Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
What Happened to Canada?
Monday 30 January 2012
by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed
Police confront protesters outside 2010's G-20 meeting in Toronto, Canada, June 25, 2010. (Photo: G20 Protest Photos)
What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.
But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.
The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.
“I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,” Canadian activist Leah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence. “I want to tell you that you might be too. I want to tell you that this is something we need to prepare for. I want to tell you that the risk of incarceration alone should not determine our organizing.”
“My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a ‘brainwasher’ and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction,” she went on. “During the week of the G8 & G20 summits, the police targeted legal observers, street medics and independent media. It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of.”
The decay of Canada illustrates two things. Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington. This, I suspect, is why the tactics to crush the Occupy movement around the globe have an eerie similarity—infiltrations, surveillance, the denial of public assembly, physical attempts to eradicate encampments, the use of propaganda and the press to demonize the movement, new draconian laws stripping citizens of basic rights, and increasingly harsh terms of incarceration.
Our solidarity should be with activists who march on Tahrir Square in Cairo or set up encampamentos in Madrid. These are our true compatriots. The more we shed ourselves of national identity in this fight, the more we grasp that our true allies may not speak our language or embrace our religious and cultural traditions, the more powerful we will become.
Those who seek to discredit this movement employ the language of nationalism and attempt to make us fearful of the other. Wave the flag. Sing the national anthem. Swell with national hubris. Be vigilant of the hidden terrorist. Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver, responding to the growing opposition to the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipelines, wrote in an open letter that “environmental and other radical groups” were trying to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” He accused pipeline opponents of receiving funding from foreign special interest groups and said that “if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.”
No matter that in both Canada and the United States suing the government to seek redress is the right of every citizen. No matter that the opposition to the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines has its roots in Canada. No matter that the effort by citizens in the U.S. and in Canada to fight climate change is about self-preservation. The minister, in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry like the energy czars in most of the other industrialized nations, seeks to pit “loyal” Canadians against “disloyal” Canadians. Those with whom we will build this movement of resistance will not in some cases be our own. They may speak Arabic, pray five times a day toward Mecca and be holding off the police thugs in the center of Cairo. Or they may be generously pierced and tattooed and speak Danish or they may be Mandarin-speaking workers battling China’s totalitarian capitalism. These are differences that make no difference.
“My country right or wrong,” G.K. Chesterton once wrote, is on the same level as “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Our most dangerous opponents, in fact, look and speak like us. They hijack familiar and comforting iconography and slogans to paint themselves as true patriots. They claim to love Jesus. But they cynically serve the function a native bureaucracy serves for any foreign colonizer. The British and the French, and earlier the Romans, were masters of this game. They recruited local quislings to carry out policies and repression that were determined in London or Paris or Rome. Popular anger was vented against these personages, and native group vied with native group in battles for scraps of influence. And when one native ruler was overthrown or, more rarely, voted out of power, these imperial machines recruited a new face. The actual centers of power did not change. The pillage continued. Global financiers are the new colonizers. They make the rules. They pull the strings. They offer the illusion of choice in our carnivals of political theater. But corporate power remains constant and unimpeded. Barack Obama serves the same role Herod did in imperial Rome.
This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement is important. It targets the center of power—global financial institutions. It deflects attention from the empty posturing in the legislative and executive offices in Washington or London or Paris. The Occupy movement reminds us that until the corporate superstructure is dismantled it does not matter which member of the native elite is elected or anointed to rule. The Canadian prime minister is as much a servant of corporate power as the American president. And replacing either will not alter corporate domination. As the corporate mechanisms of control become apparent to wider segments of the population, discontent will grow further. So will the force employed by our corporate overlords. It will be a long road for us. But we are not alone. There are struggles and brush fires everywhere. Leah Henderson is not only right. She is my compatriot.
(vid) 400 Protesters Including 2 Journalists Arrested In Oakland 1/28/2012
Protest marchers kettled by Oakland Cops in front of YMCA
and then arrested for trying to escape through the YMCA.
Newt Gingrich: I would ignore supreme court as president
Thursday 19 January 2012
Republican presidential candidate would order military to defy judges' ruling extending legal rights to terror suspects
Read by 1,580 people
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich listens to a question during the Personhood USA presidential forum in Greenville, South Carolina. Photograph: Chris Keane/Reuters
Newt Gingrich has pledged that on his first day as president he will set up a constitutional showdown by ordering the military to defy a supreme court ruling extending some legal rights to foreign terrorism suspects and captured enemy combatants in US custody.
The Republican contender told a forum of anti-abortion activists ahead of South Carolina's primary election that as president he would ignore supreme court rulings he regards as legally flawed. He implied that would also extend to the 1973 decision, Roe vs Wade, legalising abortion.
"If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact ignore it," said Gingrich to cheers.
The Republican contender, who has made no secret of his disdain for the judiciary, said that as president he would expect to have repeated showdowns with the supreme court. He said the court would lose because it is the least powerful and least accountable arm of government.
Gingrich said the first confrontation would be over its historic ruling, known as the Boumediene decision, that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in US courts.
"I fully expect as president that there will be several occasions when we will collide. The first one, which is actually foreign policy, the Boumediene decision which extends American legal rights to enemy combatants on the battlefield is such an outrageous extension of the court in to the commander in chief's role.
"I will issue an instruction on the opening day, first day I'm sworn in, I will issue an executive order to the national security apparatus that it will not enforce Boumediene and it will regard it as null and void because it is an absurd extension of the supreme court in to the commander in chief's (authority)."
Gingrich has said before that he regards the president as above the court when the two branches have fundamentally differing views but he went further in committing himself to setting up a constitutional crisis on his first day in office.
The Republican candidate cited what he said were precedents, including Abraham Lincoln's refusal to accept the Dred Scott decision denying that former slaves were citizens.
Gingrich's interpretations have previously been met with disdain. President George W Bush's attorney general, Michael Mukasey, has said that a president selectively ignoring supreme court decisions would turn the US in to a banana republic.
At the same election forum, Rick Perry, the Texas governor, did not go so far as Gingrich but he did say that as president he would seek to pack the supreme court with judges who would overturn the ruling legalising abortion.
"When we have a president that appoints two or three more supreme court justices - that's what the next president of the United States is liable to do - those from my perspective should be individuals who are strict constructionists who look at the constitution and interpret it in a way that our founding fathers wrote it," he said. "Therefore Roe vs Wade would be overturned."
While that comment was less contentious than Gingrich's approach, Perry created his own ripple of controversy by once again speaking ill of a foreign country.
"Think about 35,000 children every day are aborted in China. That country is destined for the ash heap of history unless it changes its values," he said.
What america's simple minded little Newt fails to realize is that it is his own narrrow-mindedness, selfishness, and greed for money and power that is king of the world's ash heap. It is the trilogy of "isms" --- nepotism, narcissim, and ethnocentricsm that makes him and the people like him the ass of all trash.
