Tuesday, November 29, 2011

GLOBAL GUERILLAS: HOW TO WIN ANY CONFLICT

HOW TO WIN ANY CONFLICT

NOTE:  I'm in the process of modernizing conflict theory (for wars, insurgencies, protests, etc.) and needed to get this backgrounder on John Boyd's thinking out of the way first.  IF any part of it is unclear/difficult to understand, let me know.  I'll improve it.
What is Conflict?
To answer this question, let's start with a theory of conflict developed by the late great John Boyd, America's best military thinker.  It's a bit of a journey, but trust me, it's worth the effort.
Boyd's theory is based on the assumption that all conflict can be reduced to a contest of minds.  Mind vs. Mind.   It doesn't matter whether a conflict is person vs. person or army vs. army or corporation vs. corporation (i.e. Toyota vs. GM).  It doesn't matter what the weapons or technology used in the conflict are.  It doesn't matter where the conflict takes place.  For Boyd, all conflict boils down to a contest of one mind against another (Sun Tzu implies the same thing).
So far, so good.  Let's dig a little deeper.
  • Question:  how does a mind "fight"?  Boyd concluded that a mind fights by adapting.  
  • This leads us to a Better Question:  how do we adapt?  
  • Answer: by making decisions.  The better/faster our decisions the greater our chances of success/survival.  
This then leads us to the next step.  How do we make decisions?  Basically, all organisms follow a simple process. Boyd put this process into a simple decision making model.  It has four steps (called the OODA loop for short,):
  1. Observe:  Gather data.  What's changed? Objectivity is paramount.
  2. Orient:  Make sense of this data.  Reference all experience/insight.  What does this observation mean?
  3. Decide:  What should be done.  Given what has changed, what should be done next.
  4. Act:  Make the decision real.    
Ok.  So, what does this all of this decision making stuff mean?
I'm Inside Your OODA Loop
How does all of this apply to conflict?  The simple answer is that conflict, in its most basic form, is a contest between decision making loops.  The side with the FASTER and BETTER decision making loop wins any conflict.  Why?  They adapt quicker.   Here's some more detail:
A FASTER decision making loop means that you accomplish a successful OODA loop quicker than an opponent.  If you can do this, you are inside your opponent's OODA loop.  This means that by the time your opponent responds to your last actions, you are already onto your next ones.  Get far enough ahead and the opponent's decision making process will collapse and victory is assured.
A BETTER decision making loop means that the process you use to make decisions is better than your opponents.  How to make a decision making loop better and how to damage your opponents decision making process is complex.  It can lead to endless debates and theory crafting.  The easiest way to look at it is as a function of connectivity (mental, physical, and moral).  More connectivity typically means better decisions, less/corrupted connectivity means worse.
NOTE: The OODA loop is an excellent way to understand how Zen applies to martial arts.  Zen training consists of repetitive muscle training attack/defense and a clearing of the mind of conscious processes.  What does this do?  It short circuits the orientation and decision steps by making the act instinctual.  You observe, you act.

THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT THE CRACKDOWN ON OCCUPY WALL STREET

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors’, city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.
Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.
That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.
The mainstream media was declaring continually “OWS has no message”. Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online “What is it you want?” answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.
When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

rest at link:  http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/29/the-shocking-truth-about-the-crackdown-on-occupy/

SWAT MURDERERS OF JOSE GUERENA CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES

http://rt.com/usa/news/charges-jose-guerena-swat-409/

No charges against SWAT team that killed American hero [VIDEO]

Published: 28 November, 2011, 23:09
Image from gamer.ru
(8.9Mb) embed video

Six months after a SWAT team fired 71 shots at Marine vet Jose Guerena Ortiz while his family watched in their Tucson, Arizona home, no one has been charged with the brutal slaying that left a father, husband and hero dead.
The Guerena’s were caught by surprise on May 5 of this year by a knock at the door. It was still early in the morning and they weren’t expecting anyone, so Jose, a 27-year-old veteran with two tours of Iraq under his belt, grabbed a gun from their closet while his wife and 4-year-old son hid. Guerena never used the rifle — he didn’t have time. Still unaware of what was happening, Guerena was ambushed by a team of SWAT officers. In seconds they knocked down his door, aimed and fired dozens of times.
According to Christopher Scileppi, the family’s attorney, the killing was “grotesque” and "almost a caricature of an overly excited group of poorly trained law enforcement agents."
To the county prosecutor, however, the killing was justified and no charges have been brought against the guilty parties.
The Tucson police were carrying out a warrant against Guerena on suspicion of drug charges earlier this year. He has been linked to drug trafficking before, but never directly. Never, in fact, had any charges been filed against him. In a handful of incidents, Guerena had been in the same place at the same time as others holding narcotics and paraphernalia, but never had law enforcement linked him personally to drugs.
"When you back up and look at why they're there in the first place and whether the search warrant was proper, my mind starts struggling," former SWAT officer Chuck Drago tells the Associated Press. "There are a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense." Drago adds that it is doubtful that the SWAT team had any probable cause to go after Guerena, especially in the way they did.
Perhaps most illogical is that half a year after the Vanessa and Joel Guerea lost their husband and father, no one involved in the killing highly viewed as unjust and unnecessary have been charged.
"We were so worried when he was over there fighting terrorism, but he gets shot in his own home," Reyna Ortiz, a family relative, told ABC News after the execution. "The government killed one of their own."
Six months later, however, no one has been held accountable. Vanessa and Joel are still without their loved one and have seen no one assume responsibility for the killing.
On August 9, Scileppi filed a lawsuit on behalf of Guerena’s estate against the sheriff’s office, those involved in the shooting and other affiliated officers, totaling a number of 14 persons. They are seeking $20 million, according to claim unearthed by the AP.
According to the SWAT team’s attorney, they don’t have much of a case.
(I'll spare you his bullshit)
Scileppi insists that those bad things, however, were absolutely uncalled for. Fellow Marines have called for an investigation into the raid, but meanwhile the SWAT team has denied any accountability. If a trial does eventually emerge, it’ll be a long way’s coming. In the meantime, Guerena’s family is left without an apology and Scileppi continues to fight for compensation.
“Vanessa, Jose and Joel have suffered immense lose from the death of their husband and father,” says their attorney. “This lawsuit seeks in part to make them whole.”

Monday, November 28, 2011

ICELAND STIFFS THE GLOBAL BANKSTERS, WINS

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100013462/iceland-wins-in-the-end/

TRUTH ABOUT RICHARD HOAGLAND?

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1427/830/Richard_Hoaglands_Dark_Mission:_Coverups%2C_Lies%2C_and_Calling_for_a_New_World_Order.html

US MILITARY RAPIDLY DEVELOPING SKYNET AND TERMINATORS

Those global banksters want a reliable force that can crush any resistance, and what better model than Skynet from The Terminator? Except that they're the controlling hand, and the robotic forces will be used to clean up what remains... after Fuck-us-shima, the Gulf of Mexico, GMO seeds, riots, starvation, economic collapse, WWIII...

BRAVE PEACE OFFICERS PUT SCUMBAG COMMUTERS IN PLACE, TAKE DOWN 5 YEAR OLDS, AND OF COURSE WHUP ANYONE BLACK

And now for one of those lippy Patriots:

TRIPLE PLAY FROM SIPSEY STREET

This is really quite remarkable. "If they find my body floating face down. . ." A new customer of The One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company.

