[News] The arms firm behind the suppression of OccupyOakland and Palestine's popular struggle

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The arms firm behind the suppression of #OccupyOakland and 
Palestine's popular struggle

http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/gadfly/arms-firm-behind-suppression-occupyoakland-and-palestines-popular-struggle?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AlAkhbarEnglish+%28Al+Akhbar+English%29

By Max Blumenthal - Wed, 2011-10-26 12:36- Gadfly

With the rise of the Occupy Wall Street, a new generation of mostly 
middle class Americans is learning for the first time about the 
militarization of their local police forces. And they are learning 
the hard way, through confrontations with phalanxes of riot cops 
armed with the latest in "non-lethal" crowd control weaponry. 
Yesterday's protests in Oakland, California were the site of perhaps 
the harshest police violence leveled against the Occupy movement so 
far. Members of the Oakland Police Department and the California 
Sheriff's Department 
<http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/police-crack-down-occupy-oakland?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+Motherjones%252Fmojoblog+%2528MotherJones.com+%257C+MoJoBlog%2529>attacked 
unarmed protesters with teargas canisters, beanbag rounds, percussion 
grenades, and allegedly with rubber bullets, leaving a number of 
demonstrators with deep contusions and 
<http://twitpic.com/75wrpb>bloody head wounds. It is not difficult to 
imagine such scenes becoming commonplace as the Occupy protests 
intensify across the country.

The police repression on display in Oakland reminded me of tactics I 
witnessed the Israeli army employ against 
<http://www.popularstruggle.org>Palestinian popular struggle 
demonstrations in occupied West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh, Ni'lin 
and Bilin. So I was not surprised when I learned that the same 
company that supplies the Israeli army with teargas rounds and other 
weapons of mass suppression is selling its dangerous wares to the 
Oakland police. The company is 
<http://www.defense-technology.com/default.aspx>Defense Technology, a 
Casper, Wyoming based arms firm that claims to "specialize in less 
lethal technology" and other "crowd management products." Defense 
Tech <http://www.defense-technology.com/specialty_impact.aspx>sells 
everything from rubber-coated teargas rounds that bounce in order to 
maximize gas dispersal to 40 millimeter "direct impact" sponge rounds 
to "specialty impact" 12 gauge rubber bullets.

Defense Tech's 
<http://www.defense-technology.com/pdfs/resources/kinetic%20impact%20analysis.pdf>literature 
concedes that "information is somewhat difficult to obtain" on the 
damage its weapons can do to the human body. However, company 
researchers were able to determine that a beanbag round fired from a 
12 gauge shotgun exerts the same kinetic impact as a .22 caliber 
bullet. "The result is blunt trauma with no penetration," Defense 
Tech researchers wrote. <http://yfrog.com/nzzcazj>Wounds suffered 
yesterday by protesters in Oakland provided vivid confirmation of the 
conclusion.

Defense Tech products have injured numerous protesters attending the 
weekly demonstrations in <http://www.bilin-ffj.org>Bilin, an occupied 
Palestinian village waging an unarmed struggle against Israel's 
confiscation of its farmland in order to build its separation wall. 
Jawaher Abu Rahme, a 36-year-old resident of Bilin, 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/bilin-protester-dies-of-asphyxiation-caused-by-tear-gas-inhalation.html>died 
this year of asphyxiation from Israeli tear gas rounds. Her brother, 
Bassem, was killed two years earlier when he was struck in the chest 
by a high velocity teargas shell (see video of his killing 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yM9U2y-op4>here). Activists arriving 
on the scene after Jawaher Abu Rahme's death found 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/the-teargas-grenades-that-killed-jawaher-abu-rahmah-were-most-likely-made-in-the-usa.html>spent 
teargas shells marked with the Defense Tech label.

Some Occupy Wall Street activists have argued that Palestine must 
remain segregated from the movement's agenda. It is a distraction 
from the essential economic issues that drive the protests, they say, 
and turns the majority of Americans off. But the issue is becoming 
increasingly difficult to avoid now that the protesters are 
confronted with the very same weapons Israel uses to crush unarmed 
Palestinian resistance.

Defense Tech is 
<http://www.armorholdings.com/productsgroup/brands/defense_technology.aspx>owned 
by <http://www.baesystems.com/AboutUs/index.htm>BAE Systems, a global 
weapons manufacturer with customers in more than 100 countries. BAE 
is currently trading at 
<http://bae-systems-investor-relations.production.investis.com>280 
pounds a share on the London Stock Exchange.




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