Thursday, March 29, 2018

Anakbayan Rep: US intelligence to get the #$@% off our campus

On March 27, about 30 Rutgers students, faculty, alumnus and community members joined forces to protest Rutgers ties to the Defense Intelligence Agency and other US intelligence agencies. They were also protesting the role the lead intelligence connected professor is playing in defining "Best Practices" for balancing the "Fight Against Hate" with "Preserving Freedom." Rutgers Against Campus Militarism and NJ Antiwar Agenda are currently working on a panel discussion on this topic which will take place in April, details to be determined. You can participate in helping to organize the event through this Facebook group or by calling 908-881-5272. For more background on this situation, see the links under the addendum at the end of this article. Matthew, of the Filipino youth group Anakbayan was on hand to oppose the intelligence role at Rutgers University. To support the struggles of the Filipino people attend: The Stop the Killings Speaking Tour
and donate to: The Peoples Caravan for Peace and Justice in the Philippines


People can contact Anakbayan New Jersey through their Facebook Page @AnakbayanNJ

You can watch Matthew's presentation:

The following is the text of Matthew's presentation:

Thanks for the chance to speak and to all who are here, I’m Matthew and I’m the Educational Development Officer of Anakbayan New Jersey, a Filipino youth and student organization fighting for national democracy and progressive change in the Philippines, as well as the welfare of Filipinos here in the US.



First, I wanted to affirm that it is vital that we as Rutgers community loudly denounce the despicable acts of Islamophobic and white supremacist hate that have taken place on our campus and throughout NB, and at the same time loudly condemn this Rutgers administration for its own hateful acts towards its own students.

The title of the symposium taking place in there is “fighting hate while preserving freedom.” So tell me, how can Rutgers claim to be fighting hate, when its President, at a town hall last year, said that hate speech is something that should be protected? How are they preserving freedom by being gracious hosts to the DIA and DHS, institutions that we know fundamentally erode our freedom, and primarily that of black and brown people, and those fighting for their own welfare.

In fact how can we even say that the people of the Rutgers community have freedom in the first place, when activists fighting for a living wage, my friends who are dual members of Anakbayan and USAS, on top of 10 other student activists, have received criminal charges for nonviolent protest. So according to Rutgers, when the the FBI undermined and ripped apart the black liberation and civil rights movements in the 60s--that must be preserving freedom to them. Activism is not illegal, and it is right to rebel against an unjust system

This event isn’t about preserving real freedom. It’s about a preserving a sham freedom, which amounts to the ruling class patting themselves on the back for giving token speeches against hate, but never confronting the real structures of oppression that cause hate: white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. It is not freedom for the vast majority of us who suffer from these systems.

The Filipino people are well acquainted with the crimes of US intelligence, and our country has in fact been a testing ground for all kinds of intelligence strategies and tactics, aimed at containing and pacifying any movement toward real sovereignty. The Philippines were one of America’s first overseas colonies, and the capital Manila was host to a CIA training facility as early as the 1950s.  The tactics of counterinsurgency and undercutting mass movements with bribes and superficial aid was first applied in the Philippines, and later Vietnam and also in the US Given this history of intel services actively working against people’s movements, going back to COINTELPRO in 60s, and even today with the infiltration of J20 and Black Lives Matter why should we believe they wouldn’t be willing to apply the same tactics on our campus and in our community?

So I just want to talk about what is the legacy of US intelligence and imperialism in the Philippines today. The Philippines continue to be of great interest to the imperial war machine because of its strategic geographic location, potential for agriculture, and rich mineral resources. The Philippines is extremely rich but it's people are still devastatingly poor. The US sends $10s of millions each year in both military and development aid, to pacify and control the Filipino people on the armed front and the civilian front respectively. US funding of extremist groups to counter popular movements has directly led to the existence of Al-Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, and ISIS in the Philippines. The existence of these groups serves to destabilize the region, discredit real people’s struggles, and justify US intervention.

These harsh realities were manifested in the Siege of Marawi last year, where the whole of Marawi City was shelled to a husk under the advisory of US Special Forces. Almost its entire population remains displaced in inadequate and inhumane temporary shelters and faces intense food shortage still today. This is the legacy of US intelligence.

So this event here today, really shows Rutgers’ priorities, and where the administration’s allegiances lie. US intelligence agencies, in service of the US ruling class and its war machine, have an astounding track record of spreading hate, undermining freedom, and violently opposing those seeking a better life for oppressed people. Rutgers has no problem inviting these people onto our campus, and providing a pipeline for its students to even work for this vile war machine. Rutgers administration is against your liberation.

We must call for US intelligence to get the fuck off our campus.