"But I'm a superstitious man. And if some unlucky accident should befall him - If he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell - or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning, then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room, and that I do not forgive." -- Don Vito Corleone to the other dons of the Five Families, The Godfather.


James R. Lightfoot, six term congressman from Iowa, 1985 to 1997. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal and General Government (TPS) of Appropriations, he had jurisdiction over 40% of Federal Law Enforcement (Customs, Secret Service, ATF, FLETC, and IRS enforcement).

Mr. Lightfoot and I disagree on a number of things, including the constitutional right of the ATF to even exist and whether or not in retrospect that the post-Waco "clean-up" of the ATF that he takes credit for actually happened, but there is no doubt he has been in the forefront of seeking the truth about the Gunwalker Scandal and the Terry murder.

"Waco looks like a runny nose compared to the sickness that now envelopes the higher echelon of the ATF."

snip

Lightfoot, it seems, understands what is at stake for the regime here. And he understands how some of these thugs react to threats to their power. It may be small comfort to him but back in October of last year, before the Gunwalker Scandal broke into the open after the murder of Brian Terry, I wrote a short piece entitled "A message that Eric Holder understands perfectly well: No more free William Colbys."


William Colby when he was CIA station chief in Saigon. The retired CIA Director turned up mysteriously dead in a "canoe accident" after angering the Clinton Administration by providing the Davidian defense lawyers with an excellent copy of the FLIR tapes taken from a plane orbiting Mt. Carmel, 19 April 1993.

Previously, of course, in May, 2009, I had written "No More Free Wacos: An Explication of the Obvious Addressed to Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States."

So, let me explicate the obvious: There are no do-overs, not when it comes to your employees killing American citizens for bad reasons. Look around, count the guns, estimate the billions of rounds of small arms ammunition in private hands, and consider that the latest Janet has already declared most of the rest of us, including veterans, "domestic terrorists" anyway. Do you think we have not noticed? Do you think we do not remember the misdeeds of the last administration you were a part of?

In addition, recent government misconduct -- bureaucratic, legal and judicial -- in the Wayne Fincher and David Olofson cases (the same kind of chicanery that rightly caused you to overturn the conviction of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens) has convinced many of us that there is no percentage in betting on a fair trial if the ATF sets their sights on us and we are not part of the Mandarin class.

If we are no longer under the rule of constitutional law but are merely subject to irreversible bureaucratic diktat and we do not fancy being railroaded in a patently unfair federal trial where expert witnesses are denied access to evidence, then our options when approached by ATF agents are rather limited. It is plain, in the absence of the right of a fair trial, that a target of ATF investigation has little to lose by resorting to the right of an unfair gunfight. This may be an unintended consequence of those cases. It is nonetheless real.

Wake up and smell what your administration is shoveling from downwind, where we are forced to stand. And please understand the predicament you've put yourselves in by your present and former bad behavior.

There will be no more free Wacos.
rest here:
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/11/this-is-really-quite-remarkable-if-they.html
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Lindsey Graham calls for using military against American citizens. Strangling the feeble old Posse Comitatus in its sickbed.


Lindsey Graham leads the charge to use the military against American citizens.

I must confess that when I received the first forwards of posts on this subject from Alex Jones and Infowars, I balked. My skepticism on stuff coming from that quarter is well-founded. However, when someone forwarded me this from the ACLU, I took another look:

"Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window"

While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself. . .

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.” Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”


COMMENT:  Oh, please, PLEASE make America a war zone, we can exterminate the lot of you and begin reconstruction that sooner!
 
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/11/lindsey-graham-calls-for-using-military.html
 
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SSI Exclusive: FBI put pressure on Newsweek to keep details of PATCON Brown's Ferry Nuclear conspiracy quiet. Radioactive 302s & black bag jobs.

Sources tell Sispey Street that the home of John Matthews' daughter was broken into over the weekend and although a television, an X-box and a small steel lockbox containing papers and a handgun were stolen, the burglars left behind prescription pain medicine, cash, and other valuable items. It wasn't because the burglars didn't find them, for "the entire place was completely trashed, they even tore apart the beds and bedding," said one source. "It was as if they were searching for something they didn't find it," the source said.

Other sources tell Sipsey Street that private email files belonging to Matthews and people who have corresponded with him have literally disappeared from folders on home computers without explanation.

When I informed another DC source of mine of these developments, he commented, "Well, they're either looking for more documents they think Matthews has hidden or they are just trying to send a message that they can get to his daughter so he'd better shut up." The source then added, rhetorically, "Do you really think that the FBI ever gave up the black bag job as a tool of enforcement?" He paused, and added, "And I don't mean law enforcement."

Speculation as to what documents the FBI may be looking for has centered on unredacted FBI invesitigative reports, called FD-302s, having to do with the plot Matthews reported that dealt with the Browns' Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Alabama. Sources tell Sipsey Street that the FBI put pressure on Newseek reporters and editors not to print details of this portion of Matthews story. Said one, "These allegations didn't even make it into the rough draft of the Newsweek story because the FBI asked them not to print (details) about Browns' Ferry."

Copies of those unredacted FD-302s have now been obtained by Sipsey Street and may be found here as well as embedded at the end of this story.

rest here: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/11/ssi-exclusive-fbi-put-pressure-on.html

Saturday, November 26, 2011

FREE INTERNET

NEW SENSOR UPGRADE TO US DRONE FLEET CAN HOME IN ON GUNFIRE IN SECONDS

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/drone-gunfire-detector/

THE RETURN OF DEBTORS PRISONS-FOR YOU, DEBT SLAVE!

So when you repudiate your debt, until you can move to an address that you don't have your real name on and don't update all the corporate and state registration, you're going to have to stay locked and loaded.

Occupy Wall Street has a good idea: repudiate student loans!
http://thenewamerican.com/culture/education/9889-occupy-wall-streets-latest-plan-refuse-to-repay-student-loan-debt

