The new “Reds under the Bed”, actually categorized as “domestic extremists”:

Don’t those people look scary to you?  

They should.  They are ……. (looking around nervously, whispering) ……. “protesters!”

Gasp!

You know, people who are well informed enough to be angry.  And angry enough to step away from their TV’s and exercise their supposed (ha!) freedom to “Assemble” and “Speechify”.  

How dare they.

It was a very sloppy policeman who dropped this “spotter card” at a protest in England.   Very sloppy.   These cards are NOT supposed to be seen by the dangerous public, you know, those people who actually employ and pay the police.   I’m sure if they catch this incompetent, he’ll be soundly punished, perhaps with some nice electrodes to his genitals.    We must ensure he never makes a similar mistake!

And I know, I know, this is in England, very far away from us, but you can bet if England is doing it, the United States is, too.   Been to any protests lately?   Seen all the cops with cameras?   There sure are a lot of them, and you can bet they’re not taking pictures for their Facebook pages.  

This kind of highly confidential document – pictured above – is rarely seen by the public.

These so-called “spotter cards” are issued by police to identify individuals they consider to be potential troublemakers because they have appeared at a number of demonstrations.

The photographs are drawn from police intelligence files. This card was apparently dropped at a demonstration against Britain’s largest arms fair in 2005.

H is Mark Thomas, the comedian and political activist. Asked why it was justifiable to put Thomas, who has no criminal record, on this card, the Metropolitan police replied: “We do not discuss intelligence we may hold in relation to individuals.”

Thomas had been acquitted of criminal damage after attaching himself to a bus containing arms traders at a previous fair.

The Met said: “This is an appropriate tactic used by police to help them identify people at specific events … who may instigate offences or disorder.”

The arms fair “is a biannual event that is specifically targeted by known protest groups, who in the past have stated their intention was to shut down or disrupt the event.” As the cards are “strictly controlled”, the officers who lost it were “dealt with”.

On Comment is Free today Thomas writes: “Protesters – or, as the police call them, ‘domestic extremists’ – are the new ‘reds under the bed’.”

I’ve never heard of Mark Thomas, but I’m a fan now.   Here’s what else he said about this discovery:

I was sent the now notorious “police spotter card” through the post. It’s an official laminated card for “police eyes only” and labelled as coming from “CO11 Public Order Intelligence Unit”. The card contained the photographs of 24 anti-arms trade protesters, unnamed but lettered A to X. My picture appeared as photo H. You can imagine my reaction at finding I was the subject of a secret police surveillance process … I was delighted. I phoned my agent and told him I was suspect H. He replied: “Next year we’ll get you top billing … suspect A.”

The Metropolitan police circulated the card specifically for the Docklands biannual arms fair in London to help its officers identify “people at specific events who may instigate offences or disorder”. Which is such a flattering quote I am thinking of having it on my next tour poster. While being wanted outside the arms fair, I was legitimately inside researching a book on the subject, and uncovered four companies illegally promoting “banned” torture equipment. Questions were later asked in the Commons as to why HM Revenue & Customs and the police didn’t spot it. Though, in fairness, none of the torture traders featured on the spotter card.

What exactly was I doing that was so awfully wrong as to merit this attention? Today’s Guardian revelations of three secret police units goes some way to explain the targeting of protesters and raises worrying questions. The job of these units is to spy on protesters, and collate and circulate information about them. Protesters – or, as the police call them, “domestic extremists” – are the new “reds under the bed”.

Many of those targeted by the police have committed no crime and are guilty only of non-violent direct action. So it is worth reminding ourselves that protest is legal. Sorry if this sounds obvious, but you might have gained the impression that if three police units are spying on and targeting thousands, then those people must be up to something illegal.

The very phrase “domestic extremist” defines protesters in the eyes of the police as the problem, the enemy. Spying on entire groups and organisations, and targeting the innocent, undermines not only our rights but the law – frightfully silly of me to drag this into an argument about policing, I know.

