For Anarchist, Details of Life as F.B.I. Target

AUSTIN, Tex. — A fat sheaf of F.B.I. reports meticulously details the surveillance that counterterrorism agents directed at the one-story house in East Austin. For at least three years, they traced the license plates of cars parked out front, recorded the comings and goings of residents and guests and, in one case, speculated about a suspicious flat object spread out across the driveway.

“The content could not be determined from the street,” an agent observing from his car reported one day in 2005. “It had a large number of multi-colored blocks, with figures and/or lettering,” the report said, and “may be a sign that is to be used in an upcoming protest.”

Actually, the item in question was more mundane.

“It was a quilt,” said Scott Crow, marveling over the papers at the dining table of his ramshackle home, where he lives with his wife, a housemate and a backyard menagerie that includes two goats, a dozen chickens and a turkey. “For a kids’ after-school program.”

Mr. Crow, 44, a self-described anarchist and veteran organizer of anticorporate demonstrations, is among dozens of political activists across the country known to have come under scrutiny from the F.B.I.’s increased counterterrorism operations since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Other targets of bureau surveillance, which has been criticized by civil liberties groups and mildly faulted by the Justice Department’s inspector general, have included antiwar activists in Pittsburgh, animal rights advocates in Virginia and liberal Roman Catholics in Nebraska. When such investigations produce no criminal charges, their methods rarely come to light publicly.

More at NYTimes.com or on the front page of the Sunday New York Times.

I have no doubt that my email accounts are monitored, etc. It doesn't bother me because I know the law and I know how to avoid saying seditious or treasonous things, it's actually gotten to a point where I wouldn't even think such thoughts because I'm more mature and the radical left has declined dramatically since the green scare and "friendly consumerism." For that last part of that comment, just look at how people defend so veraciously Foxconn or other extremely authoritarian companies right here on our very own DU, using archaic justifications a radical leftist only a decade ago would've been repulsed by.

One quote in the article stands out:



As is true for the vast majority of anarchists, we are a niche, we know it, and violent overthrow is non-viable. Violent activities participated by a small number of anarchists are hardly worth the time of the FBI, but the FBI wastes valuable resources on them in any event.

When it comes to the US government. If you want it to come down, sitting in your house is really all you have to do... The FBI and all these other alphabet soup groups will simply create their own justifications for spending a fortune of treasury money monitoring you, and the bankers and corrupt congressman will take care of the rest. And they wonder why Bin Laden had all that porn? Probably because when he saw current US policies unfolding, he knew he couldn't possibly do it any better... He only needed to sit around choking his chicken.

my new friends and i were discussing gun laws, and I said im for reasonable gun laws, as well as flaming hoops people must jump through if they want an exception to that.IE to have a fully automatic weapon it should be hard a fucking hell to get a permit, but still possible.

I pointed out that even if ALL publicly available guns etc were made legal, we can't overthrow the government.

what the military has access to is FAR FAR superior. Even assuming weapons are equal, the standing military is better trained than any rag tag group of people.

the point of gun laws are to protect the majority of us. that if those clips had been illegal the assassination attempt of the senator would have probably ended sooner with less less of life.

I don't believe in taking guns, but there is no reason you can make to me why a CIVILIAN needs a fully automatic weapon.

I even managed to explain the well regulated militia, in that when the constitution was founded there WAS NO STANDING ARMY! The militias would be brought together as needed, then sent home (national guard like). That the provision was for THAT militia not so that every person can have an uzi.

it was a good discussion, as we were all on the same side as it turns out.

That aside... I'm afraid that this article doesn't surprise me in the slightest. you knew this was gonna happen the microsecond * got into power and after 9/11...well... yeah

but its not necessarily true. All the same arguments could be made about Tunisia, Egypt etc. In the case of Egypt the military sat it out. In the case of Libya, the rebels might have been able to turn the tide if they were better armed earlier, but after the military consolidated behind the old guard there was no way. I know the leading role non-violence played in some of these, but what I'm saying is that things are never as clear cut as citizens against military when you have unrest.

I'm for gun rights, but its not a pet issue with me. What's more interesting to me is what I said in the previous post though, if you want radical change in the US, you really don't have to anything but sit back and wait. The simple fact is that present course is unsustainable. I really believe that: change is coming whether we want it or not. So the real question to me is what is tomorrow going to look like. In that sense, I guess the real revolutions are creatives, inventors. Those people building tomorrow.

The only thing that seems lacking are the jackboots.

- No doubt they wear them while at home......

K&R

so they waste time & money following people who are no threat.

and arresting people who are no threat for quite some time

As war protesters and budding anarchists in Dallas, my SO and I knew we were under fascist rule when Cheney got his war in Afghan, and Ashcroft got his PATRIOT ACT. We knew being against them in a visible vocal way was the same as Scott throwing banners. We must be silenced!

He asked us to come train with him, but we demurred, thinking "We're already on the no-fly list, why risk going to Gitmo?" We weren't on the no-fly list and they weren't going to send us to Gitmo, but we didn't know that then. It looked like the whole goddamn country was late 1930's Germany, and the Fuhrer had been placed, and jackbooted thugs were about to start marching down the streets. They didn't, but they acted like that could happen. We had heard about 9-11 being an Inside Job and the secret FEMA camps. We didn't know what the FUCK was going on in our country. We just knew a bunch of shitheels stole the keys and were joyriding in our beloved democracy.

Which, if you're an American, is grounds for getting uppity. Protests are weak. They give the group participating a self-satisfying stroke, but no one in the towers looks down, and thinks twice if they're doing anything immoral or illegal or offensive. Nonviolent direct action is so much more to the point, but has a limited shelf life as well. A majority of our American brethren have been zombified. To break through the cacophony of MSM and Idol, you gotta MAKE the news for the masses to catch a glimpse of the truth behind the staged news. I enjoy the Freeway Blogger and The Yes Men and the BLF for these reasons.

But even then you got to kick out infiltrators. The marches are bad enough when cops burn cop cars, and the Black Bloc causes mayhem and subverts the nonviolent theme of the whole deal. But if you're in your living room with like-minded anarchists, and some burly toad says, "Let's light the IRS on fire," how would you deal with that? You get paranoid. Probably right down to the catalogs you throw away. Life sucks when there's a camera and a manned SUV right outside.

He did nothing wrong. The FBI did. And we still don't have our country back.
BTW, kudos to the NYT for its belated front-page coverage of this American spirit. Franklin and Jefferson would have loved Scott.
His work at the Exxon shareholders meeting was meaningful and necessary.
His work in New Orleans in 2005 alone is reason to consider him an American HERO.



Photo courtesy of the BLM