kennethlipp
At 1 am the New York City Police Department removed the assembled, largely sleeping, body of the Occupiers (which by rights should be referred to as the General Assembly. Wherever the people meet to reach agreement in an open forum in our many cities' occupations, this is the General Assembly).
I thought I might offer some words of encouragement, including words which encourage lucidity and open dialogue between all participants.
Occupy Birmingham is a small group, even if you include the larger network of good friends and fellow "99%'s" who are unable to pull up lightweight anchors. We owe and feel such gratitude to this largely unnamed demographic; they keep our bellies warm and our spirits high.
“The civil rights movement, owes Bull Connor as much as it owes Abraham Lincoln”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
This is important
By kennethlipp at 2011-10-04
To the Birmingham Police Department: We are on a course where I believe we will eventually meet. The timing and conditions of that intersection might eventually be (or at least feel) out of our hands. Thus far on the very large part police officers have been ever polite if not outright supportive. Thank you for engaging us as people. A point of process for both parties might be the necessity of such respect for one another as whole and independent men and women; we have roles and rules and fables which will continue to insinuate themselves in our relations with our fellows, and we ought to be honest about, rather than protective of, our limitations.
I took part in an extemporaneous "dox" of certain organizations which constitute umbilical interests of fiduciary agents with questionable merit (some with highly evident conflicts of interest. The details are a matter of at least expository if not judicially "public" record. Search twitter.
I will not be returning to wall street any time soon. Joanne and I have, with surprising ease, realized that our place in this cooperative purge is here.
We trust and love our friends here at Occupy Birmingham, and wish only the honor of being a part commensurate with the common influence.
Each person's perspective gets heard, that's the idea, the process has to be applied, has to be ALLOWED TO HAPPEN. We called it a GA tonight when we met to discuss a simple personal misunderstanding. I left having learned more, again, in a few minutes with a few amazing people struggling to Be than I ever have from a book or a theory.
Treat the next person with kindness, and then the next. That's the revolution. Forget protecting the sacred words and attacking nefarious caricatures of discrete enemies.
If we cannot forgo the parable, we should understand that between the oppressed and marauded and the Philistines the favor is irrevocably seized when David (or Davids) finally see that they can slay a Giant with a stone.
By kennethlipp at 2011-10-04
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
This is a reminder of what happened here, and what can never happen again. Never forget that the men who sicced dogs to sink teeth into innocent flesh did so under the auspices of the Law.
The Social Media engineering and intelligent data-mining platforms used in ploys like those involving Aaron Barr and the HBGary Federal leaks were based on targeting and swarm intelligence (UAV, drone) technologies. You'll see the modalities of distributed artificial intelligence in tomorrow's social media espionage in the battlefield-bound, autonomous vehicle innovations.
Northrop Grumman Completes Lot 1 Deliveries of LITENING G4 Targeting Pod GLOBE NEWSWIRE October 19, 2011ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Oct. 19, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has completed delivery of the first 50 LITENING G4 Advanced Targeting (AT) Pods under a $277.8 million indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract from the U.S. Air Force.
"Completing Lot 1 is an important milestone because it puts a significant capability in the hands of our war fighters," said Jim Mocarski, vice president of Electro Optical/Infrared Targeting Systems at Northrop Grumman. "It also demonstrates our expanded production and upgrade capacity to execute Lot 2, our Marine Corps G4 and U.S. Air Force Advanced Targeting Pod – Sensor Enhancement orders."
The LITENING G4 Advanced Targeting Pod is the newest addition to the company's LITENING family of targeting pods, delivering the latest advancements in sensor, laser imaging and data link technology. LITENING G4's full 1Kx1K Forward Looking Infrared and Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) sensors, wider field of view and enhanced zoom deliver more accurate target identification and location at longer ranges than previous generations of LITENING targeting pod systems. The short wave infrared laser imaging provides a unique capability to capture images in situations where forward-looking infrared and CCD are ineffective.
"The prior generation LITENING AT pods are upgradable to the G4 configuration," Mocarski said.
