And other things we’d rather not think about:
Naomi Wolf gives an excellent in-depth analysis of those newly released documents that reveal the FBI’s counterterrorism monitoring of Occupy Wall Street, and points out the assassination by sniper fire threats against OWS leaders that the FBI never bothered to inform anyone in the movement about.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism,” and believes these documents are only the “tip of the iceberg.”
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61)
Wolf mentions that Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, has sought similar documents for more than a year, and reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. So indeed, is the release strategic? Having your personal information harvested and sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, and the threat of an unknown entity’s “longterm” plans to shoot you could easily frighten off even the most hard-core activists among us.
The Occupy movement was extinguished by coordinated police violence, not a failure of ideology or organization. This is a good article by Laurie Penny:
http://www.penny-red.com/post/31714844516/what-happened-to-occupy-the-police-for-the
“Across the world, the question being asked in time for the anniversary is: “What happened to Occupy?” The question implies that the occupations simply drifted. It implies, falsely, that the activists involved involved lost interest and lacked direction.
But none of the major camps disbanded of their own accord: all of them, from New York to London and beyond, were evicted by force, with batons and tear gas and hundreds of arrests, by police forces bent on ensuring that sustained dissent against big banks and government-imposed austerity would not be allowed to continue. Without police intervention, would the protest camps – some of which withstood blizzards – still be standing? Somehow, our collective memory has refused to accommodate that possibility. Somehow it’s easier to believe that the hippies just got bored.”
Obama (and Rahm Emanuel?) was/were in the thick of this, with White House staffers setting up conference calls with several dozen mayors to plan and coordinate attacks on OWS.
Oppression is meant to ensure that violence becomes the only avenue of resistance. Violence only ensures further oppression. Since we’ve abandoned the Constitution and democracy, it’s only a matter of time.