An interesting story unfolded the night Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister of Israel, spoke at Union College.

John Amidon, one of the organizers of the witness against the alleged war criminal Olmert, was approached by two men in the proverbial dark suits, one of them flashing a badge so quickly that John didn't have time to read it. They turned out to be from our nation's Homeland Security Anti-Terrorist Unit and told John that they had information about possible violence at the event; his name was associated with it and then told him not to be stupid, etc. To be fair, they started out by telling John that he had done nothing wrong – but John already knew that.

Anybody connected with the Capital District peace community and regular readers of this blog know that John has been a longtime proponent and practitioner of non-violence. John has quite the CV when it comes to peace work: He's one of the principal founders and organizers of the annual Kateri Peace Conference, has been on peace-building trips to the Middle East and is active with Veterans for Peace – just to name a few of his peace-building activities.

If this is the quality of the information that our government is gathering on people it is no wonder that they let a man with loaded underwear onto a airplane. Meanwhile, there was a man accused of killing over 1,400 innocent human beings in the vicinity.

To John's credit, he responded by telling the government agents that if they wanted to speak with him, he wanted witnesses and asked a couple of friends to come over. The two men in dark suits said that they wanted to keep the conversation private.

I'll bet they did. Transparency is never conducive to intimidation. John challenged them to “be a man” and have this talk filmed as the TV news people were right there. They declined.

There were about 100 people at the witness including several non-Zionist orthodox Jews. To see a great photograph of their witness click HERE.