After a quiet winter and with a rival group 99% Spring emerging, we ask how is the Occupy movement developing. Inside Story Americas, discusses with guests: Nathan Schneider, Karunga Gashusha and Mike King.

Check out this letter from comrades in Cairo. What a relief to see Egyptians speaking out in English against the ICNC spin, as one after another “leader” of the Egyptian revolution is trotted out to represent Nonviolent Egyptian Youth in “solidarity” with Occupy Wall Street protesters, with their neutered Gandhis and MLKs (no anti-imperialism/anti-capitalism here) and “turn-the-other-cheek” blather. Regardless of who is actually behind this letter (it is signed “Comrades from Cairo”), it speaks some very important truths about what happened in Egypt. Here’s a quote:

We faced such direct and indirect violence, and continue to face it. Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government’s own admission; 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed, and all of the ruling party’s offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on the 28th of January they retreated, and we had won our cities.

It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. If we do not resist, actively, when they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. Do not confuse the tactics that we used when we shouted “peaceful” with fetishizing nonviolence; if the state had given up immediately we would have been overjoyed, but as they sought to abuse us, beat us, kill us, we knew that there was no other option than to fight back. Had we laid down and allowed ourselves to be arrested, tortured, and martyred to “make a point”, we would be no less bloodied, beaten and dead. Be prepared to defend these things you have occupied, that you are building, because, after everything else has been taken from us, these reclaimed spaces are so very precious.

Counteracting the cult of non-violence is important on a number of levels. First, the international non-violence racket is intimately tied to so-called “non-violent communication,” which is Harmony Ideology at its most dangerous. Just to be clear, some of the techniques of NVC can be useful, for example, in trying to work out intimate relationship issues. Sometimes. But even then, they are potentially a silencing technique. Where entrenched power differentials exist, sticks and stones will still break your bones. And there’s no honor in that. Really, there isn’t. Try telling Mubarak, “when your police sodomized me, it made me feel sad.” Or telling Obama, “when you take all those corporate donations, it makes me feel disenfranchized.” Or telling Pepe Lobo, “What I hear you saying is that you care about human rights, and that makes me feel confused.”

Confrontation is productive. And political violence is productive. Sometimes it produces misery, and sometimes it produces liberation (which is always reversible—you can’t institutionalize freedom through representative democracy, obligatory speech patterns, or anything else). What violence produces depends on the kind of violence, who’s enacting it, how, and why. And silencing people, which non-violent communication does, is violent. Try it- try going to a meeting in, let’s say, Santa Cruz, and passionately arguing your point to a room full of non-violent communicators. It’s like not knowing Robert’s Rules in a union hall. If you can’t speak their language, you don’t get to speak. There’s something very Orwellian about the whole enterprise.

The same non-violence non-profits who take CIA money when they can get it (I’m not talking about ICNC, which just shares an accountant, has parallel goals, and whose president used to work there; ICNC has enough junk bond money to operate on its own) also give non-violent communication trainings and are inserting themselves wherever they can in the OWS movement. In DC, this is particularly worrisome, since the think-tank/lobbying/pro-USG logic is so hegemonic. And I’ve received four email invitations this week to attend think tank and right-wing academic seminars on What the Occupy Wall Street Movement Means and Why it Should Matter to Me. Framing is everything. Who gets to speak, what they get to say, whether their whole movement can be invalidated because somebody got justifiably angry and threw a rock. We don’t need to be tackling the rock-thrower. People throwing rocks doesn’t explain or justify the police violence I saw and felt in Oakland last Tuesday. We need to be tackling the derivative Christian logic of non-violence (but lacking the possibilities of liberation theology) that chastises the oppressed for rising up against the oppressor, using fictitious narratives about Egypt’s and Eastern European countries’ “revolutions” as legitimation. And when people come to town claiming to speak for a revolution and making their way into lefty media with the same bland lies, we need to be asking who is paying for their plane ticket, and why the hell are they not back at home, where their “revolution” is not in great shape at all.

Screen shot of the Homeland Security report from October on Occupy

(update below)

The transparency organization WikiLeaks has published an assessment report from the Homeland Security Department (DHS) on the Occupy movement that was put together in October of last year. The assessment was attached to a Stratfor email, one of five million or so emails the organization obtained and has been releasing since February 27.

The release of the report is timely, coming just as Occupy supporters are mobilizing for demonstrations against the suppression of the Occupy movement by law enforcement and political leaders in the United States.

Put together by the Office of Infrastructure Protection under DHS, the report seems to have been put together with the following presumption in mind, which appears in bold at the top of the report:

Mass gatherings associated with public protest movements can have disruptive effects on transportation, commercial, and government services, especially when staged in major metropolitan areas. Large scale demonstrations also carry the potential for violence, presenting a significant challenge for law enforcement.

The report proceeds to break down the risks and threats the Occupy movement poses to “critical infrastructure” by looking at their “impacts” on financial services, commercial facilities, transportation, emergency services and government facilities. The breakdown relied on news reports from sources like the New York Daily News, CBS, Associated Press, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Reuters, New York Times, Boston Globe, etc.

