Yet more evidence of the Obama White House’s direct involvement in spying on and suppressing the Occupy movement. The White House orchestrated this and tried to hide that fact.

There is zero chance that our system can be fixed through the
officially-approved mechanisms. Whether overtly recognized or not,
there’s a war going

Therefore, our primary focus should be on resisting & criticizing the system, not on adapting to it.

Looking at it historically, the “solution” has to be a break from the officially-approved mechanisms. It must have the form of a broad movement based on the interests of the bottom 80-90% of the population, rather than on the
interests of the top 1%. It has to be what they call “radical” politics —
something that big business and the media are definitely not going to
like.

The 2 parties are really just a mechanism of social control. They’re not a
way for “the people” to express their will; they’re a way for rulers to
control the people — partly by making them believe that they (the peeps)
have some say (which they don’t). Building a movement to oppose this
takes time. But its sine qua non is political consciousness — the type
that socialists understand & try to cultivate; and that the
big-business parties & media try to suppress & eradicate.

Strength in humility is a myth. Passive denial of the enormity of
the problems that confront us and the radical solutions needed to
address these, while understandable in light of all the devastation
being visited upon the Earth by developers, capitalists of all stripes and a
largely acquiescent populace, is still an indefensible and repugnant
position.

We need Latin American-style “socialist” revolution in the streets,
complemented by effective traditional political organizing, social-class
based. Genuine socialism is good. An honest look at history shows that
it’s what the global fascists truly fear. (For instance, read “Killing
Hope” by William Blum.) Why do privileged first worlders always think
they/we know better, with their quasi-capitalist new-big-thing?

The only remedy will be when people begin to get interested in taking
back active control of the processes that rule their lives and work with
each other rather than crossing their fingers and heading off to the
ballot box.

well, this pretty much confirms our suspicions; but since we lack any “authority” to whom we can seek redress of our grievances, it becomes just another interesting historical footnote to the obama regime.

welcome to pinochet’s Chile. The chicago boys have another successful defeat of “democracy” by fascism. gonna be a long 30-year slog to restore a democratic fiction.

Confirming what we have believed there would be evidence to prove all along.

Well said, Jimbo, and very much spot-on.

Thank you, DSWright, for this post.

Thank you, FDL, for front-page coverage and perspective such as this post reflects.

It is past time to refrain from outrage at the latest daily “outrage”. It is time to recognize the pattern for what it is, class warfare, and to engage in the process of rebuilding those things necessary to civil society. There is, now, no Rule of Law, no justice, no observed of Constitutionally guaranteed protections … now, and for the foreseeable future, there is tyranny.

As we stand against such tyranny, and stand against it we must, we must also build a common understanding of where it is that we would choose, as conscience and justice must lead us, to “go”.

If we are not clear as to our intended collective destination, then we shall not arrive there. We will be waylaid by demagogues and self-serving opportunists, by petty tyrants, by clever sociopaths, and by brutal psychopaths. There are, already, those who claim, “There is no such thing as ‘reason’, there is only differing ‘opinion’ …” This is akin to those who said that we have approached the “end” of “history”, that unassailable forces have taken rational control and that the future is already mapped out and “owned”.

If our species has any one thing it must now draw upon, beyond courage and awareness of common plight, then it must be inspired imagination.

If we may determine where we want and need to “go”, if we wish to avoid either extinction or a “new” feudalism, then we must, together, imagine the pathway to a better, more sane, more just and sustainable human-scale world.

DW

Strength in humility is a myth.

I don’t think it’s a myth. It can cause one to see that we’re inevitably all in it together. Strength in numbers.

Agreed.

We are many … they are few, wordplay, we are the many of humanity and they are the few of tyranny.

Alone, we are vulnerable, together, we are the future …

DW

Obama Admin’s version of COINTELPRO.

Please remember Mitchell Palmer was a liberal Democrat.

Here is a comment off this article that was posted at Common Dreams. Hope it’s okay to place it here as it pertains.

“It was clear that the FBI was investigating Occupy. We saw many of the same dirty tricks used against us during the past 30 years. No surprise that some of our Food Not Bombs volunteers were set up in Cleveland and that a coordinated pattern was used across the nation. I would get waves of calls and emails about the same issue during a few day period than the issue would change. Since we had volunteers helping at kitchens in a few hundred occupations we had a movement wide view of the FBI’s activities. One that is shocking is the idea that the FBI talked of using “suppressed sniper rifles” noted on page 61. “gather intelligence against
the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.” I am sure happy they didn’t go that far but is shows just how far they would go if we were to have even greater impact. I was stopped and questioned and even arrested a number of times from September 17th to Thanksgiving as I traveled from one occupation to another.”

