A video has been circulating of a white man casually smashing the windows of a Minneapolis shop with a hammer during protests against the police murder of George Floyd. The man is clearly trying to hide his identity by wearing a gas mask, carrying a large umbrella, and wearing full-length black clothing.

Protesters can be seen intervening to stop his destructive behavior in the video.

“Are you a fucking cop?” one asks.

An officer with the Saint Paul Police Department has been publicly named by someone identified as the officer’s ex-wife, who said his voice, walk and gas mask made her “90% sure” it was him. The Saint Paul Police Department has denied this.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it is a very safe bet that it’s a law enforcement officer of some kind. Disruptive police infiltration of protest movements is a historical constant in America, after all. It is the norm, not the exception.

Protests have spread throughout the United States since the emergence of that footage. Local outlet KHOU 11 News was told by the Houston police department that protests over George Floyd’s murder would be attended by both “uniformed officers and plain-clothed officers”. This admission cannot be found in KHOU’s reporting any longer, but it has been screenshotted and still shows up on Google searches as of this writing.

In New York, protesters have conclusively worked out that cops posing as demonstrators are currently wearing white armbands to identify each other. Ways of identifying plain-clothes cops are being circulated by protesters on social media.

None of these people are paranoid or irrational. For generations it has been a well-established fact that police will reliably infiltrate protests and political movements, and it remains so to this day.

From J Edgar Hoover’s illicit COINTELPRO infiltration campaign to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise Neutralize” dissident political movements, all the way up to infiltration and espionage targeting Black Lives Matter and Occupy protesters, police infiltration of American protests has been as certain as death and taxes.

A 2012 Truthdig article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers titled “Infiltration of Political Movements Is the Norm in America” goes into this time-honored tradition at some length. Here’s an excerpt [bold font mine]:

How many agents or infiltrators can we expect to see inside a movement? One of the most notorious “police riots” was at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Independent journalist Yasha Levine writes: “During the 1968 protests of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which drew about 10,000 protesters and was brutally crushed by the police, 1 out of 6 protesters was a federal undercover agent. That’s right, 1/6th of the total protesting population was made up of spooks drawn from various federal agencies. That’s roughly 1,600 people! The stat came from an Army document obtained by CBS News in 1978, a full decade after the protest took place. According to CBS, the infiltrators were not passive observers, monitoring and relaying information to central command, but were involved in violent confrontations with the police.”

 

Peter Camejo, who ran as a Socialist Workers Party candidate for president in 1976, as a Green Party candidate for governor of California in 2003 and as Ralph Nader’s vice presidential running mate in 2004, often told of infiltration in his mid-’70s presidential campaign. After campaign offices were burglarized, Camejo was able to get the FBI into court by suing it over COINTELPRO activities. The judge asked the FBI special agent in charge how many FBI agents had worked in Camejo’s presidential campaign; the answer was 66. Camejo estimated he had a campaign staff of 400 across the country. Once again that would be an infiltration rate of about one in six. Camejo discovered that among the agents was his campaign co-chair. He also discovered eavesdropping equipment in a campaign office and documents showing the FBI had followed him since he was an 18-year-old student activist.

One in six. That’s a whole lot.

https://twitter.com/britrican/status/1266548802841833473

This is important for all of us to be aware of, not just the people attending these protests. Any time we are told a protester threw this or “rioters” set fire to that, we must take this information with a very large grain of salt, because we usually won’t be able to know it wasn’t an undercover cop acting as an agent provocateur to shape a narrative and justify more use of force to disperse the crowd. The idiot with the umbrella did it in a very ham-fisted and obvious way, and we can expect other police infiltrators to be more clever about it as well.

This is not to say none of the anger we’ve seen exhibited at these protests is real and grassroots; people have a lot to be angry about, and surely much of the destruction we’re seeing is the organic result of way too many people being pushed way too far by a cruel and abusive system. It’s just to say that we should all be as skeptical as we would be when dealing with any other narratives we know powerful factions have a vested interest in manipulating, and not treat any claim about protester behavior as a certain fact.

