People march for peace in US, worldwide

People rally for peace in Washington, DC on Sat. 29, 2001.

Compiled by Sachie Godwin

Washington, DC, Sept. 30— Between 10,000 and 20,000 people took to the streets in the nation’s capital to call for peace, at a time when the nation’s government seems intent on war. The focus of the protests, initially planned against global financial policies of the World Bank and the IMF, had changed since Sept. 11. After the attacks, the world bodies canceled their meetings, and some protest groups altered their message. Rallies were organized by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, consisting of some DC- based anarchist groups and other anti-capitalists groups. They pleaded that the country not engage in what they called a “rush to war” and to condemn violent acts of retaliation against those of Middle Eastern background in the US.

“I call on our government to refrain from bringing the suffering we have endured (from the terrorist attacks) to other innocent people,” said Eleiza Braun, a student activist from George Washington University. “There has to be an end to hate, an end to the cycle of violence.”

Rachel Ettling, a 19-year-old sophomore at New York’s Columbia University, said she and the throngs of protesters were putting the country’s best ideals to use. “It’s a very patriotic thing to be an activist,” she said. “This is democracy in the streets.”

Many protesters criticized US foreign policy, which they say has exacerbated tensions in the Middle East.

“We rain bombs on Iraq, then we’re surprised we’re hated,” the Rev. Graylan Hagler, minister at the District’s Plymouth Congregational Church.

Some protesters agreed that finding those responsible for the terrorist attacks was understandable , but not at the expense of the Afghan people.

“When someone in the United States commits an atrocious crime as in an act of murder, we don’t go after their families or their community or their neighborhood,” one demonstrator said. “We go in and we arrest the individuals involved, and I think that’s what needs to be done here.”

The Anti-Capitalist Convergence had not sought a permit for their march, and police in full riot gear maintained a constant presence by shadowing the marchers on their route to the World Bank and the IMF.

Trouble started at 11th and H streets near the Washington Convention Center about 10:45 am, when a shoving match erupted between police and demonstrators after two police vehicles leading the march slowed down but protesters would not.

As activists continued the march, the police vehicles were enveloped. Police used their batons to push the crowd from the cars. Several protesters were knocked to the pavement and some were pepper sprayed, including Lisa Fithian, a 40-year-old Los Angeles activist. Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer received a dose of mace when he was handed his police helmet, which contained the substance. Some suspect this was done by a disgruntled police officer.

DC police chief Ramsey lost his left shoe in a brief melee at 15th and H streets, where two arrests took place. Once at the World Bank, police sealed off the square, trapping the demonstrators there for more than an hour. Hundreds of police stood shoulder-to-shoulder surrounding the park.

Catherine Allegre of Winsted, Conn., had her two children, age 5 and 11, with her on the march.

‘’I’m trying to teach my children that violence is not the answer. How do I explain that the police that are here to protect us are here as aggressors, and we’re being held against our will and this is not a democracy? What do I tell him?’’ she said.

Police officials said the tactic was used to cool off the crowd, but many who were detained said the action violated their rights. According to lawyers with the Partnership for Civil Justice, it was not until police were threatened with an emergency injunction that they allowed the group to move on and join the rally already in progress at Freedom Plaza.

At the rally, organized by International ANSWER, an array of speakers decried US aggression against Afghanistan and called for social justice. They also criticized the US government on a wide variety of subjects, from use of the bombing range at Vieques in Puerto Rico, the death penalty and universal health care, to the Supreme Court decision that sealed President Bush’s election. One speaker, from occupied Palestine condemned the Sept. 11 attacks but added that “it was a direct result of US foreign policy against that region.’’

Asheville resident Rae Hansen attended the march in DC with the newly-forming WNC peace coalition.

“I wanted to add my presence to the non- verbal vote cast against US attacks on innocent people in Afhganistan, and against global corporate exploitation of third world people,” she said.

A protester who identified herself as Meher, said she was hiding her face behind a bandana so that her parents would not recognize her. A Muslim of Pakistani origin, she said they were scared for “security reasons.”

Another protester carried a coffin, on which he had written a death toll from the attacks on New York and Washington, but also from the war in East Timor, US strikes against Iraq and the US-funded war in Colombia.

“We needed to respond to the war and bring light to US foreign policy that has helped create those attacks,” said Richard, 27, who also would not reveal his last name. “We are trying to go beyond patriotism.”

