New Documents Detail FBI, Bank Crack Down On Occupy Wall Street 584
jvillain writes "The Guardian has up a story detailing the crack down on Occupy Wall Street (OWS). It goes on to show how the FBI, DHS, Terrorist Fusion Centers and the banks all worked together to stifle dissent. From the article: 'This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.' The next question is how many Americans are now listed as part of a 'terrorist group' by the government for their support of OWS?"
"Stifle descent?" (Score:5, Funny)
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What I find odd is this: "stifle" is a relatively obscure word to use and yet they can't spell "dissent".
Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:4, Funny)
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That's not a typo!
Or a moon!
Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot summaries are dissending into chaos.
Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:5, Funny)
"stifle" is a relatively obscure word
we used to think so, but then edith and the meathead helped us learn the true meaning of this word.
Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:4, Funny)
Well it is based on an article from The Grauniad
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Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:5, Funny)
The editors fell down on the job
If only there was someone who could stifle descent for them.
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Perhaps you forgot (Score:4, Funny)
that "Descent is the highest form of Patriotic"?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/unpossibles/3462246191/ [flickr.com]
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Don't fall for it : the FBI has hacked the above summary, in an attempt to ridicule the above truth about their operation.
The reasoning is simple : If it's full of typos, no one will take it seriously.
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Looks like the author of the summary didn't RTFA, since they actually got it right in TFA.
Re:"Stifle descent?" (Score:5, Funny)
And there's a huge difference between "detailing the crack down on [OWS]" and "detailing the crackdown on [OWS]".
Yes we can! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this the hope or the change?
Re:Yes we can! (Score:5, Insightful)
The excuse that Obama is still busy cleaning up Bush's mess is wearing a bit thin, I suppose.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes we can! (Score:4, Funny)
Just the best option with an actual chance of winning, which is practically the same thing.
And who decided that these particular idiots were the ones with an actual chance of winning?
So far, from the limited times I was paying attention, my most ridiculous experiences were in the Democratic primary of 2004 and the Republican primary of 2012.
In 2004, Howard Dean had enough personal conviction to yell out his passions. Suddenly, he's labeled a lunatic, no chance of winning. Let's go with the silver-haired and tall John Kerry. Never mind that he has no positions worth writing about.
In 2012, Ron Paul was immediately labeled The Other [wikipedia.org] and given no chance of winning. Even when he won 2nd place in Minnesota and Maine, it was treated as an anomaly, "The Other" has won 2nd place, not a real candidate with a name. Let's go with the steady-voiced and rich Mitt Romney. Never mind that he has no positions worth writing about.
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Sadly, it's hard to clean something up when you're blocked by the house of representatives and a filibuster happy senate.
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You're dreaming if you think the POTUS micro-manages the FBI.
Re:Yes we can! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does he have to micromanage? Go to the head of the FBI or DEA and say:
"Stop prosecuting marijuana dispensaries or you're fired."
"Stop spying on OWS supporters or you're fired."
It's that simple, but Obama supporters keep making every excuse in the book for that spineless weakling. "Waaaaah, the awful Republicans are spoiling everything!" News flash Sparky, Obama is just another big government, corporate stooge.
Re:Yes we can! (Score:4, Insightful)
American satirists must be in a sad state if that's the best they can come up with.
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That might be true, but Obama is just as easy to attack from the left.
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Hmm. Private companies co-operating with law enforcement to mitigate criminal behaviour and damage to the economy? Surely not!
The document seems pretty haphazard and it's hard to give credibility to the 'sniper' plot without the context and further information. Shit, it's not even clear who came up with the plan to use snipers, whether they worked for the government, for commercial interests, a political party or a secret global conspiracy intent on keeping down the plebs.
If anything the tone of the documen
Um, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
So the FBI silently investigated people who reasonably could have resorted to lawlessness, and that's now stifling dissent? As someone who supported the idea of OWS, even that doesn't make any sense to me. As the saying goes, civil disobedience is still disobedience. When you walk the thin line of breaking the law, you should expect the organizations which investigate crimes to be interested.
The summary, and the article attached to it, seem nothing more than sensationalist in order to drive web traffic. More than sensationalist, outright biased. Just reading a few paragraphs of the summary pretty well shows this article was not at all interested in truth, but rather just spreading biases against the many agents and officers who were simply doing their job.
