🇮🇱 Exporting militarism: how Israeli companies market repression in Latin America
「 In the favelas in Brazil, the militarised police unit BOPE (Special Police Operations Unit) cooperates with ISDS, and the methods of repression in the favelas and in Palestine are very similar. BOPE occupies the rooftops of homes to control and kill people, just as the Israeli military does in Palestinian cities 」
Five former Memphis, Tenn., police officers were charged Tuesday with federal civil rights violations in the beating death of Tyre Nichols as they continue to fight second-degree murder charges in state courts arising from the killing.
Ho lee shit.
The AP has found that the number of deaths caused by the police in the US is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than thought because they're not always reported as being "officer-involved."
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The investigation found that between 2012 and 2021, more than a thousand people died after police use physical force that was not intended to be lethal. That includes batons, stun guns, physical restraints, and chemical agents. The oldest victim was 95 and the youngest 15.
Only 28 of the officers were charged.
The Police role was only cited in about half of the cases, meaning that many more Americans have died at the hands of the police than was previously known.
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Today in Labor History March 7, 1932: Over 3,000 people, led by the United Auto Workers, marched on the main Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Workers on the Ford Hunger March were demanding that laid off colleagues be rehired. They also demanded a slow-down of the assembly lines and an end to the evictions of unemployed workers from their homes. Marchers carried banners saying "Give Us Work," "We Want Bread Not Crumbs," and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor." During the protests, police opened fire with machine guns, killing 4 and injuring 60. A fifth worker died later from his wounds. The Unemployed Council (part of the Communist Party) also supported the march.
Today in Labor History February 4, 1979: Six workers were killed by police in the massacre of Cromotex, Lima Peru. The workers had taken over the factory after it went bankrupt and its owners tried to close it down. Led by a hardline revolutionary, Hemigidio Huertas, workers armed with sticks took the premises over. They held out for a week, killing a police captain in the process. When police later stormed the factory, they killed six workers including Huertas. One of the survivors, Nestor Cerpa, was arrested and jailed for 10 months. After his release, he went underground and started to organize the MRTA, or Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
Today in Labor History November 21, 1921: The original Columbine Massacre occurred in Serine, Colorado. State police and company thugs used machine guns against the unarmed miners, slaughtering six striking IWW members, all of whom were unarmed. Dozens more were injured.
Today is the 22nd #anniversary of the raid on the school Armando Diaz during the #Genova#G8 summit. 21 July 2001.
I could write a long rant on that shameful, violent night and the following years of lies, gaslighting, manipulation of evidences, infinite trials, and ridiculous condemnation of a handful of police officers. That night 22 years ago, democracy died to let the Liberal Free Market politics live.
Today in Labor History August 22, 1917: Italian police opened fire on protesters against the hunger caused by World War I. Most of the protesters were women. The next day, workers declared a General Strike. On the 24th, a state of siege was declared, but the strike continued until the 26th. Police violence during the strike resulted in the deaths of 60 people.
Today in Labor History August 28, 1990: New York state police closed all roads to the St. Regis Mohawk reservation to prevent Mohawks from crossing the international border during a protest to defend Mohawk land from private development of a golf course. On March 11, 1990, members of the Mohawk community erected a barricade blocking access to the dirt side road between Route 344 and "The Pines". After ignoring 2 court injunctions ordering them to remove the barricades, the police intervened, deploying tear gas and concussion grenades, and opening fire on the Mohawks. After a 15-minute gun battle, the police retreated, abandoning six cruisers and a bulldozer, which the Mohawks seized. The conflict lasted from 7/11-9/26/1990, with 2,500 non-local activists and warriors supporting 600 local Mohawks against an army of 4,500 soldiers and 2,000 police. One person was killed on each side. After 26 days of siege without supplies being let through, the land defenders ended the struggle. However, the cops and military continued to attack them after they began to leave, including a 14-year-old, who was bayoneted near the heart, and who almost died from her wound. But the golf course expansion was halted.
