Said Senator Dianne Feinstein to Fox News about an al-Qaeda suspect in Yemen: “I am hopeful that we will be able to, candidly, kill this bomb maker and kill some of these other associates. This, about a certain Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri about whom we have only intelligence hearsay to go on, based on an undetectable bomb, on which they say they detect his forensic signature, and about his friends, members they say of AL-QAEDA OF THE SAUDI PENINSULA or some such. What this means, for employees of GENERAL DYNAMICS or RAYTHEON OF SOUTHERN COLORADO for example, is that you don’t even have to possess a factory security ID to be suspected by Yemen, or our other Muslim adversaries, of making bombs that terrorize their innocents. Allah forbid they should commandeer armed drones, in preemptive self defense, to kill you and your now pants-pissing friends, candidly.
And let’s be realistic, the BOMB MAKERS OF AMERICA is an awfully big fraternity at this point.
Tag Archives: Intelligence
Collaborators, rats and pigs
I found this unsigned flier in Denver, a collage of the American eagle, globe in mouth, and Stars & Stripes over US misdeeds, clockwise from top left: race lynching, branding slaves, blindfolded Iraqi detainees, combatant corpse desecration, Hiroshima, torture of Viet Cong,
My Lai, Columbus’ mass burning of Taíno Indians, Filipino insurgents executed in trenches, the gruesome trophy pic, etc, framing this succinct condemnation: “The US military, intelligence operatives, and police are traitors to humanity. Those who work with them, those who friend them, and those who sleep with them are collaborators. They are rats and pigs.”
Um, embarrassing “Bin Laden papers” found during assassination raid give new life to CIA al-Piltdown melodrama
Ignoring that a recent BBC investigation had determined that “al-Qaida” was an intelligence community fabrication, US media trots out bin Laden papers “seized during raid” for latest Borat-style mocking of Islam.
Now MoJo throws Apple critic Mike Daisey under the bus in their exposé of Walmart Chinese shadow factories
Mother Jones is next to discredit Playwright Mike Daisey for his dramatization of Apple’s supply line abuses in China, right in the byline of Andy Kroll’s piece on Walmart’s shadow factory system in China, which they call their, haha, “fiction-free investigation”. THEN THEY FALL FOR A GREEN INDUSTRY-STRENGTH CLEANER! MoJo asks: Are Walmart’s Chinese Factories as Bad as Apple’s? and never really answers. Instead it’s a behind the greenwash exposé, and what else is new. AND Kroll falls for a Walmart PR contractor who adversaries of sustainability hacks recognize as the archetypal intelligence fiend, the federal witness protection program hair club for men, biker, treehugger alias. This time in the persona of “Terry Foecke (pronounced FAKE-ee), a consultant spearheading Walmart’s factory energy efficiency program in China. In a lobby full of Westerners, Foecke cut an unmistakable figure—thickly bearded, 6-foot-3, with a broad belly and hip square-framed glasses. He was an unlikely Walmart ally: a soft-spoken, almost professorial progressive who quoted George Bernard Shaw and told me he spoke out against runaway consumerism at his Unitarian church back home in Minnesota.” Um, yeah Andy. Fake-ee.
Four Occupy tormentors unmasked

Occupy Colo. Springs held a NO WAR ON IRAN demo today, counter- protested by some soldiers who think any antiwar criticism of their mission fails to Support The Troops. (Horrifyingly curious don’t you think, that US soldiers would already consider war with Iran as their mission?!) Joining them it turned out, were four of OCS’s sneakiest saboteurs. I got them with one camera click! From right to ultra-right: Raven Martinez aka Briaunna Webbing aka Occupy Csprings, Michael Clifton aka Agent of Doubt, Ian Carman aka “Father” Ian, and Ryan Butler aka Ry King aka Lone Wolf.
My policy until now was not to dignify any of these Facebook twits with attention, but their rumor campaign against OCS has become so virulent and untrue, and their misdeeds are now tipping the balance. Today the entire intersection had to bear personal megaphone taunts, but I’ll say that the final straw was yesterday when I learned of misinformation they attempted to spread to the local news. Occupy CS’s hand was forced in issuing a public statement about accused-arsonist Kyle Lawrence, because someone asserted Kyle had joined a violent group that had sprung up in OCS. Uh, let’s get to the bottom of that one, shall we?
WARNING: OCCUDRAMA AHEAD. All of it boring, but these creeps need to crawl back under their mouse pads. Ignoring them hasn’t worked, and even though they crave attention, I’ll give that a try.
Exhibit A

At far right is RYAN BUTLER aka Lucky Dog, aka Lone Wolf. When he disrupted OCS GAs he went by “Ry King”.
The secretive Ryan Butler is half of the Clifton/Butler nerd team that hijacked the “Occupy Colorado Springs” Facebook Open Group. It’s got about 400 members, doesn’t represent Occupy at all, and is maintained as a launchpad for Tea Party occu-haters under the pretext of “free speech” as decided by its unlisted admins Ryan & Michael. The open group was originally created by authentic occupier Amber Hagen, who in her idealism let all participant have admin privileges. When Amber discovered that haters among the admins kept wrecking the page, she began to delete them. Michael Clifton once recounted at a meeting how he and Ryan scrambled over Skype to keep Amber from shutting them out. They hurriedly deleted Amber’s admin access, thus exiling her from her own group. This was the act that inspired Raven Martinez to do the same with the OCS Facebook community page, in all fairness I should say, to prevent others from doing it to her.
Ryan’s claim to fame in OCS came from a failed coup to share the spokesmanship monopoly held by occupothead Jason Warf, but I digress.
Ryan had to step away from OCS after legal trouble from a drunken poker game gone awry, which he tried to blame on authentic occupy vet RTG. Ryan has a criminal record of domestic violence and wears a gun in his home in violation of having lost his permit to carry. That much is not disputed. But Ryan refutes RTG’s version of the event: that Ryan pistol-whipped his ex-girlfriend, which enraged RTG and the two fought, trashing the house. Both face assault charges and Ryan’s ex has filed her usual plea to the court to dismiss any notion that Ryan abused her. Instead we are to believe Ryan tried to defend himself with a vice-grips laying about (leaves a strike pattern similar to a gun maybe), accidentally striking his ex.
I’ll add that my perspective doesn’t come from hearing RTG’s testimony, but rather from eavesdropping on private IMs sent by Ryan as he deliberated what to say by way of damage control. Anyway.
Entirely relevant here however is Ryan Butler’s favorite bragging right, his secret Fight Club-inspired “PLAN-B” CLUB (First rule of Plan-B, you don’t talk about Plan B, snore). Apparently “Plan B” is for Amendment Two fans who want an alternate plan “when the revolution fails.” Was this the pro-violence group to which Michael Clifton alluded in TV interviews? It had nothing to do with Occupy, didn’t come from Occupy, and if its membership is limited to Ryan’s friends, I’m guessing that pares it down to two: he and Clifton. Thus Clifton’s statement about his disassociation from proponents of violence was also facetious, because the above photo was taken upon their arrival at the counter-protest, they came together.
But how absolutely scurrilous to attempt to tarnish OCS with the suggestion that occupy was the breeding ground of their pro-gun Amendment Two fantasy life?!
Exhibit B

Occupying more than the center of this photo is Michael Clifton, self-appointed videographer of the local occupy, known on Youtube and DIY newsites as “Agent of Doubt”.
Michael Clifton was a very early supporter of OCS, donating water and food as he documented its progress on Youtube, each segment introduced in his best impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock, minus the wit, or substance. Let’s say Clifton’s motives started out good, what would lead him last week to step forward and break the story about arsonist Kyle having a history with OCS, packaging his videos for best consumption by the local media?
Of course the answer is simple, and we’ve seen it before. Apparently 15-minutes of personal soundbite, TV attention converted to Youtube views, trumps any consideration for possible negative blowback for the movement. Clifton actually keeps distancing himself from OCS every time he alleges to speak authoritatively as an insider. It’s laughable if it wasn’t damnable, because this time the oaf said he quit when OCS members began to plan illegal strategies. Whaaat? –leaving listeners to infer that arson was among the strategies. What kind of tomfoolery insinuation is that?