Protest is part of the democratic process. It wasn’t the goodwill of politicians that led them to cancel developing countries’ debt, but the protests and campaigning of millions of ordinary people around the world. The political leaders were merely the rubber stamp in the democratic process. Thus any targeting and treatment of demonstrators (at the G20 for example) that creates a “chilling effect” – deterring those who may wish to exercise their right to protest – is profoundly undemocratic.

No police, secret or otherwise, should operate without proper accountability. So how are these three units accountable? Who has access to the databases? How long does information remain in the system? What effect could it have on travel and future employment of those targeted? How closely do these units work with corporate private investigators, and does the flow of information go both ways? Do the police target strikers?

A police spokesman has said that anyone who finds themselves on a database “should not worry at all”. When a spokesman for the three secret units will not disclose a breakdown of their budgets, and two of the three will not even name who heads their operations (even MI6 gave us an initial, for God’s sake), then the words “should not worry at all” are meaningless. Indeed, when the police admit that someone could end up on a secret police database merely for attending a demonstration, it is exactly the time to worry.

This is what we’re up against.  

And I am reminded of this quote, which I happened to look up this morning for a response in another post here.   Many seem to have forgotten it especially those in charge:

JFK: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Why have they forgotten or ignored this?    

One thing I really like about this place is how most of the folks here aren’t in the junior-high-school style rah-rah-rah bullshit mode of  “The Dems are OUR team and that other team sucks and is the cause of all our problems!”

Most of us have outgrown that.   It’s why we’re here and not at that other place, where that attitude prevails.

So this is why I wanted to share something I saw today, it’s a most fantastic documentary on the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.   It’s called “RFK Must Die:  The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy” and was made by a filmmaker named Shane O’Sullivan, and broadcast on the BBC.   You can rent it, or buy it now.   I happened to catch it, quite by chance, on The Documentary Channel, which is right next to CNN (ha!) on Dish TV.

The reason I’m sharing this is because many of the conversations here, about such things, always seem to lead to “well, who exactly ARE the men behind the curtain”?  

This film doesn’t answer as to exactly these people are specifically, but lets you know who they are in a general sense.

As many people have pointed out, there are a great many parallels between 9/11 and the JFK assassination, such as Peter Dale Scott in this article here (highly recommended).   And it’s obvious whoever was behind the JFK murder also committed RFK’s.  

Oddly enough, I had actually written about this documentary a little while back at DK, when I stumbled across the following:

MASHANTUCKET, Conn. — New forensics evidence presented Tuesday during a symposium at Foxwoods suggests Sirhan Sirhan did not fire the fatal shots that killed Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968.

The essay I wrote went on to discuss a few other details, such as this:

These guys aren’t the first to consider a “second gunman”.  The first was probably the Los Angeles corner who did the autopsy, Thomas Noguchi.  In his autobiography, he reports:

“Until more is precisely known…the existence of a second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.”

Why would he say such a thing?  Well, even before these new recordings came out in which 13 shots are heard (and Sirhan Sirhan’s gun only held eight bullets), Noguchi discovered that there were more bullet wounds than there were bullets — considering that RFK had been shot with four bullets, and there were five people also wounded, presumably by five more bullets.  The LAPD rationalized this by saying that some of the wounds must have been caused by one bullet hitting more than one victim, and they even presented an extremely convoluted case as to all the whacky trajectories the bullets must have taken.  However, the main sticking point, the point that probably haunted Noguchi, and many others, is the fact that the shot that killed Kennedy was fired from just a few inches away from the back of his head, behind his ear — powder burns proved it.  Yet Sirhan Sirhan was never closer than five or six feet away, and always facing Kennedy.  

What can I possibly say to this?  

And let’s face it, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  

Listen to the people cheer, thinking he’s telling the truth.

I’m sorry, but if this doesn’t leave you feeling completely sick to your stomach, you just haven’t been paying attention.

This is one of those times where the transparency is cranked up to 11, the veil falls away, and no pretense is made as to a political figure’s true position.   This is right up there with GWB’s “I call you my base” speech, one of those sickening moments that you will probably only see in a Michael Moore film, a moment that will leave you wondering “how come nobody noticed this when it happened?”