Joyeux Noel DWBartoo, DSWright, Jimbo and all. I have some errands to run. Read you on the flip side. : )

Senator Durbin admitted that “Wall Street owns this place”, and that applies broadly to the US Govt. I seem to recall that Wall St. provided grants to NYPD to obtain surveillance and riot gear, so obviously there’s a partnership in suppressing dissent. That partnership includes the telecoms that participate in warrantless wiretapping and a range of corporations that contract for “security”. DHS coordinates the whole network. This is the realization of Dick Cheney’s dream of authoritarian control.

Think of those who complained that Occupy seemed “leaderless” and how all collective human endeavors MUST have “leaders” to be “legitimate” and have “purpose”.

Like the Wobblies … everyone, by the very nature of what is occurring, is a leader.

Your comments are very much appreciated, Jimbo.

DW

We can’t ever be safe enough from these hippies.

24/7 surveillance, latest crowd torture tech, tanks, drones, fusion centers, money money money. All money, all energy, all ever more crazed murderous technology to serve the Brute.

9/11, Brute Industrial Complex’s greatest coup ever. Will never stop giving teh silly and brutal till our whole pointless heartbreaking awful existence is mercifully over anyway.

That said, merry christmas! I love my cats and what things and people there are to enjoy. What else is there to do. So much simple beauty and interesting things right outside the door.

9/11. Talk about return on investment. Just amazing. If it’s ever finally actually investigated it won’t matter. Whoever’s still around then will be caring only about food and water.

None of this surprises me or anyone else who was paying attention. I think the significant point is not the spying and infiltration, but the fact that not a single FBI or Homeland Security official will be called before a Congressional Committee to justify his or her actions. No one.

As to the police state, it has been here for a long time. The problem is that the more oppressive it becomes, the less legitimacy it has. There is always a tension between fear and disgust. The PTB are trying to instill fear, so that the public submits to whatever happens — high unemployment, wars, redistribution toward the rich, debt peonage–as something inevitable. But that kind of fear eventually gets displaced by disgust. It can take a generation, but it eventually happens. Legitimacy is hard to attain and hard to sustain.

Interesting too that these docs. were released just before the holidays, when they probably figured few people would be paying attention.

Merry Christmas.

Fascism is here embodied in the FBI, where every American is a “threat” to the corporate interest.

It’s only natural and expected that negative appellations — “terrorists” — applied to anti-US forces overseas would also be applied domestically, especially considering that many in the various governmental police forces are ex-military who are very familiar and experienced in dealing with uppity civilians. It will soon (already has) go beyond name-calling to drones, checkpoints, blacklists and retina scans, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Summary execution too. It’s a natural force, like entropy.

What happens in Afghanistan doesn’t stay in Afghanistan. Why should it? It’s one world, with the US in full command of it.

At least they won’t hate us for our freedom any longer.

Oh boy were in the phone book–were somebody now! Like we need a weather man to tell us it’s raining. Happy merry everyone.

Puts the lie to the benevolent image of police as ‘community helpers’ like fire fighters, doctors, EMTs. Spying on ‘free speech’ events for corporations?? Arresting demonstrators, pepper spraying people in marches, beating on journalists and arresting them in a targeted fashion, smearing Occupy with the ‘dirty’ jacket of ‘terrorist’ labelling and in the name of what? Security? Suppression of freedom of speech is a hallmark of a society which is becoming a police state.

Exactly. To whom can we go for redress of our grievances?

If we are going to ignore the constitution, that second amendment isn’t working out so well. We ought to ignore that part first. Just sayin.

I was suspicious when my bank accounts were frozen, without any prior notice. I don’t owe anyone, I own my home, have been self employed for over thirteen years, pay all of my taxes, etc… But, I supported OWS with; food, supplies, demonstrated with them, encouraged my customers to support them, etc…. And, I am a Cuban born, legal permanent resident. I have lived in this country for the last 50 years, of my 53 year life….Why after my support of OWS did this happen?

its, “does bernake get a glock..” does bernanke get a glock.carry on.

Are you able to access your own money now?

There really isn’t much more to say because you previous commenters have covered the ground. This is one of the major indicators of fascism:

personnel within the FBI invoked the term “domestic terrorism”when referring to non-violent protests while also coordinating opposition to the protests with banks and other private firms.

The assassination of OWS people is just the next logical step. It would probably be done in broad daylight and one of the other OWS people would be arrested on the spot.

