Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
Source: The Guardian
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
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Berlum
(7,044 posts)Thank you for posting...
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Now would be a great time for us to give up all our guns, no?
While the FBI and the banks are busy finalizing and consolidating fascism, DU's GD is obsessed with further disempowering citizens. I don't get it.
I stand for all Constitutional, inalienable, and natural rights: speech, assembly, privacy, the RKBA, trial by jury, habeus corpus, equal protection, etc. I call upon all other conscious DU'ers to quit the infighting about guns, and start paying attention to the larger issues, which may require the exercise of many rights in order for progress to happen.
-app
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)When the government decides to get you, how will you stop it? You and the whole family can be armed to the teeth with every assault rifle you can find and hundreds of thousands of rounds and it will do nothing to stop the Hellfire missiles that the drones will use to reduce you and your house to rubble and gore.
Newsflash: Guns don't prevent police states when people willingly sacrifice all their liberty for a false sense of security afforded them by guns.
The police state is fact, and has been since the "Patriot Act". All the guns you can eat didn't do a damn thing to thwart it.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)So I post about how we Democrats might ought to try and be more united about protecting all our rights, and you practically wet your pants with glee about some prospective future tyrannical government annihilating me and my family with drone-launched Hellfire missiles.
Nice, real nice.
Glad we can really be team players around here.
I suppose I'll be able to derive some satisfaction from the fact that while it will cost this possible tyrant $250,000 a pop to knock-off armed families such as mine, they'll be fine using some $20-an-hour rent-a-cop to put your sorry, unarmed ass onto a train to the labor camp. Be sure and stand smartly when they yell, "Papiere bitte!" Now, that's a good homelander.
Sarcastically,
-app
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)So I post about how we Democrats might ought to try and be more united about protecting all our rights, and you practically wet your pants with glee about some prospective future tyrannical government annihilating me and my family with drone-launched Hellfire missiles.
Wet my pants with glee? Hardly I asked you a question. How are these guns going to protect yourself from a police state that already exists? All the Constitutional rights we had, except for the 2nd and 3rd, are already NULL and VOID.
This has nothing to do with "glee" and everything to do with REALITY. When the Occupy movement was under direct government/corporate attack, where were all the 2nd Amendment die-hards?
Oh, right, they were rooting for the police. Just as they now want legions of armed police in our schools to "protect" us.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)
votesparks
(1,288 posts)is anyone surprised by anything?
pacalo
(24,721 posts)And I've suspected the motivation from the beginning:
RKP5637
(67,102 posts)
pcbynature
(3 posts)This info should have been reported in MSM, which is now just the Propaganda of the Banks. Both Dems and Reps are controlled by the Banks and the pressure of the Plutocrats on working people resulted in the OWS movement and the mass shootings and bombings in America.
American terrorism is born out of the belief that the Banks cannot be fought. That is the other side of protests: action of a destructive nature. That is how revolutions begin...
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)apparently OK'd at the top. And I mean THE TOP. Don't 'cha just love that Third Way? Fascism but at a much slower pace. Aren't we just the lucky ones?
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)
Magoo48
(4,701 posts)We do pay for them to treat us this way. The question is: do we have the collective will to turn it around.....stay tuned.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)Or do we have to wait until they drag out the Swastika and the jack boots?
And what is really disturbing is that we have accepted this as the new normal.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)do not seem to concern the freedom-fantics of the RW one tiny little bit.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)You're really trying to blame this on the Republicans? Open your eyes. YOUR "Democratic" president OK'd this. He would have had to or at the very least, had knowledge of and never stopped it.
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)to the right they have made it possible for centrist Dems to look reasonable by comparison and those who try to hold the left look radical.
The RW has had the backing of the moneyed classes to conduct a long term, long range, massively succesful multimedia propaganda campaign to achieve this goal.
indepat
(20,899 posts)and their works speak loudly for themselves. 
Cleita
(75,480 posts)We need no swastikas because we already have the corporate logos stamped on us.
votesparks
(1,288 posts)Taking direct orders from Goldman Sachs, I suppose.
Earth_First
(14,910 posts)Willful ignorance is not a defense in this situation.
LisaLynne
(14,554 posts)Get the authorities to crack down violently on the protesters themselves, while their mouthpieces in the corporate owned media belittle the entire movement.
Bozita
(26,955 posts)The Guardian has been MUST READ material for a long time now.
reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)
snot
(10,520 posts)reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)...the information about the FBI coordinating with representatives of the banks was in the American MSM article I read some time ago.
