[Occupymendocino] FBI-should-investigate-bankers-not-protesters

Wed Jan 2 06:56:50 PST 2013

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
FBI Should Investigate Bankers, Not Protesters
01 January 13

ecember 16th of 2012 marked the 239th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when activists clad in Native American costumes protested a tax code that benefited a multinational corporation at the cost of taxpayers, and committed one of the biggest acts of property destruction in history by dumping the East India Tea Company's product into the Boston Harbor by the crateful. For nearly fifty years, the act was either shunned or ignored by the populace. But today, those activists' names are among the revered "founding fathers" of our country.

Since September 17, 2011, police have arrested at least 7,719 people affiliated with Occupy Wall Street. But since September of 2008, when banks, ratings agencies, corrupt regulators and complicit economists helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, not one banker or corrupt government official has been jailed. The fact that the federal government has used extensive resources to help coordinate law enforcement response to the Occupy movement is well-documented. The FBI's budget request for 2013 is $8.2 billion. Surely, with 34,000 employees and an impressive budget, the FBI could glean all the information they needed for the arrests of those who rooked families out of their homes to make excessive short-term profits. There's certainly no shortage of evidence that can be found for free with a simple Google search.

More at   http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/441-occupy/15335-fbi-should-investigate-bankers-not-protesters

According to redacted FBI documents, federal agents had been warning the New York Stock Exchange of a coming "anarchist protest" since August of 2011, a month before the movement even began. Surely they also knew in advance that Moody's and Standard and Poor's were intentionally giving AAA ratings to worthless mortgage-backed securities that Goldman Sachs eagerly sold to state pension funds on the open market, then referred to as "shitty deals" in private emails with one another. If the FBI spent the same amount of time and resources on gathering evidence to use against corrupt bankers in court as they did on profiling Occupy Wall Street activists, we might not even be protesting right now.

It's offensive that our government, which was founded on revolutionary war against tyrannical government and protesting the multinational corporations they colluded with, puts nonviolent protesters in the same classification as terrorists. It's offensive that it is now considered criminal activity to peacefully protest economic inequality. But it's disgusting that our government is letting real terrorists and criminals get away while going after the very people trying to make things right.

It shouldn't shock anyone anymore to say that the United States is now a police state, or that walking on a sidewalk in New York City while protesting can end up with your head in between a cop's knee and a sidewalk, or that the I in FBI stands for Intimidation rather than Investigation. Hoping that President Obama will suddenly start caring about the rights of protesters in the United States or appoint a new Attorney General that will prioritize the protection of the First Amendment is naÔve and silly. But what we should do is continue to build our own evidence locker against the bankers, continue to announce their crimes to all who would hear, and keep risking arrest to get the truth out. Maybe we can finally turn the cops against the real bad guys.

Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut. You can contact Carl at carl at rsnorg.org.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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+17# tomtom 2013-01-01 21:15
I had this weired vision that America was turning a new leaf, by starting the new year by feeding our fellow hungry countrymen, countrywomen and countrychildren . As easy as that would be to do, it isn't being done. We need some systems analysts to do a little flow charting, to clean up and straighten out the way we budget our money and do some serious rearranging of our priorities. I'm trying but I'm not seeing change. If a guy has 500 apples and only needs one to sustain life, and a person living next door has no apples, will get sick and die without an apple; what isn't clear about this picture?

+12# MidwestTom 2013-01-01 21:23
The OBama administration waited until the statute if Limitation has expired to attack the banks, thus assuring tat no individual bankers can be charged with a crime, thereby causing loses to shareholders, but not to bankers. All bankers still got their bonus this year.

+23# Holmes 2013-01-01 21:46
"Peoples of the World Unite, you have nothing left to lose!" When that attitude prevailed in the Eastern European Empire, the Empire and the Wall fell. Copy Iceland and tell the bond holders that they, not the people, have to take a cut, and put the locals responsible in jail.

+1# brux 2013-01-01 22:11
Did Iceland do that ... do you know a link to that story, I had not seen that.

