IAHF LIST: I should have sent this version of my report from Seattle first. Its an expanded, updated,more accurate account of what happened in Seattle, with a lot of urls of different organizations that were there, including the website of Independent News Media which interviewed me in the street while I was demonstrating http://indymedia.org. This report is current through when I left Seattle a couple days ago. Please forward it,not the last version I sent, which I shouldn't have sent.(Please delete that one.) I was tired upon returning and sent it at 4 am or so eastern time.
I saw enough tear gas and rubber bullets in Seattle to last a lifetime, but unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we will soon find outselves being stomped into the ground under the iron boot of tyranny unless more of us resist, NOW! Maybe those of you who think I've been exaggerting the threat of jack booted NWO domination will be believers upon reviewing the streaming video at http://indymedia.org
I had the chance to get the Codex vitamin issue out to a larger group of people and some valuable networking occurred and will be ongoing between IAHF and many other organizations that are also fighting back.
IAHF LIST: I am TRUELY in your corner! If you value the way I just risked injury and arrest to bring you this eyewitness report from Seattle, please send your most generous year end donation to IAHF, PO Box 625, Floyd VA, 24091.
I can really use your support at this time as am currently flat broke from two weeks on the road.Please forward this to more people and scrap my previous email.
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 1:42 AM
Subject: Expanded, Updated Eyewitness Account of the Battle in Seattle
IAHF LIST:
I've just returned from a history making demonstration in Seattle in which thousands of demonstrators, angered by the gross injustice represented by the World Trade Organization, succeeded in seriously disrupting the first day of the WTO Ministerial Conference here, forcing the WTO to cancel the first day of the scheduled week long meeting. Video footage and the TRUTH about what REALLY happened in the demonstration can be seen at http://www.indymedia.org .They did a videotaped interview of me at the demonstration talking about Codex and how the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO will be used to dismantle American Dietary Supplement Laws in the not too distant future unless more people become aware of whats going on and join us in opposition to the WTO. I hope to get some digitized still photos from the Battle of Seattle into http://www.iahf.com soon.
The Governor of Washington was forced to call out the Washington National Guard to totally shut down the demonstration as enraged demonstrators overwhelmed Seattle Police and King County Sheriff's office which proved insufficient to keep things in check. Some of you will get this mssg right away, the rest will get it after I get back to VA in a couple days.
It was clear to everyone present that the New World Order is moving in on us with a vengeance, and that most law enforcement personnel in this country are clueless as to what is going on- they are firing their teargas on the wrong people- they should have fired it into the WTO convention to stop the REAL criminals!! The myopic street hoods who sprayed graffitti and broke into stores wrecked our demonstration. If not for them, we could have successfully shut the WTO down for the whole week they're scheduled to meet, and if police had intervened THEN, it would have made THEM, not all of us. look bad. 99% of the people at the demonstration were totally non violent except when the tear gassing began and many of us, including myself, were forced to throw tear gas cannisters back at the cops in self defense.
The Battle of Seattle, An Eyewitness Account
Sadly, a predominantly peaceful, very well organized and otherwise peaceful demonstration was marred by anarchists, a group of young (16-20 year old) disaffected youth combined with local gang members who broke store windows, sprayed graffitti, and looted local shops including a Radio Shack franchise. It is a real shame that this group of immature people did so much to interfere with the vast majority of demonstrators who were very orderly and well bahaved- but then it is also not surprising that the egregious offenses of the WTO would incite rioting, even though the rioting effectively wrecked the demonstration by giving the mainstream the weapon they needed in order to paint all demonstrators with the same unfair broad brush (!)
I got some insight into this anarchist group which disrupted the demonstration, turning it into a violent war, a couple days ago when I missed the last bus back to Everett where I've been staying at the home of Gayle Eversole from the IAHF list. Missing the bus caused me to need a place to crash in Seattle, where all motels and hotels and hostels were sold out.
