Shitdown, New Betrayals, Hacktivists vs. Theocrats

“PATTY MURRAY LISTEN TO US! No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits or education...” That's Kristiné M. Reeves, right, the South Sound Regional Director of Sen. Murray's staff, as she was confronted by Occupy Tacoma activists Francesca Carreras-Velez, left, and Joy Bonney, center, on 16 November 2011 during a demonstration that braved cold, relentless and often torrential rains. Bonney is the editor and publisher of the pop-culture magazine Wake Up 253, which is named after the local telephone area-code. This picture – relevant in 2013 given Murray's repeat role in the renewed effort to impose even harsher austerity measures on the subjects of the USian oligarchy – was originally published by Reader Supported News as part of my Occupy Tacoma coverage. Pentax K1000, SMCP 28mm f/2.8, Fujicolor 800, exposure not recorded. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2011. (Click on image to view it full size.) 

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“SHITDOWN” WAS ORIGINALLY a typing error, the geezerly and perhaps Freudian slip of arthritic fingers. But I left it uncorrected after I realized it is the perfect name for the U.S. governmental shutdown, which is the piss-on-the-99-Percent policy of trickle-down economics expressed in solid rather than liquid form. Thus the childhood euphemisms for urination (Number One) and defecation (Number Two) become useful additions to the vocabulary of toilet-bowl capitalism. Now we can accurately describe how the One Percent and its Ruling Class support-staff of politicians, bureaucrats and thugs first hosed us into submission with decades of Number One and now assault us with Number Two, legions of assholes spewing projectile diarrhea intended to imprison us in the ever-expanding cesspool of wage slavery and indentured servitude.

I write of this fecal onslaught in the present tense because the shitdown was merely the most recent deposit of turds into the reeking effluent of the USian economy. Since President Nixon's 1973 declaration of war against the 99 Percent, nearly half the population has been reduced to lower-income status if not official poverty.  Now with the immediate crisis ended and the Big Lie of the Democrats' so-called “victory” over the Republicans, the ringmasters of the One Party of Two Names  have set the stage for (another) imposition of genocidal austerity  disguised as another bipartisan “grand bargain.” Meanwhile all we are witnessing is a temporary cessation in the One Percent's offensive. Nor is there any letup in the murderous campaign of fear and anxiety by which the Wall Street aristocrats hope to reduce the numbers of those of us who are dependent on Social Security, Medicare, food stamps or any other life-sustaining government subsidies. The only real unknown is how much more deeply we of the 99 Percent will be buried in shit once the bargaining resumes. 

To understand what is being done to us, we need to fight off our conditioned “American Dreamer” obliviousness  enough to recognize that if we are not actually part of the One Percent, we are all Working Class. That and the reality of class-struggle are the most important lessons of our time. Through them we see the core truths of our individual and collective existence. We understand that all the political tantrums and financial brinkmanship around the budget and the debt ceiling are nothing more than manifestations of the most maliciously dishonest strategy of governance in all USian history. We see how the plutocrats and their henchmen are methodically imposing a genuinely murderous depth of austerity, and we know they regard us as too hopelessly dumbed down to ever catch on to their scam. Verily, we are up the proverbial Shit Creek. Not only do we lack the metaphorical paddle; we have already been cast overboard from the requisite lifeboat.

But beyond the banks of that infamous creek there are a few glimmers of genuinely promising alternatives. They are barely more than flickers – and in the methane darkness of the septic-tank existence to which we have been condemned, they could prove either fatally implosive or explosively liberating. We of the USian proletariat, like the too-often-unacknowledged USian peasantry that lives on the First Nations reservations and in the migrant labor camps, are beginning to awaken.  That's why it is time to resurrect the forbidden revolutionary labels of proletariat and peasantry with all their former ferocity and pride. We are starting to understand the vital truth we are all sisters and brothers of the Working Class regardless of gender or race or any of the other apparent differences by which our overlords seek to shatter our implicit solidarity. We are glimpsing the almost inconceivable power inherent in our unified resistance resistance to the punishing realities of proletarian-and-peasant existence. As a result, we are also awakening to the hideous truth the greed and sadism of our plutocratic masters has no limit this side of our individual deaths and our collective extinction. Hence we are now asking of ourselves the same question Vladimir Lenin – a man some of us are beginning to suspect may have been more hero than villain – famously asked in 1902: “What Is to Be Done?”
 

Am I again falling prey to another example of what I have so often denounced as “the imbecility of hope?” Maybe yes, maybe no. Proud cynic that I am, my inclination is to point once more to “change we can believe in,” the biggest single Big Lie in USian political history, and to again sneer at how the alleged “audacity of hope” – the one emotion allowed the powerless – was proven to be the nadir of gullibility. But a tiny voice from my subconscious urges me to remember the eventual aftermath of the original Bloody Sunday.  Then I think of a song I have known at least since my earliest childhood, a now-taboo and mostly forgotten anthem of resistance translated by Paul Robeson into words that for reasons I will probably never fully understand made such an impact on my mind and spirit I cannot possibly forget them: “Far and away the road goes winding/Look and see how merrily the road goes.”

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Advent of Obamacare Reveals Another of Barack's Betrayals

An authoritative Kaiser Family Foundation report details yet another of Obama the Orator's Big Lies about health care “reform,” specifically that under Obamacare, people who like their present health insurance policies will be allowed to keep them.

The truth, however, is that hundreds of thousands USian who were taken in by the Obamascam are now being slapped with cancellation notices – and the stunning, often ruinous reality of skyrocketing premiums. Once again, the only winners – exactly as the nation's most dishonest president intended – are the capitalist pigs of the insurance industry. 

