Juan Cole -- Police Crackdowns on OWS Coordinated among Mayors, FBI, DHS

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/16-3


Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let slip in an interview with the BBC that she had been on a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities about how to deal with the Occupy Wall Street movement. That is, municipal authorities appear to have been conspiring to deprive Americans of their first amendment rights to freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Likewise, A Homeland Security official let it slip in a phone interview that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had been strategizing with cities on how to shut down OWS protests. The FBI is said to have advised using zoning ordinances and curfew regulations, and to stage the crackdown with massive police force at a time when the press was not around to cover the crackdown.

Wonkette suggests that the PATRIOT Act is implicated here, but I’m not sure how that works. Actually the techniques discussed are standard for US police forces in dealing with peaceful protests (the only routine technique missing is that of putting saboteurs among the protesters who cause destruction and create an image of them as violent.

What these two reports show is a high-level conspiracy to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to protest peacefully.

MORE at the link --

[TBF]

1. Recommend. nt

[HopeHoops]

2. I hope they remembered to cavity search the old lady they pepper sprayed.

:sarcasm:

[Botany]

3. Why is Homeland Security involved w/ this at all?

This has nothing to do with terrorism or a threat to the American people but this has everything to do with
protecting the status quo. The people protesting @ various occupy sites are doing what good and patriotic
Americans have done for generations and that is to stand up for the rights of the American people.

The top 1% knows that if the occupy folks last over winter that their message will become even more powerful.

[earthside]

8. You're kidding, right?

Of all the failures of the Obama administration -- the zero effort to repeal/change/reform the Patriot Act and Homeland Security will be seen as historically the greatest.

Just as most of us here predicted when these 'big brother' bills were passed during the Bush/Cheney regime, they are now being used against the people.

And don't kid yourselves ... whether is makes sense or not, or if these crack-down measures are actually in the law or not, they will be interpreted to permit using Homeland Security to suppress the people.

So, I'm surprised that anyone wouldn't believe that Homeland Security and the FBI are coordinating these OWS raids.

[jeff47]

11. The HS involvement angle is based on a story from the Examiner

The basis for Homeland Security involvement is an anonymous quote in a story from the Examiner. The same publication has stories about the US Government's secret program that teleports people to Mars using technology given to us by all the aliens visiting our planet.

Their reporting should be considered suspect until someone else independently verifies it. So far, all the other people talking about FBI and Homeland Security involvement are quoting the Examiner story.

[femrap]

4. Donnachaidh,

I'm quite amazed at all the DUers who really dislike the Occupy Movement. Do they think they're part of the 1% or are they from The Heritage Foundation or are they just brainwashed against 'protests?' Lots of unreccing going on.

I thought people around here were smarter than this and could see that they are part of the 99%.

What was done to the OWS Movement yesterday was out and out fascism....which of course was just a matter of time in the scheme of things.

Ideas do not die...the 99% will not go away.

eta: can't type.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Javaman]

5. one would think that if the FBI was involved in such a big operation...

the Attorneys General of the US would have had knowledge of this.

and if so, that would mean he would also have to report such a massive operation to the president.

Just saying.

[Donnachaidh]

7. as KO and Michael Moore noted last night

it was really -convenient- that all this went down as the president was on his way to Australia.

[jeff47]

13. That would be convenient if this was 1802.

Being in Australia doesn't mean the President is out of contact.

[Donnachaidh]

14. you've never heard the term *plausible deniability* I take it?

:eyes:

[jeff47]

15. For that to work, the deniability would have to actually be plausible.

The idea that Obama was "out of the loop" because he was in Australia is not plausible.

[jeff47]

12. The FBI/Homeland Security involvement is based on some pretty thin reporting

It's based on an anonymous quote in a story by a tabloid publication. It's a break from their reporting about secret agreements between the US Government and extra terrestrials.

So far, everyone else talking about it is quoting the Examiner's story. But we probably shouldn't consider that story to be reliable until someone else independently verifies it.

[Newest Reality]

9. This comes as no

surprise to some. It is to be expected. What has been erected via the misnamed Patriot Act, (which is quite the opposite) and DHS with its Fusion Centers, (which I recommend looking up if you don't know about them) are powerful, repressive tools that appear to be fulfilling a more insidious function than they were proposed to.

Because the terminology is vague and easily assigned, we are at a place where the "terrorist" outside is now potentially, the "terrorist" within if the Powers That Were proclaim it so. The conditions that create civil unrest, be it peaceful and in the form of civil disobedience, or otherwise, are real and growing. They were expected.

If we scrape the lovable Micky Mouse facade that has been ingrained in us here in the US, (it is already frayed and the seams are unraveling) the ugly truth is becoming more resistant to the flimsy barriers of our reality tunnels and comfort bubbles, created and reinforced by the five, massive conglomerates that are the McPravda of corporate media.

Perhaps, the artificial divides that have been inflicted upon us and that we have bought into will soften and even dissolve gradually as we see the critical divide that is revealing itself in an overt struggle of the people vs. the dominance and control of the corporate/government merger that stands over us with visions of total tyranny in its angry, reptilian eyes, reminding us that we rise or fall together and the time to respond is most certainly at hand.

[starroute]

10. I'm curious about the role of local city elites in pushing the crackdowns

We've seen stories about the role in Oakland of developers who would rather have that city follow a path of gentrification than provide for the needs of existing working-class residents. And the attitudes of Mayor Bloomberg and his elite cronies in New York are obvious.

So what I've started wondering about is to what extent there are elite groups in many major cities -- possibly acting through the Chamber of Commerce, possibly brought together more informally through upper-class cultural or philanthropic institutions -- that are in a position to influence city policy even against the will of the elected political leadership.

I suggest this in part because of this article about Washington, DC that I ran across a number of years ago. I've never been sure what to make of it and whether it's baseless conspiracy theory or the real scoop. But current events have certainly gotten me thinking about it seriously.

http://www.thecommondenominator.com/121399_news1.html

THE DISTRICT’S POWER BEHIND THE SCENES
Washington Post-connected business group wields influence over city’s legislative agenda
(Published December 13, 1999)

An exclusive group of largely wealthy Washington area business people has for years been working behind the scenes with the city’s political leaders to advance its own agenda for the nation’s capital – often without D.C. residents’ input and almost always without wide knowledge of its efforts.

Legislative influence of the group, which has close ties to the Washington Post, extends from the D.C. City Council and the mayor’s office to the halls of Congress and the White House, according to sources interviewed for this story. Since the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, even the president’s Cabinet and other key federal officials have been considered ex officio advisers.

Membership in the private and generally secretive group, called the Federal City Council, is highly selective. Washington Post Publisher Donald E. Graham serves as nominating committee chairman for the organization, which was founded in 1954 by his father, the late Post Publisher Philip L. Graham. Seed money for the group’s formation came from the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, named for the parents of Katharine Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Co. executive committee.

"They’re controlling the city and it’s a problem," said Sandra Seegars, a longtime Ward 8 activist and recent appointee to the D.C. Taxicab Commission. "It’s a secret group that’s in the background pushing buttons and pulling strings, but nobody knows who they are."