This article and summary make very little sense. Or, would that be "since", in order to keep in step with stifling descent?
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Right, now re-read what you said and keep in mind the fact that the FBI was coordinating and conspiring with the Banks that you're protesting against...
Personally, I don't think we need "Terrorist Fusion Centers" at all. We're more at risk from dying in a car accident. We need more "First Responder Centers".
Re:Um, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are several things in the article that are pretty much impossible to defend. Maybe you did not read it, or you have a very different worldview to me.
Uh, no (Score:5, Insightful)
OWS had one unforgivable sin: it offered a working and likable alternative narrative. Right now the only narrative in American society is that if you work hard and play by the rules you'll succeed, and if you didn't it's your own damn fault and you're a bad person. It's prosperity gospel by any other name. OWS and the 'We are the 99%' was catchy, simple and made sense. It was a movement that had a real chance, which is why we're even talking about it, and also why it was crushed relentlessly.
In short, you didn't think speech was really free, did you?
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I think the concern is less with the investigation and monitoring and more with the FBI walking-hand-in-hand with (for) private entities.
If the FBI were working for the people, they would have been doing everything to protect the public from extremists as well as defending the right to PEACEFUL PROTESTS. But since they work for private entities, they do everything in their power to undermine peaceful dissent which their true bosses find undesirable.
I mean if they are going to stifle free speech just for the
Paranoid Much? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Paranoid Much? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not have to be paranoid to be extremely mistrustful of the FBI. In fact, "paranoid" would be a word that would be more accurately applied to the FBI itself.
Read up on COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org]. The FBI actively worked against the civil rights movement, targeting individuals and organizations such as Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They built up an 1800-page file on Albert Einstein, who was involved with "communist front" organizations such as the American Crusade Against Lynching. They tracked his phone calls and went through his trash. The FBI has a long history of anti-union activity, starting from the era of the Palmer Raids, continuing through the McCarthy era, and on to the present day, with, e.g., arrests [stopfbi.net] in 2010 of peace and labor activists of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee.
No way would I ever cooperate with the FBI in any way. They're a threat to democracy. Always have been.
Your explanation of their surveillance and infiltration of Occupy is awfully naive. Trying to open a bank account on behalf of a group of people isn't the kind of thing that merits the creation of a "network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity."
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The FBI is primarily responsible for bringing down most of the major mafia families and their criminal enterprises.
In the U.S., the existence of organized crime has historically been largely due to the government trying to dictate to people what substances they could put in their bodies (as well as prohibitions on other victimless crimes, such as prostitution). The government created Al Capone by prohibiting alcohol, so I don't really think we should be falling over ourselves to thank the government for catching him and putting him in jail. And it wasn't the FBI that caught Capone, it was the IRS and the Bureau of Proh
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I mean seriously this reeks of paranoia. There's a very valid reason for banks cracking down on OWS. In the USA there are really only two ways to legally create a bank account...
You may not like the system or the laws, but they exist, and the banks and FBI are simply following them.
Insightful, my arse.
I'd like to say that you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think this is anything to do with following banking regulations, but it's clear that in fact you're just bending reality to fit your dislike of OWS.
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The folks who work at banks can lose their jobs and face criminal prosecution if they don't report activity that looks exactly like what OWS was doing with the bank accounts they were opening
What a fucking joke. 1994: UBS execs got a slap on the wrist for laundering Colombian drug money --a low-level exec was reported to be arrested. 2012: HSBC laundered billions for Mexican drug lords and Iranian banks via American subsidiaries --no arrests have been made. I'm not even going to get into the mortgage fraud side of the story in the USA. Go ahead and search for bank fraud before the 1990s. There are many accounts of internal mismanagement and relatively few arrests.
