Debating the Government Monopoly on Violence

It will be instructive over coming months to watch the response of OWS protestors to the orgy of militarized police violence that has all but shut down the major public occupations. In just two months, the Occupy movement has used the combined tools of social networking, strategic outreach, consensus governance and mass civil disobedience to build the largest mass resistance in the US since the 1930s. The Office of Homeland Security and other federal agencies coordinating the simultaneous crackdowns seem to think a show of force will persuade protestors to give it up and return to their former lives. As many have nothing to return to (no jobs and, in many cases, no homes), I think this may be a serious tactical error. Even before the police crackdown, there was growing concern about keeping numbers up over winter, as well as inadequate representation of women, minorities and unskilled and blue collar workers. With a little nudge from the authorities, Occupy activists have made a good decision to regroup and engage in strategic planning.

I believe there will be strong consensus to resume their public occupations when the weather warms up. Nothing crosses the digital divide quite so effectively to Americans without Internet access. How committed the government is to stopping them is uncertain. Are the 1% and their lackeys are determined to suppress the Occupy movement by any means necessary? If so, how far are OWS participants are willing to go to preserve their movement?

Our Culture of Violence

As OWS groups across the country strategize over winter, younger activists, especially, will ask why the police should have a monopoly on violence. These discussions won’t take place on Facebook or Twitter, but they will happen (at least they are happening in New Zealand). A pending bill to authorize the indefinite detention of American citizens without criminal charges amplifies the urgency of these discussions. Violence is an integral part of the American psyche, as demonstrated by the continuing upsurge in gun ownership. We are all bombarded on a daily basis with mindless violence, through TV, movies and videogames. The view of American foreign policy presented by the mainstream media centers around violent retaliation. The vast majority of Americans will tell you that the US had to attack Afghanistan and Iraq to retaliate for the 3,000 Americans killed on 9-11. This pervasive emphasis on violence occurs in an intenseley competitive, consumer-driven culture in the absence of any moral framework to channel aggression into more “humane” or “civilized” outlets.

Government Violence Against Minorities

In this social context, the OWS commitment to non-violence will be extremely difficult to maintain, especially as the movement reaches out to traditional blue collar and minority communities. I can’t name a single working class or minority activist I have worked with in the last thirty years who would stand or lie there passively while the police beat them in the head or squirted them in the face with pepper spray. Police violence in minority communities is a daily occurrence.

The treatment of minority activists, even non-violent ones, is especially brutal. December 4^th is the 42^nd anniversary of the unprovoked raid on Fred Hampton’s apartment, in which the FBI and Chicago police murdered the Black Panther leader in his sleep. Four days later, on December 8, 1969 they carried out a similar raid in Los Angeles that Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt miraculously escaped. This was followed by years of federally sponsored “death squad” activity on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota (which Ward Churchill documents with FOIA memos in his 1990 book Cointelpro Papers), culminating in an armed FBI siege against American Indian Movement activists who had come to protect older residents. In 1985 the Philadelphia police, with federal support, destroyed an entire neighborhood by dropping a bomb on a household of activists belonging to the black liberation movement Move.

Fast forward to 2011, and police shootings of unarmed black men are so commonplace they are almost never prosecuted. This is on top of the thousands of cases of sub-lethal police violence (beatings, tasering, pepper spray) that all minority communities struggle to cope with as they go about their daily lives.

To be continued.

Book Review

Most American readers are vaguely familiar with British spy novelist John LeCarre’s cold war thrillers about KGB spies. A Spy who Came in from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People are the best known. I myself prefer his post-1990 espionage novels, which pit principled intelligence operatives against government and corporate corruption. Despite an international literary standing on a par with William Faulkner’s, LeCarre’s more recent work is less well known. Corporate media critics don’t like it. I find this a great pity. LeCarre’s exquisite craftsmanship, like Faulkner’s, continues to ripen with maturity. As a psychiatrist, I especially enjoy his vivid characterization. I often feel I have met his characters somewhere, either in my office or one of the political groups I work with.