From Kuala Lumpur to Paris to Chicago, around the US and around the world people have been taking to the streets to protest what they see as an imminent war with a vague enemy. Beginning the day after the attacks on New York and Washington, DC, peace vigils and marches from Philadelphia to Vienna show that many people are not confident in how the war on terrorism will be carried out by the US government.

US peace rallies

Vowing to redefine patriotism, around 10,000 people rallied in San Francisco to mourn American terror victims — and to urge the nation to work to heal the poverty and injustice that fuels global violence instead of focusing on military revenge.

Chanting in a poetic rhythm, Arab American activist Eman Desouky said: “I am frightened for my people, ya’ll ... As the noose tightens around Arab civil liberties, as the FBI begins to round us up, we stand in fierce solidarity with our Japanese American brothers and sisters who have suffered and resisted the internment camps of the 1940s. As Arabs (and) Muslims get kicked off airplanes, as our homes are vandalized, as our children are terrorized, we stand in fierce solidarity with the African Americans who suffered and continue to suffer through the ugly history of racism in this country.”

A rally at University of California-Berkeley drew several hundred people. The Berkeley Stop the War Coalition started a “green armband” protest in solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans.

Some 100 protesters carrying signs with slogans like “All Violence is Wrong” held a vocal anti-war protest at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor.

“I think the people who are against violence might be under-represented in the media,” said Nancy Stoll, 43, a homemaker who joined the march with her three small children and a sign that read: “Bombing Afghan Children Won’t Help.”

Peace rallies in Boston, Michigan, Wisconsin and Chicago drew hundreds of people. While a march in New York City drew 7,000.

In Alburquerque, NM nearly 1,000 people participated in a rally that many bystanders said was the largest seen here since the Vietnam War.

“I think an alternative to war needs to be voiced, and we’re not hearing that,” protester Dave Pace said. “It seems to be that the only way to get the voice for peace heard is to go out into the street.”

In Asheville approximately 80 people marched from Pritchard Park to Vance Monument, receiving both positive and negative responses from bystanders.

Participants sang and chanted peaceful messages and the event lasted about one hour.

“We have the dubious privilege of living in the belly of the beast,” said Asheville resident Willy Rosencrans. “We have the duty of informing the American public of the effect of American foreign policy on the rest of the world.”

Around the world

About 1,000 people protested in Frankfurt, the German financial capital, on Saturday against war in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Union members, peace advocates and a local Afghan group gathered under the motto: “Solidarity yes, war no.”

Turkish police detained up to 50 anti-war protesters on Saturday as they tried to stage a demonstration. Police stopped small groups from gathering in Istanbul’s Bakirkoy district and warned them their demonstration was illegal.

About 100 Kenyans marched to the office of the district commissioner on Friday, demanding he ban US warships from using Mombasa’s harbor. The protesters say the predominantly Muslim city should not play a role in US preparations to strike at Osama bin Laden.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took part in a march on Sept. 29 in Rome with the theme “For Peace and Against War,” organized by the PRC communist party. Some 5,000 people in Barcelona marched behind a banner that read: “No More Victims. For Peace,” at a rally organized by the “Let’s Stop The War” committee of some 70 associations -- ranging from labor unions and political parties to social groups.

Several hundred people also attended an open-air concert in downtown Athens Saturday to protest possible American military strikes. Labor unions and immigrant organizations lent their support, as well as Greece’s branch of Amnesty International. A spokeswoman for the human rights watchdog urged restraint from the US government.

“We condemn the deaths of 6,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. We want justice for the dead,” said Ava Babili. “We also do not want any more victims as a result of military action.”

Between 20,000 and 40,000 anti-war demonstrators marched peacefully through Naples Sept. 27, to protest a military build-up and the threat of a global conflict in the wake of anti-US terror attacks. Some marchers were angered by comments by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in which he said that Christianity was superior to Islam.

“It is absolutely senseless. It’s like Hitler in 1933,” one said.

Over ten thousand people filled Amsterdam’s medieval central square, the Dam, on Sept. 30. They were there for an open air meeting for peace, against all terrorism, and against xenophobia.

On Sept. 25, an estimated 2,000 people marched in the streets of Oslo, Norway.

Sources: Agence France Press, Albuquerque Tribune, Associated Press, Boston Globe, CNN, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle

US and Britain to strike within days

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Oct. 3— The biggest movement of aircraft and munitions in Britain and America since the Gulf War is under way, amid signs that the first strikes against Afghanistan are just days away. Devastating attacks on bases supposedly controlled by Osama bin Laden are ready to be launched as part of a tightly focused military operation approved by US President George Bush and backed by Britain.

