Maryland Police Infiltrated Activist Groups, Turned Over Information to Feds, Listed Citizens in Database as Committing Anti-War and Anti-Government Terrorism
July 20th, 2008Most of what is commonly referred to as “political activism” is viewed by the corporate state’s counterinsurgency apparatus as a useful and necessary component of political control.
Political activism amounts to an utterly useless waste of time, in terms of tangible power, which is all the American Corporate State understands. Political activism is a cruel guise that is sold to people who are dissatisfied, but who have no concept of the nature of tangible power. Counterinsurgency teams routinely monitor these activities, attend the meetings, join the groups and take on leadership roles in the organizations.
The Prius driving sign wavers, with Fair Trade shoes and subscriptions to The Nation have some very hard lessons ahead.
Via: Current:
Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and sending reports on their activities to U.S. intelligence and military agencies, according to documents released Thursday.
The documents show the activities occurred from at least March 2005 to May 2006 and that officers used false names, which the documents referred to as “covert identities” – to open e-mail accounts to receive messages from the groups.
Also included in the 46 pages of documents, obtained by the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is an account of an activist’s name being entered into a federally funded database designed to share information among state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies on terrorist and drug trafficking suspects.
ACLU attorney David Rocah said state police violated federal laws prohibiting departments that receive federal funds from maintaining databases with information about political activities and affiliations.
The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His “primary crime” was entered into the database as “terrorism – anti govern(ment).” His “secondary crime” was listed as “terrorism – anti-war protestors.” The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
“This is not supposed to happen in America,” said Mr. Rocah. “In a free society, which relies on the engagement of citizens in debate and protest and political activity to maintain that freedom … you should be able to attend a meeting about an issue you care about without having to worry that government spies are entering your name into a database used to track alleged terrorists and drug traffickers.”
Mr. Rocah called the surveillance “Kafka-esque insanity.”
…
Documents released by the prosecution revealed that the protesters had been under surveillance by an entity called the Baltimore Intelligence Unit.
The Maryland ACLU sued last month, claiming the state police refused to release public documents about the surveillance of peace activists.
The documents, which include intelligence reports and printouts from the database, show that several undercover officers from the state police’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division attended meetings of three groups: Mr. Obuszewski’s group; the Coalition to End the Death Penalty; and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a convicted murderer who was slated for execution.
The documents show at least 288 hours of surveillance over the 14-month period. The undercover officers attended at least 20 organizing meetings at community halls and churches and a dozen rallies against the death penalty, including several at the state’s SuperMax jail in Baltimore.
Included in the documents are references to a proposed sit-in at the offices of Baltimore County State’s Attorney SandraA. O’Connor. However, they show no trooper reports of violence or threats of violence. Organizers repeatedly stressed the importance of peaceful and orderly demonstrations, the documents show.
I remember that part one of the beginning of the end of my youthful “PC” radical leftist phase was the realization that college-campus leftists mostly just waste time and makes fools of themselves in their attempts at “activism”. Part two was the realization (brought on by the fact that they didn’t want me in their little social-club anymore because I wasn’t like them in every possible way; how like insanely bigoted small-town rednecks) that their scene seemed to have a way of attracting social idiots with serious pyschological problems…like me.
And probably a lot of people reading this are like “Oh boo-hoo, so you got thrown out of the useless bitter losers’ club, BFD L&L.” But the thing was, I was utterly devastated as though my heart had become a wind-blasted desert because I had invested so very much of myself into thinking of myself as part of a “movement” and that those people were my “comrades”. And part of my devastation was realizing my emotional investment was into something that turned out to be the equivalent of a fucking dribble-glass and that it should have been obvious to me that it was a dribble-glass! I felt like a total loser because that was exactly what I had been, willingly and eagerly.
Many of us could tell similar stories re: emotional and other investments in lots of organizations and belief systems.
Jeez, I wanted to be a government ink pisser (foreign policy analyst) at one point! When I realized, about two or three years into my university program, that I wouldn’t even be able to maintain an appearance as a passport shuffler (U.S. Foreign Service) I felt pretty damn lost, and stupid for wasting time, money and effort on that degree.
“Woh,” I thought, “It’s either become one of the Good-Germans or think up some other plan.” My drinking might not have looked too unusual, given my age, but its nature was very different than the drinking being done by my peers. Anyway, seems like many lifetimes ago now.
