From power of the pen to power of civil disobedience: Blinken’s farewell presser interrupted by courageous journalist protesters

I commend to this community yesterday’s interview with Colonel Larry Wilkerson on ‘Judging Freedom’:

One reason for this suggestion is that you may see the complete alignment in my and the good colonel’s thinking over the final responsibility of Washington for all of the atrocities that Israel has been committing these past 15 months in Gaza and more broadly in its neighborhood. In other words, we have no doubt that Washington is the head that wags the Israeli dog, however much John Mearsheimer and a host of other analysts insist that the Israeli Lobby is the force shaping American foreign policy.

However, the main reason for my recommending this program is because Judge Napolitano has put up on screen short videos of the forcible removal of two dissident journalists – Sam Husseini and Max Blumenthal – from Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s farewell press conference, both of them denouncing Blinken for his awful role as enabler of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Max Blumenthal is surely well known to many followers of alternative media in the United States and possibly also in Europe. Sam Husseini is less likely to be a familiar name. I know him going back seven years when he was an active Washington-based journalist who was at the same time an events promoter. In that capacity, he did what he could to bring in attendees to a presentation in The National Press Club of my newly published book entitled Does the United States Have a Future? a book which, I might add, has still more relevance today than it did in 2017. Indeed, readers of this essay may also wish to take a look at a video of that book presentation and hear the introduction to the event delivered by my good friend Ray McGovern who arranged the video recording of the presentation.

I have an ulterior motive for mentioning Ray here, because he later exercised the same right of peaceful protest as Max and Sam at a conference in CIA headquarters when a new director was being presented to staff and former employees. Ray interrupted the proceedings to denounce that individual’s involvement in unlawful torture practices being carried out by the Agency or by its proxies. Ray was viciously attacked by several beefy CIA security men, who were not so tender as the ones at State who manhandled Sam and prodded Max. Ray was thrown to the floor and nearly had his shoulder broken.

We, journalists are not known to be particularly courageous when facing possible physical violence at the hands of the upholders of public order. But those who do exercise the right, rather the obligation to peacefully protest the grossly illegal behavior of government officials deserve our highest respect.

This is the courage of our convictions that I had in mind in my recent discussions of collective responsibility for crimes against humanity in our own age, when protest really counts.

I write to you from Brussels, the capital of Europe. Sadly, I can think of no exemplars of civil disobedience on this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps readers will come forward with names and dates.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025