Not surprisingly, once more Clifton is defending himself against accusations of being an informer or provocateur. I make no such charge. He’s an idiot. What can you do, Colorado Springs is full of them. Am I being too harsh? Read on.
In an earlier episode in front of City Council, Clifton famously declared himself an outsider to OCS so that he could take all the credit for a –he-thought– brilliant bit of investigative deduction regarding CSPD’s billing of man hours charged for policing OCS. Our friend had videotaped an OCS march you see, and noticed there weren’t any police officers in sight, ergo, the billings must have been fraudulent, yes, ignoring the possibility the cops were plain-clothed, or observing from a perimeter, or on call, etc. So like a flat-earther who draws conclusions based on only what he can see, our intrepid Sherlock declares the CSPD guilty of fraud, and… marches straight into the local office of the FBI to make the charge! The FBI, he reports, were only too happy to accept all his video footage into evidence!
This might point to Clifton’s real reason to declare he was not part of Occupy, because a GA consensus would have vetoed his FBI idea. OCS had recently endorsed a no-snitch policy, not on anyone, not even the city, and let’s face it, not least of all I’m guessing, TO the FBI.
Thus, however unwittingly, let’s call it witlessly, Clifton is an FBI informant in the very technical sense, isn’t he?
To put a fine point on it: everyone who’s participated in OCS activities recorded by Agent of Doubt Clifton, is now on record at the FBI, in not just the lossy Youtube segments available online, but the original hi-def digital sequences, in their entirety.
And while Agent Dork has been a stalwart companion to Occupy, if only for the videos which he converts into ad-views whose revenue he “contributes” to the Occupy movement by funding his own efforts to “promote” it, so far the sum of his efforts has been to give law enforcement and the local media evidence to build a case against Occupy. Thanks a ton Agent Dork. From here onward, your camera aught to record everyone giving you the finger!
Exhibit C

I was tempted because of his sign to give Father Ian Carman a pass. Who’s to say a Department of Homeland Security employee shouldn’t consider himself part of the 99%? But after successive absences from GAs, then hiding among the haters, it might be time to take a close look at this very disruptive occupier.
Divisive behavior can be very subtle, so I’ll cut to the quick on Father Ian. He revealed to us that he worked for DHS because he wanted to explain that he had access to confidential files on certain occupiers, one of whom, supposedly a veteran, still had a very high security clearance, indicating he was likely still active duty, or perhaps in the intelligence service. Father Ian was asserting this about our high profile occupy star JWS, effectively trying to snitchjacket JWS. Come down on that whichever way you like.
Exhibit D

Raven Martinez writes on Facebook under the identity of her daughter, or the occunonymous Facebook user “Occupy Csprings”. Once a formidable OCS volunteer, Raven suddenly became my own personal raving critic. It’s been suggested that her fury bears the air of a woman scorned — I’ll delve into that further down, if I feel like it.

As reported above, the Tea Party mutiny of Amber’s Facebook OCS open group is what inspired Raven to hijack the OCS Facebook COMMUNITY PAGE. Raven might have done it with the best intentions, but did it utterly undemocratically and to everyone’s chagrin and condemnation. Here’s what happened.
Embattled by internal struggle against the very identity of mothership Occupy Wall Street, the OCS GA had adopted the moderating policy implemented by the New York OWS to thwart vanguards and saboteurs, but the Springs admins at that time were refusing to implement them. Admins were continuing to post political endorsements, conspiracy theories and statements critical of fellow occupiers. Further protocols were adopted by OCS to require admins to use their initials to identify who was responsible. Again this was ignored, and now many of the admins were refusing to attend the GAs.
One day Raven noticed important posts being deleted and snide comments being made about OCS protest actions, all being done by an admin who would not reveal his/her identity, and worst of all, in the name of Occupy Colorado Springs. An admin herself, Raven made the clever move of temporarily deleting all the other admin users on the chance that this one might be stupid enough to reveal himself by complaining about his suddenly lost access. The idiot took the bait, and turned out to be none other than OCS-permit-holder and self-important-leader Hossein Momsforpot. For shit. Well this left Raven with a dilemma. Who was going to believe that Hoss was anti-OWS? More critically, who among the admins she had deleted, could she reinstate without the risk that Hoss would convince them to reinstate his admin status with which he could then delete Raven? This was the lesson Raven had gleaned from the hijack perpetrated by Wolf & Agent Duh.
I neglected to mention that the earlier hijack was accomplished anonymously, with Ryan pretending that sole admin status was held by “his dog”. So with her hijack, Raven added her own innovation, Raven loudly proclaimed that she’d been shut out too! She planned to claim that her eventual “reinstatement” was the result of an omniscient AnonymousTM hacker who’d intervened for the betterment of the movement.
Raven’s problem was that I had just the day before publicly refused an admin appointment, and when she cavalierly let suspicions fall on occupier PJ, he promptly deleted himself. Funny story, no?
Well, although a number of very earnest admins felt slighted, oddly enough things worked out for the better after Raven’s purge because all the internal occuhating stopped, and a number of the admins who felt pushed out ultimately outed themselves as Ron Paul enthusiasts, conspiracy nuts, or single-issue MMJ addicts. In reality, no one was ejected from OCS, but having lost their control over the Facebook page, they chose to make kissoff statements and move on.
So Raven was able to coax PJ and me to share the admin responsibilities with her, and it’s a good thing too, because when Raven eventually turned against the broader OWS mission, she’ll say it was because of my personal agenda, Raven went and DELETED the Facebook page. She thought she’d done it, but Facebook has safeguards fortunately, PJ and I were alerted and able to save the 3,300 member page from oblivion.
And the rest is history in the making. Three of us administrate the community page now, we trust each other and our dedication to the values and goals of the original Wall Street occupiers, and the Facebook likes continue to rise.
Is that enough about Raven? Yes it is. She’s doing her best to vilify and destroy our efforts, but that’s as much as I want to say about her.
What the hell. Each of these four unsavory characters knows that I could say far more than I’ve divulged here. I’m already embarrassed enough to talk about them as I did, good grief. The personal attacks on me are based on nothing that I hadn’t written about on NMT, yet they persist via email and phone calls to everyone they can reach. Well, here’s my shot across the bow.
US use of torture on POWs should stop
The U.S. has a long history of torturing its POWs. Torture of POWs is used by many other countries. However its use is denied by many U.S. authorities or government officials. The definition of torture put simply is to cause pain, emotionally, physically, or psychologically. Torture is used to terrify enemies, and hardly ever gains information.
Some examples of the U.S. A. military use of torture on P.O.W.s
Che Guevara
Che Guevara was murdered on October 9, 1967 in Bolivia. He was tortured and killed by Bolivian soldiers trained and equipped by CIA operatives. Che was told he was going to be killed by Felix Rodriguez. He was shot in the legs several times, and put into a dirty schoolhouse. His arms and feet were tied while he lay in the dirt. He lay by the bodies of his dead Guerrilla fighters. The USA tried to cover up his deliberate murder by shooting him in the legs to make it look like he died in battle. He was never given a trial. He was shot nine times.
Philippines war
The Philippine war was a war fought by Filipino revolutionaries and the USA. Waterboarding was one of the main techniques used by the CIA. It was used on Extra Judiciar prisoners.The department of Justice authorized this. Sleep Deprivation and de-sensorizing among other things was used. The use of solitary confinement and confusion is used frequently, prisoners are made to wear blindfolds to cause confusion and panic. Medical treatment is also refused. Bribery, and threats are used to force a confession.
Korean War
The Korean war was fought between South and North Korea. The US occupied the south, while the soviet troops occupied the North.
Vietnam War
Prisoners were put in Tiger cages. Lime was dumped on them, and water was dumped on them after.
Central America
In Nicaragua Somoza tortured people by putting them in cages with lions. Somoza was a dictator backed up by the US military. In Argentina children of communist parents were stolen, while their parents were tortured and killed.