I’ll just get right to it, even though I’m tempted to go on about how disgusting it truly is:

In a glowing tribute to a Republican predecessor, President Obama on Friday praised President George H.W. Bush as an example of someone who eschewed “a life of comfort and privilege” and instead devoted himself to public service – inside government and out.

During an evening speech to honor the public service institute that Bush founded two decades ago, Obama called for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. The former president, he said, proved that “the R or D next to your name is irrelevant” in challenging times.

“You might not always know it from watching the cable news shows or listening to folks on the radio,” Obama said, but “I think we’re standing in one of those moments.”

They were joined onstage Friday in the Texas A&M University auditorium by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who also served in the previous administration and was CIA director under the elder Bush.

Okay, I don’t even know where to begin here ….

For one thing, here’s the statement that is so ridiculously true, it’s like they are mocking us on purpose:

“the R or D next to your name is irrelevant”

That really does say it all.   There is no difference between the R’s and the D’s, especially when the D’s are honoring one of the great criminals of the 20th century, George Herbert Walker Bush.   The Bush family is nothing more than a criminal enterprise, literally a crime family, who are responsible for literally countless deaths, destruction, coups, wars, trickery, assassinations, corporate/government malfeasance, conspiracies, and worse.  

Yet here he is being “honored” by the member of the supposed “opposition” party who was swept into power by one of the greatest con jobs of all time, that of convincing the desperate American public that he was an agent of “hope” and “change”.

Wow.  

Next is the “you must think we’re really stupid” bullshit of this whole “public service” thing.   Public Service?   Are you fucking kidding me?   PUBLIC SERVICE from the BUSH FAMILY?   Is THAT what you’re CALLING IT these days?

Gangsterism, pure and simple, is now being called “Public Service”?

Sure, it’s a public service to start wars, destroy governments, conspire to assassinate folks who don’t play ball with you, to give your sons entire states to play with, to manipulate presidential elections, to con, to steal, to bankrupt …… You call that Public Service?

Okay.   In a world turned completely upside down and gone completely fucking MAD, we’ll call that Public Service from now on.

And it is utterly appropriate that they these two assholes, these two criminal fucks, were joined onstage by another monster criminal fuck, one Robert Gates, who Obama had the sheer audacity to keep on as head of the Pentagon, knowing that we wouldn’t give him one iota of shit for this.   The Obama-Con was so complete that Obama could literally wipe his ass with the Constitution on live television and everybody would swoon and cheer, and this is basically what he is doing at this point — he has done nothing but go out of his way to continue the policies of George Bush, one of the three criminal sons of the master criminal he is honoring here, knowing that nobody would say a peep and what’s more important, nobody could stop him even if they wanted to.

I don’t even know where to begin with Gates.  He’s a criminal from the GHWBush school, a crony, a former CIA guy along with “Poppy” Bush, and his rap sheet is a mile long.  Here’s just a tiny sample:

 So Goldman Sacks is making big fat gobs of money off the financial crisis.

It plans to give out $23 billion, yes, that’s billion with a B, in “bonuses” (hm, we used to call that “embezzlement”) for it’s beloved employees hard work in milking a failing US economy to the ridiculous benefit of The Firm.

Last year, Goldman Sacks paid only 14 million dollars in taxes.  Worldwide.    

Okay, what is wrong with this picture ….?

And why can’t the government do something about it?

Oh right.  The government is owned by Golden Sacks.   Geithner?   Nobody can get him on the phone EXCEPT for Golden Sacks.  They call him all they want, and he calls them, too.   They’re BFF’s!

How much is $23 Billion dollars?

For one thing, it’s enough to send 460,000 full paying students to Harvard University for one year, or 115,000 for four years.

It’s enough to pay the health insurance premium for the average American family ($13,375) 1.7 million times.

It’s enough to upgrade 191 million computers to Windows 7 operating system (priced at $119.99), or to buy 115 million iPhones at $199.99 (provided the recipient was willing to sign a two-year contract).

Or, apparently, it’s enough to reward the employees of Goldman Sachs for a bonanza trading year, at a firm where average employee compensation was recently $622,000 — and likely to be greater this year.

The $23 billion figure could leave some American taxpayers woozy — the US government bailed out Goldman Sachs with a multi-billion payment last year, which the firm has since repaid.