These are big words for such a little man as Newt Gingrich but they are not meant for him. These words are meant for american voters who certainly are smart enough to get out a dictionary if need be and are smart enough to vote and prevent people like Gingrich, Romney and Perry from leading our country and the world into a garbage pit of their own making, one they stand atop of and spit down upon the rest of us.
~cleanelectric
The Republican contender told a forum of anti-abortion activists ahead of South Carolina's primary election that as president he would ignore supreme court rulings he regards as legally flawed. He implied that would also extend to the 1973 decision, Roe vs Wade, legalising abortion.
"If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact ignore it," said Gingrich to cheers.
The Republican contender, who has made no secret of his disdain for the judiciary, said that as president he would expect to have repeated showdowns with the supreme court. He said the court would lose because it is the least powerful and least accountable arm of government.
Gingrich said the first confrontation would be over its historic ruling, known as the Boumediene decision, that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in US courts.
"I fully expect as president that there will be several occasions when we will collide. The first one, which is actually foreign policy, the Boumediene decision which extends American legal rights to enemy combatants on the battlefield is such an outrageous extension of the court in to the commander in chief's role.
"I will issue an instruction on the opening day, first day I'm sworn in, I will issue an executive order to the national security apparatus that it will not enforce Boumediene and it will regard it as null and void because it is an absurd extension of the supreme court in to the commander in chief's (authority)."
Gingrich has said before that he regards the president as above the court when the two branches have fundamentally differing views but he went further in committing himself to setting up a constitutional crisis on his first day in office.
The Republican candidate cited what he said were precedents, including Abraham Lincoln's refusal to accept the Dred Scott decision denying that former slaves were citizens.
Gingrich's interpretations have previously been met with disdain. President George W Bush's attorney general, Michael Mukasey, has said that a president selectively ignoring supreme court decisions would turn the US in to a banana republic.
At the same election forum, Rick Perry, the Texas governor, did not go so far as Gingrich but he did say that as president he would seek to pack the supreme court with judges who would overturn the ruling legalising abortion.
"When we have a president that appoints two or three more supreme court justices - that's what the next president of the United States is liable to do - those from my perspective should be individuals who are strict constructionists who look at the constitution and interpret it in a way that our founding fathers wrote it," he said. "Therefore Roe vs Wade would be overturned."
While that comment was less contentious than Gingrich's approach, Perry created his own ripple of controversy by once again speaking ill of a foreign country.
"Think about 35,000 children every day are aborted in China. That country is destined for the ash heap of history unless it changes its values," he said.
What america's simple minded little Newt fails to realize is that it is his own narrrow-mindedness, selfishness, and greed for money and power that is king of the world's ash heap. It is the trilogy of "isms" --- nepotism, narcissim, and ethnocentricsm that makes him and the people like him the ass of all trash.
These are big words for such a little man as Newt Gingrich but they are not meant for him. These words are meant for american voters who certainly are smart enough to get out a dictionary if need be and are smart enough to vote and prevent people like Gingrich, Romney and Perry from leading our country and the world into a garbage pit of their own making, one they stand atop of and spit down upon the rest of us.
~cleanelectric
BREAKING: Police Fire Projectiles at Students from Occupy UC Riverside Protesting Board of Regents
Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 05:49 PM PST
BREAKING: Police Fire Projectiles at Students from Occupy UC Riverside Protesting Board of Regents
Share428
The cease-fire against California students appears to be over.
Students from UC Riverside, protesting today's Board of Regents meeting, were confronted by riot police, with multiple reports indicating they were fired upon with paint-filled bullets and other projectiles that injured several at the scene.
The students, many of whom are associated with Occupy UC Riverside, today protested and (ultimately) shut down a Board of Regents meeting where tuition hikes were planned to be discussed.
The meeting was adjourned when students who managed to get inside refused to be silent in the face of skyrocketing tuition costs. After the meeting was closed, the board members were escorted off of campus amidst what were, for most of the day, incredibly peaceful and nonviolent protests.
Here is a report from ABC's local affiliate on what transpired before police began attacking protesters:
While things remained peaceful in the early afternoon, after the board members were escorted from campus, students amassed to continue their protest and were confronted by riot police – reportedly a mix of campus police and officers from the municipality – who forced them to disperse using fired projectiles that injured several protesters.
Why were these students today at UC Riverside protesting?
Tuition for students in the University of California system has nearly quadrupled in the last ten years, with plans for tuition – approximately $14,000 at most campuses – to double within the next four years.
Such increases, both past and future, make pursuing a degree at a UC campus a liability for many, and prohibitive for more still.
And one wonders why college students, leaving school with record amounts of debt, are giving up on the American dream, are raising their voices in anger, are refusing to remain silent.
Things cannot continue this way for a creative society to thrive. And students at UC Riverside understand this with a painful immediacy that drove them today to confront those who command the University of California system's purse strings.
May their voices, in numbers, continue to grow.
-----------------------------------
Follow me on Twitter @David_EHG
-----------------------------------
Students from UC Riverside, protesting today's Board of Regents meeting, were confronted by riot police, with multiple reports indicating they were fired upon with paint-filled bullets and other projectiles that injured several at the scene.
The students, many of whom are associated with Occupy UC Riverside, today protested and (ultimately) shut down a Board of Regents meeting where tuition hikes were planned to be discussed.
The meeting was adjourned when students who managed to get inside refused to be silent in the face of skyrocketing tuition costs. After the meeting was closed, the board members were escorted off of campus amidst what were, for most of the day, incredibly peaceful and nonviolent protests.
Here is a report from ABC's local affiliate on what transpired before police began attacking protesters:
While things remained peaceful in the early afternoon, after the board members were escorted from campus, students amassed to continue their protest and were confronted by riot police – reportedly a mix of campus police and officers from the municipality – who forced them to disperse using fired projectiles that injured several protesters.
This screenshot, just one of many taken from live streams that covered incidents today, shows abrasion wounds from paint bullets fired at students by police. Photo via @marymad.
This incident – another show of disproportionate force by police in the University of California system – adds to a growing list of shameful moments, most notably the indiscriminate use of pepper spray at UC Davis.
Riot police confront and use extreme force to disperse student protesters. Photo by @OccupyUMD.
Why were these students today at UC Riverside protesting?
Tuition for students in the University of California system has nearly quadrupled in the last ten years, with plans for tuition – approximately $14,000 at most campuses – to double within the next four years.
Such increases, both past and future, make pursuing a degree at a UC campus a liability for many, and prohibitive for more still.
And one wonders why college students, leaving school with record amounts of debt, are giving up on the American dream, are raising their voices in anger, are refusing to remain silent.
Things cannot continue this way for a creative society to thrive. And students at UC Riverside understand this with a painful immediacy that drove them today to confront those who command the University of California system's purse strings.
May their voices, in numbers, continue to grow.
-----------------------------------
Follow me on Twitter @David_EHG
-----------------------------------
Author's Note:Video has been posted from the scene at UC Riverside which shows much of the confrontation:
Originally posted to Writing by David Harris Gershon on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 05:49 PM PST.
Also republished by California politics and Occupy Wall Street.