LeCarre pulls no punches in describing the takeover of British and US intelligence by a corrupt criminal element, supported by even more corrupt corporate and government sponsors. The Constant Gardener (which has been made into an exquisite film by the same name) is about a drug company that conducts illegal drug trials in Africa and bumps off a local doctor and British journalist who try to expose them – and the higher ups in British and US intelligence who protect the drug company. A Most Wanted Man, set in Germany, is about a devout Muslim and the idealistic female lawyer who tries to prevent him from being deportation. It’s also about the sinister new fad of contracting out covert assassinations and other criminal acts to (totally unaccountable) private intelligence contractors.

The Transformation of British and US Intelligence into Criminal Gangs

LeCarre himself is a former intelligence officer for MI5 and MI6. His unflattering depiction of US and British intelligence in his novels suggests a high level of disgust at the transformation of two of the world’s greatest intelligence networks into glorified criminal gangs. This attitude comes through loud and clear in Our Kind of Traitor, his darkest and most gut-wrenching novel yet. The subject of the book is the Russian mafia and their cozy relationship with the international banking establishment – and how both British and US intelligence are used to protect this relationship. The “traitor” in this instance is a high officer in the British government, and the story line concerns the curious way officials in the British Foreign Office close ranks around him, greedy for the infusion of illicit cash (from drug dealing, arms smuggling, paid assassinations, etc) to help the failing British economy.

As with all his novels, Our Kind of Traitor is very systematically researched with the help of Russian mafia experts. And as usual, there are two crusading spirits who, for their own complex psychological reasons, endeavor to expose this corruption. Without being a plot spoiler, let me say that Le Carre feels no compulsion whatsoever to give his readers a happy ending. At the same time, he’s a master story teller who keeps you hanging till the very last page.

How Nonviolence Protects the State is the title of a 2007 book by Peter Gelderloos. It can be downloaded free at http://zinelibrary.info/files/How%20Nonviolence%20Protects%20The%20State.pdf

As a long time activist, I have always been troubled by the militant nonviolent perspective that dominates the progressive movement in the US. In some circles, the taboo is so absolute that activists are systematically demonized for raising the subject. I tend to get suspicious whenever I see the politically correct thought police swing into action – especially when they embrace views that are clearly counterproductive to successful organizing (the US left, in contrast to other countries, is a shambles). An arbitrary taboo against specific topics is often a sign that your movement has been infiltrated, either by Cointelpro or left gatekeeper agents.

The systematic misrepresentation of Gandhi’s and Martin Luther King’s views on violence also puzzles me. Neither were militant pacifists. Gandhi clearly articulated situations in which he would advocate violence as a strategy. Whereas as Mark Kurlansky describes in 1968, King employed violence strategically in some of his marches (in which female protestors slapped cops to provoke a violent overreaction) to maximize media attention.

Likewise I have never understood the failure to distinguish between property destruction and interpersonal violence. If anything progressive organizers come down harder on activists who break shop windows (because of its greater harm to corporate interests?) than those who get into scuffles with cops or counter protestors.

Alienating the Working Class

As an organizer, however, what bothers me most is that militant nonviolence is totally alien to working class culture and creates a major stumbling block in drawing blue collar workers into the movement for change. We try to recruit working class activists by appealing to their deep resentment over the unfairness of wage exploitation and privilege. Then we outlaw their natural reaction – to level that privilege by destroying property and looting (to reclaim what they believe is rightfully theirs) or bashing a cop or security guard who is manhandling them or standing between them and food for their kids. I have repeatedly seen blue collar activists marginalized and demonized in these debates. And yet people wonder why they are drawn to the Tea Party movement (which isn’t bound by politically correct niceties) rather than the left.

Reviving the Debate

Obviously I’m extremely pleased to see Gelderloos, American Indian Movement activist Ward Churchill, environmental activist Derrick Jensen and even the culture jamming group Adbusters revive the debate. In 2008 Churchill released the second edition of Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America. This can also be downloaded free at http://www.cambridgeaction.net/images/c/c7/Pacifism_As_Pathology.pdf

Moreover I am unsurprised to learn that the taboo against violent protest isn’t a spontaneous development in the American progressive movement. As in the case of alternate media outlets that refuse to report on 911 or the JFK assassination, there is increasing evidence that government-backed left gatekeeping foundations have carefully inserted themselves into roles where they dominate the dialogue around the issue of violence.