Today in Labor History September 15, 1923: Japanese anarchist Osugi Sakae was murdered by the Japanese military. In the wake of the 7.9 magnitude 1923 Kantō earthquake, which killed over 100,000 people, and the protests that ensured, Japanese police, military and vigilantes slaughtered over 6,000 dissidents and ethnic Koreans in the Kantō Massacre, including Ōsugi and his nephew.
The only time they ever switched from their constant chant of yelling "Stop resisting!" into the void as I lay still as a ragdoll, taking my beating, was when one of them was choking me out and I managed to grab a tiny bit of air to wheeze, "I can't breathe," then he changed his chant for a moment to "I don't give a shit!" before choking me out more. I somehow got another gasp of air and survived to tell the story. Many do not. The world heard George Floyd, but they do not know. #policebrutality
Today in Labor History January 31, 1971: For the second time in six months, rioting broke out during an anti-war protest in East Los Angeles. Police fired into the crowd, killing one protester. The anti-war demonstrations were organized by the Chicano Moratorium. Chicanos were dying at a higher rate during the Vietnam War than white Americans. During the August 29, 1970 protests, police killed three people, including Journalist Ruben Salazar. Oscar Zeta Acosta portrayed Salazar in his 1973 novel, “The Revolt of the Cockroach People.” Hunter S. Thompson portrayed Acosta as his “Samoan attorney” in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
Today in Labor History October 1, 1910: Twenty-one people were killed when the Los Angeles Times building was dynamited during a labor strike. Anarchists were immediately blamed. The Iron Workers had been engaged in a brutal and protracted battle with U.S. Steel and the American Bridge Company, which was busting their union with spies, informants, scabs and agents provocateur. Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Otis, who was viciously anti-union, provided propaganda for the bosses. By early 1910, the owners had driven nearly all the unions from their plants, except for the Iron Workers union, which had instigated a bombing campaign starting in 1906. In April 1911, private detective William Burns and Chicago police sergeant William Reed kidnapped union organizer James McNamara and held him hostage for a week prior to illegally extraditing him to Los Angeles for the bombings. Burns later arrested his brother John, but denied him access to an attorney. Both McNamaras had been arrested based on the confession of a third man who had likely been tortured. And both were likely innocent of the bombings. Eugene Debs accused Otis, himself, of the Times bombing. James McNamara spent the rest of his life in San Quentin, dying there in 1941. John served 15 years and then went on to serve as an organizer for the Iron Workers.
Today in Labor History September 24, 1906: The Atlanta massacre ended on this day. Rioting by white mobs began on September 22 after newspapers published several luridly detailed and unsubstantiated reports of black men allegedly raping 4 local women. The racist mobs destroyed black businesses and homes, killing at least 25 African Americans (official reports). However, the actual death toll may be closer to 100. Black men, including university professors, met to organize defense committees and began arming themselves. However, police and state militias raided their meetings and disarmed them. One cop was killed in the fight. W. E. B. Du Bois, who was teaching at Atlanta University at the time, purchased a shotgun when rioting broke out. "I bought a Winchester double-barreled shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot. If a white mob had stepped on the campus where I lived I would without hesitation have sprayed their guts over the grass." The massacre was not publicly marked in Georgia until 2006, its 100th anniversary, nor made part of state's curriculum for public schools until 2007.
Today in Labor History October 15, 1966: The Black Panther Party was created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, in Oakland, California. One of their early core practices was open-carry armed citizen’s patrols monitoring abusive police behavior. They also implemented free breakfast programs and community health clinics, and advocated for revolutionary class struggle. The FBI sabotaged the Panthers through its COINTELPRO and participated in the assassination of Panthers, like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. In 1969, the Panthers officially declared sexism to be counterrevolutionary and ordered its male members to treat women as equals. In 1970, Huey Newton expressed support for the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the LGBTQ Liberation Movement which, he correctly noted, were subject to much of the same police brutality as were African Americans.