Kaiser Foundation, by the way, is a nonprofit think-tank and research organization not aligned with any of the so-called “stake-holders” or (in reference to the caduceus) “snake-holders”of the uniquely USian business of profiteering on sickness. Indeed Kaiser is considered the best independent source of health insurance information in the entire USian Empire. 

Which puts a spotlight of relevance on a recent Truthout discussion-thread wherein a writer who steadfastly denies he is an undercover Democratic Party activist implicitly calls me a liar by asserting that I “cannot honestly believe” both parties have been equally deceptive about the so-called Affordable Care Act. The truth, of course, is that no law in the nation's history has ever been so effectively smokescreened by falsehoods, disinformation and the deliberate withholding of facts – a carefully scripted campaign of obfuscation in which both parties are equally culpable. (Click on “Show Comments,” then scroll down for my several contributions to an unusually civilized on-line debate.) 

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Theocracy: a 'Good Christian Town' Virtually Lynches a Rape Victim

In Maryville, Missouri, where church attendance fills the local A&G Restaurant after Sunday services, the misogyny at the core of Christian doctrine has again become evident in the USian cult of the divine athlete and how it inspired the Internet lynching of Daisy Coleman, a formerly popular Maryville High School cheerleader who dared complain she had been raped by Matthew Barnett, one of the school's football stars. Nor was the girl the only target of the town's vindictive fury. Her entire family was persecuted. Her brothers were threatened and otherwise harassed, her mother was thrown out of work – and when they continued to fight back, their house was burned to the ground, a traditional tactic of the Ku Klux Klan and other Christian vigilante groups throughout the USian homeland. 

As is typical in such cases, the Maryville victim has not been allowed to confront her accused assailants in court. The charges against Barnett and other suspects were dropped under questionable circumstances. Moreover, Barnett is the grandson of Rex Barnett, a politically influential former legislator and Southern Baptist deacon. The inexplicable refusal to prosecute the cases plus the magnitude and viciousness of the retaliatory hate-campaign against Ms. Coleman and her family suggests – but certainly does not prove – an organized effort clandestinely driven by people who are members of the local Ruling Class if not of the actual One Percent. 

Though no other journalist has thus far dared link the Maryville atrocities with the town's ideology  – its above average number of avowed Christians, its overwhelming Teabagger Republicanism that repeatedly re-elects U.S. Rep. Sam Graves  and thus its implicit part in the thrust toward biblical-law theocracy that's sweeping the old Confederacy and the USian interior states – the connection should be obvious to anyone who knows the sociological underbelly of such locales. An on-line satirist who writes under the nomme de guerre Foster Disbelief understands it well enough to describe Maryville as “a good Christian town.”  And having spent nearly two-thirds of my boyhood and teenage years in the South, where the Ku Klux Klan  is colloquially called “the Saturday night men's Bible-study class,” I too know the relevant psychodynamics. 

Anyone foolish enough to regard the threat of Klannish hatefulness as remote should note the KKK still publicly claims to be “a Christian organization” and is again expanding its ranks,  not just in the South but throughout the nation.  The most recent (2012) edition of the Southern Poverty Law Center's “Hate Map” lists 21 such groups active in Missouri, though none are headquartered in Maryville.

 

Yet despite the apparent absence of any obvious Klan-type connections to the Maryville atrocities, the town is nevertheless behaving as if it were under the domination of a Christian version of the vicious Islamic Morality Police – and this is precisely one of the functions the KKK and other hate groups traditionally fulfill in the more rural districts of the USian interior. It's a terrain with which I am enough familiar to be profoundly thankful I live in a city on a distant seacoast and am despite being old and crippled yet able to maintain a few vital self-defense skills. But not even the alleged bastions of secularity are truly safe from these fanatics, as shown by frightening reports about the nationwide nature of the Christian war against female sexuality.  Similarly tyrannical Christian dogmas  that fueled the recent shutdown of the federal government. In this context, the relentless persecution of Daisy Coleman and her closest kin is a terrifying microcosm of the theocratic assault on all the rest of us. A recent essay by Chris Hedges summarizes the dangers quite succinctly. 

Meanwhile the anarchist hacker-collective Anonymous has announced it is targeting Maryville to avenge the attacks on Ms. Coleman and her family. Anonymous is also organizing an anti-rape protest demonstration scheduled for 6 p.m. on Tuesday (22 October). Not surprisingly, it already has the town fathers in a call-out-the-garrison panic.  

But the story's newest and potentially most controversial development is that the Anonymous announcement, which includes an implicit threat of hacking all the electronic files associated with the Maryville case, might be taken as a direct challenge to the Obama Administration Justice Department. That's because Obama Justice is effectively siding with the Steubenville rapists by investigating the hacktivist whose work exposed the town's protect-the-sacred-jocks coverup and compelled the prosecution of two of the rapists. Thus there is no doubt where the administration stands in the global struggle against patriarchy and its religious and political descendants – a revelation that should make feminists and all other civil libertarians profoundly wary. 

LB/20 October 2013

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Working on a Long Story: This Week's Essay Very Short

"Stop Corporate Abuse of Democracy; Tax the Rich": Yet another of my hitherto unpublished Occupy Tacoma pictures, as relevant now as in November 2011. Pentax MX, 100 mm SMCP-M f/2.8, Fujicolor 800, exposure not recorded. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2013. (Click on image to view it full size.)

 

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MY BLOGGING TIME this week was taken up by old-fashioned reportorial work – chasing a story via the telephone and the Internet. On Wednesday I thought I had it pretty well in hand, so well I was beginning to write parts of it in my head. But then yesterday I discovered what I thought I knew was mostly wrong – that not only was I ignorant, but I had a helluva lot more to learn before the story would be ready to write. 