The Government Role in Promoting Nonviolence

Australian journalist and researcher Michael Barker is one of the most prolific writers about the role of CIA, Pentagon and State Department linked foundations in the nonviolent movement. The ones he has followed most closely are the National Endowment for Democracy, the US Institute for Peace, the Albert Einstein Institute, the Arlington Institute, Freedom House, the NED-funded Human Rights Watch, the International Republican Institute, and the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38214).

Most of the research into these foundations focuses on their work overseas, particularly their active role in creating “color” revolutions in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. However as Barker points out, the ICNC also has major influence, via its workshops, literature and documentaries, on progressive organizing in the US.

To be continued

http://www.healthcare-now.org/

My own knowledge of left gatekeepers stems from 14 years as a single payer activist (1988-2002)  in Washington State. Our local single payer movement was launched by a group of doctors belonging to Physicians for a National Health Program. Our goal was to reduce health care costs and cover the uninsured by following the example of all other industrialized countries, by lobbying the government to create a Canadian style government-funded “single payer” health program to cover all Americans. Our group seemed to make the most progress in the first five years, when we were a primarily doctor-run organization focused on educating other doctors, lawmakers and community groups about the mechanics of a single payer health care system. In fact we were an important partner in a broader coalition that included the Washington State Medical Association and the Washington State Hospital Association and that pressured the government to appoint a blue ribbon commission to develop a proposal for a state based, publicly financed health care system.

In 1993, when we joined with Seattle Gray Panthers to form a broad based citizen’s coalition, we began to have the same difficulties many of experienced in the antiwar and Central American solidarity movement, and which one African American member experienced as a Black Panther in Los Angeles. It started with the appearance, out of nowhere, of quirky strangers who disrupted and sabotaged our meetings, tampered with our database and seized control of our contact list to launch rumor and character assassination campaigns. In 1994 one of these “outsiders” managed to take control of the leadership and totally shut down the single payer for six months. After we learned he had done the same, seizing control of the database and the leadership and committee structure of two other groups – the Anti-Gulf War Coalition and the Seattle chapter of Democratic Socialists of American, we logically assumed he was a Cointelpro agent and worked for the FBI. I describe all this in the second half of my memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Who Infiltrated Washington’s Single Payer Movement?

In retrospect, some aspects of this “infiltration” of the single payer movement that strike me as distinctly different from classic the Cointelpro methodology. The first was a heavy reliance on the formation of “parallel” health care reform organizations, both to compete with us for new members and to discredit us. The second was a much higher level of sophistication and national coordination than is normally associated with the FBI operation. The FBI memos American Indian Movement activist Ward Churchill reproduces in the Cointelpro Papers suggest that J. Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro operation was quite decentralized – that for the most part, he left it to field agents to devise their own strategies for infiltrating and sabotaging local Black Panther chapters.

In contrast, single payer activists in Washington State quickly discovered that single payer activists in Ohio, Oregon and California were experiencing the exact same problems that we were. As in our own state, short-lived “parallel” single payer organizations were being created by brand new left think tanks or left leaning foundations that claimed to support single payer health care – but disagreed with grassroots organizing to mobilize public support for it. Despite their nominal support for nationalizing health care, their newsletters, brochures and publicly forums almost exclusively focused on arguments against lobbying for single payer health care. What was even more uncanny was that the language articulated by the staff employed by these parallel organizations was virtually identical in state after state. All their arguments boiled down to the “political climate” and “politically timing” being wrong for single payer and accusations about grassroots single payer activists being “inexperienced,” “reckless,” and “wrong-headed” to aggressively push for it. In some cases, these parallel organizations also launched competing proposals based on the private health insurance model.

Co-opting and Forming Parallel Organizations

In Oregon, for example, single payer activists complained how the Oregon Health Action Campaign, which began as a single payer advocacy organization, was systematically co-opted by Governor John Kitzhaber and foundation-funded staff who argued the “political climate and timing” was wrong for single payer and revamped OHAC’s mission to advocate for Kitzhaber’s Oregon Health Plan. The OHP, enacted in 1994, employs state and federal funding to subsidize and maintain a private health insurance model.