What's new here is the hysterical hyperbole of a pundit with an extreme point of view. The occupy movement was (almost despite itself) a rather successful effort and the response to it was not a "corporate-state repression of dissent".
It seems reasonable to me that information about a series of mass protests with a (legitimate) grudge against wall street banks would be shared with the targets so they could protect themselves against trespassing and vandalism. In fact, it may even be helpful for the protest, since lowering the visibility of the more violent, extremist elements in the movement gives it more legitimacy in the eyes of the average citizen.
The one point that she made that I thought was all-to-true was the fact that a non-profit had to pursue this, rather than a regular news organization. Unfortunately, the economic demise of newspapers has really cut into their budgets and they don't have the same resources for investigative journalism that they used to.
snot
(10,520 posts)because there was no significant violence or vandalism. Indeed, in many cities, crime actually went down in the vicinities of camps, despite the fact that police routinely sent vagrants to the camps.
And i.m.h.o., the demise of journalism is not primarily due to economics, but to conservative take-overs and consolidation of media ownership.
reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)...this was done so the banks could protect their property against trespass and vandalism. I don't see what that has to do with the evictions, coordinated or not. Assertions to the contrary not withstanding, that is all that was done.
If there was no violence or vandalism (against the banks) it is for one of two reasons... the protesters were peaceful and no one attempted it, or, some minority of them did attempt it and it was thwarted. If it was the second case, it would have been a win-win - the banks avoid damage and disruption and the Occupy movement avoids the embarrassment of being smeared as gratuitously violent and disruptive, which would detract from its message.
You are entitled to your opinion about journalism, but the sad fact is that the demise of professional print journalism with the capability of carrying out extensive investigative reporting and international reporting is directly due to the rise of the internet and the consequent shrinking readership for print journalism. That isn't to say there isn't consolidation - when newspapers lose readership that's the only course possible.
Response to reACTIONary (Reply #36)
Post removed
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)And the people in charge of the corporations and banks would be the first to object to surveillance if it were being done of them.
How is it possible that we have so much gun crime, how is it that we can have shootings like at Virgina Tech or in Shady Hood, Newtown, Ct. -- that appear to be completely unexpected, so many apparently random mass murders, and the police are wasting their time beating up on First-Amendment-protected folks protesting corporate crime?
The police and military look over here and there and there, then over there, harassing people who are policing themselves and keeping weapons out of their groups, and completely ignoring real crimes like the fraud of the banks and mortgage companies and real dangers like gun freaks gone wild.
President Obama. This is a national emergency. It is turning citizen against citizen.
You can fix this. Just do it.
DollarBillHines
(1,922 posts)We're fucked.
Adenoid_Hynkel
(14,093 posts)She calls that nutcase "a brave truth teller"
I'll wait for a more credible analysis of this info before believing her interpretation of it
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/naomi-wolf-defends-herself-ignoring-her-gra
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:
Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A's claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
Adenoid_Hynkel
(14,093 posts)If she's willing to deem people like that legitimate, then everything she says should, at first, not be believed
She's a hack:
http://angryblacklady.com/2011/11/25/ows-the-shocking-truth-of-naomi-wolfs-journalistic-hackery/
KoKo
(84,711 posts)snot
(10,520 posts)grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)
Moonwalk
(2,322 posts)Also known as Appeal to Authority:
You appeal to authority if you back up your reasoning by saying that it is supported by what some authority says on the subject. Most reasoning of this kind is not fallacious, and much of our knowledge properly comes from listening to authorities. However, appealing to authority as a reason to believe something is fallacious whenever the authority appealed to is not really an authority in this particular subject, when the authority cannot be trusted to tell the truth, when authorities disagree on this subject (except for the occasional lone wolf), when the reasoner misquotes the authority, and so forth. Although spotting a fallacious appeal to authority often requires some background knowledge about the subject or the authority, in brief it can be said that it is fallacious to accept the words of a supposed authority when we should be suspicious of the authority’s words.
Example:
The moon is covered with dust because the president of our neighborhood association said so.
This is a fallacious appeal to authority because, although the president is an authority on many neighborhood matters, you are given no reason to believe the president is an authority on the composition of the moon. It would be better to appeal to some astronomer or geologist. A TV commercial that gives you a testimonial from a famous film star who wears a Wilson watch and that suggests you, too, should wear that brand of watch is using a fallacious appeal to authority. The film star is an authority on how to act, not on which watch is best for you.
