rigorousintuition.ca

... speaking of provocateurs:

Occupy Beltane: Anarchists Plot To Bomb Cuyahoga Bridge
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2012/ ... ane-1.html


... it's a great new market: ProvocaTourism!!

May Day Protest - Geneva, Switzerland.

Location: Place de Neuve / Parc des Bastions

'Battle for the soul of Occupy': Activists fear being 'pulled to the right,' becoming Democratic 'pet'
5/1/2012
3 hours ago

By Miranda Leitsinger, msnbc.com
As Occupy protesters hit the streets for a nationwide general strike on Tuesday, some in the movement fear the emergence of two new activist outfits made up of "old left" advocacy groups and unions is an attempt to turn them into a "pet" for the Democratic Party and President Obama’s reelection effort.

The new groups, 99% Power and 99% Spring, include backers such as MoveOn.org, Rebuild The Dream, AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, and The Ruckus Society. The groups bring money with them – something in short supply for Occupy – but their efforts are being eyed warily by those who helped launch the Occupy movement.

Adbusters, the Canadian magazine that made the initial call for people to Occupy Wall Street on Sept. 17 of last year, has been running a blog series on their website, "Battle for the Soul of Occupy," in the last few weeks. In it, the publication has decried attempts to "neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaign of donor money and co-optation."

"This counter-strategy worked to kill off the Tea Party’s outrage and turn it into a puppet of the Republican Party. Will the same happen with Occupy Wall Street? Will our insurgency turn into the Democrats’ Tea Party pet?" Adbusters wrote in an April 12 post. "Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, the same cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades? Will you allow MoveOn, The Nation and Ben & Jerry to put the brakes on our Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a ‘99% Spring’ reelection campaign for President Obama?"

Skepticism of electoral politics runs deep in the Occupy movement and it could affect the ability of Democrats to mobilize activists during the 2012 campaign, despite attempts to appropriate the "99 percent" rhetoric. But Todd Gitlin, a former leader of the 1960s group, Students for a Democratic Society, who has just published a book on Occupy, believes the concerns of some in the movement are "outlandish."

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http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... c-pet?lite

elfismiles wrote:... speaking of provocateurs:

Occupy Beltane: Anarchists Plot To Bomb Cuyahoga Bridge
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2012/ ... ane-1.html


... it's a great new market: ProvocaTourism!!

Yes Miles, provacatuers. Sure. Not the angry & disempowered youth you see in those photos, but police agent infiltrators. Because, after all, what about this society could possibly cause the youth to act out in such rage?

Just for the record, I want to make it clear that I neither support nor endorse, to any degree, the sort of violent tactics embraced by these kids.

That said, I would invite you to take a closer look at those photos. Those kids, imho, are m,ostly just pissed off at police brutality, racism, wage slavery, classism, etc.

I know those kids, from Eugene to Olympia, Asheville to Austin. I've lived with them, I've worked with them, and I've tried along with other activists and organizers to encourage non-violent action when they have suggested otherwise. They are usually too infuriated by the brutality and injustice of the system to understand that violence is unaceptable.

If you had hung around down at City Hall during OA, you'd have been able to meet their counterparts in your own back yard.

They are angry. They are righteous-idignant. They are big-hearted and feel the need to protect the poor, oppressed, and neglected by any means they can. They feel that our non-violent tactics are not enough. They often lack the insight and intellectual sophistication to understand that violence will not overcome violence. They are not agent-provocatuers.

Behind the mask of a provocatuer is the face of a pig, not the face of a poor, disturbed, angry 'anarchist' kid.

Hola MayDay!

For the record, which kids are we talking about here? These kids the article I linked to was talking about:



I was speaking generally, speculating that the folks in the pic above are likely just easily misled like so many others:

Homegrown Terror Threat “Manufactured”: NYU Study
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... =8&t=33325

Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.
By DAVID K. SHIPLER / Published: April 28, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opini ... e-fbi.html

I can completely understand the angry youth you describe. I often feel the same way and cracking skulls, or at most really just smashing windows, seems almost acceptable.

I wasn't trying to smear or defame whomever it is you think I was talking about.

MayDay wrote:

Yes Miles, provacatuers. Sure. Not the angry & disempowered youth you see in those photos, but police agent infiltrators. Because, after all, what about this society could possibly cause the youth to act out in such rage?