Meanwhile here are links to three pieces by other writers I strongly urge you to read:
The first is old news – how the Occupy Movement was suppressed by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security through its command and control of federally militarized local police departments. But the report is worth reading again in the context of the most recent disclosures  about the total surveillance that now defines us all – the entire 99 Percent – as enemies of the global USian empire and all its corporate states.

Link number three is to a vital and closely related report from Europe – Former President Carter's admission there is no longer any “functioning democracy” anywhere in the United States.  That Carter's remarks were available only in a major German newspaper (and not only carefully excluded from its English-language editions but suppressed by all USian mainstream media), is more proof of the informational iron curtain that is being drawn down around the U.S. as it moves ever closer to becoming the genuine Fourth Reich, thereby fulfilling the dreams of the Nazi war criminals the federal government and its capitalist overlords embraced in 1945. 

LB/20 July 2013

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One Year Later: a Former Occupier's Dissenting View

Samuel Farber's “Occupy Wall Street and the Art of Demanding,” published by Truthout on 13 September 2012, is the best analysis I have yet seen of Occupy's tragic but mostly self-inflicted failure,  the magnitude of which was painfully apparent in the collapse of the demonstrations planned for downtown Manhattan on the 17th, the first anniversary of  the movement's emergence.

Carefully sidestepping assignment of blame, Farber wrote that Occupy's avowedly “anarchist” refusal to formulate a program of demands “might have been beneficial initially in that it might have created a more welcoming atmosphere to newly radicalized people.”

As I noted repeatedly during my own involvement with Occupy Tacoma,  encouraging the articulation of grievances is the first step in any effective organizing campaign. 

“But as  movements develop and mature,”  Farber continued, “they need to state more clearly what they stand for and not only what they stand against. Movements need to develop some kind of theory to guide their actions, not as an obscure, technical body of thought only accessible to the select few, but as the clearest possible ideas about the nature of the enemy and of the movement.”

Again, Farber is absolutely correct. And it was in these pivotal functions – formalization of grievances into demands, formulation of supportive ideology – that Occupy failed so abysmally, betraying not only its initial promise but the (briefly) bolstered hopes of the 99 Percent it claimed to represent.    

Which brings me to the one huge flaw in Farber's work: his obvious reluctance to forthrightly address the broader reasons for those betrayals. Thus – apparently as a byproduct of an admirable but misguided effort to avoid confrontation – he omits the two most vital factors in the historical and psychodynamic processes that, in retrospect, probably made Occupy's downfall inevitable.

One of these is global, the fact the death of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has removed all the restraints that previously compelled the capitalists to ameliorate or conceal their innate savagery.

Though the U.S.S.R. was never the workers' paradise it claimed to be, its official Marxism nevertheless provided an obvious alternative to capitalism. The socioeconomic democracy promised by Soviet-backed Marxian revolution so terrified the denizens of Wall Street and comparable enclaves elsewhere, they cunningly erected a  seductive facade to hide capitalism's darkest and most murderous reality – the fact it is based on the overthrow of all humanitarian morality and, in its place,  the elevation of infinite greed to maximum virtue, with Ayn Rand's impossibly turgid prose as the latter-day equivalent of Mein Kampf.   

Underlying the Ruling Class response was its fearful recognition the Soviet intelligence agencies – the variously-named KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti or Committee for State Security) and the lesser known but infinitely more formidable GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye or  Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff) -- were genuine cadres of professional revolutionaries.  It is in this context Communism's explicit threat to capitalism – backed not just by rhetoric but by the overwhelming might of the Red Army –  explains all the humanitarian successes of the 20th Century. What empowered organized labor, gave birth to the New Deal and fostered the now-forever-dead American Dream, what enabled the victories of Gandhi in India and King in the U.S. South, was not the (nonexistent) beneficence of capitalist overlords but rather the capitalists' terror of the violent consequences were the forces of non-violence defeated.

Painfully ironic as it may be to admit, the Red Army was thus the ultimate protector of the American experiment in constitutional democracy, just as organized labor was the only real defender of the  American Dream.  Hence, with the labor movement nullified and the Soviet Union consigned to history, we suffer the unabashed brutality with which the capitalists now routinely suppress their adversaries,  particularly here in the allegedly "democratic" United States. Such (steadily intensifying) brutishness would never have been allowed when the Soviets were prepared to foment revolution whenever the Big Lie of "capitalist democracy" was revealed, as it nearly was, for example, in the Bankers' Plot or 1934 or in the atrocities committed against the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s.     
      
The second factor Farber omits in explaining in Occupy's failure is implicit in his mistaken choice of “anarchist” to describe the movement's primary ethos. Anarchism, despite the capitalist propaganda that associates it with maniacal bomb-throwers in Tsarist Russia, is an avowedly humanitarian ideology developed logically from approximately 2,600 years of grievances; one of its exemplars was Mikhail Bakunin, who no doubt would have been appalled by Occupy's fanatical rejection of reasoned analysis.

Precisely because it generally despised intellectuals and angrily rejected intellectuality in any form, Occupy was therefore not “anarchist” at all. It was instead a nationwide uprising by nihilists, a  typically short-lived expression of the self-centered  nihilism unique to the United States. It embodied the widespread USian belief human society has become so oppressive – or so evil – we can achieve liberation only by its total destruction, and it shared with the Ayn Randers the fervent conviction that self – and selfishness – are the only truths. But the latter is not just a singularly USian restatement of the existential paradox that meaning is meaningless; it is also – what else? – the enabling precept of the moral imbecility essential to capitalism and capitalist growth.   

