So, What's to be Done About That Pesky 1%?

No, no, not that 1%. I mean that minuscule group within the Occupy Vermont movement that, although they're no longer engaging in openly anti-Semitic chat on their Facebook pages, still provide a platform where with one click you can get to some of the most virulently, vile anti-Semitic crap that's comparable to the garbage spewed at David Duke's website. The Occupy Burlington-Vermont website was directly responsible for posting this Jew-bashing photograph that falsely and maliciously claimed that a baby and mother had been deliberately killed by Israelis. Read the whole story here.

One of the anti-Semitic posters at the Occupy Burlington-Vermont, Eamon James Cahall, no longer openly posts there under that name but from time to time posts appear that link back to his Amherst, MA based Facebook page (more on that below) for work based on the writings of the dead racist, anti-Semite, Eustace Mullins, (a true scumbag if there ever was one) for whom Cahall has been such a big booster. Mullins was the author of such bile as "Adolph Hitler: An Appreciation" first published in the October 1952 issue of National Renaissance Bulletin, which described itself as “the only Fascist publication in America.” Mullins was also a well-known perpetrator of anti-Semitic hoaxes like fabricating writings attributed to rabbis and this whooper, "Jews Mass Poison American Children" based on Mullins' claim that the polio vaccine, invented by Jonas Salk, was a poison because it contains live polio germs. During the 1950's Mullins also wrote frequently for the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic publication Common Sense. From Mullins' self-published book "The Biological Jew":

"The Jew has always functioned best as a panderer, a pornographer, a master of prostitution, an apostle of sexual perversion, an enemy of the prevailing sexual standards and prohibitions of the gentile community."

(The above about Mullins comes from FBI documents and other investigative files that cannot be linked to, however extracts and a great deal additional information may be found here)

According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, Mullins is "the most vicious anti-Semite on the face of the planet." You can read more about the unhinged nature of Eustace Mullins in this piece from The Atlantic here, reading that I'd recommend for those Occupiers who seem insistent about using anti-Semitic claptrap about the Federal Reserve as a part of what they like to call "dialogue."

HAMM: "You know who is behind all this shit... I just want the banking families behind all this shit taken down.. you know the names, we don't have to go into it here.."

OVB Admin: "I would LOVE to get those banking families pulled down.You should see how much flack I get for posting Rothschild expose stuff!"

HAMM: "Yeah I'm in the same boat... Rothschilds have been the death of a few conversations for me..people are unwilling to see the simple truth..they look for truth to be very complex and convoluted..these families of people are the problem..if people could just focus on that and on them.."

OVB Admin: "I've heard those concerns before.I don't think you're being unreasonable to suggest connecting the dots in that way. I've even heard it said that this movement was started to draw all of the thinkers and doers out in the open to get their information and cart em off."

HAMM: "amen brother"

Naturally, Mullins is something of a Holocaust denier as well:

"It wasn’t really an issue until the late ’50′s. All of the sudden, they remembered that six million Jews died in WWII. I’ve often said that after six million Jews died, most of them went on to own apartments in Manhattan and Tel Aviv. It’s not really a topic that interests me much beyond how it’s used as propaganda and mind control.”

Eustace Mullins

While I was looking into connections between the anti-Semitic leadership of the Vermont secession movement and their involvement with the Burlington occupiers, it was the comments at Occupy Burlington-Vermont Facebook page about Jewish "banksters" at the Federal Reserve there that first brought this troubling issue to my attention. I'd seen earlier reports of anti-Semitic aspects at the New York OWS camp at Zuccotti Park, as well as its origins having come the call made by Kalle Lasn's magazine, Adbusters, which has a history of publishing anti-Semitic screeds. The NYOWS Media Team began to produce what can only be described as a "the right wing is out to get us by falsely labeling our movement as anti-Semitic" false meme. This falsehood is also being churned out from various Occupy groups around the country that suggests that anti-Semites that had begun to permeate the Occupy movement from coast to coast were mere "outliers" and to say otherwise was to be labeled a part of some vast rightwing conspiracy to undermine the Occupy movement. Unsurprisingly, one prominent member of the NYOWS Media Team by the name of Justin Wedes has a history working with other groups like Yes Men and US Uncut, perpetrating media hoaxes which has been reported on here and here.

I've received criticism for having focused too much on a small group of anti-Semites that has attached itself to the Vermont Occupy movement. In most cases the criticism parrots in some way the false meme that has been created by the NYOWS Media Team. Fact is that here in Vermont I'm not the only critic of, not only the anti-Semitism, but of the occupy movement's failure to adequately address the presence of anti-Semitism based, in large part, on the works of a known Nazi sympathizer and proponent of the modern day neo-Nazi movement in the US, Eustace Mullins. Here's but one example of concern raised in Vermont from an opinion piece published in UVM's The Vermont Cynic by Peyton Rosenthal, a local Occupy supporter:

"By (occupiers) allowing and not condemning (the anti-Semitism) says something to me and, I'm sure, a multitude of other people..."

"...I propose OWS condemns anti-Semitism or any message remotely racist or bigoted. The movement should at least make it clear whether they do not care, or are not affiliated with it..."

"...I know it's been said repeatedly that Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless movement, but it needs to be acknowledged that the anti-Semitic incidents are becoming a problem. Until then, I don't think I and others who are Jewish, have a place in the movement."

Source

To which I'd add, you don't have to be Jewish to have no room for anti-Semitism attached to anything in which you're involved.

But for the moment my hope for a refutation of anti-Semites in its midst isn't very high for the local Occupy movement. A recently proposed statement by one local Occupy group seeking the end to various isms has one ism, under the circumstances, glaringly missing. Care to guess which one was missing? Maybe it's just another example of activists not wanting to do anything that might undermine their anti-Zionist cred. Since their argument essentially is that concerns about anti-Semitism are an attempt to silence criticism of Israel, I suppose that it's only fair to throw similar crap back at them, only of a fact based sort of crap that is not a meme.

There are people who I like and admire that are involved with the Vermont occupy movement, and at some point they are all going to need to address and condemn the politics of hatred that has established a firm and visible foothold in Occupy Vermont movement.

On a brighter note, Eamon James Cahall, page owner of the Eustace Mullins inspired, viciously anti-Semitic "We Know The Secrets of the Federal Reserve" Facebook page has announced that he's got a problem:

This facebook page has recently received some warnings in regards to our wall posts. We have been threatened with termination, however facebook failed to inform us as to which post was against the facebook terms and conditions."

"This facebook page has recently received some warnings in regards to our wall posts. We have been threatened with termination, however facebook failed to inform us as to which post was against the facebook terms and conditions."

"Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for reading/sharing/liking!"

Naturally, his comments section contain the usual inaccurate assertions about bullshit free speech violations. Facebook has every right to prohibit some forms of speech under its terms of service, as they do with hate speech. Maybe if Cahall hadn't based his page entirely on the hateful expressions of a well known anti-Semite and Hitler lover like Eustace Mullins he wouldn't have violated FB's well publicized terms of service proscribing hate speech, no? Good riddance.

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More Anti-Semitic Red Meat From The Folks At Occupy Vermont-Burlington

UPDATE: Noon, 1.6.12: OVB has taken down their anti-Semitic post based on a really foul falsehood meant to inflame hatred against Jews but you can't really disappear anything in the age of screen caps. I don't know how OVB will ever be able to represent any portion of the 99% using 100% lies and trying to airbrush their way out of the hole that they dug for themselves. The facts are below.

Meanwhile, here's what the smear was replaced with, although, naturally, with no acknowledgement of the original anti-Semitic intent:


Below is what I first wrote yesterday about, at this point, the most insidious attempt at fostering race hatred and flagrant Jew-baiting by an Occupy Vermont group.

This morning some unknown administrator of the Occupy Vermont-Burlington Facebook page posted this that s/he had obtained from Occupy Wall Street here.

The originator of the photo, (H) at OWS wrote, "(H) Can you hear or feel the pain of Palestine?" to which the OVB admin added, "Wrong wrong wrong. How can they do this stuff?!!!" and "Hardcore pic but reality sucks...."

Commenters on the OVB Facebook post followed OWS and OVB down the anti-Semitic rabbit hole and tripped over their collective dicks to add these embellishments:

David Cardill "That is a photo, which produced the remark from the izreal army, where they said "1 bullet, 2 kills" They sniped pregnant women."

And...

Occupy Vermont-Burlington "Please don't construe this post as an anti-semitic statement.That was not the idea and is not my position. - Mr. X"

And...

Occupy Vermont-Burlington "No like ^ but true."

OWS commenters were even more condemning of the Jewish state and even got into the racist, anti-Semitic Eustace Mullins' Rothchild family claptrap that is reported on repeatedly here in posts below.























You see, if the Occupy brain trust that was all over this picture during the morning today had spent the FOUR MINUTES AND TWELVE SECONDS that I did researching (sorry for the ALL CAPS, something I don't normally do, but I can't believe how STUPID these people can be when they WANT TO BE) this sad picture they would have learned:

▪ The baby was not Palestinian.

▪ The mother lived.

▪ The shooting occurred in Mosul, Iraq on August 10, 2005.

▪ The alleged shooter (unconfirmed) was not Israeli but purported to be American.

This was reported by the Iraqi League here. I found their report after clicking on the picture where I located it in a depressing collage at the Children of Iraq Association Charity here (the picture may not show but presently it's the first one directly beneath the Vanessa Williams video and to the left of the group and is labeled "Baby Killed" - it will link directly to the Iraqi League website report).

While this deal over the picture certainly rises to the level of an anti-Semitic smear designed to tap into the medieval, anti-Semitic baby killing trope known as Blood Libel, I suppose we should be thankful that OWS, OVB admin(s?) and David Cardill didn't suggest that the Israeli troops served the baby for dinner as a part of their lies.

*** On a personal note: It has been observed that the posts on some Occupiers anti-Semitic inclinations and secession are not a well connected subject. While somewhat true, there is ample justification listed in posts below about Vermont's secesher leader, Thomas Naylor, bragging about another secesher leader/activist, Matt Cropp, being a primary organizer of the Occupy Vermont Burlington group. Naylor has praised, sort of, the Burlington group and has himself expressed vile, anti-Semitic sentiments. In short, over the coming days I'll decide whether to continue posting these commentaries on the anti-Semitism which permeates some Occupy groups like OVB and OWS here or on a separate blog.

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Occupy Gov. Peter Shumlin's State of the State Address at the Vermont Statehouse?

Well, maybe not so much.

Occupiers issued a press release today about a planned action at the Vermont Statehouse for the occasion of Gov. Peter Shumlin's. Here's what it says:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

99% TO OCCUPY THE STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS

Montpelier, Vermont, 5 January 2012 — Silently displaying their feelings about details of the Governor’s assessment of the state of the State, using hand signals indicating approval, disapproval or withheld judgment, Vermonters from around the state will line the House chamber to occupy the state of the State address on the third day of the 2012 legislative session.

Dressed in green, with personal messages for the Governor taped to their chests, Vermonters identifying themselves as the 99% will make themselves visible in a peaceful and respectful demonstration of their position at the center of government.

“It cannot ever hurt to remind our elected representatives of their obligation to the people of Vermont,” said Del Waterhouse, a member of the Occupy Central Vermont General Assembly. “Democratic government is the result of community members joining together to satisfy our needs, so it is the obligation of government to satisfy the needs of the people in our communities. As cuts are made to LIHEAP, mental health services, affordable housing programs and more, I feel the need to be visible at events such as these, to let the decision-makers know that I am paying attention. It sends a strong message to see so many of us standing together representing the 99%. We are engaged, and we want to work together to create change.”

The Occupy Central Vermont General Assembly meets every Saturday at 3:00 PM and is open to all members of the community. Updated location information can be found at occupycentralvt.org. Members work together to address issues in the community related to economic justice, inequality and democracy. Other local General Assemblies take place regularly in Brattleboro, Burlington, Rutland, and the Upper Valley.
Contact:
www.occupycentralvt.org

I've spent time at the Statehouse, as have many Vermonters, and one distinguishing fact that I'd point out to the group (I can't bring myself to call this an "occupation" - more on that below) is that unlike them, the legislators in the Vermont Statehouse General Assembly chamber were all elected to represent 100% of Vermonters in their respective districts and counties and are not self-appointed to serve a limited political agenda. And unlike the unelected occupiers, the executive and legislative members in the chamber have all taken an oath to "not, directly or indirectly, do any act or thing injurious to the (Vermont) Constitution or Government thereof... and will therein do equal right and justice to all persons, to the best of (their) judgment and ability, according to law."

In addition to announcing their intent to engineer a quasi-disruption of a governmental proceeding, they've issued instructions and press talking points that include advice on how to evade reporter's questions:

Occupy the State of the State Address Event Plan!

Below is the text from a handout we will be distributing tomorrow at the State of the State address. Please see the comments for a couple more updates.

The Event

This will be a peaceful and non-disruptive action. NO MIC CHECKING! Occupiers will listen to the speech, using General Assembly hand signals to give instant feedback on what we hear. If you are not familiar with these, ask someone! Basically it is this:

•Wiggly fingered jazz hands = approval, I like what I hear
•Level hands in front of you= I’m unsure, I’m neutral or I need more information.
•Down hands= I don’t like it, I want more information.

Write your message to the Governor on a 8 ½ x 11 piece of paper; tape it to your shirt, and deliver after the event. Message collectors will be circulating after the event and by the exits on the way out. You can also drop it off yourself in the Sergeant-at-Arms office. NO SIGNS ALLOWED in the State House.

Our message: your message

More than 70,000 Vermonters lived at or below the poverty level in 2010. Gov. Shumlin campaigned on a promise to rebuild Vermont’s Middle Class, yet we are in the slowest job growth rate on record in Vermont, and public policy continues to deepen the income disparities, dismantling the middle class and undercutting the poor. Real wages at all income levels in the state dropped over the past year, except for the top 10%. People in the bottom 20th percentile saw wages decrease an average of 5%; while the top 10% of income recipients saw a 1% increase.

We hope that, in expressing your vision and focusing on the specific issues of greatest concern to you, you will make an effort to frame issues in terms of economic and social justice, to connect the specific to the general and show the unity of our movement.

As a movement of many leaders, we have many spokespeople, and we hope that you will feel empowered to express your awareness of the problem and your vision of a solution. But please be clear that — like each of us — you are a spokesperson for yourself, not for the movement. Use “I” statements when talking to media and decision-makers. Here are some other tips:

How to talk to the media:

Talking to members of the media is an opportunity to convey a message to a large number of people and to frame and inform public conversation. It is important to know that talking with reporters is not like normal conversations.

•Reporters are not looking for a conversation at all. They are looking for a quotation, and that quotation is generally limited to a sound bite. Talk in brief statements that can be quoted.
•Focus on the message that you are trying to convey, regardless of the question a reporter might ask you. Take control of the story. Do not be afraid to repeat your message.
•Relax. You are involved because your values encouraged you to be. You need no more justification or authority than that. Talk about your values, tell your story, personal impacts- you are the expert on that!
•If you do not know an answer to a question,admit it. The truth is on your side, do not make things up.
•Be friendly, positive and accessible. Do not give the media help in marginalizing or vilifying us.
Be a character in your story. Explain how your issues affect you. Be quotable.

Quick Facts:

EDUCATION: The Legislature has cut the annual General Fund appropriation to support education for the past few years; shifting the burden onto local school boards. The shift means property taxes, which still fall harder on middle-income Vermonters than on the wealthy, are $77 million higher this year.

TAXES: The progressive income tax in Vermont was cut for those at the top of the wealth bracket. There is support from wealthy Vermonters to increase revenues from them. Many of the top 10% in Vermont want to pay their share!

JOBS:Even before the start of the Great Recession in 2007, Vermont was creating jobs at the slowest rate since records have been kept. By 2010, Vermont was seeing a net loss of jobs. This poor job-creation performance occurred in a decade when the wealthiest Vermonters — the so-called “job creators” — saved hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes, thanks to the Bush tax cuts.

WAGES:Median household income has only risen 1.5% over the last 20 years, while the State’s domestic product has risen almost 65%.

In 2009, the Vermont livable wage was calculated to be $16.75 an hour for a single person with no children to pay their bills and have a rainy day fund. Just a couple of days ago the minimum wage in Vermont rose to just under $8.50/hour.

Jazz hands? Really? Well, I'm sure that'll make an impression.

1/04/2012 - 1:34 PM

FYI for those coming, we have been notified that bags will be searched upon entering the building, and again, no large signs on things on sticks will be allowed in. Our goal is to be non-disruptive of this event. NO MIC CHECKING during the governor’s address. We have been working with capital police to ensure safety for all involved, they have been really helpful and accommodating and are working on reserving a number of seats in the House Chamber for us.

It is unlikely that most of us will fit in the Chamber and they have new(ish) rules that there is no standing allowed, which means many of us will be in the hallways outside. They pipe the speech through the speaker system so we should all be able to hear and use our hand signals to express our feelings about things being said.

Apparently the organizers of this yawn inducing event have been working with law enforcement assigned to the Vermont Statehouse to reduce the chance of being carted off, so no tedious mic checking, no signs, just notes taped to their chests like ones that school groups' moms do for their kids that show up at the Statehouse for outings and (groan) jazz hands.

Meanwhile, back in Burlington the local occupiers continued to purge participants on their Facebook page over the New Year's weekend, while still promoting the work of the racist anti-Semite, Eustace Mullins and claiming to "Know the Secrets of the Federal Reserve" based on Mullins' screed. Mullins was also infamous for having perpetrated a "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"-like racist hoax in the 1950's called "A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century", as well as his classic racist, anti-Semitic tomes, "Adolph Hitler An Appreciation" and "The Biological Jew".

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Thomas Naylor Calls the Racist, anti-Semitic George F. Kennan, the "Godfather" of Naylor's Vermont Secessionist Movement

Just when I thought the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the the Dixie singin' Thomas H. Naylor couldn't get any weirder, he goes straight into the batshit crazy corner and pens a big, sloppy wet kiss to a bona fide racist, misogynist and anti-Semite - George F. Kennan.

