How to Identify an Agent Provocateur

By Occupy Taketothestreets Asheville in Occupy Asheville INFO Group

As governments around the world, including our own, face more and more popular resistance, we’re witnessing a revival of the use of agent provocateurs. An agent provocateur is the well-used tactic of using undercover military or police to join a dissenting group or protest in order to provoke others in the group to carry out illegal actions and violence. The goal is to discredit the group from the inside. Sometimes the group gets discredited with those outside. Other times the group is enticed into internal divisions and collapses.

-Drawing from several sources, experienced observers have suggested some tips for identifying such agents. They’re not foolproof, but they’re a start.

-Agents will often lack background connections or references. No one in your circles or related groups will know them.

-Agents try to keep discussions and action unproductive and still. They’ll spend plenty of time debating issues, with little action. They focus on ideas over people.

-They tend to create messes in groups and between group members. They leave chaos in their wake.

-They tend to gravitate toward people in the group who are dissatisfied. Once relationships with those folks grow, the dissatisfaction spreads.

-Some agents have been former prisoners who do this work as part of a deal. These folks tend to jump from organization to organization in a relatively short time.

-Agents don’t have known sources of income. They might have a job that doesn’t match their spending or claim their money comes from prior savings.

-They tend to provide gifts for key figures at first. This helps them build trust with the group.

-When confronted, they will get defensive and start making their own accusations.

-They act like zealots, but they don’t have the fruit of it. They have passion but don’t truly care.

-Of course, good but immature people can do all these things. Discernment involves sound judgment calls. Protection from agent provocateurs increases as your group matures. If your group has rich relationships and trust, you won’t as easily fall prey to cheap provocateurs.

For more info on Agents Provocateurs Please see our other links on ALGG that discuss Anarchists and their tactics such as vandalism and attempts to hijack the marches etc.

O'Keefe apparently has no problems breaking his probation.

                                         
       You may remember James O'Keefe from such incidents as the maligning of an ACORN official, the maligning of NPR executives, and , most notable, his attempted wire tapping of the phones of the New Orleans Senatorial office of Senator Mary Landrieu. The former landed him a felony conviction along with Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Louisiana. He was sentenced to probation, court ordered to live with his parents in Westwood, New Jersey. But this hasn't stopped O'Keefe from attempting to malign the occupywallstreet movement. This isnt the first time he has appeared in New York or Washington D.C. If O'Keefe is allowed to break his felony convicted probation, I would love to know what his probation officer thinks about it. Would you?
Darrel Naquin Federal Probation Officer New Orleans 
United States Probation Office 
New Jersey Federal Probation Supervisory Officer
Patrick Hattersley - (973)-357-4080
-humanstruggle

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Portland Pisses off Anarchists trying to incite violence

Excerts from the Occupy Seattle Forums:

We just got back from the opening march for Occupy Portland, and were even more disappointed by how liberal, reformist, and nonthreatening it was than we had expected. The website for Occupy Portland had promised that "proper actions" would be taken against "instigators" of any "illegal activity (property destruction etc.)," which we can only interpret as a threat to snitch to the cops, so we went with low expectations, but this was by all means a massive disappointment even taking into account our pessimism from the get-go.


We attended the opening march for Occupy Portland because we are some angry-ass proles who really hate capitalism. Although Occupy Wall Street (and the various off-shoot occupations) have few official defined goals or positions, there is a general opposition to "corporate greed" and "corrupt politics". As anarchists, we seek to expose and destroy the roots of these problems - as long as capitalism and the state exist, there will be greedy corporations and corrupt politicians. Capitalism and the state cannot be reformed into something kinder, gentler, or more humane, it is exploitative by nature. We wished to push the discourse at Occupy Portland in a more radical, explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-state direction.

Why are these guys always trying to take over while complaining about how no one should be in charge in the same breath? Dont you just love cognitive dissonance?

