[Onthebarricades] Fw: Green Scare is old cases and stings-useless against active direct activists

[Andy]

Forwarded from another list.



There is one thing about the Green Scare that is being neglected: 
All or nearly all persons arrested are either alleged only to have 
participated in actions years ago, or are accused of taking bait set by 
FBI sting operations! The Green Scare has NOT been effective at taking 
out operational cells of any direct action group.

For instance, the case against persons alleged by the FBI to have 
been involved in the Vail action concerns a cell not alleged to have 
done anything since (I believe) 2001! The only reason any of these 
defendants were arrested at all is the FBI was looking at an expiring 
statute of limitations and decided to risk all on leaning on Fergerson, 
a known drug addict and the only person they even had anything at all 
on. Needless to say, this case does not in any way interfere with the 
ability of currently active cells to do anything, any more than the 
SHAC 7 case has obstructed underground direct action against HLS(which 
is way, way up!)

Had Fergerson not been a druggie, they would not have been able to 
arrest him as there was no usable evidence of anything else. Had he 
kept his mouth SHUT, the FBI would not even have had names, much less 
anything else, on the other defendants associated with that case.

There are several lessons of that case:

1: the odds of being captured at the scene or shortly thereafter 
on a carefully planned operation, one with proper recon and 
security, are almost zero. Nobody was caught at the scene for
the actions the Vail defendants are accused of, for instance-
even with action after action taking place, even with the cops
going absolutely CRAZY about what was happening. 

The fact of the matter is, taking physical direct action is
usually far safer than going to a protest, where cops and
cameras are everywhere and illegal arrests are commmon. In 
some cases(HLS in Alexandria, VA, for instance), direct 
action might be a LOT safer than doing any form of legal 
protest in an environment where cops seek to arrest everyone 
for even the slightest offense.

Most cases where someone gets caught at the scene of any illegal
action(political or otherwise) happen because of taking careless
risks like bringing motor vehicles within visual range of a
target, failing to learn police patrol patterns(and camera
locations) in advance, working with poorly-known partners(Anna!)
who turn out to be enemy agents, or engaging targets where they
do not have multiple routes of escape.

2: Too many cooks can spoil the soup-the larger the cell, the
more people any snitch can bring down, and the greater the odds
that one person will turn out to be a snitch. It is safer to work
alone than with someone you have not known for many years and been
through many situations with.

3: Once you undertake serious(felony-level) direct action, you 
are in for life-if anyone in the cell decides in 5 years to "go
career," everyone in is the shit if the FBI suspects that person
even slightly. There have been cases where the FBI has put 
pressure on people they had nothing on-but had gone career and
were no longer willing to face danger themselves-to generate a 
snitch.

When you decide to take on this evil, corrupt system, you are 
enlisting in a war. This war, the World Class War, has been described 
by people ranging from Neocons on the one hand to Anarchists on the 
other as the Fourth World War. There was WWI, WWII, and the Cold War 
which was WWIII on a slow burn plan. The war between Capitalism and all 
the people of Earth oppressed by it is WWIV.

As a result, in entering the struggle you must ask youself many of 
the questions you would if you were enlisting to fight Hitler in 1943.
You need to ask first and foremost how far you are willing to go-and 
how much harm to yourself you can accept. Ask yourself as well if you 
can tolerate living if this system is NOT stopped. If the answer is NO, 
you have just enlisted-if it is YES, you now have a very personal form 
of risk-benefit analysis to make.

You then need to ask the same of all your partners. People unwilling 
either to die or go to prison for a very long time to protect their 
buddies should not participate in group direct action. They can be and 
should be active in any and all of the aboveground ways people 
organize, of course. If this is you, be careful in such organizing not 
to come into posession of any information you think a grand jury might 
want. If you know such people, do not give them such information or you 
endanger both them and yourself.

If you can accept death or prison for your own actions, but not to 
protect your friends, make damned sure they know that, and either agree 
in advance that this is OK or work alone. In a group of people where 
everyone feels they can accept the risk of an action but could not 
stand up to a grand juty, I suggest solo direct action and avoiding 
protests aboveground-it is safe and fairly effective.

You may also find that you are prepared to do what it takes whatever 
the cost, but don't know anyone else you can trust. In this case, you 
again need to figure out what actions it is possible to do by yourself, 
do those actions, and forget about actions beyond the capability of one 
person. If every person who cared about our Earth did just one direct 
action and from then on forgot about it, the Earth destroying 
corporations would face an ever-shifting army of millions of "ghost" 
warriors they could do absolutely nothing to stop. There would be no 
snitches, no agents of penetration, and everyone who got away at the 
scene would get away forever.

In Occupied Iraq, there have been positions held against hordes of 
US troops by just TWO warriors! They use cover, concealment, and 
movement to create the impression of many, many more.

If, however, you have a group of committed people who have known 
each other for years and are willing to lay down their lives for 
oneanother, you have the backbone of a damed serious affinity group, 
like the ones the FBI once compared chasing to "grasping at smoke," 
or "chasing Elves." 

In this case, you have some real power. No affinity group engaged in 
this kind of shit should ever be bigger than a squad in a military unit
(about 12). This is itself a dangerous size, as if only one of the 12 
is bad you are looking at losing 11 good warriors to a snitch.

For most kinds of work, team size(about 4) is far safer and effective 
enough. If you really have 12 good, committed people, best practice 
might be to break into three teams of four, just like a squad would do 
at, say, Normandy in 1944. 

Unlike a military squad,each team operates independantly wherever 
possible, with their own supply caches, their own recon and 
intelligence, and so on. If one team is penetrated, they know nothing 
about the independant actions of the other two. 

The only things all members would know is any initial meeting, and 
any actions so big as to require the services of all 12. In an action 
that size, each affinity group member is now betting their life and 
liberty on the strength under fire of 11 more people, not just three 
more. Still, if you are, say, closing down HLS once and for all, you 
might need that many people to handle the logistics of, say, freeing 
and rehoming every animal inside HLS. 

Had the people accused of the Vail action broken at the start into 
three smaller groups(and assuming they did anything at all), I suspect 
there are eight people would would never have been arrested after 
having performed 2/3 of the alleged direct actions in two separate 
groups.

In all actions, everyone must agree in advance that the benefit of 
the action outweighs the risk. Decide-and then commit,not the other way 
around. This goes for direct action, it goes for mass mobilizations, 
everything.

Risk can be controlled, but never eliminated totally. You control 
risk with planning, security-and keeping affinity groups no bigger than 
they need to be. Even a mass mobilization works best when people are in 
small affinity groups with separate defined tasks. One goes out, the 
rest stay lit...



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