The powerful few are afraid of the many. Always have been, always will be. And there’s nothing they and their goon squad won’t do to try and rein in any group which poses a threat to their power if they can get away with it.

Correction: This article has been updated to remove a section about a video shared by journalist Max Blumenthal purporting to have discovered undercover police in an unmarked vehicle. The men in the video were not police, and were with CNN as one of them initially asserted. Blumenthal has removed the video and issued a clarification and apology.

_____________________

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59 responses to “Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, And Police Infiltration Of US Protests”

  1. is it police infiltration or DOD, daddy bush started many cia type departments at DOD – Department of Defense after cia whistleblowers testified in Congress about severals different things over the years.

  2. William Arkin wrote in Newsweek over a month ago that the U.S. military had been activated, he seemed upset. Mr. Arkin has a twitter with link to his blog. twitter look up Continuity of government COG. despite censorship have been some interesting comments.

  3. Another good indy reporter showing police violence all across the U.S., David Doel (the Rational National). a Canadian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3DX3SLGB34

  4. Saturday night I was downtown
    Working for the FBI
    Sitting in a nest of bad men
    Whiskey bottles piling high
    Bootlegging boozer on the west side
    Full of people who are doing wrong
    Just about to call up the DA man
    When I heard this woman singing a song

    Awesome bass line here. I suspect that if the KKK (for example) still exists at all, we can probably bet that one in three members is undercover working for some kind of law enforcement agency. The problem is that when they get bored or else need to justify such existence it becomes time to initiate some illegal action for which they will be held harmless while any morons who are not actually getting paid to be there go down for it. Just for fun, try to locate and visit a local FBI, CIA, ATF or other such agency. It seems they had to start hiding themselves even from the very citizens they serve. Now that’s really a shame.

  5. Back in the 80s I had a buddy whose father had been a precinct Captain in Virginia in the 1960s. My friend’s father was PROUD to have acted as a pro-government goon squad leader by organizing agent provocateurs. One of his strategies was to offer early parole to black prisoners who were willing to do their dirty work, thus discrediting civil rights and anti-war protests. Their tactics never change much, do they?

  6. Government has no “authority” to infiltrate anyone until a crime is committed, and evidence is gathered, the suspect identified by witnesses, who’ve sworn before a judge” according to established law. We don’t have a government under law, we have a government beside the law, intent on the ultimate destruction our Country, the vast majority of its population, and this “carnivorous carnival” was merely a tool to begin the step by step destruction.
    I expect there will be riots continuing, until the other three Cops, not civilians, are returned to duty, charged with conspiracy and anything else under the rule of law, and also indicted and tried. That would be my own standard, and I will protest with them, until such has been done.
    There is no excuse to “fire the cops”, pretend they’ve fixed the problem, then blame “The People” who’ve been told, “you don’t count, at all”, when they reply with their own form of destruction. These are people with little hope of making a living again, much less a good living, they’ve been run into their homes, based on Bill Gate’s plans for the world, and what else can they do, to have their city, their lives, their future back? I know of no way to return, and I don’t believe any who suggest they know of such a thing.
    When the government isn’t under the rule of law, it is not representative of “The People”, they must do what they have to, to force those once elected, to obey “Our Law”, not their own, personal edicts. Governors have no authority to make law, and no one has authority to overrule “natural rights”, not only those enumerated in our Constitution, but all “Natural Rights” to be found, precisely as our founders did, by logic, reason, basic principle.
    Semper Fidelis,
    John McClain
    Vanceboro, NC, USA

  7. The umbrella might seem a bit eccentric, but not so much if you take into consideration that it would help a drone pick him out from the crowd, when and if thought necessary. Imagine if more demonstrators had surrounded him.

  8. Debs once said that ‘the thud of a policeman’s club on the head of a striking workman is merely the echo of the last election.’