On the front page of the Seattle Post Intelligencer I read an article about an abandoned house at Virginia Avenue in downtown Seattle, just two doors down from Seattle Police Headquarters, that had been seized by demonstrators the day before. I knew I was at the right place when I saw two police cars monitoring the place from the other side of the street, a short distance down the block and I could see demonstrators on the roof with black bandanas obscuring their faces. The demonstrators were in radio contact with others inside the house. A guy was sticking his head out of a broken window on the second floor to ask my who I was and what I wanted. I explained that I was a demonstrator who needed a place to crash, and told them who I was. After convincing a group of them that I was ok, they removed the barricade to open the steel door on the street and ushered me into the front entry and frisked me for weapons and to make sure I wasn't a cop wearing a wire.They were very glad to learn of the IAHF website.
They had barricaded the stairs so that the only way into the house after they let me in was to crawl through a very small opening. This proved to be a very effective way of preventing the house from being stormed by cops earlier in the day when a street fight ensued in which the cops tried to evict them.
After being ushered into the house, they sent me to a room upstairs where I had to read the mission statement of the people who had initially seized the house. They were a group of idealistic students, mostly from University of Oregon in Eugene, but combined with other students from across the US and Canada who wanted to keep control of the house throughout the coming week to use as a crash pad for demonstrators who had no where else to stay, and they hoped to turn it over to a homeless advocacy group at the end of the protest so that the homeless could have it as a badly needed shelter. Sadly, there are far more vacant houses in the USA than their are homeless people- yet they are being forced into the streets by corporate greed.
The students who had initially started the "squat" moved in, boarded up the windows, turned on the power and water, stockpiled food, water and medical supplies, but the city turned the water and power off. The owner did not give the police permission to kick the students out, but the police tried anyway, unsuccessfully, and then kept the place under surveillance throughout the night by shining a flood light through the second story windows throughout the night as students on the roof with walkie talkies monitored their whereabouts in case the place got raided.
Inside, no one slept. People stayed up all night drinking coffee, talking and playing guitars. Students from all over the US and Canada were there, along with anarchist hitch hiking grungers who seemed to me to be deeply alienated street kids with zero respect for much of anything, covered with tattoos and body piercings who looked forward to open war with the police, or as they called it "class war" - but THEY had about as much "class" as he corporate scum who they professed to oppose. Periodically they mooned the police from a bank of windows as the floodlight was shined into the building, (keeping all of the rest of us awake, which annoyed me because I was very tired from demonstrating all day. They also shined flashlights back at police and taunted them calling them "pigs". Earlier in the day one had spraypainted "Pig" onto the back of a patrol car during the melee in which the window of the building got broken. It was very cold in the abandoned building and I had no sleeping bag with me so I did my best to sleep on the wood floor with no mat, in my coat, covered only with a poncho.
Prior to this I missed the bus back to Gayle's house in Martha's Lake due to protesting in front of the King Dome where the WTO held their gala opening party called Jubilee 2000. A well organized mix of organized labor, environmental groups, and others opposed to the WTO marched on the King Dome and formed a human chain in the rain to call for the WTO meeting to be cancelled and to call on the World Bank, IMF and WTO to cancel the debt of all nations, especially in the third world. The AFL-CIO had a large trailor near the King Dome and we were all linking arms around its perimeter singing "We Shall Overcome, We Shall Overcome, Some Way, Some How- Deep in My Heart, I Do Declare, We Shall Overcome Some Day" Several of us circled over to the entrance to the King Dome where we heckled the trade reps of many countries as they got in and out of limosines chanting to the unelected dictocrats "who elected YOU?" and "we're here// we're wet// CANCEL THE DEBT!" (Earlier that evening, we stood in the cold rain while people pounded rhythmically on drums getting soaking wet for over 2 hours while waiting for people inside the church who were dancing to Sweet Honey and the Rock to join us in our march on the King Dome. While waiting people burned phony dollar bills called "Federal Repression Notes" that had been issued by "The Corporate States of America, Inc" under the auspices of the New World Order. The "Great Seal" on this "funny money" was replaced by a seal bearing the words "work" "obey" and "consume" around its periphery, and in the middle of the bill was a characature of "wafflin willie clinton" dressed in a clown suit with a fake nose.
