MichaelMoore.com : U.S. Missiles Killed at Least Six People on Afghanistan-Pakistan Border, Residents Say

September 7th, 2008 8:06 pm
At Both Conventions, a Band Salutes Anarchy

ST. PAUL — On Wednesday night, Republican delegates fresh off Gov. Sarah Palin’s vice presidential nomination speech at the Xcel Energy Center here formed a conga line of taxis, buses and private cars to Minneapolis, where post-convention parties were firing up. At almost the same time, a huge crowd was emptying out of the Target Center after a political show of a different sort — a concert by the band Rage Against the Machine.

A small fraction of those people, perhaps 200, decided to take over the intersection of First Avenue North and Seventh Street. Traffic snarled, and delegates watched in waiting traffic as riot-clad police pushed the spontaneous, vocal protest up Seventh Street. A delegate from Texas said, “Those guys, again?”

Yes, again. For two weeks straight, both in Denver and in Minneapolis, Rage Against the Machine, a rap-metal band formed in 1991 and known for its big noise and ferocious politics, formed an ad-hoc convention in opposition to both major parties. Although the band has been a significant commercial success — three of its albums in the 1990s attained multiplatinum status — radical politics have always been baked into their music.

The band members’ notoriety grew in 1996 when they tried to hang upside-down flags on their amps during a two-song set on “Saturday Night Live” — a performance that was cut short, and became something of a theme. Shortly after a concert at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles in 2000 that ended in clashes with the police, the band broke up, then reunited in 2007 at the Coachella music festival.

At both the Democratic and Republican conventions this year, Rage led marches, performed through megaphones when prevented from taking their stage, and generally agitated against the politics of convention and the conventions themselves.

None of this would be especially noteworthy — cause musicians reflexively congregate around political events — but Rage has millions of fans whose ardor has not been diminished by the band’s not putting out a record in eight years. The group’s insistent calls to action, in song and from the stage, still fall on receptive ears. Some of its hard-core fans are less prone to buying T-shirts than engaging in the kind of civil disobedience that sometimes ends in tear gas.

The Democratic convention opened with a free Rage show at the Denver Coliseum in support of Iraq Veterans Against the War, with the band’s lead singer, Zack de la Rocha, kicking into “Guerilla Radio.” “It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime,” he sang, “What better place than here?”

The building all but tipped on its side and bucked throughout the frantic, politically framed set, which included a guest spot by Wayne Kramer of the MC5, reprising the song “Kick Out the Jams” from an appearance during the mayhem of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. When the band finished at the coliseum, most of the 9,000 people who were present followed a march led by the veterans down to the Pepsi Center.

Many contemporary musical acts have lined up behind the Democratic candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama, while the McCain campaign has put some country music firepower behind it, but Rage Against the Machine and its legions regard donkeys and elephants as the same species.

“The only difference between the two parties is marketing,” said Adam Jung, a youth organizer who was interviewed during the Rage concert in Denver. “Electing Democrats to end the war is like drinking light beer to lose weight.”

Still, Republican Party officials here and in Minneapolis this week reacted to various Rage endeavors as if a sleeper cell were in their midst. A concert sponsored by the Service Employees International Union at Harriet Island on Monday, the first day of the convention, had its permit revoked and then restored after Rage was placed first on and then off the bill.

On Tuesday a five-band protest concert was scheduled on the lawn of the State Capitol above St. Paul. Near the end of the day the four members of Rage pulled up and were immediately surrounded by the police. The band members were told that they were not going to take the stage because they were not on the bill — but there were no bands listed on the permit. And so the four members of the band walked out into the crowd, which was chanting, “Let them play!,” and someone handed them a megaphone. With the guitarist Tom Morello vocalizing instrumental interludes, Mr. de la Rocha did two songs: “Bulls on Parade” and “Killing in the Name.” The crowd surged around the band and filled in the musical gaps.

After Mr. de la Rocha suggested that the assembled police were “not afraid of four musicians from Los Angeles, they are afraid of you!,” Mr. Morello took the megaphone.

