The Delphi Technique and #Occupy

[Wombaticus Rex]

By "Evidence" I just mean data points vs. accusations. For instance, during Katrina, the revelations of Brandon Darby started as accusations, but quickly blossomed into a rich shit bouquet of actual data points. Has anything like that happened for Occupy yet?

I do appreciate you sticking to your guns, it will make for a better essay. For future ref, though, this is not the kind of environment where the Dictionary gets invoked unless you're trolling people.

[elfismiles]

"Alleged" at this point but ...

"Occupy" Movement Was Infiltrated By FBI Informant In Cleveland Bridge Bombing Probe
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/fbi ... ent-758348

Unmasked: Meet The FBI's Bridge Bomb Plot Snitch
Shaquille Azir, 39, was indicted twice during federal cooperation
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/ ... zir-756123

Provocateur Unmasked: The FBI's Cleveland Bridge Bomb Plot Informant
Shaquille Azir, 39, was indicted twice during FBI Occupy Cleveland sting operation
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/03-7

[TerryBain]

Thanks elf

[wintler2]

Readers would do well to heed the warnings included in Infiltrators, Informers and Grasses – don’t become paranoid, don’t gossip, and never make accusations about people without significant investigation and evidence. http://www.activistrights.org.au/handbo ... s08s03.php

Lotsa relevent text resources there too.

[TerryBain]

Thanks wintler - I got paranoid, after reading this (great). This info talks about actually searching a suspected person's belongings, among other things. Hopefully, there are some less intrusive mitigation tactics, too.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Via: http://innovationpatterns.blogspot.com/ ... -2011.html

"You don't seriously believe this is a leaderless movement, do you?" Cecily McMillan, a 23-year-old graduate student at the New School, asks me one day. Not possible, she says, that's an illusion crafted by the OWS secret elite, who she insists are unresponsive to the demand for a concrete agenda by the "actual 99 percent."

McMillan is Northeast regional organizer for the youth section of the Democratic Socialists of America, which bills itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States. She's been involved with the Occupy movement since August, despite sharp differences with most of the people in the park. "I believe in a constrained view of revolution," she says, by which she means putting pressure on mainstream politicians. And for this, she says, she has suffered. "I have been called a terrorist. I have been called CIA, FBI. I have been called a Democrat!" Like Lasn, she wants regime change. Unlike most of the occupiers, she believes it requires the guidance of those, like her, possessed of what she calls "cultural capital."

She's a former cheerleader; she used to want to be a politician. She says her studies and her work – she's also a nanny – prevent her from sleeping in the park. But she's not afraid to put her body on the line. She was arrested after she charged Wall Street three times, a "direct action" that even some veteran anarchists – militant and masked – considered wildly courageous, if foolish. A cop thought so, too, blasted her with pepper spray, knocked her down, stepped on her head and snarled at her, "Shut up. You get what you deserve, cunt bitch."

We met in the atrium of 60 Wall Street, built in 1989 as a headquarters for JP Morgan and sold to Deutsche Bank right after 9/11. It looks like a bad Italian restaurant – white-tiled columns, mirrored ceiling, a grotto, stunted palms. This is where many of the movement's working groups meet. At any given time there might be a half-dozen of them – the People's Kitchen, Alternative Banking, Tactics, Medics, Sanitation. McMillan had just come from a gathering of one of the biggest and most influential groups, Facilitation, responsible for setting the agenda of the daily General Assembly. She was there as the least bristly representative of the working group that bluntly calls itself Demands, and her first demand was a place on the agenda, which she claimed had been denied by "infiltrators." She wasn't talking about police; she meant other occupiers opposed to her ideas.

--from Jeff Sharlet's outstanding history, Welcome to the Occupation

[TerryBain]

Sue Basko writes, in http://occupylosangeles.org/?q=node/4285

"HOW TO AVOID PSY-OPS:

1) Use real names and identities. Check IDs.

2) Avoid people or groups that do not use real names.

3) Avoid people that use multiple identities.

4) Avoid secrecy.

5) Avoid cult behavior. If anyone tries to keep you from reporting illegal behavior to the police, ignore them and report it.

6) Avoid anyone that wants you to report to them. They may want you to report your own activities and thoughts, or those of someone else. They may want you to report on confidential meetings with your lawyer. Their insistence on this intrusion can come in the guise of telling you you must cooperate, that they are trying to mentor you or train you for a leadership position. This is all bogus.

7) Avoid any person or group that twists things from wrong to right. Damaging people or property is wrong, but if you have been around a Cy-Ops person long enough, you may start thinking the opposite. No matter how someone wants to glamorize it or makes fun of those that disagree, destructive acts are illegal, immoral, and unethical. Beware of those who use qualifiers, who say they think it is only okay to do violence against the people or property of those they label as the enemy.

Avoid anyone that wants to get you into a secret group where things are supposed to be more interesting or exciting. Usually this is someone setting you up for arrest.

9) Beware of people or groups that want to get you high or drunk and get you to talk.

10) Beware of people who want to take you to visit or stake out a proposed site where some sort of destructive act is being proposed or even theoretically proposed."



11) Beware of flattery or offers of sex.



12) Beware of coincidences. THIS IS IMPORTANT! What might these coincidences be? You need a place to live, they just happen to have a place you can move in. You walk into a mall or park, and they just happen to be there. They just happen to show up living where you live. Think hard about these relationships and about information being elicited from you.