Like the Teabaggers, Occupy was thus a manifestation of the psychological condition unique to the United States,  something I long ago labeled the Moron Nation syndrome – the carefully induced anti-intellectuality  intended to guarantee We the People of the most oppressed realm in the industrial world never again  formulate an effective program of humanitarian change and resistance to capitalist tyranny, much less evolve an ideology of actual revolution. 

We are brain-soaked in these anti-intellectual reflexes literally from birth, so much so they have become the defining characteristic of  the U.S. population.  Venomous even in its most casual everyday expressions, it is the toxic legacy of the political purges that began the moment World War II ended, peaked during the McCarthy Era and continued well into the 1960s. Though the targets were presumably only Communists, in bitter truth the victims were socialists of every persuasion. Eventually (and obviously just as the Ruling Class intended), the persecution was expanded to demonize anyone deemed an “egghead” – that is, an intellectual.

"Intellectual" thus eventually became synonymous with "subversive" and even "traitor," a hostility so intense during the 1950s, the children of families with substantial home libraries, myself included, were instructed by our parents never to publicly admit the presence of books in our homes. The cultural result (or more aptly the anti-cultural consequence) is one of the major psycholinguistic perversions of all time – the intellectual as a bad guy, intellectuality as a sin if not a demonic trait –  shibboleths that rule even avowedly secular U.S. society to this day.   

The national mindset so imposed includes unconditional rejection of ideology, analytical thinking and even logic itself. As already noted, the same irrational bigotries – and bigotries is precisely what they are –  are found on both Left and Right, whether in New Age, Deconstructionist,  Teabagger or Christian fundamentalist movements. And the associated fanaticism is again increasing, just as it did during the years of the Purge, perhaps now fueled by our species' (impotent) rage at its betrayal-unto-extinction, seemingly by all modern (logic-based) institutions.
     
Not surprisingly, the same kinds of frenzies appear to have motivated the nihilistic disruptions that nullified Occupy as any sort of meaningful force for change, whether ameliorative or revolutionary,  which soon silenced the movement's ability to express the common grievances of the 99 Percent it claimed to represent.

This was as dismayingly apparent in Occupy Tacoma, in which I was among the earliest activists, as it was elsewhere throughout the U.S. Unlike many local Occupy groups, we did – after  exceedingly bitter infighting – produce a statement of purpose, never mind by the time of its publication it had been reduced to meaninglessness by nihilistic obstructionism.

We also managed – just once – to confront an eel-slippery politician with a well-formulated list of demands.   

But we were already discovering any thoughtful exercise of our constitutional rights invariably came at a price of internal hatefulness many of us were unwilling to endore. The following excerpts are from “OT Blues: a Clash with 'Important' Helps Me Occupy My Mind,” published via Blogger on 7 December 2011, during the time Outside Agitator's Notebook was banished from TypePad:

When I heed Occupy Tacoma's best slogan to date – “Occupy Your Mind” (for which thanks to Nikki Weatherhead, Joy Bonney and Autumn Jacobs) – the resultant introspection insists that above all else I am still a journalist, whether with camera or keyboard or both.

My commitment to journalism is nearly lifelong. It dates from 1952, when my father gave me a Kodak Brownie Reflex for my 12th birthday. Two years later he gave me a Polaroid Land Camera. In 1955, via the what-will-I-be-when-I-grow-up unit of my 10th grade English class, I declared myself a future reporter and photographer. Late the following year I was hired by The Grand Rapids Herald, a Michigan daily. I was a combination copyboy and stringer, in the latter role a regular contributor to the sports and youth sections. That's also when I got my union card, becoming – at age 16 – a fiercely proud member of the American Newspaper Guild.

Since then I have tried to live in accordance with journalism's oldest creed: “to comfort the afflicted...and afflict the comforted.”

It was in the latter context I wrote a blistering retort to two posters on the OT Forum.

The two were trashing a thread-starter who was trying to alert us to the huge danger implicit in the National Defense Authorization Act, which is wending its way through Congress bearing a concentration-camp provision that would turn stateside-stationed armed forces into national police, enable the imprisonment of citizens without trial and thus move the United States that much closer to becoming the de facto Fourth Reich.

Because the trashers' onslaught against this latter-day Paul Revere seemed not only unfair but vindictive, I opened the ball accordingly:

“The reactionary anti-intellectuality implicit in (the first respondent's) attack is surprising even here in the region of the United States most noted for its vindictive xenophobia and venomous anti-intellectuality.”

The first trasher, clearly enraged, misquoted me to the forum's moderator, then withdrew in a huff after the moderator pointed out the distortion.

Meanwhile the second trasher, whose screen name is “Nobody Important” and who claims to be an Occupy Seattle website moderator, was already boiling over with self-important arrogance.

Important had been subtly protecting the One Percent by denying the ruined state of our constitutional democracy, telling us the system was working and we had nothing to worry about – a tactic typical of capitalist-party operatives whether DemocRat or GOPorker.

My response was intended to end what I already recognized as pointless confrontation: “It seems – please correct me if I'm wrong – your underlying purpose is to defend the status quo, including the infinity of betrayals perpetrated by Barack the Betrayer. That being the case I see little point in debating you.”

But this gentle rebuke provoked an on-line tantrum that lasted nearly two days, with Important repeatedly proving the screen name to be not just devoid of its implied humility but a classic example of passive-aggressive camouflage.

In the parlance of the old-time newsrooms in which I learned my craft, obviously I drew blood.