  9. The irony for protesters is that as soon as the protests turn, shall we say, violent, a lot of cops are going to start “feeling that their lives are being threatened” …….. and you know what cops start doing when they “feel that their lives are being threatened” (or even when their lives are denfintely not being threatened). They start killing and killing and killing until the “threat” is “neutralized”.
     
    Again, exactly HOW do “revolutions” start? Are they well-thought out affairs, or are the kind of ……….. spontaneous?

    1. Johny Conspiranoid Avatar
      Johny Conspiranoid

      Revolutions start when the controlled oposition slips out of control. See Lenin and controlled oposition.

  10. Twitter took down the Max Blumenthal links. Twitter is aligned with the Democratic Party. Taking down the links shows that Twitter defends police brutality and criminality. It isn’t just the Republicans. Both parties are criminal. Wait until Kamala Harris replaces Biden for the Democratic Nominee. She will make Trump look like Mr. Rogers.

    1. People are forgetting the empty camps built out west during Obama years. It was not democrats but the deep state preparing for what is to come. Mass incarcaration is coming. Gather protesters up or maybe gather illegals up. The constitution is fraying right now.

      1. Those were built during W’s years.

  11. It was said among some in the irreverent New Lefties of the 1960s that during the 1950s the old-line Communist Party of the USA was infiltrated by so many FBI informants that they kept the party solvent. The informants were the only party members that paid their dues regularly. Of course, this makes sense. Hoover needed the CPUSA to sustain the myth of the domestic “Red Menace” that he used to justify the bureau’s budget.

  12. Corruption in law enforcement has always been a pretty big problem. ‘Plain clothes officers’ and ‘under cover officers’ and ‘off duty officers’ and just plain old ‘don’t give a fuck officers’ are kind of a thing in America.
    There is a ‘theory’ within certain law enforcement circles that ‘controlling’ criminal activity is the best way to ‘protect the public’ from it. That’s good news for us, because if they were merely running a protection and collection racket, as regards the aforementioned criminal activity, we would (of course) be more ‘totally fucked’ than we already know we are.

  13. There are posters here on Ms Johnstones website that question the “virus”; this article should please them!
    Germanys federal government and mainstream media are engaged in damage control after a report that challenges the established Corona narrative leaked from the interior ministry. This article can be read here:
    German Official Leaks Report Denouncing Corona as “A Global False Alarm” by Pozzati Daniele!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/29/german-official-leaks-report-denouncing-corona-as-global-false-alarm/

    1. That report has been disproved. The document was created by a single employee and a couple of independent scientists who distributed it on Ministry letterhead without authorization. The site you link to above, the Strategic Culture Foundation is a Russian site which the Department of State lists as part of the Russian Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem.
      https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-Russia%E2%80%99s-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Ecosystem_08-04-20.pdf

  14. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    Any healthy functioning society allows a certain vested segment of the population to have certain “extra powers” the group at large does not possess in order to fulfill some kind of important necessary social function purportedly intended to benefit “the many”.

    There are three necessary ingredients for this to work. The first is, the special vested group must perform its duties rightfully and in good faith. Secondly, the population at large (the “many”) participates in good faith making this relationship work and the contract effective. And the third? The real glue that makes this relationship work is TRUST. “The many” (and the special group) must have trust that the system and all its participants will perform their assigned duties and purposes as this social contract intends when the social contract was initially established.

    When any participant fails to act in good faith, that trust is severed and lost and the overall contract is permanently broken (and void?).

    There are many countries and societies around the world (most?) where that basic trust and social contract have long been obliterated. What remains is the shallow appearance of some kind of social order without any true underling trust or good faith. And “the many” know it and feel it. A “pretend” social order.

    This is what we are seeing amplified today. Trust is gone. The contract is broken. What remains is the heavy-handed wielding of power without regard for its true purpose or good intention.

