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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRevealed: How the FBI Coordinated (With Big Banks) the Crackdown on Occupy
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.- Benito Mussolini
Revealed: How the FBI Coordinated the Crackdown on Occupy
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent
by Naomi Wolf
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall so mystifying at the time was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document reproduced here in an easily searchable format shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire by whom? Where? now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).
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There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society people's income streams and financial records is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....
- Benito Mussolini
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp
JReed
(149 posts)The documents are heavily redacted, and it is clear from the production that the FBI is withholding far more material. We are filing an appeal challenging this response and demanding full disclosure to the public of the records of this operation, stated Heather Benno, staff attorney with the PCJF.
As early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldnt start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest.
The FBIs Indianapolis division released a Potential Criminal Activity Alert on September 15, 2011, even though they acknowledged that no specific protest date had been scheduled in Indiana. The documents show that the Indianapolis division of the FBI was coordinating with All Indiana State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, as well as the Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center, the FBI Directorate of Intelligence and other national FBI coordinating mechanisms.
Documents show the spying abuses of the FBIs Campus Liaison Program in which the FBI in Albany and the Syracuse Joint Terrorism Task Force disseminated information to sixteen (16) different campus police officials, and then six (6) additional campus police officials. Campus officials were in contact with the FBI for information on OWS. A representative of the State University of New York at Oswego contacted the FBI for information on the OWS protests and reported to the FBI on the SUNY-Oswego Occupy encampment made up of students and professors.
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http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html
JReed
(149 posts)Ain't it obvious?