Look at those soldiers with their limbs, faces and nuts blown off, who still believe in the bullshit. Some people get so far down the road that the only thing they can do is cling to something that wasn’t there in the first place. I think that’s what it takes to be a “productive member of society” or to move in “polite circles” now. Anyway, I’ve found that saying, “Fuck this and fuck you,” too often was limiting my opportunities along those lines.
Woh,” I thought, “It’s either become one of the Good-Germans or think up some other plan.” My drinking might not have looked too unusual, given my age, but its nature was very different than the drinking being done by my peers.
IOW, you drank alone, I’ll bet. That’s always a pretty reliable flashing red light on the control-panel of life. In my case in the post-PC years, I used Benadryl (Diphenhydramine) in massive doses as a recreational drug. I recall actor Woody Harrelson once saying that prohibition doesn’t really work all that well because if people are in deep emotional pain and want to get out from under it, they’ll drink Lysol if they have to! He was right. My Benadryl-binging, I tend to think, was a major contributing cause to the candidiasis I later developed.
As for being a “Good German”, that probably wouldn’t have worked. The real Good Germans, especially the ESFJ and ESTJ Myers-Briggs types, can tell when you’re not really one of them deep down in your heart of hearts. (For the record, I’m an INFJ.)
I hope I’m not drifting too far afield in saying this, but my INFJ nature wants me to say this here: online friends of mine who have psychic insight into the future see things that are bad and scary enough that a total meltdown of civilization is not an unreasonable conclusion. That’s probably why I’m a primitivist sympathizer, even though it makes a lot of people think I’ve entirely lost my mind. If the result of what we’ve brought upon ourselves (which will likely include nature opening up a can of whoop-ass on us visa-vis climate-change) doesn’t result in human extinction, it’s difficult for me not to imagine us returning to the default state for which our evolution designed us.
You guys are not the worst, and by far. I spent 11 years being a good german: first going to school to be a linguist and from there going into the Foreign Service. You are so much smarter than I was, both of you: you realized the utter and complete transparency of the bullshit … I didn’t. I was going to do something for my country, for freedom, for the greater good. ha ha he he. I went so far down the road into happy colonel Kurtzland, I became a major in the USMC, and it killed me.
yup, I drank the kool-aid, all the way down to the bitter dregs. One day, I woke up and realized I was having to drink it alone. It is a pitiless, cold, dark day when you wake up, and realize that everything about you, from the clothes you wear to the slogans you are supposed to feel, are lies. When you realize that everything you have done just makes you more of a calculating murderess, just following orders, blithely and self-righteously, all the way to hell.
The problem for me was, there is no forum in the military from which to speak out, and it isn’t exactly encouraged. So I quit. I became a complete anathema to my friends, my folks, and my peers. You can’ t tell the truth in this country in company, you have to do it alone (perhaps that is why so many of us have are/were alcoholics) The road back wasn’t easy. I think a lot of people are due to wake up soon, and their dawns won’t be easy, either. I think it is up to us, those who know what is coming, to help, because hope is about all I have left.
@dagobaz:
Good points all. I guess I tend to be a bit hard on myself about my foray into Kool-Aid Land because I didn’t know what to do with my life, and the political fantasy-world in which I lived served as a distraction from dealing with this fact, and that has a lot to do with why I’m a very intelligent (apologies for the “own-horn blowing”) middle-aged man with a college degree who is working at the freaking grocery store where the asshole-narcissist corporate-CEO puts his picture on all the bags.
I had no idea that the employment world into which my generation was emerging was one where you couldn’t even be a receptionist or a file-clerk unless you were a member of their incestuous little club, and had spent your life since graduating high school doing and being exactly what you were supposed to do and be exactly when you were supposed to be doing it and being it; and even that wouldn’t be a guarantee. Perhaps had I not been fooling myself the way I was, I might have been something more where I could do some good, such as being a social worker. Though without a doubt, this “idealized” scenario would have pitfalls and pratfalls of its own that might have ended up filling me with an entirely different but equally poignant set of regrets.
I think a big part of the problem is that here in the USA, we live in what is probably the most narcissistic society that ever was or ever will be. When narcissism is the antithesis of the sort of person you strive to be, living in such a context can be very draining, to say the least.