  15. This outstanding article should be shared as widely as possible. All pro-worker, anti-establishment activists need this information at their fingertips. Excellent reporting and research, Caitlin. You, along with Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Aaron Mate, Dylan Ratigan, Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, Max Blumenthal, Kyle Kulinski, Lee Camp, Niko House, Fiorella Isabel, Krystal Ball, Hard Lens Media, Kim Iversen, James Corbett, Tim Black, Eric Zuesse, Whitney Webb — along with other worthies who have surely slipped my aging mind — comprise the crucial independent media on whom we the people now rely for truth, insight, and a basic reality check. Thank you for serving as our media. You’re a thousand times better than your MSM equivalents whose abject sold-out nefariousness the oligarchy rewards with dollars.

    (paragraph) At first I thought the window-breaker could be antifa, given his black, disguised attire, but your links prove he’s a cop, a paid infiltrator from the oligarchy. Now I wonder if the ever-spontaneous Trump made the same mistake and am hoping he did, so that he can wake up to what’s happening (long shot, I know). Jimmy Dore, who grew up in a cop family, knew immediately that the window-breaker was an undercover cop.

    (paragraph) A positive insight occurred from these events, and maybe it will encourage others. I’d been fearing a Mad Max scenario in response to the government’s Covid lockdown/sudden poverty move, an onrush of desperate citizens charging into bordering middle/working class neighborhoods in search of food and money, but instead my people are out in the streets taking on those who guard the oligarchy. The citizens vs. the system. This is the correct target. Looks like our indy media has reached a lot of us. Again, thank you.

    1. 2 minutes of my life I won’t get back. Keeping it relevant would be nice.

  16. How protest get abused by the armed rightwing nuts:

    “We are under attack by right wing forces who are burning post offices (we would not do that/trust me) and beloved community institutions (Gandhi Mahal/Migizi Communications).

    They are taking out whole blocks with military level training arson tactics in under an hour.

    While protesters target major corporate chains, these guys reduce everything to ash.
    https://louisproyect.org/2020/05/30/are-riots-revolutionary/

    Last night it got real personal, because they started burning residential homes, over here on the Southside.

    Their goal is to push us all over the edge where this spirals into an actual war.

    Where people feel so abandoned that we all start shooting at each other. Where the chaos grows so great that Trump has to send in the army and declare martial law, and start shooting.

    And guess who they will be shooting? Not the heavily armed White Guys from Texas. No it will be who they always shoot…Black, Brown, Native, PoC…our neighbors.”

    1. I have heard other conspiracy theories just as credible. But to say they are right wing is only partial. Left wing forces are just as deadly. The far left and far right are both equally dangerous to society. Either or both could be doing this or it could just be some really pissed off people venting their frustration.

      1. “Left wing forces are just as deadly”

        I regard those advocating and practicing aimless violence not “left-wing”.

        If there is a socialist reorganization of society along co-operative lines and the public ownership of the means of production possible – it can only be achieved by a democratic process undertaken by the majority.
        This of course can include defenses against the presently minority owners of capital and resources, but those are targeted measures to further the actions decided upon by the majority.
        That is the difference between rebellion that is violence without a clearly defined goal and methodology to achieve such goals, undertaken by a minority actually endangering the lives of the majority not in support and a revolution that is supported by the majority of those who are dependent on the good-will of a small elite controlling most aspects of public and private life to further their further accumulation of wealth and with it power.

        Maybe one should read again those who analysed the deep contradictions of a capitalist way of organizing society and production:
        https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

        Unless done democratically, supported by the majority of those that are way, a ruling class again – see the example USSR and China – will develop that controls society as an elite after such a “revolution” by a minority.

        https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/05/young-white-men-abuse-george-floyd-protests-for-violence-and-looting.html#more

        1. Antifa is far left and dangerous. Open your eyes. You are speaking of center left which align with center right. The fringes on left and right are the true danger. Admit it internally and you will see the center is under attack.