Rutgers administration is against your liberation.

To view the complete set of speakers and the musical performance:

Addendum



Targum covers protest of DIA ties 

Some answers to a reporters questions about opposition to $2M DIA war project

The massive intelligence operation at Rutgers New Brunswick has been the subject of a news report in the Daily Targum, and a blog piece at this site, an article at the New Brunswick Todaynews site, an article in the #NJAntiWarAgenda paper which is also published at our website.

Group: CIA OFF CAMPUS #CIAOffCampus / Oppose Campus Militarism

There will be a presentation about the Philippines at this April 7 event in Newark.  More details.

In the Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - All Out Saturday April 7

April’s Newark Monthly Protest: In the Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Saturday, April 7th from 11:00am until 1:00pm

Event on Facebook


The NJAntiWar Agenda’s next monthly protest will take place on Saturday, April 7th from 11:00am until 1:00pm at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. monument located at the Essex County Hall of Records, 465 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Newark, NJ.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated April 4, 1968, exactly one year to the day after his "Beyond Vietnam: Why I Oppose the Vietnam War" speech given at Riverside Church in New York City. In the last year of his life he focused greater attention on opposition to the US war on the Vietnamese people. We are dedicating this event to the struggle for peace and justice that Dr. King exemplified.
Madelyn Hoffman, Director of New Jersey Peace Action, will orchestrate the reading out loud of Dr. King's speech, with each section read by a different person. Readers include young and old alike -- a wide range of voices. There will be at least 20 readers, each to read a section of this historic speech. Is it a coincidence that Dr. King was assassinated a week to the day he delivered this powerful speech about the U.S. and its commitment to wars overseas?
In today’s United States, it seems not very much has changed. In fact, the recent round of appointments or nominations to key positions, including John Bolton, original member of the Project for a New American Century and now the country’s National Security Advisor, Gina Haspel, known for her support of torture and for allegedly destroying evidence of torture under the administration of George W. Bush, and now nominated for CIA Director, and Mike Pompeo who moves from CIA Director to Secretary of State, the U.S. seems more dedicated and poised to continue its wars of aggression around the globe.  
Said Dr. King in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed [in the ghettos] without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
U.S. threats of war against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and on-going wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen should cause us to look at ourselves in the mirror – and wonder how Dr. King’s words could be so terribly prophetic.


To hear the entire speech, click on the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qf6x9_MLD0

Since this event is one week before tax day, we also address the 700 billion tax dollars being used to fund the aggressive US war escalations and threats, military deployments and weaponry, while the health care, nutrition, education, infrastructure, employment, shelter and other needs of the people are not being met.
Again, in the words of Dr. King, “...Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of the overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin, we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a people-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

The readings will feature participation of at least 7 members of the Peoples Organization for Progress youth group Popcorn Kidz,

There will be a presentation by members of the Philippines community on the Peoples Caravan for Peace and Justice in the Philippines: For more information on this campaign, please click below.

https://www.gofundme.com/stop-the-killings-caravan




Sunday, March 25, 2018

Press Conference: DIA Involvement in "Best Practices" Forum at Rutgers Opposed

VIDEO OF TODAYS PRESS CONFERENCE:



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: 908-881-5275

Rutgers students, faculty and alumni have announced a press conference in response to the Rutgers Symposium entitled “Fighting Hate While Preserving Freedom: A Best Practices Forum” being held at the Rutgers Business School, 100 Rockefeller Road, on the Livingston Campus on Tuesday, March 27. The press conference will occur outside the building where the event is occurring from 11:30 to 1pm. The press conference has been called by Rutgers Against Campus Militarism and NJ Antiwar Agenda organizations.  This is a press conference outside the building where the event is taking place and there is no intention to disrupt the symposium nor are we trying to have the symposium canceled.

Opposing hate and all of its manifestations on campuses, in social media, and in the community should be everybody’s objective. However, there is a taint to this symposium due to its sponsorship and participation of Rutgers centers connected to, and with overlapping staffing of, the Rutgers Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE). The IC CAE is funded through a $2 M grant from the Defense Intelligence Agency of the US Department of Defense.

We are not opposed to a symposium on the topic of fighting hate. We recognize that many important voices are being represented at this symposium and some are important advocates for causes of justice and against racism who have a proven record of calling out abuses of the US criminal justice system and US foreign policy. We welcome their voices to the campus.

Our concern with this symposium is not the representation of community voices and advocates on some of the panels. Our concern is over the involvement of the National Security State in a symposium, co-sponsored with the Office of the President, Robert Barchi, that sets out to define “Best Practices” for “Fighting Hate while Preserving Freedom.”