Earlier on November 29th I listened to a very informative program at the Methodist Church titled "The Human Face of Trade: Health and the Environment- People's Tribunal" where the rally began in which a panel of US Congressmen (Defazio- D-OR, and Maxine Waters (D-CA), Magda Aelvoet, the Belgian health minister; and Bill Blaike a member of the Canadian parliament (NDP) heard and questioned two different panels of NGO members from around the world, all of whom had VERY serious misgivings about the lack of transparency within the WTO, which has been conducting its meetings in secret, shutting out the people of the world as the corporations seek to make an unbridled power grab by making an end run around any national, state, or local legislation that interferes, in any way, with their profits. The NGOs and foreign speakers included Alejandro Villamer representing Mexican farmers, Todd Steiner- Sea Turtles Restoration Project; Steve Shrybman, West Coast Environmental Law Center (Canada), Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Indigenous Network for Policy Research and Education (Phillipines), Cipriana Jurado Herrera, Centro de Investigacion y Solidaridad (Mexico), Barry Castleman, ScD, Environmental Consultant (USA), Navik Leonen, Friends of the Earth, Phillippines; and Dr. Zafar Mirza, Health Action International- Pakistan.
The WTO should be abolished completely, and it will never have any credability if it excludes a People's Jurispudence such as the Tribunal that I sat on which met at the Labor Temple (AFL-CIO) on November 29th where I served as the rough equivalent of a grand jury member, listening to testimony of people from around the world who had eye opening experiences involving corporate genocide and greed. Currently the WTO has set its own charter, and totally ignores the grass roots in all of its activities- listening only to corporate agendas and their lackies in government.
Lawyers from various public interest groups served as prosecutors before our Tribunal, and we handed down indictments against several corporations including Shell, Cargill, The Gap, Union Carbide and Monsanto- charging them with Crimes Against Humanity on a basis of the Nuremburg Code and the Geneva Convention. For a crime to be a crime against humanity it has to be systematic in nature, and large in scale. When we attempted to serve citizens arrest warrants on some of the trade ministers, two of our people were placed under arrest for crossing police lines. One of the people arrested, Cheri Honkala, represented a homeless advocacy group in Philadelphia called the Kinsington Welfare Rights Union which presented facts to our tribunal and she awaits trial next year after being indicted for moving homeless people into an abandoned building in Philadelphia where her group was barred from speaking at the Liberty Bell and thrown out of the state government building after seeking a meeting with the Governor of Pennsylvania. http://www.libertynet.org/kwruhttp://www.libertynet.org/kwru
Other very strong cases that we heard were against Cargill (genetically engineered seeds,and polluting Puget Sound), Shell Oil (committing literal genocide and outrageous pollution against the Ogoni tribe in Nigeria's Delta region. Shell's private goons combined with corrupt Nigerian army troops murdered villagers and hung Ogoni environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwo along with 8 other Ogoni leaders in 1995. Project Underground, which examines has documented many environmental and mining abuses at http://www.moles.org. While the clear cutting of redwood forrests in northern California is exposed at http://www.havc.org/, IAHF is now networking extensively with these and other environmental groups in order to discuss common ground as public health issues tie in considerably with environmental issues.
On the tribunal I also heard shocking testimony from a sweat shop laboror from the Phillipines who was shanghied into working in Saipan, behind barbed wire, at a factory where impoverished women from China, Vietnam, the Phillipines and Malaysia are paid $3./ hour and forced to work 12 hr days, 7 days/ week under very unsafe conditions in which many are indentured servants. These women are automatically fired if they so much as fall in love, let alone get pregnent and armed guards strongly discourage them from leaving the company barricks. They are forced to pay room and board for horrible food and truly slum like living conditions. Technically, Saipan is an American Territory, but they aren't governed by American labor laws so don't forbid sweat shop labor. Clothes made there say "Made in USA" The witness I heard contracted TB from no ventilation in the factory (horrendous dust) while many others got environmental illness and cancer from offgassed formaldehyde fumes in the ironing room. The GAP is well aware that they are paying the Saipan sweat shops for clothes sold in their stores, but have done nothing to help correct the horrendous conditions on which they have made millions. American corporate greed is clearly driving the NWO agenda and all of us had better WAKE UP, or we too will be enslaved just like the workers in Saipan!