The DHS report found financial services sectors had been the “focal point of the OWS movement, with protesters holding protests and camping out” in financial districts. It found “large gatherings” had a “major impact on surrounding business and retail districts” and in some cases “commercial facilities” were “targeted” (though no real examples are cited). It found that demonstrations had caused “widespread traffic jams, road closures and suspension of public transit.” It found a “considerable burden on emergency services personnel to control crowds, protect critical infrastructure and maintain public order” had occurred. And the movement had “impacted” government facilities through protests at “city halls and courthouses.”

In the report’s summary, DHS concluded:

The growing support for the OWS movement has expanded the protests’ impact and increased the potential for violence. While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure (CI). The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters. As the primary target of the demonstrations, financial services stands the sector most impacted by the OWS protests. Due to the location of the protests in major metropolitan areas, heightened and continuous situational awareness for security personnel across all CI sectors is encouraged.

Much like the threat government officials might allege WikiLeaks releases pose to national security, the threat described here is, for the most part, hype. Though the protests had been “peaceful,” Homeland Security determined the fact more and more citizens were turning out to support the cause of Occupy made it a possible threat to critical infrastructure and public order. The presence of supporters of Anonymous, which the FBI has been investigating, led Homeland Security to believe “potential incidents” or “potential security risks” could transpire. But, while Anonymous has claimed responsibility for cyber attacks, it has absolutely no history of violence in the world of non-virtual reality.

The conclusion forces one to ask if the suggested potential risks alluded to in this paragraph had something to do with crackdowns on Occupy groups around the country. Was there a point when political leaders in city and state governments thought this could gain too much momentum and they had to squash it?

Given that the report is an October 2011 report, presumably it would take until November for political leaders to truly begin to act upon it. November was when the “counteroffensive” against Occupy really began.

Using the mass media, politicians hyped the movements as imminent threats to public health and safety, justifying aggressive evictions of prominent occupations in Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore., and New York City. Within weeks other major encampments in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and New Orleans were scattered with hundreds of arrests. A third wave of closures has been underway since late January with occupations shut down from Hawaii to Miami and Austin, Texas, to Buffalo, N.Y.

The methodology and production of this report should be questioned. It relies entirely on corporate news reporting. While it is refreshing to see the report relies on Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Together website to put together a background description for the movement, the fact that the New York Daily News is cited is appalling.

The New York Daily News editorial board published this op-ed, “Occupy Wall Street protesters are behaving like a bunch of spoiled brats,” on September 28 of last year:

And for sleet and torrential rains – anything that might convince the precious insufferables who have taken over Wall Street that they have had enough of exercising their First Amendment rights to the inconvenience of tens of thousands of people who actually have to work for a living.

This bunch ought to get down on their knees in thanks that America’s capitalist Founding Fathers saw fit to protect the privileges of the dumb and obnoxious along with everyone else.

They should also salute the NYPD and all its officers for paying diligent attention to ensuring that peace and harmony reign in their daze of rage. But no.

The newspaper’s animosity toward Occupy is why this sentence, “On October 5, roughly 200 protesters attempted to storm police barricades blocking protesters from the area,” is likely hyperbole.

Perhaps Homeland Security doesn’t care. Its employee(s) or the employee(s) of the contractor that put this together might actually have that much scorn for members of the Occupy movement. Maybe the employee(s) that put this together do not know a thing about the quality of the coverage of the media outlets and are just looking for lines in these news stories that support already held presumptions about the Occupy movement. Whatever the case may be, it is important to ask what role the report might have played in precipitating a crackdown.

Who read the report and who, if anybody, acted upon it? How did it influence how government agencies and institutions handled, perceived and tolerated (or in many cases did not tolerate) the Occupy movement? What role did this report play in governments decisions to not permit an Occupy encampment in their city? What role did it play in state governments’ decisions to oppose the presence of an Occupy camp on statehouse grounds?

The suppression of Occupy is nothing less than an attack on those who would try to exercises their civil liberties, their rights and seek to energize democracy. Moreover, this significantly increases suspicion that the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA may be withholding information on the Occupy movement and are refusing to cooperate with FOIA requests made by journalists and citizens of the United States. It does not seem likely that, given the machinations of US government, DHS would be monitoring Occupy and the Justice Department, FBI, CIA or other similar agencies would not be monitoring the movement.

*

Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone has covered this report. He eloquently summarizes why this report is important:

It’s never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to “control protestors” – especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent. From the notorious Cointelpro operations of the 1960s to the NYPD’s recent surveillance of Muslim Americans, the government has a long and disturbing history of justifying the curtailing of civil liberties under the cover of perceived, and often manufactured, threats (“the potential security risk to critical infrastructure). What’s more, there have been reports that Homeland Security played an active role in coordinating the nationwide crackdown on the Occupy movement last November – putting the federal government in the position of targeting its own citizens in the name of national security. There is not much of a bureaucratic leap, if history is any guide, between a seemingly benign call for “continuous situational awareness” and the onset of a covert and illegal campaign of domestic surveillance.