13) Beware of dares or people trying to get you to prove yourself or to offer information about yourself, your activities, or your whereabouts. Ask: Who are you and why are you asking this? You don't need to tell anyone anything.



14) Beware of fake profiles online. They are all over. Cyberstalking is a crime in California. If you fear for your safety or are being harassed or embarassed online, it is time to report this.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Sue Basko writes, in http://occupylosangeles.org/?q=node/4285

"HOW TO AVOID PSY-OPS:

All excellent advice.

This resonated with me- "Beware of coincidences" -

1

2) Beware of coincidences. THIS IS IMPORTANT! What might these coincidences be? You need a place to live, they just happen to have a place you can move in. You walk into a mall or park, and they just happen to be there. They just happen to show up living where you live. Think hard about these relationships and about information being elicited from you.

[JackRiddler]

Sue Basko's list is a good example of paranoid reaction. Not that there isn't good advice in it. I'd not only beware a new person who was trying to get me into say, a bombing plot. I would immediately shut down any contact with them, warn everyone I trusted, and would have to consider how best to expose this person given the reality that the majority of bombing plots since (and maybe even before) 9/11 have been organized by coppers and FBI for the purpose of luring people into stings.

But let's start with #1. I agree completely about real names. But is she saying we should check people's IDs when they show up at meetings? How is that not going to look like a cult, by the way? Other parts of her list indicate a doctrinaire approach to non-violence in which property is put on the same level as people, and what is one to make of the word "illegal" used synonymously with "wrong"? The coincidences thing is vague and can generate paranoia about mutual aid. Any anonymous activity on the Web is Them? As usual with such lists, there's too much to encourage over-broad "spidey sense" paranoia. And imagine we apply these as generalities:

9) Beware of people or groups that want to get you high or drunk and get you to talk.

...

11) Beware of flattery or offers of sex.

End of The Partay, I guess.

That being said, we all have our own criteria for grounds for suspicion. In many cases it will boil down to feelings and indicators that one cannot so easily put into a list of general rules, and some people who are sensitive to snow jobs and bullshit will be able to see things that others might not. Without being certain. Things that you can't just announce, like "that guy looks fishy," without causing disruption. All these junior Columbos don't seem to get how destructive paranoia can also be to a group.

.

[TerryBain]

Riddler - gotta say I was sad to see #11 too.

[JackRiddler]

The accountant who offers to handle the money.
The writer who wants to do the manifesto.
The ingratiating charismatic whom everyone can't help but love, and follow.
The loudmouth who hasn't yet realized it's a stump speech.
The vegan who keeps changing the subject to the plight of local stray animals.
The blowhard who bogs down meetings on petty semantics.
The one who wants to talk about chemtrails and fluoride and Zeitgeist.
The bottle-throwing hero who tells you to break shit and run away.
The civil disobedience monk, insisting people give themselves up for arrest willingly.
The demonstrator who wants to negotiate with cops.
The ones who want to chant "big sticks, little dicks" at the cops.
The anarchobureaucrat, demanding hours of procedural discussion prior to an agenda.
The consensus heads.
The ones who want to vote.
The actionist who wants everything ad-hoc and now.
The crisis monger who rightly points out that time is always running out and continued injustice is intolerable.
The Democrat who wants you to vote for Obama.
The anarchist who insists you must never vote never ever.
The ego whose boring story of self takes three minutes just for the throat-clearing.
The super-activist who is always there with labor and a smile - can this really be what it seems?
The white guy who wonders why so many white guys.
The doofus who sees no racism or sexism.
The suit.
The guy in the Manson tee shirt, Marilyn or Charles.
The femme who wants the boys to shut up and confess.
The party-paper seller who always brings it back to Uncle Karl.
Oh god, the Ron Paul goldbug guy.
Is one of these YOU?
You may be the infiltrator!

.

Addendum for the 9/11 truth movement:
Anyone who was too soon and too effective in expressing their suspicions:
Because THEY wouldn't plan IT without also planting a controlled opposition.
(That one was my favorite, for the paradox factor.)
Anyone who gets media.
Anyone who makes media run away.
Anyone who isn't talking about demolitions all the time.
Anyone who isn't talking about Pentagon Hole or {Insert Supposition X} all the time.
Anyone who isn't blaming it on Occult Unnamed Powers, the Jews, the Federal Reserve, or {Insert Supposition X}.
Anyone who isn't crediting ME as the One Who Had That Idea First!
Anyone who isn't excluding Idea X.
Anyone who isn't including Everyone from A to Z, except those who would exclude Any Idea.
Anyone who mentions hijackers, passenger flights, passengers or airlines as potentially having relevance to the events.
Anyone who mentions Muslim persons in connection with the events.
Anyone who has a soldier or a Republican in the family, unless he's a former Bush regime official talking no-planes.
ETC.

[TerryBain]

Or maybe it is these guys, who provide an excuse to turn peaceful demonstrations into a frappin war zone. This time it's Canada....

"We were truly dealing with a highly organized group that was very well prepared, and who had a very specific plan," he said of the Black Bloc."

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/ca ... 52354.html

[Wombaticus Rex]

All via FUTURE OF OCCUPY
Occupy as a new societal model - and ways to improve it
Quick Guide to Group Dynamics in People's Assemblies
Dealing with Internal Conflict
Lisa Fithian's Facilitator Training Session

[MayDay]

Is one of these YOU?
You may be the infiltrator!

Classic.

[MayDay]

This resonated with me- "Beware of coincidences" -

Wow. What a surprise.