Occupy Wall Street's Latest Plan: Refuse to Repay Student Loan Debt | Print |  
Written by Brian Koenig   
Tuesday, 22 November 2011 16:40
Occupy Wall Street’s latest grievance centers on student loan programs and higher education reform, and the group’s most recent campaign involves a movement-wide boycott on student loan debt repayment. Early Monday afternoon, a crowd of faculty and student organizers assembled at the southeast corner of New York City's Zuccotti Park to announce Occupy Student Debt, a national initiative directed at recruiting student loan borrowers and requesting that they willfully default on their loan payments. The campaign consists of three pledges:
1. A refusal to make loan payments. This pledge will take effect after a million debtors have signed on to the campaign.
2. A faculty pledge of support for the "refusers."
3. A general, non-debtors' pledge of support for parents, the students and other public sympathizers.
"Since the first days of the Occupy movement, the agony of student debt has been a constant refrain," New York University professor Andrew Ross announced to a crowd of more than 100 people. "We’ve heard the harrowing personal testimony about the suffering and humiliation of people who believe their debts will be unpayable in their lifetime."
Chronicled on the movement’s unofficial "We Are the 99 Percent" Tumblr blog, recent graduates hold handwritten signs detailing their personal stories on student loan debt, with signs with statements such as, "I have $50,000 in student loan debt and my B.A. is useless." In response to rising tuition costs, and driven by the movement’s virulent disdain for profitable institutions, OWS protesters plan to accomplish the following goal:
Under the campaign — which grew from the original Occupy Wall Street protest and is now known, inevitably, as Occupy Student Debt — borrowers will pledge to stop repaying their student loans once 1 million people vow to do so as well. The campaign is calling for several reforms of higher education, including free public colleges, no-interest loans, greater transparency at private and for-profit colleges and complete forgiveness of all existing student debt.
The strategy behind the campaign is that if one million students refuse to pay back their student loan debt, the group will suffer minimal consequences due to safety in numbers. But also incorporated in the student-debt refusal pledge is a willingness to help draw attention to the progressive rise in tuition costs, and the calamitous effect such inflationary maneuvers have had on student debt loads.
However, even supporters of the movement perceive the protesters’ demands as too far-reaching, as it is highly unlikely that there will be free public colleges and that all private universities will disclose their internal finances. Moreover, the repercussions for defaulting on student loan debt are not inconsequential. Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation Debt and The Edupunks’ Guide, warns borrowers of the consequences of defaulting on their loans, which can involve wage and tax refund garnishments and other penalizing tactics.
Further, Kamenetz is skeptical that the Occupy Student Debt campaign will garner much support from the student graduate population. "As an organizing tactic, mass default is a little bit difficult to get mainstream America to embrace, since there’s this very strong moral and ethical belief that people don’t walk away from loans they voluntarily assumed," asserted Kamenetz, who has researched and written on the subject of student loan debt for several years. "There’s this deep, pervading sense that since I had to pay off my loans, you should have to pay off your loans, too."
Besides the formidable challenge of amassing widespread public support — particularly as violence and destructive behavior have showered the movement with negative sentiments — are the abiding ramifications of student loan defaulting. "Defaulting is considered a financial felony that will continue to haunt you," asserted Carl Van Horn, a public policy professor at Rutgers University. "Student loans are not something you can easily walk away from, and defaulting is hardly the same thing as missing a credit card payment. It really is a black mark."
But this inevitable notion has not stopped college graduates and university faculty from hawking their anti-student loan agenda, as Thomas Gokey, an adjunct professor at Syracuse University and participant in Monday’s announcement, says it is not uncommon for Syracuse students to amass upwards of $200,000 in debt come graduation time. "There’s been a lot of talk around student debt, but not a lot of action," averred Ross. "Even in the best of times, it was a very heavy burden to carry for decades. But now, with chronic unemployment, it’s morally unsustainable."
Ashley Dawson, an associate professor at the City University of New York and proponent of the new OWS initiative, says she sees many of her students working "not only one but two jobs just to afford our relatively reasonable tuition rates." "For students faced with debt, this campaign is important because it will help provide them with a collective organizing vehicle," alleged Dawson, a member of the OWS Empowerment and Education working group. "We’re aiming to galvanize sweeping political change."
However, the professors and OWS organizers have neglected to identify the actual cause of rising tuition costs, but instead demonize private universities for leeching off of young high school graduates who are seeking college degrees. Similar to the third-party-payer system which bridles American healthcare, government has played an increasing role in subsidizing tuition costs, as students are amassing bulky government loans to finance their education.
Such a system discourages high school graduates from pursuing the most competitively-priced institutions, as many students choose schools charging $30,000 per year in tuition costs, with the anticipation that they will land high-paying jobs come graduation. This of course allows higher learning institutions to charge enormous tuition rates, and thanks to federal interference which has distorted the education market, colleges and universities get off scot-free.
The government’s devious act of manipulating the higher education market, coupled with a Federal Reserve system which is brewing an inflationary hailstorm, is the origin of the problem, as Texas Congressman and GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul wrote in October regarding his "Restore America" budget plan:
Like housing and medicine, education costs went through the roof when government became involved. In the last three decades, the overall inflation rate has increased more than 100%, which means we basically pay double now for everything we buy. This price inflation is an inevitable consequence of printing money out of thin air and devaluing our dollar. But compare this inflation to the rise in the cost of college tuition, which has increased almost 500% in the same amount of time.
This is what happens when we print money out of thin air and couple it with government intervention in education.


Occupy Wall Street's Latest Plan: Refuse to Repay Student Loan Debt | Print |  
Written by Brian Koenig   
Tuesday, 22 November 2011 16:40
Occupy Wall Street’s latest grievance centers on student loan programs and higher education reform, and the group’s most recent campaign involves a movement-wide boycott on student loan debt repayment. Early Monday afternoon, a crowd of faculty and student organizers assembled at the southeast corner of New York City's Zuccotti Park to announce Occupy Student Debt, a national initiative directed at recruiting student loan borrowers and requesting that they willfully default on their loan payments. The campaign consists of three pledges:
1. A refusal to make loan payments. This pledge will take effect after a million debtors have signed on to the campaign.
2. A faculty pledge of support for the "refusers."
3. A general, non-debtors' pledge of support for parents, the students and other public sympathizers.
"Since the first days of the Occupy movement, the agony of student debt has been a constant refrain," New York University professor Andrew Ross announced to a crowd of more than 100 people. "We’ve heard the harrowing personal testimony about the suffering and humiliation of people who believe their debts will be unpayable in their lifetime."
Chronicled on the movement’s unofficial "We Are the 99 Percent" Tumblr blog, recent graduates hold handwritten signs detailing their personal stories on student loan debt, with signs with statements such as, "I have $50,000 in student loan debt and my B.A. is useless." In response to rising tuition costs, and driven by the movement’s virulent disdain for profitable institutions, OWS protesters plan to accomplish the following goal:
Under the campaign — which grew from the original Occupy Wall Street protest and is now known, inevitably, as Occupy Student Debt — borrowers will pledge to stop repaying their student loans once 1 million people vow to do so as well. The campaign is calling for several reforms of higher education, including free public colleges, no-interest loans, greater transparency at private and for-profit colleges and complete forgiveness of all existing student debt.
The strategy behind the campaign is that if one million students refuse to pay back their student loan debt, the group will suffer minimal consequences due to safety in numbers. But also incorporated in the student-debt refusal pledge is a willingness to help draw attention to the progressive rise in tuition costs, and the calamitous effect such inflationary maneuvers have had on student debt loads.
However, even supporters of the movement perceive the protesters’ demands as too far-reaching, as it is highly unlikely that there will be free public colleges and that all private universities will disclose their internal finances. Moreover, the repercussions for defaulting on student loan debt are not inconsequential. Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation Debt and The Edupunks’ Guide, warns borrowers of the consequences of defaulting on their loans, which can involve wage and tax refund garnishments and other penalizing tactics.
Further, Kamenetz is skeptical that the Occupy Student Debt campaign will garner much support from the student graduate population. "As an organizing tactic, mass default is a little bit difficult to get mainstream America to embrace, since there’s this very strong moral and ethical belief that people don’t walk away from loans they voluntarily assumed," asserted Kamenetz, who has researched and written on the subject of student loan debt for several years. "There’s this deep, pervading sense that since I had to pay off my loans, you should have to pay off your loans, too."
Besides the formidable challenge of amassing widespread public support — particularly as violence and destructive behavior have showered the movement with negative sentiments — are the abiding ramifications of student loan defaulting. "Defaulting is considered a financial felony that will continue to haunt you," asserted Carl Van Horn, a public policy professor at Rutgers University. "Student loans are not something you can easily walk away from, and defaulting is hardly the same thing as missing a credit card payment. It really is a black mark."
But this inevitable notion has not stopped college graduates and university faculty from hawking their anti-student loan agenda, as Thomas Gokey, an adjunct professor at Syracuse University and participant in Monday’s announcement, says it is not uncommon for Syracuse students to amass upwards of $200,000 in debt come graduation time. "There’s been a lot of talk around student debt, but not a lot of action," averred Ross. "Even in the best of times, it was a very heavy burden to carry for decades. But now, with chronic unemployment, it’s morally unsustainable."
Ashley Dawson, an associate professor at the City University of New York and proponent of the new OWS initiative, says she sees many of her students working "not only one but two jobs just to afford our relatively reasonable tuition rates." "For students faced with debt, this campaign is important because it will help provide them with a collective organizing vehicle," alleged Dawson, a member of the OWS Empowerment and Education working group. "We’re aiming to galvanize sweeping political change."
However, the professors and OWS organizers have neglected to identify the actual cause of rising tuition costs, but instead demonize private universities for leeching off of young high school graduates who are seeking college degrees. Similar to the third-party-payer system which bridles American healthcare, government has played an increasing role in subsidizing tuition costs, as students are amassing bulky government loans to finance their education.
Such a system discourages high school graduates from pursuing the most competitively-priced institutions, as many students choose schools charging $30,000 per year in tuition costs, with the anticipation that they will land high-paying jobs come graduation. This of course allows higher learning institutions to charge enormous tuition rates, and thanks to federal interference which has distorted the education market, colleges and universities get off scot-free.
The government’s devious act of manipulating the higher education market, coupled with a Federal Reserve system which is brewing an inflationary hailstorm, is the origin of the problem, as Texas Congressman and GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul wrote in October regarding his "Restore America" budget plan:
Like housing and medicine, education costs went through the roof when government became involved. In the last three decades, the overall inflation rate has increased more than 100%, which means we basically pay double now for everything we buy. This price inflation is an inevitable consequence of printing money out of thin air and devaluing our dollar. But compare this inflation to the rise in the cost of college tuition, which has increased almost 500% in the same amount of time.
This is what happens when we print money out of thin air and couple it with government intervention in education.