Nothing has stopped these
Any desent will be quelled (Score:5, Interesting)
At the time that the crackdown happened to the OWS people I wrote the following:
"I’m very sorry to hear about your forceful removal from Zuccotti park where you were peacefully demonstrating against what you see as what is wrong with our country. You were exercising your free speech and free assembly rights and I hate to see this taken from you. Let me tell you that I know how you must be feeling right now. About two and a half years ago several of my friends and I joined a movement to protest the government bailing out the bankers that you are so upset with (first time I ever protested anything BTW). We had rallies around the country with the theme of promoting individualism over corporate cronyism. This movement was attacked by the press and government as being racist, gay-bashing, “Astroturf” (term for grass-roots effort sponsored by big money sources), and heartless (I’m sure there were cases where people on the fringe were causing such issues, the same can be said about the fringe in the OWS crowd, but for a majority of people I met while involved this was not the case) but now the whole movement has been marginalized. It is unfortunate that we were unable to convince you at the time of the importance of the issues we were facing and that you chose to sit on the sidelines mocking us as “Tea Baggers” and such. I do hope we can find some common ground now that you are awake and we can take our government back from the statist and big money influences we’ve ceded it to."
Re:Any desent will be quelled (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen some interesting polls that show clearly, the street level people in OWS and The Tea Party both agreed on a number of issues that totally fly in the face of the media portrayal of either. The sad part is, while each side hates the way they are portrayed in the media and feels it unfair....each seems to buy the portrayal of the other as complete astroturf and ignorance....division is well achieved.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/a-majority-of-americans-including-both-ows-and-the-tea-party-agree-on-the-most-important-issues-we-just-dont-realize-it.html [washingtonsblog.com]
In fact, its the majority of people agree on these issues. OWS and The Tea Party are manifestations of the same outrage, just from different groups, and with different groups of spinsters trying to profit from them.
Answer: Zero. (Score:4, Interesting)
The next question is how many Americans are now listed as part of a 'terrorist group' by the government for their support of OWS?
Get some historical perspective and look at the stings the FBI ran on MLK Jr and the Civil Rights Movement. This is nothing.
hyperbole and hysteria (Score:3, Insightful)
Police drawing up plans in case the OWS potentially resorted to criminal or terrorist behaviour ? How dare they! I demand a police service that doesn't prepare for any eventuality and is always taken by surprise!
It is rather shocking that the police didn't inform the leaders of an organisation that prided itself in having no leaders that they had vague threats of violence against them. Imaginary people have the right to information too!
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Irony: denying the collusion of money and power, regarding the occupy wallstreet protests.
This is nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
A highly decorated Marine Corps General, and one of only a handful of men to receive the Medal of Honor twice wrote:
"It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
-- General Smedley Butler [fas.org]
Laugh (Score:4, Insightful)
Step 0: Control media outlets and discredit all that are not under your power, Propaganda!!!
Why is this step 0? Because with the media intact and doing what it is required by society, none of the other crap would have happened, however the buck stops with the people, if the people aren't going to do anything about it then they get what they get.
Step 1: Create a crisis or allow one to happen.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
-Rahm Emanuel
Create an enemy that will never go away (terrorist) and wage a war that will never end (terrorism) and define the enemy as "those without any rights" and can be held indefinitely (National Defense Authorization Act)
Step 2: Promise to protect the populace from said crisis/enemy by any means necessary, begin by restricting rights in the name of security.
Step 3: Implement a massive trillion dollar (data from The Economist) surveillance network HLS, TSA, NSA, DIA OMG, WTF, BBQ ), record all calls, maintain facial recognition database (thank you Facebook) fill the air with drones and the ground with cameras.
Monitor for dissent. (see: fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy below)
Step 4: Dis arm populace (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons)
Step 5: Tighten grip further via martial law or other "required security protocols", rename political protest groups as "terrorist" deregulate corporations, dismantle workers rights, remove environmental protections, and finally ammo up. (Department Of Homeland Security Is Buying 450 Million New Bullets)
Anyone not complying or protesting is a terrorist. (see step 1)
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/09/costs-homeland-security [economist.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012 [wikipedia.org]
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/12/fbi-treated-occupy-terrorist-group/60289/ [theatlanticwire.com]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy [guardian.co.uk]
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-28/news/31247765_1_atk-rounds-bullet [businessinsider.com]
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/27/5079151/california-gun-sales-increase.html [sacbee.com]
Lets see what 'our' President has to say (Score:4, Funny)
http://wh.gov/UCL9 [wh.gov] sign on folks! I can hardly wait to see the mealy mouthed BS answer to this... Oh, and expect to be on some FBI troublemaker list, if you're not yet. Consider it a badge of honor. ;)
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What the hell does an "astroturf movement" mean?
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What the hell does an "astroturf movement" mean?