China's Wealth Disparity Erupts in Wukan Protests
Posted by: Dan Beucke on December 16, 2011 at 6:30 AM
The Occupy Wall Street protests in the U.S. are a delayed reaction to a bursting property bubble, which led to a jobs crisis and rising anger over financial influence and wealth disparity. What’s happening right now In China — angry protesters seizing a village and forcing Communist officials to retreat — is a dramatic example of what happens when a similar toxic mix plays out in a totalitarian society.
The protests in Wukan, a coastal village in Guangdong province, began three months ago over land seizures. They exploded this week after party officials tried to seal off Wukan with riot police, setting up roadblocks, blocking fishing boats, and beating residents. On Wednesday the party was forced to back down, saying it would halt a controversial real estate project and investigate local officials. The images out of Wukan are a startling contrast to the usual way Chinese officials manage to snuff out any sign of public discord.
At the heart of the protests is a corrupt system in which local officials seize land, evict poor tenants, and sell it to rich developers to fund government operations. A Bloomberg article last October described this strange twist on the Communist Revolution:
Land disputes and growing numbers of “mass incidents” (the Chinese term for any large public protest) aren’t the most spectacular manifestation of China’s class tensions. In two separate cases this year, sons of powerful officials were found guilty of running down peasants with their cars. One of the men was executed after admitting he stabbed to death a young woman whom he feared would seek payment for her injuries.
(Photographer: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)
The Occupy Wall Street protests in the U.S. are a delayed reaction to a bursting property bubble, which led to a jobs crisis and rising anger over financial influence and wealth disparity. What’s happening right now In China — angry protesters seizing a village and forcing Communist officials to retreat — is a dramatic example of what happens when a similar toxic mix plays out in a totalitarian society.
The protests in Wukan, a coastal village in Guangdong province, began three months ago over land seizures. They exploded this week after party officials tried to seal off Wukan with riot police, setting up roadblocks, blocking fishing boats, and beating residents. On Wednesday the party was forced to back down, saying it would halt a controversial real estate project and investigate local officials. The images out of Wukan are a startling contrast to the usual way Chinese officials manage to snuff out any sign of public discord.
At the heart of the protests is a corrupt system in which local officials seize land, evict poor tenants, and sell it to rich developers to fund government operations. A Bloomberg article last October described this strange twist on the Communist Revolution:
Mao Zedong won the hearts of the masses by redistributing land from rich landlords to penniless peasants. Now, powerful local officials are snatching it back, sometimes violently, to make way for luxury apartment blocks, malls and sports complexes in a debt-fueled building binge. City governments rely on land sales for much of their revenue because they have few sources of income such as property taxes. They’re increasingly seeking to cash in on real estate prices that have risen 140 percent since 1998 by appropriating land and flipping it to developers for huge profits.Market reforms that began under Deng Xiaoping in the late ’70s sparked spectacular economic growth — and widened the divisions between rich and poor, city dwellers and farmers. The share of income collected by the top 1 percent of China’s earners more than doubled between 1986 and 2003, to 5.87 percent, according to the incomes database of Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. (That was still lower than the share held at the time by their U.S. counterparts, 14.87 percent.) China ranked 53rd on the CIA’s list of countries with the most unequal incomes — lower than the U.S. (40) — based on 2007 data.
Land disputes and growing numbers of “mass incidents” (the Chinese term for any large public protest) aren’t the most spectacular manifestation of China’s class tensions. In two separate cases this year, sons of powerful officials were found guilty of running down peasants with their cars. One of the men was executed after admitting he stabbed to death a young woman whom he feared would seek payment for her injuries.
(Photographer: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)
21,000 Residents Expell Police & Politicians
21,000 Residents of Wukan Guangdong Province, CHINA
Expelled All Politicians And Police From Their Village
Chinese protesters in open revolt for the past three months. Government illegally selling the villagers land. Protests organizer mysteriously dies in jail. Police preventing all food and water from entering the town. One villager says we do not know what the governments next move will be but we know we cannot trust them ever again. Media reports out of Wukan are censored by the Chinese Government and the rest of China has very little awareness about what is really going on there.
Expelled All Politicians And Police From Their Village
Chinese protesters in open revolt for the past three months. Government illegally selling the villagers land. Protests organizer mysteriously dies in jail. Police preventing all food and water from entering the town. One villager says we do not know what the governments next move will be but we know we cannot trust them ever again. Media reports out of Wukan are censored by the Chinese Government and the rest of China has very little awareness about what is really going on there.
We are all the 99%
The audience is listening ~ And now For Our Feature Presentation
And now For Our Feature Presentation
Kids write Santa this year for basic needs instead of toys
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
Santa Claus and his elves are seeing more heartbreaking letters
this year as children cite their parents' economic troubles
in their wish lists.
U.S. Postal Service workers who handle letters addressed to Santa at the North Pole say more letters ask for basics — coats, socks and shoes — rather than Barbie dolls, video games and computers.
At New York City's main post office, Head Elf Pete Fontana and 22 staff elves will sort 2 million letters in Operation Santa, which connects needy children with "Secret Santas" who answer their wishes.
Fontana, a customer relations coordinator for the Postal Service, has been head elf for 15 years.
"The need is greater this year than I've ever seen it," he says. "One little girl didn't want anything for herself. She wanted a winter coat for her mother."
GIFT GUIDE: Christmas books for children
ECONOMY CLUES: Watch the bras
At more than 20 post offices, workers log every letter, black out identifying information except first name and age, and ask the public to respond. Lobby displays promote the program. People return with gifts and letters, which carriers deliver.
Cesar, 7, wrote for himself and his baby sister.
"This year my moom don't have much money to spend on Christmas gifts so I'm writing to you," Cesar told Santa. "It would make us very happy if you and your elves would bring us toys and clothes."
There are more letters from unemployed parents asking for kids' gifts they can't afford, says Darlene Reid of New York City's main post office.
One mom sent a turn-off notice from the electric company, Fontana says. A single mother of a girl, 8, and a boy, 2, wrote that she recently lost her job. "I am unable to buy my children toys and clothes," she said. "Santa may you help me with my family?"
Tough times are shrinking the number of Secret Santas, Fontana says. Meanwhile, "the percentage of people who need help has increased," says Mark Reynolds at the Postal Service's Chicago district, and about half the letters won't get answered.
Melanney, 9, asked Santa for a coat and boots. "I have been a very good girl this year," she wrote.
(vid) Hell Unlimited Norman McLaren's Silent Movie from 1900 entitled Hell Unlimited.
Nothing has changed in 113 years.
Who's fault is that? It is all of our faults.
(vid) Occupy America - Interviews with protesters - Really explaining the issues
"We are Ground Zero for the Fossil Fuel Industry in Ohio"
This is just one of the many quotes in among these excellent interviews.
Mass March by Cairo Women in Protest Over Abuse by Soldiers
Nasser Nasser/Associated Press
A poster showing a woman attacked by officers was carried by one of several thousand marchers Tuesday in downtown Cairo.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: December 20, 2011
Related
Related in Opinion
Editorial: Egypt’s Military Masters (December 21, 2011)
Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A woman shouted slogans during the protest Tuesday in Cairo. Chants, some joined by men, included, “Freedom, freedom.”