In short, it is not an ad hominem attack if one is questioning the authority of the source.
creeksneakers2
(7,473 posts)because the documents were posted. I read them the best I could. Some parts were too small to read. My take was that most of the documents were from FBI or other field offices merely passing on threat information to local law enforcement. Most of the threats were from groups affiliated with Occupy, but not Occupy. Occupy was repeatedly called "peaceful."
In all the instances I found, the feds left the matters to local law enforcement, even when there were threats to shut down ports. In that case, the feds even told their agent to leave if any trouble started.
When Occupy Wall Street named themselves "occupy" they created a threat. "Occupy" is generally a hostile forceful act. I don't blame the feds at all for monitoring the situation by reading web sites, etc. There's no evidence of surveillance going beyond that. I don't blame them at all for meeting with banks too, when words like "occupy" are used.
After reading the documents, I reread the article. The author was trying to make a big deal out of nothing. I don't think she's very credible.
Adenoid_Hynkel
(14,093 posts)It works like this:
1. make alarmist or false claim
2. provide names of sources
3. assume your audience already agrees with you, and won't go to check out the sources to discover you're full of shit
BTW, I wonder if Wolf will be dropping by her old buddy Michael Savage's show again to push this latest bullshit?
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)You're creating a distraction around the author when the documents are actually available. If you don't like Wolf reading them for you, read those and then come back to us.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)I've always found her very credible.
And, I don't even know who Alex Jones is, other than a name. And Wolf is certainly no biirther.
Adenoid_Hynkel
(14,093 posts)Jones is a rightwing Ron Paul-ian POS, who, when not pushing race-baiting memes, is one of the leading proponents of birtherism and trooferism.
He's a fraud and a massive liar. Just a few weeks ago, Drudge was linking to Jones' video in which he invented the crackpot theory that Obama staged the school shootings to take everyone's guns away.
That's the kind of lunatic Wolf praises and recommends to her audience.
It tells you all you need to know about her.
She's been hell-bent on pushing this lie that Obama co-ordinated the Occupy crackdown, and this latest bit is just her once again cherry-picking and distorting the "facts" to try to make them fit her storyline.
She's a hack.
Pharaoh
(8,209 posts)reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)...so I scanned some of the others she has recently posted. My impression was much the same. She seems to be making unfounded assertions, given what other sources have said about the same documents. Her extremist, hyperbolic "point of view" is pretty obvious. She's a pundit, not a serious analyst.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)The FBI is one of The Guardian institutions of Hierarchy.
Note: this is my own writing, so copyright rules do not apply.
You can think of this effect as a form of social "reverse osmosis", in which power is pumped from social regions of low power concentration to regions of high concentration, with class boundaries forming the membrane between them.
What drives social power from low to high concentrations? And what keeps the semi-permeable membrane of social class boundaries intact so that the whole system can function?
These mechanisms are provided by what I call the Guardian Institutions. These are the corporate, economic, financial, political, legal, educational and communications institutions that form the structural skeleton of our civilization.
- Corporate and economic and financial institutions set the value of work and control the money supply. It doesn't make any difference whether an economy is capitalist, socialist or communist. The core beliefs it promotes are always the same: ownership and growth. These institutions are the pumps that move power and wealth away from the powerless and to the powerful.
- Political institutions encode, enshrine and manage the application of social power. Politics is the institution that legitimizes all the others. Because of its unique ability to make laws and its access to legalized violence to defend them, politics is the primary self-defense mechanism of the power hierarchy of civilization. In this view it doesn't matter if the political system is democratic or authoritarian, capitalist or socialist, liberal or fascist, feudal, monarchic or dictatorial. As long as the political system can make laws and use institutionalized violence (i.e. police forces like the FBI) to enforce them, any political system will do. Politics as a social system invariably works to the benefit of those at the tip of the power pyramid.
- Legal institutions enforce the norms of the hierarchy in ways too numerous to count. These range from the protection of privilege (one law for the rich, one for the poor) to the preferential defense of property rights over human rights. Along with the police force it empowers, the legal system is the tip of the spear that keeps the power-holders safe from the powerless. In our metaphor, legal institutions and the police maintain the integrity of the membranes between the classes and defend them against any possible disruptions.
- Educational institutions teach successive generations how the system works. It gives those at the tip of the pyramid the tools to integrate into it and manipulate it. At the same time it trains everyone involved to see the pyramid of hierarchy as the only possible way the world can work.