The strategy, they say, is designed to kill bin Laden and his forces, and will be launched in tandem with strikes against air and ground forces of the Taliban regime which the Western leaders accused of supporting him.

In a live radio address Bush said, “we did not seek this conflict, but we will end it. This war will be fought wherever terrorists hide, or run, or plan. Other victories will be clear to all.’

US officials confirmed on Friday that US Special Forces units have already been deployed in Afghanistan on reconnaissance missions.

Planning groups at the Pentagon are now increasing pressure on the White House to expand the action to attack locations in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

War approaches Afghanistan

The world stepped closer to war on Tuesday as the West sealed its case for destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and gave zero quarter to renewed pleas from Kabul to sit down and talk about it.

As a fourth US aircraft carrier battle group steamed toward southwest Asia, the United States and Britain served notice that the Kabul government was in the crosshairs for protecting bin Laden, the Bush administration’s top suspect in the recent attacks on the United States.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) said it had seen, accepted and was ready to act on evidence tying the Saudi-born dissident to the September 11 attacks that left more than 6,000 people dead or missing.

“Surrender the terrorists or surrender power, that is your choice,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a speech in England.

Washington welcomed both Blair’s speech and NATO’s response to the evidence it presented, but declined to offer any clues on what that evidence was and flatly rejected a request from the Taliban to be given some of it too. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime issued a fresh and desperate appeal for negotiations to avert war, but that plea was also quickly dismissed.

“I don’t address Taliban complaints,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

US ready to fight war in ‘two phases’

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, gave the strongest indication yet that the war would have two aspects: a long, covert special forces campaign, possibly lasting years, and a huge air attack using the whole range of air power currently lining up against the Taliban. He warned America not to expect a “quick fix” or “an antiseptic war.” Defense analysts agree that when air power is called for, and it will be, it will be on a huge scale - a policy calculated to invoke “shock and awe."

British and American special forces are already inside Afghanistan gathering intelligence. They will guide in allied attack aircraft (now numbering 550) as well as larger units of combat troops. Already, the 10th Mountain Division is fully mobilized, which would be the main ground force in what Bush called an upcoming ‘guerrilla war’ fought by US and British forces. However, Tomahawk Cruise missiles will play a large part in the attacks as well.

It remains unclear whether the target will remain Afghanistan, as Secretary of State Colin Powell wants, or a broader offensive against Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, as advocated by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz rose through State Department and Pentagon ranks under Ronald Reagan to become one of the chief architects of the 1991 Gulf War. Drafted with a small coterie of loyal aides, the Wolfowitz plan argues for open-ended war without constraint of either time or geography and potentially engulfing the entire Middle East and central Asia.

The Bush administration is suggesting that the plot to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon spreads well beyond Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden into what Attorney-General John Ashcroft on Friday night called “a series of individuals and a series of networks around the world.”

“This is the green light,” said a senior Pentagon official on Friday, “to do away with fundamentalist terrorism worldwide, for good.” The plans put before the President during the past few days involve expanding the war beyond Afghanistan to include similar incursions by special ops forces -- followed by air strikes by the bombers they would guide -- into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. In Iraq, any site suspected of being a chemical weapons facility or proliferation plant of any threatening kind would be bombed. In Syria and Lebanon, as in Afghanistan, special ops would guide air strikes, and also be called on to mount guerrilla-style raids on training camps and to carry out assassinations. In addition, special US units could be deployed against so-called terrorist cells in allied Western countries, notably Britain, Germany, France and Spain.

Cracks in US/Pakistan alliance

An already uneasy strategic alliance between the US and Pakistan was further undermined on Wednesday when a US Congressional delegation accused Pakistan of fomenting terrorism across the world and held it responsible for attacks against Americans.

“Pakistan created the Taliban and kept it in power. Pakistan is responsible for the lion’s share of the slaughter of American citizens,” Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican was quoted as saying in Rome following a meeting of a 10-member US Congressional delegation with the exiled Afghan monarch Zahir Shah.

But US efforts to enroll the former king in a post-Taliban regime face a major problem. The monarch is, as is also the majority of the rebel commanders, dead-set against Pakistan, which he accuses of creating the Taliban.

Also this week, in a letter received by President Bush, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee minced no words in directly blaming Pakistan for a recent massacre in the Kashmir legislature. By emphasizing his position as the elected leader of India and pointing out that the terrorists had attacked the “state parliament,” Vajpayee conveyed his misgivings about Washington allying itself so readily with the military ruler of Pakistan.