School of The Americas
The CIA distributes an interrogation manual which shows torture techniques to use during interrogations. The manual was used by the CIA to train US-supported Latin American militaries at this school.
Abu Ghraib Prison
Torture has been recently used in Abu Ghraib prison, located in Iraq. Some of the main forms of torture used here are rape, sodomy, water boarding among many others. Military Intelligence has been present during these procedures, and highly encourages it. A prison guard said prisoners receive snake bites for minimum mis-behavior. In the AD. seg units prisoners are dumped into poop and pee.
Afghanistan war
The US invaded, tortured and suffocated thousands of POWs to death.
Officials claim that Torture must be used to gain information. During the presidency of George W. Bush some U.S government officials said that they believed water boarding was not a form of torture. In 2002 the Office of Legal Counsel stated that water boarding wasn’t a form of torture. The OLC said that the reason water boarding was not thought of as a torture was that “In order for pain or suffering to rise to the level of torture, that statute requires it to be severe & water boarding did not cause severe pain or suffering either physically or mentally.” Even though water boarding causes the victim to believe he/she is being drowned.
Torture hardly ever gains information but instead is used to terrorize people so they don’t resist, or to force a confession. Torture is used in interrogations by cops, being put in handcuffs that are to tight is also a less painful form of torture. During the st. Patrick Parade a couple of years ago the police stopped the parade and threw older people on the ground, an old lady was dragged across the pavement and put into handcuffs. She died a couple of months later.
People say that the US doesn’t torture people, because supposedly it is better than that.The fact of the matter is that the USA is the biggest user of torture in the world. It has and will continue to torture its POWs while everyone here says the USA government and military does not torture and has never tortures POWs.
CSPD acquires urban assault vehicle. What line have activist informants been feeding them?
COLO. SPRINGS- This image just in from a reconnoiter of the downtown police garage. The CSPD has mobilized an urban assault vehicle, for, I don’t know what, keeping up with the Jones’s? Ever since Springs police decided that the Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission held gravitational pull over all political dissent in El Paso County, the CSPD holds weekly briefings with a PPJPC staffer, and of late they’ve added morning tete-a-tetes with an OCCUPY delegate from Acacia Park. What are those “representatives” telling them? That law enforcement needs bigger ammo? Would now be the time to suggest we call organizers who grease the mechanisms of oppression, however ill-conceived their intention, by a more appropriate term, RATS?
I can understand neighbors with differing opinions about whether cops need more helicopters, or K-9 intimidation duos, but how ever does the ordinary citizen rationalize that their police department needs riot equipment? To protect us from ourselves? We found out a couple years ago that the CSPD has a busload of their own people-suppression gear. Now we have an armored personnel carrier for cops? Because they can’t drag defenseless nonviolent protesters across the pavement without mechanization? The Acacia Park protesters have been happy to seek permits to set up their literature canopies and have organized community service cleanup actions to put a shine on their model compliance, meanwhile the police are arming up…
EPILOG:
Is this a political cheap shot? Yes. It’s trash talk. No argument. Why and when Colorado Springs took delivery of an armored vehicle is entirely conjecture. Maybe it’s the usual cost-plus profiteering scheme. That’s not really the point. The point is, what intelligence is CSPD getting from their de facto adversaries?
The sight of a new armored vehicle to use against civilians should be a major embarrassment to someone who considers themselves tasked with offering assurances to the city that all local protest will be inoffensive and dismissible.
The CSPD needs armor WHY? Not even crime here has ever escalated to a level which would require an armored assault by the police.
I was content to leave it at that, but oh well, some people need it explained.
It is not conceivable that anything public citizen advisers might have whispered at regular meetups would have prompted the CSPD to armor up. But what are the collaborators conferring with police about? We know the why, for a seat at the table, so what goals are they selling out?
It would be false praise to suggest the PPJPC had a role in bringing the armored UAV to town. But the PPJPC cannot escape responsibility for eroding the role and breadth of activism in this city. In particular for playing informant to the CSPD, for being the conduit of intimidation which the police want to push the other way, and for employing an executive director who has a personal resolve against confrontational activism. You won’t see him at protests, organizing protests, or promoting protests. You’ll see him keeping his meetings with other respectable nonprofit heads, and his appointments with the CSPD, and fielding their calls when they catch wind of other dissenters. No surprise that a once energetic PPJPC is now but a social justice knitting circle of communion takers.
Of course it’s worse, because Colorado Springs social circles are small enough that the CSPD only needs one snitch. Not that any illegal activities have been planned, certainly no violence, but the CSPD wants to keep tabs, and the PPJPC is happy enough to believe that if you have nothing to hide, then keeping city authorities informed shouldn’t threaten you.
For those who need this spelled out: civil disobedience is by definition illegal, and benefits incalculably from putting authorities on the spot. Giving them your game plan in exchange for not upsetting the apple cart does not favor those who are protesting the apple cart.
So what is whispered in these regular meetings with the police? Let’s imagine only the most innocent possibilities. Who’s new to town, who’s jumping on this national campaign, who’s retreating from the fallout from that recent action, what’s the scuttlebutt, what’s to these rumors, and what are CSPD’s concerns. It makes me nearly sick to think about. The relationship must be as with a lobbyist. The collaborator is enjoined to take responsibility for keeping the peace. Any surprises and it’s their rapport that suffers. Police embarrassed on the street? No cookie for you.
Occupy Colorado Springs organizers have fallen for the same bait, a quasi permitted stay in Acacia Park in exchange for daily updates with the police. A special relationship is how I believe it’s being billed. You’d probably call it a morning coffee with your boss, with info flowing his way, instructions coming yours.
If you are hoping to reform the system, thinking you have allies among the blimp-necks sworn to uphold it TO THE LETTER is probably wrongheaded.
The ugly arrangement at the PPJPC didn’t begin with Executive Director Steve Saint. The PPJPC sat down in 2003 after an antiwar rally was teargassed, to hash out a code of conduct agreement with the CSPD. Membership balked at such a prospect and the project was abandoned, but left the city with a paper trail with which to claim it believed it had cemented a deal and would consider further trouble to be a breach of the agreement. This came to light after the St Patrick’s Day Parade fiasco of 2007. An event which provoked the larges upsurge in participation in the PPJPC but rapidly dropped off with its failure to capitalize on the visibility.
I know a little about that because I was chairman in that aftermath, fighting an insubordinate staff who only slowly revealed their ulterior motives and stacked the board against me. The rationale? Public protests hurt alliances with other non profits. Being anti-military preempted cooperation with almost all the other social causes in an army town.
It’s of course a long story, but in the end you’ve got a career staff member determined to jettison antiwar efforts for the comfort of taking on the environment, poverty, and whatever causes get a Democratic president elected. Steve Saint very visibly put his name to the letter which invited Van Jones to come speak at Colorado College. Van Jones is as corporate a messenger as Barack Obama, with the same empty promises. This time instead of Hope, he’s selling Green. And it’s just as easy a sugar pill to swallow.
Did you know some disgruntled Dems have set about to form a Green Party? Guess who’s put himself at the center of scuttling that effort by neutering any grassroots platform? I take no pleasure in delivering this punch line.
Of course more than anything the antiwar movement suffered with Obama’s election. Now the hopeful are disillusioned and cynical, and who is the little PPJPC to revive that crowd? But the PPJPC backed Obama, stood in line to see him while their dissenters embarrassed them by protesting outside. Dissenters who ultimately had the police called on them for trying to have a meeting in front of the PPJPC office.
The PPJPC is fully co-opted, fine, but that the organization plays the role of informant to the police is untenable. A historically, unequivocally, uninterruptedly nonviolent activist community provides no grounds for the city police to escalate their crowd-control technologies, and it certainly doesn’t merit full-time paid informants trying to snitch on them.