Today in Labor History November 30, 1999: Thousands of activists, students, union members, environmentalists and others shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle. It was the first large-scale demonstration in the United States to protest “globalization” and the beginning of many similar protests. The WTO protest raised awareness of corporate greed while simultaneously promoting the delusion that, with a few reforms, capitalism and democracy would serve the needs of the people.
Today in Labor History November 23, 1903: Army troops were sent to Cripple Creek, Colorado to put down a rebellion by striking coal miners. 600 union members were thrown into a military bullpen, and held for weeks without charges. When a lawyer arrived with a writ of habeas corpus, General Bell, who led the repression, responded "Habeas corpus, hell! We'll give 'em post mortems!” The strike was led by Big Bill Haywood and the Western Federation of Miners, which, at the time, was the most militant union in the country, calling for revolution and abolition of the wage system.
Today in Labor History December 24, 1936: On Christmas Eve, drunk cops beat up 150 strikers on the Houston docks, sending 18 to the hospital. They were members of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast. Gilbert Mers, who had dual membership in the Maritime Federation and the IWW, was their leader. Violence against dockers was rampant along the gulf coast in the 1930s. In July 1934, three black longshoremen were shot to death during a strike. In 1935, longshoremen struck along the entire gulf coast, with 14 more workers getting killed. From 1936 to 1938, 28 union members were killed and over 300 injured in strikes. Mers’ autobiography, “Working the Waterfront: The Ups and Downs of a Rebel Longshoreman,” was published in 1988, ten years before his death, at age 90. As a young man, Mers worked the docks in Corpus Christi, but went on to become President of the Corpus Christi Central Labor Council and the President of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast, while remaining a dedicated dual member of the IWW throughout his life. He was part of the effort to establish an industry-wide union along the Gulf Coast states. In his autobiography, he exposes the brutality and corruption of the Texas Rangers in the 1930s-‘40s, and their use as violent, strike-breaking bullies with badges.
Today in Labor History September 21, 1913: Mother Jones led a march of miners' children through the streets of Charleston. Between 1912 and 1913, there were frequent violent conflicts during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia. At least 50 people died from violence during the strike, plus unknown numbers from starvation. Most of the violence was provoked by the Baldwin-Felts detectives that the mine owner brought in to bust the strike. During one incident, the sheriff and private detectives attacked a miners’ camp with an armored train, equipped with machine guns and high-powered rifles. After the attack, Ma Blizzard led a group of women who destroyed the tracks, setting the precedent for Central American Solidarity activists who, in the 1990s, destroyed tracks after a munitions trains ran over and dismembered Brian Willson’s legs.
Today in History August 18, 1977: Steve Biko was arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No. 83 in King William's Town, South Africa. He later died from injuries received during this arrest. Biko was a socialist and an anti-apartheid activist. He was 31 at the time of his assassination. He was influenced by the teachings of Martinican philosopher Frantz Fanon and the American Black Power Movement. His death brought international attention to South Africa's apartheid policies and helped launch the modern anti-apartheid movement.
Today in Labor History August 3, 1959: Portugal's state police force, PIDE, fired upon striking dock workers in Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, killing over 50 people, during the Pidjiguiti massacre. The government blamed the revolutionaries from the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). The event caused PAIGC to give up their nonviolent campaign and engage in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence.
Going through my social media, it seems like Gaza doesn't even exist.
It's all about student protests and police brutality in US.
In the mean time, the stories of Maas Graves, mass execution of healthcare staff and mutilated bodies of palestinians in Khan Yunis have all but disappeared from the news.
No news about starvation.
No news about murder of aid workers by IDF.
No news of bombing tent cities with fire bombs.
No news of Netanyahu ignoring the peace proposal.
No news that Biden keep sending weapons and money to Netanyahu.
I guess it's good that we see the student protests are spreading, but it should not be forgetting WHY they are protesting and what over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live every day.