Important then asserted a despotic sense of privileged entitlement, demanding ever more fiercely I be banished for “hate speech.” Apparently  Important searched not just the OT Forum but even Outside Agitator's Notebook to cobble together a less-than-literate denunciation based on my characterizations of our neo-feudal politicians (Barack the Betrayer, Christine the Cruel); our treacherous political parties (DemocRats, GOPorkers); and my factually correct, historically proven statement Nazism (and fascism in general) are logical fulfillments of capitalism.

But one brave moderator persisted in defending my right to write as I see fit, and Important finally left in a hissy, still spewing venom, a trail of petulantly self-deleted posts littering the path of departure.

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Despite the Occupation Movement's outspoken commitment to transparency, the forum incident was not my first encounter with OT's would-be censors.

When OT was formed, Tacoma's First Methodist Church offered its facilities as an indoor locale for meetings of OT's governing body, the General Assembly. The offer was gratefully accepted; the frigid rains characteristic of winter on the Pacific Northwest Coast are of such monsoonal intensity as to discourage extended outdoor meetings – and GA sessions tend to last two, three, even four hours.

But not long after OT took its first collectively approved policy stance – a list of formal demands it presented to Washington state's U.S. Sen. Patty Murray – the church withdrew its offer, forcing the GA outdoors in the rain and cold and thereby effectively excluding most elderly and disabled people from the decision-making process.

The reasons for the church's sudden reversal have never been adequately explained, though it should be noted most OT activists emphatically assert the cause was nothing more ominous than administrative error and organizational confusion.

Nevertheless it's difficult to overlook the fact the excluded seniors and disabled people had been amongst those most active in shaping the demands OT addressed to Murray. Citing Murray's position as co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, OT insisted she block proposed cutbacks in Social Security and prevent further slashing of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits and federal aid to education.

Coincidence? Probably – though the demographic identity of the chief victims of the church's sudden denial of its meeting facilities surely arouses my investigative reporter's suspicion.

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Since the beginning of my involvement with OT I have sensed – particularly amongst its younger leaders – an underlying bias against those of us who are elderly, especially those of us who are lower-income elderly.

What brought this into sharp focus was OT's decision to center itself on a 24/7 on-line presence and on computer technology in general.

Recognizing the prohibitive nature of computer costs, I spoke up at several GAs citing current statistics that fully half the nation's lower-income households are economically denied computer access and thus remain cut off from an increasingly computer-oriented world. I myself, I admitted, am nearly at the economic bottom of the 99 Percent; I live in constant fear my computer will die and leave me irremediably isolated. I have no funds with which to replace a computer and short of a miracle will never have such funds again.

To exclude me and all the others who are in these dire circumstances, I said, is to nullify the core purpose of the Occupy Movement.

Again I was told I was being divisive.

The expressions on the faces of those around me left no doubt it was the majority opinion...

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Thus, by fomenting intellectual and physical vandalism –  whether under the mindless banner of "anarchy" (as in Occupy's suicidal hostility toward analysis and ideology), or in reflexive obedience to the Ayn Rand doctrines with which we in the United States are conditioned from birth (as demonstrated by the foregoing indifference of self-proclaimed “progressives” to legitimate concerns of elderly, disabled and lower-income people) –  does the Ruling Class sustain its ever-expanding despotism. Thus too, at least partly because of Occupy's nihilistic rejection of politics,  we are once again allowed only the most limited electoral choice, the greater evil of the unapologetic neo-Nazism offered by the Republicans versus the lesser evil of the stealth fascism the Democrats hide behind compellingly progressive but demonstrably untrustworthy slogans.  Such is “change we can believe in.”  

LB/17 September 2012

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Occupy Tacoma: Prime Target of Secret Police?

Note: I wrote the following report two months ago for the research branch of Occupy Washington D.C. Since then, the events of May Day have proven Occupy Tacoma and indeed the entire Occupy Movement are very much alive, which makes this material relevant not just to Occupiers but to all other emergent protest movements, especially in the ever-more-openly fascist United States. Hence this, edited only slightly for presentation here:

I. SUMMARY: Typical of Occupy Wall Street and its local offshoots throughout the United States, Occupy Tacoma was from its inception vexed by disorganization and chaos. The resultant obstructions – especially in planning and communications – prevailed from OT's birth-period (the last week of September through the first week of October 2011), until 26 February 2012, when the few remaining campers evacuated Occupation Park in peaceful compliance with a state eviction order. How much of the disruption that plagued OT during those five months was merely typical of newly formed grassroots movements? How much was caused or intensified by clandestine operatives working on behalf the One Percent – agents provocateur and other sorts of infiltrators? The question is impossible to answer at this point. But at least a dozen episodes or incidents, each of which is described in more detail below, display one or more characteristics that identifies them as the product of hostile operations.

II. BACKGROUND: In startling contrast to the protest movements of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, where from the beginning there was sufficient awareness of the oppressor's ultimate malevolence (and therefore a magnitude of paranoia that was both profound and entirely rational), Occupy Tacoma seemed dominated by an almost childish naivety – an attitude all the more astonishing given how the protest movements of yesteryear operated under constitutional protections that have since been notoriously abolished. As a consequence, the identification of possible infiltrators within OT was left largely to elderly women who are veterans of the Feminist Movement and a handful of aging males who are, as I am, veterans of the Civil Rights, Anti-Vietnam War, Back-to-the-Land and Alternative Press movements. Alas, because of a new and far more politically damaging generation gap – the enormous contempt with which younger U.S. Caucasians so often view those of us who are in our 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond – our cautions typically fell on deaf ears.