Colorado Springs issues permit to sleep on sidewalk but without tents. Let Them Eat Concrete
COLO. SPRINGS- I’m not crazy about OCCUPY organizers negotiating with city representatives for a tentative permit to occupy Acacia Park. You don’t need permits for free speech, nor does activism gain by the advice of cops. That said, allowing a protest encampment, even without tents, may grow participation more effectively than outrage over oppressive responses to civil disobedience. So what’s come of this strategy today is the same permission that has been granted to the Wall Street activists in Zuccotti Plaza, sleeping bags but no tents. Doesn’t that seem shamelessly punitive? Shelter is a human right, deprivation of which is a violation of the 14th Amendment. It’s likely the city could be held liable for endangering the health and lives of these activists.
So permits or not? No American citizen needs permission to express himself, and whatever means you have to conspire to shut down Wall Street are not going to be allowed. So should an occupation seek a permit? The physics of military occupation are Might Makes Right, not Simon Says. But military intelligence and diplomats play invaluable roles. Might makes right, but guile and craft save the occupiers manpower and lives. Maybe permits create the beachhead with which the American people get their size 99 shoe in the door.
Holding regular meetups with the police is another dilemma. I know I’m not shrewd enough to go head to head with a police department, its vast intelligence resources, and well practiced dissent-quashing strategies. For me a most significant element of the public demonstration is law enforcement’s incapability of predicting unregulated behavior.
The 14th Amendment forbids the state to “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” So we might well pause to consider another news story which emerged today, that the US citizen assassinated by CIA drones in Yemen, wasn’t riding in a convoy as previously claimed, but at a dinner party with a 16-year-old relative and his friends, all of them killed without trial or even legal charges. At its simplest the 14th Amendment says you can’t punish someone before properly found guilty. Forcing inhumane conditions upon a citizen exercising his rights is punitive, cruel and unusual.
In Denver today a similar delegation met with the mayor, who give his permission for protests to continue, as it was his to give, for his subjects to exercise their 1st Amendment Rights, but abridged to exclude at night, in the cold, or in city park. Specifically the Denver mayor said he’d allow them to sleep on sidewalks provided they’re exposed to the elements. No tents. Let them eat concrete.
The Colorado Springs city attorney gave instruction to formalize the handicap with a permit. They can sleep on sidewalks but no shelter allowed. Want a cold or flu? Have at it.
A provocative thought, however sad: will today’s protesters submitting their bodies to rain, cold and snow, submitting their health and spirits to debilitating hardship, streamed live on the internet, will it have a similar effect as images of water hoses on civil rights marchers?
NY #OccupyWallStreet protest is going to be this generation’s Woodstock. Are you going to miss it?
If you can’t bum a ride to New York City, you are going to miss out, it’s plain as that. But you can make the revolution happen where you are. The Egyptian victory in Tahrir Square wasn’t achieved without simultaneous demos in Alexandria and Suez, etc. The earliest heavy casualties actually happened outside Cairo. In the Colorado capitol, a nascent #OccupyDenver is building steam. President Obama is making a campaign stop in Denver on Tuesday at Lincoln High School at Evans and Federal. That will be an excellent chance to force the media to break its blackout against the anti-capitalist uprising. What’s there to say to President Obama? Nothing right? He’s shown he answers only to Wall Street. But the message to the TV coverage of Obama, and to the people of Denver can be: Why is the bank-owned corporate media not telling you about #OccupyWallStreet? Reclaim our democracy from the bankers.
Colorado Springs is gaga for warmongers, bigots, Zionists and conservative educational campuses. The local Intelligence Quotient doesn’t rise to the level of critical thinking, which is a heartbreaking trait in its youth. But there is an ongoing effort to aid #OccupyWallStreet’s visibility. It’s held on the noon hour, at Tejon and Colorado Ave downtown, at the Booz Allen Hamilton Building, where area war profiteers laugh all the way to the investment banks across the hall, passing by the local FBI office, btw. Our protest doesn’t have the music, mahem & hijinks of NYC Liberty Plaza, but none of the beatings either. Come a few minutes late and you get to pass reserve cops hiding out of our view in the alleys around the critical intersection, in case the bankers want their critics squashed. Possible messaging: DON’T LET BANKERS FORECLOSE ON DEMOCRACY, OCCUPY WALL STREET NOW!
WALL STREET BANKS ARE STEALING YOUR HOME, HEALTH, RETIREMENT, STANDARD OF LIVING, & WORLD RESOURCES. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET –LOOK IT UP.
Dear President Tar Baby…
Does anyone know if Rep. Lamborn really sent an apology to President Obama for calling him a Tar Baby?
Has anyone seen it? Lamborn’s office issued a press release saying “the congressman is confident that the President will accept his heartfelt apology.” News headlines regurgitated the story sight unseen. The Denver Post quoted Lamborn: “I am sure that he will not take offense and he’ll be happy to accept my apology because he is a man of character.”
How do we know an apology was sent? Because Lamborn says so? That dork told us Obama was a Tar Baby, luckily someone showed skepticism about that. This reminds me of the old gag about the man who returns to his parked car to find a note on the windshield: “Sorry I dented your car. I’m writing you this note so people will think I’m leaving my contact info, but I’m not.”
Until Representative Lamborn issues a public apology, or until President Obama acknowledges Lamborn’s contrition for such a preposterous racist remark, how is this insult to everyone’s intelligence and sense of humanity supposed to be lessened?
To judge by the lack of sensitivity shown in Lamborn’s press release, composed for the public, there couldn’t have been much by way of empathy in a private letter to Obama. Alleged. Try to find it online. Every news article about the purported apology links back to Lamborn’s press release. On his Facebook page, Lamborn has a link called “my apology to President Obama” but it leads to the same PR blurb below. (emphasis mine)
Lamborn Issues President an Apology
Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO-05) today sent a personal letter to President Barack Obama apologizing for using a term some find insensitive. Lamborn was attempting to tell a radio audience last week that the President’s policies have created an economic quagmire for the nation and are responsible for the dismal economic conditions our country faces. He regrets that he chose the phrase “tar baby,” rather than the word “quagmire.” The Congressman is confident that the President will accept his heartfelt apology.
Saying “I told him I was sorry” never passed muster in primary school, especially a pronouncement that was 3/4 filled with more insult. A child who’d offended another was made to apologize to his face, out loud. Why is Colorado’s asinine little congressman being given a pass on a transgression that reflects so unbecomingly on his community?
In response to the local fallout, Lamborn’s office has acquiesced to holding a public forum on Friday August 19. It’s outside of town, go figure, in a church pre-filled with dumb bigots, to ensure Lamborn’s supporters can find him. What’s he going to say there? “My statement wasn’t racist.” “Amen!” “It’s not Obama’s being black that makes him untouchable.” “Amen!”
I don’t want to go — what is there to say to him? I don’t even want to meet Lamborn’s unrepentant eyes, much less sit in an audience and give the stupid creep the impression what he has to say deserves a listen.
CSPD Junior Police Explorers learn early to swagger and menace like pros
2011 DIVERSITY FAIR, NOTES, PART 1- What is our police department doing with high school age “explorers?” They’re uniformed and have their own shoulder patch. Exploring what? The limits to which they impose their weight against peoples’ rights? I’m at a civic festival in Confluence Park, across from a canopy whose shade does not conceal a mass of blue uniforms, adult officers bulky with bullet-proof vests and leather, holstering all manner of law enforcement weaponry, and CSPD apprentices, skinnier for lack of the armor and accouterments, but otherwise dressed exactly like police officers, and adopting the swagger which comes of trooping the colors, emboldened by the anonymity of the requisite Ray-Bans.
I don’t know what the CSPD think they’re doing. Community outreach would be far better accomplished in t-shirt and shorts. I can’t help but think that the authority communicated by the uniforms is being abused in this setting. I’m reminded immediately of the menace which fascist youth groups projected over even their parents. These kids are strolling around the event like appointed hall monitors. Patrolling, some of them would you believe, with their thumbs looped on their leather belts. If they had clubs they’d be twirling them.
Of course, they stroll pretending it means assimilation, as if submission to authority is a normal ingredient of any balanced community. I suspect that’s what the early indoctrination “explores.”