I am sure that the lote voters are ecstatic with the very progressive moves by o’s leadership. All of this is done with his approval.

Merry Christmas to all and I hope your money is unfrozen, Fidel.

It’s no mistake, that’s for sure.

A-yep!

As Glen Ford says, obama is the more effective evil. He gets many to cheerlead their own demise.

WOW! Even more accurante and more inspiring than usual today.

I never thought our country would devolve into this. And I, as do most of my contemporaries, feel very badly that is has happened on our watch.

Whatcha think? New guy sems pretty good so far.

WOW! Again. Outstanding post. Bettern usual. I hope you are right. Lots of US. Few of THEM.

Pfft. Angry Black Griftress and all the other “pragprogs” assured everyone that this was not true, and that disgraced American strongman Obama had nothing to do with it.

I consider Dan Wright’s efforts, here, to be absolutely superb, newcarguy, and I look forward with genuine enthusiasm, complete appreciation, and full attention to whatever he might provide us in future. His reporting is truly excellent and his perspectives well-honed and most agreeable to the perspectives and well-considered understandings of those commenting. Jane and FDL have brought another exceptional, clear-thinking, and very talented writer on board, so far as I am concerned.

DW

A Story About A Leading Democratic Party Liberal: The Year 1917

Most everyone has heard of the Palmer Raids which occurred immediately after WWI. They were directed specifically against
immigrants, radicals, and union types and together made up one of the
greatest wholesale suspensions of “the Rule of Law” in American history.

The raids started at the behest of the great liberal and Democrat,
Woodrow Wilson, who warned as early as 1915 of, “hyphenated Americans
who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our
national life. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be
crushed out.”

As the labor movement, draft resistence, and opposition to the war
deepened with U.S. entry into WWI, Wilson ordered Attorney General
Alexander Mitchell Palmer to “put a stop to it”. Palmer, in turn, raised
the little tyrant J. Edgar Hoover from obscurity to lead the effort.
What follows is a short excerpt of a mostly reactionary Wikipedia
write-up on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_raids

Quote:Pressure to take action intensified after
anarchists, communists and other radical groups called on draft-age
males to refuse conscription and/or registration for the army, and for
troops already serving to desert the armed forces. President Wilson
ordered Attorney General Palmer to take action…

…Attorney General Palmer requested and promptly received a massive
supplementary increase in Congressional appropriations in order to put a
stop to the violence. Palmer then ordered the Department of Justice and
the Bureau of Investigation to prepare for what would become known as
the Palmer Raids, with the aim of collecting evidence on violent radical
groups and arresting those in violation of federal criminal codes.
In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of a new division of the
Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence
Division. By October 1919, Hoover’s division had collected 150,000 names
in a rapidly expanding database. Using the database information,
starting on November 7, 1919, BOI agents, together with local police,
orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids against apparent radicals
and leftists, using the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of
1918. Palmer and his agents were accused of using various controversial
methods of obtaining intelligence and collecting evidence on radicals,
including harsh interrogation methods, informers, and wiretaps…

…In December 1919, Palmer’s agents gathered 249 radicals of Russian
origin, including well-known radical leaders such as Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman, and placed them on a ship bound for the Soviet Union
(The Buford, called the Soviet Ark by the press). In January 1920,
another 6,000 were arrested, mostly members of the Industrial Workers of
the World union. During one of the raids, more than 4,000 radicals were
rounded up in a single night. All foreign aliens caught were deported,
under the provisions of the Anarchist Act. All in all, by January 1920,
Palmer and Hoover had organized the largest mass arrests in U.S.
history, rounding up at least 10,000 individuals.

The public reaction to these raids was favorable, and, in fact, may have
forestalled reactionary violence by the public in the form of
vigilantes. A group of young men in Centralia, Washington, lynched
Wesley Everest, an IWW member, from a railway bridge. The coroner’s
report stated that the man “jumped off with a rope around his neck and
then shot himself full of holes.”

The related outrages were endless and extended well beyond the legal
lynching of Sacco and Vanzetti. A Connecticut clothing salesmen was
sentenced to sixth months in jail simply for saying Lenin was smart. The
Washington Post noted with approval how in Chicago, a sailor shot
another man merely for failing to rise during the national anthem. The
stories are endless. /End Quote

All this is pretty well known, but one question remains: Who was Alexander Mitchell Palmer?