Though I was involved with the Occupy movement in Washington state even before the organization of Occupy Tacoma – I had posted on the Occupy Olympia website seeking information about Occupy activities in Tacoma several days before the Tacoma group was formed – by January all save one of the original approximately 14 movement-veteran seniors, myself included, had been quietly ousted. The primary means of our ouster, which may or may not be relevant to the infiltration question, was the refusal of what emerged as OT's dominant faction to accommodate our very real, health-mandated need for General Assembly meetings in spaces that were both heated and protected from the incessant and dangerously chilling rains typical of Pacific Northwest coastal winters. Rather than grant us the sheltered space we demanded, the OT core faction continued to meet in frigid and often torrential downpours until all but one of us stopped participating. Only then – after we were gone (and thereby silenced) – was a community tent erected in Occupation Park. Whether this was coincidence or something darker could not be determined.

The following report is therefore the product of two kinds of sources. Its primary source is my own on-the-spot observation through mid-December 2011, which given my 55-year background in investigative reporting, photography and journalism in general is definitively the work of a trained observer and analyst. (For details of my qualifications, see the resumé I sent with my e-note of 1 March 2012). The secondary sources, none of whom I am at liberty to identify, are a few people within Occupation Park and OT in general with whom I remained in contact from mid-December until the encampment's formal demise on 26 February 2012.

III. VITAL HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: When reading the following it is imperative to bear in mind the reluctant admission by Watergate felon John Ehrlichman that Washington state and the Puget Sound region¹ in particular is the One Percent's favorite domestic laboratory for perfecting its techniques of oppression. The late Ehrlichman, a Seattleite who climbed the Republican ladder to achieve infamy as one of All the President's Men, testified during the Watergate hearings, and it was there he revealed his home state's hitherto-secret rat-lab role. This disclosure made headlines in Seattle, particularly in the alternative press. But the news reports of Ehrlichman's revelations have all seemingly vanished down the proverbial Orwell hole. Hence no verification links exist – at least none I've been able to find. Moreover my own Watergate reference files – clippings and notes on the Seattle area's many connections to various Nixon outrages – were destroyed in 1983 by the same mysterious house fire that burned up all my life's significant work including two books in progress. Nevertheless Ehrlichman's description of the state and especially the Puget Sound area as a Ruling Class proving ground might explain a curious paradox of Washington's Occupy history: the astounding tolerance the authorities granted Occupy Tacoma, this in contrast to the anti-Occupy violence of the police elsewhere in the region, especially in Seattle, where the cops were so brazenly brutal they attacked an 84-year-old woman.

IV. TWELVE RELEVENT EPISODES: Here in chronological order are a dozen examples from Occupy Tacoma's first five months that strongly suggest infiltration or infiltration attempts, the activities of agents-provocateur and a miscellany of other hostile actions:

(1)-In angry, significantly unionized working-class Tacoma, the two-fingered peace sign of the 1960s is considered a symbol of silliness (if not outright submissiveness), and in union circles it is generally viewed with contempt. But this symbol mysteriously ousted the clenched fist of today's economic rage and thus – undoubtedly to Occupy Tacoma's detriment – became the movement's defining logo. Just how this came about is a mystery I was never able to solve, and I pursued it with reportorial diligence for several weeks. But the answers to my questions were always variants of “it just happened.” Indeed the peace sign, which I as a socialist have always found objectionable, was seemingly cemented in place even before OT became functional. (I was the first contributor to OT's “why I joined” testimonials, this on 6 October 2011.)  Indeed by then the peace sign had already become sacrosanct, so that every attempt to challenge it was shouted down – never mind that (in the words of one of my more articulate neighbors), it publicly declared OT, “nothing more than a bunch of kids trying to be hippies and relive the '60s.” The result was that OT was never taken seriously by the community at large. Was this curious choice of symbols – self-defeating in any context and downright inexplicable in working-class Tacoma – the product of infiltration? I don't know. But I regard it with profound suspicion. (Update: sometime after I filed this report with Occupy Washington D.C., OT did indeed replace the two-fingered peace sign with the clenched fist [scroll down to May Day], though the peace sign persists in all its insipid self-defeating obnoxiousness on OT's Facebook page. )

 

(2)-A few individuals whose online comments marked them as likely agents provocateur were evident from the moment the OccupyTacoma.org website opened its forum; the identities of these individuals will be obvious to anyone who peruses the forum's contents. Indeed many OT activists, myself included, stopped posting there because of its domination by posters whose sole purpose seemed to be antagonism and provocation. (Update: OT's website was destroyed by hackers in mid-March but was rebuilt by the end of the month.)

(3)-At OT's second GA, a longtime (and therefore presumably credible) local activist repeated in seemingly good faith a warning Tacoma City Council had recently amended its ordinances so that if anyone in a demonstration was charged with a felony – say felonious vandalism or assault on a police officer – everyone who had any connection with the demonstration (even non-demonstrating members of participating organizations) could be identically charged and arrested. That such a measure is reportedly being urged on states and municipalities by the Department of Homeland Security made the warning all the more believable – and all the more terrifying. But it was patently false. My own investigation revealed that no such measure had been considered – much less enacted – whether by Tacoma, Pierce County or any other municipality within the county. Nor could I trace the warning to its source; it was always “so-and-so said,” and then when I questioned “so-and-so,” the source was invariably somebody else. The fact similar rumors spread through Occupy organizations elsewhere suggests a classic combination of disinformation and psychological warfare – this of a sophistication that in turn evidences the most skilled sorts of military or secret police operations.

(4)-OT's communications were constantly disrupted. The email addresses of key work-group personnel were mysteriously blocked. E-messages went astray; important information was never delivered. At least one OT activist was worked into a state of psychological exhaustion by the associated frustrations. These obstructions clearly suggest communications countermeasures that, again, are indicative of military or secret-police capabilities.