Assassins and drug dealers now helping US

The US delegation’s findings and India’s misgivings should come as no surprise. Pakistan’s shadowy intelligence service, one of the main sources of information for the US-led alliance against the Taliban, is widely associated with political assassinations, narcotics and the smuggling of nuclear and missile components.

Pakistan’s “secret army” and the “invisible government”, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was founded soon after independence in 1948. Today it dominates the country’s domestic and foreign policies.

Modeled on Savak, the Iranian security agency and, like it, trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the ISI “ran” the mujahideen in their decade-long fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The ISI maintained a “formidable” presence across Afghanistan, helping the Taliban to consolidate their hold over the country. The tactics used included bribery and raids that wiped out entire villages of different ethnic tribes. The ISI-CIA collaboration in the 1980s assisted bin Laden.

The intelligence link-up also helped powerful international drug smugglers. Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan’s northern tribal belt and adjoining Afghanistan was a vital offshoot of the ISI-CIA cooperation. An intelligence officer said: “The heroin dollars contributed largely to bolstering the Pakistani economy and its nuclear program, and enabled the ISI to sponsor its covert operations in Afghanistan and northern India’s disputed Kashmir state.”

Tehran threatens to shoot allied planes

On Monday, Iran warned the United States and Great Britain that their aircraft will be attacked if they stray into Iranian airspace in any future operations against targets in Afghanistan.

When operations begin there is a serious risk of overflight into Iran, which complained about frequent violations of its airspace during the Gulf War a decade ago.

This time, however, the Iranians say they will be more robust in intercepting warplanes. “We are military men,” Admiral Shamkhani said. “We will strongly defend our airspace and will confront (American and British) planes if they use our airspace.”

His warning also appeared to confirm the harder line being taken by the leadership in Iran, which first responded to the attacks in New York and Washington by offering sympathy and support.

Since then, however, splits have emerged: President Khatami and Kamal Kharrazi, the Foreign Minister, have said that Iran is willing to join the fight against terrorism and have implied that they will not oppose military action.

But Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has rejected any notion of assisting the American-led coalition and has accused Washington of sponsoring terrorism.

Iran’s Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani said the United States was using the attacks as a pretext to try to expand its influence in Central Asia and the Caucauses.  

US-led war not confined to military

On Monday, President Bush, calling for a “strike on the financial foundation” of terrorists, demanded that foreign banks follow America’s lead and freeze the assets of 27 individuals and organizations. Bush said the order applied to “terrorist organizations, individuals, terrorist leaders, a corporation that serves as a front for terrorism and several nonprofit organizations.” If they fail to assist, he said, the Treasury Department “now has the authority to freeze their banks’ assets and transactions in the United States.”

Bush also said the list of financially banned organizations will be expanded. Stepping in line with the US program and acting with unusual speed, the UN Security Council soon after approved a sweeping resolution sponsored by the United States requiring all 189 UN-member nations to deny money, support and sanctuary to terrorists.

US tightens borders, domestic surveillance, prosecution

On Monday, Democratic and Republican negotiators in the House reached agreement on a bill that would give law enforcement officials expanded authority to wiretap suspected terrorists, share intelligence information about them and monitor internet communications. Under the new plan, the government can detain an immigrant suspected of terrorism for seven days without bringing charges. At the same time, support is building in Congress for proposals to permit military personnel to assist in patrolling the nation’s borders, to triple the number of agents on the Canadian border, and to limit student visas.

The definition of terrorism in the administration’s proposal is broad and would allow the authorities to treat crimes more harshly by deeming them acts of terrorism. As a result, the bill lists many crimes like destruction of government property as qualifying as terrorist actions if they were committed with a motive to influence or change the government.

The House bill has been given the title “Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001” to allow it to be called by an acronym, the Patriot Act of 2001.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, has proposed major changes in the foreign student visa program, including a six-month moratorium on issuing new visas, comprehensive background checks on all foreign students and new requirements for schools to verify students’ compliance with the terms of their visas.

Afghan refugees pour into Pakistan

Between 10,000 and 20,000 Afghan refugees are believed to have crossed the border into Pakistan over the past week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in Geneva on Friday.

While thousands of Afghans make their way in fear and hunger to Pakistan’s sealed borders, one aid group says an even worse plight awaits those left behind. Red Cresent volunteers sort relief items in Peshawar, Pakistan (pictured below).