          1. Khatika:
            Wow, you’ve a firm grip on the underlying psychology at work. -Rick

          2. Wasn’t Anifa operative recently in Syria under the ISIS label? They like the same color, seem to have similar objectives. Franchising is the way to go … Talk about danger!

  17. Hope Sheets Sanford Avatar
    Hope Sheets Sanford

    Max Blumenthal’s tweet/video is unavailable via your links and my efforts to hunt it down on twitter. Anyone know how to view it?

    1. Same, it looks as though it’s been memory holed.

  18. No! No! No!—Caitlin. Not police infiltrators, but A N T I F COM provocateurs, paid by Commie Soros, and bussed to location—just exactly what happened in Charlottesville (( that’s the documentation I had planned to mail to you )).
    -Rick

    1. AntifaCom, Caitlin ! ! !

      Anarchical Communists.

      -Rick

      1. Yeah, they can’t be anarchico-capitalists. Different M.O.

    2. very possible and probable. Busing people in has been used alot.

  19. Jesus is coming back very soon!

    Yeah, waiting since about 0030/33…or maybe jesus was just some itinerant preacher whom Paulus elevated to the status of a god.

  20. Michel Bélisle Avatar
    Michel Bélisle

    Something is certain: the Truth from Jesus.

    And again, in our times where lies are everywhere and the truth difficult to find, we have to admit that it is again the Catholic Church which is standing for the Truth:

    https://stmarcelinitiative.com/admirable-appeal/

    Keeping my Rosary on hand! Jesus is coming back very soon!

    1. While they’re busy buggering little children.

      Fuck the Church!

  21. Mr. Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, and many city police forces throughout these United States purposely created “violent or unethical incidents ” that always was used to ” justify” the use of ” lethal force ” on U.S. citizens. Our government has done this from its inception and it has no intention to change. The ” streets ” belong to the owners and the masters; they do not belong to the people. If you dare to ” go up against the system ” you had better be aware of all the ” traps” you are going to have to avoid. Every human being around you might be a ” spy ” hoping to entrap you in a plot ” and eliminate you and your goals before you even get started. Alone, and non-violent, is always the safest way to proceed.

  22. Mary Wildfire Avatar
    Mary Wildfire

    Two stories. I have heard that especially in some communist cells decades ago, it turned out that virtually ALL the members were FBI…
    In about 2001, when there was one of those G20 or maybe it was World Bank meetings in Genoa, Italy, there was a much publicized incident in which cops shot dead a young protester. Less publicized was that cops went into a school temporarily unused due to construction, where protesters were meeting and sleeping, in the night and beat the living shit out of people in their sleeping bags, till blood spattered the walls and dozens were taken to hospitals. And I saw a report from someone who claimed to have video proof of “black-clad protesters” jumping out of a police van in the morning, who then went into a major protest area and began smashing up parked cars and the windows of small businesses ( unlike the real Black Bloc, who hit the chains, not the mom-and-pops), and then moved on, followed by police who attacked the real demonstrators,. Thus the media captured what appeared to be demonstrators smashing things without reason, and the cops “appropriately” retaliating–against actually peaceful demonstrators, while the black-clad cops moved along to the next group of demonstrators.

    1. This is all true. At the time, it was G8.
      To Italy’s credit full light was thrown on the issue, the perpetrators (Cops) were prosecuted and convicted.

  23. The absolutely worst criminals rule us. They lack any morals whatever. They far outdo any versions folks may have imagined for Satan etc. in very real ugliness and lethality. They are the source of most of the suffering in our world.

  24. It’s really sad that the shops that were destroyed and looted were small business owners in Minneapolis. But the police were in a solid line protecting the big Talbot store down the street.