Nasser Nasser/Associated Press
Egyptian protesters detained a suspected government collaborator, third from right, in Tahrir Square on Tuesday.
Associated Press
Protesters threw rocks toward Egyptian forces near Tahrir Square in Cairo early Tuesday.
“Drag me, strip me, my brothers’ blood will cover me!” they chanted. “Where is the field marshal?” they demanded of the top military officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. “The girls of Egypt are here.”
Historians called the event the biggest women’s demonstration in modern Egyptian history, the most significant since a 1919 march against British colonialism inaugurated women’s activism here, and a rarity in the Arab world. It also added a new and unexpected wave of protesters opposing the ruling military council’s efforts to retain power and its tactics for suppressing public discontent.
The protest’s scale stunned even feminists here. In Egypt’s stiffly patriarchal culture, previous attempts to organize women’s events in Tahrir Square during this year’s protests almost always fizzled or, in one case in March, ended in the physical harassment of a small group of women by a larger crowd of men.
“It was amazing the number of women that came out from all over the place,” said Zeinab Abul-Magd, a historian who has studied women’s activism here. “I expected fewer than 300.”
The march abruptly pushed women to the center of Egyptian political life after they had been left out almost completely. Although women stood at the forefront of the initial revolt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak 10 months ago, few had prominent roles in the various revolutionary coalitions formed in the uprising’s aftermath. Almost no women have won seats in the early rounds of parliamentary elections. And the continuing demonstrations against military rule have often degenerated into battles in which young men and the security police hurl rocks at each other.
On the fifth day of clashes that have killed at least 14 people, many women in the march said they hoped their demonstration would undercut the military council’s efforts to portray demonstrators as little more than hooligans, vandals and arsonists. “This will show those who stay home that we are not thugs,” said Fadwa Khaled, 25, a computer engineer.
The women’s demand for a voice in political life appeared to run counter to the recent election victories of conservative Islamists. But the march was hardly dominated by secular liberals. It contained a broad spectrum of Egyptian women, including homemakers demonstrating for the first time and young mothers carrying babies, with a majority in traditional Muslim head scarves and a few in face-covering veils. And their chants mixed calls for women’s empowerment with others demanding more “gallantry” from Egyptian men.
Egypt’s military rulers came under fire from international human rights groups soon after they took power in February for performing invasive, pseudo-medical “virginity tests” on several women detained after a protest in March. But in Egypt’s conservative culture, few of the women subjected to that humiliation have come forward to criticize the generals publicly.
The spark for the march on Tuesday came over the weekend, when hundreds of military police officers in riot gear repeatedly stormed Tahrir Square, indiscriminately beating anyone they could catch. Videos showed more than one instance in which officers grabbed and stripped female demonstrators, tearing off their Muslim head scarves. And in the most infamous case caught on video, a half-dozen soldiers beat a supine woman with batons and ripped off her abaya to reveal a blue bra. Then one of them kicked her in the chest.
Recalling that event at a news conference Tuesday, the woman’s friend Hassan Shahin said he had told the soldiers: “I’m a journalist, and this is a girl. Wait, I’ll take her away from here.” But, he said, “nobody listened, and one of them jumped on me, and they started beating me with batons.”
No doubt fearful of the stigma that would come with her public humiliation, the victim has declined to step forward publicly, so some activists now refer to her only as “blue bra girl.” The photos of her beating and disrobing, however, have quickly circulated on the Internet and have been broadcast by television stations around the world.
In Washington on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the recent events in Egypt “shocking.” “Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Women are being attacked, stripped and beaten in the streets,” she added, arguing that what she called the systematic degradation of Egyptian women “disgraces the state and its uniform.”
As recently as Tuesday morning, however, many activists here said that because relatively few Egyptians have access to the Internet, read independent newspapers or watch independent satellite television news, the blue bra video was far more widely familiar in the United States than in Egypt.
“Four blocks from here, no one knows about this,” said Aalam Wassef, a blogger and an activist, at a meeting Tuesday morning in which activists announced a plan to set up screens in cities and towns around the country where people could see that video and others that contradict the generals’ version of events. (Other scenes include security forces hurling rocks and gasoline bombs, military police officers firing rifles and handguns and protesters bloodied by bullets.)
Some men who had seen the images questioned why the woman had been in the square, suggesting that her husband or father should have kept her at home. Other men have argued that she must have wanted the exposure because she wore fancy lingerie, or they have said she should have worn more clothes under her abaya.
But the woman’s ordeal began to receive new attention on Monday when Gen. Adel Emara, a member of the ruling military council, acknowledged what had happened during a news conference on state television. General Emara argued that the scene had been taken out of context and that the broader circumstances would explain what happened.
At the same news conference, a veteran female journalist who reports on the military stood up to ask the general for an apology to Egyptian women. “Or the next revolution will be a women’s revolution for real,” the journalist warned. The general tried to interrupt her — he said the military had learned of a new plan to attack the Parliament — and then he brushed off her request.
Many Egyptian women said later that they were outraged by his response.
When core activists called for a march Tuesday evening to protest the military’s treatment of women — organizers on Twitter used the hash tag “#BlueBra” — few could have expected the magnitude of the response.
The crowd seemed to grow at each step as the women marched, calling up to the apartment buildings lining the streets to urge others to join them. “Come down, come down,” they shouted in an echo of the protests that led to Mr. Mubarak’s ouster in February. “If you don’t leave your house today to confront the militias of Tantawi, you will leave your house tomorrow so they can rape your daughter,” one sign declared.
“I am here because of our girls who were stripped in the street,” said Sohir Mahmoud, 50, a homemaker who said she was demonstrating for the first time. “Men are not going to cover your flesh, so we will,” she told a younger woman. “We have to come down and call for our rights. Nobody is going to call for our rights for us.” Along the sidewalks beside the march, some men came out to gawk and stare. Others chanted along with the women, “Freedom, freedom.”
“I came so that girls are not stripped in the streets again,” said Afaf Helal, 67, who was also demonstrating for the first time, “and because my daughters are always going to Tahrir. The army is supposed to protect the girls, not strip them!”
A version of this article appeared in print on December 21, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: March In Cairo Draws Women By Thousands.Historians called the event the biggest women’s demonstration in modern Egyptian history, the most significant since a 1919 march against British colonialism inaugurated women’s activism here, and a rarity in the Arab world. It also added a new and unexpected wave of protesters opposing the ruling military council’s efforts to retain power and its tactics for suppressing public discontent.
The protest’s scale stunned even feminists here. In Egypt’s stiffly patriarchal culture, previous attempts to organize women’s events in Tahrir Square during this year’s protests almost always fizzled or, in one case in March, ended in the physical harassment of a small group of women by a larger crowd of men.
“It was amazing the number of women that came out from all over the place,” said Zeinab Abul-Magd, a historian who has studied women’s activism here. “I expected fewer than 300.”