Although Occupy Wall Street and the offshoot occupations are supposed to be leaderless movements, we found that there were most definitely leaders who managed everything, from the route to the chants to who was allowed to be at the front of the march to who was allowed up on the microphone at the rally at the end of the march. To be clear, this was a hierarchical, authoritarian event. These leaders/organizers, especially the wannabe-cops wearing blue "peacekeeper" armbands, are not our comrades in any way, shape, or form. When the march stopped at Pioneer Courthouse Square, the "peacekeepers" (whose role it was to de-escalate any conflict should it arise) chanted to the bike cops something along the lines of "Thank you cops, we love you!" It should be self-evident to anyone who doesn't have their head stuck up their ass that the police are not our allies. The police protect property over people and enact violence daily along lines of oppression. The police exist to protect and serve capital. The police uphold the very institutions that the Occupy movement is supposedly fighting. When we brought out the usual anti-cop chants ("All cops are bastards, ACAB" and "No justice, no peace! Fuck the police!") we were shouted over and told to calm down. One of the peacekeepers called out on the megaphone, "we need volunteers to block the anarchists because they're being negative and this is a positive event!" We were repeatedly told that "cops are the 99% too!", which made us very sad that so few people have any understanding of how class society functions. Cops are class traitors and the enemy.

The person who spoke on the microphone before us said something along the lines of "this is a revolution that started in Egypt and is now sweeping the globe!" The Occupy Portland organizers conveniently forget that in Egypt, they actually fought the cops. Again and again, past movements are rewritten as nonviolent and nonconfrontational, and anyone who dares to draw clear lines in the sand with the cops on the other side is silenced and branded divisive and a threat to the movement.

Obviously these cats think they can rail road the movement to obey their twisted demands to go against all civilized actions straight to murder, arson, and depraved chaos. But as you can see Seattle organizers dealt with the situation properly.

http://forum.occupyseattle.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=36

EFF on Digital Privacy Rights

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In a recent Washington Times editorial titled “Internet trolls, Anonymity and the First Amendment,” Gayle Falkenthal declared that “the time has come to limit the ability of people to remain anonymous” online.* She argued that any benefit to online pseudonyms has long since dissipated and anonymous commenters have polluted the Internet “with false accusations and name-calling attacks.” Newspapers, she wrote, should ban them entirely.


This argument is not only inaccurate, it's also dangerous: online anonymity, while allowing trolls to act with impunity, also protects a range of people, from Syrian dissidents to small-town LGBT activists and plenty of others in between.


Unfortunately, many newspapers have already banned anonymous comments, and while not all have offered an explicit reasoning for their policies, "civility" is often cited as justification in discussions on online anonymity.


Of course, online civil discourse is something to strive for. Anyone who’s spent time reading YouTube comment threads is aware of the vitriolic bile spewing from the keyboards of largely anonymous masses. And it is a truism that when people speak using their true identity, they are more likely to think about the consequences of their speech.

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Kate Danley on OCCUPY Wall Street

What They did not want you to ever find out is that your generation, the gener...ation born between 1980-1995, actually outnumbers the Baby Boomers. They knew that if you ever turned your eye towards political reform, you could change the world.

They tried to keep you sated on vapid television shows and vapid music. They cut off your education and fed you brain candy. They took away your music and gave you Top Ten pop stations. They cut off your art and replaced it with endless reality shows for you to plug into, hoping you would sit quietly by as They ran the world. I think They thought you were too dumb to notice.

Indeed, I thought They had won.

But I watched you occupy the capital of Wisconsin. I see you today as you occupy Wall Street. And I see a spark, a glimmer of the glorious new age that is yours. A changing of the guard, a guard that has stood for entirely too long and needs your young legs to take his place.

I watch you turn away from what is easy and stand up for what is right. I see you understand we as a society are only as strong as our weakest link. I see you wise beyond your years. And I am proud. Give ‘em hell, kids. You are beautiful. -Kate Danley

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Henry Rollins on OCCUPY Wall Street

Progressive Counter-balance to the Tea Party movement born out of #Occupywallstreet

Today when I was checking my Facebook feed I stumbled across an episode of Up w/ Chris Hayes on msnbc.com and he had Van Jones on his panel and Jones gave an interesting plug. Van Jones's Rebuild the dream movement is planning to launch a Progressive Campaign movement in 2012 out of the #Occupywallstreet protests.

To me this is music to my ears how great would it be if we had a government with values like putting kids through college, actually stopping climate change so we don't get screwed like in the Day After Tomorrow. Make the outsourcing corporations bring their jobs back to America. I think if Occupy Wall St. & Van Jones rebuild the dream movement succeed we could be on the verge of a new America and a better one for the good of the people.

http://rebuildthedream.com/blog/2011/10/06/lets-make-history-solidarity-with-occupy-wall-street/

We Are the 99%.

#OCCUPY: Cool Photo by Lee Ranaldo

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