SIPSEY STREET: HIDING MASS MURDER BEHIND "NATIONAL SECURITY" WHAT NEWSWEEK AND THE FBI DIDN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT PATCON AND THE OKC BOMBING

SSI Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing.


And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.

For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed.

Sources in advance of the story said that FBI was very afraid of this article. "They don't want PATCON mentioned," said one source. "Not ever, by anybody. Because it leads to OKBOMB (the FBI name for the Oklahoma City bombing case), Elohim City (Oklahoma, a Christian Identity community), (German undercover agent Andreas Carl) Strassmeier, the McVeigh-Strassmeier connection, the Aryan Republican Army, the whole shebang." A source out west told me that when he mentioned the name to a retired FBI agent, he was told to "stay away from that shit" for "PATCON will get you killed -- it's national security."

There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years -- Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance -- including weapons, explosives and money -- to neoNazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, "Violence Against Abortion Providers," using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI's power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that "there isn't a neoNazi or racist group in the country that isn't operationally controlled by the FBI." Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. "Certainly," he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.

Now, however, "the Fibbies in the Hoover Building, (Eric) Holder and (Janet) Napolitano must feel like dancing" said another source. "They got what they wanted out of Newsweek. . ."


So I wrote on Monday in this article which linked to a
published but gutted version of the original Newsweek story about the patriotic volunteer confidential informant John Matthews, who was recruited by the FBI under the secret program known as PATCON (Patriot Conspiracy).

"What was it, specifically," I was asked later in numerous emails and phone calls, "that Tina Brown cut out?" From sources I had a pretty good idea, not all of which I put in the first article. But that was only based on trusted but secondhand sources.

Well, now I can answer that question. Sipsey Street has obtained a copy of the unedited article written by R.M. Schneiderman.

It was -- as originally written -- a great story, an important, game-changing story, a story that couold have made the career and reputation of Ross Schneiderman for the rest of his life. It had been several months in the making, sources say, as Schneiderman and his immediate editor John Solomon put it together and almost instantly ran into resistance from editors higher up the Newsweek food chain including, ultimately, Tina Brown.

When the editors were finished, most of the startling revelations of what John Matthews and Jesse Trentadue had to say were in Tina Brown's waste basket. Nestled beside them, amid waste paper and used Starbucks' latte cups, was the golden opportunity of Ross Schneiderman's career.

However, sources tell Sipsey Street, that the FBI, the Obama DOJ and the White House were all reportedly quite happy -- as well they should be.

Until now.

(NOTE: The excerpts below contain typographical errors found in the original and I have left them as is.)

Among the items expunged from the story:

1. The missing paragraphs that presented evidence that Tom Posey, the supposed chief conspirator whose crazy talk about using weapons of mass destruction first prompted Matthews to go to the FBI, may himself have been a government asset. From the original story as written, before Tina Brown's felt tip marker excised it:

After Posey’s arrest, the FBI had Matthews Social Security number changed, and paid for him and his family to move to Stockton , California . Yet the trial in Alabama proved frustrating for him. Despite hundreds of hours of recorded conversations, as well as video and personal surveillance, the Justice Department only chose to prosecute Posey and his cohorts for buying and selling the stolen night vision goggles. And in the end, Posey was sentenced to just two years in prison.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Birmingham said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Posey for the Brown’s Ferry plot. Yet curiously, the TVA denied that the plot or the weapons cache even existed. Meanwhile, several of the men involved in the planned robbery were never arrested. At the time, two of the men, Matthews says, were planning to blow up a federal building in Birmingham .

“They were gonna take a truck filled with fertilizer,” says Matthews. “You look at what Timothy McVeigh done, it’s basically the same thing. “What happened in Oklahoma could have happened a couple of years earlier.”

One possible explanation for how Posey’s trial played out: In 1996, the year he was released from prison, Posey appears to have been issued a new Social Security number, according to a Lexis-Nexus search conducted by Newsweek. Tony Gooch, a friend and Posey’s and a former CMA member, said that Posey was innocent of any wrongdoing, and that the whole Brown’s Ferry plot had been cooked up by Matthews. “Tom was a good man,” he says. “John did not endear himself to us with that story.” Yet Gooch said that Posey may have felt forced to cut a deal with the Justice Department, and provide them with information on other groups in the movement, or agreed not to reveal what he knew about Iran Contra.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Gooch said. “Tom knew some people who were real hardcore.”



Andreas Carl Strassmeier. John Matthews encountered him in company with Timothy McVeigh in San Saba, Texas. Sources say that Strassmeier was a joint operative of the German and U.S. governments.

2. There is mention that Matthews had encountered both Timothy McVeigh and Andreas Carl Strassmeier, widely thought to have been involved in the planning of the bombing, in Texas. From the original version of the story:

In the spring of 1995, Matthews was sitting on the couch with his father at his house in Stockton California when he heard the news: A truck bomb had exploded in front of a federal building in Oklahoma . Dozens had been killed, hundreds had been injured and the face of the building looked like it had been chewed off by an animal with a giant maw.

Matthews watched the coverage of the bombing with rapt attention. After all, this was the same sort of attack he had spent years trying to prevent. Days later, when McVeigh became the prime suspect and his photo flashed across the screen, Matthews realized he had seen him before. His mind drifted back to a weekend several years prior at a ranch in San Saba , Texas , where once a month, the TRM held paramilitary training.