Seems like it would be sort of like an earth quake, except then you realize that there's actually someone to blame for your fall because someone yanked the rug you were standing on.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Informative)
astroturf movement == fake 'grass roots' movement
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously a scare-term that imbeciles have made up on the spot to 'justify' cracking down on protests & activists who don't cheer about rampant corruption between the government and the financial sector.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Funny)
They're not comparable.
The poor bankers and oil companies behind the "grassroots" Tea Party don't have a chance against the overwhelming financial might of the tree-hugging hippies!
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not comparable.
The poor bankers and oil companies behind the "grassroots" Tea Party don't have a chance against the overwhelming financial might of the tree-hugging hippies!
If history keeps repeating itself, today's tree-hugging hippies are tomorrow's bankers and big oil executive.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, precisely like the term "useful idiot". Both are cop-outs that are thrown around to trash entire groups; "they're just [bogeyman term here], ignore them or laugh at them and cheer when they get their skulls split open by police batons".
But it really takes an imbecile to believe that ows could spring into existence fully formed, complete with a slick web site and well orchestrated publicity.
What, is this the same movement that has been criticised a million times for not being organised, having no leadership, and having "no clear message"? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
What, is this the same movement that has been criticised a million times for not being organised, having no leadership, and having "no clear message"? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?
It doesn't need that to have been organized by someone. Check it out [wikipedia.org], it was formed by the anarchist group Adbusters [wikipedia.org]. They carefully planned it as well. Lawyers gave them the advice to stage it in Zuccotti park because it is a privately owned public space, which made it confusing whose responsibility it was to clear it.
Of course, to start a movement, you need people who will go along with you, to carry the movement along. It's not like all those protesters were manipulated into being there, they wanted to protest.
Re: Who Cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Zucotti park wasn't planned. I was there on day one, originally the plan was to occupy Wall Street itself...but the entire area around it for several blocks was barricaded by the NYPD requiring a corporate ID to walk down the public streets...So we marched for a while until coming across Zucotti, at which point people basically decided "screw it, let's camp here!"
Lawyers wouldn't have made that decision. Zucotti is private property, while there is case law on the books protecting coming on sidewalks for protests.
As for occupy having a fully formed website....big Fuckin deal, so does everything these days. Not hard to find a college kid to buy a domain and install WordPress. Please tell me what corporations were funding the dozen student orgs I did that for in college....because we sure could have used that money....and why the hell did I pay for all those out of my own pocket?
Re: Who Cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Zucotti park wasn't planned. I was there on day one,
You mean you didn't plan it.
Lawyers wouldn't have made that decision. Zucotti is private property, while there is case law on the books protecting coming on sidewalks for protests.
It's not private property, it's privately owned public space. There's case law on the books for clearing people who try to occupy sidewalks overnight.
As for occupy having a fully formed website....big Fuckin deal, so does everything these days.
It's not a big deal, but if you think OWS was a spontaneous protest, then you're ignorant.
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First, way to take partial, out of context quotes. The first point you make I've already responded tip of you actually read what I posted.
Secondly....Nothing is spontaneous. Obviously you're not going to get hundreds of people out just by....Not doing anything. So yea, the idea was published by adbusters. That doesn't make it astroturf. First, anyone who was there, anyone who spent more than five seconds looking at it knows that. Astroturfers generally try to hide who is behind the campaign. Secondly, they
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"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"
We engaged and educated a large number of people about political issues that the mainstream media refuses to cover.
We provide food and some semblance of shelter to many who had neither.
And above all we did what any political action must - make noise and make change. We've purchased and abolished millions of dollars of debt. We've stopped home foreclosures. We filled (and continue to fill) the gaps of mainstream disaster relief organizations. We provided networking
Re: Who Cares? (Score:4, Informative)
Tell that to the people who received aid from Occupy Sandy when FEMA and the Red Cross were nowhere to be found; or to the people who have had thousands of dollars of debt erased by Rolling Jubilee. Or those facing foreclosure who had their homes saved by Occupiers.
I get it, you don't think political activism can ever bring change and nothing I say will change your mind....but OWS has done quite a lot of good with real, concrete action as well:
current.com/groups/news-blog/93963203_four-occupy-offshoots-making-a-difference.htm
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But it really takes an imbecile to believe that ows could spring into existence fully formed, complete with a slick web site....
Really? What site did you think you were posting to? Yes, making a slick web site. That must take a team of computer nerds and years of labor.
