Author: Steve Horn

Jingoistic platitudes were all the rage at the recently-completed Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

Foreign Policy Magazine’s Uri Friedman reported that Democratic Party apparatchiks used Osama Bin Laden’s name, in bragging about slaughtering him, some 21 times during the DNC. By way of contrast, according to Friedman’s count, there was only one mention of Bin Laden at the Republican National Convention, which took place the week before in Tampa.

One of the more memorable lines, in making the case for another four years in office for the 2009 Nobel Prize Peace Prize winning Laureate-in-Chief, came from U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). He stated (emphasis mine),

And after more than — after more than 10 years without justice for thousands of Americans murdered on 9/11, after Mitt Romney said it would be naive to go into Pakistan to pursue the terrorists, it took President Obama, against the advice of many, to give that order and finally rid this earth of Osama bin Laden.

Ask Osama bin Laden is he is better off now than he was four years ago.

Vice President Joe Biden went so far to boast triumphantly, “Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”

This bellicose rhetoric on the part of Kerry, Biden and others moved investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill to compare the language to “jingoism that belonged in a sports bar” in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes.” Now billing itself as the “Lean Forward” network (a hilarious premise in of itself, given that it’s owned by General Electric, a weapons manufacturer), Scahill said MSNBC’s DNC coverage might as well have been an Obama for America salon.

“Many of the media discussions, including here on MSNBC, about foreign policy during the convention felt like we were watching an Obama for America meet-up, not an actual serious critique of this president’s most egregious aspects of his foreign policy, where you do see that of the Republicans,” he said on “Up With Chris Hayes.”

General Electric has given Democratic Party candidates at a federal level $510,400 so far in the 2012 election cycle, according to Open Secrets.

Antiwar.com readers won’t be surprised by any of this. What was surprising, though, was one of the more shameless displays by the Military-Industrial-Media Complex at the “Nightly Lounge” festive gatherings hosted by the Beltway media outlet, Politico.

One of the co-sponsors of the nightly ritual was none other than BAE Systems, another weapons manufacturer and war contractor, which has given $233,000 to Democrats so far in the run up to the 2012 elections, according to Open Secrets.

The nightly fiesta also included a delicious BAE Systems-sponsored specialty drink, the “BAE Systems Countermeasure,” which I ordered while having the pleasure to attend one of the soirees.

Why will November feature an election between Liberal Hawks and Neoconservatives? Just follow the money.

As Smedley Butler wrote long ago,

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

Whoever resides in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after November 6, 2012, at least one major thing is already settled: the war racket has no end in sight.

Today, on the morning of the pre-trial hearing of the “NATO 3,” — who are being charged with “conspiracy to commit terrorism,” “terrorism” and “possession of incendiary devices”– another explosive (excuse the pun) revelation has been made by Occupy Chicago.

In an article I published yesterday on TruthOut, a picture of only one of the two police informants, “Mo,” was published in the press for the first time.

Now, the other informant, “Gloves,” has in some ways been outed, with two pictures of her up online for the world to see for the first time thanks to Occupy Chicago activists. The pictures can be seen below:

“We do have pictures of ‘Gloves,’ but they’re not clear enough to make a positive identification,” NLG legal worker Kris Hermes told me in an interview in the TruthOut article. “We understand they’re both in their 30s, but we’re not sure of their age.”

“Mo” and “Gloves” have been described as the informant “threads” that bind the five NATO Summit activists charged with “terrorism.”

“The thread between all five was the informants that we believe were provoking criminal activity,” said to me in the Truthout article. “We believe it was the same two informants, which has been ascertained from the arrestees.”

Stay tuned for more coverage from the front lines. Much more to come.

Update: In a press release obtained by Antiwar.com, Occupy Chicago stated,

Occupy Chicago has obtained photographs of suspected police informants, who according to witnesses and arrestees were part of a law enforcement operation, which has resulted in the prosecution of 5 NATO protesters on terrorism-related charges. The city has yet to admit to using infiltrators in the Wednesday night raid on a Bridgeport home of activists, but both suspected police informants who go by the names of “Mo” and “Gloves” (aka “Nadiya”) were arrested with 9 others but then mysteriously disappeared. Mo and Gloves have not been seen since.

According to Occupy Chicago activists, Mo and Gloves took part in various organizing efforts over the past few weeks. Mo was arrested during an action on April 17th at 63rd & Woodlawn to protest the closure of a mental health clinic. The so-called NATO 3 (Jared Chase, Brent Betterly, and Brian Jacob Church), who came to Chicago from Florida, were befriended by Mo and Gloves and were likely sought out by the informants because of the out-of-town activists’ unfamiliarity with local Occupy Chicago organizers.

Although the State’s Attorney has not made any connections between the NATO 3 and two additional protesters with terrorism-related charges, the common thread between all of the cases is the involvement of Mo and Gloves.

Robert (left) and Daniel (right), the two activists released Friday night (Photo by Steve Horn)

Two more antiwar activists, in from out of town to protest the NATO Summit, were released from a police station on the south side of Chicago late tonight at roughly 10:00 PM, making it a grand total of six activists released so far, of the nine detained without charge by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) on Wednesday, previously covered on Antiwar.com.

