palmer report

palmer report

The Importance of the Palmer Report

1. Introduction

The Carlisle Board of Public Welfare in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, a small struggling agency at best, was not always filled with despair. On the contrary, once they were very proud and thrived on providing opportunity for those less fortunate as they worked towards upward mobility. Their demise was not wrought of their own failings, but rather brought on by a series of unjust acts and unfair doings of others who they trusted and relied on. This quote from the former President ..

Ghost of Injustice

The Importance of the Palmer Report

Palmer’s report is the detailed account and investigation into the dissolution of the once proud and accomplished federation of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania by the American Medical Association. Compiled by international law attorney James F. Hammill, the document spans a period of five years, starting at the time when the AMA began their investigation in the Lewistown Hospital Residency Program in March of ’86, to the final acceptance of the dissolution and disassociation of the federat ..

It would stand to reason that if a person or organized group is systematically slandered and defamed, they would at the least want a chance to clear their name and set the record straight. In order to do this, an individual would surely need to return to the scene of the incident and gather any and all evidence pertaining to their case. This is the express purpose of the Palmer’s report, to review the evidence and get to the bottom of accusations brought against the Un ..

The Carlisle Board of Public Welfare in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, a small struggling agency at best, was not always filled with despair. On the contrary, once they were very proud and thrived on providing opportunity for those less fortunate as they worked towards upward mobility. Their demise was not wrought of their own failings, but rather brought on by a series of unjust acts and unfair doings of others who they trusted and relied on. This quote from the former President Palmer’s book: “A Reflection of Medical Professionalism.”

2. Overview of the Palmer Report

The Palmer report was released in May 2010 and investigated the events on board the Mavi Marmara during the aid flotilla to Gaza on 31 May 2010. The report was compiled by a committee of four with Sir Geoffrey Palmer (former Prime Minister and Minister of Justice of New Zealand) as the committee chair, Alvaro Uribe (Former President of Colombia), Joseph Ciechanover (a special envoy to the Prime Minister of Israel), and lastly, the Turkish representative Shabtai Rosenne. The report’s intended purpose was to establish the facts surrounding the events and resulting incident around the Mavi Marmara. The report aimed to discover how the incident occurred and determine what could be done to avoid similar issues in the future. The report was written in a simplified style and was comprised of three parts. The report used a significant quantity of evidence in reaching its conclusions but sadly fell short of interviewing some of the high command in Israel. The Palmer report was an objective analysis of the incidents which occurred surrounding the flotilla. It gives understanding into the reasons behind the flotilla, the event itself, and what could be done to avoid similar occurrences in the future. The report gives great insight into the events of the flotilla and the situation surrounding it. Although the commission did not interview any of the high command in Israel, the report still managed to attain conclusions in an objective manner. This was done by no fault of the commission and would have made a significant difference to the report and its conclusions.

3. Key Findings and Recommendations

Through this essay, it has been clear that the most important aspect of the Palmer report is the recommendations and the findings from the report. This is the first independent inquiry into the handling of the Longman Island Standoff. Key findings provided a clear view of the incident, the general reaction from the public, emergency service organizations, and the media, which helped identify the consequences of the event. There were nineteen pages of the findings; however, the significant points were: the Standoff caused serious injury to the public’s perception of the Queensland Police; this was because of the regular media reports about the incident, followed by the report after the standoff had ended, and the Queensland Police had been misled by inaccurate information from Island residents and at times had overreacted. This picture of the event and the consequences was important for the public and the police. It shows how a failure to understand the residents’ true grievances and to maintain professionalism had escalated a series of minor incidents into a major one with measurable damage. This was essentially a lose-lose scenario for the Police and the Islanders. With the understanding of the event and its consequences, the QPS and EMQ can assess the impact it had on their respective organizations, and the law enforcement agencies can learn from the mistakes made by the QPS. This was the first step towards achieving the report’s goal of preventing similar events in the future.