Actually, the Explorers get their name because they’re “exploring law enforcement as a career.” Yes any profession would be something an apprentice might want to explore, but police craft is one which requires alerting the public that this uniformed person does not have full-on authority/responsibility over you. Well, responsibility is probably what they’re most concerned about.
No one should doubt the craft of policemanship bears complexities worthy of journeymen, but I’d rather recruits came into law enforcement in the more common manner, after a college education.
Well, this IS the EVERYBODY WELCOME Diversity Fair, so we can’t exclude the Fascists. But do the city’s traditionally marginalized populations really feel welcomed by such an asserted police presence? I’m thinking of the immigration-challenged circles. But in general, how welcome do you suppose Hispanic, African, or Native Americans feel with white kids semi-officially playing cop?
Presumably the Klan was excluded from invitation, like any hate-group, because it offends the hatees. Probably law enforcement should take a backseat too, and not pretend that policing be considered a cultural component of a community.
It’s given me an idea however. Maybe the point could be brought home if we injected the event with worse than these crew-cutted crackers. How about a para-militarized presence?
I’m thinking cops in riot gear, patrolling like it was no big deal. In protest situations it’s become the norm, imagine if the average non-protester were to see the face of the US police state. Would citizens be so comfortable if instead of officer friendly, or junior uniformed friendlies, the event was patrolled by storm troopers. The CSPD knows better than to expose itself like that, but imagine a riotous development to draw them out.
Or, why not assert a pseudo-authoritarian presence for them?
If not riot gear, maybe a paramilitary uniform, American dark blue, with plenty of USA insignia, the American eagle made to look a little Germanic, let’s say. Jack boots, riding pants, leather straps, and black gloves a must.
Technically, the force could pretend to be a secret service, community outreach for the NSA or the plethora of intelligence agencies. The idea would be to present a dark, ominous authority. Handing out small fliers that read “Please take no notice of us, if you’ve done no wrong, you’ve nothing to be afraid of.”
News of the World crimes belong to Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, Fox News, Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal
The issue of Rupert Murdoch’s lawless news empire isn’t about phone hacking to break news, it’s about surveillance used for the same purposes as intelligence agencies, to control political climates, to effect outcomes based on what you have on the players. Does the FBI have to find evidence of malfeasance in the US to make Murdoch any less guilty? The important point to make is that News Of The World, is News Corp, is Rupert Murdoch, is News International, is Fox, is Dow Jones, is the Wall Street Journal. With the WSJ, Murdoch’s sway over the stock market may mean he dictates the editorial voice of all corporate media properties. Anyway, who can pretend the corporate kleptocracy isn’t a shared agenda? Murdoch may be just one rotten apple, but now everyone can see how rotten. Here’s a chance to wash him out.
If the ‘Left’ is serious about doing something credible to counteract the capitalist class, now is the time. Do the work of informing the public on how News Corp has been twisting the truth not just to sell papers and floor wax, but to promote an agenda of limitless greed at the expense of working and poor people. In reality, Rupert Murdoch is just one cog in a very large propaganda machine, but he is a significant dynamic that binds the corporatists and political right-wing together. Telling the plain truth about Murdoch at this time is the best weapon progressives have at their disposal.
Solidarity rally for Gaza Aid Flotilla II called off in Christian-Zionist Springs

Humanitarian rights activists aboard the Canadian Flotilla II aid ship bravely try to block the pilot’s view as Greek forces commandeer the TAHRIR before it reached international waters. While Greece is denounced for its complicity with Israel, the international press offered no live coverage, so few Americans knew it was happening. Meanwhile predominantly Christian-Zionist Colorado Springs urged Team USrael to #sinktheflotilla! Sorry local Judeo-Christo-holes, no dialog.
While the maritime aid convoy looks sunk, to the degree it received attention, the Flotilla II did raise awareness about the besieged Gazans. But more, the blocking of the aid ships, by USA, Greece, Turkey, litigious NGOs and unknown intelligence operatives, suggests that Israel is not a rogue state after all. The Flotilla II revealed the illusion of democracy, the farce of sovereignty, and the inhumanity of our global governors. By international humanitarian aid being denied Gaza by state power we see: this is what a police state looks like, globalized.

Arrest of those who blocked the wheel house.

A sweet photo of the Canadian activists looking forlorn, for a brief moment. However unceremoniously, by this weekend’s blocking of the Freedom Flotilla II, the cause of freedom for Palestine and for Greece is well advanced.
And best news, precious activists didn’t have to die by the hand of Israeli commandos, and live to repeat their promise, Gaza We Are Coming!
Press intimidation, frivolous lawfare, and sabotage, it’s hasbarapocalypse
You’re looking at an underwater photo of the starboard propeller of the passenger ship “Juliano” berthed in Piraeus, Greece, waiting to sail with the “Stay Human” Freedom Flotilla II departing soon to break the siege of Gaza. Reports of sabotage babelfished, even as some flotilla participants quickly issued a retraction. As diver video documented, someone assailed the propeller shaft casing, luckily repairable, but Greek authorities could seize on the incident to delay the activists with an investigation, or insist on further inspections, using anticipation of sabotage to delay or forbid the voyage.
Whodunnit? Sooner than point the finger at whoever took the intelligence contract, better to focus on the flotilla’s irrepressible forward momentum. Notice how the Hasbara themes want to presage the relief effort’s dwindling relevance? Sabotage would grant Israel too easy success. You can’t kill activism but in the shadows.
Fortunately the flotilla vessels are arrayed at various Mediterranean ports, and the identities are being kept secret, much as the internet chorus would like to track them by satellite. So far the flotilla organizer strategies have been impeccable.
Media reports of nonviolence classes counter Israeli anticipation of violence.
The American boat’s decision to bring only a cargo of letters appears to have been a savvy maneuver around the US DOJ’s predictable enforcement of its anti-terrorism statutes. Yes, Hamas was democratically elected, but on the books it’s a terrorist entity and supporting it materially will result in charges. It seems inconceivable, but surprise seems to be a recurring judicial theme. The US delegation comprises the antiwar movements most luminary, I have to credit them now for not being too reckless. Where would the rest of us be, if they are behind bars?
Next I expect we will see the wit behind naming their boat after President Obama’s bestseller Audacity of Hope. What’s that going to do for his Google-metrics? Obama won’t be able to mention it again, without drawing reference to the Gaza relief mission he didn’t support.
The flotilla2 organizers don’t hope to provoke Israel, nor shame the IDF to “Stay Human,” they want to sail the the people of Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel asserts its right to besiege Gaza, to starve, harass and demoralize the Palestinians in hope that eventually they’ll just want to leave. And that’s why the flotilla must not pass.
Straight blogger confesses he’s lesbian
So a retired Air Force man has to fess up that he was “Paula Brooks,” editor of the blog LEZ GET REAL. More critically, Bill Graber, 58, of Ohio, was a shill for fellow hoaxer Thomas MacMaster aka the Gay Girl In Demascus, whose wife Britta Froelicher has yet to be implicated directly, though she’s a Syria scholar at a Neocon leaning institution, and as supposed activists, their talking points are concern trollishly generic. With Graber unmasked, LezGetReal is being handed off to alternating erstwhile shill “Linda Carbonell”, who says she doesn’t use her married name La Victoire lest she jeopardize her husband‘s job with the government. “Victory?” Hello? Commenters are all LOL because LezGetReal still won’t get a real lesbian for an editor, and tittering because Graber and MacMaster flirted online, unknowingly middle-aged-man-on-man. Heehee, yeah, I don’t think so. MSM interviewers ponder that no one appeared to intend harm, but aren’t they missing a wooded Virginia campus for the trees? If psy ops programs were indeed coordinating trolls, what do you think the motley crew would look like? No doubt you’ve encountered your share already, a drearily uncreative bunch, frequently on the fringe of the military, with their fingers in many pies, the gay issue being not so distantly DoD-related.
“Paula Brooks” was one of the smelly loose ends of the Tom MacMaster Amina Arraf hoax, so I’m glad that someone smoked Graber out. But on the other hand I’m not.