- Communications media reinforce the message of the inevitability and beneficence of our social hierarchy by enlisting people in the power/growth/ownership paradigm. They do this through overt messages like advertising, covert messages embedded in the story lines of entertainment and of course the selective editing and presentation style of news programs. People who are programmed by this constant messaging come to regard any values that challenge the existing structure as incomprehensible, self-evidently absurd, dangerous or even insane.
Getting rid of one of them would be like cutting out a skin lesion that is simply a visible symptom of a systemic cancer. The body of our civilization is riddled with this particular cancer, and has been for at least the last few hundred years. Perhaps the only real solution lies in the death and rebirth of civilization itself, but that's a fairly ... ummm... unpopular notion, especially to those at the tip of the power hierarchy.
nolabels
(13,133 posts)You sound much like them in your thinking. Maybe let go of the hierarchy ideas. As people we all have something to contribute Through my years, one thing i have noticed is that it not always which side you stand for but which side has the quickest road to the win. What i am saying is the less verbiage with the most to the point and resonating message gets that jump ahead every time.
The connection to hitting home to what people are thinking also just as important (and why i read your post). A lot of two dollar words turn off or confuse us common Joe's also. Lastly, it might be hard to convince a lot people when you complain about this certain group but tend to use the same language and type of outrage as the ones you have problem with.
Your post indicates you have a problem with the way society in US is structured but if you advocate in the same ritual as the ones you oppose how can we know what you propose would be much different?
Btw. I was trying to be helpful but if any of this seems negative or condescending forget i wrote it and just consider that it was only a few seconds of lost time.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Last edited Sat Dec 29, 2012, 10:34 PM - Edit history (2)
I wrote that back in 2009 when I was fleshing out my understanding of things worked behind the curtain. I didn't write it to convince others, but to clarifying my own thinking. So yes, it did get quite long-winded. I hauled it out here because the topic was appropriate. As the song goes, "Take what you want and leave the rest..."
While I have a problem with the way hierarchies appear in US society, and in Canada where I live, it's more that I see hierarchies in general as a problem - no matter where they arise. I'm firmly on the side of Occupy and their determinedly non-hierarchic approach. I'd use the word "anarchistic" in its formal sense, but it carries too much semantic baggage around here.
Thanks for passing on your thoughts - they're very helpful.
reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)Actually, since about the neolithic with the adoption of agriculture. Since the early copper age at the latest. And really, most likely during earlier hunter-gatherer periods.
Hierarchy and social stratification isn't a "cancer" on the body of civilization - it IS civilization.
You might want to take a look at Kenneth Arrow's The Limits of Organization for some thoughts on hierarchy.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)But for most people it's the present situation that matters, so my article sticks with the situation we're all familiar with.
The critique of how we got here, and when TSHTF for the first time is complex. Most of us pin it on the development of agriculture - or more precisely, when we started locking up the resulting food. But that analysis isn't essential to understand what's going on today. It IS essential, however, if you want to claim - as I do - that there is no way to fix what's going on today (the insoluble predicament of GlobCiv 1.0) within the context of our current civilization.
In fact, I can make a reasonable case that this situation is the unavoidable result of homo sapiens' evolutionary development of self-awareness waaaay back when. Self-awareness automatically implies other-awareness, and if self is important and not-self is less so, you have the foundation of a system that permits the view that the universe (including other life and other people) as an enormous bag of resources for me and my buddies to use as we see fit.
But as I said, we don't need to go all the way to the bottom of the rabbit hole in order to get a working-level understanding of why the FBI are prepared to zap Occupy.
reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)... with reference to "within the context of our current civilization" I would add, "or any reasonable civilization we might attempt to establish". I would also add that the perceived problem - which I take it is hierarchy and social stratification - isn't necessarily all that much of a problem in principle.
I'm wondering if you are familiar with John Rawls' A Theory of Justice?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)AverageJoe
(2,292 posts)This is a cogent and thoughtful analysis. Right on target, IMHO.
Uncle Joe
(58,342 posts)Thanks for the thread, votesparks.
snot
(10,520 posts)"There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people's income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.
"Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one's personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a "terrorist organization" and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing."
