So now what?

Comment with your thoughts...

http://www.terrorizingdissent.org/downloads.php

Didn't make it to the RNC this year? Want to experience the gasing and pepper spray from the comfort of your own home? This new film is now available for download. There will be a showing in the bay area at AK press.

Oakland, CA — AK Press, doors 7pm/show 8pm

$5-$10 sliding scale donated to RNC-related legal support groups. [more info]
AK Press is at 674-A 23rd Street, Oakland, CA. Wheelchair accessible.

Please come if you can and throw a few bucks for our homies.

A draft US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Global Positioning System maps and voice-changing software as potential terrorist tools.

The report by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion, posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), examines a number of mobile and web technologies and their potential uses by militants.

The posting of the report on the FAS site was reported Friday by Wired magazine contributing editor Noah Shachtman on his national security blog "Danger Room" at wired.com.

The report is not based on clandestine reporting but drawn from open source intelligence known as OSINT.

A chapter on "Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter" notes that Twitter members sent out messages, known as "Tweets," reporting the July Los Angeles earthquake faster than news outlets and activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements.

"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.

Hacktivists refers to politically motivated computer hackers.

"Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives," the report said.

"Extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance," it said. "This could theoretically be combined with targeting."

The report outlined scenarios in which militants could make use of Twitter, combined with such programs as Google Maps or cell phone pictures or video, to carry out an ambush or detonate explosives.

"Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operation tool," it said. "However, it is unclear whether that same theoretical tool would be available to terrorists in other countries and to what extent."

Besides Twitter, the report examined the potential use by militants of Global Positioning Systems and other technologies.

"GPS cell phone service could be used by our adversaries for travel plans, surveillance and targeting," it said, noting that just such uses have been discussed in pro-Al-Qaeda forums along with the use of voice-changing software.

"Terrorists may or may not be using voice-changing software but it should be of open source interest that online terrorist and/or terrorist enthusiasts are discussing it," the report said.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081025182242.js2g2op8&show_artic...

Dear Friends, Family, and Comrades:

We are the RNC 8: individuals targeted because of our political beliefs and
work organizing for protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, in
what appears to be the first use of Minnesota’s version of the US Patriot
Act. The 8 of us are currently charged with Conspiracy to Commit Riot in
Furtherance of Terrorism, a 2nd degree felony that carries the possibility of
several years in prison. We are writing to let you know about our situation, to
ask for support, and to offer words of hope.

A little background: the RNC Welcoming Committee was a group formed in late
2006 upon hearing that the 2008 Republican National Convention would be
descending on Minneapolis-St. Paul where we live, work, and build community.
The Welcoming Committee’s purpose was to serve as an
anarchist/anti-authoritarian organizing body, creating an informational and
logistical framework for radical resistance to the RNC. We spent more than a
year and a half doing outreach, facilitating meetings throughout the country,
and networking folks of all political persuasions who shared a common interest
in voicing dissent in the streets of St. Paul while the GOP’s machine chugged
away inside the convention.

In mid-August the Welcoming Committee opened a “Convergence Center,” a
space for protesters to gather, eat, share resources, and build networks of
solidarity. On Friday, August 29th, 2008, as folks were finishing dinner and
sitting down to a movie the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department stormed in,
guns   drawn, ordering everyone to the ground. This evening raid resulted in
seized property (mostly literature), and after being cuffed, searched, and
IDed, the 60+ individual inside were released.

The next morning, on Saturday, August 30th, the Sheriff’s department executed
search warrants on three houses, seizing personal and common household items
and arresting the first 5 of us- Monica Bicking, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erik
Oseland, Nathanael Secor, and Eryn Trimmer. Later that day Luce Guillen-Givins
was arrested leaving a public meeting at a park. Rob Czernik and Max Specktor
were arrested on Monday, September 1, bringing the number to its present 8. All
were held on probable cause and released on $10,000 bail on Thursday, September
4, the last day of the RNC.

These arrests were preemptive, targeting known organizers in an attempt to
derail anti-RNC protests before the convention had even begun. Conspiracy
charges expand upon the traditional notion of crime. Instead of condemning
action, the very concept of conspiracy criminalizes thought and camaraderie,
the development of relationships, the willingness to hope that our world might
change and the realization that we can be agents of that change.

Conspiracy charges serve a very particular purpose- to criminalize dissent.
They create a convenient method for incapacitating activists, with the
potential for diverting limited resources towards protracted legal battles and
terrorizing entire communities into silence and inaction. Though not the first
conspiracy case against organizers- not even the first in recent memory- our
case may be precedent-setting. Minnesota’s terrorism statutes have never been
enacted in this way before, and if they win their case against us, they will
only be strengthened as they continue their crusade on ever more widespread
fronts. We view our case as an opportunity to demonstrate community solidarity
in the face of repression, to establish a precedent of successful resistance to
the government’s attempts to destroy our movements.

