Bittersweet Harvest: Mexicans Tackle Trump Over Migrant Row
SBS (2015)
Film Review
Bittersweet Harvest is an Australian documentary about a special training camp for Spanish-speaking labor activists who organize immigrant farm workers in the US. It takes its title from a ludicrous claim Donald Trump made accusing Mexican immigrants of being druggies, criminals and rapists. The film profiles two “undocumented” student organizers who, based on stellar academic achievement, have won university scholarships.
As the film ably documents, American’s $400 billion agriculture industry would collapse without the one million immigrant workers who comprise the bulk of its labor force. Americans don’t want these jobs: the living and working conditions are too obscene and the pay too meager. Ironically the substitution of immigrant labor for black slaves has enabled the southern US to maintain the plantation system it developed prior to the Civil War.
Following the trainee activists as they visit farm worker camps, the filmmakers raise thorny questions, such as why neither federal nor state governments enforce basic labor laws, eg child labor, minimum wage and occupational safety laws (limiting exposure to cancer causing pesticides like Roundup and green tobacco sickness).
The film effectively highlights the total hypocrisy of politicians like Trump who use the immigration crisis to score political points. The federal government could shut down illegal immigration tomorrow by a) prosecuting the agro-businesses that employ undocumented immigrants or b) requiring them to pay minimum wage and provide safe living and working conditions. Clearly our elected officials have no interest in doing either: the current system allows Food Inc to reap immense profits at the expense of the illegal labor they exploit.
According to today’s Guardian, the London Metropolitan Police have issued an apology and a generous settlement to four female activists tricked into having sexual relationships with undercover cops who infiltrated their political organizations. The apology and settlement comes four years after the women filed suit against the police, claiming damages for emotional trauma.
Assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt, who issued the apology, maintains such relationships are illegal and contrary to police policy – that they only occurred owing to “a failure of police supervision and management.”
He claims the undercover cops’ superiors had no idea they were fucking activists. Activists (such as myself) with direct experience with government infiltration and disruption of their political organizations will recognize this is total bullshit.
Police and intelligence operatives have a long history of deliberately using sex (the old “honeypot” strategy) to infiltrate and disrupt peaceful protest activities. This has been well documented in academic research and journalistic investigation, including a 1992 MIT study study into undercover police and intelligence activity, a 1995 University of Leicester study into British undercover seduction and a We Are Anonymous article about an undercover FBI agent named “Anna,” who lured animal rights activist Eric McDavid into a sexual relationship. Following his release from a nine year prison sentence, in January 2015 Eric was interviewed on Democracy Now.
The real story behind today’s apology is that five years ago six undercover cops were exposed for infiltrating peace and animal rights groups. The women they seduced recognized their photos and in 2011, began the difficult and distressing process of initiating legal action. If, as the Met claims, the behavior of the six undercover cops was so at odds with official policy, you have to ask 1) why none of the undercover cops have been criminally charged and 2) why it took the police four years to settle and apologize to the victims.
I think it’s pretty obvious that sexual seduction is a standard accepted strategy in undercover operations. The only difference here is the police got caught doing it.
While the Guardian article fails to identify the six undercover cops by name, they are profiled in a January 2015 Green is the New Red article.
Police Constable Mark Kennedy (see Mark Kennedy: the spycop who disappeared into the cold) posing as Mark “Flash” Stone, infiltrated Nottingham environmental and leftist networks for approximately eight years (~2001-2009). During this period, he had sexual relationships with at least two activists, one lasting at least four years. Kennedy has always maintained his superiors knew about his sexual relationships. He also denies that sexual relationships with targets were forbidden. In a 2011 Guardian article, he claims they were encouraged. “Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence.” I believe him.
Bob Lambert, posing as Bob Robinson, infiltrated leftist and animal liberation networks, using a job at Greenpeace London as an activist cover. Lambert has admitted to having sexual relationships with four women while working as an undercover cop in the 1980s. Lambert posed as a left-wing animal rights activist from 1983 to 1988, fathering a child with an unsuspecting activist during his deployment. At present he works as a lecturer in Terrorism Studies at the University of St Andrews and a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University’s John Grieve Centre for Policing.
Detective Constable Jim Boyling, 28-years-old, posing as Pete James Sutton or Jim Sutton 34-years-old, infiltrated the pro-bicycle movement Reclaim the Streets for five years (1995-2000) as a lead organizer, as well as having contact with additional environmental campaigns. During this period he had sexual relationships with two of the activists he was assigned to monitor. He married one of them and had two children with her prior to their divorce.
Mark Jacobs, 44-years-old, posing as 29-year-old Marco, infiltrated anarchist, anti-globalization, animal rights, and other social justice networks for five years (2004-2009) in the Cardiff area. Jacobs was known for taking on logistics and financial roles in his circles, and used the reputation he built within the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN) to infiltrate the Dissent! anti-G8 planning committees. During 2008, Jacobs maintained a sexual relationship with two female activists.