Solly Mack
(90,762 posts)plethoro
(594 posts)in America, as well as much of the world.
libodem
(19,288 posts)And those teabag bastages went out with open carry to their stinkin rallies. Pffffttt.
lovuian
(19,362 posts)Maybe the FBI and SEC need to be arresting and getting Intel on the BANKSTERS who have yet to be brought
to justice....Derivitives scandal of which Europe and Iceland prosecuted banksters
and they went after the Occupy movement ...who by the way WON because the WHOLE WORLD Protested
the theft of the people and the OLD REGIME partners are all gone
God Bless everyone of them...They can be Proud that they fought for AMERICANS and JUSTICE
The Republican Party is responsible for the devastation of this country and they are a dying party
due to the Occupy movement
the Tea Party has been a DISASTER for Rove
for all the cruelty inflicted ilegal intel and suppression
they still lost ....and if they thought they won
they would be very very wrong
Cleita
(75,480 posts)for a long time over the interests of the rank and file citizen. What is so disturbing in the last forty years is that these agencies have been working for global corporate interests, not just American ones.
salib
(2,116 posts)With the "fiscal cliff"
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)this happened during the late 1800`s to the 30`s labor movement. it also happened during the civil rights movement and the anti war movement.
why would anyone be surprised if her assumptions were true?
Stewland
(163 posts)Forces much more powerful than this Corporate sponsored Fascism will undo much of it by midcentury. Natural disaster and cosmic forces will lay ruin to this darkness visited upon humanity by the global elites. They have forgotten the real purpose of their existence and soon they will have to reckon with the consequences. Natural Law will do its job.
Zax2me
(2,515 posts)Missteps left and right.
Ran its course too quickly.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Adenoid_Hynkel
(14,093 posts)something OWS, with its failure to adopt any sort of leadership structure, dogmatic adherence to the purity of not getting involved on issues beyond battling over public parks, pushing of a 'don't vote, it only encourages them' mantra, and palling around with Paulites and tinfoil hatters, was not interested in.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)I have been in quite a few "organized" protests. We behaved ourselves and were literally herded down streets in the part of town that impacted commerce the least. The newspapers literally ignored us. The oligarchs tolerated us.
As long as we have so many that fear the oligarchs we will be their slaves.
It's shameful that Democrats can, not only look the other way while peaceful demonstrators are being brutalized, but disparage them as well.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)If only they'd been GOOD organizers, the FBI would have protected them, right? Like, Martin Luther King - what a great organization was built around him! That's why the FBI never did a thing to harm him. Because they're just wonderful people in general with no political interest whatsoever.
I suppose it's possible you really believe what you write, that is if you define "good" as "ineffective liberal milquetoast politics financed with grants from the big foundations." The FBI doesn't generally bother those, although of course they have everything under surveillance (except the banks and corporations they serve).
PufPuf23
(8,764 posts)
frylock
(34,825 posts)Adenoid_Hynkel
(14,093 posts)Seeing as Wolf was basing her tinfoil hat theory solely on an anonymously-sourced article from the rightwing rag the Examiner.
There was nothing to back up her theory. I can't believe people are seriously taking this bait again.
Prometheus Bound
(3,489 posts)And the real hacks are now exposed.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Handy labels that serve to smear and discredit also serve to stop discussion.
randome
(34,845 posts)Nowhere in the documents does it say the government did anything but monitor groups of protesters. Same as they do with Tea Party groups. Same as they do with hate groups.
When a hundred different groups are all protesting without leadership or defined goals other than 'make things better', it makes sense for law enforcement to keep an eye on what is going on.
What else would we expect them to do? Take someone's word that nothing bad will happen? If so, whose word? They don't have anyone who speaks for the different groups.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)US Intelligence Machine Instead Plotted with Bankers to Attack Protest Movement
FBI Ignored Deadly Threat to Occupiers
by DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch DECEMBER 28-30, 2012
New documents obtained from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by the Partnership for Civil Justice and released this past week show that the FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies began a campaign of monitoring, spying and disrupting the Occupy Movement at least two months before the first occupation actions began in late September 2011.
As early as August, while acknowledging that the incipient Occupy Movement was “peaceful” in nature, federal, state and local officials from the FBI, the DHS and the many Fusion Centers and Joint Terrorism Task Force centers around the country were meeting with local financial institutions and their private security organizations to plot out a strategy for countering the Occupy Movement’s campaign.
Interestingly, one document obtained by PCJ from the Houston FBI office refers to what appears to have been a plan by some group, the name of which is blacked out in the released document, to determine who the leaders were of the Occupy Movement in Houston, and then to assassinate them with “suppressed” sniper rifles, meaning sniper rifles equipped with silencers.
The chilling document in question reads as follows:
“One identified BLANK as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified BLANK had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. BLANK planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest group and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership by suppressed sniper rifles.”