US intelligence and national security related agencies involved in IC CAE include the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which commands Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security Agency (NSA).

We are concerned that the involvement of these agencies in defining “best practices” for opposing hate could lead to restrictions on student speech and activities that oppose the actions of those agencies, including warfare, the crackdown on immigrants, torture, domestic surveillance aimed at criminalizing opposition to US policies, and the pervasive electronic surveillance of everybody who uses electronic communications.

Right now, the world faces the very real danger of ultimate US war, and the US is threatening escalations in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. The nominee to head the CIA is a known torturer who destroyed damning evidence. The appointee as National Security Advisor is an extreme war hawk who has openly called for a US first strike attack on Korea. Homeland Security and ICE are continuing a crackdown, rounding up 1000s of immigrants and reportedly targeting those who are actively organizing opposition to repressive US immigration policies. The FBI is actively targeting Black activism under the rubric of “Black Identity Extremism.” The NSA is fully unleashed, gathering every bit of electronic data on people in the US and in the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, students, faculty, staff, and alumni at Rutgers and community members around NJ are organizing around these topics, opposing US policies and opposing the role of the Defense Department at Rutgers. The agencies that have been invited by Robert Barchi to shape “best practices” for fighting hate on the Rutgers campuses have a direct interest in undermining the effectiveness of student opposition to those policies. The national security state has no business in defining such policies – their involvement can only result in the “worse practices.”

Our concern is the involvement of the National Security State in the process of defining policies that could end up restricting the right of students to dissent against the policies promulgated by these agencies. That Robert Barchi is facilitating their involvement in this process demonstrates the precise reason why the $2 Million DIA grant and the IC CAE project it is funding is anathema to the very purpose of the university.

Rutgers Against Campus Militarism and NJ Antiwar Agenda will present a panel discussion that will fully explore the implications of the Department of Defense funded Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence in April. This discussion will be part of an effort to actively oppose the support that Rutgers is providing to towards the escalation of total global warfare.

For more on the topic:

The massive intelligence operation at Rutgers New Brunswick has been the subject of a news report in the Daily Targum, and a blog piece at this site, an article at the New Brunswick Todaynews site, an article in the #NJAntiWarAgenda paper which is also published at our website.

Group: CIA OFF CAMPUS #CIAOffCampus / Oppose Campus Militarism

ADDENDUM

The following is the part of the symposium that is most concerning, from 1:30 - 2:30pm.  John D. Cohen is one of the top professors in the Defense Department IC CAE program.  Due to his compromising intelligence connections to the national security state - for the reasons cited above, he should not be providing any back drop or even participating in a process that can end up modifying campus conduct and speech and student protest rules nor modifying or expanding the definition of the word "hate" or any other loaded legal words that could be used to disrespect student rights to organize around the issues of the day including US warfare.

The participation of Rutgers administration's top lawyer makes it real clear that they are aiming to change such policies.  Then there are two police officers.  I have no personal knowledge but we can assume that national security state intelligence services regularly work together with campus police forces.  The final two listed, we know not much about and have no quarrel with their participation.

Our point is - the agencies described above should not be part of this "best practices" process.

Countering Hate Online and On Campus                                                                

Overview: John D. Cohen, Executive Director of the Center for Critical Intelligence Studies; Distinguished Professor of Professional Practice in Criminal Justice, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University-New Brunswick; Former Acting Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

  • John Hoffman, Moderator, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
  • Darren Baxley, Deputy Chief, University of Florida Police Department
  • Kenneth B. Cop, Chief of University Police and Executive Director of Police Services, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
  • Imam Khalid Latif, Executive Director and Chaplain, Islamic Center at New York University
  • Adnan Zulfiqar, Assistant Professor, Rutgers Law School

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Universities Team w/ Pentagon & US Intelligence: Controlling Dissent Under Cover of Fighting Hate


PRESS CONFERENCE: 
Tuesday. March 27, 11:30 - 1pm
Rutgers Business School, 100 Rockefeller Rd. Piscataway, NJ
https://www.facebook.com/events/171815676804477/ 

On March 27, an all day
symposium on the Rutgers University campus co-sponsored by the “Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience” and by the Office of Rutgers President Barchi entitled “Fighting Hate While Preserving Freedom: A Best Practices Forum” will occur.

The Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience is connected to the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE),  a US intelligence program sponsored by a $2M grant from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).   This program offers an intelligence minor, paid stipends for field work with the FBI, NSA and CIA, regularly features guest speakers from those and other intelligence and police agencies, and also provides training for current agents of the various US intelligence agencies.  It is also a recruitment operation for these agencies, using faculty members, administrators and even students as recruitment agents.  Agencies operating through the IC CAE  include DIA, NSA, CIA, DHS, ICE and FBI.

