Occupational Hazards

by digby

But to those now oddly demanding an apology from me for speculating about federal involvement in two posts two weeks ago, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to apologize for. I wrote them on the day that Oakland's Mayor Quan announced that she'd been coordinating her Occupy response on the phone.My first post merely asked the question about coordination, in light of the Mayor's statement.

I suppose it makes sense that they [the mayors] might want to share tips and insights. But if they are coordinating, we're dealing with something else entirely. It would be very interesting to know if any government entity is coordinating this. It makes a big difference if it's the National Conference of Mayors or Homeland Security.

I can certainly see why the authorities might think that it would be great to have this whole thing just end with one big national sweep. But if they think that could actually happen they are too stupid to hold their jobs.

Later that day I wrote an update, quoting the notorious Rick Ellis piece, (whose later updates are now oddly being touted by his earlier critics) in which I clearly state that the information is "obviously unconfirmed." Beyond that, I issued disclaimers all through the piece about how this information wasn't verified and basically used it as a jumping off point to speculate about the various dangers of the expanded police state, linking once again to my Al Jazeera op-ed about the militarization of the police of the day before. Later, I linked to pictures of Federal Homeland security police arresting protesters in Oregon (since explained as a unique situation) in the same news cycle and linked to a post about a Homeland Security threat assessment for Pittsburgh. (This is a state DHS, not a federal DHS, but if there is one state office that is known to coordinate with the feds, it's this one. Pittsburgh hosted the 2008 G-8, where all kinds of interesting modern military equipment was deployed and DHS was very much involved.)

Nowhere did I suggest in any of that that the president was personally involved. Neither did I implicate the congress or suggest some sort of high level conspiracy to take down Occupy Wall Street as Wolf did. My concern, as it has been for more than 25 years, is that the police state apparatus we have developed lends itself to the suppression of political dissent. And this sort of suppression is rarely specifically directed by the highest levels of the agencies. It's usually an actual outgrowth of the bureaucracy itself, as a sort of self-perpetuating coordination that actually excludes "interference" from the political branches. That's the problem.

I understand why there was so much sturm und drang over the Wolf article which was fact-free assertion, but nothing I wrote contained any of that. If people want me to apologize for writing about the dangers of our humongous policing apparatus they are going to wait a long time. If they are unable to understand that when I write "obviously unconfirmed" and "if this turns out to be true" that I'm not reporting something as fact, that's not my problem. So no apologies. I'm not going to stop writing about this, speculating about it and worrying about it. This police state we've built is dangerous to our freedom and a whole bunch of raids on the Occupations at the same time, many using the same tactics, was something any thinking person should wonder about. As Holland writes in his piece:

Yes it should. In fact, its mission as stated by Michael Chertoff is:

This Department of Homeland Security’s overriding and urgent mission is to lead the unified national effort to secure the country and preserve our freedoms. While the Department was created to secure our country against those who seek to disrupt the American way of life, our charter also includes preparation for and response to all hazards and disasters.

Advising local authorities on demonization and evictions techniques for peaceful protests doesn't strike me a "preserving our freedoms" or "securing our country against those who would disrupt the American way of life." Considering our history, from the Palmer raids, to Hoover's reign to the Church Committee revelations and most recently the surveillance of Iraq War protesters and the expansive new definition of "terrorism" I would think any liberal would be extremely skeptical about these agencies assurances that they aren't using any of their new powers and technology against the Occupy Movement.