Maj. Evans Boeve, Targeting Pod program manager with the Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center described LITENING G4 as offering, "A significant technological leap, enhancing the F-16's combat capability while reducing pilot workload. G4 will greatly keep our troops and coalition partners safe on the ground and further the security interests of our nation."
Northrop Grumman has delivered more than 550 targeting pod systems to U.S. and international customers. These systems have maintained an operational availability greater than 98 percent, and have flown more than 540,000 combat flight hours. LITENING G4 has begun full operations at its first military base with seven additional base deployments planned in the near future.
One strange night immediately after Joanne and I's return to Zuccotti, we found ourselves in the middle of something, well, strange
The video was made after @korgasm_ was targeted with threatening twitter mentions regarding "how to piss off the police," including a video of someone crossing a yellow crime-scene tape. These tweets were followed with another to annotate: "LOUD BLONDE." Earlier in the evening I uploaded this:
The following is a list of tweets from that evening, which I offer for your perusal in the larger context.
My own assessment is that both the NYPD and private interlopers were engaged in peripheral intimidation tactics.
The FBI and the NYPD are currently on the ground, infiltrating the crowd at #OWS. Look to the origin of any provocation, and (more on this shortly), as always, follow the money. Peace.
https:/twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117523497772785664
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117540215970734080
https:twitter.com#!kennethlipp/status/117539500175007744
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117547730791956480
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117547944294617088
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117548555744448512
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117549407112658944
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117550486483255298
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117550567697555456
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117551415039238144
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117551596308676608
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117554675099766785
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117555841208553472
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117556232935583744
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117556806192078849
https:twitter.com#!Korgasm_/status/117558035924258816
https:twitter.com#!not_me/status/117558850227412992
https:twitter.com#!not_me/status/117558913993408512
https:twitter.com#!kennethlipp/status/117563795919994880
https:twitter.com#!/kennethlipp/status/117564143900426240
The author of this short piece spoke yesterday at the press conference for Occupy Wall Street at New York City Hall. Afterwards asked him if he could comment on the recent publishing of revelations from a several-month-long AP investigation which revealed a deeply-entrenched profiling-surveillance co-op between the NYPD and CIA. He asked for my email address and promised to send something. Here it is:
Kenneth, Peace
Attached is my article on COINTELPRO revisited. Please publish.
Imam A. Abdul-Baqi
Patriot Act = COINTELPRO Revisited
by Imam A. Abdul-Baqi
Imam Abdul-Baqi addressing media at City Hall
In a series of articles, published recently in the Associated Press, the Daily Challenge and the New York Times, it was revealed that the New York Police Department (NYPD), along with the CIA, were involved in domestic spying on innocent Muslims and their houses of worship. Why?
The CIA spokeswoman, Marie Harf stated, “It should not be surprising to anyone that, after 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency stepped up its cooperation with law enforcement on counterterrorism issues or that some of that increased cooperation was in New York.” Although NYPD investigation into criminal activities is well known, going outside their jurisdiction (New Jersey) is a violation of their mandate. NYPD should be involved in policing the streets of New York City, in order to make New Yorkers feel safe.
Crime rates are going up. The War on Drugs is a failure and the crooks on Wall Street are milking the system of millions of dollars with their corporate greed, all this while the poor are getting poorer. Currently, there are 3 million people in poverty in New York. Why are no arrests being made curtailing these crimes? Instead, the NYPD were caught going beyond state lines to spy on Muslims who were not involved in any criminal act. Over 200 mosques were spied on. This is a tremendous waste of time and tax-dollars, which could have been used to fight legitimate crime.
Since 9/11, with the Patriot Act, we have seen an increased infringement upon Americans civil liberties. Religious profiling is the result of institutionalize racism; it is COINTELPRO all over again. Previously, it was the Native-Americans then the Blacks then the so-called radicals or the freedom fighter, and those opposed to U.S. foreign policy, today it is the Muslim community who are targeted.
On 9/11/2001, an enormous crime was committed, and all criminals should be punished, but to blame 1.5 Billion Muslims for the actions of a few extremists is wrong, unacceptable, and discriminatory.