The other three remaining weren’t so lucky. They’ve been charged with, as Occupy Chicago has reported on its Twitter feed,  “possession of incendiary or explosive device, conspiracy to commit terrorism & providing material support for terrorism.” “Material support” of terrorism, under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 signed by President Barack Obama, is a crime that could call for indefinite detention without a trial, begging the question: are these legitimate political prisoners?

One Occupy activist noted, “It’s NDAA in full effect. We are doomed.”

“The National Lawyers Guild deplores the charges against Occupy activists in the strongest degree,” said Sarah Gelsomino with the NLG and the People’s Law Office. “It’s outrageous for the city to apply terrorism charges when it’s the police who have been terrorizing activists and threatening their right to protest.”

There will be a bond hearing at noon today. The three activists names, according to the NLG, are Bryan Church, Jarred Chase, Brent Betterly.

The lame excuse for arrest and “terrorism” charges and the subsequent police raid to begin with?

The activists were making “molotov cocktails” to use in their protests, or so reported the sycophantic local press in Chicago. As Kevin Gosztola of FireDogLake explained in a previously written blog post well worth reading, “Local news reported a ‘police source’ had recovered ‘Molotov cocktails.’ There is no evidence of the existence or production of Molotov cocktails. The police did confiscate a home brew-making kit.”

“I haven’t stayed anywhere except for in the custody of Chicago’s finest,” he said after his release.

The “gang of nine” were (or still are, in the case of three being charged with “terrorism” charges) held in solitary confinement, with their two feet shackled and one arm cuffed to the bench in the cell, according to the activists.

Murphy said the police “Refused to tell us what charges were for our entire 20 hours spent there,” in an interview with Antiwar.com.

As is obvious from a quick glance on YouTube, Murphy is not shy about expressing his grievances with the police, in the case of this particular video, titled, “Daniel Murphy’s 3 minute rant to line of NYPD @ Union Square #OWS,” the New York Police Department (NYPD). Translation: he was likely an easy, visible target for the CPD or the FBI or whoever was responsible for targeting these activists.

The activists also said the police were taunting, name-calling (“terrorists”), and were, generally speaking, rude and verbally abusive in all ways to the activists.

Gosztola describes the horrifying arrest scene well, writing,

They came in with guns pointed at the activists’ faces and were screaming so we couldn’t really understand what they were saying. The activists froze and waited for them to give commands.

Police ransacked the home, throwing property. A watermelon and printer was thrown. They were dumping clothing and material out of bags. One of the arrested activists says police ‘destroyed everything.’

Remember, this all comes on the prelude of the NATO Summit — the Summit and the big days of activism on the streets of downtown Chicago are yet to come. It should be an ugly weekend, to say the least.

Stay tuned for a follow-up report after the bond hearing.

Update: These pictures up on the blog Shortwave America, in a post titled, “Chicago NATO Command and Communications Operations Update,”  are a must-see. Chicago has been transformed into a war zone.

(Photo: Zach D. Roberts / GregPalast.com)

TruthOut Assistant Editor Yana Kunichoff has just filed an alarming report titled, “NATO Protesters Held Without Charge After Raid as Chicago Steps Up Police Activities,” showing that in the lead-up to the NATO Summit protests upcoming this weekend, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) raided the homes of nine Occupy Chicago activist leaders on Wednesday. Some of the activists were held in custody for nearly 24 hours without charge, with only four of them having been released at the time of the publishing of her story.

“I’d like to stress that we have done nothing wrong,” Zoe Sigman, an Occupy Chicago activist told Kunichoff, whose home was raided. “We have been planning to protest NATO and there is nothing illegal about expressing our feelings about a war machine. Now we’re being treated as mere criminals. As if we’re part of an organized crime that they’re trying to take down. Who knows what they’re going to pin on us. We’re terrified.”

Occupy Chicago, in a press release, says that the CPD’s behavior is the hallmark of a “militarized police state.”

Occupy Chicago demands the immediate release of the peaceful protesters terrorized by the Chicago Police Department in Wednesday nights raid. We are getting a taste here in Chicago of what it’s like to live in a militarized police state, with non-violent demonstrators targeted for expressing their First Amendment Rights and for standing up against the NATO war machine.

Kunichoff went on to explain that the preemptive arrests and arraignments were but the “tip of the iceberg” of what’s been brewing in the Windy City, noting that a local ABC News affiliate had reported yesterday that during a protest on environmental issues, “Dozens of uniformed Chicago police stood guard nearby, though they made no arrests. But around the corner a couple blocks away back-ups were apparently standing by. Inside 15 unmarked passenger vans they were dressed in black uniforms with riot gear.”

The takeaway, as is obvious: the tools of imperial repression have made their way home for those protesting the U.S. Empire in Chicago this weekend at the NATO Summit.

As FireDogLake‘s Kevin Gosztola put it,

For all the worries about protesters descending upon Chicago to create violence, it certainly seems like the people of Chicago should be more worried about NATO occupying Chicago. NATO is being used as a pretext to suppress dissent and go after activists. The police squads are more likely to violate someone than a protester raising his or her fist in the air while wearing a mask. In fact, that person wearing that mask just might be a police officer, federal agent, or some kind of hired agent provocateur.

Stay tuned for more coverage from the front lines in Chicago forthcoming on the Antiwar.com Blog.