But while Goldman is likely to pay its biggest bonuses ever to employees, the firm pays very little in taxes worldwide. In 2008, the company was said to have paid just $14 million in taxes worldwide, and paid $6 billion in 2007.

The firm’s corporate tax rate? About 1 percent. According a prominent tax lawyer, “They have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions.”

A 1 percent tax rate?  

This is the very epitome of “laughing all the way to the bank”.

I suppose it’s good to be King.   And the King of the world right now is Goldman Sachs.

They own the place.

 

Gee, it’s a good thing the governments rode to the rescue with billions of dollars in Corporate Welfare for the lying cheating fucktards who screwed everything up, no?

Otherwise, gosh, we would have had people not being able to buy bread, power shut off to everyone, riots in the streets …

No, we would have had the banks nationalized.  Which is what should have happened in the first place.

But here with the 1-year anniversary of the collapse, we are having a ridiculous level of retroactive propagandizing BY the criminals who fucked everything up in the first place.  The same people who STILL haven’t had any new regulations to control their activities, the same people who STILL haven’t faced any repercussions for nearly destroying the economy of the western world, are now expecting us to BELIEVE their bullshit about how they managed to dodge the bullet and keep us all from anarchy and starvation …

U.K. Faced ‘Bank Runs, Riots’ as RBS and HBOS Neared Collapse

This begs the question for me — why haven’t we had a run on the banks? Who in their right mind would continue keeping their money in banks?  How stupid are people?  Wait, I already know the answer to that.

“Hey, I know we almost destroyed the world economy, and took every dollar you owned with it, but hey, it’s all good now!  Trust us!”

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — A year ago today, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and HBOS Plc were close to collapse, causing a chain reaction that could have ended with riots in U.K. cities, security analysts and economists said.

Bank failures would have forced the government to cancel police leave and deploy troops as the breakdown of the financial payments system threatened the ability of utilities to provide essential services, said David Livingstone, a fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, a former adviser to the government’s Cobra crisis response committee.

“You are talking about a situation with mass disorder and panic,” the former Royal Navy officer said in an interview. There would be “riots, pandemonium, everyone fending for themselves.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and Financial Services Authority Chairman Adair Turner met at 5 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2008, and readied a 250 billion-pound ($398 billion) rescue for the banks in the 16 hours before they opened for business the following day. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Bloomberg News one year on, the Treasury declined to say if it had a contingency plan for the two banks, then or now.

Releasing such information would probably “have a destabilizing effect on financial markets,” damage the government decision-making process and cause commercial harm to the banks involved, the Treasury said in a letter.

“In the current economic climate, economic perception, even if totally misconceived, is important and has the capacity to alter market behavior,” the government said. “To confirm or deny whether or not the information is held, either in relation to the banks mentioned in your request or more generally” would hurt the banks and the U.K.’s economic interests.

‘Catastrophic’ Costs

The crisis last year was the worst Britain had faced in peacetime, Darling told the British Broadcasting Corp. last month. The two banks were not “confident they could get to the end of the day,” on Oct. 7, King told the same program.

“You would have had unmitigated panic and a bank run,” said Tom Kirchmaier, a fellow at the London School of Economics. “People would not have been able to buy bread. The cost to the economy would have been catastrophic.”

RBS and HBOS, then in talks to be taken over by Lloyds TSB Group Plc, had more than 35 million business and individual customers with 475 billion pounds of deposits, 22 percent of the U.K. total, held at about 3,250 branches.

‘Contagious Effects’

“If RBS hadn’t been propped up as it was, in practice it would have been nationalized the following week,” former Bank of England deputy governor John Gieve said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “If RBS, HBOS, Lloyds had gone down, that would have had huge contagious effects throughout the rest of the world.”

The failure of Edinburgh-based RBS and HBOS would have had a domino-effect with customers seeking to take out their deposits from other lenders and causing a wider run on U.K. banks, said Vicky Redwood, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd.

“Trust in the banking system would have completely collapsed” and would have generated civil unrest, said Redwood. “People would have been rushing to take their money out of the other banks and you would have been heading back to the depression era.”