Sergeant John Dines, posing as “John Barker” infiltrated London Greenpeace and various anti-capitalist groups from around 1987-1992. He worked with the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad and began infiltrating Greenpeace following the departure of Bob Lambert. In 1990, Dines began a sexual relationship with an activist he abandoned in 1992.
Mark Jenner, presenting himself as “Mark Cassidy,” infiltrated UK protest groups from 1994-2000 as an officer in the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad under the direction of Bob Lambert. During his tenure, Jenner was married yet maintained a five year relationship (1995-2000) with a 29-year-old female activist, living with her in a London.
Whoa Canada is an expose of illegal Canadian intelligence activities presented in the humorous satirical style of the Yes Men documentaries. The films credits list the Yes Men and Michael Achbar (directed The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent) as executive producers.
The film follows the exploits of the founders of the ShitHarperDid.com website as they attempt to investigate the psychic Harper has hired (at taxpayer expense) as his hairstylist and makeup artist.
These adventures are interlaced with escapades in which they crash closed door meetings between Harper and other members of the Conservative government and their corporate clients and benefactors.
The filmmakers also provide brief factual interludes revealing the extent of the Communications Security Establishment’s (CSE) illegal surveillance activities against Harper’s political opponents, their notorious racial profiling, their infiltration (along with the Canadian police) of the Canadian Occupy movement and the country’s barbarous treatment of First Nations Canadians.
I was particularly intrigued to learn that Canadian telecommunications providers voluntarily turned over data on their subscribers to Canadian intelligence after the CSE paid them over $1.6 million for it ((unlike the US where the government compelled telecoms to turn it over).
When CSE security guards deny them access to the multibillion dollar CSE security complex, ShitHarperDid.com activists hire their own psychic to visualize activities taking place inside the building. Her findings are later confirmed by NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
A public service announcement for all Texas teachers, principals, school districts* and law enforcement**
Atomic clock (def): an extremely accurate electronic clock*** regulated by the resonance frequency of atoms or molecules of certain substances, as cesium.
*A good way for Texas school districts to avoid national humiliation in the future is to establish equity teams in every high school. This was a major demand in the Seattle teacher’s strike, which was settled Wednesday. See Seattle teachers strike ends
**Law enforcement please note: in Texas it’s against the law to interrogate a minor (no matter how dark his skin is) without parents being present.
An estimated 25,000 marched on Saturday to block New Zealand’s participation in the secret Transpacific Partnership Agreement (aka TPP or TPPA). Kiwis are really sick of being dictated to by the United States
Three hundred people marched in New Plymouth, the largest protest since I’ve lived here.
Trudell is a documentary about the life and work of American Indian Movement (AIM) activist, poet and philosopher John Trudell. The film is made up of archival and performance footage, interviews with Trudell, family members and film and rock celebrities who have worked with him, and samples of his poetry.
Stop Thief: the Commons Enclosures and Resistance (see Forgotten History: the Theft of the Commons) has helped me understand the Indian Wars and the continuing oppression of Native Americans in a whole new light. As author Peter Linebaugh describes it, the Indian Wars boil down to a determination by Jefferson and other early US leaders to enclose (ie steal) Indian lands to fence them off as private property. And as Trudell emphasizes in this film, repeated treaty violations all revolve around US efforts to steal yet more Indian land and resources for profit.
Trudell’s Role in AIM
Trudell first became an activist in his early twenties, with the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1970-71. The federal government declared Alcatraz Island surplus property after closing the prison in 1973. Trudell and his fellow activists claimed it under provisions in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which promises Native Americans access to unused federal land.
He eventually became secretary of AIM in Minnesota and helped organize the Trail of Broken Treaties occupation of the DC Bureau of Indian Affairs office in 1972. He also helped organize the AIM defense against the FBI siege on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973. The standoff at Wounded Knee related to yet another treaty violation, in which the federal government allowed mining companies to mine for uranium on tribal land. In one interview, Trudell reminds us that 50-70% of all US energy resources are on native lands. Their extraction nearly always violates US treaty commitments. Worse still, radioactive contamination from uranium mining is a major factor in the high mortality rate at Pine Ridge and other reservations.
When the residents of Pine Ridge tried to block the mining companies, the FBI sent in paramilitary units equipped with helicopters and tanks in addition to covert death squads. Between 1973-76, Pine Ridge had the highest murder rate in the country.