The two primary groups involved in Muslim-bashing are Stop Islamization of America, headed by Pam Geller, and Jihad Watch, headed by the Pro-Israel Zionists, Robert Spencer and his patron David Horowitz. These groups have conspired to mislead the America public and pollute their minds with lies, misconceptions and distortions about the Muslim faith. They are in a campaign of hate. They have influenced public opinion to the degree that our law enforcement agencies are poisoned with the venom of Islamophobia, which is fear and hatred of Muslims and Islam. Racism is a disease and institutionalized racism must be rejected.
Unless we have become a police state, the NYPD should be involved in fighting crime in New York City, while the FBI deals with interstate crime, and the CIA is supposed to gather international intelligence on all foreign threats to America. The racist Ander Brevik, a right-wing Norwegian who was responsible for the mass murder of 76 people in Norway. He quotes extensively from the writing of both Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in his manifesto of hate, but there weren’t any investigations into the activities of Stop Islamization of America and Jihad Watch. Hate groups are on the rise in America.
They need to be monitored, for they are fanning the flames of hate, which leads to violence.
The NYPD needs to review its bias policy of religious profiling, along with its "stop and frisk" policy (which targets inner city youths). They should do their job and continue fighting real crime in New York City, not spying or harassing innocent citizens who are not involved in any criminal activity. Everyone is engaged in a day to day struggle to survive and make a decent living, and the Muslim community is no different from any one else.
Thanks to the Imam for sharing this. In parting, I'll add that irrespective of any theological or political debate concerning the content of Islam as regards violence or human rights, WE DO NOT LEGISLATE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT. Behavior - it is what people DO that matters.
Joanne (@Sabzbrach) and I are leaving New York City today on the Chinatown bus to Philly - with the exception of a two day hiatus at my parents' home in Alabama, we have been at Liberty and on the march since the 17. I will only speak for myself from here on out (as if I'm ever speaking for anyone else), names may or may not be changed in the interest of privacy. You'll know me, for the most part, by the green hat.
I feel like there has been a good deal missed in the coverage of the demonstration and encampment. Media attention was finally garnered in the wake of the Incident at Union Square (with the photo-ops of girls sprayed with mace, straight out of a 1960's Selma tableau); and of course the mass arrests and suspicious circumstances on the Brooklyn Bridge were widely reported and read.
There is a lot to tell about what happened in Manhattan this September (and there continues to be emergent news which requires attention), so this will be by necessity a serial retrospective (Speak, Memory is the title of Vladimir Nabokov's memoirs).
But before we get to recounting, a forward-thinking statement is in order:
Forget issuing concrete demands
It is first of all a basic misunderstanding of our condition to demand concessions; taking the Square is an assertion that it is ALREADY OURS, our city, our street, our World. It must be kept, defended against petty law enforcement antagonism and political co-opting, but it is already ours.
Discrete demands also create the problem of having one's bluff called.
I'm packing for Washington DC - for now I leave you with some memories.
Don't allow that first week's fear and uncertainty become an anecdote.
Love
Kenneth
Rich Lowery writes about Occupy Wall Street and misapprehends it in his article in The National Review, contrasting it derisively with the right-wing Tea Party and their manner of public "dissent."
The Right’s tea party had its signature event at a rally at the Lincoln Memorial where everyone listened politely to patriotic exhortations and picked up their trash and went home. The Left’s tea party closed down a major thoroughfare in New York City — the Brooklyn Bridge — and saw its members arrested in the hundreds.
The march on the Brooklyn Bridge did impede traffic, I'm sure nothing but grief for many commuters. But accurately, the bridge was shut down by the NYPD's decision to execute a massive, incendiary apprehension of hundreds of marchers, including members of the media.
But yes, #OWS interrupted New York City's grinding back-and-forth to make their intentions to persist more indelible.Tea Partiers had a luncheon, we took the streets - fine - you're goddamn right. We want to e be kind and open to discussion, but the least of our worries is a history of proper manners.
On the cusp of the confrontation, the protesters chanted “This is what democracy looks like,” betraying an elemental confusion between lawbreaking for the hell of it and free discussion. They flatter themselves that, in contrast to the wealthiest 1 percent, they represent “the 99 percent.” It might be true if the entire country consisted of stereotypically aging hippies and young kids who could have just left a Phish concert.
