Former Blackwater Employee Threatens to Kill CODEPINK Activist in
Senate Hearing Room

CODEPINK calls on Congress to support the Schakowsky/Sanders ‘Stop Outsourcing Security’ Act

On Wednesday, February 24, at the Senate Armed Services hearing on Blackwater, a former Blackwater employee known as Johnnie Walker threatened to kill CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry.

The hearing, entitled Contracting and Counterinsurgency: An Examination of the Blackwater-Paravant Contract and the Need for Oversight, was convened by Senator Carl Levin to look into Blackwater personnel’s reckless use of unauthorized weapons, its failure to adequate vet its personnel, and the lack of government oversight into the behavior of the contractors.

Johnnie Walker was a program manager in Afghanistan hired by Paravant, a front company for Blackwater. According to program manager Hugh Middleton, Mr. Walker was fired on May 6, 2009 for repetitively drinking on the job and cultivating an environment that led to the May 5, 2009 shooting incident in Kabul which two Afghan civilians were killed.

CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry was attending the hearing and was shocked about the criminal behavior of Blackwater contractors that included stealing weapons, reckless use of weapons, drinking on the job, violating rules of their contracts, defrauding the US government and disregarding local Afghan laws. “During the recess in the hearing, I spoke out about the shameful actions of Blackwater personnel that led to the death of Afghan civilians and their own fellow employees. Johnnie Walker, as he was leaving the hearing room, turned to me—within earshot of the U.S. Capitol Policeman Angel Morales–and said, “I’m gonna kill YOU.”

Barry shouted out to the police and Blackwater management, “Do you see the kind of people you hire–such loose cannons that they’d threaten me in a Senate hearing room?” Barry filed a complaint with the Capitol Police.

The hearing also exposed that in 2008, Raytheon told Blackwater that if it wanted to get a subcontract to train Afghans in arms safety, it should apply under a different name because Blackwater had such a bad reputation. So Blackwater, which later rebranded itself as Xe, created a shell company called Paravant.

The hearing revealed the urgent need to support the bill introduced on February 23 by Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and Senator Bernie Sanders called the “Stop Outsourcing Security Act.” This legislation would phase our private security contractors in war zones. “If Blackwater employees would threaten to kill a member of the US public in Washington DC, imagine what they do to Afghans thousands of miles away,” said Barry. “We’ve got to stop these people from committing criminal acts with our taxdollars.”

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NEW YORK CITY — The Israeli cosmetics company, Ahava, which illegally manufactures and appropriates its products in occupied Palestinian territory, has dropped its spokesperson Kristin Davis amid a public relations debacle sparked by the peace group CODEPINK’s Stolen Beauty campaign.

As Gawker.com first reported yesterday, ‘Sex & the City’ star Kristin Davis has been dropped by Ahava. All trace of her image and mention of her name have already been removed from Ahava’s website.

Davis’ dismissal, and the accompanying blow to Ahava’s image, follow the successful launch of CODEPINK‘s Stolen Beauty campaign designed to spread word of Ahava’s illegal practices — its products are falsely labeled as “Made in Israel” but in actuality are made in an illegal settlement in occupied Palestinian territory, and often contain resources appropriated from occupied land, in clear violation of international law.

For the past two months CODEPINK activists have been appearing at Ahava stores, trade booths, and online, spreading word of Ahava’s illegal business practices (view photos and publicity at www.stolenbeauty.org). Particularly newsworthy was Davis’ dual role as Ahava spokesperson and as a goodwill ambassador for the international charity Oxfam—a group that has courageously spoken out against the illegal Israeli settlement trade. First, CODEPINK activists reached out to Davis to dissuade her from continuing her paid promotional appearances for Ahava. When that failed, public pressure forced Oxfam to suspend Davis from publicity work for the charity. The glare of publicity, including a story on Page 6 of the New York Post, surrounding that controversy appears now to have helped make untenable Ahava’s P.R. campaign centered on Davis.

For more information, please call Nancy Kricorian, Stolen Beauty campaign coordinator, at 646-234-8529.