In other venues, such notables as author Ken Kesey, and Ralph Nader spoke and engaged in debates respectively and as we manned picket lines in the streets we discussed the things they'd said to us.
Yesterday's demonstration began for me at 5 am, when the people who'd organized "the squat" roused us all by beating drums to call a meeting of the house. They were afraid we might be raided before 6 am to keep us from demonstrating, so when the lookout on the roof announced over the walkie talkie that the coast was clear we exited the house and dispersed back to the streets. I joined a group of Oregon University students at 7 am who barricaded several key intersections in order to keep WTO delegates from being able to get from their hotels to the convention center and to snarl up traffic throughout Seattle. We succeeded in causing total gridlock within the city, and frustrated the hell out of delegates who we wouldn't let through our lines. Several attempted to barge through and were told to "walk back to the airport and leave the country."
Tense stand offs with Seattle police and King County sheriffs clad in riot gear occurred all over downtown Seattle who started using rubber bulletts, and pepper spray tear gas against demonstrators starting around 1 pm as some demonstrators climbed atop gridlocked busses, while others climbed lamposts, and on top of a pedestrian overhang on the Nike Town store where they also hung many huge banners.
Large numbers of demonstrators, including myself, wore gas masks and hurled tear gas cannisters back at police in self defense, as percussion grenades went off making thuderous booms which echoed through the concrete canyon of downtown Seattle where Christmas decorations lent a surreal air to everything going on. Some demonstrators overturned trash containers and set fires in the street, broke shop windows, slashed tires on police cars and sprayed graffitti while others, (including me) did our best to stop them. Several times we stopped police from charging by chanting as news media looked on "The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching! and also "Non Violent Protest! Non Violent Protest!" A few WTO delegates attempted to physically push through our lines, and angry words were exchanged in both directions.On the whole, given what they were confronted with, I give the Seattle Police credit for keeping calm, but at the same time feel strongly that the King County Police overreacted badly on several occassions, using rubber bullets and tear gas out of fear when they didn't have to and it only escalated the actions of the punks, spurring them on to break more windows, spray more graffitti, slash tires, attack busses and commit other senseless acts of vandalism. I heard one vandal bragging about ripping the mirror off the side of a bus and reaching inside to punch the driver, and I told him he was an asshole for wrecking our demonstration.
Demonstrators wearing helmets with red crosses served as medics and administered first aid to several of us who were overcome by the tear gas. A lot of children and older people in the crowd were really hit hard by the tear gas, including some who were veterans of the Vietnam war demonstrations years ago who looked nervously at the armored cops concerned that they might start cracking skulls with billy clubs as they recalled from the more violent demonstrations in the '60s. Some demonstrators brought food and water to people on the picket lines so that we could keep our arms locked to block delegates from crossing, and the police from breaking through. In several intersections everyone sat down in the street to block police, and we experienced 10 of the most tension filled minutes of my life as an armored personnel carrier bore down on us as we sat in the street, facing it down while reporters nervously filmed the event. Students did street theater and made speeches denouncing the evils of corporate greed.
Many of the street theatre skits imaginatively creative, very positive (in stark contrast to the stupid things the vandals did) and were obviously well rehearsed by students from University of Washington and University of Oregon and others who took pains to conduct themselves responsibly- but there was some blurring of the lines amongst the ranks of the more radical environmentalists who scaled the walls of downtown buildings to hang banners, while standing shoulder to shoulder with the punks who sprayed graffitti.
I got out of Seattle shortly before dark, after the National Guard had been called in. The city had been placed under curfew before I left and they were already starting the mass arrests that broke everything up as police have massively expanded their perimeter. Herr Clinton is here at the Westin Hotel, so security has been ramped up considerably. King 5 TV news reports today, December 1, that over 450 demonstrators were arrested today for failing to disperse, and firemen have been using Water Cannons to force people to disperse in the Pike Street Market. Possession of gas masks has been outlawed by civilians, and a rally by steel workers was broken up with arrests made. Today the police filled several busloads with arrested people who they processed through a temporary holding facility at the Sand Point Naval Station where demonstrators have been refusing to disembark from the busses or answer any questions by police. Before pulling out I shot two rolls of film which I hope to get developed in the morning and digitized for posting on the IAHF website. I will be sending this information to the IAHF email distribution list as soon as I get back to Virginia, and a few of you are getting it in advance of my leaving Seattle.