On September 11, 1973 (28 years before the World Trade Center-Pentagon attack), General Augusto Pinochet, leading a gang of treasonous officers, ordered Chilean air force jets to fire missiles at the Presidential Palace. By the end of the day Pinochet had seized power in a bloody, US-backed coup against the elected socialist government of Dr. Salvador Allende who died in the assault on the Palace.

In 1974, Pinochet ordered his secret police to assassinate his former boss, General Carlos Prats, Chile’s army chief, who lived in exile in Buenos Aires. A car bomb blew Prats and his wife six stories high.

In September 1975, another Pinochet foe and his wife got shot in Rome. Christian Democratic leader Bernardo Leighton survived but never fully recovered.

On September 21, 1976, Pinochet’s hit squad detonated a bomb placed under the car of Orlando Letelier, Allende’s last Defense Minister, exiled in Washington, D.C. The blast on Washington’s Embassy Row severed Letelier’s legs and also killed Ronni Moffitt, an American woman passenger and colleague of Letelier’s at the Institute for Policy Studies where both worked.

Two lead FBI agents investigating the case later affirmed publicly their certainty of Pinochet’s direct responsibility. Despite abundant proof of his guilt, successive Attorneys General did not indict him.

When he died in 2006 Pinochet faced 3,197 murder charges – number of proven assassinations; one of his accomplishments during his 17-year reign –1973-1990. (March 1991, Chilean Commission for Truth and Reconciliation)

In 1998, a smug and retired Pinochet, secure in the Amnesty he had granted himself and his fellow torturers and murders, traveled to England, visited his friend Margaret Thatcher, and then had back surgery. When he awoke from the anesthetic, a British policeman told him he was under arrest; a translator made sure he understood his rights.

Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzón signed the extradition order. Underlying this extraordinary arrest lay a groundwork of legal activity. When Spanish lawyer and former Allender adviser Juan Garces learned of Pinochet’s London trip, he convinced Judge Garzón, who had recently taken over the case, that sufficient evidence existed to ask British authorities to arrest Pinochet and request his extradition to stand trial in Spain and to freeze his assets so that his victims could receive some compensation. British authorities complied.

After 16 months in custody, validated by England’s highest Court, the British government maneuvered with Washington and Santiago to free Pinochet on the pretext of mental unfitness for trial.

Garzón proceeded to follow the Pinochet case with indictments and prosecution other foreign nationals like Argentine navy officer Adolfo Scilingo for crimes against humanity during that country’s dirty war (dates). He also pursued high-ranking human-rights abusers in Guatemala and in Guantánamo.

In Spain, as a National Court judge he also, in the 1980s, opened investigations into Spain’s own questionable procedures in its fight against Basque separatists. What got him into trouble, however, derived from his re-opening of crimes committed during Spain’s 1936-39 civil war and the years of dictatorship that ensued. Almost 115,000 people had disappeared during Franco’s fascist regime; thousands were assassinated – with impunity for the criminals.

Garzón’s reputation as human rights defender did not protect him from — and indeed may have contributed to — the wrath of right wing judges, with ties to the old Franco regime. Garzón “challenged the very nerve centers of right wing political power,” said Juan Garces, “by going after corruption among the elite of Spain’s right wing party.” He re-opened the issue of “impunity granted by the very people who collaborated with or approved of the kidnappings and murders.” (Netherlands radio interview)

In 2010, Garzón was indicted for criminal abuse of power. A panel of pro-Franco judges declared Garzón of guilty of exceeding legal authority because he ordered police to record conversations between suspects in prison and their lawyers. Garzón argued the taping emerged directly from the charges against those in custody and their attorneys: corruption, and suspicion that the lawyers did money-laundering for their clients.

The prosecutor called Garzón’s actions “monstrous” and Garzón “some kind of Big Brother who thinks he can listen to everything.”

After hearing the guilty verdict, Garzón said: “This sentence, lacking in juridical basis or supporting evidence, eliminates any possibility of investigating corruption and its associated crimes. Instead, it makes room for impunity and, in its fervor to impugn one particular judge, crushes the independence of the entire Spanish judiciary.”

Perhaps Judge Garzón recalled W.H. Auden’s thought on September 1, 1939 when Nazi troops invaded Poland and World War II began. The fascists in Germany and Italy had also supported Franco. “The unmentionable odor of death offends the September night.”  Chileans remember that odo9r from September, 1973 when fascists destroyed their democratically elected government and went on a killing-torture rampage.

Because of the work Garzón and fellow human rights activists, like Garces, some sense of basic justice was restored to people who survived the wounds of military fascism.  In 2006, Chilean judge Judge Juan Guzman ordered divers to search for evidence relating to missing bodies of Pinochet victims in Chile. Guzman accumulated evidence about the whereabouts of the 1200 “disappeared” people – euphemism for avoiding paper trails for murder. No arrest records. No corpse! No crime!

Then the divers found evidence of human remains. The families of the disappeared had proof: Pinochet’s thugs had murdered their loved ones. Garzón’s persecutors now want to hide the Franco era crimes by removing the withering rays of light that this brave judge had shined on the odoriferous deeds.

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