Wages of Rebellion

by Chris Hedges

  27. Ibid., 8.

  28. Bonnie Kerness, ed., “Torture in United States Prisons: Evidence of Human Rights Violations,” 2nd ed., American Friends Service Committee, 2011, https://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/torture_in_us_prisons.pdf.

  29. Ibid., 15–16.

  30. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Viral Hepatitis Specific Settings: Correctional Facilities and Viral Hepatitis,” http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/Settings/Corrections.htm; Dara Masoud, Dato Chorgoliani, and Pierpaolo de Colombani, “TB Prevention and Control Care in Prisons,” http://www.euro.who.int/_data/assets/pdf_file/0005/249197/Prisons-and-Health,-8-TB-prevention-and-control-care-in-prisons.pdf?ua=1; AIDS.gov, “HIV/AIDS and Incarceration,” http://www.aids.gov/federal-resources/policies/incarceration/.

  31. Council of State Governments, Justice Center, “Medicaid and Financing Health Care for Individuals Involved with the Criminal Justice System,” December 2013, http://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ACA-Medicaid-Expansion-Policy-Brief.pdf.

  32. Matthew R. Durose, Alexia D. Cooper, and Howard N. Snyder, “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 30 States in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010,” US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, April 22, 2014, http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4986.

  33. Staughton Lynd, Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2004), 153.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Jeanne Theoharis, “The Legal Black Hole in Lower Manhattan: The Unfairness of the Trial of Muslim Activist Fahad Hashmi,” Slate, April 27, 2010; see also Jeanne Theoharis, “My Student, the ‘Terrorist,’ ” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/My-Student-the-Terrorist/126937/.

  36. Theoharis, “The Legal Black Hole in Lower Manhattan”; Theoharis, “My Student, the ‘Terrorist.’ ”

  37. Sami Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida and a leading Palestinian activist, was indicted on terrorism charges in February 2003. In 2005 he endured a six-month trial in Florida with three codefendants in which the government’s case collapsed. The Justice Department spent an estimated $50 million and several years investigating and prosecuting Al-Arian. The government called eighty witnesses and subjected the jury to hundreds of hours of trivial phone transcriptions and recordings made over a ten-year period that the jury eventually dismissed as “gossip.” Out of the ninety-four charges made against the four defendants, there were no convictions. Of the seventeen charges against Al-Arian—including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad”—the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors disagreed on the remaining charges, with ten of the twelve jurors favoring his full acquittal. Two others in the case, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted of all charges.

  Following the acquittal—a disaster for the government, especially because then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had announced the indictment—prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor, under duress, accepted a plea bargain agreement that would spare him a second trial, saying in his agreement that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a tepid charge given the high profile of the case. The US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida and the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department agreed to recommend to the judge the minimum sentence of forty-six months. But US District Judge James S. Moody sentenced Dr. Al-Arian to the maximum fifty-seven months. In referring to Al-Arian’s contention that he had only raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s charity for widows and orphans, the judge said acidly to the professor that “your only connection to orphans and widows is that you create them.”

  The government kept him in jail for five years after he refused to testify before a secret grand jury in Virginia investigating Islamic organizations in the United States in a separate case. Al-Arien’s lawyers said that his plea agreements had exempted him from any further testimony.

  Al-Arien was jailed and then held under house arrest in northern Virginia from 2008 until 2014. In 2014, US District Judge Anthony J. Trenga signed the order dismissing the indictment against Al-Arian. All charges were dropped.

  38. Jeffrey A. Sluka, ed., Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 7–30.

  39. Theoharis, “The Legal Black Hole in Lower Manhattan”; Theoharis, “My Student, the ‘Terrorist.’ ”

  40. Kareem Fahim, “Restrictive Terms of Prisoner’s Confinement Add Fuel to Debate,” New York Times, February 4, 2009.

  41. Theoharis, “My Student, the ‘Terrorist.’ ”

  42. Fahim, “Restrictive Terms of Prisoner’s Confinement Add Fuel to Debate.”

  43. Amnesty International, “Entombed: Isolation in the US Prison System,” 2014, 3.

  44. Christopher S. Stewart, “Little Gitmo,” New York, July 10, 2011; see also Amnesty International, “Entombed.”

  45. Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka: The Complete Short Stories (New York: Schocken Books, 1995).

  46. Jesse McKinley and Abby Goodnough, “Cities Begin Cracking Down on ‘Occupy’ Protests,” New York Times, October 27, 2011.

  47. In February 2011, protesters gathered in the state capital of Madison to protest the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, also known as the “Wisconsin budget repair bill,” which would have stripped state employees of their collective bargaining rights and forced them to pay a larger share of their health care and pension costs. As many as 100,000 state workers, including teachers, firefighters, and police, protested the anti-union measure, and some occupied the state capitol building from February 20 until March 3.

  48. Jon Swaine, “NYPD Officer Embroiled in Assault Trial Sued by Another Occupy Campaigner,” The Guardian, April 4, 2014.