“Women who have children too young to flee or are too weak to go are faced with two choices: starvation or suicide,” says Sahar Saba, a representative of one of the few aid groups to focus on the plight of Afghanistan’s women. She said that since the United Nation’s pullout from Afghanistan two weeks ago many women, particularly widows, lost their only access to food. “They are now eating grass and even that is beginning to run out,” Saba said.

Sources: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Environment News Service, The Independent (UK), London Telegraph, New York Times, The Observer, Times of India

Local activists under government and corporate surveillance

By Willy Rosencrans

Asheville, North Carolina, Sept. 27— In the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty following Sept. 11, organizers called off a “Rally for Real Food,” scheduled to coincide with a biotechnology retreat at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort in Asheville. Environmental and other groups around the US have kept a similarly low profile. But some local activists knew nothing of the cancellation, and about two dozen of them showed up anyway.

Scott Del Duca was among the police officers waiting at the hotel for them. “We’re going to have about 35 officers here, and anyone associated with the protest who sets foot on this property will be arrested,” said Del Duca, who acknowledged that Sept. 11 had played a role in the Asheville Police Department (APD)’s larger-than-usual mobilization.

As patrol cars circled past them, members of the impromptu rally knelt in the grass at the Westgate Plaza Shopping Center to make signs. Eventually APD Captain Ted Lambert approached the group and let them know that he had secured a lot just outside the hotel’s gates, where they could demonstrate without harassment. He stressed that the police presence was as much for their protection as for the hotel’s, and in fact, as they marched to the lot, the driver of a passing pickup shook a gun clip at them.

But Lambert’s concern for their safety came against a backdrop of internet surveillance, FBI monitoring, and inflammatory phone calls from both the police and biotechnology advocates.

“A sergeant called me from the APD,” said Sy Stanley, manager of the plaza where the activists gathered, “saying that statements had been made by individuals who intended to try to infiltrate the group and use it as a basis for some other kind of action.” He couldn’t remember the sergeant’s name.

“I told him that as far as I knew, y’all were just going to try to educate the public.” “I was told that the same group sponsoring the rally had caused $10,000 in damages to a hotel in Greensboro during a similar conference,” said Connie Nuckolls, the hotel’s director of sales. “But I called all over Greensboro, and I couldn’t find a hotel that knew of such an occurrence.”

One of the groups organizing the rally, DownSouth Resistance Against Genetic Engineering (DownSouth RAGE), had in fact participated in an action at the Syngenta biotech facility in Greensboro in April; and the facility, which cosponsored the Asheville retreat, has used the $10,000 figure, though damages were limited to spray paint and the planting of organic corn on Syngenta property. But the distinction between “biotechnology facility” and “hotel” was apparently an insignificant one to the caller, whose identity Nuckolls doesn’t remember. “I got a lot of phone calls about this,” said Nuckolls, “from all sorts of people: the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the Asheville Police Department.”

One biotech advocate emailed her a link to a website where she could see for herself what the group had done in previous actions. “Apparently a building had been taken over, and hostages had been taken,” said Nuckolls.

The taking of hostages turned out to be a lock-down before the door of a biotech industry meeting. But in the wake of Sept. 11, the politically charged term “hostage” carries a whole new range of significance. And the FBI definition of terrorism — “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian populace, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives” — is cause for alarm among direct action groups, especially environmental ones now that the term “ecoterror” is in vogue among industry apologists: the Earth Liberation Front is widely regarded as the main terrorist group in the US.

The hotel’s assistant general manager, Shawn Wragg, said that the FBI had called the APD. Agent Rankin, of the Asheville FBI office, denied it: “We’re crawling through our butts trying to get this New York thing figured out,” he said. “We don’t have time for this sort of thing right now. People love to say all sorts of things about the FBI. Listen, if we want to talk to you we’ll come and get you. Don’t worry about it.”

Captain Lambert was more candid about FBI contacts. “Sure,” he admitted, “they do that any time there’s any kind of rally or protest where property damage was done.”

Of equal concern to activists is the monitoring of internet communications. DownSouth RAGE has been under Internet scrutiny since at least April, though the first suggestion of it came only recently, when Bill Gorz, one of the organizers of the rally, received a phone call from a reporter for the Asheville Citizen-Times.

“I asked the guy where he found the number,” said Gorz. “He said he got it from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, who said they’d gotten it off the web; and sure enough, that information only went out via the DownSouth RAGE and Katuah Earth First! listserves.”

