A gift from the U.S. to the Egyptian police state

As popular uprisings sweep North Africa and the Middle East, new light is being shed on the U.S. government's role in propping up regional dictators and proliferating weapons around the globe. Egypt in particular has benefited from Washington's war chest, receiving an average of $1.3 billion in military aid every year. That's more than $50 billion since Hosni Mubarak came to power. All the while, State Department officials in Egypt were sending home regular reports that Egyptian security forces routinely tortured members of the political opposition and media, as Wikileaks revealed today.

Congressmen Chip Cravaack and Sean Duffy have called for deep cuts to domestic spending in order to balance the federal budget. Perhaps they should be asking themselves what the people of Egypt are asking today: Why is there always enough money for guns, but never enough for butter?

NAWC Attempts People's Subpoena of FBI

Today, as Midwest anti-war activists once again defied orders to appear before a grand jury in Chicago, a dozen anti-war and labor activists went to the Duluth Federal Building and attempted to serve People's Subpoenas on the FBI and US attorney's office for "all documents in your possession which evidence violations of citizens' First Amendment rights..."

Building security was friendly, but the FBI didn't answer the door.

Continued FBI and grand jury harassment of the anti-war movement

Nine activists have been ordered to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago on Tuesday to testify about ties between the Midwest anti-war movement and foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). This comes on the heels of September 2010 FBI raids on the homes and offices of anti-war and labor organizers in Minneapolis and Chicago. 

The witch hunt fits a pattern of increasing politicization of anti-terror laws, including the unlawful surveillance of Duluth's Loaves & Fishes Community and dozens of other community and activist groups around the country.

In a disturbing twist to the current grand jury fiasco, our allies at the Anti War Committee in Minneapolis recently learned that one of their own organizers - who helped plan protests during the RNC in St Paul and a fact-finding mission to Palestine - was in fact an undercover federal agent.

The grand jury investigation appears to rest on the material support provision of the PATRIOT Act, which makes it illegal to have any contact with people who the U.S. State Department considers terrorists, even to negotiate aid delivery or advocate disarmament. (To put the State Department's competency at identifying "terrorists" in context, the African National Congress - the current ruling party in South Africa and leaders in the struggle against Apartheid - once found itself on a list of foreign terrorist organizations). 

Under the draconian logic of this provision, and the brutal political realities of countries like Colombia, human rights activists in the U.S. could conceivably be charged with support for terrorism for meeting with human rights activists in other countries. Indeed, it looks like it's already begun. 

TAKE ACTION TODAY

1. Rally in solidarity with those facing the grand jury:

Tuesday, January 25, 4pm
Duluth Federal Building
(1st St and 5th Ave W)

2. Contact Attorney General Eric Holder:

202-353-1555
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Tell him to stop the grand jury investigation of anti-war activists and return all material confiscated during the September raids in the Twin Cities and Chicago.

Report-back from the SOA protest

by Twin Ports SOA Watch

(see earlier post for photos from the protest) 

10,000 people took part in this year's SOA protest

Bringing the Vigil Home:

Report from the School of the Americas protest

Thursday, January 27
7 PM
Holy Assumption Church
5601 Tower Ave, Superior
(past the fairgrounds)

Since 1946, the US Army's School of the Americas has trained Latin American troops to torture and make war on their own people. And for more than two decades, Twin Ports-area activists and legislators have been at the forefront of efforts to close it.

Please join us for a report from the most recent protest and learn how you can get involved in the movement to close the SOA and transform US policy in the Americas.

Featuring:

• - Music with Rachael Kilgour
• - Report and photos from the SOA protest at Ft Benning, GA
• - Eyewitness account of US military violence in Colombia from Linda Riddle
• - Student organizer Flo Matamoros on coming of age as an activist in post-war El Salvador
• - Former prisoner of conscience Rev. Brooks Anderson on the local SOA Watch movement
• - Petition forms, handouts and other action tools to help put pressure on our new Congressmen

All are welcome. Spanish interpretation available upon request.
For more information or rides from Duluth,
contact soawtwinports(at)riseup(dot)net or call Joel at 218-340-4356 

Brandon Clokey @ Duluth MLK Day rally

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day

(Left: King and Dr Benjamin Spock lead an anti-war march on the UN in 1967).

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood

---------------------------------------Martin Luther King, Jr
April 4, 1967 in a speech to Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam
Read the entire speech here.

Pentagon budget cuts? Don't believe it!

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently announced plans to trim $78 billion from the Pentagon budget. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives increased the Pentagon's budget to a whopping $725 Billion for 2011! What gives?!?

Here's the scoop: US military spending has surged every year since 2001, including a 65% growth to the Pentagon base budget and more than $1 trillion in additional funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The "cuts" we're hearing about represent a modest slow-down to this trend over a 5-year period. Instead of enjoying a 10% increase to its budget next year, the Pentagon will have to make do with a 3% pay raise. But make no mistake: military spending is going up, not down -- even as spending on roads, schools and other programs that benefit our communities is frozen or slashed.

Take action:

Newly-elected Congressmen Sean Duffy (WI-7) and Chip Cravaack (MN-8) gave a joint press conference in Duluth on November 30th, during which they repeatedly called for cuts to "non-defense" discretionary spending. In other words, they want to balance the war budget on our backs.

Call or write your Congressman today. Tell him to balance the budget by cutting war.

If you live in NE Minnesota, contact:
Congressman Chip Cravaack
6448 Main Street, Suite 6
North Branch, MN 55056
888-563-7390

If you live in NW Wisconsin, contact:
Congressman Sean Duffy
208 Grand Ave
Wausau, WI 54403
715-842-5606