It was a relatively warm Saturday morning. Matthews, who had spent the night on the ranch, was walking back from the woods where he had been setting up the evening’s exercise, when he spotted a group of men in fatigues hanging around a shed where the TRM stored explosives. Some of them, Matthews could tell by their haircuts and bearing, were ex-military.

Matthews and a few of his cohorts walked over to the men and introduced themselves. One man had dark hair, slightly buck teeth and a foreign accent. His name was “Andy,” and Matthews later learned that he was from Germany . Another man was tall and lanky, with short, buzzed hair. He said his name was “Tim.”

“He [Tim] was a nobody,” Matthews says. “Just another ex-soldier, but I remember his face. He was at one of the meetings, where a bunch of [stolen] ammunition was brought in from Fort Hood .”

Sitting in father’s living room in California , watching the television, Matthews decided he should call Jarrett. He told them about “Tim” and “Andy the German.” Yet Jarrett seemed blasé about the matter. “He said, ‘We know, John. Don’t worry about it. We got it covered.”

Instead, he was more interested in whether Matthews had seen McVeigh in Arizona . At the time, Matthews was working for the bureau there, infiltrating militias and separatists, along with meth-cooking gangs of bikers. Apparently, Jarrett said, McVeigh had spent time with similar groups. But Matthews never ran across him in Arizona , he said. Only in Texas . Jarrett thanked him and said he’d keep him updated. But as Matthews recalls it, that was the last time they ever spoke about the bombing.

When the FBI and the Justice Department eventually determined that McVeigh had largely acted alone in the bombing, with minimal assistance from two men who eventually back out of the attack, Matthews was skeptical. He began to wonder if it wasn’t a repeat of the Brown’s Ferry incident all over again.

“I felt Don knew more about this, but he could never say something to me,” Matthews says.

Jarrett passed away in 2009. . .


3. The story published also excised any mention of the Texas Light Infantry, a militia unit in the Lone Star State which contained constitutional militia, racist right and non-political elements. The racists and neoNazis, says one source who was familiar with TLI at the time, "kept a very low profile. Think of them as infiltrators that most TLI members knew nothing about."

Exactly why Newsweek found it necessary to delete mention of the TLI get-together in San Saba, and instead ascribe it to the Texas Reserve Militia, is curious. It was the TLI which is mentioned in FBI reports (called 302s) of this meeting where Matthews met men who he later discovered to be McVeigh and Strassmeier, sources say. Why, sources ask, is Newsweek (and presumably the FBI) allergic to mention of TLI?

4. The published story also expunged mention of an FBI undercover operative named Dave Rossi.

In January 1992, Matthews and Posey traveled to Austin Texas to meet with Neal Payne, a member of the Texas Reserve Militia, an Austin-based paramilitary group. Years earlier, Payne, a chiropractor who had been married in a church in which swastikas were frequently displayed, had been arrested for harboring Louis Beam, then a fugitive former Klan leader, who was indicted on charges of trying to overthrow the government. (He was later acquitted). Now, the FBI was investigating Payne, Beam and the TRM for allegedly laundering money through a Texas gun shop, paying off local law enforcement, purchasing stolen weapons from a Texas military base, smuggling arms from Central America, attempting to blow up a National Guard convoy in Alabama and threatening to kill two FBI agents in response to Beam’s arrest.

It was evening when they met at a small hotel room, on the outskirts of the city. The weather was cold and the sky was darkening. It had rained earlier that day, and inside the hotel room, the smell of must lingered in the air. Portraits of cowboys hung on the walls, as did old photos of the Alamo . Payne had wanted Matthews and Posey to meet a friend of his, an Austin-based Vietnam veteran named Dave Rossi. Rossi was about average height and build. He sported a shock of silver hair, a gray moustache and a green bomber jacket, which was fashionable among skinheads at the time.

For the next few hours, they kicked back on the beds and in the chairs and talked about the movement, how if they were ever going to stop the Jewish-led New World Order, they would have to band together, trading knowledge and weapons and making sure the government didn’t infiltrate them in the process. Fashioning his group after the Order, an infamous white supremacist gang of bank robbers from the 1980s, Rossi told Matthews and Posey that he and his cohorts were robbing armored cars, and using the proceeds to fund the movement. “He let us know that there was money available,” says Matthews. “We were feeling each other out.”

Posey, on his part, touted his access to weapons, and his history with the Contras. And as they left the hotel and drove to a local restaurant for dinner, Posey said could supply Rossi with C-4, a military grade explosive, as well as Stinger missiles, deadly heat-seeking devices, which when strapped to your shoulder, can bring down an aircraft with one shot.

Matthews recalls Posey leaving the meeting and feeling good about the future of the movement. “We really didn’t know where we were going with it at the time,” Matthews says. “But if they showed up with money then we could believe what they were telling us.”

In September of 1992, on a brisk morning in Benton , Tennessee , Matthews met Rossi and Posey at the annual convention of the American Pistol and Rifle Association, a gun rights group to the right of the NRA. Guards dressed in a camouflage uniforms, and armed with semi-automatic pistols patrolled the compound. Children and adults fired pistols and rifles at targets shaped like police cars a nearby range, and later, the group’s head of security, a police officer, taught a class on how to disarm law enforcement officials and kill them with their own guns.

As the day progressed, Matthews did his best to keep his distance from the undercover agent. For months, he and Posey had been travelling across the country, meeting a who’s who in the movement—from the Klan to the Aryan Nations--and linking them up with Rossi. Each time, Rossi introduced himself as a leader of a gang of armored car robbers with lots of money on his hands and a desire to fund the movement.

Eventually, however, Matthews began to wonder: If this guy has all this cash at his disposal, and he’s robbing all these banks, why haven’t I heard about the robberies? Matthews asked Jarrett and several of his other handlers at the bureau and they demurred. But eventually, after Matthews continued harping on the issue, Jarrett admitted what Matthews had begun to suspect: That Rossi was an undercover agent, posing as the leader of a white supremacist group. And the hotel they had initially met at in Texas had been bugged.

At first, Matthews felt betrayed; it was as if the bureau didn’t trust him. But then the knowledge that Rossi had been with him along the way was validating; Jarrett told him that he had earned their trust, and so Matthews continued his work, knowing that his handlers were behind him. Now, when they arrived on a scene, they often split up and had separate targets.

Matthews’ job for the weekend was to film. And that evening, as roughly 150 men and women—many of them in flannel shirts and baseball caps--gathered into an old barn to listen various speakers, Matthews sat in the back with the video camera rolling, while Posey and Rossi sat nearby, chatting amicably.

One speaker, a burly man with silver hair and a commanding Southern drawl drew considerable applause as he excoriated then President George H.W. Bush, and his opponent, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

“It is no longer the lesser of two evils, but the evil of two lesser that threatens the United States of America today!” the man said. “We have more of a good reason for a second American revolution than ever before.”

The speaker, James Gordon “Bo” Gritz, was the leading candidate for the extreme right wing Populist Party in the 1992 election. Four years earlier he had been on the party’s ticket as the running mate of former Klan leader David Duke. In recent months, Gritz had been in the headlines for his role in trying to negotiate an 18-month standoff between federal agents and Randy Weaver, a right-wing Christian fundamentalist and former ATF informant, who had links to the Aryan Nation. The standoff ended after an FBI sniper, who was authorized to use lethal force, shot and kicked Weaver’s wife Vicki, who was holding her new-born child.