Just for the record, I want to make it clear that I neither support nor endorse, to any degree, the sort of violent tactics embraced by these kids.

That said, I would invite you to take a closer look at those photos. Those kids, imho, are m,ostly just pissed off at police brutality, racism, wage slavery, classism, etc.

I know those kids, from Eugene to Olympia, Asheville to Austin. I've lived with them, I've worked with them, and I've tried along with other activists and organizers to encourage non-violent action when they have suggested otherwise. They are usually too infuriated by the brutality and injustice of the system to understand that violence is unaceptable.

If you had hung around down at City Hall during OA, you'd have been able to meet their counterparts in your own back yard.

They are angry. They are righteous-idignant. They are big-hearted and feel the need to protect the poor, oppressed, and neglected by any means they can. They feel that our non-violent tactics are not enough. They often lack the insight and intellectual sophistication to understand that violence will not overcome violence. They are not agent-provocatuers.

Behind the mask of a provocatuer is the face of a pig, not the face of a poor, disturbed, angry 'anarchist' kid.

Watch Coverage of May Day Events from Media for the 99 Percent | NationofChange
http://www.nationofchange.org/watch-cov ... 1335886747



Call to Action: Occupy May Day | NationofChange
http://www.nationofchange.org/call-acti ... 1335885724


Day 226: Live Stream of the Occupy Movement | NationofChange
http://www.nationofchange.org/live-stre ... 1316970901

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/04/30/ ... tan-banks/

"NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Envelopes containing white powder turned up at multiple banks in Manhattan on Monday, police told 1010 WINS.

Five of the envelopes were sent to Wells Fargo banks, one was sent to JP Morgan Chase headquarters and another was sent to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office and ended up in a mailroom on Gold Street.

The powder was determined to be cornstarch, police said.

Hazmat teams and detectives were dispatched to banks all afternoon checking for possible threats, 1010 WINS’ Sonia Rincon reported.

The envelopes also contained notes that were nearly identical, containing references to “May Day,” which falls on May 1 and is a traditional rally day for labor movements.

The notes also included statements such as “You have 10 seconds to stop working,” “You are not in control” and “[Expletive] the banks.”

Occupy Wall Street is planning a big demonstration Tuesday in New York City, urging followers to block traffic at bridges and tunnels to make it hard for people to get to work.

That has the NYPD suspecting that there may be an Occupy Wall Street connection to the letters.

“I’m not aware of any unions who are actually striking, but the message seems to be connected to that, saying ‘Stop work, you have 10 seconds to do it,’” Browne told 1010 WINS’ Rincon."
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This is, imo, just as likely a ploy by the banks to paint #OWS as wannabe violent terrorists as it the work of some lone 'anarchist' nut job. Convenient timing on all these 'violent anarchist' stories, although not surprising in the least.

That said, I must add that I am concerned that some sort of mayhem could go down tonight.

2 years ago I attended a May Day gathering in a park in downtown Asheville, NC. There were nearly 200 local anarchist kids present, most of them apparently of the balck bloc variety. Many of them were college students at nearby Warren Wilson. I knew some of them from recent potlucks and demos. At the end of the day, the whole throng of them headed off to a 'warehouse dance party' in the bar district. When the people I was hanging out with asked if we should follow, I said, "Let's stay here in the park and have some more beers. Those people look mean and angry, and they're probably up to no good tonight."

The result:

http://www2.wspa.com/news/2010/may/03/d ... ar-143725/

Asheville, N.C. --

The Asheville Police Department held a news conference Monday afternoon to address the weekend vandalism and damages in the Battery Park area.

Authorities say shortly before 11 p.m. on Saturday, they responded to the downtown area in reference to a group of people who were smashing windows on cars and buildings.

They say the suspected vandals were wearing masks and face coverings and are estimated to have damaged at six vehicles and seven businesses, doing an estimated $18,000 worth of damage.

Thirty people, were involved, Asheville police said during a news conference Monday afternoon. 11 were arrested.

Investigators took eleven people into custody.

Detectives have issued 112 warrants for Damage to Property. The 11 were also charged with a total of 33 felonies, 3 felonies for each suspect. The three felony charges were felony riot, felony conspiracy to riot and felony damaged property.

