Illegal Government Spying and the Nature of the Excuses

California National Guard monitoring peaceful protests

The California National Guard has set up an intelligence outfit that is monitoring and could potentially spy more directly on Americans engaging in constitutionally-protected free speech and public assembly activities. As noted in this  news story, 30 years ago there was a great deal of spying on Americans.

Such spying is not new, and it wasn’t pretty last time

The assassins (hint: it wasn’t James Earl Ray ) who killed Martin Luther King may have been linked to military agents spying on the civil rights leader. Even the recently outed Nixon-era “Deep Throat” Mark Felt had engaged in such spying while the No. 2 man at the FBI. Of course, such spying is illegal. Whether it is the FBI, the military or the California National Guard, it is illegal. The illegal nature of this very un-American spying was finally acknowledged in the 1970s and it was halted. One wonders why the House un-American Activities Committee wasn’t all over this. Nevertheless it was halted; in part, likely because the reason for the protests, the Vietnam War, had itself come to an end. Nice of them to stop breaking the law when the excuse for the law-breaking goes away.

Forward to the Past

But this is 2005, it’s a whole new era! Right? Well, we find ourselves in another unpopular war foisted on the American people via deception and manipulation; a war likely to continue for a number of years. This one, like that one, has behind it a propaganda backdrop by which many things can be explained and many things excused. In 1964 it was Communism, the “Red Menace.” Then it didn’t matter that the Viet Cong and even the North Vietnamese were firstly nationalists wanting to rid their land of foreign invaders. It didn't matter that the crooked authoritarian capitalists in the South needed the foreign invaders to help them to “live in the manner to which they had become accustomed”, that is, getting rich through the exploitative methods of corporate capitalism backed up by a strong state. In any event, the Communists have shown they are nothing of the sort. They are, like their counterparts in other Communist states, merely authoritarians who want to bring in foreign capital and capitalists to do essentially what the South Vietnamese would have done! But I digress.

Old Wine in New Bottles

Today, the propaganda background is not Communism, of course, but Terrorism. Communism is a deflated monster that in most cases is ready to deal with Western systems on mutually-beneficial (but not necessarily popularly-beneficial) terms. Terrorism, however, back after being dormant in many ways since the hey-day of Anarchist “propaganda of the deed”, fills the government's need for a mechanism of fear and manipulation with which to pull the strings of the public puppet. And don’t you think the propagandists and quasi-fascists in and out of government are unhappy about this new propaganda tool! But the deployment of “terrorism” as a motivator and excuse is perhaps even sloppier than that of the use of Communism. Of course, Communists could be Communists, or they could be church and secular humanitarian workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, you name it. Whoever or whatever they were, if they stood in our way or the way of our evil underlings around the world, they could be wiped out as “Communists”. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were indeed Communists, at least as far as their self-designation and alignment with similarly self-described national governments and movements suggests. (The meaning of course was emptied by unscrupulous, inaccurate use of the term, but that’s another story.) However, Iraq, the new Vietnam which may go on another 12 years and cost thousands of more lives, had little if anything to do with external terrorism, and nothing to do with the main act of terrorism supposedly inspiring the “War on Terror”, the attacks of September 11, 2001. And they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, as Bush and Company promised us they did. The link then between our excuses and our actions is a little loose, to say the least. But as George Bush the First would say, “No linkage!” In any event, onward the liars march! Iraq was the main target of the Bushies no matter what. Of course, now, there are all sorts of individuals and groups attacking all sorts of targets and terrorism can be said to exist now in Iraq, unlike before. That is, our invasion opened the doors, literally and figuratively, to terrorism in Iraq! Our brutal, murderous, illegal invasion and occupation of the country is the cause of the resistance, and perhaps the terrorism (even though there is some funny business with that), both of which started with our arrival and would likely end with our departure.

But even given the growing obviousness of the “mistake” (I would choose harsher words) of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, there are still some who feel it is better to spy on Americans, thus further facilitating rather than ending the criminality of the government. That speaks volumes about those individuals and the organizations to which they belong.

“Who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up?” – Spokesman for Goverment Spies.