He said: “I suspect that the cops have much more in common with this band, with you people. Before this weekend is over, they may turn their batons, rubber bullets and their tear gas against us, but it is our hope that one day they turn those batons and rubber bullets and the tear gas against” the people assembled at the Xcel Center, whom he described in colorful language.

It did not turn out that way after a few of the more fleet-footed protesters began running through the streets of St. Paul. Windows were broken, chemical agents were deployed, and arrests were made.

Later that night, Mr. Morello, who like Mr. Obama is the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother (and who went to Harvard), stood in an alley behind the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis, tuning up for a hootenanny with Billy Bragg hosted by the Minneapolis musician and writer Jim Walsh. Neither he nor the other members of the band were granting interviews, however. Mr. Morello, who performs solo as the Nightwatchman, was talking to the songwriter Ike Reilly, and said the day had been a busy one.

“When we got to the capitol, we were surrounded by cops, and they asked, ‘Are you in Rage Against the Machine?,’ ” Mr. Morello said. “And I didn’t know what the right answer was, so I just said, ‘I don’t know.’ They blocked us from even approaching the stage, saying they’d arrest us if we played. So we went into the middle of the crowd and began to improvise.”

The Rage show at the Target Center on Wednesday night was a commercial concert, not a protest rally, with proceeds going to benefit various antiwar causes, according to Mr. Morello. But the political backdrop had hardly disappeared. When the lights came up at the start of the set, the band was clad in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, with hands behind them, an image that seemed to shout “Guantánamo Bay” without ever saying the words. Still, the rhetoric from the stage was more nuanced than that of the previous shows.

“I hope you all leave peacefully, but you don’t have to be passive,” Mr. Morello said. “Don’t let anyone put their hands on you.”

Thousands took that advice, and a few took it a step further, refusing orders to disperse at Seventh Street and Second Avenue.

Arrests, a mainstay of the latest Rage shows, quickly ensued.

September 7th, 2008 7:36 pm
Antiwar march ends in tense standoff, 396 arrests

The final night of the convention led to confrontations between police and protesters. At least 396 people were arrested, an official said this morning.

By Curt Brown, Terry Collins, Randy Furst and Herón Márquez Estrada / Minneapolis Star Tribune

Police arrested scores more people Thursday night after another series of tense showdowns with protesters on the final night of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Sweeping into the State Capitol grounds in riot gear, police used snowplows, horses and dump trucks to seal off downtown from antiwar demonstrators attempting a march to the Xcel Energy Center.

"They chose not to leave when told to do so and now everyone's paying the price," said one officer on the scene.

This morning, the Joint Information Center said 396 people were arrested during Thursday's demonstrations, and a total of 818 people were arrested during the four-day convention. The numbers are preliminary; an official count will be released later today, said a spokeswoman for the center, which has been providing information about arrests and security during the convention.

Most of those arrested were ticketed and released, the spokeswoman said.

Thursday night, as police blocked off bridges to stop demonstrators from getting downtown, a rolling series of sit-down protests started on the John Ireland Boulevard bridge over Interstate 94. The arrests ended with more than 200 demonstrators, squatting with their hands on their heads, taken into custody on the Marion Street bridge.

Police used tear gas and pepper spray to quell some of the unrest.

A group of more than 700 demonstrators had a permit to rally and march. But they were angry the permit expired at 5 p.m., before delegates began arriving at the Xcel Energy Center for GOP presidential nominee John McCain's acceptance speech.

Among those arrested were two Associated Press reporters covering the event. They were issued a citation and detained, along with a KARE-11 TV photographer and more than a dozen other members of the media. All were released later in the evening.

"They're trying to steal our protest -- we have to ignore the police intimidation," Katrina Plotz, an organizer with the Anti-War Committee, hollered from a stage in front of the Capitol steps.

But ignoring the police wasn't easy during one of the largest shows of force on the fifth straight day of confrontations in St. Paul.

September 7th, 2008 3:56 pm
U.S. Missiles Killed at Least Six People on Afghanistan-Pakistan Border, Residents Say

By Pir Zubair Shah and Jane Perlez / New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A missile strike from a remotely piloted United States reconnaissance aircraft killed 6 to 12 people in a group of houses in southern Afghanistan, very close to the border with Pakistan, Pakistani residents of the area said Friday.

