US spies focus on Wounded Knee 1973 photo and American Indian organizations

Anonymous hacked e-mails reveal global security spies' paranoia over Indian movements, and De Occupy movement

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

The files of a global security company, Stratfor, were hacked by Anonymous, exposing US spies at Stratfor were focused on a website with a photo of the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973. The website includes links to Indian organizations and movements, including the American Indian Movement, Indigenous Environmental Movement, the Zapatistas, Transform Columbus Day, Defenders of the Land, Waziyatawin, Unsettling America and Lakota Oyate.

The website is the Deep Green Resistance Austin.
http://deepgreenresistanceaustin.org/2011/10/09/occupy-austin%E2%80%99s-
The website includes the Indigenous Struggle Solidarity Statement.

The hacked e-mails reveal that the Texas DPS (Department of Public Safety) worked together with the private security firm Stratfor to spy on activists, including Occupy Austin and the Deep Green Resistance movement.

As usual with US spy files, the hacked e-mails of the security firm reveal a distortion of facts, misinformation, unreliable informants, confusion, and self-serving exaggeration that keeps security firms and intelligence operations lush with US funding.
The e-mail, released in what Anonymous called a "teaser" of more to come, is signed by the Watch Officer for Stratfor and states:

1. Early on in the Occupy movement, they got the group to support some
2.      document called, "Indigenous Struggle Solidarity Statement" calling
3.      Austin an occupied territory. It includes a picture of armed native
4.      Americans.

In another e-mail hacked by Anonymous, the Stratfor director of operations had this to say about anarchists and Code Pink:

1. Is it worth talking about how the occupy wallstreet people are really just
2.  retreads from the anarchist movement in the late 1990's early 2000's?  It
3.  also showed a little bit in the code pink anti war movement in the mid
4.  200s.
6.  So it is not a completely new phenomenon, it is just an older phenomenon
7.  that is once again regaining strength.

Occupy Austin’s Indigenous Struggle Solidarity Statement

Approved by the Occupy Austin General Assembly (7pm) on 10/8/11

Occupy Austin recognizes that the land now referred to as Austin, Texas is already occupied. It was stolen from the indigenous peoples, including the Tonkawa and Apache, in a genocide against indigenous peoples that continues to this day.
Before colonization, this land was the home to several truly sustainable cultures; cultures that were integrated into the land-base, cultures that did not have to worry about corporate influence on the political process. These cultures were destroyed and are being destroyed by the corporate state, starting with Columbus’ state-sponsored invasion of North America more than five hundred years ago. This invasion is not something to celebrate.
Occupy Austin recognizes that the injustice of colonization by the culture of the corporate state is a wrong that must ultimately be righted, and as such we stand in solidarity with the struggles of indigenous peoples in North America and all over the world.

For more information on such matters, please check out: unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com, aimovement.org, defendersoftheland.org, ienearth.org, waziyatawin.net, lakotaoyate.net, enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx, transformcolumbusday.org
Please note that the presence of this statement on the Deep Green Resistance Austin website does not imply that Occupy Austin supports the DGR strategy, analysis, statement of principles, or code of conduct.
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Deep Green Resistance responds

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 26, 2012
Contact Deep Green Resistance:
Lierre Keith lierrekeith@yahoo.com Aric McBay aric@aricmcbay.org

View documents here.
View Deep Green Resistance response and picture of Stratfor employee here.

Computer hackers known as Anonymous leaked information obtained by hacking into private intelligence firm Stratfor’s computer network. The documents – what Anonymous is calling a teaser – suggest that from at least October to November 2011 Stratfor worked with Texas law enforcement to infiltrate the Occupy movement and spy on the Deep Green Resistance movement. The document contains emails in which Stratfor employees discuss Occupy Austin and Deep Green Resistance. Stratfor “Watch Officer” Marc Lanthemann writes about receiving information on Occupy Austin and DGR from a “Texas DPS agent.” The Texas Department of Public Safety is a statewide law enforcement agency that includes an Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division.
Deep Green Resistance condemns the surveillance and infiltration of activist groups by law enforcement and private corporations and calls on activists and their allies to expose and protest this violation of all of our constitutional rights.
“Law enforcement sharing information about local activism with private intelligence firms should be a huge scandal,” writes Rachel Meeropol, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Privately funded surveillance and infiltration of activist groups is especially chilling, as time and again we see such corporations operate as if they are above the law and accountable to no one.”
In the emails, Stratfor staff discuss how a Stratfor agent went undercover and tried to gather information from an Occupy Austin General assembly. They discuss DGR Austin holding a public meeting on what radicalism means for Austin (wrongly describing the purpose as “indoctrination”), they write about the book Deep Green Resistance, and they speculate about the relationship between DGR Austin and other groups. Comments in the email suggest that this surveillance was ongoing and continued past the incidents described.
Stratfor and law enforcement not only violated activists’ constitutional rights, they also were grossly incompetent. Their report is full of hasty generalizations and inaccuracies. They confuse members of the DGR action group in Austin (which does exist) with another group they call the “Phoenix commune” (which may or may not exist). And they allege a conflict between members of the DGR Austin group and Occupy Austin that doesn’t seem to have happened. It’s not clear if this is part of the strategy counterintelligence groups have used in the past to try to provoke conflict between different social movements—the FBI used this very effectively against groups like the Black Panther Party—or whether Stratfor is simply relying on unreliable or incompetent sources.
In addition, their claim that DGR is inspired by Nazism and philosopher Martin Heidegger is outrageous and obviously wrong. As is their claim that DGR “is focused on creating a situation where violent confrontation will be the ultimate outcome.” It doesn’t require an agent to get simple facts correct. Both of these assertions are just plain false.
In December 2011, Anonymous attacked the Stratfor website, allegedly stealing 200 gigabytes of data and shutting the site down for weeks. Anonymous has gone after such corporations before, such as internet security firm HBGary. They released private documents that included secret plans by HBGary and others to attack and discredit Wikileaks on behalf of big banks. There is a long history of clandestine groups releasing secret information about the surveillance of social movements. In 1971, and underground group called the Citizen’s Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI field office and released thousands of pages of secret information, revealing that the FBI had attacked 1960s social movements with methods ranging from surveillance and infiltration to targeted assassinations. Though we have no contact with Anonymous, their leak of information about government and corporate tactics of repression is part of an important tradition. More leaked information from Stratfor is presumably forthcoming.
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