The march abruptly pushed women to the center of Egyptian political life after they had been left out almost completely. Although women stood at the forefront of the initial revolt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak 10 months ago, few had prominent roles in the various revolutionary coalitions formed in the uprising’s aftermath. Almost no women have won seats in the early rounds of parliamentary elections. And the continuing demonstrations against military rule have often degenerated into battles in which young men and the security police hurl rocks at each other.
On the fifth day of clashes that have killed at least 14 people, many women in the march said they hoped their demonstration would undercut the military council’s efforts to portray demonstrators as little more than hooligans, vandals and arsonists. “This will show those who stay home that we are not thugs,” said Fadwa Khaled, 25, a computer engineer.
The women’s demand for a voice in political life appeared to run counter to the recent election victories of conservative Islamists. But the march was hardly dominated by secular liberals. It contained a broad spectrum of Egyptian women, including homemakers demonstrating for the first time and young mothers carrying babies, with a majority in traditional Muslim head scarves and a few in face-covering veils. And their chants mixed calls for women’s empowerment with others demanding more “gallantry” from Egyptian men.
Egypt’s military rulers came under fire from international human rights groups soon after they took power in February for performing invasive, pseudo-medical “virginity tests” on several women detained after a protest in March. But in Egypt’s conservative culture, few of the women subjected to that humiliation have come forward to criticize the generals publicly.
The spark for the march on Tuesday came over the weekend, when hundreds of military police officers in riot gear repeatedly stormed Tahrir Square, indiscriminately beating anyone they could catch. Videos showed more than one instance in which officers grabbed and stripped female demonstrators, tearing off their Muslim head scarves. And in the most infamous case caught on video, a half-dozen soldiers beat a supine woman with batons and ripped off her abaya to reveal a blue bra. Then one of them kicked her in the chest.
Recalling that event at a news conference Tuesday, the woman’s friend Hassan Shahin said he had told the soldiers: “I’m a journalist, and this is a girl. Wait, I’ll take her away from here.” But, he said, “nobody listened, and one of them jumped on me, and they started beating me with batons.”
No doubt fearful of the stigma that would come with her public humiliation, the victim has declined to step forward publicly, so some activists now refer to her only as “blue bra girl.” The photos of her beating and disrobing, however, have quickly circulated on the Internet and have been broadcast by television stations around the world.
In Washington on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the recent events in Egypt “shocking.” “Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Women are being attacked, stripped and beaten in the streets,” she added, arguing that what she called the systematic degradation of Egyptian women “disgraces the state and its uniform.”
As recently as Tuesday morning, however, many activists here said that because relatively few Egyptians have access to the Internet, read independent newspapers or watch independent satellite television news, the blue bra video was far more widely familiar in the United States than in Egypt.
“Four blocks from here, no one knows about this,” said Aalam Wassef, a blogger and an activist, at a meeting Tuesday morning in which activists announced a plan to set up screens in cities and towns around the country where people could see that video and others that contradict the generals’ version of events. (Other scenes include security forces hurling rocks and gasoline bombs, military police officers firing rifles and handguns and protesters bloodied by bullets.)
Some men who had seen the images questioned why the woman had been in the square, suggesting that her husband or father should have kept her at home. Other men have argued that she must have wanted the exposure because she wore fancy lingerie, or they have said she should have worn more clothes under her abaya.
But the woman’s ordeal began to receive new attention on Monday when Gen. Adel Emara, a member of the ruling military council, acknowledged what had happened during a news conference on state television. General Emara argued that the scene had been taken out of context and that the broader circumstances would explain what happened.
At the same news conference, a veteran female journalist who reports on the military stood up to ask the general for an apology to Egyptian women. “Or the next revolution will be a women’s revolution for real,” the journalist warned. The general tried to interrupt her — he said the military had learned of a new plan to attack the Parliament — and then he brushed off her request.
Many Egyptian women said later that they were outraged by his response.
When core activists called for a march Tuesday evening to protest the military’s treatment of women — organizers on Twitter used the hash tag “#BlueBra” — few could have expected the magnitude of the response.
The crowd seemed to grow at each step as the women marched, calling up to the apartment buildings lining the streets to urge others to join them. “Come down, come down,” they shouted in an echo of the protests that led to Mr. Mubarak’s ouster in February. “If you don’t leave your house today to confront the militias of Tantawi, you will leave your house tomorrow so they can rape your daughter,” one sign declared.
“I am here because of our girls who were stripped in the street,” said Sohir Mahmoud, 50, a homemaker who said she was demonstrating for the first time. “Men are not going to cover your flesh, so we will,” she told a younger woman. “We have to come down and call for our rights. Nobody is going to call for our rights for us.” Along the sidewalks beside the march, some men came out to gawk and stare. Others chanted along with the women, “Freedom, freedom.”
“I came so that girls are not stripped in the streets again,” said Afaf Helal, 67, who was also demonstrating for the first time, “and because my daughters are always going to Tahrir. The army is supposed to protect the girls, not strip them!”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 21, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled the first name of a demonstrator in Cairo. The demonstrator is named Afaf Helal, not Afa.
Correction: December 21, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled the first name of a demonstrator in Cairo. The demonstrator is named Afaf Helal, not Afa.
The contradictions of the Arab Spring : Al Jazeera
The spirit of 1968 flows through Arab Spring and Occupy movement - as its counter-current attempts to suppress uprising.
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The turmoil in Arab countries that is called the Arab Spring is conventionally said to have been sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in a small village of Tunisia on December 17, 2010. The massive sympathy this act aroused led, in a relatively short time, to the destitution of Tunisia's president and then to that of Egypt's president. In very quick order thereafter, the turmoil spread to virtually every Arab state and is still continuing. Most of the analyses we read in the media or on the internet neglect the fundamental contradiction of this phenomenon - that the so-called Arab Spring is composed of two quite different currents, going in radically different directions. One current is the heir of the world-revolution of 1968. The "1968 current" might better be called the "second Arab revolt". Its objective is to achieve the global autonomy of the Arab world that the "first Arab revolt" had sought to achieve. The first revolt failed primarily because of successful Franco-British measures to contain it, co-opt it, and repress it. The second current is the attempt by all important geopolitical actors to control the first current, each acting to divert collective activity in the Arab world in ways that would redound to the relative advantage of each of these actors separately. The actors here regard the "1968 current" as highly dangerous to their interests. They have done everything possible to turn attention and energy away from the objectives of the "1968 current", in what I think of as the great distraction. The past didn't go anywhere What do I mean by a "1968 current"? There were two essential features to the world-revolution of 1968 that remain relevant to the world situation today. First, the revolutionaries of 1968 were protesting against the inherently undemocratic behaviour of those in authority. This was a revolt against such use (or misuse) of authority at all levels: the level of the world-system as a whole; the level of the national and local governments; the level of the multiple non-governmental institutions in which people take part or to which they are subordinated (from workplaces to educational structures to political parties and trade-unions).