The answer is that Palmer was a leading Democratic Party liberal, a
leader of the Progressive wing of the party, a Quaker, and a pacifist.
In 1917, he had turned down the offer of appointment as Secretary of War
because of his pacifism. It was then that he was appointed attorney
general. His nickname, “The Fiighting Quaker”, was “earned” for
arresting people in the middle of the night. For his labors, Palmer
almost became the Democratic nominee for President in 1920… only a
hung convention because of a minor candidate prevented it.

Palmer himself justified his change of heart by commenting that
“communism was eating its way into the homes of the American workman… ”

In other words, “they hate our freedoms”.

Palmer wrote:

Quote: “In this brief review of the work which
the Department of Justice has undertaken, to tear out the radical seeds
that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories, I desire
not merely to explain what the real menace of communism is, but also to
tell how we have been compelled to clean up the country almost unaided
by any virile legislation. Though I have not been embarrassed by
political opposition, I have been materially delayed because the present
sweeping processes of arrests and deportation of seditious aliens
should have been vigorously pushed by Congress last spring. The failure
of this is a matter of record in the Congressional files.

The anxiety of that period in our responsibility when Congress, ignoring
the seriousness of these vast organizations that were plotting to
overthrow the Government, failed to act, has passed. The time came when
it was obviously hopeless to expect the hearty cooperation of Congress
in the only way to stamp out these seditious societies in their open
defiance of law by various forms of propaganda.

Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every
American institution of law and order a year ago. It was eating its way
into the homes of the American workmen, its sharp tongues of
revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into
the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of
American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws,
burning up the foundations of society.

Robbery, not war, is the ideal of communism. This has been demonstrated
in Russia, Germany, and in America. As a foe, the anarchist is fearless
of his own life, for his creed is a fanaticism that admits no respect of
any other creed. Obviously it is the creed of any criminal mind, which
reasons always from motives impossible to clean thought. Crime is the
degenerate factor in society.

Upon these two basic certainties, first that the “Reds” were criminal
aliens and secondly that the American Government must prevent crime, it
was decided that there could be no nice distinctions drawn between the
theoretical ideals of the radicals and their actual violations of our
national laws. An assassin may have brilliant intellectuality, he may be
able to excuse his murder or robbery with fine oratory, but any theory
which excuses crime is not wanted in America. This is no place for the
criminal to flourish, nor will he do so so long as the rights of common
citizenship can be exerted to prevent him.

OUR GOVERNMENT IN JEOPARDY

It has always been plain to me that when American citizens unite upon
any national issue they are generally right, but it is sometimes
difficult to make the issue clear to them. If the Department of Justice
could succeed in attracting the attention of our optimistic citizens to
the issue of internal revolution in this country, we felt sure there
would be no revolution. The Government was in jeopardy; our private
information of what was being done by the organization known as the
Communist Party of America, with headquarters in Chicago, of what was
being done by the Communist Internationale under their manifesto planned
at Moscow last March by Trotzky, Lenin and others addressed “To the
Proletariats of All Countries,” of what strides the Communist Labor
Party was making, removed all doubt. In this conclusion we did not
ignore the definite standards of personal liberty, of free speech, which
is the very temperament and heart of the people. The evidence was
examined with the utmost care, with a personal leaning toward freedom of
thought and word on all questions.

The whole mass of evidence, accumulated from all parts of the country,
was scrupulously scanned, not merely for the written or spoken
differences of viewpoint as to the Government of the United States, but,
in spite of these things, to see if the hostile declarations might not
be sincere in their announced motive to improve our social order. There
was no hope of such a thing.

Radicals seek to take our property, therefore radicalism is the simple
crime of theft. Freedom of “thought and word” extends only to those
ideas which “improve our social order”. /End Quote

Liberals, Democrats?

Those are the people who want to arrest us, aren’t they?

Let any “leftist” of any persuasion who engaged in the 2008 & 2012
elections explain why they think that “Al”, or “Hil”, or “Barak” or
“John” are not capable of exactly the same transformation as is recorded
above… and at precisely this moment in time, sitting on the three
legged stool of “terrorism”, “immigration”, and craven opportunism.

In different times- less urgent times- there is much to be said for courtesy. But these are not those times.

Let’s look at it from the FBI agent’s perspective. You have a choice. Investigate right wing militias that are extremely paranoid and heavily armed or investigate protestors who publicize their plans and eschew violence? Which is easier? Which is more likely going to let you retire in old age?

This is the realization of Dick Cheney’s dream of authoritarian control.
And Bush-dark aided and abetted that dream!

Pwr 2 the RIGHTEOUS peons!
GUILLOTINE BIG BROTHER!