We all know now how this works. The Republicans send in their operatives who pose as Washington outsiders. They gain the trust of their target group by espousing rhetoric opposed to government largess and fiscal mismanagement. While leaning hard on the Democrats, these operatives will also give light criticism to fellow Republicans for cronyism, stagnation and being “out of touch” with the concerns of the average American. They promise to “take on the system” and restore the government to the people, placing the focus on economic and social issues, while being careful to steer away any debate that would challenge the power of the military-industrial-complex. That’s the game.

Now this same game is being played against Latinos, with an emphasis being placed on immigration reform.

The Republican operative heading up this project is former US House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. As a base of operations, Gingrich recently launched a bi-lingual news website called The Americano, that claims “to offer a more balanced view on all the issues that concern American Hispanics today, while celebrating the richness of Hispanic Heritage.”

This information is extremely useful, and I recommend reading the entire article.

HOWEVER, we need to be more concerned with leaders manufactured using our own traditional talking points on the pro-immigrant left. There will be a point in time in which people are sent in on our own side to round us up and to pacify us regarding very real policy issues.

This has happened time and again, and I have had their operatives try to convince me that we should shut up and swallow sorry legislation which included immigrant touch backs and other crap. These operatives come from traditional liberal party blocs that had the power to deliver votes.

THESE are the people to worry about because their motives and patrons are less obvious. When the need arises, the gringos that be will manufacture and push these people out. aguila.

These raids come on the heels of the Obama administration’s decision to pursue its right to assassinate its own citizens. Earlier this year, the administration approved of the assassination of a radical, US-born Muslim cleric named Anwar Al Awlaki. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups denounced the administration’s position. “The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy.”

This country has had a long history of suppressing the words and political activities of people of color. In July of last year, on my blog, OurNewAnahuac.net, I posted a story about the military sending undercover spies into non-violent anti-war organizations in the Northwest. In the post, I made some connections to COINTELPRO, which was a government program used to suppress activist groups in the sixties. After the sixties, some of the program’s shocking activities were revealed.

One Chicano leader who had helped organize a group called the Brown Berets was actually a Treasury Department operative under the COINTELPRO program. Anyone even slightly familiar with today’s Brown Berets knows that the government has left a scar on the organization which exists even today. In many other instances, activists who had engaged in violence or encouraged it were actually government operatives.

In that July post, I wrote, “The problem is, I don’t believe that such surveillance has ever ended. It has just changed forms, using more decentralized forms of management. It is becoming clear that there might be much more centralized control of such surveillance resurfacing.” A little over a year later, it seems clear that I was correct.

The structure of this society and government is most in trouble with these new trends. Traditionally, minorities of all colors have had to deal with official oppression in differing forms. This is nothing new. In fact, to my own disappointment, I have had to come to terms with the fact that injustice is so much a tradition in or community, that it is often no longer a cause for outrage. The minority communities who are victims of this repression will survive, as we always have, damaged, scarred and with more mal-adaptive behaviors.

The true issue is that, this society, this government or whatever term you wish to use, is setting itself up for an explosion. The only spirit which holds this fragmented country together is the constitution, and all the myths that the constitution sells to minorities. Most countries are bound by some combination of culture, religion, language, and history.

In the US, there is no official culture; there is no official language; we expect to have a freedom of religion, and the history of this country is so exploitative, that history would be a more effective way to divide the country than to unite it. Instead, the only promise that this country can sell to the people who would normally go in their own directions, is that here, unlike anywhere in the world, you are supposed to have the freedom of speech, the right to petition the government, the right to religion, the right to hate the country, and most importantly the right to life while enjoying these freedoms. Rights, and the ability to convince minorities of all kinds that we can enjoy these rights, are the only thing holding this country together. It did not matter that in practice we could not enjoy these rights. As long as we were convinced that we were afforded these rights by the constitution, we would get in line and wait for these rights to be handed out. Sure, we might make a raucous, but over all we would not leave the line, no matter how long it was.

As long as the repression was done secretly, as was the case with COINTELPRO, the government could always put up a show, telling the people of color that, in fact, the people behind these secret programs were out of line, and were acting against the constitution. We just needed to end this program or punish that person and the constitution would take care of the rest.

What makes today different are a few things: the raids of a few days ago were conducted on many white people. Additionally, the government is no longer making efforts to hide the fact that if you hate its policies, and speak openly about its destruction (even if you take no violent actions) they will not hesitate to order your assassination.

With the government telling us and showing us to our face that we cannot speak our mind in an organized manner and that if we do, they can kill us; and with them showing us that they will not even stop with minorities, what other ideas do they have to sell us?

The Chinese Revolution —— they wanted land. They threw the British out, along with the Uncle Tom Chinese. Yeah, they did. They set a good example. When I was in prison, I read an article —— don’t be shocked when I say I was in prison. You’re still in prison. That’s what America means: prison. When I was in prison, I read an article in Life magazine showing a little Chinese girl, nine years old; her father was on his hands and knees and she was pulling the trigger ’cause he was an Uncle Tom Chinaman, When they had the revolution over there, they took a whole generation of Uncle Toms —— just wiped them out. And within ten years that little girl become [sic] a full—grown woman. No more Toms in China. And today it’s one of the toughest, roughest, most feared countries on this earth —— by the white man. ’Cause there are no Uncle Toms over there.
-Malcolm X 1963 on using history to learn how to get our problems straight.