I made my way here from Canada after doing some work north of the border and have now been away from home for over 2 weeks, paying my expenses out of pocket.
Please, IAHF is the world's premier source of information on what is really going on behind the scenes on the health freedom front with CODEX and the WTO. If you value my work, please help me- I'm barely making a living as I seek to expose the truth of what is REALLY happening on the health freedom front. I've got my fingers on the pulse of whats really going on behind the scenes. Any donation would be greatly appreciated and will help me with my ongoing work to prepare for y2k- something which none of us can afford to take lightly as the ruling elite intend to use it to usher in their plans to enslave all of us under the New World Order. They intend to use y2k to call a state of National Emergency, and its going to lead to another world war. If you are not preparing for y2k, in plain English, you are setting yourself up for a world of pain. Get out of the City if you possibly can and get to where you'll have food and water.
If you can't get out of the city, at least have a contingency plan to TRY to get out, and at LEAST stock up on food and water- enough for AT LEAST 6 months, preferably enough for 5 YEARS. What is happening now in Seattle should serve as a wake up call. When martial law comes down gas masks will be illegal, just as they are right now in Seattle, and you're going to need one because there will be a LOT of tear gas used, and we could come under biowar from anthrax or other agents. Get one now while you still can from Centerfire Systems at 800-753-5178 along with ammunition.Get guns without registering from ads in the paper so you'll be able to defend yourself and your family when you can't call 911. The best y2k news site aside from IAHF is http://www.y2knewswire.com
If you haven't yet read my White Paper on y2k, or Will Thomas's- you'll find both on the IAHF website at http://www.iahf.com. Also check out Gary North's latest links at http://www.garynorth.com.
The ruling elite are gearing up to commit mass global genocide and to force the survivors into a mind controlled state of servitude. You may think this is a joke, but I assure you, those of us who have been participating in the Battle of Seattle, (ongoing as I write this) can unequivocally tell you that this is NO JOKE. We are living under the Fourth Reich here in America right now, and this is NOT mere "empty rhetoric" as Herr Clinton himself has arrived here in Seattle. The TV newsmedia are acting as if we don't even have the right to assemble as they cheer on the police and keep count of the number of busloads full of people who're being arrested just for opposing the stinking WTO.
Please, people: donate TODAY to International Advocates for Health Freedom. I have been going the extra mile for all of you and its not easy living the way I do out of a suitcase to bring you the truth. Any amount that you can send will help me immensely as I am currently tapped out.
By the time I get back to Virginia, I will have literally NO MONEY. Checks and money orders can be made out to:
IAHF, and sent to: IAHF PO Box 625, Floyd, Virginia, 24091, USA.
God Bless You All.
Your Friend,
John Hammell
On the road in Seattle, Washington til tomorrow morning when I fly back to Virginia.
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IAHF:(International Advocates for Health Freedom) PO Box 625 Floyd, Virginia,24091, USA 800-333-2553, overseas: 540-745-6534, 540-745-6535 fax, http://www.iahf.com email: jham@iahf.com
Help Get a Codex Oversight Hearing:
Call Beth Clay at 202-225-5074
House Government Reform and Oversight Committee- See Codex Oversight Section of IAHF website for more info.
If You Belong to NNFA- Ask Them Why They Oppose Having a Codex Oversight Hearing, and Ask Why They Don't Enforce Article 14.3 in their Bylaws: (Conflict of Interest)
Ask why they don't kick Warner Lambert and the rest of the drug cartel OUT of NNFA!
Ask Why they endorse the NAS paper "A Risk Assessment Model For Establishing Upper Levels for Nutrients" when it is being used illegally by the FDA to break past the consumer generated impasse at Codex. [See Codex Oversight Section http://www.iahf.com]
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