In 1975, following a fire fight that killed two FBI agents, AIMS members Bob Robideau, Darelle Butler and Leonard Pelletier were charged with murder. Robideau and Butler were tried in Cedar Rapids, where AIM enjoyed strong public support. They were acquitted on self-defense grounds. Pelletier, who was tried in Fargo, was prohibited from using their acquittal in his defense. He remains in prison to this day.
A Suspicious House Fire
In 1979, Trudell’s wife and two children were killed in a house fire he believes was started by the FBI. Between 1969-70, the FBI compiled a 17,000 page dossier on him. They also made a direct threat to go after his family.
He began writing poetry as a way of coping with the emotional turmoil of losing his family. His first albums were spoke word against a background of indigenous chants. He later worked with prominent rock artists who set his poems to music.
This documentary is about a member of Britain’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) who served as an undercover operative inside the British environmental and antifascist movement between 2002-2009. Mark Kennedy was recruited for the elite NPOIU while working as an undercover narcotics officer. Following three weeks of specialized training, he assumed the role of a vegan anarchist named Mark Stone. For seven years, he reported daily to an NPOIU cover officer with information he had gleaned about fellow activists and their protest campaigns.
The NPOIU justification for infiltrating the environmental movement was to ensure the police response was “proportional” to the size of environmental protests. However over time Kennedy realized their true goal was to minimize the effectiveness of the environmental movement. As a result, he became increasingly conflicted about the role he played in undermining activists who seemed to have a genuine social function.
London’s massive March 2003 demonstration against the Iraq War was one of the first protests he infiltrated. Over time Kennedy, who was living under the cover name of Mark Stone, was admitted to the inner circle of the environmental movement. By 2005, he was assuming major responsibility for managing logistics for the 2005 G8 protest at Glen Eagles and the attempted shutdown (in 2006) of the Drax Power Station.
He also began a four year relationship with a female activist, in clear violation of NPOIU policy. According to police officials interviewed in the film, his cover officer had to know about the affair and should have terminated the assignment. It appears Kennedy’s superiors allowed the affair to continue for four years owing to the high quality of the information he was providing.
In 2005, he was suspended after riot cops beat him up during a protest, leading to an investigation on a possible charge of assaulting a police officer. After three months, he was suddenly recalled to duty to infiltrate the Spanish antifascist movement. Spain had contacted NPOIU requesting their assistance.
The NPOIU was forced to remove Kennedy from his undercover role in 2009, when information he provided led to police preventively arresting 30 protestors planning a civil disobedience at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. It became patently obvious Kennedy had narked on them when he was the only participant to have his charges dropped.
The NPOIU extracted him by floating the cover story he was moving to the US. After two weeks, he returned to Britain to be reassigned and was told the Metropolitan Police no longer had any use for his particular skills. He resigned, effectively ending a twenty year career.
When he tried to resume his relationship with his activist girlfriend, she happened to find a passport issued under his real name and outed him to the rest of the group – who outed him to the media.
The film concludes by raising important ethical questions about Kennedy’s undercover activity. Such as why the British police feel justified in preventing environmental protestors from executing their democratic rights. And how they justify spending millions of dollars spying on activists when Kennedy’s seven year mission failed to result in a single conviction.
The Deep Web is about the January 2015 trial of the alleged founder of the Silk Road website Ross Ulbricht. In addition to exploring Ulbricht’s background and the history of the Silk Road, the documentary also lays out some pretty revealing evidence US District Judge Katherine Forrest disallowed at trial. Ulbricht was sentenced to life imprisonment for drug sales, money laundering, hacking and engagement in a continuing criminal enterprise (kingpin charge). The filmmaker clearly believes Ulbricht was denied a fair trial.
The film begins by explaining what the Dark Web is, ie the unindexed records on the Internet. The Dark Web, which is thousands of times larger than the visible Internet, includes millions of bank records, as well as private and government administrative records. It also includes illicit sites like Silk Road.
Silk Road was created in 2011 by combining two cryptographic technologies: TOR (an open source technology originally developed by the US military), a browser that allows a user to access the Internet anonymously, and bitcoins, a cryptographically generated currency which, unlike bank-generated currency, is virtually untraceable.
Silk Road Founded as Political Statement
Silk Road didn’t actually buy or sell drugs. It simply provided a secure eBay-type marketplace where buyers and sellers could link up anonymously. Over time Silk Road developed an extremely tight knit user community that participated in the site’s political forums. One of the lead administrators, who took the screen name Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR)*, always maintained that Silk Road was less about selling drugs than making a political statement. DPR presented himself as a free market libertarian and talked a lot about resisting state efforts to control every aspect of our lives. All the Silk Road administrators were unified in their desire to end the war on drugs** and the extreme violence associated with it.
This fundamental nonviolent stance was reflected in their refusal to accept sellers offering products or services that caused people harm, such as prostitution or child pornography.