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Mod Parent 2 - Interesting.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the real astroturfing going on here.
OWS was about holding the financial goons responsible for wrecking our economy. The FBI, et. al. was about cracking down on legitimate dissent, and that is unconstitutional.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Also, don't you find it ironic that OWS is so heavily staffed by children of privilege like those two?"
No. The investment banker takedown of our economy put lots and lots of middle to upper middle class people out of work. Besides, what is your point? That children of privilege should not care about the country? Or that children of privilege are trying to overthrow the government?
The real conspiracy is that OWS got labeled as a bunch of dirty hippies when in fact they were regular people who were fed up, and the whole country should have been behind them.
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fake grassroots. People have gotten quite skeptical these days, in some ways - they always expect a lie. Espicially in politics and advertising. Astroturfing refers to the increasingly common tactic of creating an apparently populist or spontainous movement while hiding the support of a large sponsor (government, pressure group, business, etc) which would have something to gain.
For example, and using entirely fictional elements to avoid getting into politics, imagine that the manufacturer of a particular widget starts taking public criticism for the negative social or environmental impacts of their product (Maybe the widget causes cancer with prolonged use, or the manufacturing process produces toxic waste) and race the possibility of expensive regulation. The company executives could well go on national TV and try to explain that the fears are overblown (truthfully or not), but no-one is going to believe them because they have a personal stake, and corporate PR departments are not respected for their objectivity right now. So they might instead organise an apparently independant 'Widgets for America' fan club to talk of how widgets make the country great, or they might find a group which is opposed to regulation in general terms and anonymously donate money to a 'Hands off Our Widgets!' campaign. If they PR department is feeling particually slimy, they may create a movement from scratch - supplying the funding, designing websites, paying people to attend protests. All to create the impression in the minds of the public that there is massive popular support for widget production, and attempts to regulate them are ill-considered.
It seems unlikely that Operation Wall Street was an astroturf movement though, because there was no-one in a position of power or money to gain from it. Who would benefit from orchestrating such protests?
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Who would benefit from orchestrating such protests?
no one with power benefits, directly. if you have say in this world, you would not benefit in OWS's objectives, initially. over time, if things ever got more equal and fair, everyone would benfit (ie, society goes up a notch).
everyone who needs the system to change but whose voice is never heard, they are the direct beneficiaries of OWS. if their voices counted, we would have had change by now. but those in power hear us, ignore us and continue on with
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It seems unlikely that Operation Wall Street was an astroturf movement though, because there was no-one in a position of power or money to gain from it.
I guess you've never heard of "controlled opposition" and "manufactured dissent..."
Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
People have gotten quite skeptical these days,
Largely, I suspect, because having discovered how weak their critical thinking skills are they're applying their disbelief with a broad brush.
Fake public demonstrations existed before the Internet, but they really took off with the Internet because a single person can pretend to be dozens using the anonymity of Internet forums. With technology and focus a half dozen people could appear to be hundreds, or even thousands.
But there being tigers hiding in the jungle doesn't mean they're hiding under your bed.
I went down to see the Occupy Boston encampment down in Dewey Square last year. I'm no expert in counting people, but there were clearly hundreds of people living in a constricted half-acre tent city -- the densest human habitation I'd ever seen. This is the *opposite* of the labor efficiency of Internet astroturfing. How much would it cost to pay hundreds of people to live like that for two months, or to be arrested as hundreds of the protesters were? Altogether there were over seven thousand arrests, and that was only a tiny fraction of the protesters.
I think the reaction to the FBI documents is overblown. The FBI was keeping tabs on the movement, but that's part of the agency's job, and that *can* be done without violating anyone civil rights (whether it *was* done remains to be seen). But the movement itself wasn't overblown. It's the largest economic protest in this country since the Bonus Army of 1932.
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Re:Who Cares? (Score:5, Funny)
You're confusing them with the Tea Party protests.
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Did you actually read that? It says the unions supported OWS, and were in agreement with it. It didn't say that OWS was commandeered by PEU's.
If you're going to cite something, make sure it actually supports your argument.
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So because someone's salary is paid by tax dollars, that means that tax payers have a right to say what they can do with the money they have earned?
That's BS. Once that money goes into their paychecks, it's no longer "tax money". Whether or not they are a member of the union, they get their money and they can spend it however they choose. They choose to contribute to union dues with THEIR money.