    1. Nice observation. Talbot probably hired a bunch of off duty cops to do that.

  25. The “Political Economy” is our human life-support ecosystem within the larger life support system of global life.
    The political economy is based on the harness of one way flows from higher to lower energy and order, like burning oil and coal, to power further extraction of fuel and ore from this fair planet. This particular iteration of political economy is the most successful ever and is eating up all the good stuff, which is now terminally depleted, while it fouls air and water that life forms need to survive. This needs to be redirected without killing us all.
    The directors are willing to sacrifice some of us, as they always do, but they are not willing to resign as directors, and give up their unique advantages as such.
    It’s an impasse. What would make them give up hope, capitulate, and let different people work out a different system that would not destroy all life, while supporting human lives?
    Loss of the internet has come to mind, but that can never happen, right?
    http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/nothing-to-trust.html

  26. The techniques used by the ruling Elites to suppress protest and revolt are quite interesting.

    One main one is to divide the protesters. If protesters are protesting and angry over police violence, make the issue all about race. Tell blacks that they have a right to be angry, but seperate them from their supporter by trying to tell any Whites that this is a black thing only. If they resist, if they start to talk about their White friends who have been murdered and beaten by the police, then deploy the big race cards and convince the White people that this is all their fault and that they should be ashamed for even living and that they have no right joining Blacks in protests against the system, now described as a “racist system” because this is to be made all about race.

    Another tactic is to deploy scare tactics. Remind any middle class, or by now, rapidly falling out of the middle class people that the Police infiltrate all protests and it is very dangerous for people to leave their homes and protests against a system that wants to kill them and has already destroyed their lives. Big stories about all the nasty things the police will do to the protesters. Remind people that dissent is dangerous, and that they can be killed to if they dare to protest.

    These are just a couple of chapters from the Oligarch Handbook.

    PS … Don’t forget that they are all the same and to remind people that voting against the Great Leader will accomplish nothing.

    1. Divide and rule will fail, as it does periodically, because we all need a new social contract for the next 60-80 years. The elites can’t give anything up to that end yet, but they will, when the trapdoor opens beneath their feet.

  27. Thanks for pointing this out, Caitlin. I’ve often wondered if Antifa worldwide is not in fact controlled at the strategic level by deep state operatives. Strategy of tension and all that. The entire history of the last 150 years or so could be more accurately re-written to give major influence to spies, assassins, and provocateurs employed by the oligarchic establishment. Of course, that’s a conspiracy theory and one not approved by the rulers.

  28. Caitlin, you know the police just do this to protect us. Everyone knows protesting leads to terrorism just like marajuana leads to crystal meth. Thank goodness they are posing as protesters to catch them before they strap on a belt of explosives and come into McDonalds while I am enjoying my BigMac.

  29. During the sixties, the CIA kept the antiwar counterculture fuelled with LSD, MJ and acid rock. Meanwhile, the FBI funded and infiltrated the KKK and the Black Panthers. When Epstein evidence refused Arkancide, and RussiaGate impeachment fizzled, the demonic warlords released their WuFlu bioweapon. As this provocateur event was playing out, they staged an antifa, crisis actor cop show to drive their well honed racial wedge. Only, it is having blowback.

    Veritas vos Liberate !

    1. Oh, and the CIA & FBI involvement in JFK, MLK, RFK & 9/11….the NATO/DARPA WuFlu bio terrorism.

  30. Nice job, but of course at the end of the day almost all of the many will roll over and throw their nearest and dearest under the bus, if push comes to shove, so there are no heroes and the victims are little better than the victimizers.

    1. The people are disorganized and dispersed. There is not a narrative or vision of the world offered to them worth dying for. So they will continue to struggle, and like those who are drowning, potentially pull their would-be rescuers down with them.
      Until us.

  31. Indeed, there is absolutely nothing the Psychopaths In Charge will NOT do to cement and maintain their power. For God’s sake they don’t balk at mass murder. Why would they balk at infiltrating opposition? Fear and division are the primary tools of tyrants, and they appear to be in full play, with the Mockingbird Media cheering it on. I have seen nothing but disgust displayed toward the obvious murder committed by this particular officially armed thug, by any political faction, except the local officially armed thug organisation, which has largely kept its mouth shut. To suggest there is a racist attempt to justify it is absurd. Indeed, to suggest more should be done than has been done would be to suggest a lynching. The officially armed thugs across the US routinely assassinate US citizens, of any race, and just as routinely get away with it. In fact, they are more likely to show restraint toward minority groups in fear of exactly what is happening now. Every thing is going exactly as the Psychopaths In Charge designed it to go. As long as we are at each other’s throats, they continue their crimes unabated.