Right now we are in the very early stages of a legal battle that will require
large sums of money and enormous personal resources. We have already been
overwhelmed by the outpouring of support locally and throughout the country,
and are grateful for everything that people have done for us. We now have a
Twin Cities-based support committee and are developing a national support
network that we feel confident will help us through the coming months. For more
information on the case and how to support us, or to donate, go to
http://RNC8.org

We have been humbled by such an immense initial show of solidarity and are
inspired to turn our attention back to the very issues that motivated us to
organize against the RNC in the first place. What’s happening to us is part
of a much broader and very serious problem. The fact is that we live in a
police state- some people first realized this in the streets of St. Paul during
the convention, but many others live with that reality their whole lives.
People of color, poor and working class people, immigrants, are targeted and
criminalized on a daily basis, and we understand what that context suggests
about the repression the 8 of us face now. Because we are political organizers
who have built solid relationships through our work, because we have various
forms of privilege- some of us through our skin, some through our class, some
through our education- and because we have the resources to invoke a national
network of support, we are lucky, even as we are being targeted.

And so, while we ask for support in whatever form you are able to offer it, and
while we need that support to stay free, we also ask that you think of our case
as a late indicator of the oppressive climate in which we live. The best
solidarity is to keep the struggle going, and we hope that supporting us can be
a small part of broader movements for social change.

For better times and with love,

the RNC 8: 

Monica Bicking, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, Luce Guillen-Givins,
Nathanael Secor, Max Spector, Eryn Timmer, Erik Oseland,  

The group who has been attacking the cult of scientology for some time has now broken into Sarah Palins yahoo e-mail account. Copies of the e-mails were posted to WikiLeaks and can be found here WikiLeaks Sarah Palin's e-mail. It is not anything too interesting still it is pretty funny though.

Here are a few links to more information:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/group-posts-e-m.html

http://gawker.com/5051193/sarah-palins-personal-email-account-hacked

Police -- believing someone at the shop could have made the materials available to the anarchists -- narrowed their search to a shop employee.

That employee has not been charged with a crime.

A FedEx spokeswoman says the employee is "no longer employed with us."

Don't let this happen to you! Wear better masks out in those streets!  The key here is anonymity, perhaps get a better mask.  One that covers your whole head.

Infiltrators

Amy Goodman of democracy now interviewed the Ramsey County Sheriff today.  The sheriff admitted that he had hired paid informants to infiltrate various RNC protest groups.  According to the Sheriff:

"We followed our Welcoming Committee members to many cities around the country. We consulted with the terrorism task force in those cities. We received information, etc. But as they started arriving, we were able to identify those that were here. " 

The ironic thing about this interview is that Amy Goodman herself was arrested at the RNC and pepper sprayed point blank in the face while handcuffed.  This was certainly not the worst police brutality faced by protesters at the RNC.  But it is safe to say that the ramsey county police had a pretty good PR fuck up by arresting her.  You can read the rest of Amy Goodman's interview at democracynow.org.

Terrorism

This admission of consulting with the terrorism task forces is not especially shocking since 8 members of the RNC welcoming committee were charged with rioting in furtherance of terrorism.  From the Twin Cities Indymedia:

"In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty." 

There were an additionally more than 800 arrests at the RNC including more than 20 journalists.  This is truly a frightening turn of events, it is the first practical use of HR-1955, the home grown terrorism bill, which we have written about before.  We can probably expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future.  Where every act of protest or dissent is considered and treated like a terrorist act.  Even the police response in Minneapolis, which was to use tear gas and concussion grenades against unarmed civilians at the RNC.  If this line of thought continues soon the concussion grenades will be the least of our worries as the bullets fly over our heads and we are charged as enemy combatants.  This is a very real threat under the provisions set aside by HR 1955. 

Hack This Zine: A criminal threat?

There were numerous home raids before and during the RNC, at least 5 by some estimates, possibly more.  During the raids everyone in the house was arrested and any equipment was confiscated.  Even hackbloc members had their equipment confiscated (stolen) by the police.  So far, very few of these items have been returned.  The protesters were treated as criminals, not protesters exorcising their first amendment rights.  The Minneapolis Star-Tribune quotes:

"Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said the St. Paul raid targeted the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group he described as "a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists...intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention."

One of the main things stolen during these police raids were pamphlets fliers and information, including copies of Hack This Zine!  From Twincities.com:

"The seized material included titles such as "Anarchism, What it Really Stands For," "You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship," "Join the Resistance: Fall in Love," "Hack This Zine" and "An Anarchist Cookbook — Recipes for Disaster." 

I hope they enjoy reading that down at the police station.