I intended, with the title of this post, to lampoon the now repeated twist of lesbian bloggers turning out to be straight men. To get attention now, you’d have to be a straight blogger who is discovered to really be a lesbian. But then no one meant to bring this kind of attention to themselves, you’d think.
Maybe you’d be wrong. The worst element of this fraudulent blogger meme, is the seed of mistrust which increasingly poisons the internet. The only edge the established media had on the blogosphere was an inherent credibility, the indoctrination that if something is in print, it must be true. Though MSM journalism has been losing ground to the superior investigative output of the internet, hoaxes such as this work in their favor.
Although it’s been fun to unmask these frauds, and seek credit for the collar, the more attention paid to the story, the more eroded becomes the public trust. Yes, we’ve proven that the net will find you out, or more precisely CAN find you out. But what’s our success rate? It feels like 100%, but that counts only the identities we question. There’s no telling how many frauds remain undetected.
And worse, internet sleuths are slashing away at the very anonymity they cherish. To be a credible voice now, you have to be completely out, you have to show your papers basically. Who celebrates that?
We may think we’ve embarrassed MacMaster and Graber and Froelicher and La Victoire, but if they are indeed intelligence spoilers, they can go right back underground and on to the next alias.
Should we discount a Hasbara hand in this? Critics seem to be condemning MacMaster and Froelicher as anti-Israel, bolstering their Palestinian advocacy identities, but really without ground. In a video interview available online, Froelicher speaks about her gig with the AFSC and outlines her strategy for helping the Palestinians: make it so they have something to lose, she explains, so they’ll be less prone to violence and radicalism. Yeah. And MacMaster writing as Gay Girl Amina once posted her dream to learn Hebrew and live in the superior democracy Israel, just like your typical Syrian girl.
And if they are spoilers, then to be unmasked, to be the embodiment of fraudsters, fleshes out exactly what their handlers want, voices to distrust, to destabilize our common supply of information.
Between Norway’s Bodø and Lofoten, the no man’s land of the midnight sun

BODØ-LOFOTEN FERRY, NORWAY- The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, except above the Arctic Circle, where the midnight sun rises in the North, and where home TV satellite dishes point downward. Bodø is the airbase from which the CIA flew U-2 spy-plane missions over the USSR. This complicity was forever denied by the Norwegian government, and when in 1979, investigative journalists were able to surmise the airfield’s function by deducing an intelligence community who’s-who from local phone book listings, the journalists were jailed, did I mention they were Socialists? There followed a notorious trail which finally reaffirmed a Norwegian freedom of the press. A WWII event on the island chain of Lofoten had a significant impact on the German occupation of Europe. Norway fell quickly to the Nazis in 1940, but an immediate counterattack by British paratroopers, which held a beachhead for only six hours, now known as the “Lofoten Raid” but appearing then as a counter-invasion, compelled the German strategists to station considerable reserves of soldiers in Norway to deter Allied ambitions to retake the valuable northern seaports.
Colo. College guest Donald Gregg: the man who hired the man who killed Che
He administered OPERATION PHOENIX during the Vietnam War, the CIA counterinsurgency operation which sought to pacify Vietnam with the targeted assassination of thousands of potential insurgents. For Vice President George H. W. Bush’s office, he coordinated the funding of the illegal US covert war against Central America, aka, the IRAN-CONTRA scandal. Yes, he supervised both Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, each of CIA-state-sponsored-terrorism fame. But Colorado College introduced Donald P. Gregg only as former national security adviser and ambassador to Korea. And CC gave Gregg an honorary degree — with not a peep from the know-nothings they laud as their exemplary students.
I attended because I was insulted by the lecture’s title: “What do Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jung Il have in common?” the speaker further slandered the father of modern Vietnam by indulging to associate another villain to the list, that of Muammar al-Gaddafi. But gracefully Gregg acquitted himself by explaining that Ho Chi Minh had been misjudged, and thus perhaps there is call to engage even our most despicable adversaries in dialog, lest we repeat our mistaken policies, as Gregg believes we are doing in Afghanistan.
Not much objectionable with that. Actually, you can read Gregg’s address, it’s virtually word for word the introduction he wrote for a 2009 study of the CIA’s unheralded successes in Vietnam. To his credit, Gregg does not echo the ongoing theme that Vietnam was winnable.
Relating his more recent expertise about Korea, Gregg offers that Kim Jong Il is more than your common loon. Rather, Il is of unusually high intelligence, underrated by the US, driven despotic by his isolation.
Or driven mad by our offense, I’d add. I’m surprised Kim Jong Il tolerates that we name our ambassador in Seoul as the Ambassador to Korea, rather than to South Korea. How dare US-occupied Korea assert to represent the national identity of Korea? As in Vietnam, it’s the north doing the heavy lifting toward inevitable unification.
Gregg nearly had me convinced he was reformed until he added a forth bogeyman for comparison, Iran.
Iran mustn’t get nukes, etc, etc, Ahmadinejad unpredictable, can’t be trusted, etc.
Ho Chi Minh had been demonized Gregg said, based on a wrong-headed anti-Communist domino-theory mindset, yet Gregg is perfectly willing to be stuck to Capitalism’s current mindset against Islam.
Gregg made such winning arguments for tolerance, respect, diplomacy, and the integrity of the best intelligence officers, but isn’t that precisely the neo-liberal spiel? The CC audience lapped it up.
Here was the closest most of us will ever get to someone connected to the murder of Che Fucking Guevara, icon of the world struggle against Western oppression. That’s explaining the obvious, but I’d add, Che’s heroic stature is no more diminished even if only known as a t-shirt image to this crowd.
School-of-the-Americas-trained Rodriguez knew the stature of the hero he was cutting down, to this day he brags about wearing Che’s watch as a keepsake. Rodriguez returned from this assignment with a piece of notebook paper wrapped around the tobacco left in Guevara’s pipe.
Donald Gregg didn’t kill Guevara, but we might have asked him how many youthful Viet Cong he killed or had tortured, etc, how many aspiring Nicaraguan freedom fighters, or Burmese victims, or boys and girls of yet to be named regions, of the CIA’s yet unrevealed adventures in extrajudicial preemptive death-dealings.
All of this may be blood under the bridge, except that the undercurrent of this elder statesman’s lecture tour is beating the drum for confrontation with Iran.
Remember the Maine? Egyptians will.
Remember the Maine? In 1898 a popular uprising was threatening Spanish rule in Cuba.
The US Navy cruised to the rescue. The rescue of whom, we never got the chance to find out. An explosion aboard the USS Maine gave America the pretext to blame a Spanish torpedo. An America inflamed by a jingoist press declared war on Spain and promptly seized her colonies “to protect US interests,” by coincidence just as the indigenous populations were overcoming their colonizer and were about to win their freedom. Today a US attack fleet speeds toward Egypt. Washington asserts its mission is to evacuate US nationals if need be.
I’d like to imagine the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge will position itself off Egypt’s coast to facilitate the Egyptian government’s stable transition to Democracy.
Perhaps the fleet intends to augment the security which Hosni Mubarak is deliberately destabilizing in Egypt. Perhaps they will offer medical care for Egyptian protesters denied access to Cairo hospitals if their wounds incriminate the government. Perhaps sophisticated Navy electronics will provide an alternate internet backbone if Mubarak tries cut his people off the web. Perhaps the US Navy can help jam the state television station still broadcasting lies to the broader population. I’m hoping our navy can erect a gallows prominently on the bow, to threaten Mubarak, speaking in the only language the despicable dictator might understand, an urgency he doesn’t feel from the peaceful protesters of Tahrir Square.
Possible?
Is it more likely to be a false flag like the Maine? Remember the USS Liberty? That was a US intelligence ship attacked in 1967 by unmarked Israeli planes, hoping that Egypt would catch the blame? There was more to that story and anyway it didn’t work out.
Remember whatever boat it was attacked/not-attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident? That worked.
“Showing the Flag” doesn’t have to be false flag. Remember the USS Cole? Worked in Yemen. Traditional foreign policy teaches that gunboat diplomacy asserts military dominance. Actually it runs a calculated risk. It draws out indignation and a show of defiance. Because a military wants to flush out resistance sooner than being taken by surprise.