In the "Arab Spring" we could see this current strongly at work in Tunisia and Egypt. It was the rapid public embrace of this current that terrified those in power - the rulers of every Arab state without exception, the governments of the "outside" states who were an active presence in the geopolitics of the Arab world, even the governments of very distant states. The spread of an anti-authoritarian logic, and especially its success anywhere, menaced all of them. The governments of the world joined forces to destroy the "1968 current". A growing world movement So far, they have not been able to do it. Indeed, on the contrary, the current is gaining force around the world - from Hong Kong to Athens to Madrid to Santiago to Johannesburg to New York. This is not solely the result of the Arab Spring, since the seeds and even the revolts elsewhere predated December 2010. But the fact that it has occurred so dramatically in the Arab world, once thought relatively unresponsive to such a current, has added considerable momentum to the growing world movement. How have the governments responded to the threat? There are really only three ways to respond to such a threat - repression, concessions and diversion. All three responses have been used, and up to a certain point, their use has achieved some success. Of course, the internal political realities of each state are different, and that is why the dosage of repression, concessions and diversion has varied from state to state. However, the decisive characteristic is, in my view, the second feature of the world-revolution of 1968. The world-revolution of 1968 included in a very major way a revolution of the "forgotten peoples" - those who had been left out of the concerns of the major organised forces of all political stripes. The forgotten peoples had been told that their concerns, their complaints, their demands were secondary and had to be postponed until some other primary concerns were resolved. Who were these forgotten peoples? They were first of all women, half the world's population. They were secondly those who were defined in a given state as "minorities" - a concept that is not really numerical but rather social (and has usually been defined in terms of race or religion or language or some combination thereof). In addition to women and the social "minorities", there exists a long list of other groups who also proclaimed their insistence on not being forgotten: Those with "other" sexual preferences, those who were disabled, those who were the "indigenous" populations in a zone that had been subject to in-migration by powerful outsiders in the last 500 years, those who were deeply concerned with threats to the environment, those who were pacifists. The list has continued to grow, as more and more "groups" became conscious of their status as "forgotten peoples". As one analyses Arab state after Arab state, one realises quite quickly that the list of forgotten peoples and their relation to the regime in power varies considerably. Hence, the degree to which "concessions" can limit revolt varies. The degree to which "repression" is easy or difficult for the regime varies. But make no mistake about it, all regimes want, above all, to stay in power. One way to stay in power is for some of those who are in power to join the uprising, casting overboard a personage who happens to be the president or ruler in favour of the pseudo-neutral armed forces. This is exactly what happened in Egypt. It is that about which those who are today reoccupying Tahrir Square in Egypt are complaining as they seek to reinvigorate the "1968 current". The problem for the major geopolitical actors is that they are not sure how best to "distract" attention and advance their own interests amidst the turmoil. Let us look at what the various actors have been trying to do and the degree to which they have been successful. We will then be able better to assess the prospects of the "1968 current" today and in the relatively near future. Ex-colonial redemption We should start the story with France and Great Britain - the fading ex-colonial powers. They were both badly caught with their pants down in Tunisia and Egypt. Their leaders had, as individuals, been personally profiting from the two dictatorships. They not merely supported them against the uprising, but actively counselled them on how to repress. Finally, and very late, they realised how big a political error this had been. They had to find a way to redeem themselves. They found it in Libya. Muammar Gaddafi had also, just like the French and the British, fully supported Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. Indeed he went the furthest, deploring their resignations. He was obviously deeply frightened by what was happening in the two neighbouring countries. To be sure, there was not much of a true "1968 current" in Libya. But there were plenty of discontented groups. And when these groups began their revolt, he blustered about how hard he would repress them. France and Great Britain saw their opportunity here.
Today, Bernard-Henri Lévy is boasting of the way in which he created a direct link between President Sarkozy of France and the structure of the Libyan rebels on the basis of active intervention to promote human rights. But France and Great Britain, however determined, were unable to unseat Gaddafi without help. They needed the United States. Obama was obviously reluctant at first. But, under internal US pressure ("to promote human rights"), he threw in US military and political assistance to what was now called a NATO effort. He did this on the basis that, in the end, he could argue that not a single US life was lost - only Libyan lives. Just as Gaddafi was unnerved by the ousting of Mubarak, so were the Saudis. They saw Western acquiescence (and subsequently approval) of his departure as a highly dangerous precedent. They decided to pursue their own independent line - the defence of the status quo. They defended it first of all at home, secondly in the Gulf Coordination Council (and in particular in Bahrain), then in the other monarchies (Jordan and Morocco), then in all Arab states. And in the two neighbouring countries in which there was most turmoil - Yemen and Syria - they began to pursue a mediation in which everything would change so that nothing would change. A current not easily contained The new Egyptian regime, under attack at home from the "1968 current" and always sensitive to the fact that Egypt's primacy in the Arab world had diminished seriously, began to revise its geopolitical stance, first of all vis-à -vis Israel. The regime wanted to take its distance from Israel, without, however, jeopardising its ability to obtain financial assistance from the United States. They became an active advocate of reunification of the split Palestinian political world, hoping that this reunification would not only force significant concessions from the Israelis but hamper the development of the "1968 current" among the Palestinians.
And Israel? Israel has been assaulted all around by the prospect of "delegitimisation" - in the Western world (even in Germany, even in the United States), in Egypt and Jordan, in Turkey, in Russia and China. And all the while it has had to face a "1968 current" that has emerged among the Jewish population within Israel. And, as all this geopolitical juggling has been going on, the Arab Spring has become simply one part of what is now very clearly a worldwide unrest occurring everywhere: Oxi in Greece, indignados in Spain, students in Chile, the Occupy movements that have now spread to 800 cities in North America and elsewhere, strikes in China and demonstrations in Hong Kong, multiple happenings across Africa. The "1968 current" is expanding - despite repression, despite concessions, despite co-option. And geopolitically, across the Arab world, the success of the various players has been limited, and in some cases counterproductive. Tahrir Square has become a symbol across the world. Yes, many Islamist movements have been able to express themselves openly in Arab states where they could not do so earlier. But so have the secular left forces. The trade unions are rediscovering their historic role. Those who believe that Arab unrest, that world unrest, is a passing moment will discover in the next major bubble burst (which we can anticipate quite soon) that the "1968 current" will no longer be so easily contained. Immanuel Wallerstein is a professor in the department of sociology at Yale University and author of some 30 books, including The Modern World System - published in four volumes, with a further two anticipated. Prof Wallerstein's decades of work, critical of global capitalism and supporting 'anti-systemic movements' have led to him being recognised as a world-renowned expert in social analysis. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. | ||||||||
Source:
Al Jazeera
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Non Lethal Force : OCCUPY ; Scientific American Magazine Article
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE :
Pepper spray is all over the news, following the Occupy Wall Street protests, particularly following the widely disseminated images and videos of protestors being sprayed in NY, Portland, and UCDavis.
Before that, I knew and occasionally used its main ingredient, capsaicin, as a treatment for my patients with shingles, an extremely painful Herpes zoster infection. And I knew about the many of the serious side effects of pepper spray, well-described by Deborah Blum.
Recently though, other questions arose, like “How was this learned?”. So off I went, looking for clinical trials to see what, if anything, had been studied, beyond the individual patient, poison control, and toxicology reports. Here’s what I learned:
There are reports of the efficacy of capsaicin in crowd control, but little regarding trials of exposures. Perhaps this is because pepper spray is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, as a pesticide and not by the FDA.
The concentration of capsaicin in bear spray is 1-2%; it is 10-30% in “personal defense sprays.”
While the police might feel reassured by the study, “The effect of oleoresin capsicum “pepper” spray inhalation on respiratory function,” I was not. This study met the “gold standard” of clinical trials, in that it was a “randomized, cross-over controlled trial to assess the effect of Oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray inhalation on respiratory function by itself and combined with restraint.” However, while the OC exposure showed no ill effect, only 34 volunteers were exposed to only 1 sec of Cap-Stun 5.5% OC spray by inhalation “from 5 ft away as they might in the field setting (as recommended by both manufacturer and local police policies).”
By contrast, an ACLU report, “Pepper Spray Update: More Fatalities, More Questions” found, in just two years, 26 deaths after OC spraying, noting that death was more likely if the victim was also restrained. This translated to 1 death per 600 times police used spray. (The cause of death was not firmly linked to the OC). According to the ACLU, “an internal memorandum produced by the largest supplier of pepper spray to the California police and civilian markets” concludes that there may be serious risks with more than a 1 sec spray. A subsequent Department of Justice study examined another 63 deaths after pepper spray during arrests; the spray was felt to be a “contributing factor” in several.
A review in 1996 by the Division of Epidemiology of the NC DHHS and OSHA concluded that exposure to OC spray during police training constituted an unacceptable health risk.
Surveillance into crowd control agents examined reports to the British National Poisons Information Service, finding more late (>6 hour) adverse events than had been previously noted, especially skin reactions (blistering, rashes).
Studies have, understandably, more looked at treatment than at systematically exploring toxic effects of pepper spray. An uncontrolled California Poison Control study of 64 patients with exposure to capsaicin (as spray or topically as a cream) showed benefit with topically applied antacids, especially if applied soon after exposure.
In a randomized clinical trial, 47 subjects were assigned to a placebo, a topical nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agent, or a topical anesthetic. The only group with significant symptomatic improvement in pain received proparacaine hydrochloride 0.5%–and only 55% had decreased pain with treatment.
Another randomized controlled trial looked at 49 volunteers who were treated with one of five treatment groups (aluminum hydroxide–magnesium hydroxide [Maalox], 2% lidocaine gel, baby shampoo, milk, or water). There was a significant difference in pain with more rapid treatment, but not between the groups.
I was most impressed with the efforts of the Black Cross Health Collective in Portland, Oregon. These activists have been thoughtfully approaching studying treatments for pepper spray exposures with published clinical trial protocols, where each volunteer also serves as their own control. Capsaicin is applied to each arm; a “subject-blinded” treatment is applied to one arm, and differences in pain responses are recorded. I love that they are looking for evidenced based solutions.
So far, antacids have been the most effective.
Suggestions for further study
Pepper spray causes inflammation and swelling—particularly a danger for those with underlying asthma or emphysema. In fact, the Department of Justice report notes that in two of 63 clearly documented deaths, the subjects were asthmatic. If they don’t already, police need to have protocols in place to identify and treat “sprayees” who have these pre-existing conditions that predispose them to serious harm from the spray. This particularly holds true for people also at risk for respiratory compromise from being restrained, on other drugs, or with obesity. The study of restrained healthy volunteers exposed to small amounts of capsaicin is simply not applicable to the general population. Also, given that these compounds appear to have delayed effects, there should be legally required medical monitoring of “sprayees” at regular and frequent intervals for at least 24 hours—by someone competent. (Iraq war veteran Kayvan Sabehgi could easily have died from the lacerated spleen sustained in his beating by police. It was 18 hours before he was taken to the hospital, after the jail’s nurse reportedly only offered him a suppository for his abdominal pain. There is also an, as yet unconfirmed report, of a miscarriage after the Portland, Oregon OWS protest last week).
<< CORRECTION>> Occupy Seattle, not Portland.
Unfortunately, there is an urgent need for clinical trials in this area—both retrospective assessments of “sprayees” health outcomes, and prospective randomized trials [like the trial done on subjects' arms] to elucidate the effects of various capsaicin concentrations, carrier solvents and propellents and to identify the most effective treatments for each mixture. Until those can be done, there should be a thorough outcomes registry kept, with standardized data being obtained on all those subsequent to being pepper-sprayed.
Sadly, I’m sure the Black Cross and others in the Occupy Wall Street movement will have too many opportunities to test therapies against painful crowd-control chemicals. Studies will be difficult because the settings are largely uncontrolled and because the sprays have different concentrations of capsaicin, carrier solvents, and propellants.
Until then, there should be a moratorium on the use of pepper spray or other “non-lethal” chemicals by police, except in clearly life-threatening confrontations, due to the high number of associated deaths until the risks are better understood?
Perhaps Kamran Loghman, who helped the FBI weaponize pepper spray, will be dismayed enough at the “inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents” to help the Black Cross develop effective antidotes…One can only hope.
Image credits: Image 1 by Brian Nguyen from The California Aggie via BoingBoing (CC with attribution); Image 2 from FreakOutNation; Image 3 from mellowed blues.
Previously in this series:
Molecules to Medicine: Clinical Trials for Beginners
Molecules to Medicine: From Test-Tube to Medicine Chest
Lilly’s Shocker, or the Post-Marketing Blues
Molecules to Medicine: Pharma Trumps HIPAA?
Related at Scientific American:
About Pepper Spray
Why One Pepper-Spraying Cop Image Dominates
Protest Infrastructure: How Much Trouble Are Protesters, Really?
How Valid Are Health Concerns for the Occupy Wall Street Camps?
Dear Occupy Wall Street: Read Jeffrey Sachs!
“Occupy Wall Street” Passes Near Scientific American‘s Office in New York City
The “Last Place Aversion” Paradox: The surprising psychology of the Occupy Wall Street protests
About the Author: Judy Stone, MD is an infectious disease specialist, experienced in conducting clinical research. She is the author of Conducting Clinical Research, the essential guide to the topic. She survived 25 years in solo practice in rural Cumberland, Maryland, and is now broadening her horizons. She particularly loves writing about ethical issues, and tilting at windmills in her advocacy for social justice. As part of her overall desire to save the world when she grows up, she has become especially interested in neglected tropical diseases. When not slaving over hot patients, she can be found playing with photography, friends’ dogs, or in her garden. Follow on Twitter @drjudystone or on her website. Follow on Twitter @drjudystone.
Molecules to Medicine: Should pepper spray be put on (clinical) trial?
November 23, 2011| 
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Pepper spray is all over the news, following the Occupy Wall Street protests, particularly following the widely disseminated images and videos of protestors being sprayed in NY, Portland, and UCDavis.
Before that, I knew and occasionally used its main ingredient, capsaicin, as a treatment for my patients with shingles, an extremely painful Herpes zoster infection. And I knew about the many of the serious side effects of pepper spray, well-described by Deborah Blum.
Recently though, other questions arose, like “How was this learned?”. So off I went, looking for clinical trials to see what, if anything, had been studied, beyond the individual patient, poison control, and toxicology reports. Here’s what I learned:
There are reports of the efficacy of capsaicin in crowd control, but little regarding trials of exposures. Perhaps this is because pepper spray is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, as a pesticide and not by the FDA.
The concentration of capsaicin in bear spray is 1-2%; it is 10-30% in “personal defense sprays.”
While the police might feel reassured by the study, “The effect of oleoresin capsicum “pepper” spray inhalation on respiratory function,” I was not. This study met the “gold standard” of clinical trials, in that it was a “randomized, cross-over controlled trial to assess the effect of Oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray inhalation on respiratory function by itself and combined with restraint.” However, while the OC exposure showed no ill effect, only 34 volunteers were exposed to only 1 sec of Cap-Stun 5.5% OC spray by inhalation “from 5 ft away as they might in the field setting (as recommended by both manufacturer and local police policies).”
By contrast, an ACLU report, “Pepper Spray Update: More Fatalities, More Questions” found, in just two years, 26 deaths after OC spraying, noting that death was more likely if the victim was also restrained. This translated to 1 death per 600 times police used spray. (The cause of death was not firmly linked to the OC). According to the ACLU, “an internal memorandum produced by the largest supplier of pepper spray to the California police and civilian markets” concludes that there may be serious risks with more than a 1 sec spray. A subsequent Department of Justice study examined another 63 deaths after pepper spray during arrests; the spray was felt to be a “contributing factor” in several.
A review in 1996 by the Division of Epidemiology of the NC DHHS and OSHA concluded that exposure to OC spray during police training constituted an unacceptable health risk.
Surveillance into crowd control agents examined reports to the British National Poisons Information Service, finding more late (>6 hour) adverse events than had been previously noted, especially skin reactions (blistering, rashes).
Studies have, understandably, more looked at treatment than at systematically exploring toxic effects of pepper spray. An uncontrolled California Poison Control study of 64 patients with exposure to capsaicin (as spray or topically as a cream) showed benefit with topically applied antacids, especially if applied soon after exposure.
In a randomized clinical trial, 47 subjects were assigned to a placebo, a topical nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agent, or a topical anesthetic. The only group with significant symptomatic improvement in pain received proparacaine hydrochloride 0.5%–and only 55% had decreased pain with treatment.
Another randomized controlled trial looked at 49 volunteers who were treated with one of five treatment groups (aluminum hydroxide–magnesium hydroxide [Maalox], 2% lidocaine gel, baby shampoo, milk, or water). There was a significant difference in pain with more rapid treatment, but not between the groups.
I was most impressed with the efforts of the Black Cross Health Collective in Portland, Oregon. These activists have been thoughtfully approaching studying treatments for pepper spray exposures with published clinical trial protocols, where each volunteer also serves as their own control. Capsaicin is applied to each arm; a “subject-blinded” treatment is applied to one arm, and differences in pain responses are recorded. I love that they are looking for evidenced based solutions.
So far, antacids have been the most effective.
Suggestions for further study
Pepper spray causes inflammation and swelling—particularly a danger for those with underlying asthma or emphysema. In fact, the Department of Justice report notes that in two of 63 clearly documented deaths, the subjects were asthmatic. If they don’t already, police need to have protocols in place to identify and treat “sprayees” who have these pre-existing conditions that predispose them to serious harm from the spray. This particularly holds true for people also at risk for respiratory compromise from being restrained, on other drugs, or with obesity. The study of restrained healthy volunteers exposed to small amounts of capsaicin is simply not applicable to the general population. Also, given that these compounds appear to have delayed effects, there should be legally required medical monitoring of “sprayees” at regular and frequent intervals for at least 24 hours—by someone competent. (Iraq war veteran Kayvan Sabehgi could easily have died from the lacerated spleen sustained in his beating by police. It was 18 hours before he was taken to the hospital, after the jail’s nurse reportedly only offered him a suppository for his abdominal pain. There is also an, as yet unconfirmed report, of a miscarriage after the Portland, Oregon OWS protest last week).
<< CORRECTION>> Occupy Seattle, not Portland.
Unfortunately, there is an urgent need for clinical trials in this area—both retrospective assessments of “sprayees” health outcomes, and prospective randomized trials [like the trial done on subjects' arms] to elucidate the effects of various capsaicin concentrations, carrier solvents and propellents and to identify the most effective treatments for each mixture. Until those can be done, there should be a thorough outcomes registry kept, with standardized data being obtained on all those subsequent to being pepper-sprayed.
Sadly, I’m sure the Black Cross and others in the Occupy Wall Street movement will have too many opportunities to test therapies against painful crowd-control chemicals. Studies will be difficult because the settings are largely uncontrolled and because the sprays have different concentrations of capsaicin, carrier solvents, and propellants.
Until then, there should be a moratorium on the use of pepper spray or other “non-lethal” chemicals by police, except in clearly life-threatening confrontations, due to the high number of associated deaths until the risks are better understood?
Perhaps Kamran Loghman, who helped the FBI weaponize pepper spray, will be dismayed enough at the “inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents” to help the Black Cross develop effective antidotes…One can only hope.
Image credits: Image 1 by Brian Nguyen from The California Aggie via BoingBoing (CC with attribution); Image 2 from FreakOutNation; Image 3 from mellowed blues.
Previously in this series:
Molecules to Medicine: Clinical Trials for Beginners
Molecules to Medicine: From Test-Tube to Medicine Chest
Lilly’s Shocker, or the Post-Marketing Blues
Molecules to Medicine: Pharma Trumps HIPAA?
Related at Scientific American:
About Pepper Spray
Why One Pepper-Spraying Cop Image Dominates
Protest Infrastructure: How Much Trouble Are Protesters, Really?
How Valid Are Health Concerns for the Occupy Wall Street Camps?
Dear Occupy Wall Street: Read Jeffrey Sachs!
“Occupy Wall Street” Passes Near Scientific American‘s Office in New York City
The “Last Place Aversion” Paradox: The surprising psychology of the Occupy Wall Street protests
About the Author: Judy Stone, MD is an infectious disease specialist, experienced in conducting clinical research. She is the author of Conducting Clinical Research, the essential guide to the topic. She survived 25 years in solo practice in rural Cumberland, Maryland, and is now broadening her horizons. She particularly loves writing about ethical issues, and tilting at windmills in her advocacy for social justice. As part of her overall desire to save the world when she grows up, she has become especially interested in neglected tropical diseases. When not slaving over hot patients, she can be found playing with photography, friends’ dogs, or in her garden. Follow on Twitter @drjudystone or on her website. Follow on Twitter @drjudystone.
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