Last month, the women’s peace group CODEPINK launched a boycott campaign of the cosmetics company, “Stolen Beauty” (www.stolenbeauty.org), bringing to light Ahava’s illegal business practices. Ahava manufactures its products at a Jewish settlement in a plant near the shores of the Dead Sea in Occupied Palestine. The settlement itself is illegal according to international law, as are all the settlements in the Occupied West Bank. According to the 4th Geneva Convention, it is illegal for an occupying power to exploit for profit the natural resources of an occupied territory. Ahava harvests mud and minerals from the shores of the Dead Sea in Occupied Palestine, and this exploitation is illegal. Ahava also labels its products, which are made in Occupied Palestine, as “products of Israel,” which is another breach of international law. Ironically, Oxfam has been a global leader in the fight to expose those illegal practices, while its ambassador actively promotes them.

In June, CODEPINK activists hand-delivered a letter to Davis at an Ahava publicity appearance at Lord & Taylor in New York City. The letter urged her to drop her ties to Ahava and live up to her Oxfam mission; the fact that her Oxfam affiliation is being used to burnish Ahava’s image is unconscionable.

During the final week of July, Oxfam began circulating a statement saying it has suspended Davis’s publicity work for Oxfam. Clearly, just a few weeks into the Stolen Beauty campaign, heads are turning!

But Oxfam’s statement leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Journalists, activists, and Oxfam members and supporters will probably wonder about the following:

Kristin Davis and Oxfam appear to have come, at some point, to a private understanding that she will not do publicity for Oxfam during the remainder of the term of her contract with Ahava. When was this secret deal between Oxfam and Davis reached? When will her contract with Ahava end? Were Oxfam staff, board members, and general membership informed of Oxfam’s understanding with Davis, and if so, when?

Davis commenced her services with Ahava in September 2007, continued to conduct high-profile activities with Oxfam for well over a year after that—and continues to be identified as an Oxfam ambassador. What does Oxfam think of the use of its goodwill in the burnishing of Ahava’s image? Are Davis’s publicity services for Oxfam indeed simply “suspended” or has her ambassadorship been terminated? In other words, is it still correct to identify her as an Oxfam ambassador?

Oxfam says in its statement that Davis was unaware of Ahava’s illegal settlement trade when she signed her contract with Ahava –how does Oxfam know this? Davis has, to our knowledge, never publicly commented on the issue. Is Oxfam saying that Davis is now aware of what Ahava is doing but that she will continue to accept payment from them and remain silent?

Have Davis or her representatives seen or approved Oxfam’s statement about their agreement about suspending her services?

In the absence of a clear picture of Davis and Oxfam’s deal, peace activists around the world will continue to highlight the tragic ironies of Ahava’s use of Oxfam’s goodwill and image through its sponsorship deal with Kristin Davis. Oxfam is a global leader for peace and justice—let’s not allow its deal with Kristin Davis to distract from and sully its heroic work!

Agha-Soltan, Ebadi, a 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and contributor to CODEPINK’s 2005 book, “Stop The Next War Now,” and Effat Hashemi, the wife of former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who was among the first to call for public protests, represent the incredible strength of Iranian women and their hunger for justice. Demanding reform, regime change, more social freedoms and a fair election, women have sometimes outnumbered men at the demonstrations, and they’ve also fought back police and militia.

For more information, please contact Jean Stevens, CODEPINK national media coordinator, or Jodie Evans, CODEPINK co-founder, at 310-621-5635.

“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us,” said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate. “Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip. President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We’re asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey.”

CODEPINK has coordinated five delegations into Gaza in the past two months, bringing nearly 200 activists from around the world to witness the destruction caused by the two-year border blockade of Gaza and Israel’s 22-day military attack in December and January that killed over 1,440 Palestinians and wounded over 5,000.

McKinney and the other “Free Gaza” activists were carrying aid to Gaza, viewing it as a symbol of hope and that they could open a sea route for Palestinians that would allow them to transport materials into Gaza so they could rebuild schools, hospitals and homes.