You see, during the past decade Naylor exchanged some correspondence with an obviously ill, doddering nonagenarian. You can read Naylor's tired attempt at attaching celebrity to his barely hanging on secessionist movement here. What I found so interesting is that Naylor used a recently published biography of Kennan by John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press, 2011). Oddly, Naylor calls Kennan "the former dean of the American diplomatic corps" when it is well known that Kennan had been ostracized by his fellow white aristocrats for having extremist white supremacist views too distasteful even for those good old, rich and connected white boys.

Naylor quotes extensively from Gaddis' book in support of his contention that an apparently bed-ridden Kennan had embraced Naylor's lost cause.

What Naylor left out was that Gaddis extensively covered Kennan's odious bigotry. Figures.

In 1935, Kennan wrote to his sister:

“I hate democracy; I hate the press. . . . I hate the ‘peepul’; I have become clearly un-American.” In the draft of an unfinished book, begun in the nineteen-thirties, he advocated restricting the vote to white males, and other measures designed to create government by an élite.
Source and also this source

And...

"...(Kennan) wrote in 1932. “We have only a group of more or less inferior races. … No amount of education and discipline can effectively improve conditions as long as we allow the unfit to breed copiously and to preserve their young.” Among these “inferior races,” he singled out blacks and Jews as objects of his frequent harangues. These “rants,” Gaddis writes, might suggest that Kennan was becoming a “dysfunctional fascist.”
Source

And...

...it was a neighbor of his, one J. Richards Dilworth, who divined (Kennan's) true character: “George is ultra-conservative. He’s almost a monarchist.”
Source

He was also a serial philanderer.

Which probably endears him all the more to an old fraud like Naylor.

But I knew that Naylor had jumped the shark of hypocrisy on this one since Kennan was the architect of the policies that fed the Cold War and which resulted in the death of millions. But, of course, that wouldn't matter to Naylor as long as he could flimsily promote a connection to some kind of celebrity for his dying secesher movement. Unfortunately, Naylor's chosen to embrace someone who, like himself, became increasingly irrelevant in his old age.

That Naylor sees Kennan as the "Godfather" of a movement that has maintained its ties to racists, anti-Semites, misogynists and homophobes throughout its sorry, unimportant to Vermonters existence, really comes as no surprise.

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Mother Knows Best

Earlier this fall during the onset of the incipient Occupy Wall Street movement and its local incarnation in Burlington, I was struck by what was clearly a blatant and historical revisionist bent to the group, not unlike some of the group's members previous and continuing involvement with the tiny Vermont secessionist movement. Not only did some embrace the conspiracist nonsense of racists and anti-Semites like Eustace Mullins, author of "Adolph Hitler An Appreciation", but they also engaged in creating fictions that evolved as need required. For instance, first the local Occupiers blamed a widely honored and acclaimed housing and homeless assistance group for having sent homeless people to live among the Occupiers, forcing the assistance organization, which has a sterling 30 year record of achievement on behalf of Vermont's homeless to issue a public denial of the baseless charge, to the Occupiers then claiming "solidarity" with the assistance provider. Flip, flop.

When the local Occupiers stumble, miscalculate or just plain screw the pooch, they resort to lies, misrepresentations or simply make shit up.

But it's been the ongoing undercurrent of anti-Semitic conspiracism displayed by some Occupiers similar to that of a Vermont secessionist blowhard, Thomas Naylor, who has claimed that a secession activist, Matt Cropp, was one of the "principal organizers of Occupy Vermont," as well as their sad continuance of making claims against Jews that's been going on for thousands of years that caught my attention. You'd think that the Occupiers, especially one in particular who's repeatedly contacted this blog, could pull their heads out of their asses and come up with something newer than age old Jew hatred.

That said, I thought I'd share something that recently appeared on the endpage of The Sunday New York Times Magazine:

Grabbing Life by the Horns
By Shalom Auslander
Published: December 16, 2011

When I was a child, my mother told me that everyone in the world hated me. They hated me, she said, because I was a Jew.

So? I asked.

So nothing, she replied. So they hate you.

Not just the people on our street, who were “classic Jew-haters”; not just everyone in the town nearby, who were “card-carrying anti-Semites”; not just everyone in the world now, but everyone who’d ever lived, ever: Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims.

I was sure she was wrong. I was sure they just hated her, which I could very well understand. She told me this when I was 6, when I was 13, when I was 15 and when I was 17. At 18, I went on a trip through Europe with some observant Orthodox friends; it was something of a symbolic trip, because we were at the age when we were getting ready to leave home, to head out into that strange new world outside the narrow religious one in which we were brought up. I was determined to find a new home for myself, something broader, more enlightened, less paranoid, less terrified.