Steven Burke, senior vice president of corporate affairs and external relations at the NC Biotechnology Center, forwarded the listserve message to the Citizen-Times reporter. It included the date, time, and place of DownSouth RAGE’s planning meeting for the rally, and the meeting was duly paid a surprise visit by an Asheville police officer. “There are,” Burke acknowledged, “a number of entities within the Research Triangle Park who routinely share information about any activities which might concern them.” But this message, he said, was probably forwarded to him by the Center’s library, which subscribes to a number of database services, and he sent it to the Citizen-Times so that their reporter could hear an opposing point of view.

“I’m sure that we monitor the activities of such groups,” said Rose Beci, manager of the Science and Technology division at the Center, who made a few calls to prepare Holiday Inn for the rally. “In response to these sorts of situations, there’s a roundtable — I don’t know the name of it — that consists of corporate members, PR people, perhaps law enforcement. We’re just trying to keep ourselves informed and educated,” she said. “With the [Asheville] retreat, our intention was to make sure things weren’t taken too far off track. Anything on the web,” she added, referring to the DownSouth RAGE listerve, “is public information.”

Rick Hall, a genetics researcher at NC State University, had earlier attempted to take advantage of the Web’s relative transparency via a disingenuous email to the group’s contact person. “I am very interested in your organization,” he wrote without identifying himself. “I read about your protest in Greensboro at Syngenta. Can you send me information please? Also do you have any upcoming protests planned?”

Another DownSouth RAGE listserve message found its way to the Food Industry Environmental Network (FIEN), an industry-friendly news service which keeps its clients up to date on a variety of topics, including biotechnology. The message, which was publicly distributed via FIEN’s e-newsletter, concerned web-based research methods, and suggested “getting a grip on who is doing what, so we can confront and expose them personally.” FIEN’s comment advised that “government, university and company agricultural biotechnology researchers should take seriously the possibility that the anti-biotech protest movement may be planning to target individual researchers, not just their research projects and may want to review security precautions with their local police officials.”

This kind of low-tech monitoring, of course, is accessible to almost anyone. But in the hysteria-tinged aftermath of Sept. 11, technologies such as Carnivore, the FBI’s internet surveillance program, may soon have their applications broadened considerably. Congress is still debating the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s proposed Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001. The Act would introduce a plethora of privacy rights issues — limiting, for example, judicial oversight of surveillance activities, and authorizing surreptitious police entries in all criminal investigations — which have civil liberties groups up in arms. The DOJ’s own analysis of the Act admits at one point that “United States prosecutors may use against American citizens information collected by a foreign government, even if the collection would have violated the Fourth Amendment.”

Compared with all this maneuvering, the rally was a model of open communication. Five student researchers attending the retreat approached rally participants, curious about “real food” advocacy and eager to debate the issue. Among them were two Duke grad students: Alyssa Dill, who studies giberrellin (a plant hormone which regulates, for example, when a plant flowers and develops fruit), and Rebecca Mosher, whose focus is plant resistance to disease.

“Organic farming can’t feed the world,” Dill argued. “Even countries, such as those in Southeast Asia, with a surplus of a certain crop -- for example, rice -- will suffer malnutrition because rice lacks beta carotene. Biotechnology produced Golden Rice, which contains the missing nutrient.”

Gorz responded with the well-known argument that an 11-year-old child would have to eat 15 pounds of Golden Rice a day to satisfy his minimum daily requirement of vitamin A, and Dill admitted the genetically engineered rice was imperfect. “And those countries didn’t use to have this problem,” he continued. “IMF and World Bank policies force these countries to focus on export, which means they lose plant diversity and variety, and then biotech industries take advantage of the situation.”

“I agree that big industry doesn’t have the highest goals and values,” said Mosher. “But that’s not a reason to do away with biotechnology altogether.”

Still, a growing chorus of voices are asking if there’s a good reason to keep biotechnology alive. Kraft Food’s taco shell recall last year (triggered by the discovery that the shells contained trace amounts of StarLink corn, an unapproved “Frankenfood” and potential allergen engineered by Aventis, another of the retreat’s sponsors) is only one of a series of recent biotech controversies, including the finally verified lethal effect of Bt corn pollen on Monarch butterfly caterpillars, and the multiple escapes of transgenic salmon into the ocean, where they may ultimately drive wild salmon populations to extinction.

“You may feel that biotechnology should be abandoned,” says Burke. “But I’ve already made the commitment that this technology will develop. We simply have to make sure that it develops responsibly.”

Whether this is possible or not remains to be seen. In the meantime, the industry is watching its opponents more closely than ever.