This is crux of the issue, greedy assholes that think they can dictate what people do with their money just beca
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That's complete bull. I've worked for a public union in the past (I'm not a fan of them, as I feel I can negotiate my salary a lot better than a union can. In fact, in the private sector I make 3x more money).
Pensions are about 40% funded by the employee, 30-50% funded from interest and investment gains, and only a small amount is matched by the employer (ie, the government, ie the taxpayers).
I *WISH* my retirement had had more than 10-20% match from my employer. That would have made things a lot more pa
Re:The problem with protests. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our Constitution guarantees us a number of ways to work through government for change.
One of those constitutional guarantees is freedom of speech to say you disagree with what the government is doing. Nothing about that "damages" the constitution.
Re:The problem with protests. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, and another, tight beside that speech, is the right to peaceful assembly.
Hmm right to speak out, and a right to assemble.... sounds like protest to me!
What constitution is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this the constitution written by slave owners who didn't allow the poor or female to vote?
The constitution was NOT written to give freedom to all, it was written to give freedom to rich white males. NEVER FORGET THIS. NEVER forget the famous Greek democracy was build on slaves.
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on the part of non-taxpayers
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that they pay taxes.
Re:The problem with protests. (Score:4, Informative)
1. Zucotti Park was open to the public 24 hours a day, according to a contract signed between the developers and the City. There was no "after hours."
2. Occupy Wall Street wanted to bring portable toilets like every other big event in New York City. The City denied them a permit. So they used the bathrooms in the MacDonald's across the street and the neighboring restaurants.
3. I was at Zucotti Park a couple of times during the demonstration. They organized a volunteer cleanup crew that cleaned every inch of the park continuously. If you threw a candy wrapper on the floor, somebody would sweep it up within 5 minutes.
4. The local Community Board voted to support the demonstration. So the local taxpayers approved.
5. There were surveys of demonstrators which found that most of them were employed, and their average income was probably higher than yours. So they pay more taxes than you do.
6. You find it offensive. Too fucking bad. That's how we do things in America. If you don't like it, go back where you came from. (If they'll have you.)
Re:The problem with protests. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you out of your fucking mind ?
Can you name any major political change that happened through normal democratic methods without widespread protests ?
Getting rid of the monarchy, getting rid of slavery, votes for women, civil rights, whatever. None of these happen through people simply going through the motions of voting. "Change must come through the barrel of a gun ..." might be an exaggeration, but it is not far off. Non-violent protest is sometimes sufficient, I hope that this is all it will take to reduce the current "government by Goldman Sachs" but sitting on your backside righting letters to congress or voting for a particular candidate definitely is not going to do it.
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Can you name any major political change that happened through normal democratic methods without widespread protests ?
Sure, the political changes that led to this for starters (if you count lobbying your representative as part of the democratic process). If you mean changes for good, then no, I haveno examples.
Re:The problem with protests. (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you name any major political change that happened through normal democratic methods without widespread protests ?
Outlawing the slave trade in/by the United Kingdom, followed by outlawing slavery in the UK.
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And crap!
I should never post before my coffee. I've said that before. I had two different posts in mind and blended them together into a mess. I'll go away now and hide.
My apologies, Joss.
Lying piece of scum (Score:5, Informative)
My god, your grasp of history is fucking flawed.
READ up on the suffragette movement you fucking insane moronic piece of shit before you try spouting your lies.
On November 15th, 1917, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, founders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) were arrested along with 216 other women who had picketed the White House under the Woodrow Wilson administration, bearing signs for the right to vote. By morning, some of the incarcerated women were barely alive. Lucy Burns had been beaten. Her hands had been chained to the cell bars over her head, bleeding and gasping for air. When Alice Paul engaged in a hunger strike, guards tried to force-feed her, tying her to a chair and using a tube to pour liquids down her throat. Thirty-three women endured ongoing torture until word was finally smuggled out to the press.
No violence by the government against the movement my ass.
You are scum.
Re:The problem with petitioning for redress (Score:5, Insightful)
Our various governments propose ways of "petitioning for redress of grievance", and, as each becomes popular, strive to cut them off.