The news quickly galvanized the radical right like never before. Men like Posey—who already worried that their right to bear arms was eroding--suddenly feared that the government would soon come for them, too. And while months prior, various white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and anti-government groups had talked about joining forces, after the Weaver shooting, that talk quickly turned to action.

The audience stood and applauded as Gritz decried the bureau’s handling of the Weaver standoff. And after Gritz’s speech ended, Matthews, Rossi and Posey slipped out of the back of the barn and walked through the grass over to where Posey had parked his blue Ford Bronco. For months they had been trying to hash out a weapons deal. Posey had told Rossi that he could get him as many as six Stinger missiles, priced at $40,000 a piece. The FBI had allocated the money for the purchase, apparently not to bust Posey, but to further embed the undercover into the world of hate and extremism. Days before the sale was to take place, however, Posey said he had sold the missiles to a group in Minnesota for $45,000 a piece, though it’s not clear if he was telling the truth.

That evening in Tennessee , however, Posey had several pairs of military night-vision goggles in his SUV. All were in green canvas cases and the serial numbers had been removed. Rossi tried out several pairs of goggles, and they worked. He then pulled out $7,500 in cash and handed it to Posey. Before they parted that evening, Rossi asked Posey when he could get more goggles, and where they came from. Posey said he’d have them in about a week along with some TNT and C-4 explosives. The goggles, he said, came from “the black market.”


Rossi, my sources say, may have been the ultimate PATCON operative, serving the FBI in a number of operations. If true, it is understandable that the FBI would be happy that Rossi's role ended up in Tina Brown's waste basket.


The body of Baylee Almon is carried from the wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building.

5. Also excised was mention that Jesse Trentadue had more than just a suspicion that his brother Kenney had been beaten to death as part of the OKBOMB investigation:

After his latest stint in the emergency room this year, Matthews says he kept thinking more and more about what his family knew about him and what he sacrificed over the years. Wondering if anyone had ever tied his name to the FBI, at a whim that morning this past summer, he began searching around online.

What he found was an article about Trentadue, the Salt Lake City attorney. For the past 15 years, the West Virginia-born lawyer has been shuffling across the street from his office in downtown Salt Lake City , and filing profanity-laced letters and Freedom of Information Act Requests to various federal agencies.

His goal? To prove that the agency killed his brother, Kenney, during a botched interrogation at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in 1995, shortly after McVeigh’s attack. The bureau claims Kenney hung himself in his cell, but Trentadue says--and provided pictures indicating—that Kenney’s throat was slit and his body was covered in bruises.

Trentadue and his family were awarded $1.1 million for emotional distress after a federal judge found that the FBI and Bureau of Prisons had lied in court and destroyed evidence during the investigation. But Trentadue wasn’t satisfied. And not long after, he received an anonymous phone call from someone who said that his brother had been killed in a case of mistaken identity. The FBI, the caller said, believed that Kenney was actually a member of the Aryan Republican Army, a notorious gang of white supremacist bandits who robbed 22 banks across the Midwest in the early to mid ‘90s.


6. Gone, too, were the links between McVeigh and Strassmeier:

For years the FBI has insisted that McVeigh was essentially a lone wolf terrorist. Yet through his FOIA requests, Trentadue learned that the bureau had long possessed evidence linking McVeigh to the ARA, and several of the gang’s members to the bombing in Oklahoma City .

As Matthews read on he ran across a name that stopped him cold: Andy Strassmeir. A mysterious German national, a member of the country’s army and son of an advisor to Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, Strassmeir moved to the U.S. in the late 1980s. Over the next few years, he began palling around with ARA members and other white supremacists in Oklahoma . But according to the FBI files released by Trentadue, Strassmeir also conducted paramilitary training with the TRM in Texas . And Matthews believes he is the same man that he encountered, along with McVeigh, in San Saba.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said he had indeed trained with the TRM, but he did not recall training with McVeigh. Instead, he said that he and McVeigh had only met once at a gun show in Tulsa , Oklahoma in the spring of 1993—a meeting that McVeigh confirmed before he was put to death roughly a decade ago.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said that he and McVeigh had never been friends. Phone records discovered by the FBI show that McVeigh called Strassmeir two weeks before the bombing. The German-native says he wasn’t home, and has no idea why McVeigh was calling. Roughly a year later, he slipped out of the country through Mexico , after a private investigator working for McVeigh’s defense attorney attempted to have him summoned to court. He had never been interviewed by the FBI until he was already safe and sound in Germany .

Speaking by way of phone from Berlin , Strassmeir told Newsweek that he was neither an informant nor a conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing. A FOIA by Trentadue sent to the CIA about Strassmeir came up with 26 documents. Yet the National Geospatial Agency, part of the Department of Defense, would not allow Langley to release the documents, citing national security concerns.



Chase and Colton Smith. Collateral damage to the unintended consequences of PATCON, 19 April 1995. They would be young men now if not for McVeigh and Strassmeier. They never got the chance.

There is one thing that the heavily-edited article did, however, which makes these edits so much more important now that we know about them.

Both the FBI and Newsweek have validated Mr. Matthews service, his accounts and the quality of his memory. From the FBI plaque given to John Matthews:

“John W. Matthews: In appreciation and recognition for your outstanding efforts in assisting the FBI to combat domestic terrorism throughout the United States : March 28, 1991 – May 30, 1998.”


And Newsweek added this paragraph:

Matthews' story, which Newsweek verified through hundreds of FBI documents and several dozen interviews, including conversations with current and former FBI officials, offers a rare glimpse into the murky world of domestic intelligence, and the bureau's struggles to combat right-wing extremism.


When you take the gutted version of the story and combine it with the critical information Tina Brown cut out and then compare it to these glowing character references, there is one thing that leaps out at any independent observer -- the full truth about the FBI's involvement in, and prior knowledge of, the Oklahoma City bombing has yet to be even scratched.

John Matthews, a dying man, a patriotic man, a man who tried above all to do right and protect the country that he swore an oath to protect against enemies foreign and domestic, has come forward to tell his story.

Then let him tell the WHOLE story about PATCON.

The cause of simple justice for the victims of Oklahoma City demands it.

Newsweek is evidently so compromised by political considerations that it cannot tell these truths.

It remains to be seen if there are any other "mainstream media" outlets who can, or will.

But at least, gentle readers, you know now the extent of Newsweek's perfidy in hiding the truth that threatens both the comfortable bureaucratic existence of the FBI and the reputations of people such as Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano -- both of whom were knee deep in PATCON and the cover-up of the true circumstances behind the deaths of 176 men, women and children in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995.

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/11/ssi-exclusive-hiding-mass-murder-behind.html

COMMENT:

Two Americas.  And the enemy has always been at war with We the American People.  This is as much a false flag op as Operation Gunrunner and 9/11.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

REMINDER: JULY4PATRIOT'S TRIAL IN JANUARY... HAVE YOU KICKED TO HIS DEFENSE FUND?

