Fiat justitia-ruat caelum

I was in two minds about upping this as the first post of 2013.

Initially I wanted to start with a positive bang, but sometimes certain things just need to be said.

The title of the blog update is from the Romans and it means 'Do Justice and let the skies fall'.

Pretty powerful words.

Speak out and damn the consequences.

As long as it is the truth that is being uttered then let the world we have created shake and crumble for tomorrow is always open to new beginnings.

I like the sentiment of that.

Fresh starts built on the ruins of misdeeds that have been dragged out into the light.

In a small way it provides me with some comfort as more than once I have found myself to be a lone voice in opposition, the unbending and unrelenting malcontent that will not go with the flow.

The person who wants to shine the light on the distasteful, the man often called an unbending bastard, and it's true.

I am that man.

It's good to know that since ancient times others have felt exactly the same way though.

However being unable to tuck what some would call a moral compass away out of sight may be a laudable character trait in literature, but in reality it makes relationships with others difficult and fraught with issues.

I am well aware of this.

It can be ugly, and long months can pass with friendships feeling the strain, or even breaking, due to my unwillingness to let the truth of a situation go - not the truth as I perceive it, but instead one that can be demonstrably proven - and it would be far easier if I could just turn a blind eye to certain situations, but I can't.

I genuinely can't. It's not a character strength, but a flaw.

A laudable, but fucked up, flaw I suppose.

Thankfully to an extent the internet has allowed me to commune with like minded individuals who like myself can't hold their tongue, and that has been a hugely positive experience.

By way of the click of a few buttons I am not alone.

Pockets of people all over the world have been using social networking to push the issues that for one reason or another their family, peers and even governments, don't want aired out into the open.

From personal issues with wrongdoings on a very basic level to global problems that we are all aware of ,there are those who are speaking out and opposing the darkness with the truth.

From the Arab spring to the Occupy Movement, from the protests in Delhi on the horrifying attitudes to rape to the dismantling of the NHS, ever more people than ever before are bravely speaking out and joining their voices together to push for justice to be done, even if the sky does fall in the aftermath.

This now brings me to the actual point of the update.

As I sit here on the eve of a new year there is much that is going on in the wider world that concerns me.

Upheaval and change are everywhere.

What country has not heard the cry of the dissident?

Legitimate dissent.

We are possibly on the cusp of very large global changes that will alter the world and how we exist in it dramatically.

For this to happen we need to listen to those who will state the truth though, and to that end I would appreciate that on the first day of this new year that you read the following article from Naomi Wolf that was featured in the comments section of the Guardian, and then consider the ramifications of the information that she has brought to a wider audience.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges the Occupy Movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a "terrorist threat":

"FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country."

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it "police-statism":

"This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a "Bank Fraud Working Group" met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its "domestic terrorism" unit. The Anchorage, Alaska "terrorism task force" was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan "joint terrorism task force" was issuing a "counterterrorism preparedness alert" about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the "Bank Security Group" – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to "National Bad Bank Sit-in Day" (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state's Occupy members' details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its "joint terrorism task force" aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the "longterm plans" of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.

There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people's income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.

Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one's personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a "terrorist organization" and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

Please share the content of the Guardian article. Discuss it with friends and seriously take a moment to consider if what it reveals leaves you feeling comfortable with the world we exist in.

If you wish to delve deeper then here's the link to the actual document that the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund managed to pull from the grasp of those who would rather you remained in the dark about the situation.

http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html