Ostensibly the forum being sponsored by these spy agencies of the National Security State is focused in part on the topic of Anti-Semitism with a featured speaker from the ADL (Anti Defamation League) and another from  B’nai Shalom.

The featured keynote speaker is former head of the Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, who served during Barack Obama’s second term as president, presiding over the deportation of approximately 1.5 million immigrants.

There is nothing wrong with talking about ways to oppose hatred in its many forms; it is, however, a dangerous situation when you have several agencies of the national security state teaming up with university administrators with a framework tying the topic to issues of freedom and First Amendment rights.

These agencies are all steeped in a history of direct participation using very extreme measures in suppressing freedom – of people within the United States as well as in the rest of the world.  They also have an interest in preventing students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the community from mounting an organizing drive against the repressive and destructrive policies they are carrying out.  They are the last entities that should be involved in defining limits to freedom and First Amendment rights under the guise of “fighting hate.”

This brief commentary piece can not provide a complete history lesson of the nefarious role of these agencies. Briefly though, the following are some reasons why the agencies mentioned should not be in the business of defining what are “best practices” for respecting freedom and opposing hate:

DHS / ICE - The keynote speaker Jeh Johnson is the former head of the Department of Homeland Security which commands Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  He presided over the deportation of 1.5 million (about) immigrants during the second term of Barack Obama—an immigration crackdown that continues under the Trump Administration.  ICE is currently targeting many activists  in the struggle for immigrant rights 
for deportation.  The ICE crackdown is contributing to a climate of anti-immigrant hatred.  Many are being forced into privately run detention centers and are being pressed into forced servitude/literal enslavement.  ICE has nothing to offer to a conversation about freedom or opposition to hatred.

CIA – The current nominee to head the CIA, Haspel is literally a torturer who destroyed damning evidence. The CIA presides over part of the US drone strike programs responsible for the deaths of 1000s of civilians including women and children. The CIA’s nefarious history includes every kind of violent and criminal operations, including but not limited to: death squad promotion, sabotage, money laundering, drug trafficking, sponsorship of coup d’etats against democratically elected representatives or governments opposed by US multinational corporations.  Should the CIA be defining limits of free speech at RU?  It is also relevant that the CIA aided a New York Police Department intelligence unit that set up and maintained a "safe house" near the College Avenue campus at Rutgers for the purpose of spying on Rutgers Muslim students and New Brunswick residents.

FBI – Without going into a history lesson on the FBI role in suppressing dissent in the US, right now, the FBI has a Black Identity Extremist desk that is making an argument for a crackdown targeting Black activism—should this be what is going to define what free speech at Rutgers is?  

DIA - the Pentagon’s intelligence agency, is conducting warfare, threats, operations, threatening exercises and maneuvers on every corner of the planet via drone hitting, collaborating with the occupation of Palestine, threatening Korea, Venezuela, Iran—so do you think there is going to be respect from the DIA for the free speech of the Rutgers community that is about to embark on a campaign of resistance to these warfare activities?  Do we want DIA defining limits of freedom?

NSA - As most now know, the NSA is violating the privacy of everyone using any kind of electronic communications, collecting everything from the internet, cell phones, and other devices.  The vast data is made available to other intelligence agencies and police agencies through the FISA courts, which approve over 90% of the requests to allow access to the data.

It is disingenuous for these intelligence agencies to team up with the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai Shalom organizations for this event.  They are couching the event as a defense against anti-Semitism.  The connection that is being attempted is in the context of national and local efforts that attempt to link opposition to Israel’s policies with anti-Semitism. By extension, this would further label opposition to aspects of US foreign policy in support of Israeli policies including military support, the growing direct US involvement with Israel in the occupation and in operations in Syria, in addition to the targeting of Iran and allied forces, as anti-Semitic. There are measures being advanced at the national level and at the state level throughout the United States that restrict and outlaw various forms of opposition to such policies, such as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.  

Movements of dissent on college campuses, including fighting for increased wages, opposing US foreign policy, opposing University investments for various reasons, calling for free education or opposing tuition hikes, engage a diverse body of student, faculty and staff activists with Arab and Muslim students often at the forefront of such efforts.  The smear of Palestine support and solidarity as “anti-Semitic” is a common tactic.  It is then no surprise that the Office of Rutgers President Barchi has teamed up with the National Security State through its $2 Million DIA-funded IC CAE  and is hiding its attempt to curtail student and faculty freedoms along with First Amendment rights under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.  

