Posted on 2-12-2003
The
War Within
By Naomi Klein 26 November 2003
- Armed checkpoints, embedded reporters in flak jackets, brutal
suppression of peaceful demonstrators. Baghdad? No, Miami
In December 1990, President George Bush Sr
travelled through South America to sell the continent on a bold new
dream: "A free trade system that links all of the Americas."
Addressing the Argentine Congress, he said that the plan, later to be
named the Free Trade Area of the Americas, would be "our
hemisphere's new declaration of interdependence the brilliant new dawn of
a splendid new world."
Last week, Bush's two sons joined forces to try
to usher in that new world by holding the FTAA negotiations in Florida.
This is the state that Governor Jeb Bush vowed to "deliver" to
his brother during the 2000 presidential elections, even if that meant
keeping many African-Americans from exercising their right to vote. Now
Jeb was vowing to hand his brother the coveted trade deal, even if that
meant keeping thousands from exercising their right to protest.
Despite the brothers' best efforts, the dream of a hemisphere united into
a single free-market economy died last week - killed not by demonstrators
in Miami but by the populations of Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, who let
their politicians know that if they sign away more power to foreign
multinationals, they may as well not come home. The Brazilians
brokered a compromise that makes the agreement a pick-and-choose affair,
allowing governments to sign on to the parts they like and refuse the
ones they don't. Washington will continue to bully countries into
sweeping trade contracts on the model of the North American Free Trade
Agreement, but there will be no single, unified deal.
Inside the Inter-Continental hotel, it was being
called "FTAA lite". Outside, we experienced something heavier:
"War lite". The more control the US trade representatives lost
at the negotiating table, the more raw power the police exerted on the
streets. Small, peaceful demonstrations were attacked with extreme force;
organisations were infiltrated by undercover officers who used stun guns;
buses of union members were prevented from joining permitted marches;
people were beaten with batons; activists had guns pointed at their heads
at checkpoints.
Police violence outside trade summits is not new; what
was striking about Miami was how divorced the security response was from
anything resembling an actual threat. From an activist perspective, the
protests were small and obedient, an understandable response to weeks of
police intimidation. The FTAA Summit in Miami represents the
official homecoming of the "war on terror". The latest
techniques honed in Iraq - from a Hollywoodised military to a militarised
media - have now been used on a grand scale in a major US city.
"This should be a model for homeland defence," the Miami mayor,
Manny Diaz, said of the security operation that brought together over 40
law-enforcement agencies, from the FBI to the Department of Fish and
Wildlife.
For the Miami model to work, the police had to
establish a connection between legitimate activists and dangerous
terrorists. Enter the Miami police chief, John Timoney, an avowed enemy
of activist "punks", who classified FTAA opponents as
"outsiders coming in to terrorise and vandalise our
city". With the activists recast as dangerous aliens, Miami
became eligible for the open tap of public money irrigating the "war
on terror". In fact, $8.5m spent on security during the FTAA meeting
came out of the $87bn Bush extracted from Congress for Iraq last
month. But more was borrowed from the Iraq war than just
money. Miami police also invited reporters to "embed" with them
in armoured vehicles and helicopters. As in Iraq, most reporters embraced
their role as pseudo soldiers with zeal, suiting up in combat helmets and
flak jackets.
The resulting media coverage was the familiar
wartime combination of dramatic images and non-information. We know,
thanks to an "embed" from the Miami Herald, that Timoney was
working so hard hunting down troublemakers that by 3:30pm on Thursday
"he had eaten only a banana and a cookie since 6am".
Local TV stations didn't cover the protests so much as hover over them.
Their helicopters showed images of confrontations, but instead of hearing
the voices on the streets - voices pleading with police to stop shooting
and clearly following orders to disperse - we heard only from police
officials and perky news anchors commiserating with the boys on the front
line.
Meanwhile, independent journalists who dared to
do their jobs and film the police violence up close were actively
targeted. "She's not with us," one officer told another as they
grabbed Ana Nogueira, a correspondent with Pacifica Radio's Democracy
Now! who was covering a peaceful protest outside the Miami-Dade county
jail. When the police established that Nogueira was "not with
us" (ie neither an embedded reporter nor undercover cop) she was
hauled away and charged.
The Miami model of dealing with domestic dissent
reaches far beyond a single meeting. On Sunday, the New York Times
reported on a leaked FBI bulletin revealing "a coordinated,
nationwide effort to collect intelligence" on the anti-war movement.
The memorandum singles out lawful protest activities. Anthony Romero,
executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the
document revealed that "the FBI is targeting Americans who are
engaged in lawful protest. The line between terrorism and legitimate
civil disobedience is blurred."
We can expect more of these tactics on the
homeland front. Just as civil liberties violations escalated when
Washington lost control over the FTAA process, so will repression
increase as Bush faces the ultimate threat: losing control over the White
House. Already, Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communications
at US Central Command in Doha, Qatar (the operation that gave the world
the Jessica Lynch rescue), has moved to New York to head up media
operations for the Republican National Convention. "We're looking at
embedding reporters," he told the New York Observer of his plans to
use some of the Iraq tricks during the convention. "We're looking at
new and interesting camera angles."
The war is coming home.
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