Remember the enterprising Marines in Iraq who drove around with a megaphone insulting the Prophet Mohammad? They repeated Jesus Killed Mohammad until every last proud Muslim to renounce their blasphemy was baptized in an obliteration of firepower.
Remember the Maine? Americans remember the Maine like it remembers the Alamo or 9-11. We have no idea. We have no sense of deja vu about the US spreading its forces in defense of empire. I’m really hoping this is not the equivalent of the Soviets sending their tanks into Hungary in 1956.
But Americans have nothing on the educated Egyptians. Whatever America’s gunships have in mind, the Arab world has seen it. Jan25 organizers continue to defy media expectations about the movement losing steam. Attendance keep rising, yesterday pro-Mubarak citizens were proclaiming their changed allegiance. Today the labor unions are recognizing the imperative of launching a general strike, and protesters are venturing outside of the central demonstrations, threatening government buildings and facilities.
With every successive day of victories for the Democracy-seeking demonstrators of Tahrir Square, I have every confidence that the Egyptians will outwit this latest US envoy convoy.
Revolution in Egypt: cue the jackals
The struggle in Egypt between spontaneous uprising and desperate measures taken by Mubarak has become complicated by covert intelligence action. Looters have been unmasked as security agents, the police withdrew from the streets only to reappear as thugs unleashed on the vulnerable public. As the popular revolution appears irreversible, world bankers and investors are threatening to destabilize Egypt with the usual market sanctions.
Protest of police state lures police

COLORADO SPRINGS- Outnumbered! Though we comprised a perfectly respectable half-dozen on the hastily organized protest of FBI tactics meant to intimidate, scouting the city blocks which formed our periphery revealed motorcycle cops poised unseen behind corners. Is that merely obligatory, post-9/11, when activists speak out against intelligence agencies? Except for a building security guard who warned us the elevated planters along the sidewalk were private property,
CSPD and state troopers kept an unobtrusive distance — well, enough to mask their number. Our sign-holding was the usual peaceful vigil, but our minders parked a solitary unmarked cruiser smack in our faces to keep up with [menacing] appearances. The proverbial chill on free speech.
Opposing war is not a crime: stop FBI suppression of antiwar activists JAN 25
COLORADO SPRINGS – JANUARY 25 – Protest the recent FBI raids and the DOJ grand jury subpoenas aimed at intimidating members of antiwar and Palestinian rights groups. Join Coloradans For Peace and compatriots beneath the windows of the FBI field office, located in the Plaza of the Rockies downtown, the complex where activists have been prevented from visiting their senator’s office, mostly a mall of investment bankers and brokerage firms. Not without irony, the main facade is named for war profiteer consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton. Come Tuesday Jan 25, from 4pm to 5pm. Meet on the NE corner of Tejon & Colorado.
Some consider the FBI to be the lesser of the US intelligence community’s seventeen known evils. Shall we draw the line at surveillance, infiltration and instigation of peace advocacy groups? Eric Holder’s Department of Justice won’t go after war criminals, torturers, or any facet of President Obama’s accelerated abuses on human rights. But they want to target humanitarian groups in hopes of tying their social causes to “terrorism, ” the traditional authoritarian label for political rival.
Peaceful protest movement infiltrators Mark Kennedy, Lyn Watson, cops Karen Sullivan, Daniela Cardenas unmasked
Social justice activists across the US are uniting January 25 to protest the infiltration of peaceful protest groups by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. As European environmental organizations reel from the revelation that high-profile activist “Mark Stone,” really PC Mark Kennedy, served undercover for London’s MET for seven years, the Guardian has confirmed another unnamed infiltrator, identified by activist sources as “Lyn Watson.” A longtime Leeds Common Place volunteer, Watson is reportedly serving at another undercover location.
Kennedy is in the US evading the blowback of many EU and UK former comrades. As US lawyers fend off grand jury inquiries against chiefly Palestinian-rights advocacy groups, the Minneapolis based Anti-War Committee has obtained confirmation that FBI agent “Karen Sullivan” had been disrupting from their midst since the 2008 RNC. A “Daniela Cardenas” is considered to be her accomplice.
While accounts vary between MET officer Mark Kennedy “going native” and privatizing his surveillance services, there are reports that Kennedy had been sexually intimate with a number of the activists he had been infiltrating. The role of “Lyn Watson” becomes critical because her reports would reflect that the authorities knew of and did not halt officer Kennedy’s improper conduct.
Green activist are debating the merits of releasing details about the infiltrators. Save Iceland made this excellent statement about Kennedy.
UPDATE UK:
To prevent further details from going public, the comments section has been disabled for the original Guardian article which refuses to name, or unscramble to photograph of Officer A, aka Lyn Watson. A subsequent UK Indymedia article has been deleted together with its thread. Discussion persists at another IMC in Sheffield now suffering under a common ISP hobble of sites designed to serve secure pages through HTTPS, having its certificate called into doubt. As a result visitors are warned by their browser that the site cannot be trusted until they finally desist from clicking through. For the benefit of those timid souls we reprint the comment thread, as of 4PM GMT.
Hold on …
13.01.2011 09:54It says she disappeared in 2008, but someone is quoted saying “she was present at Drax and Heathrow climate camp actions, against Coryton oil refinery and various anti-capitalist gatherings and protests” … but the Coryton blockade was last year. Or was there some other Coryton action I wasn’t aware of?
Shame the Guardian took representations from the cops and no one else. They’ve even decided against a comments section – maybe in case someone decided to put her name up.
I might be missing some key piece of info or argument here, but I really think people have GOT to post her identity up here – people will want to know what info the state now definitely has on them etc.
proof-reader
Her activist name was…
13.01.2011 10:12Lyn Watson. Haven’t got a photo though.
Someone
there was a earlier coryton blockade
13.01.2011 10:26,,, on fossil fools day. yeah, i don’t see a problem in posting her (false) name… though in general i’m not sure what feeding this story is doing for our movement… though i am perfectly aware their is a wider public interest at stake…but it may cost us dear.
old timer
Media Whores
13.01.2011 11:43Knew it was only a time before Dr Chatterton got his name in print. Seems to be one rule for the oi polloi and one for the careerists.
ACAB
No news here
13.01.2011 12:04She came under suspicion long before Flash Mark did. When he was confronted, hers was the name put to him and he, apparently, said she was part of the “same unit” as he was, but was otherwise not forthcoming. She was long gone by then.
Stroppyoldgit
She may not have put it about like Shagger Stone…
13.01.2011 12:09But Lynn certainly wasn’t averse to a roll in the hay.
Sleaze-watch
To say or not to say
13.01.2011 13:07I can see both sides of the argument about how much to say about these spies.
On the one hand saying what has been going on will get some sympathy. On the other it reveals the spies who have been spotted, which tells the enemy which spies have not been spotted.
I come down slightly on the side of exposing them to the light of day. Circulate their photograph and brief details widely, together with what they were up to. This will allow those involved with them to realise who they are, even if they used a different name. The police and other forces of darkness will suffer more from the truth than we will.
A N Other
Thanks for the pic
13.01.2011 13:52Many thanks for putting a pic up. Does anyone have a better one though. I’ve been told that I definitely know this woman, but can’t think who she is/was.
Leeds activist
medic?
13.01.2011 14:21Am I correct in thinking she was involved in our medic collective?
fleabite
Guardian website
13.01.2011 15:12I have been keeping an eye on the Guardian web site http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/12/second-undercover-police-officer to see what people had to say.
They opened up coments then suddenly stopped them, including not just saying that some comments had been removed by a moderator but deleting them entirely as if they never were. The entirely deleted comments are the ones that point to Indymedia and this thread in particular.
Possibly after “Officer A” was withdrawn from her unethical activities against campaigners she was pointed towards groups she should have been working against all the time, criminals. Unlike campaigners criminals may not be too kind to her.
If that is the case I have limited sympathy for her. Injury or death is not right, even for a maggot like her, though she deserves any verbal attack she gets for spying on campaigners. Her bosses got her into whatever situation she is now in, they should get her out of it.
