me, but with twice as much energy. He was small, intelligent, full of vitality, full of both good intentions and actions. He was an unassuming Prescott institution, along with the Catalyst Infoshop.
Bill was part of a sweep of arrests of activists around the US, and more broadly, part of the US government’s efforts to wipe out what it calls “ecoterrorism.” To impose decades-long sentences (Jeffrey Luers was sentenced to a breathtaking 22 years) on people who have harmed no one, people who have essentially committed expensive acts of vandalism -- against the corporations that are destroying our world.
The term “ecoterrorism” was coined by a corporation, by a PR firm from New York. The laws passed by the Congress giving “ecoterrorists” extra decades in prison for their alleged crimes were, of course, like most laws in this alleged democracy, passed at the behest of large corporations.
At the beginning of June Daniel McGowan, Joyanna Zacher, and Jonathan Paul will be sentenced for their alleged crimes of property destruction. Next week, at the federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, a judge will decide whether the “terrorism enhancement” law shall be applied to these cases. If applied, each defendant would receive a mandatory sentence of 20 years on top of whatever other draconian sentence they will otherwise be receiving. In the same way communists were once singled out for special punishment, so now are “ecoterrorists.” It’s the new Red Scare, the Green Scare.
This May 15th court decision comes at an interesting time. Our country is waging an illegal war for oil in Iraq in which over 600,000 people have lost their lives. The ice caps are melting, the oceans are rising, and the federal government is invading oil-rich nations and giving tax breaks to Americans for buying Hummers. Last week, a Cuban man named Luis Posada Carrilles was let back onto the streets of Miami. A free man, though he is known to have killed 73 people by planting a bomb on a civilian airplane in 1976, among many other deadly crimes. And the man responsible for blowing up Greenpeace’s ship in 1985 while it was docked in New Zealand, killing one, is now living in Virginia and selling arms to the US government.
But real terrorists like Posada are not our government’s concern. International law, illegal wars and mass deaths of innocent civilians are just fine. Global warming is just fine. “Ecoterrorists” are the problem, the FBI’s enemy #1, by their own admission. And in September, 2001 what was the FBI’s biggest, most expensive ongoing campaign? Right. Not Al-Qaeda, but the nonviolent acts of property destruction carried out by the Earth Liberation Front.
Of course, Muslims are also the new bogeymen. Just as anyone in the 1980’s who defended the sovereignty of nations in Latin America was called a “communist,” now anyone defending the soverignty of nations in the Middle East are called “terrorists” or “Islamists.” There have even been transparently ridiculous efforts on the part of the State Department to link supporters of Hugo Chavez with Al-Qaeda. In the modern era, you don’t even need to commit a crime or “conspire” (with FBI infiltrators/provacateurs) to commit a crime. You need only open your mouth.
Such is the case with devout Muslim university professor Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who has been in prison in Florida for years now. But this is also true of Sherman Austin, a young man from California who recently served a year in prison because someone posted a crude, easily-available smoke bomb recipe on his website.
And it is terrifyingly true in the case of Rod Coronado, who is being threatened with a 25-year prison sentence for a speech he gave in 2003 in which he answered a student’s question about an action for which he served years in prison in the early 1990’s.
There is a thread running through all of this – the war in Iraq, the criminalization of Muslims in the US and around the world, and the criminalization of environmentalists, particularly those involved with the activities of the ELF. That is, the interests of massive energy corporations. It was due to lobbying efforts by energy companies masquerading as the pseudo-eco “Wise Use Movement” that led Bill Clinton to pass the 1997 law criminalizing speech, under which Rod Coronado is facing his shockingly draconian sentence.
(Snip)
For the rest go the the URL at the beginning of this excerpt. It will be well worth your while. And if you don't weep, just a little as I did at the end, then ...... !?
"Mad" Miles
:burngrnbounce: