Quando qualcuno commette un crimine contro qualcun altro, solo l’autore di questo crimine dovrebbe essere considerato responsabile. Non la famiglia o i compagni di camera, non quelli della sua razza o nazionalità, non quelli che condividono le sue idee politiche, non quelli che vivono nella stessa area geografica. La punizione collettiva è immorale. La Convenzione di Ginevra la considera un crimine, un’aggressione violenta che tutti quelli che tengono ai diritti dell’individuo dovrebbero odiare. Ora, in risposta alla morte di questi adolescenti, il governo israeliano ha deciso di commettere questo crimine.

Soldati israeliani hanno demolito le case di Marwan al-Qawasmeh e Amer Abu Aisheh, sospettati del rapimento e dell’uccisione. Questa punizione è avvenuta senza processo. La demolizione ha terrorizzato membri di famiglie innocenti e vicini di casa, e ha danneggiato i loro beni. Secondo la Reuters, “Prima di far saltare in aria la casa, i soldati hanno mandato in frantumi le finestre e scaraventato a terra i sofà. Hanno fatto a pezzi con una mazza il water e il lavandino, oltre ai gradini della scala uno per uno. Zucchero, yogurt e pane sono stati gettati sul pavimento della cucina.”

Questa distruzione gratuita non è stata d’aiuto alla cattura dei sospetti, né ha risarcito le famiglie delle vittime. È solo una distruzione stupida che terrorizza un vicinato e impoverisce il mondo.

E non finisce qui. Secondo Amnesty International, il governo israeliano “la mattina del primo luglio ha lanciato almeno 34 attacchi aerei in diverse località di Gaza. Ci sono notizie di feriti palestinesi.” Com’è facile immaginare, queste azioni colpiscono innocenti, lasciandosi dietro indiscriminatamente feriti, morti e distruzione.

Amnesty parla anche di persone morte per mano delle forze di sicurezza israeliane da quando è iniziata la ricerca dei giovani rapiti. Secondo il governo israeliano, uno dei morti, Yousef Abu Zagha, lanciò una granata; ma secondo la Associated Press “la famiglia dice che stava portando a casa delle uova per il pasto prima dell’alba, come previsto dal digiuno del Ramadan.”

La punizione collettiva non è una novità per lo stato di Israele. Da tanto tempo costringe il popolo di Gaza alla povertà con un embargo draconiano che divide le famiglie, priva le persone della libertà di cercare cure mediche, e impedisce quel commercio pacifico che potrebbe dare benefici e prosperità ad entrambe le parti. L’Onu ha condannato l’embargo come una violazione dei diritti umani.

Lo stato di Israele, inoltre, arresta arbitrariamente i palestinesi. Secondo Amnesty, sono “almeno 364 i palestinesi attualmente agli arresti amministrativi, un numero che non si vedeva da anni.”

E sono numerosi i posti di blocco che limitano la libertà di movimento dei palestinesi, a molti dei quali Israele demolisce le case per costringerli ad andare altrove e rubare loro le terre.

Lo stato di Israele cerca di giustificare tutta questa violenza nel nome della lotta al terrorismo. Ma è lo stesso stato che fa violenza alle popolazioni civili per terrorizzarle e raggiungere i propri scopi. Terrorismo è semmai la violenza praticata dallo stato di Israele.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

When someone commits a violent crime against another person, the perpetrator should be held accountable. Not the perpetrator’s family or roommates, not those of the same race or nationality, not those with similar political views, not those who live in the same geographical area. Collective punishment is immoral. It is a war crime under the Geneva Convention and it constitutes aggressive violence that all who care about individual rights should abhor. But in response to the deaths of these teenagers, the Israeli government chose to engage in it.

Israeli soldiers demolished the homes of Marwan al-Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh,  suspects in the abduction and killing of the Israeli teenagers. This punishment was inflicted without trial. The demolitions terrorized innocent family members and neighbors and damaged their property. According to Reuters, “Before blowing up the house, soldiers shattered the windows and threw sofas to the ground. Toilets and sinks, along with every step in the staircase, were smashed with a sledgehammer. Sugar, yogurt and bread were thrown across the kitchen floor.”

This gratuitous destruction didn’t help apprehend the suspects, nor did it provide restitution to the families of the victims. This is senseless destruction that terrorizes a neighborhood and makes the world less prosperous.

The collective punishment doesn’t end there. According to Amnesty International, the Israeli government “launched at least 34 air strikes on locations across Gaza on the morning of 1 July. There have been reports of Palestinian injuries.” Such actions predictably harm innocents by causing injuries, death and property destruction indiscriminately.

Amnesty also reports multiple deaths at the hands of Israeli security forces since the search for the abducted teens began. While the Israeli government alleges that one of the dead, Yousef Abu Zagha, hurled a grenade, the Associated Press reports that “his family said he had been carrying eggs home for a predawn meal before the daylight fast for the Ramadan holiday.”

Collective punishment is not a new practice for the Israeli state. That state has long forcibly kept the people of Gaza in poverty with a draconian blockade which separates families, deprives individuals of the freedom to seek medical care, and forcibly prevents peaceful trade that could produce mutual benefit and prosperity. The UN has condemned this blockade as a violation of human rights.

The Israeli state arbitrarily locks up Palestinians, according to Amnesty, “with at least 364 Palestinians currently under administrative detention, the highest number in years.”

Checkpoints are used to restrict Palestinians’ freedom of movement. Palestinians’ homes are demolished as the Israeli state forcibly displaces them and steals their land.

The Israeli government seeks to justify all of this violence in the name of fighting terrorism. Yet the Israeli state is engaging in violence against civilian populations in order to terrorize those populations and thus achieve their political aims. Israeli state violence is terrorism.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Punizione Collettiva e Terrore di Stato Israeliano.

Brazil is a violent country. A sizable part of the population experiences many aggressions in its streets. However, violence in Brazil is present in prisons too. There, it can take very subtle forms, which very few people – except those who suffer from it – come to know about. Among these subtle forms of violence are the “vexatious searches.” On April 23, Rede Justiça Criminal launched a national campaign against vexatious searches in prisons.

The campaign’s website splash page warns us: “This campaign contains offensive language, and dramatizations are based on real accounts from the victims.” When we proceed, there is a new warning: “Close your eyes, put on a headset and feel the victims’ pain.” The stories are very moving. They speak of women and children who went to visit their incarcerated family members and had to strip and spread their genitalia open as well as squat three times before being allowed in the prison. “We can’t see inside. Open your vagina with your hands. There, that way I can see it properly,” a prison officer says in one of the accounts.

In a handwritten letter publicized by Rede Justiça Criminal, a woman denounces what happens in a São Paulo penitentiary:

We suffered constant humiliation and embarrassment; we had to pry our intimate parts open with our hands, lift our legs and rest them on the counter, put the finger in, crawl on all fours, and (…) if we are having our period, we cannot visit our relatives.

The institution defines vexatious searches as the “procedure to which people are submitted when they visit their family members in prison. This practice is known as vexatious search exactly because of its humiliating and abusive character. These people, children, adults, or elders, are required to take off their clothes, squat several times, and often have their genitals inspected (with no attention to hygiene whatsoever).”

Rede Justiça Criminal also notes that it is a harsh reality that approximately half a million people weekly in Brazil endure, while its effectiveness to prevent the entry of drugs or cell phones in the penal institutions is debatable: According to a survey, only .03% of the people searched in São Paulo penitentiaries are ever caught holding banned items. It affects disproportionately adult women, who make up 70% of the searched.

Researchers Raquel Lima and Amanda Oi also stress that the practice’s perceived legitimacy distorts the officer’s view of the situation:

And … those women who cry, try to cover their body with their hands, or demand their rights to be respected are treated as undisciplined and not as people reacting instinctively to an act of violence. Many end up being punished with loss of visiting privileges for at least 30 days, under the justification that they slow down work by the prison personnel.

We should not be surprised: Obedience to authority is an instrument of psychological desensitizing, as described by Milgram’s famous experiment. Without a culture of questioning power, there can be no respect to basic individual rights.

For that reason, the group calls for the approval of a new law which would forbid this practice (nowadays it’s left to each state to regulate it) and propose, as an alternative, the so-called “humanized search,” already employed in the state of Goiás.

A large public debate was needed about the subject in Goiás so that it would enact change. It was spurred by the publication by the Public Prosecution of a video in 2010 called “Vexatious Search – Visiting a Brazilian Prison.” According to prosecutor Harold Caetano da Silva, it was brought about by the “courage of a woman who allowed filming of her search under the old system and was willing to denounce, even if it meant exposing her own body, the abject institutional violence committed by the State of Goiás against the people, mainly women, of all ages, that experience the duress of having a relative, friend or partner convicted and incarcerated.”

As David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan pointed out, the existence of civil rights, and even the existence of a libertarian society, depends on a culture of freedom and individuality, where specific heroic acts are catalysts for change. Despite the human tendency to social conformity, the example of someone who rebels against an unjust rule makes it easier for other people to question it, creating a new opposing trend. The example of this woman in Goiás is firmly within this social dynamic, bringing about change that prevented many people from going through the same situation as her.

Prisoners’ families should not be penalized by vexatious searches. It is necessary to liberate Brazilians from yet another state violence. As libertarians, we cannot tolerate it if we ever want to live in a free society.

Translated from Portuguese into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

“The Iraq War was, as wars go, not an especially harsh or brutal one, and was largely conducted according to all the latest precepts of “humanitarian intervention.” The free-fire zones of Vietnam were largely absent, as were the brutalities of massed, prolonged aerial and artillery bombardment. And yet, the results are unimaginably horrific to us in our First World comfort. Sandy Hook and Columbine reverberate to this day in America; in the hell into which we plunged Iraq, neither would even make the front page. There is no war without horrific violence and nightmarish suffering. Never forget.”

Last night, 13 people were killed when a café in Baghdad was bombed, bringing the total killed yesterday to forty-six. In America, we are still discussing a terrible shooting at a school that killed 28 people, including the perpetrator, over a year ago. In Iraq, more than 2,000 people have been killed just so far this year. Every single one of those deaths, and every single one of the 500,000 killed since 2003, is an entirely foreseeable consequence of American foreign policy.

But today, rather than rehashing the well-known arguments against the war, let us focus on what the war has cost us. The American death toll is well known- 4,489 killed, 32,021 wounded. According to several studies, a minimum of 4% and a maximum of 17% of American veterans of the Iraq War suffer from PTSD. Applying the lower bound to the population of Iraq, we can estimate that at least 1.3 million Iraqis suffer from this debilitating condition, which can cause difficulty sleeping, emotional detachment and outbursts of rage, among other things, and which denies those who suffer from it the possibility of leaving their suffering behind and living a normal life.

Worse still, these victims of the Iraq War, along with the survivors left behind by the dead and the wounded, do not have the support structures American veterans enjoy. American veterans are eligible for disability pensions, career retraining, and free medical care for their war wounds, physical and psychological. However dysfunctional the institutions providing these services may be, American veterans still fare much better than the Iraqi people. The Iraqis, who bore the brunt of the war, are simply left to suffer while some “libertarians” wonder why they are not more grateful for their plight.

The Iraq War was, as wars go, not an especially harsh or brutal one, and was largely conducted according to all the latest precepts of “humanitarian intervention.” The free-fire zones of Vietnam were largely absent, as were the brutalities of massed, prolonged aerial and artillery bombardment. And yet, the results are unimaginably horrific to us in our First World comfort. Sandy Hook and Columbine reverberate to this day in America; in the hell into which we plunged Iraq, neither would even make the front page. There is no war without horrific violence and nightmarish suffering. Never forget.

It does not end with just these incidents; strip searches are routine at airports. If we wish to travel via air, then we must grant the state permission to invade our privacy and our bodies. Probably the most explicit form of state rape — that is some kind of sexual assault or violation undertaken by a representative, or someone with authority granted by the state – is prison rape. What gives a government official this power? If we consider the specific case of the man in New Mexico, it is unlikely that two men on the street would have been able to apprehend him and conduct these acts without him protesting, resisting, trying to get away or, at the very least, gaining support from bystanders.

Given the position of authority granted to these men, however, means that physical resistance isn’t even a reasonable response. The presence of law enforcement in this man’s ordeal provided the implicit threat of an infinitely scalable escalation of violence. Had he attempted to stop one of the doctors from violating him, at least one officer would have gotten involved to subdue him; were he successful in subduing one cop, it is likely that a second cop would have used lethal force against him; in the unlikely event that he could have stopped this, the state has near unlimited resources to stop him. He could be chased to other states, even extradited from another nation. As soon as the state is involved in a situation like this, the individual citizen has already lost. While some instances are eventually dealt with in an appropriate manner, the aforementioned prison rape by prison authorities shows that even after sexual assault takes place, the opportunity for recourse is minimal to non-existent — to the point where authorities were able to deny that such a thing was even a problem.

Recently a report by the Department of Justice, surveying nearly 2 million prisoners from federal, state, local and private prisons, found that almost half of sexual assaults in prison are perpetrated by prison staff. In cases where allegations were substantiated, less than half the offenders were prosecuted or faced jail time. This issue stems from the conflict of interest that arises when state officials are expected to be held accountable to and prosecuted by other state officials. It’s the same reason we don’t see police engaged in acts of brutality being handcuffed by their peers. Inmates attempting to report such offenses must deal with possible retaliation by the accused or their peers, who have been granted power over them by the state. As demonstrated before, their actions carry with them the implicit threat of infinitely scalable violence.

If these cases do reach court, again we have the problem of representatives of the state sympathizing with fellow agents of the justice system. This is exemplified by the recent sentencing of a police officer charged with violently anally assaulting twelve victims. The officer in question, who is by any account a serial rapist, faces only two years in prison. Four other officers were involved, reportedly assisting by holding down and even pointing guns at the victims. The accomplices face no charges at all.

Writing here about the horrors of state rape and the power dynamics involved is in no way meant to minimise the horrors of rape by private individuals against others. The difference in this situation is that the power given to the attackers is artificial. With the elimination of the organisation that grants the power to strip rights from other human beings, backed by the implicit threat of infinitely scalable violence, we can at least remove this scourge from our society.

“This is one of the most horrifying, despicable things that I have seen all day. People who post this kind of adulation for this mass murderer — an immensely privileged millionaire dynastic politician, who imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent people in military internment camps solely on the basis of their race, who repeatedly turned away Jews fleeing the Holocaust, who sponsored and administered nativist immigration policies and spoke in openly racist terms against “the mingling of Asiatic blood with European and American blood,” whose policies and whose court appointments resulted in some of the worst adverse civil-rights decisions of the 20th century — the man who authorized the firebombing of Tokyo and the creation of the atomic bombs, who spent the 1930s courting votes from Jim Crow Dixiecrats, who repeatedly used federal forces to imprison striking workers during the Depression, who drove Congress to create the House Un-American Activities Committee and who ordered J. Edgar Hoover to begin the massive covert political espionage program which later became COINTELPRO, . . . — people who post this kind of adulation, I say, thinking that they are doing so in the name of liberalism, are white-washing history and excusing the violation of human rights in defense of immense, unaccountable privilege.

Nobody who professes to have even an ounce of concern about social justice or civil liberty should have anything but disgust for the record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Anarchist, of course, note the state’s claim to a monopoly on violence, and observe that TSA agents are known for things such as racial profiling, sexual assault and other forms of aggression. Their very jobs are facilitated through state aggression. It should come as no surprise, then, that someone reacted with retaliatory violence toward the TSA, as Paul Anthony Ciancia apparently did.

But why is it still wrong?

The violence of the state creates ripple effects across our communities at large. From public schools to the war on drugs, we are surrounded by statism. Its violence pervades our social arrangements. I would argue that at the core of violence in our communities is allegiance to the state. That allegiance creates a culture in which it is considered acceptable, nay virtuous, to aggress against others in order to meet our social and economic ends.  At least, as long it is the political class doing the aggressing. Yet, when people fight back, they are abhorred. This is not to say that what Ciancia was moral or virtuous; it’s just that statism creates a strong layer of cognitive dissonance. The fact that Ciancia committed an act of violence against the state is not, broadly speaking, wrong. But he failed to take into account that the state, being pervasive, can technically make just about anyone, from a teacher to a fireman, one’s enemy. He joined the state in its game of violence, and not only did he lose, but more than likely the TSA will become more violent and aggressive.

Paul Anthony Ciancia has made things worse.

Note that this is not an argument against violence, per se, but rather to the fundamental flaw of violent revolution: The state is simply better at violence.

What could people like Paul Anthony Ciancia do instead of playing the state’s game? I am no techie, but one idea I have is developing open source, black market methods of air travel. If drug dealers can do it, why can’t other people? Perhaps there are people out there smarter than I who could develop cloaking devices for larger planes. The point is, there are plenty of things the state is bad at, and dealing with decentralized workarounds to its systems is one of the areas where it is the weakest.

Put simply, capitalize on something the political class doesn’t understand: Peace.

O artigo a seguir foi escrito por Anthony Gregory e publicado por O Estandarte Libertário, 18 de abril de 2013.

Há algo com abril. De Columbine à Virginia Tech, de Oklahoma City a Boston, meado a fim de abril ocasiona alguns dos mais execráveis massacres em solo estadunidense. Pelo menos aqueles que, dizem-nos, deveríamos focar. Os assassinos são chamados de terroristas. A menos que vistam uniformes, como fizeram em 19 de abril de 1993, logo ao largo de Waco, Texas. Daquela vez, como somos instados a acreditar, os terroristas foram os que morreram. Em todos esses massacres, independentemente dos aspectos específicos, o governo se apresenta como aquele que mantém o caos à distância.

O estado afirma erguer-se contra o terrorismo, mas matar pessoas é sua marca registrada. As chacinas tomam várias formas, quase todas as quais alimentam a saúde do estado. O estado leva a efeito muita matança abertamente. O estado oficialmente posa de contrário a outras matanças, embora todavia as estimule por meio de sua própria violência. Até a matança não levada a efeito diretamente pelo estado serve como pretexto para o aumento do estado.

Em Boston, nesta segunda-feira, alguém deixou bombas que assassinaram três pessoas, inclusive um menino de oito anos de didade, e feriram outras 176. O Presidente Obama chamou o crime de “ato de terrorismo.” A definição de “terrorismo” dada pelo establishment sempre foi falha, visto que sempre absolveu categoricamente o governo, mas pelo menos sempre especificou envolver civis escolhidos como alvo para o atingimento de objetivos políticos. Nada obstante, nos dias atuais, mesmo antes de o motivo ser conhecido, como no caso de Boston, ou quando os alvos não são civis, como no caso dos soldados estadunidenses no exterior, o governo dos Estados Unidos chama quaisquer atos dramáticos de violência que desaprove de “terrorismo.”

Este fevereiro, chamou o ex-policial Chris Dorner de terrorista. Então a polícia o cercou numa cabana para queimá-lo vivo, pedindo à mídia para cobrir os olhos como em Waco. Todo mundo que sabia como o governo funciona não tinha motivo para esperar que ao homem fosse concedido o devido processo legal. Iriam caçá-lo, capturá-lo e matá-lo de qualquer maneira. A mídia dispensou a formalidade de chamá-lo de “possível” assassino. O Departamento de Polícia de Los Angeles – LAPD julgou-o e condenou-o e executou-o no mesmo dia e ningém exibiu a menor reação. Enquanto isso, os liberais vêm com aquela conversa de que a tirania estadunidense é irresponsável e os conservadores continuam sua adoração à imposição do cumprimento da lei.

Hoje, resistência violenta ao estado é chamada de terrorismo. Muitos dos “terroristas” arrebanhados e presos em Guantánamo Bay foram no máximo culpados de defender seu país contra um exército invasor. Algumas dessas pessoas continuam a definhar naquele calabouço, vendo sua desesperada greve de fome em protesto contra as condições em deterioração não obter resposta, exceto da parte de uma admoinistração disposta a privá-los de sua água.

De 28 de fevereiro a 19 de abril de 1993, os Davidianos do Rebento resistiram. Na manhã de 28 de fevereiro, cerca de cem agentes do Bureau de Álcool, Tabaco, Armas de Fogo e Explosivos – ATF, escondidos em trailers de gado, desceram sobre a propriedade deles. Os agentes haviam planejado e treinado por oito meses, havendo praticado sua agressão histriônica contra modelos de edifícios. Não havia motivo para tudo isso a não ser publicidade. Os agentes poderiam facilmente ter prendido Koresh, com quem tinham feito amizade. Os agentes haviam conduzido uma investigação para efeito de violações concernentes a armas e nada encontraram. Koresh havia cooperado com eles. O 60 Minutos havia recentemente focalizado um escândalo de assédio sexual da ATF, e o órgão havia sido acusado de discriminação durante reunião de subcomissão da Câmara. O bureau desejava melhorar sua imagem pública. Autoridades foram à imprensa para assegurarem-se de que repórteres pudessem testemunhar seus feitos heroicos na última manhã de fevereiro de 1993.

Diferentemente da vasta maioria das centenas de incursões militarizadas diárias internas aos Estados Unidos, a incursão de surpresa do ATF chamada “Operação Hora do Espetáculo” encontrou resistência. Quando a munição dos agentes acabou, os davidianos cessaram fogo. Houve baixas de ambos os lados, embora um agente anônimo tenha dito ao Notícias Matinais de Dallas que suspeitava de alguns agentes terem tombado por causa de fogo amigo. Uma vez a incursão tendo-se tornado claro desastre, o ATF forçou a imprensa a afastar-se.

Então veio o impasse/ponto morto. O FBI assumiu e transformou-o numa operação militar plena em solo estadunidense. A guerra psicológica desceu dura sobre os seguidores de Koresh. O FBI clangorou música alta e obnóxia, e sons de matança de animais, enquanto lançava luzes cegantes pela noite. Agentes sem motivo algum guiaram um veículo para profanarem um túmulo davidiano. O governo cortou do grupo acesso a família, mídia, e advogados. Destruiu seu suprimento de água.

A mídia demonizou os davidianos pintando-os como um culto armado que cometia abusos contra suas crianças. Os jornalistas tenderam a noticiar as afirmações do governo como se fossem fato. Eles, porém, igualmente se tornaram cada vez mais críticos em relação ao ATF e ao FBI. Depois de semanas de parecerem trapalhonas na mídia majoritária, particularmente após relato de fatos comprometedores no New York Times em 28 de março revelar o mau planejamento e a inconsequência da incursão inicial, as autoridades do governo foram-se tornando cada vez mais hostis à mídia. Em 11 de abril, o chefe da inteligência do ATF David Troy parou completamente de ter suas reuniões coletivas regulares com a imprensa.

A Procuradora Geral Janet Reno, que assumira o cargo no meio do impasse, finalmente resolveu pôr fim a ele. Às cerca de 6 da manhã de 19 de abril, o FBI começou a bombear gás CS inflamável e venenoso, proibido em guerra internacional, no lar davidiano. As autoridades sabiam que mulheres e crianças estariam escondidas na secção da residência exposta a esse gás. O governo continuou a utilizar gás por quase seis horas.

O professor de química George F. Uhlig avaliou, em audiências do Congresso, haver probabilidade de sessenta por cento de só o gás já ter matado algumas crianças. “Liberar quantidade excessiva de CS definitivamente não consultava os melhores interesses das crianças,” disse Uhlig. “Máscaras contra gás não se encaixam muito bem em crianças, quando se encaixam.” Ele depôs dizendo que a aplicação de gás pode ter transformado a área circunjacente “em área similar a uma das câmaras de gás usadas pelos nazistas em Auschwitz.”

O FBI trouxe um tanque Abrams, o mais pesado veículo blindado do Exército, para substituir seus veículos de combate Bradley. Agentes dirigiram o tanque, que posteriormente a Procuradora Geral Janet Reno obscenamente comparou a “um bom carro alugado,” para dentro do prédio. O franco-atirador do FBI Lon Horiuchi, que havia atingido e matado Vicki Weaver em agosto de 1992 em Ruby Ridge com ela segurando o filho nos braços, estava no local. Agentes do FBI lançaram embalagens de gás lacrimogênio incendiário. O porta-voz do Departamento de Justiça Myron Marlin declarou mais tarde: “Não sabemos de evidência a apoiar que qualquer dispositivo incendiário fosse usado no complexo em 19 de abril de 1993.” O FBI finalmente admitiu, seis anos depois, ter de fato usado tais projéteis em Waco.

O lar davidiano fez-se em chamas no início da tarde. Mais de setenta pessoas morreram, todas elas alvos civis, muitas delas estadunidenses, outras oriundas de outros países, mais de vinte delas crianças e perto da metade pessoas de cor, embora de algum modo os davidianos tivessem amiúde tido sua reputação manchada, juntamente com o assim chamado movimento da milícia, sendo chamados de supremacistas da raça branca. Ao o fogo intensificar-se, o FBI não deixou que o corpo de bombeiros acorresse. O agente especial Jeffrey Jamar alegou que temia pela segurança dos bombeiros — presumivelmente, os davidianos poderiam atirar exatamente nas pessoas que tentariam apagar o fogo que os estava levando à morte. Quando tudo terminou, o AFT hasteou sua bandeira no topo das ruínas conquistadas.

O julgamento dos sobreviventes foi um embuste. Jurados confusos buscavam condenar os sobreviventes por ofensas relacionadas com armas, mas não por assassínios. O juiz perfilou-se com a promotoria e questionou as intenções dos jurados. Ao chegar 1999, pesquisas indicavam que forte maioria dos estadunidenses culpava o FBI por iniciar o incêndio. O advogado especial John Danforth, Republicano, divulgou relatório, no ano seguinte, isentando de qualquer culpa a administração Clinton por aquela atrocidade.

Depois de Sandy Hook, os liberais regurgitaram todos os exauridos argumentos a respeito de controle de armas, mas um dos mais interessantes é que uma população armada não funciona para conter uma tirania porque o governo tem o equipamento militar para vencer qualquer confronto. E de fato é verdade: a maioria dos que resistem ao governo são esmagados como insetos. Alguns resistem violentamente, como os índios Lakota em Wounded Knee em dezembro de 1890, e são chacinados. Outros são atingidos por ousarem resistir até mediante jogar pedras em tropas armadas, como os quatro estudantes assassinados e os nove feridos na Kent State em maio de 1970. Outros são atingidos depois de alguns anos de relativa calma, como os radicais do MOVE de Filadélfia em maio de 1985. Os liberais estão corretos em que o governo tem os meios e a vontade de esmagar estadunidenses que ousem resistir. Esse fato nunca parece convencer os liberais de que o estado é, para começo de conversa, extremamente poderoso e ameaçador, e talvez a última coisa que deveríamos querer é dar a ele mais poderes de fazer cumprir a lei, tais como a monopolização de armas de fogo, por meio de uma guerra às armas de fogo.

Perto de uma vez por dia a polícia mata um estadunidense, mas é amiúde um criminoso e ninguém se importa, ou pelo menos uma pessoa marginalizada como o sem teto Kelly Thomas, espancado em julho de 2011 por cinco policiais no Sul da Califórnia, morrendo de complicações cinco dias depois. Ou são veteranos como Jose Guerena, em quem a polícia de Tuscon cravou 71 balas no meio da noite em maio de 2011 – inocente de qualquer crime, apenas em sua própria casa na hora errada. O estado economiza a maior parte de sua matança para o exterior, onde matar é sua própria política. E agora, graças à guerra ao terror, Obama chama os Estados Unidos de seu campo de batalha, e o mundo de sua jurisdição. Ele tornou doutrina oficial que o presidente pode determinar unilateralmente a morte de quem quer que seja.

Há vinte anos, Waco mostrou aos estadunidenses a verdade acerca do fazer cumprir a lei, do governo dos Estados Unidos, e do próprio estado. Revelou qual é a realidade para estrangeiros do além-mar. No entanto, a maioria dos estadunidenses parece totalmente indiferente ao assassínio em massa que o governo dos Estados Unidos tem perpertrado e desencadeado no Oriente Médio. No dia em que três pessoas foram assassinadas em Boston, setenta e cinco pessoas morreram no Iraque. A violência no Iraque, há nove anos, era chamada de terrorismo, a menos que cometida por soldados dos Estados Unidos. Hoje, a violência no Iraque dificilmente chega ao noticiário. O estado decide de que vidas vale a pena cuidar, e quando.

Alguns críticos da violência do estado desgostam da própria palavra “terrorismo,” considerando-a sem sentido, mas discordo. O estado perverte a maioria das palavras que usa, mas essas palavras ainda assim podem reter valor. Terrorismo refere-se a violência infligida intencionalmente a inocentes para instilar medo e promover objetivos políticos. Autoridades estadunidenses praticam terrorismo o tempo todo. Nos vinte anos desde Waco, o terrorismo do estado entrou em escalada, das sanções contra civis no Iraque para os ataques de aviões não-pilotados capazes de tiros praticamente simultâneos contra prontos-socorros, e daí até as constantes incursões policiais dentro do país. Até as mais básicas medidas da polícia, como o apalpo sistemático dos residentes de New York conhecido como “parar e revistar” visam a “instilar medo,” como jactou-se o comissário de polícia Raymond Kelly de ser a intenção, de acordo com o depoimento do ex-capitão do Departamento de Polícia de New York – NYPD Eric Adams. De alto a baixo, no país e fora, o estado estadunidense pós-Waco parece decidido a instilar medo em todos nós.

Em todo abril, desde 2003, escrevi um artigo acerca de Waco. Acho que os estadunidenses nunca deveriam esquecer o que aconteceu. LewRockwell.com publicou a maioria desses artigos. Cada um deles tem algo de diferente e discute eventos contemporâneos. Também escrevi minha tese de graduação acerca de Waco e o relacionamento entre a mídia e o estado policial. Eis aqui meus arquivos para os interessados:

• 20 Years Ago Today: Operation Showtime (Independent Institute, February 2013)
• We’re All Branch Davidians Now (LRC, April 2012)
• From Waco to Libya: Eighteen Years of Humanitarian Mass Murder (LRC, April 2011).
• Waco and the New Brown Scare (LRC, April 2010).
• The Waco Butchers Are Back (LRC, April 2009).
• Why Waco Still Matters (LRC, April 2008).
• Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, Virginia Tech (LRC, April 2007).
• Waco and the Bipartisan Police State (LRC, April 2006).
• Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic (LRC, April 2005).
• Eleven Years Since Waco and Very Little Has Changed (LRC, April 2004).
• An Anniversary We Must Never Forget (Independent Institute, April 2003).
• “God Help Us, We Want the Press”: The 1993 Waco Disaster and Media/Government Relations”  (UC Berkeley Undergraduate thesis, 2003).

Poderei fazer um intervalo na revisitação de Waco no próximo abril, não por ter esquecido as vítimas – nunca o farei – mas simplesmente porque acho que já escrevi bastante acerca dessa atrocidade específica por algum tempo, dado que o estado tem causado devastação em tantas direções, tornando Davidianos do Rebento tantos estrangeiros e estadunidenses apanhados no lado errado do infindável sítio do mundo perpetrado pelo governo dos Estados Unidos. Muitos davidianos morreram e outros sofreram injustiça no julgamento, mas tragicamente essas vítimas não são raras. Há também os muitos milhares chacinados no exterior nos últimos 20 anos. Há os milhares atingidos pela polícia desde então. Há Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, o adolescente de dezessei anos de Denver a quem Obama fez virar poeira por meio de um avião não tripulado – drone, cuja morte foi justificada com base em ele ter tido mau pai. Antes da rápida ascensão do estado de vigilância e a guerra ao terror posterior ao 11/9, Waco era a melhor oportunidade para reverter as coisas. Em vez disso, os estadunidenses, em sua maioria, viraram as costas e agora nosso país está-se tornando um grande parque de diversões para o estado policial.

Podemos chamar essa situação de a vingança de David Koresh.

Artigo original afixado por Anthony Gregory em 19 de abril de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

There is something about April. From Columbine to Virginia Tech, from Oklahoma City to Boston, mid-to-late April occasions some of the most infamous massacres on U.S. soil. At least, these are the ones we are told to focus on. The killers are called terrorists. Unless they wear uniforms, as they did on April 19, 1993, just outside Waco, Texas. That time, as we are urged to believe, the terrorists were the ones who died. In all these massacres, regardless of specifics, the government portrays itself as all that keeps chaos at bay.

The state claims to stand against terrorism, but killing people is its stock in trade. Slaughters come in various forms, almost all of which feed the health of the state. The state conducts much killing outright. The state officially poses against other killing, while nevertheless encouraging it through its own violence. Even the killing that the state has no hand in serves as a pretext for the state to grow.

In Boston this Monday, someone left bombs that murdered three people, including an eight-year-old boy, and injured 176 others. President Obama called the crime an “act of terrorism.” The establishment definition of “terrorism” was always flawed, in that it categorically absolved the government, but at least it specified the targeting of civilians for political goals. Yet these days, even before the motive is known, such as at Boston, or when the targets are not civilians, such as American soldiers abroad, the U.S. government calls any dramatic acts of violence of which it disapproves “terrorism.”

This February, they called ex-cop Chris Dorner a terrorist. Then the police surrounded him in a cabin to burn him alive, asking the media to cover its eyes like at Waco. Everyone who knew how the state operates had no reason to expect he would get due process. They were going to hunt him down and kill him no matter what. The media dropped the formality of calling him an “alleged” murderer. The LAPD tried and convicted and executed him all on the same day and no one batted an eye. Meanwhile, liberals say all talk of American tyranny is irresponsible and conservatives continue to worship law enforcement

Today, violent resistance to the state is called terrorism. Many of the “terrorists” rounded up and imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay were at most guilty of defending their country against an invading army. Some of these people continue to languish in that dungeon, seeing their desperate hunger strike in protest of declining conditions go unanswered, except by an administration willing to cut off their water.

From February 28 to April 19, 1993, the Branch Davidians resisted. On the morning of February 28, about one hundred ATF agents, concealed in livestock trailers, descended upon their property. The agents had planned and trained for eight months, having practiced their histrionic assault on model buildings. There was no reason for all this other than publicity. The agents could have easily arrested Koresh, whom they had befriended. The agents had conducted an investigation of weapons violations and found nothing. Koresh had cooperated with them. 60 Minutes had recently focused on an ATF sexual harassment scandal, and the agency was accused of racial discrimination during a House subcommittee meeting. The bureau wanted to improve its public image. Officials reached out to the press to make sure reporters could witness their heroics on the last February morning of 1993.

Unlike the vast majority of the hundreds of daily domestic militarized raids in America, the ATF’s surprise raid “Operation Showtime” faced resistance. When the agents ran out of ammo, the Davidians ceased fire. There were casualties on both sides, although one anonymous agent told the Dallas Morning News that he suspected some agents had fallen from friendly fire. Once the raid became a clear disaster, the ATF forced the press away.

Then came the standoff. The FBI took over and turned it into a full-blown military operation on American soil. Psychological warfare came down hard on Koresh’s followers. The FBI blared loud, obnoxious music, and sounds of animal slaughter, while shining blinding lights through the night. Agents gratuitously drove a vehicle to defile a Davidian grave. The government cut off this group’s access to family, media, and lawyers. It destroyed their water supply.

The media demonized the Davidians as a heavily armed cult that abused its children. Journalists tended to report government claims as fact. But they became increasingly critical of the ATF and FBI as well. After weeks of looking like fools in the mainstream press, particularly after a critical exposé in the New York Times on March 28 revealed the initial raid’s bad planning and recklessness, government officials became increasingly hostile to the media. On April 11, ATF intelligence chief David Troy stopped holding his regular press conferences altogether.

Attorney General Janet Reno, who took office in the middle of the standoff, finally decided to put an end to it. At about 6AM on April 19, the FBI began pumping flammable and poisonous CS gas, banned in international warfare, into the Davidian home. Officials knew that women and children were holed up in the section of the home exposed to this gas. The government continued to deploy gas for almost six hours.

Chemistry professor George F. Uhlig estimated in congressional hearings that there was a sixty percent chance that the gassing alone killed some children. “Turning loose excessive quantities of CS definitely was not in the best interests of the children,” Uhlig said. “Gas masks do not fit children very well, if at all.” He testified that the gassing could have transformed their surroundings “into an area similar to one of the gas chambers used by the Nazis at Auschwitz.”

The FBI brought out an Abrams tank, the Army’s heaviest armored vehicle, to replace its Bradley fighting vehicles. Agents drove the tank, which Attorney General Janet Reno later obscenely compared to “a good rent-a-car,” into the building. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, who had shot and killed Vicki Weaver in August 1992 at Ruby Ridge as she held her infant in her arms, was at the scene. FBI agents launched incendiary tear gas canisters. Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin later declared, “We know of no evidence to support that any incendiary device was fired into the compound on April 19, 1993.” The FBI finally admitted six years later it had indeed used such projectiles at Waco.

The Davidian home went up in flames in the early afternoon. More than seventy people died, all of them civilian targets, many of them Americans, others hailing from other countries, more than twenty of them children and close to half of them people of color, although somehow the Davidians are often smeared, along with the so-called militia movement, as white supremacists. As the fire raged, the FBI turned back the local fire department. Special agent Jeffrey Jamar claimed that he feared for firefighters’ safety—presumably, the Davidians might shoot at the very people trying to stop the fire that was burning them to death. When it was all over, the ATF hoisted its flag atop the conquered ruins.

The trial of the survivors was a sham. Confused jurors intended to convict survivors of weapons offenses but not murder charges. The judge sided with the prosecution and defied the jurors’ intentions. By 1999, polling indicated that a strong majority of Americans blamed the FBI for setting the fire. Special counsel John Danforth, a Republican, released a report the next year whitewashing the Clinton administration of all guilt in this atrocity.

After Sandy Hook, liberals regurgitated every tired gun control argument, but one of the most interesting is that an armed populace fails as a brake on tyranny because the government has the military hardware to win any confrontation. And indeed it’s true: most who resist government are swatted down like bugs. Some resist violently, like the Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee in December 1890, and are slaughtered. Others are shot for daring to resist even by throwing rocks at armed troops, like the four students murdered and the nine wounded at Kent State in May 1970. Others are targeted after a few years of relative calm, like the Philadelphia MOVE radicals in May 1985. Liberals are correct that the government has the means and the willingness to crush Americans who dare to resist. This fact never seems to convince liberals that the state is way too powerful and menacing to begin with, and maybe the last thing we should want is to give it more law enforcement powers, such as the monopolization of firearms through a war on guns.

About once a day police kill an American, but it’s often a criminal and no one cares, or at least a marginalized person like the homeless Kelly Thomas, beaten in July 2011 by five officers in Southern California, dying of complications five days later. Or they are veterans like Jose Guerena, at whom Tuscon police fired 71 rounds in the middle of the night in May 2011 – innocent of any crime, just in his own house at the wrong time. The state saves most of its killing for abroad, where killing is its very policy. And now, thanks to the war on terror, Obama calls America his battlefield and the world his jurisdiction. He has made it official doctrine that the president can order anyone’s death unilaterally.

Twenty years ago, Waco showed Americans the truth about law enforcement, the U.S. government, and the state itself. It revealed what reality was like for foreigners overseas. Yet most Americans seem totally indifferent to the mass murder the U.S. government has perpetrated and unleashed in the Middle East. On the day three were murdered in Boston, seventy-five died in Iraq. Violence in Iraq nine years ago was called terrorism, unless it was committed by U.S. troops. Today, violence in Iraq hardly makes the news. The state decides whose lives are worth caring about, and when.

Some critics of state violence dislike the very word “terrorism,” calling it meaningless, but I disagree. The state perverts most words it uses, but these words can still hold value. Terrorism refers to violence intentionally inflicted on the innocent to instill fear and advance political goals. American officials commit terrorism all the time. In the twenty years since Waco, state terrorism has escalated, from the anti-civilian sanctions on Iraq to the double-tap drone attacks on foreign first responders, all the way down to the constant domestic police raids. Even the more pedestrian police measures such as the systematic groping of New York City residents known as “stop and frisk” are there to “instill fear,” as police commissioner Raymond Kelly boasted was the intention, according to former NYPD captain Eric Adams’s testimony. From top to bottom, at home and abroad, the post-Waco American state seems intent on instilling fear in all of us.

Every April since 2003, I’ve written a piece about Waco. I think Americans should never forget what happened. LewRockwell.com published most of these articles. They each have a little bit of something different and discuss contemporary events. I also wrote my undergraduate thesis on Waco and the relationship between the media and the police state. Here are my archives for those interested:

• 20 Years Ago Today: Operation Showtime (Independent Institute, February 2013)
• We’re All Branch Davidians Now (LRC, April 2012)
• From Waco to Libya: Eighteen Years of Humanitarian Mass Murder (LRC, April 2011).
• Waco and the New Brown Scare (LRC, April 2010).
• The Waco Butchers Are Back (LRC, April 2009).
• Why Waco Still Matters (LRC, April 2008).
• Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, Virginia Tech (LRC, April 2007).
• Waco and the Bipartisan Police State (LRC, April 2006).
• Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic (LRC, April 2005).
• Eleven Years Since Waco and Very Little Has Changed (LRC, April 2004).
• An Anniversary We Must Never Forget (Independent Institute, April 2003).
• “God Help Us, We Want the Press”: The 1993 Waco Disaster and Media/Government Relations”  (UC Berkeley Undergraduate thesis, 2003).

I might take a break from revisiting Waco next April, not because I’ve forgotten the victims – I never will – but simply because I feel like I’ve done enough writing about this particular atrocity for a little while, given that the state has raged on in so many directions, making Branch Davidians out of so many foreigners and Americans caught on the wrong side of the U.S. government’s never-ending siege of the world. Many Davidians died and others suffered injustice at trial, but tragically these victims are not so unusual. There are also the many thousands slaughtered abroad in the last 20 years. There are the thousands shot by law enforcement since then. There is Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the sixteen-year-old from Denver whom Obama snuffed out with a drone, whose death was justified on the grounds that he had a bad father. Before the rapid rise of the surveillance state and the post-9/11 terror war, Waco was the best opportunity to turn things around. Instead, most Americans turned their backs and now our country is becoming one big playground for the police state.

We might call the situation David Koresh’s revenge.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Waco e 20 Anos de Terror de Estado.