GLOBAL GUERILLAS: BEYOND OWS, ZUCOTTI PARK AND TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONES

BEYOND ZUCCOTTI

Ok.  Let's recap.  Occupy Wall Street wasn't able to actually occupy Wall Street.  Why?  A phalanx of legal and physical barriers as well as paramilitary police prevented it.
  • What did they do? They took up residence in a place nearby:  Zuccotti park.  This occupation was made possible due to a loophole in the regulations of domestic compliance.  
  • The occupation of Zuccotti quickly proved to be plausible promise for an open source protest.  What was the promise?  It proved that it was possible for protesters to avoid immediate herding (kettling), beatings, and arrest in the heart of a major US city (given how totalitarian the US has become over the last couple of decades, that's a pretty amazing accomplishment).  With the plausible promise in place, Occupy zones (tents, settlements, etc.) spread like mushrooms across the global landscape. 
  • Some of these occupy locations were eventually raided by hordes of militarized police wielding non-lethal weapons and clubs.  Some of these occupations have found alternative locations to camp in, others have yet to do so.  Most importantly, the NYPD raided and ejected Occupy from Zuccotti square. 
Question:  Has Occupy been defeated by the NYPD's raid on Zuccotti?
Answer:  Probably not.  Why?  Over the last couple of months, Occupy had gone beyond a reliance on a specific place like Zuccotti.  It developed a recipe for how to set up a temporary autonomous zone (what's often called a TAZ).
What is a TAZ?  A location that is outside of the control of the nation-state and global marketplace.  Specifically, in the context of Occupy, the TAZ is
  • the modern equivalent of a nomadic village (a mobile, temporary community)
  • community that is self-governed (typically democratically)
  • a counter cultural hot spot (from music to visual arts to deep discussion)
  • a media hub and wireless communications network
  • a source of limited amounts of shelter/power/prepared food/etc.
  • simple security and a means of defense (this will get more elaborate)
  • a launching point for protest
What does all of this mean?
Here are some conclusions.  I'll refine this list as we progress.
  • This is formula of protest and community that will outlast Occupy.
  • The TAZ will be attractive to younger people (from the unique atmosphere to the element of danger involved).
  • Much of the technology that is being developed for the Occupy TAZ (energy, communications, etc.) is useful for building resilient communities
  • If passive TAZ defense tech/techniques are developed and deployed, these communities will be very difficult to eradicate
NOTE:   The origins of this concept are found in the work of the anarchist poet Hakim Bey (I don't recommend it if you aren't into doing deep/messy/original research).  Also, here's some background on the role of the TAZ in open source warfare.
NOTE2:  Some of the recipe for setting up a TAZ is seen in the Occupy API.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/11/occupy-note-112311-beyond-zucotti-and-onto-the-taz.html

A COP'S TAKE ON THE PEPPER SPRAY COP:

MORE OF THIS HERO COP IN ACTION HERE: http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=707&q=pepper+spray+cop&gbv=2&oq=pepper+spray+cop&aq=f&aqi=g1g-S9&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2617l7313l0l8144l19l19l3l0l0l0l219l2368l2.12.2l16l0

And the quote from a brave peace officer at Officer.com:

 Let me break this down to Barney level:

1- People have a right to "peaceably" assemble under the first amendment to the US Constitution.

2- When their assembly is NOT peaceful, it is unlawful.

3- The US Supreme court has repeatedly held that blocking traffic, footpaths/sidewalks, business entrances, etc. are NOT considered peaceful, and are therefore unlawful.

4- These protestors were blocking a path.

5- The protestors were warned of the unlawfulness of their actions.

6- The protestors were warned they would be sprayed.

7- The protestors got sprayed.

8- Occupy a jail cell, turds!

REST HERE:  http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?172855-OWS-gets-OC-UC-Davis

Oh, here are some protesters blocking the sidewalk-at WAL-MART:

CONSIDERING CONSPIRACY THEORY FROM AN IMPERIALIST ANGLE

The Sorcerer's Apprentice & Illuminati Impostor
Considering Conspiracy Theory From An Imperialist Angle
By Douglas Herman
11-23-11
 
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)
 
"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths while reality is fabulous." -Henry David Thoreau
 
Recently, for about a week, I wore the gold and diamond ring of the alleged most powerful group of elites in the world on my finger. The ring was old and worn but still exuded talismanic power. I felt like Mickey, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, donning the robe and cap of the sorcerer, wielding the wand of that magician. I felt like an Illuminati imposter, able to channel Albert Pike and Aleister Crowley, seeing through my All-Seeing Eye, seeing the sacred symbols and numbers in the sky itself. For about a week I stared at my surroundings and began to see clearly geopolitical reality--from a sociopathic /psychopathic viewpoint that is. Suddenly I was privy to deep dark secrets. But more about this later.
 
 
 
 
All conspiracy events fall into two categories: Those events which have less to do with strengthening the security state and those which overwhelmingly empower it. The suicide of Marilyn Monroe, the murder of MLK, The Roswell UFO sighting and the Moon Landing conspiracy would fall into the first group. The assassination of JFK, the Oklahoma City Bombing and the 911 Attack would fall into the second. The result of each one of these events strengthened, not weakened, the national security state, eroded Constitutional rights, weakened the public while enriching a few of the powerful and well-connected.
 
Americans fall into two distinct groups. Those who believe in the possibility of conspiracy theories and those who discount any and all conspiracy theories except those formulated by their own government. Have you ever noticed how the two mindsets rarely meet on common turf? Interesting huh?
 
Some people believe the rich and powerful possess no hidden agenda, but are simply wealthy and powerful people without malice aforethought.  Thankfully, with recent world events unraveling by the minute, fewer and fewer people remain so trusting, ignorant or naive.
 
Did you know that both Thomas Jefferson and Charles Lindbergh were conspiracy theorists? Yes, both men warned, loudly and in writing, about the future dangers to the country of big private banks. Imagine what their friends must have thought of them. Paranoid nut jobs and wackos. Nearly 200 years ago, Jefferson wrote: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
 
The conspiracy theories of yesterday are the conspiracy facts of today. Lindbergh considered the Federal Reserve the enemy of the American people. Indeed the Minnesota Senator said, after the hasty passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, "When the President signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized....the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill." 
 
Surprise, surprise; a couple of conspiracy theorists proved prescient. Wonder what their critics would say today?
 
 
The Theory of Conspiracy Theory
 
Once again, ALL conspiracy events fall into two categories: Those events which have less to do with strengthening the security state and those which overwhelmingly empower it. There are NO so-called Black Swan events. Significant state shaping events occur deliberately. The Reichstag Fire didn't just happen but was made to happen in order to benefit and strengthen one group of people while weakening another. 
 
Many lesser conspiracy events are directly tied to the powers that be. The suicide of Marilyn Monroe and Bruce Ivins and the Roswell UFO sighting and subsequent conspiracy would fall into the first group. The media spun these events but the conspiracies did not necessarily shape and strengthen the power of the state. By contrast, the assassination of JFK and RFK, the Oklahoma City Bombing and the 911 Attack would fall into the second. The result of each one of those events strengthened, not weakened, the national security state, eroded Constitutional rights, weakened the public while enriching a few of the powerful and well-connected.
 
 
The General Public Embraces Conspiracy Theory
 
Some years ago, while working aboard an Alaska fishing boat, I struck up a conversation with my fellow crewmen. That evening, while at anchor, we listened to the George Noory, Coast To Coast radio show. George spoke of the Roswell UFO event of 1947. The young crewmen laughed at the idea; they had never heard of Roswell.  After outlining the reported crash at Roswell and subsequent US military denial to my crewmen, I asked them which well-known conspiracy, if any, they considered might have a ring of truth about them. One crewman, a native Alaskan, said he didn't believe we landed on the moon and gave his reasons. The other crewman, a Panamanian by birth, believed that Panama's president, General Omar Torrijos, had been murdered by a remote controlled bomb, causing the small airplane in which the general traveled to crash. Many people believe the exact same thing happened to JFK Jr and Paul Wellstone.  Assassination by Aviation.
 