Between 1997 and 2001, Washington’s single payer movement confronted four parallel foundation-funded (in Washington State, they also received substantial support from a very conservative Washington State Labor Council) health care reform organizations. The first, the Equal Opportunity Institute (EOI), was formed in 1997 to launch a health care initiative campaign (to expand the insurance-based Washington Basic Health Plan) to compete with our own single payer ballot initiative. The second was Just Health Care, which had a brief existence between 1999 and 2000, was solely focused on attacking our single payer initiative. The third was Code Blue Now! (2001-2008), which was supposedly formed to develop “public consensus” on the best way to reform health care (despite polling showing that 60% of Washington voters supported a single, publicly financed system). The fourth was the Rainier Foundation, a “progressive” foundation (2001-2005) also established to “promote consensus” around health care reform.

It was never clear from the website of these “parallel’ groups exactly where they got their funding. And since all but the EOI are now defunct, it would be quite complicated to get their tax records via the Freedom of Information Act. My sense has always been that they derived most of their funding from the private insurance industry (which stands to lose big if federal and/or state governments enact publicly financed health care programs). Thus in this sense they were most likely pure “astroturf” creations (*see below), though they clearly adopted techniques employed by CIA-linked counterinsurgency foundations and classic FBI Cointelpro operations.

* Senator Lloyd Bentson, himself a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider, is credited with coining the term “astroturf lobbying” to describe the synthetic grassroots movements that now can be manufactured, for a fee, by a dozen or so public relations companies. The Tea Party movement, largely created and funded by the infamous Koch brothers, is probably the most high profile example of astroturfing (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/tea-party-koch-brothers)

Many of the public relations firms that launch “astroturf” organizations have strong links to the intelligence community. Transferring to a private sector public relations company is a common career move for former intelligence officers – though not quite so common as taking up employment with a private intelligence/security contractor.

Unlike genuine grassroots activism which tends to be money-poor but people-rich, astroturf campaigns are typically people-poor but cash-rich. Funded heavily by corporate largesse, they use sophisticated computer databases, telephone banks and hired organizers to rope less-informed activists into sending letters to their elected officials or engaging in other actions that create the appearance of grassroots support for their client’s cause. Source Watch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf) cites a number of examples (in addition to the Tea Party) in which ordinary citizens (and occasionally citizen’s groups, such as the United Church of Christ and the Gray Panthers), have been recruited into Astroturf organizations to promote corporate agendas, such as

• blocking the transfer of federal licenses that WorldCom uses for its long distance and Internet services by Issue Dynamics Inc. using non-profit groups like the United Church of Christ
• defeating the Clinton administration’s proposed health care reform, through a front group called “Rx Partners” created by the Beckel Cowan PR firm, and the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices, created by public relations consultant Blair Childs
• harassing environmentalists through the Wise Use movement
• supporting clear-cutting American forests, through a front group called Citizens to Protect the Pacific Northwest and Northern California Economy
• opposing restrictions on smoking in public places, through a front group called National Smokers Alliance, which was created by Burson-Marsteller

The two most prolific contemporary writers regarding foundation funded Cointelpro-style counterinsurgency tactics are historian and journalist Webster Tarpley (in Barack H Obama: the Unauthorized Autobiography) and Australian-born academic researcher Michael Barker. A list and link to all Barker’s publications (which include fascinating articles on Noam Chomsky’s anti-conspiracy views and the aggressive promotion of “non-violent protest” by CIA-funded foundations) can be found on his website and blog at http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/ My sense, related to direct personal experience with foundation-funded “astroturf” (see * below) and “counterinsurgency” activity in the single payer movement, is that the domestic variant of left gatekeeping tends to rely less on CIA or other government funding than on direct right wing corporate funding.

Barker’s articles devote particular attention to the role played by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Institute for Peace, the Albert Einstein Institute, the Arlington Institute, Freedom House, the NED-funded Human Rights Watch, the International Republican Institute and individual philanthropists (for example, Bill Gates and George Soros) in “democracy manipulating” activities overseas. (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38214).

George Soros

However he also writes about the role three foundations (the Ford Foundation, the Benton Foundation and the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict) have played in “counterinsurgency” activities in the progressive movement within the US. His 2006 article “Corporate Fronts, Astroturf Groups and Co-opted Social Movements” (http://www.zcommunications.org/corporate-fronts-astroturf-groups-and-co-opted-social-movements-by-michael-barker) raises concerns about funding the World Social Forum, among other progressive groups, derives from CIA-linked foundations.