Hence, recently, someone in the Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger administration emailed the chief of the California National Guard and reminded him of a then-upcoming Mother’s Day antiwar rally involving families of dead soldiers and a group of passionately peaceful grandmas known as Code Pink. Scary stuff, right? Well the National Guard bigshot told the Arnie toady “Thanks!” and passed on the information to the “intell” as he put it, adding an extra ‘l’ to this James Bondish verbiage. The “intell” people said they were just going to monitor the media coverage of the rally, not the event itself. But of course this begs the question: Why the heads up from the Schwarzenggerites? If you are merely going to monitor the media coverage of an event, can't you just, um, monitor the media coverage of an event?? Why do you need to be reminded of something about to occur if you are merely going to watch the TV news later? In any event, whatever the “intell” traitors were up to in this case, the California National Guard did in fact lay it out in plain view what they will do if they feel they need to.

''It's nothing subversive,'' said Zezotarksi, [a California National Guard spokesman]. ''Because who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up? After all, we live in the age of terrorism, so who knows?''

Aha, so here we go. They will spy on Americans  using the excuse of terrorism because "who know who could infiltrate that type of organization and try to stir something up?" Gee, I wonder who? Agent-provocateurs working for the "intell" people, perhaps? The question we might want to ask the likes of Zezotarski, regarding the government and the intelligence community, is "who knows who could infiltrate the government and the military and try to stir something up!?" The military and intelligence community was notorious for using undercover agents to manipulate and provoke all sorts of groups in the 60s and 70s (and beyond?). It’s funny that this Zezotarski guy puts it this way: “Who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up?” Uh, well, people like the CIA, FBI, DIA, and the California National Guard “intell” people. That’s who!

So let’s carry on our just cause of protesting this government and its actions. But everyone should fully expect that our protests will be “monitored” by the low-level facilitators of the present madness. They have infiltrated the government (they are the government) and they are good at stirring things up.

Comments

[Boris]

We do live in interesting times. Only the americans don't know it!

[anon]

Great post and great blog! (linked from WRC)

Unfortunately, most of today's potentially most active war protesters (youth), will be woefully ignorant of the depths of depravity that earlier powers had stooped to stifle, quash, and disrupt a potentially active, powerful, and unified antiwar movement that cut across racial and economic lines.

The COINTEL operations were hideous: psyops, disinformation, infiltrations, set-ups, frame-ups, beatings, and worse (neutralizations) on our own people.

I don't think these programs ever really went away. The manuals are still being written and read. There just hasn't been a protected and unpopular war long enough to develop a vigourous resistance at the grass-roots level...yet. Maybe that is changing.

[go long into the day]

after the berlin wall came down, we all felt that worldwide peace really had a chance. but that horrified the military / industrial / defense contractor / corporate complex - peace = no $$. tell me, whom has benefitted the most $$ - wise since 9 /11 ? as molly ivins says time and time again, ' cui bono ? ' = who benefits and ' follow the $$ '. since 9 / 11, the 'terrarism' boogeyman was trotted out, and lo' and behold, the red communism menace was replaced the 'terrarism' menace. all in an effort to generate $$ flow for the above mentioned complex and also to instill fear into the minds and souls of the amerikan sheeple drones, by which, they are more easily controlled and led by propaganda and spin. as soon as anyone even starts to speak the truth ( see Sen. Durbin ) the rightwing noise and attack machine goes into full sprint mode. and power - did i forget to mention power - power to run this country right into the ditch - but there are some that are profiting mightily from all of this ... BIG $$$$$. really big.

[Ron Leighton]

Hello all,

I appreciate the comments. Anon, you are right I think, I don't think COINTELPRO ever went away. But it is certainly becoming more prominent now, if under new guises.

Go long into the day, I believe you are correct in saying money is a driving force. Sometimes it is also power. Together, much evil can be done.

And Boris, we do indeed live in interesting times. Fortunately many Americans do know this. Me, for example.

Thanks for visiting and commenting.

[Provocative1]

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[gangstalking]

This Sunday is Indigo Ribbon Day. The Ribbon has been adapted by some members of the Targeted Individual community as a way to show unity and solidarity.

Every cause has a symbol of hope, a ray of light. When people see this ribbon, it's with the hope that they will realise that there are Targeted Individual and that they are suffering.

It's a voice for those who are having to remain silent. If you have a web blog, website, etc you can paste this on your website.

If you campaign offline, you can paste the ribbon on just like you would for any other cause.

The Indigo Ribbon is a ray of hope for Targeted Individuals. Light for those in the dark. Hope for the Survivors.

http://www.indigoribbon.com/images/Ribbon3.jpg

[gangstalking]

Thank you for all your hard work and dedication

To all Targeted Individuals everywhere.

I just wanted to stop and take a moment to say thank you. We would not have come this far without your hard work and dedication in exposing our targeting.

Thank You from http://www.GangStalkingWorld.com

Please keep your lights shining & keep up the fight.

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