    1. We could live in a sustainable, just, free, and peaceful world. And yet we are descending into a world of perpetual wars; slavery; ignorance; overwork side by side with unemployment; vacant homes side by side with homelessness; specialization; crass materialism; contaminated food, water, and air; destitution; despair.

      Since the men in the shadows are not about to change, the only hope is their removal from power—by any means necessary. Unfortunately, given these men’s cohesiveness and organizational skills, given their power over our minds, given their ability to convince the vast majority to act against its convictions and interests, given their success in establishing cross-generational dynasties, such removal presents humanity with a herculean task.

      Most left-wing movements get into power without having properly thought out what they’ll do once in power and without a realistic understanding of the deep lack of belief in democratic norms by their right-wing opponents. Break your enemy’s power. If you’re any sort of left-winger worth your salt, you ethically do not believe in huge concentrations of power and money in the hands of a few people anyway. Act on your beliefs. And if they’ve committed a pile of crimes—and they almost always have—use those crimes against them.

      Then remember the world system is set up expressly to stop what you are doing. You’re tackling the dragon, and most people who do that get eaten. We tell the stories of the dragonslayers because they are so few. So, know the odds are against you and be willing to do what is required to improve them. If you aren’t, stay home.

  32. Where is the line between performance art and treason? The line between cosplay and criminality? The line between fandom and fanaticism?
    .
    Will Ferrell can dress up as Ricky Bobby, be him out and about in the real world, to promote a movie. Spiderman can kick and punch and jump around your son in Times Square—or at least he could before this whole lockdown nonsense—but if the guy does that in street clothes, well he’s probably getting maced and forced to introduce himself to all his neighbors going forward.
    .
    So again: Where is the line between performance art and treason? The line between cosplay and criminality? The line between fandom and fanaticism?
    .
    You can dress up as an airline pilot, walk around pretty much anywhere you could when not in an pilot uniform. Except, ironically enough, an airport. That’s where you’re bound to catch some flak.
    .
    Yet again: Where is the line between performance art and treason? The line between cosplay and criminality? The line between fandom and fanaticism?
    .
    You can be a Storm Trooper, a Space Captain, a Bounty Hunter, a Ninja Warrior, an evil villain or noble hero from any number of stories.
    .
    So yet again: Where is the line between performance art and treason? The line between cosplay and criminality? The line between fandom and fanaticism?
    .
    Let’s find out together.

    November 2024.

    We are coming. Expect us.
    .
    https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/05/30/18833392.php
    http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1omyaf0r73shvk/Twenty-Twenty-four.pdf/file

  33. Roland Chrisjohn Avatar
    Roland Chrisjohn

    In 2013 in Rexton, New Brunswick, RCMP vehicles were set afire during a protest against attempts to bring fracking to our province. News reports at the time

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/rcmp-protesters-withdraw-after-shale-gas-clash-in-rexton-1.2100703

    emphasized the “violence” of the protesters, and not the fact that the territory has never been vacated of aboriginal title by the Canadian government, and that therefore the continuing resource extraction (and planning of same) by multinational corporations is illegal. No news reporter attempted to get the VIN’s (and the maintenance records) of the vehicles set ablaze, and later an indigenous person in the pay of the RCMP “outed” himself publicly as the person tasked to set the police cars on fire. There are no Max Blumenthals in Canada, it seems.

    1. Naïveté is not an option if you are involved in a protest action of any kind. Remember, Police Intelligence is an oxymoron and your best protection against agent provocateurs is common sense.

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