The Role of “Democracy Manipulating” Foundations Overseas

According to Barker the “democracy manipulating role” played by CIA-linked foundations was first identified in William I. Robinson’s groundbreaking 2006 book Promoting Polyarchy. “Polyarchy” is defined “low intensity democracy” – a form of government that replaces violent coercive control with the type of ideological control (i.e. brainwashing) that Noam Chomsky describes in Manufacturing Consent.

In Promoting Polyarchy, Robinson describes how the CIA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies were pressured to cut back on many of their more repressive covert activities (i.e. covert assassinations) as a result of Church committee reforms enacted in the 1970s. This resulted, in 1984, in the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which works closely with the CIA and the US Agency for International Development (the USAID is a well-documented conduit for CIA funding), as well as the other “democracy manipulating” foundations listed above. Robinson specifically outlines how these US-based “democracy manipulating” foundations worked to bring about “non-violent” revolutions in the Philippines and Chile to prevent genuinely democratic governments from coming to power, as well as sabotaging democratically elected governments in Nicaragua (where they orchestrated the ouster of the Sandinista government) and Haiti (where they instigated a coup against the populist priest Jean Bastion Aristide).

Since then numerous studies (which Barker references on his website) have furnished further evidence where these foundations have infiltrated and “channeled” (i.e. co-opted) the genuine mass movements that form naturally in countries dominated by repressive dictators. The goal is too make sure they don’t go too far in demanding economic rights (for example, protections for organized labor or restrictions on foreign investment) that might be detrimental to the interests of multinational corporations. All the “color” revolutions in Eastern Europe, which also received substantial funding from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, have been a major disappointment to citizens that supported them, owing to their failure to bring about genuine change (see http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2006/09/29/the-color-revolutions-fade-to-black/).

* Senator Lloyd Bentson, himself a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider, is credited with coining the term “astroturf lobbying” to describe the synthetic grassroots movements that now can be manufactured, for a fee, by a dozen or so public relations companies. The Tea Party movement, largely created and funded by the infamous Koch brothers, is probably the most high profile example of astroturfing (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/tea-party-koch-brothers)

To be continued.

As I blogged previously, the brutal extrajudicial murder of a patient in 1989 demonstrated in the most horrific way possible that ultimate power lay outside America’s democratic institutions. It forced me to accept that political control lay in the hands of a wealthy elite who employed an invisible intelligence-security network to terrorize – and sometimes kill – Americans who threatened their interests. This painful discovery lent new urgency to my political work. It simultaneously caused an increasing sense of alienation and isolation from who hadn’t shared these experiences. My liberal and progressive friends all had access to the same alternative news sources I did. Many of them were far more knowledgeable than I was about the absolute control multinational corporations exerted over elections and lawmakers via their political donations and ability to manipulate the mainstream media. Yet my friends reacted very differently to this knowledge. Whereas I responded by devoting every spare moment to some form of community organizing, they tended to withdraw from political activity to focus on their personal lives.

The Patriot Act: Repealing the Bill of Rights

In September 2001, I expected that the Patriot Act, which legalized domestic spying on American citizens, as well as revoking habeas corpus and other important constitutional liberties, would be the turning point that would send progressives into the streets, as the 1999 anti-WTO protests had, to halt America’s transformation into a fascist police state. It never happened. In Seattle, a small 9-11 coalition formed in October 2001 to protest Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan. Over the following year, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and others spoke to sell-out crowds about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Yet when I left the US in October 2002, Seattle’s antiwar movement was still quite small and fragmented.

Sacrificing Mental Health for Global Conquest

Meanwhile the major leading up to the invasion of Iraq led to severe cutbacks in the state and federal programs that funded psychiatric services for the mentally ill. After 25 years of private practice, I faced the difficult choice between trying to find a salaried position in a mental health clinic, leaving medicine or going bankrupt. In the end – for moral rather than economic reasons – I rejected all three options to pursue my 28 year dream of returning overseas. I, like most American intellectuals with access to the international and/or alternative press, knew perfectly well that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq had played any role whatsoever in the 9-11 attacks. In fact, beginning in February 2002, many of us had growing concerns the Bush administration had engineered the attacks in some way.

In any case, by launching unprovoked wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush was clearly guilty of war crimes under international law. And so long as I, as a US taxpayer, continued to work and pay taxes in the US, I shared some responsibility for these crimes.