  49. Ibid.

  50. “Occupy Arrests Near 8,000 as Wall Street Eludes Prosecution,” Huffington Post, May 23, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/occupy-wall-street-arrests_n_3326640.html.

  51. Jon Swaine, “Pussy Riot Members Visit Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan in Prison,” The Guardian, May 9, 2014.

  52. “Freedom, Leniency, and Pardon Cecily McMillan NOW!” (petition), change.org, http://www.change.org/p/freedom-leniency-and-pardon-cecily-mcmillan-now.

  53. E. V. Debs, “Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act,” September 18, 1918, https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm.

  CHAPTER VI

  1. James Baldwin, James Baldwin: Collected Essays, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, 1998), 202.

  2. Graduate Institute of International Studies, Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  3. Heather Loney, “Canada’s 2012 Homicide Rate at Lowest Level in Nearly 50 Years: StatsCan,” Global News, December 19, 2013.

  4. “Gen. Smith’s Counsel Admits Main Charges; Orders Were Given to Make Samar a ‘Howling Wilderness.’ Commander Wanted Everybody Killed Capable of Bearing Arms and Specified All Over Ten Years of Age,” New York Times, April 26, 1902.

  5. D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, vol. 2 (New York: Penguin, 1990), 65.

  6. Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace, eds., American Violence: A Documentary History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 16; see also PBS, “The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s,” American Experience, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/flood-klan/.

  7. Scott Martelle, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 172–175.

  8. Philip Taft and Philip Ross, “American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome,” in The History of Violence in America: A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, ed. Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr (Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 270, cf. 360; see also P
hilip Taft’s essay “Violence in American Labor Disputes,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March 1966): 128.

  9. Robert Shogan, The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America’s Largest Labor Uprising (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 4; Lon Savage, Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War 1920–21 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), 147–148.

  10. Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 90.

  11. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, 35.

  12. Melvyn Stokes, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 111.

  13. Ibid., 234–235. For Nancy Maclean, see her book Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 197; for Lawrence Reddick, see “Educational Programs for the Improvement of Race Relations: Motion Pictures, Radio, the Press, and Libraries,” Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 3 (Summer 1944): 367–389; for James Baldwin, see Baldwin: Collected Essays, 511.

  14. Michael Freitag, “Goetz Released After Spending 8 Months in Jail,” New York Times, September 21, 1989.

  15. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence averaged the most recent three years of data from death certificates (2008–2010) and estimates of emergency room admissions (2009–2011); available at CDC, “Injury Prevention and Control: Data and Statistics (WISQARS™),” http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html (accessed December 28, 2012).

  16. Craig R. Whitney, “Arms and the Men: The Second Amendment and This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed” (book review), New York Times, June 19, 2014.

  17. Joseph Straw, “School Shootings Happen Every 10 Days Since Sandy Hook, Gun Control Groups Find,” New York Daily News, February 12, 2014.

  18. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, 3, 10.

  19. The historian Gerald Horne documents the role of private property in the founding of the country in his book The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (New York: New York University Press, 2014).

  20. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, 10.

  21. Jennifer B. Smith, An International History of the Black Panther Party (New York: Routledge, 1999), 35.

  22. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, 11.

  23. John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (New York: Grove Press, 1995), x.

  24. Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 79.

  25. Keane, Tom Paine, 116–117.

  26. Ibid., xi.

  27. Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, 75.

  28. Elsie Begler, Thomas Paine: Common Sense for the Modern Era (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2007), 159.

  29. Ibid., 99.

  30. Keane, Tom Paine, xiii.

  31. J.G.A. Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 12, 38, 105, and passim; cf. Walter J. Ong, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971); cited in Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, xv.

  32. Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, xv.

  33. Keane, Tom Paine, 347–348.

  34. Keane, Tom Paine, 337.

  35. Thomas Paine, “African Slavery in America,” March 18, 1775, Constitution Society, http://www.constitution.org/tp/afri.htm.

  36. Keane, Tom Paine, 362.

  37. Ibid., 413–414.

  38. Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History, vol. 3 [1837] (London, 1888), 217; cited in Keane, Tom Paine, 408.

  39. Ibid., 409.

  40. Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, 72.

  41. Keane, Tom Paine, 115.

  42. Ibid., 394, 395.

  43. Ibid., 457.

  44. Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine [1892], vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1908), 417–418.

  45. Journals of Richard Wright, 1945–1947, entries for January 7, 28, and 29, 1945, Richard Wright Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

  46. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Jarod Lee Loughner Pleads Guilty to Federal Charges in Tucson Shooting,” August 7, 2012, http://www.fbi.gov/phoenix/press-releases/2012/jared-lee-loughner-pleads-guilty-to-federal-charges-in-tucson-shooting.

  47. Michael Cooper, “Accusations Fly Between Parties over Threats and Vandalism,” New York Times, March 25, 2010.

  48. Matthew Avery Sutton, “Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics,” New York Times, September 25, 2011.