Anti-Semitism must be opposed in all of its manifestations; however, the Rutgers community and supporters of higher education across the country must reject the couching of an effort to undermine and restrict student activism under the thinly veiled guise of “fighting hatred.”

It is clear that the national security state is using Rutgers – not only in its effort to undermine opposition to its policies on the Rutgers campus but also as a means to thrust its opposition to student activism in academia throughout the nation.  

Universities in general and students, faculty, and staff in particular are facing adversity and challenges on many fronts.  The condition of this nation and world is precarious, and there is a growing likelihood of the US slipping from its current state of low to medium level warfare in many theatres around the planet towards full-scale ultimate warfare.

At times like this, such a cynical attempt by the national security state to control dissent must be confronted, protested, rejected, and sent packing!
CIA OFF CAMPUS!

SHUT DOWN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY CENTER FOR ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE (IC CAE)

For more on the topic:

The massive intelligence operation at Rutgers New Brunswick has been the subject of a news report in the Daily Targum, and a blog piece at this site, an article at the New Brunswick Todaynews site, an article in the #NJAntiWarAgenda paper which is also published at our website.


Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Intelligence Center at Rutgers Protested at Newark Monthly Antiwar Protest


Several organizations culminating around the idea of an “Anti War Agenda” held a second monthly protest at the MLK Monument on MLK Boulevard in Newark NJ this past Saturday, March 3.  These events occur each first Saturday of each month, with the next one scheduled to occur on April 7, at the same location at 11 am.  Next event promotion on Facebook

At this month’s event, there was an important presentation by a student of Rutgers University, Henessa Gumiran, who announced the initiation of plans to oppose the presence of a well funded intelligence center, a conduit for multiple intelligence agencies including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notorious as the department that commands ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement ) which has for years been conducting a high profile crackdown on those suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

The massive intelligence operation at Rutgers New Brunswick has been the subject of a news report in the Daily Targum, and a blog piece at this site, an article at the New Brunswick Today news site, an article in the #NJAntiWarAgenda paper which is also published at our website.

However, in Henessa’s presentation she released new information about the intelligence operation – the fact that Rutgers is now providing paid internships to work for the FBI, the CIA and the NSA.

Henessa announced plans, in conjunction with #NJAntiWarAgenda, for a panel discussion on the Rutgers New Brunswick campus to oppose the intelligence operation which directly connects Rutgers to the US war machine.  Those interested in helping should join the CIA OFF CAMPUS Facebook group – an initial organizing meeting will be announced shortly.

The following is Henessa’s presentation:

My name is Henessa, and I am a graduating student at Rutgers University, studying philosophy, political science, and economics. So in January 2015, Rutgers received a 1.95 million grant for the establishment of the CCIS or the Center for Critical Intelligence Studies, funded by the DIA, (Defense Intelligence Agency) making Rutgers the only “Big 10” school to be federally recognized as an “intelligence community center for academic excellence.”

The center is headed by a former acting under secretary of DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, John Cohen. So the objective of the center is to “provide undergraduate and graduate students with academic experiences that will prepare them for careers in national security and law enforcement”. This is the direct recruitment of Rutgers students into the propagation of the US war machine by the US intelligence agencies.
Actually, a current FBI special agent was present in my internship class this past Wednesday, and they basically are using students as proxy recruiters for the FBI, CIA, and NSA by advertising that these are the exclusive, paid internships in the intelligence community, which appeals to low income students in the same way that the military recruitment is catered to low income students as well.

Further, there are critical intelligence studies classes taught by John Farmer, who is a former senior counsel to the national commission on terrorist attacks upon the US, a.k.a. “The 9/11 Commission.” 

I looked at the syllabus briefly for the intro to critical intelligence studies with John Farmer, and one of the objectives of this class is to identify the role intelligence gathering has played through history and also identify historical lessons learned and apply them to the challenges of the intelligence community that are faced in the post 9/11 era. Further review of the critical intelligence studies minor shows that the target focus of these studies is on South Asia, East Asia, the study of the Arabic language, Latin America, the Middle East, and Russia.

Also further criminalizing Islam, by promoting the studies of Arabic along with two classes that fulfill the requirements called Islamic Law and Jurisprudence, and Islam and Democracy in the Arab World.

So it is clear that Rutgers is using its 1.95 million grant in order to promote that students are funneled into the intelligence community by incentivizing with paid internships through the critical intelligence studies program.

So right now we’re in the process of organizing a panel on the militarization of campus whose date is to be announced. So if you’d like to follow along with us, we do have a Facebook group called CIA Off Campus to oppose campus militarization. Thank you.