In British law, as applied to the 13 colonies, a signed petition could be presented to a governing body and it had a duty to respond. As the Yale law journal points out, that was so heavily used in response to slavery that it was withdrawn in the U.S. (see http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/796438?uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21101604364957 [jstor.org]) A certain well-known president is trying to bring it back, but that's a different discussion.
With organized petitioning unavailable, personal appeals to one's representative became popular. It soon became impossible to meet your representative, and written letters turned into counts pro and con that their staffs reported.
Groups and companies then banded together and hired lobbyists, to button-hole legislators in the lobby of their building, where the public was allowed. When these became too bothersome, only selected lobbyists were invited to meetings, and the general public was excluded from the buildings.
The press is still allowed in some selected lobbies, but there is always a back corridor available for legislators to use to bypass them.
Groups then started petitioning in person, on the front lawn of the parliament buildings, and occasionally their representatives would come out and meet them. More often, the police closed off access to the building and its vicinity.
No organization, whether legislative or commercial, enjoys hearing criticism. As soon as they get too much from a given channel, that channel will be cut off. Only the occasional brave, duty-oriented legislator will ask their electors for comments.
In my own country of Canada, this last happened when the government of the day asked for broad comments on amending the copyright law, when my local city councilman needed opinions and options on a garbage-collection proposal, and most recently when the CRTC asked for suggestions to moderate the bad practices of cell-phone providers.
Redress of grievance still exists, but it's genuinely rare.
--dave
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Of course. We (those of us in the US and Western Europe, anyway) have a stable system of government. What this means is that there are negative feedbacks in the system which counter any attempt to change it. Furthermore, the systems learn: When a tactic manages to overwhelm the existing feedback mechanisms and cause an actual change, new feedback mechanisms are set up to r
Re:The problem with protests. (Score:4, Interesting)
Our Constitution guarantees us a number of ways to work through government for change.
And if the Government obeyed its restrictions in the Constitution, those would be valid methods.
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it." - Spooner
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Our Constitution guarantees us a number of ways to work through government for change.
Yes, there are. There's even a little ditty to remember them by: Soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box.
The problem with protests is that by working around these methods,
Protest is the most elevated form of the first method we are supposed to use for change, as documented in The Constitution. The soap box is first because it is least injurious. The second box, electing officials based on their position on a single issue,
Re:The problem with protests. (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations cant vote, only people can
People can't decide who we get to vote for, only corporations can.
There are exceptions at the low levels of politics, where it doesn't cost so much to get a good percentage of the vote if you're on target. But the higher up the ladder you go, the more it costs to participate, until only corporations can even (effectively) have that much money.
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Er, the election is rigged before it gets to the vote. You can't win a U.S. election without tons of money for TV ads, and you won't get that kind of money without corporate support.
Re:peaceful protesters? (Score:4, Insightful)
How many videos have you seen? How many minutes, total? Do you realize that the protests have been ongoing for well over a year? Can you comprehend how utterly stupid it is to extrapolate the motivations and behavior of a movement with thousands of people, spanning millions of man-hours, from a few minutes of cherry-picked video?
No, I suppose you can't... because Fox News hasn't explained that to you.
Re:peaceful protesters? (Score:5, Informative)
I went down there (Zucotti Park) and spoke to them too. Their message was pretty clear, so I'll repeat it:
The wealthiest 1% of Americans have most of the income, most of the wealth, and control the political system through their campaign contributions and power generally.
They're not running it very well. They've used health care, education, and housing as a way to make money, driven the costs up, and made them unaffordable to the rest of us.
There's more of us than there are of them. We can vote. We don't have to vote for politicians that will sell us out (50/50 divided on Obama). We can organize to teach people how they're being exploited by the 1%.
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You know, I am always surprised at how often those who dismiss OWS choose to do so by pointing out that the people that showed up at the camps were unemployed.
Who the fuck else can show up there? The employed supporters of OWS had jobs to go to. I would love to have participated in my local OWS protest but it didn't jibe with my work hours at all.
Nonetheless I support the need for change in our system (here in Canada as well as down in the US and over in Europe). The concentration of wealth in the hands of
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I worked hard to get where I am today without taking a dime from the government.
You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you t
Re:peaceful protesters? (Score:4)
In other words, they were out there minding their own business getting on with their Constitutional right to petition the government and peacfully assemble and some screeching cuckoo jibbers at them for 15 minutes and they were polite enough not to dump you head first into a trash can?
yes, peaceful, 'Capt James' (Score:5, Insightful)
From *personal experience* Occupy was peaceful and never physically antagonistic...