Why I Chose New Zealand

I chose New Zealand out of pure expedience: it was an English speaking country and had the least stringent requirements for credentialing foreign psychiatrists. I was aware, through friends in the UK, that British society had changed drastically under Margaret Thatcher, with consumerist culture totally supplanting the more humanist, community values I had observed in the early seventies. This stemmed in part from Thatcher’s twelve year attack on unions and the working class – and in part from the steady bombardment of the British public with individualistic, consumerist messages via their corporate controlled media.

I had no reason to believe New Zealand would be any different. As a long time anti-globalization activist, I fully accepted that no country on earth escapes the corrupting influence of multinational corporations. Moreover psychiatric colleagues who had worked in New Zealand had warned me that American movies, sit-coms and pop culture had replaced nearly all remnants of traditional New Zealand identity or culture.

At the same time I believed that specific political features protected New Zealand from the absolute corporate control of government and public information that is found in the US. These included New Zealand’s parliamentary system of government, its electoral system based on proportional representation, it’s National Health Service (the oldest in the world – created in 1938) and its absolute ban on nuclear power or weapons (including a prohibition against US naval ships docking in any New Zealand harbor).

New Zealand protest boat

To be continued.

Interesting all the brouhaha over jailed Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Lui Xiabo – and Obama’s “demands” that he be released – or that at minimum his family be allowed to travel to Oslo to collect his prize. Obviously if the President were really concerned about human rights in China, he could always impose trade sanctions on them, as he does on Cuba and Iran.

The US June 4^th Movement

The reality is that the US has always had a very schizophrenic reaction to Chinese human rights violations, starting with the June 4, 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. Much has been written, especially since the twentieth anniversary last year, about the underground June 4^th movement that developed in China after the massacre. However you never read anything about the parallel June 4^th movement that emerged in the US in the months after Tiananmen Square. It was led by Chinese university and graduate students on campuses all over the country – with the support of American pro-civil liberties advocates across the political spectrum.

For two to three months, it got extensive mainstream media coverage. I recall seeing an article in the Seattle Times about an upcoming meeting at the University of Washington. Unfortunately I was sick that night and unable to attend.

By September 1989, the US June 4^th movement had vanished without a trace. I found this extremely odd until six months later, an investigator friend learned, off the record from an FBI friend, exactly how the federal agency had shut down the American June 4^th movement.

It was quite simple really. The FBI went to all the Chinese leaders and told them their student visas would be revoked unless they agreed to inform on the other activists who attended the meetings. Not surprisingly, they chose to keep their visas and disband the movement. A very old strategy – still in use today (see http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/16428/spy-for-us-or-never-return-home-obamas-new-tactic-in-the-war-on-terror).

Why Did Bush Senior Shut It Down?

So why did Bush senior want the June 4^th movement shut down? According to my friend’s FBI friend, Bush was engaged in major trade negotiations that China refused to consummate unless Bush could guarantee the underground June 4^th movement wouldn’t receive (potentially substantial) financial and political support from Chinese students in the US.

With the recent FBI’s raids on Twin Cities and Chicago peace activists, there has been a lot of Internet traffic about a “resurgence” of the old FBI Cointelpro (the FBI operation which spied extensively on peace and social justice organizations in the sixties and seventies) This assumes Cointelpro ended when J. Edgar Hoover died, though increasing evidence suggests his successors continued it.

The FBI operation to shut down the US June 4^th movement is but one of many examples – in Seattle alone – that I discuss in my recent memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Other Examples of Cointelpro-Type Activities

In The Most Revolutionary Act, I also cover the FBI’s collaboration with Marcos agents in 1981 to gun down Filipino cannery workers and union activists Domingo and Viernes (the US government later settled with their family, as they did with Fred Hampton’s family after the FBI gunned him down in his sleep). And, among other police-state activities, the FBI infiltration of CISPES and the grassroots campaign to create a Seattle African American Museum – and the 1989 murder of Seattle postal worker and union activist Oscar Manassa (it so happens it was the Postal Inspectors – another branch of US intelligence – who seized his evidence file to halt the homicide investigation).