The author is obviously appraising the demonstration from a remote vantage point, because the marchers represent a diverse cross-section of cultures, social conditionings, and political backgrounds.
At this point the crow decidedly appears to be a wholesale rabble of professional political transients, because that's a common result of weeks spent living in an urban park. You see, this is a problem in communication which speaks to the larger issue - Deriding people for their apparent membership in a supposedly irrelevant interest group is fallacious. To do so remotely from the MSM's pictorial representations would essentially consist of judging merit by how nice one looks and the condition of one's attire. Lowery commits the crime of discarding the outcry of those who do not have obvious resources to back them of a pecuniary nature. Sweep away the poor...
Mr. Lowery might not feel very committed to his writing, he obviously did not bother to travel for the sake of accuracy, perhaps he wrote this because it is now expected, and this was the best he could manufacture. I would encourage him and everyone who is framing this movement third-hand to reconsider the situation, in person.
This is Class War.
Just outside City Hall Park, a small group of protesters picketed behind a blue barricade. The largely elder crowd held signs demanding an end to official harassment of the Liberty Square new colonists.
The signs also identify their association with the website bailoutthepeople.org., whose home page resounds:
Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests!
Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
The support is appreciated and appropriate; I am, however, left to wonder whether it is actually an example of momentum gained or is simply an extended instrument of #OccupyWallst (whichever) and/or the General Assembly, and therefor a misleading indication of waxing support from the community. The media team for the GA is very aggressively promotional, which gives me some anxiety about how "strategically" they are representing themselves and us with their coverage. Image-consciousness is alarming to me in a supposedly subversive organization, this is, in fact, the Global media-terrorist State (final clause should allow those who differ to dismiss me altogether as a whack job).
Keep thinking for yourselves.
"And men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and relations with their fellow men." The Communist Manifesto
This afternoon at 4 PM Eastern Daylight Time a press conference will be held in solidarity with #OccupyWallSt and communal protest with the gross overbearance and corruption on the part of law enforcement. Jon Penley, former POW and antiwar activist, and Liberty Square ne' Zuccotti transient denizen, will also announce the support of another victim of the NYPD's martial surveillance/counter-dissent operations: the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York.
The organization and its leader were among those targeted for surveillance under the cooperative guidance of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Expect this announcement to be pounced upon by Beck and like-minded pundits as well as militant anti-seditionists within the political body. They'll call us all terrorists.
I will have video from city hall shortly.
Read MoreI really would like to know what the NYPD is thinking. Last night at Zuccotti Park, in front of hundreds watching (with at least a thousand protesters present), NYPD TARU used an industrial concrete demolition saw to remove a young woman's bicycle from a lamp post.
Apparently the cyclist was ordered by police to remove her bicycle from it's hitch on the curb at Broadway (between Liberty and Cedar), and as an alternative to compliance, she elected to chain HERSELF to the bicycle. We should all be grateful that the same heavy-duty lock pick wasn't employed to free her, as well.
To be clear: Arrest is part of civil disobedience. Thoreau willingly spent his night in the clink, knowing that he would be jailed for refusal to pay the "poll tax" (which he opposed for its use to fund the US war with Mexico). When activists break the law as an act of protest, legal consequences should be expected. Walking with head held high to one's cell is an ethical assertion - as in: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." John Bunyan
The imagery and dialogue surrounding such is the powerful instrument of groups engaging direct action for social and political change, and the NYPD should damn well know this. Yet they continue to stage photo ops in confrontation with Occupy Wall Street participants that makes a feast for a vapid media and an American public increasingly wary of their State.
If this Occupy movement truly is a show-down with greed, then there will be a point police as well soldiers, even bureaucrats must make a choice about their loyalties and interests, and fight like hell to make things change or fight like hell to keep them. But unless the police are in fact pushing us toward a breaking-point by antagonizing peaceful protesters to elicit their own worst press, the NYPD would be well-advised to pick their battles with kids with iron-on "A" patches and girls in cute bright helmets parking their bicycles. Officers, you look like bullies, many of your comrades are ashamed, you all indeed should be. Yes, all.
If you are a police officer and hate what's happening, you either act to stop it, or you protect it.