One morning, we were on a train headed, I believe, for Paris, when we decided to pray. We had on our yarmulkes, zizit, phylacteries, the whole outfit. A U.S. Marine, in full camouflage, was seated in front of us, and he kept turning around, looking at us and smiling warmly. When we finished praying, he turned around again, and in a heavy Southern accent, with absolutely no malice or hatred whatsoever — in fact, with an almost endearing, childlike curiosity — asked me if I wouldn’t mind too terribly showing him my “Jew horns.”

Not, he added, if it’s like a big deal or something.

My first thought was that he was kidding.

My second thought was that he was serious.

My third thought was, Oh, no — Mom was right.

If he had just called me a dirty Jew, it would have been O.K. If he had just held me down and carved a swastika on my head — no biggie, I’ll wear hats. But he went all the way to horns — to the Middle Ages, Christ-killing, money-lending, shape-shifting stuff.

That was going to be a problem.

Not because of anti-Semitism. I could probably make it in a world fouled with ignorance. I could probably get by on a planet poisoned with petty prejudice and institutionalized hatred. But a world where my mother was right?

That was going to be a problem.

Source

Shame on the Occupy Vermont group in Burlington for never having called out the bigoted, racist anti-Semites among them.

Shame on them!

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Second Vermont Republic's Thomas Naylor Has Given Repeated Interviews Over the Years to Iran's State Run "Press TV"

I've blogged in the past about Thomas Naylor's appearances on the racist, Holocaust denying, anti-Semitic and homophobic, to name just a few of the hatreds espoused there, Internet radio program hosted by the white supremacist League of the South honcho, James Edwards, called The Political Cesspool here and here.

It really should come as no surprise then that for years the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, baas of the Second Vermont Republic, has also been doing interviews with Iran's state run English news service, Press TV, which was launched in 2007 by Iranian President and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Press TV has established a reputation for providing a forum for Holocaust deniers, and while Naylor hasn't himself commented, that I can find, about the Holocaust, he's had an SVR advisory board member with long ties to the League of the South who's published Confederacy claptrap in a well known Holocaust denial publication, The Institute for Historical Review (IHR formerly was advertised on Edwards' Political Cesspool - small world!).

Press TV has a sordid history of taping the "confessions" of Iran's political prisoners in interrogation chambers, while Iranian security interrogators remain in the room to ensure that the prisoners stick to the "script."

"Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist, spent three months in prison after the Iranian election in 2009. Bahari, who made confessions under duress, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that his taped confession was a fabricated show, coordinated by Iranian state television and certain press outlets close to the Iranian government..."

"One was a reporter from the IRIB Persian service, one was a reporter from the English language Press TV, and the other was a reporter from Fars News Agency. All three of them and I were reading from a script. The IRIB reporters read the interrogator’s questions. When I made a mistake, just like an interrogator, the reporter would say ‘It’s better if you say it this way.’”

"According to Bahari, there was complete coordination between his interrogators and the IRIB team. “The room where I was interviewed by Press TV was the same as my interrogation room. Only that during the taping, a red curtain was put up behind me and my interrogator sat behind the curtain making sure I spoke as they wished,” said Bahari."

Read the complete August 2010 report, "Iranian State TV Acts as an Arm of the Intelligence Apparatus" at the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran here

More on Press TV' "collu(sion) with the torture and illegal detention of (the) journalist" here

You can watch Naylor's two part secesher talking point interview here and here. In these October, 2009 interview segments Naylor repeats his oft told fiction that, in this telling, 11.5 to 12 percent of Vermont's registered voters support secession. Last year's result for his handpicked gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele, revealed how fraudulent Naylor's figure is; Steele's candidacy was rejected by more than 99% of Vermont's voters. The irony of Naylor's appearance on an Iranian propaganda outlet mere months after the Iranian government crushed public protests over the sham re-election of Ahmadinejad and the death of hundreds of demonstrators while Naylor was denouncing the US seems to have escaped the secesher Godfather. In one instance of a sniper's attack by a member of Ahmadinejad's Basij militia (government paramilitary) that has been called "probably the most widely witnessed death in human history," Neda Agha-Soltan was murdered for attempting to reach a demonstration a kilometer away from where she was shot. Rather than come to his senses and offer a belated condemnation over Ahmadinejad's many wicked crimes and state sanctioned murders of the peaceful election protesters, as well as the ongoing criminal executions of Iran's gay youth and citizens, Naylor issued this statement a couple of months after his Press TV interview:

"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of the few leaders in the world who possesses the courage to confront the United States and Israel."

