>FBI to Monitor European Activists
>Ezekial Ford, Freezerbox
>August 8, 2000
<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9595>
>Once upon a time the FBI investigated leftists at home, and the
>CIA subverted them abroad. This started to change in the 1960s,
>when crack intelligence squads from the CIA were required to stamp
>out domestic 'threats to stability.' The Black Panthers, anti-war
>groups and the American Indian Movement were all targeted by the
>CIA, which according to its own charter was restricted from doing
>so. Once the precedent was set, it was a smooth transition to gun
>running and drug smuggling onto private US airstrips in the 1980s,
>when the agency wiped its patriotic rear with the Constitution and
>helped turn Black America into a nation of crack zombies in order
>to illegally fund the Contras.
>
>If the 1960s saw the CIA cut in on the FBI's turf, then recent
>years are witnessing the opposite trend. The FBI has caught
>globalization fever, and is currently dotting Central Europe with
>offices to complement its already impressive network of 43 centers
>operating off US soil. Along with one in Budapest, the US Federal
>Bureau of Investigation is launching an office in Prague. According
>to Czech State Television, FBI chief Louis Freeh met with Czech
>Interior Minister Stanislav Gross to finalize arrangements and
>discuss an agenda for the joint US-Czech project, which is to
>include at least one agent and an administrative force. Although
>the training and intelligence gathering center is supposed to be
>fighting organized crime, the Central and Eastern European Review
>reports that one of the "main topics of discussion during Freeh's
>visit was the upcoming joint IMF/World Bank annual meeting in Prague
>in September."
>
>Something tells me that those Albanian heroin rings aren't going
>to be out in full force next September 26th during the protests.
>No, the FBI is colluding with the Czech police to gather information
>on citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Not that anybody
>should be gasping at this.
>
>In terms of practical obstruction, it is not clear what a bunch of
>G-men can accomplish. They can plant moles, monitor the listserves,
>collect names, and forward everything to the mother database in
>Washington; but they can't stop tens of thousands of European
>activists from trying to get into the country and filling the
>streets. It is no secret where activists are organizing in Prague,
>and anybody can join the email list offering detailed information
>about the protests. The FBI will basically be eavesdropping on an
>open conversation.
>
>The FBI may be convinced, along with Czech political elites, that
>the "largest threat to stability in the country is the extreme
>left" (Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman), but they should not be
>surprised to find no bomb making materials in opposition quarters.
>Unlike the extreme right, which actually kills people and has
>explicit political ambitions, the Czech anarchists, whose political
>expression is limited to an annual street party powered by a couple
>of diesel generators, are harmless. A minority of militants hold
>a penchant for breaking the occasional window and many of them
>fancy shocking imagined bourgeois sensibilities with pierced faces
>and various flavors of self-imposed disfigurement, but their actions
>cannot be anticipated or controlled by anyone, not even their fellow
>anarchists.
>
>In short, they are isolated, unpredictable and largely unaffiliated.
>If the FBI is after an imagined clique of well organized Fidelistas
>buried deep within some Molotov cocktail factory, they are wasting
>their time.
>
>A more cynical and dystopic view of FBI involvement posits that
>global elites are merely integrating their intelligence networks
>as part of a long-term project in countering international movements
>for economic and social justice; which is to say, in countering
>the pan-European Left. Just as these movements gathered force in
>the 1960s and challenged traditional structures of power, it is
>possible that we are moving toward a similar era at the dawn of
>the new century.
>
>The Battle of Seattle -- followed by Mayday demonstrations around
>the world and the IMF protests in Washington -- was a wake up call
>to those interested in seeing popular struggle against the reign
>of capital stunted or reversed. We must remember that the 1960s
>were viewed by elites not as a flowering of consciousness or a
>period of liberation for subjected groups, but constituted a "crisis
>of democracy," according to the Trilateral Commission, the collective
>voice for elites in the US, Europe and Japan. Networks of activists
>involved in the struggle against the investor-centric model of
>globalization may become future targets of state repression, just
>as they were in the 60s and 70s. And the FBI is apparently doing
>the preparatory fieldwork.
>
>Attempts to undermine or track these activist networks will be more
>difficult than in the past. They are extremely decentered. They
>extend beyond both national and hemispheric boundaries. They overlap.
>They have excellent communication systems. But perhaps most
>importantly, it is extremely difficult to garner popular approval
>for repression against them. For they are overwhelmingly nonviolent
>and support causes with widespread support. Unlike the Black
>Panthers, which worked out of a lone office and had an arsenal of
>guns aimed against 'whitey', the new protest organizations cannot
>be so easily raided and shut down. They can try, as they did in
>Washington, but it is all to little effect.
>
>Clearly, the groundswell of global opposition to corporate tyranny
>-- as represented by the policies of the IMF/World Bank -- is bigger
>than the FBI, or any other organization for that matter. Even within
>the limited context of a single protest, I cannot see how their
>function can be anything but symbolic. Given the thousands of people
>who will descend on Prague in September -- from Germany, Spain,
>England, Poland -- the image of a handful of ear-wired US FBI
>officials in their three room office is almost laughable.
>
>What isn't laughable are the priorities of those in power, who feel
>that democratic opposition to fascist structures of world governance
>should take law enforcement precedence over serious criminal
>syndicates operating in Central Europe. For there are in fact well
>funded and well organized cliques who warrant international
>cooperation between intelligence operatives in the US and Europe.
>But these cliques are not interested in sustainable development or
>debt relief, however. They have other interests, like the abduction
>and forced prostitution of teenage Ukrainian girls, kilos of heroin,
>cases of Kalishnakovs, and little vials of weapons grade Strontium.
>
>I say let the FBI worry about these things, and let the citizens
>of the world take care of the IMF. But if the Bureau is really
>worried about us activists, they can start their files with me.
-end-
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