+8# brux 2013-01-01 22:09
> FBI Should Investigate Bankers, Not Protesters

Short, sweet and to the point! Yes!

+6# ghostperson 2013-01-01 22:30
Since ordinary citizens are irrelevant, it will take big celebrity firepower to hammer this issue, the Judds, the Afflecks, the Streisand's.

My additional thought was that instead of flash mobs--maybe that too--there could be flash emails, flash face books so that ire is presented in a way that it cannot currently be impeded by those in business and their handmaiden's in law enforcement.

No doubt methods of prevention will be developed but for now, it is something.

Who would have thought that we, the people, would have to fight our own government to exercise our guaranteed right of free speech under the 1st Amendment.

+8# 4yourinformation 2013-01-01 22:30
Banksters run the place! 

Both parties are owned.

When will we learn?

+4# JSRaleigh 2013-01-02 04:07
Quoting 4yourinformation:
When will we learn?

Wrong question. We have already learned.

When, and HOW, do we take our country back from the banksters?

+10# Barkingcarpet 2013-01-01 22:32
Bankers=Legitim ate Rapists.
Politicians are self serving profiteers.
We, the people, ARE the power, and are sleeping in consumerland.

+2# MainStreetMentor 2013-01-02 05:51
Yes, bankers ARE legal financial rapists; Politicians ARE self-serving profiteers. We, the citizens of the United States, elected those politicians to office, and the largest percentage of them are lawyers. We must do two things: 1. STOP voting for lawyers! 2. Stop watching “Dancing with the Stars“ and sports programs, and GET INVOLVED WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF OUR COUNTRY. Write letters, make phone calls to elected officials; Letter-to-the-E ditors of local newspapers are helpful; speak out at city council/town hall meetings. Be HEARD. Be involved. Use the tools our democracy provides, and defeat our miscreant avarice-loving opponents.

+7# KrazyFromPolitics 2013-01-02 00:05
If bankers were investigated, much less be indicted, I would need to be treated for anaphylactic shock. The myth of blind justice disappeared years ago, or never exited in the first place. Our legal system is too corrupt to even consider fairness under the law. It's just a tool for corporations, and the wealthy. However,if American citizens ever awaken...

+5# gdp1 2013-01-02 03:27
...steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.....Dylan

+2# Smokey 2013-01-02 06:02
In Dercember, 2011, some of the Occupy folks in Boston reclaimed the Boston Tea Party. 

The new rebels gathered at the site of the original Boston Tea Party - ironically, it was the place where the Occupy camp existed, before it was destroyed by city officials - and there was a lively demonstration. The demonstration was confronted by cops, and ignored by the mass media, but it
brought something good back to Boston.

The first Boston Tea Party was a protest against "crony capitalism" and the political influence of a global corporation. Keep that story in mind.
It should be celebrated every year.

The modern Tea Party - the crowd that gets money from the Koch brothers - is a tool of global capitalsm. It's a sham.

0# walt 2013-01-02 06:16
Sen. Bernie Sanders said it correctly: "Congress doesn't control Wall Street; Wall Street controls Congress.

A look at our government shows two massive and shameful failures: the refusal to investigate and prosecute those who lied the country into the Iraq invasion, and the prosecution of those responsible for destroying the economy and peoples'pensions.

No matter which party controls the government, this shame remains. The people should demand action or the little faith in government that may remain will perish completely. Failure to take action will haunt the nation as the rest of the world looks on.

0# Bruce Gruber 2013-01-02 06:25
Unfortunately it took the imperial power of the military against the Bonus Army to embarrass the plutocracy's ever present plan for austerity by the needy. Bayonets and tanks mobilized against poverty, want and citizen petitions of grievance is hardly a new control technique.

That the media, owned and controlled by that same elite gentility, should consistently justify, apologize for, or ignore the excesses of 'order' is not a surprise. Nor is the need for a Bonus Army to OCCUPY the corridors of self-congratula ting pompousness.

Change will require GREAT PAIN and entail universal suffering. Wealth does not share its power and, ultimately, yields only to force.

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