Source

If Time magazine named a Scumbag of the Year for 2009, Naylor surely would have been a finalist.

So, here are his entries for being the 2011 Time Scumbag of the Year, two more appearances attacking the US for an Iranian audience (February 11 and October 22) based on pieces he'd written, although for the Iranian listeners he threw in a little additional Jew-baiting, red meat:

"... the "Israeli lobby" essentially (has) hammer-lock control over the US government"

The gay genocide being perpetrated by his friends in the Iranian government shouldn't have come as news to Naylor in 2009 or this year since officials of Ahmadinejad's regime have been saying that gays"deserve to be tortured and executed" since 2007 and, for e-confirmation, Robert Cook, a Salon.com blogger suggests going to Google Images, "type in 'gay Iranians,' and you’ll see that most of the images are images of young Iranian men being hanged."

Additional sources of information about Press TV that Naylor should have consulted before contributing to Iran's propaganda machine are readily available from the Iranian democracy movement here and here. Or maybe he should have recalled the woman condemned to be "stoned" that blanketed the real press and Press TV's involvement in producing and airing her "voluntary" media confession or the condemnation from the world human rights community of Press TV's despicable act of working hand-in-hand with Iranian thugs.

For years the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force has funded the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in Iraq that have been killing Americans according to this CNN report:


I keep wondering if Naylor and the clowns in his Vermont secession movement can come up with anything dumber than they have in the past, and they seem incapable of disappointing in that regard.

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An Earlier "Besetzen Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada" ("Occupy the US and Canada") List of Jews

My alternative title to this post that has much to do with an Occupy Vermont-Burlington admin's continuing Jew-baiting might have been more seasonal like, say, "He's Making A List," but when you see the content below you'll probably agree that there's no danger of violating Goodwin's Law since this is no mere analogy. The title used fits unfortunately well.

Another YouTube video has been linked to yesterday by an OVB admin and, yes, it's again about the Rothchild family. This Jew fixation on the part of the OVB leadership, a leadership that, according to that hater of the so-called "Israeli Mafia," the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, includes a secession organizer, Matt Cropp, is growing into a stench these guys aren't going to be able to get off of the group with a bar of human soap. And, no, I'm not going to link to this one. Suffice it to say that the producer of the vid is fascinated with Jews, Freemasons, the Illuminati, specialized sovereign citizen crazy name spellings and lore, 9/11 truthiness, grassy knolls and loads of other paranoid crap - a total nutjob that the admin could have determined in 2 minutes and 3 clicks, as I did. Or maybe they did and...

I suppose none of this is really very surprising since, as I've pointed out before, the Occupy movement was inspired and created by an anti-Semite, Kalle Lasn, who published the Occupy call to action in his Adbusters magazine. In an interview just a few days ago by Robert Siegel on NPR, Lasn addressed his listing of Jews in government from an earlier 2004 article in his Adbusters magazine:

SIEGEL: "You are identified, obviously with the Occupy Wall Street protests. But before that, with campaigns against commercialism, excessive materialism. You've been very critical of Israel and of neoconservative policies."

LASN: "Yeah."

SIEGEL: "Some people think you're out of bounds identifying who are Jews among prominent neoconservatives."

LASN: "Yes, and some people think I'm way in bounds as well."

Source

Other than some of the people at OVB and the bigots who make such lists at the white supremacist, neo-Nazi hate website Stormfront.org (like this one here) that are remarkably similar to the sort of list Lasn compiled of Jewish neocons in the Bush II administration that was reported on here, these guys are all following in the goosesteps of an earlier list maker.

Here's a little something that some OVB secret Santa might want to hurry up and bid on if someone hasn't already snapped it up - an earlier list of Jews in the US and Canada compiled by none other than the Master of the master race, who I'm also sure would have found Lasn's list, as well as the Rothchild/Jew-baiting going on over at OVB, "in bounds."

"Adolf Hitler’s personal copy of a city-by-city, state-by-state guide to the location of America’s Jewish population..."

"It also provides details of several hundred Jewish organizations, including B’nai B’rith and the Anti-Defamation League, along with names of key individuals and their addresses."

"In light of the Holocaust, it is a disquieting compendium."

"The 137-page report, “Statistik, Presse und Organisationen des Judentums in den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada” (Statistics, Media, and Organizations of Jewry in the United States and Canada)..."

Source

It'll make a great oven, er, stocking stuffer for some Jew-baiter at OVB. Of course, if OVB missed the auction they may want to start their own list of Vermont Jews in government and banking - they're on the same track.