People who supported former third-party presidential candidates like Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr are cited in the report, in addition to anti-abortion activists and conspiracy theorists who believe the United States, Mexico and Canada will someday form a North American Union.

“Militia members most commonly associate with 3rd party political groups,” the report reads. “It is not uncommon for militia members to display Constitutional Party, Campaign for Liberty or Libertarian material.”

Other potential signals of militia involvement, according to the report, are possession of the Gagsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag or the widely available anti-income tax film “America: Freedom to Fascism.”

Barr, the 2008 Libertarian Party presidential nominee, told FOXNews.com that he’s taking steps to get his name removed from the report, which he said could actually “dilute the effectiveness” of law enforcement agencies.

However, it has been the tradition of intelligence agencies to focus their intelligence activities on progressive or left-wing groups. Today seems to be no different. Even the fox news story gave a nod to the harassment of people on the other side of the spectrum: “ACLU officials blasted a Texas fusion center last month (Feb 2009) for distributing a ‘Prevention Awareness Bulletin’ that called on law enforcement officers to report activities of local lobbying groups, Muslim civil rights organizations and anti-war protest groups.”

However, yesterday’s report on CNN, shows the flimsy excuses that fusion centers can use to begin an intelligence file. Here is a partial transcript of the report, which describes the results of an investigation at a fusion center.

WILLIS: It was the morning of Governor Jodi Rell’s inaugural parade.

KEN KRAYESKE, POLITICAL ACTIVIST: I pulled out my camera and I shoot the Governor Rell, about 23 shots.

WILLIS: Moments later, Ken Krayeske was stopped by Hartford police officers, handcuffed, arrested, and jailed.

KRAYESKE: I said “What did I do?” They said you shouldn’t have been making those threats.

WILLIS: Local police had been on the lookout for him after state police gave out a security bulletin with his photo on it. officials wouldn’t comment pending a civil lawsuit, but court documents reveal state police were alarmed by Krayeske’s blog posts — “Whose going to protest the inaugural ball with me?” And, “No need to make nice.”

KRAYESKE: Why do I have to be nice to a political figure simply because she won an election?

WILLIS: Police began digging for more information, mining public and commercial data bases. They learned Krayeske had been a Green Party campaign director, had protested the gubernatorial debate, and had once been convicted for civil disobedience. He had no history of violence.

Law professor Danielle Citron says police aren’t supposed to gather information on citizens who aren’t suspected of a crime.

DANIELLE CITRON, PRIVACY ADVOCATE: If we’re interested in someone because they are an advocate for a Green Party candidate and we think they are suspicious because they want to get people to protest ideas but not because we think there is a true threat to their lives, I think that’s troubling.

Protests? Antipathy toward politicos? Third parties and blogs? Could be me and you, right?

The whole program sounds eerily similar to the COINTELPRO Program which was originally set up to gather counter-intelligence on the Soviet Union, but which slowly changed its attention to progressive activists, especially organizations which tried to empower people of color like the Brown Berets, the Black Panther Party and La Raza Unida Party.  These modern fusion centers were created to gather information on acts of terrorism, and they are now in the business of harassing bloggers who promote protests, and third-party supporters.

I have been guilty in the past of not taking the possibility of government intelligence gathering too seriously. My thought had always been that everything I do is overt (nothing covert) and within my legal rights. However, I recently re-read an article from my undergrad days: “Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant.”

The article was a good reminder that even if a group is acting responsibly and within the boundaries of the law, the informants may have differing motives to report something completely different. Informants have often fabricated lies to advance their career or to seem like a more valuable asset to their handlers. Even worse, law enforcement officers themselves, have repeatedly fabricated lies which they have represented to community supporters, courts and spouses. All of this has been done in an attempt to disrupt and “neutralize” (to use COINTELPRO’s term) their target.

If history is teaches us anything, it might be that it does not matter so much that an activist or organization is acting legally, once they become the targets of these fusion centers.  Still, those of us committed to justice must not allow fear of surveillance paralyze us.  It’s just one other thing to keep in mind as we push hasta la victoria.

Here are just a few of the COINTELPRO activities listed in the article.

-A Chicano leader helped organize the Brown Berets, while working as an informer for the Treasury Department in Texas and California. His actions permitted police to raid the Chicano Moratorium Committe and arrest some of its members.

-Malcolm X’s personal bodyguard, the man who delivered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to him, was a New York detective who had been undercover for seven years…He earned a black belt in karate and taught it to one black nationalist group he infiltrated.

-In demonstrations at the University of Alabama, a police agent reportedly urged violence, set fire to at least one building, and threw fire bombs at police. His actions were used to declare unlawful assemblies in which 150 people were arrested.

-A deputy sheriff posed as a campus radical and testified that he helped students build and test explosive devices in Buffalo, New York

-”Tommy the Traveler,” posing as an SDS organizer, offered bombs, guns and lessons in guerilla tactics to students on various New York campuses. Two students whom he had trained burned down the campus ROTC building and were immediately arrested.

The article cites 24 of these incidents.