The news of the riot was reported on an anarchist site (click here to view) where members are soliciting donations for bail money for the suspects in the riot.
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Btw- The tv news clip in that link is full of distortions- for one, most of these young people are pro-immigrant rights, not against.

It's sad to see the reaction of the authorities when this sort of thing goes down in a small city. Inevitably, for weeks or even months afterward, the police take out they're anger on the homeless, the dirty, the poor, the lower class that these 'slumming' kids, often from privileged back grounds, claim to champion in their violent actions. Ironic.

Protesters hit streets for May Day rallies; violence flares in Oakland, Seattle
By Miranda Leitsinger, msnbc.com
Updated at 4 P.M. ET: Protesters across the world hit the streets Tuesday on May Day to rally against austerity measures and call for higher wages and more jobs.

Marches turned violent in Oakland, where protesters pounded on bank windows and went face-to-face with a police line, and in Seattle, where protesters dressed in black smashed windows and police pepper-sprayed some in the crowds.

---

In the United States, the protests are seen as the biggest test for the Occupy movement since many of its camps were shuttered late last year. Occupiers in more than 100 cities across the country were expected to protest on the day that traditionally celebrates workers’ rights.

--
"We’ve got hundreds of people out already and I know a lot of people are going to be trickling in as the day goes along. We’ve had pickets at the Bank of America, Chase, Disney,” Mark Bray of the Occupy Wall Street PR team said as protesters in Manhattan chanted "We are the 99 percent" in the background. “(The) mood is very spirited, the rain is lightening up.”

Occupy Cleveland cancels protest, distances itself from alleged bomb plot
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About 1,000 Occupy protesters were based at New York's Bryant Park. As about 250 protesters left to march on banks after noon, they chanted "Out of the stores, into the streets" and "Banks got bailed out; we got sold out."

Robby McGeddon, 47, a tech worker carrying a maypole for May Day, said, “There's too much fear for the general public to actually want to strike. They don’t want to lose their job. ... We haven’t reached that tipping point where people are more frightened for some place to live. ... It will get to the tipping point but right now we're just practicing.”

“We're trying to find new, positive community-building ways to engage and protest and be a part of the burgeoning civil dialogue about what this country should be doing," said Daphne Carr, 33, co-organizer of the Occupy Music Working Group.

About 300 musicians led a march of about 1,000 up Fifth Avenue to Union Square in Mahattan.

Carr said music making "has been eroded from our public sphere so we're taking and re-claiming the right to play music publicly together in the streets, in the parks without permits, and that it's a safe and natural part of being a part of the city.”

"Get a job," one man said as he elbowed his way through the crowd of protesters.

Elsewhere:

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http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... attle?lite

Union Sq. is packed, thousands of people! #ows #OccupyWallStreet #m1gs #MAYDAY http://pic.twitter.com/WPLXDboH

Stockadamus™ ‏ @Stockadamus
MUST SEE VIDEO Union Square http://youtu.be/kaqIFwIK21c #RT #RETWEET #occupywallstreet #OWS OCCUPY Dow Jones #obama2012 #earnings

40s Cuddlyfinger ‏ @Cuddlyfinger
.@OccupyFresno holds May 1 protest at bank branch http://bit.ly/KFSu7h #OWS #OccupyWallstreet #Mayday

1m Ron Lewenberg ‏ @NYCRight
#OccupyWallStreet thugs who sent white powder committed terrorism. Send 'em to Gitmo, and investigate OWS using the Patriot Act.

10m NYCLU ‏ @nyclu
Das Racist on stage now #occupywallstreet #ows Union Square
Retweeted by ShannonOccupyDaytona

http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/% ... wallstreet

Immortal Technique live now:

http://www.ustream.tv/timcast#utm_campa ... ium=social

Just now.

This, from "the media consortium", is up and running today. It seems to be working smoothly, with plenty of updates, photos, tweets and articles from around the world.
http://mediaforthe99percent.com/


Oakland. May Day 2012.

OCCUPYINTERVIEW Radio E6 - Guest Kevin Ryan Occupy 911

http://occupyamerica.ning.com/profiles/ ... ccupy-9-11

Now these appear to be provocatuers. Note the almost identical, brand new shoes, clothes, and backpacks. Not the typical black bloc, in my opinion.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/01/se ... ay-mayhem/

I could be wrong, but this scene looks pretty fishy to me. Something tells me there's a pigs face behind each of those masks.