The Cryptoanarchist Movement
The Deep Web also provides interesting background on the radical cryptoanarchist movement that would eventually lead to the emergence of Wikileaks, Anonymous and Silk Road. A primary goal of this movement has been to create a world where the government can’t spy on everything we do. Members feel they have an implicit duty to develop encryption tools that non-tech savvy Internet users can employ to protect their privacy and anonymity.
Before the FBI shut it down in 2013, Silk Road had over one million registered users. According to cops, judges and FBI and DEA agents filmmakers interviewed, the site accomplished its goal in reducing violence associated with the drug trade.
Judge Disallows Evidence of FBI Crimes
The defense Ulbricht attempted to present was that he founded Silk Road but wasn’t Dread Pirate Roberts, as the prosecution claimed – that the individual using this screen name had taken over the website and framed him.
In March 2015, two federal agents were indicted (after a nine month investigation) for infiltrating Silk Road and stealing and extorting millions in bitcoins from Silk Road clients. These agents had high-level access to administrative functions of Silk Road, thanks to an administrator they arrested who turned informant. These federal agents had the power to change access to administrator platforms and passwords and to change PIN numbers and commandeer accounts, including that of DPR. They also had the means to manipulate logs, chats, private messages, keys, posts, account information and bank accounts. And they had the motive to alter data in order to cover up their own actions and point guilt elsewhere.
Judge Forrest barred Ulbricht’s attorney from presenting any of this evidence at trial.
She also disallowed evidence the FBI had illegally hacked into Silk Road’s servers in Iceland without a warrant – a violation of Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure. If her ruling is allowed to stand on appeal, it sets a dangerous precedent for allowing evidence resulting from illegal government hacking to be used at trial.
*Dread Pirate Roberts was a fictional character in the novel and movie The Princess Bride. In both, when the original Dread Pirate Roberts dies, his successor takes up the alias.
**The libertarian think tank Cato Institute has taken the position that the US should legalize all addictive drugs as Portugal has done. See The Cato Institute and the Drug War
For an update on Ulbricht’s appeal and to donate to his legal defense fund (like I did) go to http://freeross.org/
Take Back Your Power: Investigating the “Smart” Grid
Josh Del Sol (2013)
Film Review
This is a documentary about the Smart Grid and the Smart Meter scam and its effect on the US and Canadian public. The Obama administration has subsidized power companies to the tune of a billion dollars to roll out Smart Meters. The President claims they will reduce electricity demand by a whopping 4% by 2030 – despite the lack of any research regarding their safety and a World Health Organization finding that radio frequency (RF) radiation produced by Smart Meters is a class 2 potential carcinogen.
The film follows Del Sol’s extensive investigation into the amount of RF (aka microwave) radiation produced by Smart Meters; the tens of thousands of human guinea pigs made ill by them; how the Smart Meter roll out sacrifices the public interest for the benefit of power companies; the laws protecting consumers who opt out; and the growing grassroots movement seeking to ban Smart Meters altogether.
How Smart Meters Damage Health
Power companies are deceiving consumers with the claim that Smart Meters only produce radiation for sixty seconds a day. In actuality, they emit 14,000 – 90,000 millisecond radiation pulses everyday. Tens of thousands of Americans and Canadians have developed chronic conditions from Smart Meter exposure, including headaches, anxiety, insomnia, impaired memory, nausea and cancer. Scientists who expose red blood cells to Smart Meter radiation find they begin to rupture degrade after a few seconds. After six months of Smart Meter exposure, even people who appear healthy will manifest DNA damage, increases in inflammatory markers and changes in neurotransmitter and hormone levels. One study showed pregnant women sleeping in bedrooms in close proximity to Smart Meters were at increased risk of having an autistic child.
The Use of Smart Meters for Surveillance
A centralized Smart Grid is extremely vulnerable to terrorist attack, as opposed to multiple separate distributed energy systems. Even more concerning, is the rollout of “Smart” appliances that track their own power use and feed it back (via the Smart Meter) to the power company. A family’s energy use provides extensive information about their personal routine and habits. Power companies have been selling this data to other Wall Street corporations, as well as sharing it with the government for surveillance purposes.
Your Absolute Right to Opt Out
Despite the arrests a few years ago when Naperville (California) women tried to block Smart Meter installation on their homes, most city councils have been responsive to growing popular unrest over Smart Meters. A few have adopted moratoriums on new Smart Meters. Others have criminalized Smart Meter installation and fine power companies who install them without residents’ consent.
Del Sol maintains that people have an absolute right to opt out of Smart Meter installation in all US and Canadian jurisdictions. In addition, it’s considered extortion (which is illegal) for power companies to charge you for opting out. People who already have Smart Meters also have a right to replace them with safer analog meters, though they may need to pay for this themselves.
The Most Revolutionary Act 