The wording does not sound like it’s some crank Tea Party faction they’re talking about — especially the words “deemed necessary” and the reference to “gathering intelligence against the leaders of the protest group.” Fortunately, in any case, no such assassination campaign materialized in Houston or anywhere else during the wave of Occupy actions across the country, but at the same time, there were never any arrests of whatever organization or individuals that the FBI clearly knew to be planning such a terrorist action against the Occupy activists.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/28/fbi-ignored-deadly-threat-to-occupiers/
I don't know why some people don't seem to understand why Secret Government is un-democratic.
randome
(34,845 posts)And here are some reader comments.
Should they be keeping an eye on OWS? Well... it depends. They note in many places that OWS itself is peaceful. They also note that OWS has been vulnerable to exploitation by groups with more violent aims, e.g. the Black Bloc. They also kept tabs on potential threats against OWS. (Yes, I see some possibility that the assassination threats that are mentioned are threats from within the government or even within the FBI, but I'm doubtful that that was the actual meaning of those notes. The FBI-as-conspirator reading doesn't fit the surrounding context of that note; not for me, anyway.)
How is it out of line for the FBI to follow up on evidence of an assassination attempt? What evidence is there that the person who was targetted was never informed?
They were sending information to local police about this threat - the threat that someone might try to assassinate an OWS leader.
Isn't that exactly what the FBI should be doing?
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)That's right: HSBC. Bank that laundered money for terrorists, according to its own admission. And the drug lords of Colombia and Mexico. But they're too big to jail. Only a fine results. No one prosecuted. Not a remote chance of it.
Imagine they'd done the same thing but weren't a British bank but a Muslim charity. Guantanamo. Drone bombs. Imagine they'd been 17-year-old black males with marijuana stems in their pockets on a stop and frisk.
In light of what the Wall Street banks have done to the world, this talk of OWS as a criminal threat is the most hypocritical propaganda imaginable.
randome
(34,845 posts)Just because Naomi Wolf says it doesn't make it so. Read the documents. Most of them characterize OWS as peaceful.
Allowing 'terrorists to skate' and 'Wall Street banks' have nothing to do with whether or not the FBI coordinated a 'crackdown' on OWS. They did not.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)the pepper spray, the beatings, the arbitrary arrests.
And of course the CRACKDOWN SIMULTANEOUSLY in dozens of localities, which everyone saw and knows happened (and is now confirmed in the documents) so your denial is predicated on forgetfulness and the well-worn propaganda idea that enough repetition of a lie will make fact.
But of course the FBI and local police have constructed completely bogus criminal cases against a variety of Occupy related people.
MEANWHILE...
Terrorist bank HSBC laundered money for the Mexican and Colombian gangs as well as "al-Qaeda" (CIA, most likely), and they admitted this, and no one was prosecuted. No one arrested. No one drone bombed. No one given a "three strikes" conviction for some petty crime and sent up for life. No one even lost a bonus. Terrorism & drugs!
This has everything to do with the coordinated federal crackdown on OWS, because it illustrates the priorities of this "justice" system under which we suffer. The rulers can plunder, in fact they can kill (as long as it's organized mass murder rather than individual crime) and they SKATE. Different laws apply to them. The political police (the FBI) are concerned with destroying peaceful protesters. They're not hogtying terrorist drug lord bankers at HSBC or anywhere else.
Sorry if you have your head so far down the ostrich hole that you really know as little about the real nature of justice in this country. Of course, there's no way you're blind to all this. You just selectively pick what you like to avoid a big picture.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,232 posts)
Black helicopters and jack-booted thugs? Really? 
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)I'm sorry, but Obama HAD to know about this. And apparently he approved because we sure as hell didn't see any of these agencies backing off when violence was used against the PEACEFUL protesters. Couple that with NOT ONE BANKSTER is in jail and you have your answer. Still want to vote "D" no matter what? Your own political party is an accessory to this and way too many other crimes against We The People who, in our new fascist state, are no more important than a gnat that you wipe away with your hand. But keep voting "D" no matter what 'cause those other guys are much worse. Really? 
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)much a threat as an inconvenience, in the view of TPTB, just being kind of small but dedicated?
Are they still doing anything? Haven't heard much beyond a soup kitchen in NY and that deal where they were helping out businesses that buy old debt.
I wonder how much violence is being done on the 50,000 families that are being yanked out of their homes this month, every month? All they did is go to work.