  49. Carl Hulse, “Texas Lawmaker Admits ‘Baby Killer’ Remark,” New York Times, March 22, 2010.

  50. James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 237.

  51. Hunter Schwarz, “Georgia Will Celebrate Two Confederate Holidays Next Year,” Washington Post, August 7, 2014.

  52. “Ku Klux Klan Recruitment Fliers Prompt Investigation by Ga. Authorities,” CBS News, January 23, 2013, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ku-klux-klan-recruitment-fliers-prompt-investigation-by-ga-authorities/.

  53. Equal Justice Initiative, “Death Penalty in Alabama,” http://www.eji.org/files/02.03.11%20Death%20Penalty%20in%20Alabama%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf.

  54. “Death of General Forrest,” New York Times, October 30, 1877.

  55. Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 173.

  56. William C. Carter, Conversations with Shelby Foote (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), 173.

  57. Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, vol. 3, Red River to Appomattox (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 108–111.

  58. Ibid., 478.

  59. Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 64.

  60. Ibid., 62–63.

  61. James Oliver Horton and Amanda Kleintop, eds., Race, Slavery, and the Civil War: The Tough Stuff of American History and Memory (Richmond: Virginia Sesquicentennial of the Civil War Commission, 2011); “Confederate States of America: Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School Library, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp.

  62. Eddy W. Davidson and Daniel Foxx, Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of an Enigma (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Co., 2007), 246.

  63. Baldwin, Collected Essays, 386.

  CHAPTER VII

  1. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, in Thoreau: Political Writings, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 10.

  2. “Statement of the Government of the Republic of Ecuador on the Asylum Request of Julian Assange,” May 10, 2013, http://cancilleria.gob.ec/statement-of-the-government-of-the-republic-of-ecuador-on-the-asylum-request-of-julian-assange/?lang=en; “Julian Assange Police Guard Cost Nears £3m,” BBC News, February 15, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-21480648.

  3. “WikiLeaks Fast Facts,” CNN Library, April 23, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/03/world/wikileaks-fast-facts/.

  4. Philip Dorling, “US Targets WikiLeaks Like No Other Organisation,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 3, 2011, http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/us-targets-wikileaks-like-no-other-organisation-20111202-1obeo.html.

  5. Alexa O’Brien, “Witness: US v. Pfc. Manning, Mark Johnson, ManTech International Contractor, Reports to Special Agent David Shaver, CCIU,” December 19, 2011, http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/witness_profiles_us_v_pfc_bradley_manning/agents/witness_us_v_pfc_manning_mark_johnson_mantech_contractor_reports_to_cciu_special_agent_david_shaver.html.

  6. Elizabeth Day, “Aaron Swartz: Hacker, Genius … Martyr?” The Guardian, June 1, 2013.

  7. Ed Pilkington, “Jailed Anonymous Hacker Jeremy Hammond: ‘My Days of Hacking Are Done,�
� ” The Guardian, November 15, 2013.

  8. Ed Pilkington, “LulzSec Hacker ‘Sabu’ Released After ‘Extraordinary’ FBI Cooperation: Authorities Credit Hector Xavier Monsegur with Helping Them Cripple Anonymous in Lenient Sentence of Time Served,” The Guardian, May 27, 2014.

  9. David Kushner, “The WikiLeaks Mole,” Rolling Stone, January 6, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-wikileaks-mole-20140106; Kevin Poulsen, “WikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI,” Wired, June 27, 2013, http://www.wired.com/2013/06/wikileaks-mole/all/.

  10. Alexa O’Brien, “Newly Published Secret Grand Jury Orders and Other Docs Shed Light on US Investigation of WikiLeaks Now Entering 5th Year,” February 17, 2014, http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/grand_jury/newly_published_secret_grand_jury_orders_and_related_material_shed_light_on_the_continuing_us_investigation_of_wikileaks_now_entering_its_fifth_year.html.

  11. David Leigh and Rob Evans, “WikiLeaks Says Funding Has Been Blocked After Government Blacklisting: Founder Julian Assange Hits Out at Decision by Moneybookers, Which Collects the Whistleblowing Website’s Donations,” The Guardian, October 14, 2010.

  12. “WikiLeaks Readies Suit Against Credit Card Companies over ‘Economic Blockade,’ ” Democracy Now!, July 6, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/6/wikileaks_sues_credit_card_companies_over; Alessandra Prentice and Adrian Croft, “WikiLeaks’ Assange Blames US Right for Funding Block,” Reuters, November 27, 2012.

  13. Leigh and Evans, “WikiLeaks Says Funding Has Been Blocked After Government Blacklisting.”

  14. “Authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to Override International Law in Extraterritorial Law Enforcement Activities,” June 21, 1989, http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/1989/06/31/op-olc-v013-p0163.pdf.

  15. Craig Whitlock, “Renditions Continue Under Obama, Despite Due-Process Concerns,” Washington Post, January 1, 2013.

  16. Anna Mulrine, “Pentagon Papers vs. WikiLeaks: Is Bradley Manning the New Daniel Ellsberg?” Christian Science Monitor, June 13, 2011.