See, here's your problem, "Captain"...you're judging a the behavior of a few and applying it to a large group. It's false equivalence...
Sort of like if I were to, say, claim that the US military is a murderous organization based on what I'd "seen and heard" of one soldier going house to house murdering civilians.
Re:peaceful protesters? (Score:5, Informative)
There was nothing illegal about it.
Zucotti park was a private park open to the public 24 hours a day, according to a legally binding agreement between the City and the original developer. The local Community Board voted to support the occupation. There were court decisions in the past allowing similar protests.
In addition, there's the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gives people the right to peacefully protest, as other people here have mentioned.
I could come down to Zucotti Park at all hours of the day and talk to people about politics. What better use could anyone make of a public space?
Re:peaceful protesters? (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is whether it was legal. The answer is yes. It was legal. Zucotti Park was in an unusual legal situation in that they had an agreement with the City to make the park available to the public 24 hours a day. There were also court decisions giving demonstrators the right to sleep in the streets.
Gordon Crovitz, a former Wall Street Journal editorial writer, lives in Battery Park City and went to Community Board hearings to complain about OWS, as he wrote in the WSJ. They heard him out and voted him down. The OWS representatives heard the complaints, and made changes. The Community Board supported OWS. In a democracy, we follow the majority decision.
This is New York City. We have lots of big events. Mayor Giuliani used to declare public celebrations, which tied up the City and disrupted traffic, after his favorite sports team won a game. We put up with it. We have Fashion Week, in which clothing companies put up tents in Bryan Park, a little bigger than Zucotti Park, for a couple of weeks and deprive everyone else of the use of that popular park. We put up with it. The crime in Zucotti Park was no worse than other large events. (There were several reports that police encouraged troublemakers and mentally disturbed people to go to Zucotti park.)
Occupy Wall Street had some money and wanted to rent portable toilets, the way every other big event in New York City does (including Fashion Week). The City refused to issue them permits. So they used the toilets in MacDonald's down the street, and some of the other local bars and restaurants. So first you refuse permits for toilets, then you complain about inadequate sanitation.
Oh, yeah. Then there was the First Amendment to the Constitution. Zucotti Park was the best example I've seen in my life of people from everywhere assembling to discuss their complaints with the political system and decide what they were going to do about it. That's not only legal, it's one of our basic American rights that we were supposed to have been fighting those wars for. So it's legal. No question about it.
Re:peaceful protesters? (Score:5, Interesting)
It remains PRIVATE PROPERTY. The public has access, but there are rules, like, I dont know, not setting up your tent and grill.
"Allowing public access" swings both ways, when OWS basically prevents any other use of the park.
Do such rules exist? I am not aware of them. You may well be correct. But, at least for me, that's not really the point.
I posit that you're looking at this backwards. That's not intended as an insult, BTW. Rather than looking for ways to limit and discourage our fellow citizens (and no, I did not take part in any OWS activities) from expressing themselves and their points of view, I believe we should expand and encourage opportunities to do so for all of us.
The NYC government should have provided sanitation facilities and police *assistance* with security to the OWS (and any others, regardless of their point of view) protestors, rather than treating them as criminals for exercising their constitutional rights.
As a native (and life-long) New Yorker, I was ashamed of my city government for debasing the ideals of our once-great nation.
Feel free to disagree with me. I don't expect that everyone should share my point of view. What I do expect is that we, as a society, and our government should be accommodating, assisting and expanding the ways that peaceful protests, dissenting opinions and alternative ideas can be expressed and discussed.
Your thoughts?
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Any reasonable definition is going to include terrorists primarily targeting civilians or using civilians for shields. The founders didn't do that.
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Nah. This is backwards.
I don't totally agree with OWS. But the FBI targeting political assemblies of any stripe is unacceptable.
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A radical far-left marxist? Soros crashed the British economy to make his fortune, that's pretty damn capitalist.
If you guys have to choose a Dark Lord of the Left, can it be Michael Moore? Because at least he's actually leftist and it would be way funnier.
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Now they threaten any (developed) country that attempts to protect its workers in exactly the same manner, and we're supposed to just suck it up as we're reduced to poverty and the