“Our mission is a gesture to the people of Gaza that we stand by them and that they are not alone,” said fellow passenger Mairead Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland.

U.S. Army Reserve (retired) and former U.S. diplomat Ann Wright said that the Israeli Navy’s actions are in violation of international law as the boat was in international waters and was not jeopardizing the security of Israel.

“The abduction of the passengers and crew from the vessel is an outrage and I call on the Obama administration to make a formal protest to the Israeli government concerning the abduction of U.S. citizens, including a former U.S. Presidential candidate,” Wright said. “The Obama administration should withhold the $3 billion the U.S. gives Israel each year.”

For more information, please call Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve (retired) and former U.S. diplomat, 808-741-1141 or Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder, 415-235-6517.

Upon our arrival at Central Park, the ladies that would end up in bikinis — Dana, Rae, Gina, and myself — quietly wrote our messages of dissent on our bare bodies at a location outside of the main event, got dressed, and inconspicuously walked into the “beach party”.  To an outsider, we must have looked like regular folks coming to participate in the day’s festivities; little did anyone know that we were about to raise some serious eyebrows — and awareness.

As we entered the actual “party” site, the four of us set up camp in a very visible spot towards the front of the “beach site” in front of the DJ.  We then casually stripped to our bathing suits and rubbed mud on ourselves as if it were tanning lotion — but the mud we rubbed on our bodies symbolized Israel’s dirty policies, to remind the crowd of their complicity in the slow destruction of an entire people.

When we started walking around with our hot pink signs (some read: “Say NO to Israel’s War Crimes”, others said, “Ahava = Stolen Beauty.  Don’t Buy Occupation”), we quickly got the attention of the event’s organizers. Needless to say, they weren’t pleased and quickly called security.  When the police arrived, they were eager for us to leave the immediate site and offered us an alternative that wasn’t to the liking of any of the activists that were participating in the event: they wanted us to go into a pen that had been set up for those who dissented.  The pen was symbolic of the plight of those trapped in Gaza and we all agreed that this was not a viable option.  Though the police kept promising to arrest us, we were able to out-maneuver them throughout the day by exiting the immediate site and walking around the entrance.  At times we were also forced to put down our signs, but this was not detrimental to our action as we had already painted our messages on our mostly bare bodies.

Not only did we find resistance from the police, but the staff was also less than friendly.  In fact, their hatred and violence was jarring.  I personally had one of the staffers approach me by pressing his body against mine and whisper in my ear, “why don’t you go f–k yourself, you dirty little whore.”  Other bystanders also had similar messages of hatred.  One family, in front of their young children, said that we should go to Israel so that we could be stoned.  Another random man said that we deserved to be bombed.  Likewise, an elderly woman made recurrent violent gestures towards us with the Israeli and American flags she held in her hand.  It was shocking to hear such violent messages, and it seemed immensely hypocritical coming from a constituency that defends its atrocities by citing their victims’ violence.  But each insult affirmed my commitment to expose the event’s hypocrisy.  It was important to me that Israel and those putting together this tourist-grabbing, phony party got a clear message that New Yorkers hadn’t turned a blind-eye to their cruel policies.

Further strengthening my commitment to the action was the solidarity we built with other groups and individuals whom we encountered during the protest.  The group contained in the pen included activists from different walks of life.  Some were Palestinians, others were Jews against Israel’s policies.  However, we were all united in promoting much needed peace in that region of the world.   The solidarity among us was palpable.  Women in veils hugged girls in bikinis and though we weren’t in the pen with them, many of the activist from within kept coming out to check up on us and make sure that the police and staff weren’t harassing us too badly.

We accomplished our goal of bringing attention (including some media) to Gaza’s plight and Israel’s violent policies by exposing the deceitfulness of this mockery of an event.  Further, we did a great job at educating bystanders whom would have otherwise perceived it as one of the city’s many free summer events.  We even had some friendly and informative chats with the few police officers who were sympathetic to our cause: that life in Tel Aviv aren’t all fun and games as this party tried to portray.  No amount of artificial sand could mask the reality of Israel’s abhorrent actions.