(5)-I heard stories of several supposedly obvious infiltration attempts and encountered one such effort myself. A young man presented himself to the Media Work Group as a graphic artist with a heavy professional background but seemed, by attitude, physique and a certain characteristic look in his eyes, more like a special-forces guy than a cultural worker. I as a key member of the work group thus began questioning him about his education and accomplishments. As we talked I asked if he was familiar with Art Direction magazine, the now-defunct international commercial-art journal of which I was editor-in-chief in 1985 and 1986. He replied that he was indeed familiar with the publication, but did so with the vagueness that invariably reveals falsehood. Shortly afterward he left the meeting – and was never again seen on Occupation circles. Opportunist seeking to hitch his metaphorical wagon to the Occupation star? Infiltrator? I'd guess the latter – emphatically so – but again there's no definitive proof.

(6)-In late October an individual hitherto unknown to OT brought to a GA a proposal the group's communications be restructured to exclude anyone without Internet access. I instantly objected, vehemently so, pointing out that such economically-based discrimination is specifically the kind of class warfare Occupy is protesting. A few others, typically single mothers or elderly people of both genders, expressed their agreement with me. The exclusion advocate sneeringly replied that Internet access was available to anyone willing to make the effort to go to a public library. One woman's response was especially memorable: “How can we go to the libraries when the transit system is being shut down and the libraries are all being closed?” The exclusion advocate merely smirked, saying nothing. Soon however his proposal, though never formally adopted, had become the OT norm, with the result the methodical exclusion of a major part of OT's natural base. Infiltrator? Ayn Rander? I'd say maybe both – because why else would an Ayn Rander be interested in OT?

(7)-When OT was formed, Tacoma's First Methodist Church offered its facilities as an indoor locale for GAs. The offer was gratefully accepted; the frigid rains characteristic of winter on the Pacific Northwest Coast are of such monsoonal intensity as to discourage outdoor meetings – and GA sessions tend to last two, three, even four hours. But not long after OT took its first collectively approved policy stance – a list of formal demands it presented to Washington state's U.S. Sen. Patty Murray – the church withdrew its offer, forcing the GA outdoors in the rain and cold and thereby effectively excluding most elderly and disabled people from the decision-making process. The reasons for the church's sudden reversal have never been adequately explained, though it should be noted most OT activists emphatically assert the cause was nothing more ominous than administrative error and organizational confusion. Nevertheless it's difficult to overlook the fact the excluded seniors and disabled people had been amongst those most active in shaping the demands OT addressed to Murray. Citing Murray's position as co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, OT insisted she block proposed cutbacks in Social Security and prevent further slashing of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits and federal aid to education. Was the church's ouster of OT a deliberately hostile action (perhaps ordered by the church's state or national hierarchy in response to some DHS edict)? Or was it mere coincidence? In this case it seems to have been the latter – though the demographic identity of the chief victims of the church's sudden denial of its meeting facilities is surely cause for continued suspicion.

(8)-Soon after ouster from the church facilities limited OT to outdoor meetings, a story spread through OT's dwindling ranks that the Teamsters (a union to which I have strong social and familial connections despite the fact I have never been a member), had been kind enough to offer its local auditorium as a permanent meeting place. But one of the leaders who had emerged within allegedly “leaderless” OT was said to have arbitrarily turned down the offer without bothering to consult the membership. If true, this was an anti-union coup. Indeed – especially since there was already growing tension between union members and anti-union “progressives” – I suspected the perpetrator was either a Green or a member of MoveOn.org. Both groups had self-identified members within OT, both share the anti-blue-collar bias that has characterized the nation's so-called “Left” since the class conflicts of the Vietnam Era, and each group is therefore as anti-union as any of its hard-right counterparts. Hence – hoping to blow the cover of an anti-union activist within OT – I telephoned several local union officials in an effort to ferret out the facts. (Disclosure: I am a member of the National Writers Union AFL/CIO, a former member of the American Newspaper Guild.) After maybe a half dozen conversations it became clear no such offer had been made – not by the Teamsters, not by any other union, not by the Pierce County Central Labor Council. Another classic example of what the Russians call dezinformatsiya? In this case I'd bet on it.

(9)-A self-proclaimed Iraq War veteran who belligerently identified himself as an OT activist was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine, this in Olympia during a confrontation between Occupy Olympia and Olympia cops. Ruling Class Media throughout Washington state seized upon the arrest to begin a Josef Goebbels-type campaign of characterizing Occupiers as undesirables. Coincidental? I doubt it – especially since three or four OT people later told me the man had been ousted from Tacoma's Occupation Park for offering free cocaine to campers.

(10)-By the end of December, the sociology of Occupation Park's approximately 30 overnight campers was changing dramatically; the park was increasingly becoming a homeless camp. Sources there told me some of the chronically homeless people – about half of whom were also severely mentally ill – claimed they had been sent to the park by (unnamed) local social service agencies to obtain free food and lodging. Meanwhile – again hardly a coincidence – the Ruling Class Media's hate campaign continued, portraying Occupiers as habitual drunks, drug addicts and mental patients who refused medication.

(11)-By the end of January, threats of violence by hard-core homeless people had driven so many of the original OT protesters out of the park, OT itself was recommending the park be evacuated, cleaned up and given back to the state.  Concurrent with the (imposed?) increase in numbers of chronically homeless people, Ruling Class Media reported a groundswell of complaints from (invariably anonymous) merchants that Occupiers were intimidating their customers and trashing the downtown Tacoma neighborhood around the park. Significantly, Ruling Class Media reporters ignored what – if my sources were correct – would have been a Pulitzer-class story: an equally dramatic increase in numbers of people flung into homelessness by the downsized economy. Typically, I was told, the newly homeless who came to Occupation Park were (bitterly angry) youths whose parents had been first thrown out of work and then evicted from their homes. It was in this context – conversion of Occupation Park into a homeless camp – the state issued its official eviction notice, with which OT then complied.