Time to make sure information about her is spread widely, so the police can’t attack a single point like Indymedia and suppress the information.
A N Other
As Wikileaks threatens establishment, Apple wields sledgehammer FOR 1984
Remember when Apple pretended to be the defiant sledgehammer to 1984? Today as Julian Assange swings the hammer, Apple joins its big brothers on the giant screen as it removes the Wikileaks app for iPones and iPads. Did you think there were any heroes in the corporate firmament? Amazon, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, now Apple, nobody wants YOU to get un-manipulated news. But here Steve Jobs has missed an innovation bigger than he has ever rolled out. For man’s innate curiosity about himself, Wikileaks has become the reason to get up in the morning. Every new day is a chance to learn or confirm something you intuited about the facade erected around you. Odd, but isn’t that what the NEWS used to do?
And it’s a curious news model, it’s all old news, serialized because 250,000 revelations is too much transformitive revisionist history for anyone to handle.
Wikileaks is providing what the corporate news media will not. Into the vacuum, leaks. How can anyone dispute that Wikileaks has not single-handedly changed the accepted narrative of recent history? Although the Cablegate diplomatic cables represent the opinions of US personnel, they are unspun by the media propagandists, as it were, straight from the horsemen’s mouths.
Which lend themselves to government’s traditional role for “leaks,” disseminating lies which the media can get more excited about than their humdrum press releases. Cablegate has probably launched a new office within the state department to poison future databases with false cables.
Michael Moore had to defend his anti-US-healthcare documentary Sicko from the Wikileaked untruth that it had been banned in Cuba. The cable in question was a US diplomat’s idea of creating spin for the US insurance industry’s smear campaign against Moore.
(Did you see him trying to untangle that mess, and explain his support for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night? They were broadcasting from New York’s 92Y to an audience strangely cool to Michael Moore. When Moore proclaimed his Christian values, asking if it was safe to use the word in present company, Maddow missed the gist of his “YMCA” joke, because the 92nd Street “Y” is actually a Jewish center, a Young Men’s Hebrew Association facility, and the NY audience last night were neither Wikileaks supporters nor fans of Moore’s criticism of America’s six ongoing wars.)
The Wikileaks v. Cuba scenario reminds me of the famous Alec Guinness spy farce Our Man in Havana where a clueless vacuum cleaner salesman is recruited by western intelligence services to be their eyes and ears in Cuba. Failing to chance upon serviceable info, he makes sketches of the latest futuristic vacuum, enlarged to industrial scale to suggest it’s a secret missile facility. In fact another recent cable which purported to document a Fidel Castro “crush on Obama” was based on nothing more than reading Castro’s regular “Reflections” as printed in the Cuban press. It used to be our government had a lock on what Americans could observe about Cuba, but today Fidel’s Reflections are available to all online.
Another unique aspect of Wikileaks as a news organization, is that it is beholden to no corporations, and no benevolent noblesse oblige, but to a 24 year-old military hero now held in solitary confinement.
Nominate Julian Assange for a Nobel? Time Person of the Year? No, jail him.
I Am Just Sick. Julian Assange arrested, denied bail, confined to a UK jail cell deemed unsuitable for Bush, Blair or their murderous peers. Britain even assured Israel that its war criminals could visit England without fear of politically motivated arrest warrants. So much for the Assange-is-Mossad rumor. Arrested for what? Publishing evidence of governments conspiring against their peoples’ interests, in their own words? Really, what’s next for our pretense of Democracy?
No, it was accusations of sexual impropriety, technically. Rape and molestation being the corporate media’s chosen translation of how Swedes might describe a consensual sexual encounter gone off, according to post-coital television interviewees, turned insufficiently feminist-sensitive. Do I sound flippant? Two women in Sweden, described as groupies, of activist pedigree it’s alleged, one elder cementing the resolve of the younger, shall we call them Lewinsky and Tripp, accusing Assange of disrespecting their gender.
They play right into the stereotype I have of single-issue advocates who can’t get past affronts to their own personal agendas. Whatever Assange’s transgressions, is not the fate of the western world, the awakening of its public participants in the balance? Though Swedish authorities originally dismissed the accusations, the pair is determined to interrupt Wikileaks’ Cablegate to school Assange in his bedside manner?
Whether instigated by intelligence operatives or not, the charges made by the two women have been the only hooks which authorities have been able to get into Assange. Will extradition to Sweden to answer police inquiries lead to US rendition to a secret facility? Should we hope that at the very least the Brits resist US pressure to interrogate Assange, or affect the operation of Wikileaks by coercion and duress?
We must hope the Assange’s colleagues can secure Wikileaks before their sysadmin is tortured for his access codes.
Hearing the New York Times assail the character of Julian Assange as having delusions of grandeur, I’m reminded of how a centuries earlier ruling class rid themselves of the populist scourge Napoleon. Defeated once, Napoleon was able to escape banishment and had but to set foot on French soil and with only the force of his personality he was able to reconstitute his campaign to free the European citizenry of their despotic monarchs. Defeated again, Napoleon was too popular to execute and so was banished again. This time, it’s alleged, a heroic loyalist submitted to be contaminated with syphilis and thence to infect and ground the upstart Napoleon for good.
The remaining Wikileaks crew is at greater risk than Julian Assange, lacking his media visibility, they could be disappeared without fanfare. But that’s evidently a fading misconception of mine. Assange’s high profile hasn’t helped him.
Need another reason to boycott 900 lb bully Amazon? Censoring Wikileaks
Amazon booted Wikileaks from its cloud server service, at the behest of Zionist warmonger Joe Lieberman. Twittered Wikileaks in response:
“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.” The corporate media is already censoring “Cablegate” with misdirection, describing the leaked diplomatic cables as indelicate embarrassments, as opposed to incriminating revelations of America’s imperialist anti-democratic outrages. The Interpol has declared an international manhunt of the Wikileaks founder based on scurrilous accusations of sexual misconduct, Canada is calling for Julian Assange’s execution via US drone, our politicians want to prosecute the Australian Assange under the draconian 1917 US Espionage Act. Amazon’s cowardly deed today is a reminder of the private sector’s omniscient control over everyone’s access to information. Imagine a world where whistleblowers are denied whistles. Shopping bags only please. On Amazon’s internet no one can hear you scream.
While the US media is scolding Wikileaks spokespeople for shaming US diplomacy, the free presses are reporting about the cables which detail the US abuse of diplomatic cover to supply intelligence data, some of it intended to direct US/Israeli drone strikes. The collusion of foreign governments to help the US circumvent international law, US complicity in the Honduran coup, among many other crimes.
Bradley Manning allegedly confessed leaking Cablegate to FBI informer Adrian Lamo, describing the trove of damning revelations thus:
“Hilary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in a searchable format to the public. Everywhere there is a U.S. post there is a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. It is open diplomacy, worldwide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope and breathtaking depth. It is beautiful and horrifying.”
Although an estimated half million US government operatives had access to these cables, only 20-year-old intelligence analyst Manning had the conscience to recognize the immorality being kept from public view. That’s a military culture of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, of which discrimination against sexual preference is the smallest consequence.
Have you read any of the objective coverage of the damning cables? What’s been released is only a fraction, so as not to overwhelm a media which can only focus on a single soundbite at a time. Is the absence of cables critical of Israel evidence that Julian Assange is actually MOSSAD? Rather, and I’m not alone in pointing this out, the dearth of diplomatic cables to and from Israel indicates the streamlined collusion with the US. Only in Tarantino movies do hired killers have dialog. Old comrades don’t regale each other with revelations about Quarter Pounder versus Le Royale. Israeli and US diplomats have nothing to have to keep abreast about.
Is Assange really CIA/MOSSAD/AIPAC? I’d say the smears against him more likely are. When the same voices disparaging Assange ALSO find themselves horrified by the revelations of the US diplomatic cables, is when I’ll start giving them some credibility. Nobody’s so cynical that they cannot be shocked about US indifference to its inhumanty. Noam Chomsky calls it the US’ hate of Democracy.