The strike came after the United States carried out a commando raid by Special Operations forces in South Waziristan in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan on Wednesday.

It was the first of what American military officials said could be more raids to attack Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal region. After the raid on Wednesday, Pakistan lodged a “strong protest” with the American government and said it reserved the right of retaliation.

The spokesman for the Pakistani Army, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said the missile strike Friday did not take place on Pakistani territory. “There was no airstrike in Pakistan, or near Miran Shah or in North Waziristan,” General Abbas said. Miran Shah is the capital of North Waziristan, a tribal region in Pakistan that borders Afghanistan.

Residents in Miran Shah also said the missile strike on Friday morning hit a target inside Afghanistan, and not inside Pakistan. They said the attack struck two residential compounds in the village of Al Must, less than a mile from the Pakistani border.

According to reports from Al Must reaching Miran Shah, 6 to 12 people, including men of Arab descent, were killed, said Ahsan Dawar, a journalist in Miran Shah. Among the dead were two women and three children, Mr. Dawar said.

He said three missiles hit the two compounds, which he said belong to two residents of Al Must, Hakeem Khan and Arsala Khan. It is common for families in these areas to rent part of their compound to foreigners, especially Arabs who are involved in planning attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan, residents said.

Mr. Dawar said that on Thursday, a pilotless American aircraft struck a large house in another village, Chaar Kehl, about 16 miles west of Miran Shah. In that attack, about 5 p.m. Thursday, seven Arab men were killed, he said.

Al Must is on the Afghan side of the border region called Gurwak, which is considered the demarcation line between Pakistan and Afghanistan and is locally known as Ground Zero, Mr. Dawar said.

Another local resident, Mahmood Khan, said that pilotless aircraft were seen over Al Must at 9 a.m. Friday.

The strikes on Friday appeared to indicate that the United States was forging ahead with a tougher strategy to curb the escalating numbers of Taliban fighters crossing from Pakistan to attack American and NATO soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, the commander of American forces in eastern Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon by teleconference on Friday that attacks against allied forces in Afghanistan had increased by 20 to 30 percent in the first eight months of this year, compared with the same period last year.

“The people that they’re killing, first and foremost, are innocent civilians, and then Afghan national security forces, predominantly police, Afghan National Army less so, and then the coalition forces even less after that,” General Schloesser said.

“They’re going to continue to drive a wedge between our international partners by deliberately causing civilian casualties, as well as attempting to weaken international resolve by targeting our alliance partner nations, their forces here,” he said.

The general said attacks on symbols of government authority were up 40 percent over last year, a trend he expected to continue.

Top American military commanders have warned Pakistan that they would start attacking Taliban havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas if the increased Taliban infiltration into Afghanistan did not stop.

The Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, told Parliament on Thursday that the American commando raid into South Waziristan on Wednesday violated national sovereignty and failed to attack militants.

No “high value target or known terrorist was among the dead,” he said. “Only innocent civilians, including women and children, have been targeted.”

Although the foreign minister used strong language, there was a growing belief that Pakistan was sharing more intelligence with the United States that allowed for more accurate targeting of Arab and other foreign militants who live among civilians in South and North Waziristan.

The Pakistani government summoned the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, to the foreign office on Thursday and formally complained about the commando raid on Wednesday.

The raid by the Special Operations forces, which killed at least 20 people in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan on Friday, was broadly criticized in the Pakistani press. “A go-it-alone strategy by the U.S. inside Pakistan will spell nothing but trouble for everyone,” said an editorial in the Friday edition of Dawn, an English-language newspaper.

Reuters reported on Friday that health officials were seeing an outbreak of cholera in refugees in northwest Pakistan. An estimated 300,000 people have fled the fighting in the area, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Pascal Cuttat, an agency official, said Friday at a news briefing: “The most immediate need remains access to clean water and sanitation. No food, health care or shelter is going to be of any good if people get water-borne diseases,” Reuters reported.

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