In 1990, we very nearly persuaded two intrepid congressmen to launch a Congressional Investigation into the mysterious, violent “suicides” of 23 postal workers between 1986 and 1990. And then, as usual, one or both of them were blackmailed – it’s my understanding they typically threaten congress people with a trumped-up ethics investigation, as they have done recently with Maxine Waters. And the CI never happened.

As Dana Priest’s recent Washington Post expose reveals, the use of private contractors to spy on Americans (in addition to the proliferation of government spy agencies) has gone viral since the 2002 enactment of the Patriot Act. In fact some civil libertarians warn that Americans’ shrinking privacy and personal freedom is rapidly approaching that of communist East Germany under the Stasi (the East German secret police) – where one in sixteen residents were paid to report on their friends on neighbors.

Was There Domestic Spying Before 2002?

Based on 20 years experience as an anti-war and single payer activist in Seattle, I would hazard that that spying on political and community groups didn’t suddenly leap from non-existent to astronomic levels when it was “legalized” in 2002. It has always been my impression that it increased at a fairly steady rate with the rightward drift at all levels of government following Reagan’s election in 1980. I also believe that prior to the enactment of the Patriot Act, much of this domestic “counterinsurgency” activity occurred under the auspices of “left” identified foundations and think-tanks. These are private entities, funded through a combination of CIA monies and right wing philanthropy, that give the appearance of being autonomous – and genuinely progressive and liberal. However it appears that their true function is to restrict the acceptable range of progressive debate and political activity. Barry Zwicker calls them “left gatekeeprs (see July 19 and 24 blog)” and Webster Tarpley “counterinsurgency” foundations.

Left Gatekeeping Foundations and the Single Payer Movement

Most of my personal experience with these left gatekeeping foundations occurred as a single payer activist. In Washington State, the single payer movement was started by doctors in 1988, under the auspices of Physicians for a National Health Program. Between 1988 and 1993, when the Seattle chapter was run by and for health professionals, it expanded rapidly, attracted much public and media attention. It was also an important partner in a broader coalition that pressured the governor to appoint a blue ribbon health commission to develop a proposal for state based, publicly financed universal health care.

Then in 1993, when the health provider joined with Washington Gray Panthers to build a broad based coalition, we suddenly hit a roadblock. There were suddenly all kinds of difficulties, which on the surface amounted to a textbook case of Cointelpro infiltration. However unlike Cointelpro, the problems didn’t appear to originate with the FBI or the police, but with local “left” leaning think tanks and foundations. The tactics, however, were classic – with the appearance of quirky outsiders who tampered with our database, seized control of our contact list to launch rumor and character assassination campaigns, split our coalitions by launching parallel, competing organizations (focused on safer lobbying activities and mild reformism), and scared off new members by repeatedly picking fights at our meetings.

A Clear Pattern

In one case we discovered the operative had a history of similar behavior in Seattle’s first Anti-Gulf War Coalition (1991) and the Seattle chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. The pattern in all three cases was the same – getting control of the database and leadership and shutting all three down – including the single payer coalition.

It was only when Washington State joined a regional coalition with single payer activists from Oregon and California – the Pacific Rim Single Payer Summit – that I got some inkling of what was happening. The synchronicity activists from other states described – down to the exact political rhetoric and targeted personal attacks – was uncanny.

It’s safe to assume that specific left gatekeeping foundations involved in suppressing the single payer movement receive generous support from the powerful insurance lobby and Big Pharma – in addition to any CIA and right wing philanthropy. Both the insurance and the pharmaceutical industry stand to lose big under a publicly funded health care system (as the sole purchaser of medication for 300 million Americans, the government would force the drug companies to agree to massive volume discounts – this occurs in all industrialized countries with publicly funded health care).

I write about my personal experience, as a single payer activist, with left gatekeeping foundations in my recent memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Winner of 2011 Allbooks Editor’s Choice Award

Available in soft cover from Amazon

***

Other good links regarding left gatekeeper foundations:

Lila Rajiva:

http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/06/17/barry-zwicker-noam-chomsky-and-the-left-gatekeepers/

Bob Feldman:

http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2010/07/from-rag-blog-bob-feldman-gives-us.html

Michael Barker Do Capitalists Fund Revolutions? (Barker has particular concerns about the foundations that fund the World Social Forum):

http://www.zcommunications.org/do-capitalists-fund-revolutions-part-1-of-2-by-michael-barker