Go to any forum, even ones provided by the mainstream media, such as Yahoo or MSNBC, and you will notice overwhelming belief in so-called conspiracies by the responses of the readers. What you will also notice is diminishing faith or trust in any of our so-called leaders or public servants.
 
Not surprisingly, many so-called conspiracy theories later turn out to be true. Like the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Attack. Never happened say many Navy vets who were there. Likewise Detroit attorney, Kurt Haskell, who was standing at the gate, claims he witnessed the so-called Underwear Bomber being led aboard the flight and the result of that event was backscatter machines at US airports, further strengthening the security state. And finally, John Perkins alleged in his book Confessions of An Economic Hitman that general Torrijos was assassinated by American interests, allegedly by CIA connected operatives.
 
Sometimes you need a scorecard to keep track of all the conspiracy theories and the logic, witnesses and scientific basis behind each one. An open-minded person need ask the very same questions a good reporter would ask: Who, What, Where, When and Why? Who benefits and why, chiefly. Nowadays mainstream news reporters never seem to ask those questions, especially regarding a significant event such as the 911 Attack. Cui Bono, all good detectives ask; who benefits.
 
Years ago, a brief encounter with a former intelligence professional became the basis for my book, The Guns of Dallas. In the book, as in reality, my protagonist was dying. He said, I recall: "We're all like a bunch of stupid penguins standing in shit on an iceberg. We can barely see what's around us and we can't see what's down below, the deep dark mystery that represents 90% of our surroundings, unless of course we dive deep into the dangerous waters where predators lurk." Then he laughed. Then, a little later, he died. A couple years later a similar dying CIA agent, E. Howard Hunt, made a similar deathbed confession regarding the same significant event at Dealey Plaza.
 
Why do we fear and ridicule conspiracy theory? If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, then what is smug denial? Conspiracy, Con Spire, means with breath or to breathe together. So why do so many prominent critics of the abuses of the state, a powerful apparatus that maims and murders, lies, cheats and steals, why do many of these influential voices readily and loudly accept the states versions of pivotal events while loudly condemning those who ask who really benefits?
 
"We are born to search after the truth; to possess it belongs to a greater power," wrote Montaigne. Meanwhile, as the American Empire becomes increasingly fascist, many otherwise intelligent writers in the mainstream and alternate media, condemn those of us who would search for the deeper darker truths below the surface.  Noam Chomsky, Matt Taibbi and Alexander Cockburn write brilliantly on an array of topics but they regard the government's version of September 11, 2001 as sacrosanct.  Why?
 
I would rather heed the late Danny Jowenko's professional opinion on controlled demolition of WTC 7. Indeed, I would rather hear what US veterans Bob Bowman, Gordon Duff or General Partin have to say about 911 rather than Matt Taibbi. Curiously Matt writes continuously about the toppled economy but fails epically when one considers the trillions in profits in the wake of the New Pearl Harbor.  
 
 
Some have a very good grasp of events and write damn well about those corrupt policies of an increasingly fascist state. And yet, and yet, they seem altogether too dismissive of the possibility --God forbid--that a group of professionals could carry out a black operation, often called a False Flag operation, similar to Operation Northwoods.
 
 
Fast & Furious:  The Conspiracies Just Keep On Coming
 
Recently a notorious government program called Fast and Furious, a cold-blooded US government program to funnel vast numbers of guns through the ATF to Mexican drug cartels, was revealed. Who authorized it and why? Napolitano? Holder? Clinton? Obama? All of them? Shouldn't American and Mexican citizens know? But suddenly, faster than you can say Ron Paul, the average, enraged American citizen was distracted again. The following day another alleged terror plot was revealed and widely broadcast by the US mainstream media. The culprits? Iranians, naturally. Fast and Furious was adroitly swept under the radar. Brilliant.
 
We live in interesting times. Presently, before the internet is monitored or more rigidly censored, an average fellow can test a conspiracy theory and show the result on YouTube.  One metal worker rigged some beams and obtained some conventional thermite to see if the conspiracy regarding the collapse of the trio of WTC had any substance.  Fact-based in other words. You can watch his experiment if you google Proof that Thermite can cut a vertical column. No, he did not possess weapons grade, so-called nano-thermite. Imagine if he had.
 
Gold & The All Seeing Eye
 
About that old gold ring I mentioned earlier. A relative said she bought it at a pawn shop.  32 degree Mason, known as the Illuminati to many.  Only a select few achieve 32nd status and fewer still the privileged 33rd degree. You might be surprised who is on that list of powerbrokers.
 
Yet you do not need a Masonic ring, or a sorcerer's wand or wizard's cape to see the Big Picture. With the ring, I could see for miles and miles, could see the rationale behind Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard and NATOs attack and annexation of Libya. I could see the rationale for the upcoming pre-scripted attack on Syria and Iran. I could see Cheney and Kissinger as imperial geniuses, while I wore that ring.  I could see why my dying informer, who served as protagonist Jimmy Jeremiah, in my novel said: "The people pulling the levers like to keep people like you and me ignorant and divided; it furthers and strengthens their power over us."
 
I could see how and why so many misguided patriots in uniform, and especially so many sociopaths in so-called Public Service, willingly serve a handful of psychopaths.  All for the sake of the empire, the bloody empire. To protect and serve the status quo and the one percent who wield power, wreck countries and world economies while stealing resources.
 
The rumored war with Iran seems to spring naturally from this agenda, from a conspiracy theory point-of-view. With the European nations and the USA nearly bankrupt, morally and economically, what other recourse do these residual empires have but to make continuous war on nations with resources but without suitable weapons to oppose them? As Bastiat noted: "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
 
If we compare Libya to a vulnerable old merchant ship, laden with riches (oil, water and gold) we realize that NATO resembles a pirate fleet rather than a band of humanitarians. All pirates need prey. Thus the NATO pirate fleet now greedily eyes the richly-laden galleons Syria and Iran. 
 
 
http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/herman/herman6.html
 
Predictable Plunder & Power Grab
 
Check any list of 33 degree Masons. FDR is on the list. FDR took power in 1933 and said "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
 
Nothing. Happens. By. Accident. A "sneak" attack on a US Navy base while a former Secretary of the US Navy Roosevelt sat in the White House?  Excuse me if I refuse to consider either Pearl Harbor or the 911 Attack as Black Swan events but predictable political moves, master strokes of psychopathic genius.
 
Interesting side note:  G. Edward Griffin, who wrote about the rise of the Federal Reserve in The Creature From Jekyll Island, appears in a documentary about these same chemtrails, called What In The World Are They Spraying.   Mr. Griffin also appeared as a guest on the Glen Beck / Fox network TV show and surprisingly was allowed to speak at length about the draconian rise to power of the Fed. Call it a conspiracy theory if you like, but not long after that broadcast, Glen Beck lost his prime time Fox TV show.
 
 
Footnote: If you look carefully at chemtrail patterns you can readily see the Masonic calipers, or dividers. The same calipers that appear on the Masonic rings and regalia. Years ago I told a woman friend that the Illuminati only used three letters when spraying chemtrails and you can see them plainly in the sky: I doublecross U.
 
 
Douglas Herman winters in Bullhead City Arizona and can be reached at roadmovie2@gmail.com 
http://www.rense.com/general95/scor.htm