4. Implications and Impact

In discussing the Palmer raids’ importance, it is crucial to evaluate not only the raids themselves but also their positive and negative long-term effects. Viscount Bryce, the then president of the British Board of Trade, accurately observed that ‘in time of fear, there is a temptation…to find the… scapegoat.’ It would be startlingly simplistic to condemn disasters such as the Red Scare as entirely baseless occurrences brought about by cranks and professional politicians. All throughout American history, in times of national stress or civil unrest, minority radical groups have been subjected to all manner of foolish and hostile accusations and acts, none of which can be said to have come from a unanimous psychosis on the part of the native population. The immigrants – be they anarchists, socialists, or IWW members – were, throughout the turbulent war years of 1917-18, a problematic minority in the eyes of the American public. The hysteria of a populace coming to grips with actual war in Europe, the dual threat of defeat by the Central Powers or rebellious revolution in aid of German or Bolshevik interests, and the economic and martial upheaval created all but perfect conditions for a ‘domestic front.’ Failure to do away with any radical or physical threat from immigrant minority had the potential to seriously jeopardize national morale and security. When considering national safety and the ‘what might have been if’ in the counterfactual history of America’s relations with cause 20th-century Europe, the Palmer raids were not wholly unnecessary measures. It can be argued they were the sadly misinformed execution of a relatively reasonable and little-known about deportee? 1918-1920 was an explosive period in American labor history. Buoyed by news of recent successes of Russian and Eastern European comrades and the idealistic belief that now was the time when capitalism was finally weak enough to be overthrown, many labor unions grew increasingly radical, as did their previously moderate membership. This was an uncomfortable prospect for a nation swamped in war and anti-German fervor, for Germany was then seen as the unbroken bastion of Marxist thought and action. Any affront to its government or the conclusion of a separate peace with allied powers had the potential to bring Bolshevik revolution advocates into accusation of sedition and the radical labor element into violence and open effort to aid Russia by igniting a revolution in the name of oppressed proletariat. Faced with the bombing of his own home and those of other prominent leaders, Attorney General Palmer became convinced of momentarily imminent attempt to overthrow the government by force and after appealing to Congress, received permission to enact a 1918 law providing for the deportation of alien criminals, seditioners, and anarchists. A military government operation was to wait the decision of the courts and remove suspects pending their cases without right to counsel. While in conduction the raids only netted some 5000 aliens of probable 10-15000 targeted and were largely seen as a failure, they dealt a severe blow the American radical movements. Arrested individuals were isolated from their families, legal delay tactics or simple lack of interest in prosecuting cases allowed some deportees to be held for many months without knowledge of their offense, much public sentiment on the issue had already been anti-radical and the benign sabotage of the wartime sedition and espionage acts was to take sweeping and crippling judicial construction in criminal syndicalism trials all across America. The Sedition Act caused 1900 prosecutions with an 80% conviction rate and in the 1920 case of United States v. Saurin, criminal syndicalism was held to mean plotting an unspecific crime in advocacy of violent change of present industrial system, thereby branding all militant radicals as criminals. These acts and decisions have left a permanent jumbled and embarrassing record in American judicial history and have added great insult to injury upon the many crushed radicals who sincerely believed they were helping the US proletariat enter a new age of social justice.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion to the essay, the Palmer Report has been sought by many to be a significant document into the events that led to the ending of communist reign in the USA. For historical purposes, it has all the information needed for an accurate, impartial piece of investigation into the United Mine Workers’ Strike. In an attempt to help the coal miners, it was said that the strike was orchestrated by communist influence, and this is where the attack on communists began. The report was said to have been biased and driven to the decision that communists were a threat, using “red-baiting,” which may hold true. However, the information that has been gathered is accurate, and if communists were hindered by this propaganda, it showed that they were weak and could not repel it. The US Attorney General, A Mitchell Palmer, was a man who was known to be violent and impulsive. This is shown throughout the report, although he tried to cover it up by using lists of statistics about the number of aliens and raids.