(12)-As I noted in the section entitled “Summary,” the degree of tolerance displayed by local law enforcement toward Occupy Tacoma is – especially given the unrestrained brutality unleashed against other Occupations in Washington state – not just astonishing but markedly suspect. The apparent coordination between state welfare bureaucrats, some non-profit social service agencies, Ruling Class Media and other state agencies including the Washington State Patrol (which despite its name is a de facto state police force) is strongly suggestive of a carefully planned and coordinated operation. It is especially significant to note that only the Department of Homeland Security possesses the requisite combination of capabilities and authority to impose such coordination. Hence – particularly given the Ehrlichman testimony – it's difficult to escape the conclusion the curious treatment of OT was part of an experiment, probably by DHS, to determine the most effective strategy and tactics (complete with the peace sign's symbolic ouster of the clenched fist) for dealing with rebelliousness sparked by the public's awakening to the savagery of capitalism and the murderousness of fascist governance. OT by its very existence also underscores the Father Gapon factor: providing the authorities with a unique opportunity to identify the largest possible number of activists and potential activists of all ages, genders and ethnicities who live in or near Tacoma.

V. AFTERTHOUGHTS – IDENTIFYING INFILTRATORS AND COMBATING HOSTILE ACTION: The questions of how to identify infiltrators, informants and/or agents provocateur, and what countermeasures to employ against them, were hotly debated during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Since these matters are obviously relevant again today, here is list of five principles from the '60s, updated to reflect present-day political and technological realities: 

(1)-Given the escalating imposition of fascist governance², most U.S. locales have longstanding communities of nonviolent resistance from which local Occupations drew their initial membership. The sudden appearance of any self-proclaimed activist who is a total stranger within these communities – particularly a stranger whose claims of radicalism cannot be confirmed – should be viewed with grave suspicion.³

(2)-Given the overwhelming military and police power of the fascist state – which possesses the capability of destroying our entire movement – the absolute necessity of maintaining the often-difficult disciplines of nonviolence is (or should be) obvious to even the most unseasoned protester. Any other course of action gives the authorities the propaganda by which to justify assaulting us with maximum lethal force. In this context, anyone who publicly advocates violence (as in General Assembly meetings or on discussion threads), is almost certainly an agent provocateur.

(3)-Given the Occupy principle of working toward consensus, individuals or groups of individuals who persistently disrupt the consensus-building process should be viewed with grave suspicion. This includes disruptive mentally ill or homeless persons whose presence may have been maliciously encouraged by the Ruling Class authorities.

(4)-Given our extreme dependence on social media (and the huge vulnerability that results from that dependence), we are easy targets for interdiction (outright blockage of communications), disinformation (incorrect dates and times), and illegal acts advocated by agents provocateur who have infiltrated our web sites. Hence people given moderator-access to Occupy websites and other communications media should be screened very carefully. Indeed each local Occupation should develop an access-screening working group.

(5)-Given our vulnerability to entrapment, we should be especially wary of anyone who makes a point of inviting us to break even seemingly minor laws, for example drinking alcohol on public property where alcohol consumption is forbidden. Such a person is best scorned as an agent provocateur. Otherwise – once arrested – we are in the hands of authorities who now today not only have the power to detain us indefinitely but to torture us into whatever confession fulfills their fascist objectives.

In keeping with the non-violent nature of our movement, our single most effective countermeasure is to deliberately plant false information with a suspected infiltrator – for example that 500 people intend to demonstrate in front of a bank. Then when the riot police show up for what turns out to be a non-event, we know the person on whom the false information was planted is indeed an infiltrator. Camera phones are superbly effective too: when the young man who 15 minutes ago was demanding violence is photographed laughing with his cop or soldier buddies around the corner, the evidence is irrefutable.

Above all else we should never forget the United States is no longer the nation into which even the most youthful Occupiers were born. “The Land of the Free” is but a memory. In bitter truth we are the subjects of the most oppressive, most relentlessly policed, most mercilessly punished nation on Earth.

***

¹The Puget Sound area or region includes the cities of Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia. 

²It should be noted that fascist governance is in fact capitalist governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the Ruling Class, total subjugation and genocidal poverty for everyone else. Capitalism – infinite greed exalted as ultimate virtue – has always been a powerfully compelling doctrine in the United States, particularly in matters of foreign policy. But after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on 22 November 1963 and the decade's subsequent political murders (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy), the nation lost the will to resist capitalism's inevitable transformation into fascism, hence the escalating tyranny at home and the brutal – indeed Nazi-like – imperialist policies abroad. The domestic imposition of fascism and the brazen re-emergence of capitalism's innate viciousness was further bolstered by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though the U.S.S.R. was never the “workers' paradise” it claimed to be, its official Marxism appeared to offer an avowedly humanitarian alternative to capitalism. The resultant competition for “hearts and minds” forced capitalism to conceal its savagery, hence the unprecedented growth of the U.S. middle class c. 1945-1973, a pretense brazenly dropped after the U.S.S.R. was destroyed in 1990.

³This is a modern-day affirmation of the affinity-group principle that evolved during the '60s: the fact collectives of people with long mutual histories are extremely difficult to infiltrate. The protection granted by the longstanding solidarity of the affinity group is, by the way, precisely why the capitalists are forever engaged in the destruction and/or prevention of communities.

L.B./4 March 2012, rev. 13 May 2012

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