Last night an OVB admin posted in these comments that he's feeling some heat over his blatantly anti-Semitic conversations about Jews, in this case in a post about drones(??) while complaining to another commenter who goes by the name of Donald Hamm:

HAMM: "You know who is behind all this shit... I just want the banking families behind all this shit taken down..you know the names, we don't have to go into it here.."

OVB Admin: "I would LOVE to get those banking families pulled down.You should see how much flack I get for posting Rothschild expose stuff!"

HAMM: "Yeah I'm in the same boat... Rothschilds have been the death of a few conversations for me..people are unwilling to see the simple truth..they look for truth to be very complex and convoluted..these families of people are the problem..if people could just focus on that and on them.."

OVB Admin: "I've heard those concerns before.I don't think you're being unreasonable to suggest connecting the dots in that way.I've even heard it said that this movement was started to draw all of the thinkers and doers out in the open to get their information and cart em off."

HAMM: "amen brother"

Update December 10, 2011, 4:00 PM: Someone at OVB has "disappeared" the vile, scary exchange immediately above, so guys, here's the screen cap:



(Note to readers: Naturally I've been receiving anti-Semitic comments here from a Jew hating Holocaust denier aptly named Zero and have allowed a couple as an example of the type of scum who while posting about the Rothchild family refer to Juden, not a common English usage except among American neo-Nazis. Unless such comments are truly compelling for some reason, I won't be approving more of them. The commenters should just indulge their hatred at some Stormfront forum rather than try to post here.)

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New Occupy Vermont Burlington Anti-Semitic Posting

Say what you will about Occupy Vermont Burlington, the repeated anti-Semitic references, like those of the Second Vermont Republic's Thomas Naylor's allusions to Jewish control of the US goverment and the "Israeli Mafia," are bound to make OVB as irrelevant to Vermonters as SVR has become.

OVB's Facebook page has repeatedly promoted such conspiracy theories about Jews. One of their posters who seems to get the biggest hardon when posting about Jews has been someone who goes by the name Eamon James Cahall. He has a fixation on the Rothchild banking family and the "research" of a notorious bigot by the name of Eugene Mullins that I first reported on here.

Cahall suggested that there were "amazing illustrations" done a century ago by one writer, Alfred Owen Crozier, that'd in some way would confirm what he was saying in his post here. I don't think one can find a better example of the sort of paranoid, "Jews wanting to control the world" crap than a cartoon that highlights the threat to "Christendom" so blatantly.

Then on Tuesday of this week an OVB admin promoted a YouTube embed provided by Cahill that continues their growing facination with the Rothchild meme that made the OVB admin absolutely giddy over what s/he thought was clever here. Watching the video I lost count of all of the images that related to Jews, the Rothchild family, Jews controlling the US government (including being in the pocket of Jews), an obit photo for Guy de Rothschild, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), etc., ad nauseum. I really shouldn't be surprised since the inspiration for such dreck that the OVB admin and commenter found so funny must have been an article written years ago by Kalle Lasn, creator of the Occupy movement, in his anti-Semitic magazine, Adbusters. You can read about Lasn's despicable past here.



Repeated anti-Semitic canards; failing to provide adequately for people living in their former camp so that one is now dead; poorly thought out shopping alternatives that harm local Vermont businesses - little wonder then that Vermont secessionists are embedding themselves into the Occupy Vermont movement.

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Second Vermont Republic's Thomas H. Naylor Brags About Matt Cropp and His Embedded Operative's Leadership Role in Occupy Vermont-Burlington

(Note to "Bill": You might want to click on the access button to the main part of the blog in the right column [red letters])

Watching the Occupy Vermont-Burlington group flounder its way to irrelevance has been a lot like watching the Vermont secession movement repeatedly pulling the pin on its ever being of importance to Vermont.

Consider this bragging revelation made by the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the Dixie singin' "Magnolia Vermonter", Thomas H. Naylor on November 1, 2011 here (confirming what was first revealed ten days earlier by me on the blog here):

"Vermont independence supporters have played an active role in the Occupy Vermont movement. Indeed, Matt Cropp, co-founder of the Vermont Independence Alliance, is one of the principal organizers of Occupy Vermont. He can be reached at carbonpenguin@yahoo.com."

If Cropp's name is familiar, that's because he was the campaign manager for last year's spectacularly failed Vermont secesher gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele. And, as if induced to follow his former candidate's own piss poor showing, Matt Cropp recently ran for a Board of Director's position with Burlington's City Market/Onion River Co-op and suffered a drubbing now so very familiar to all secesher electoral aspirants. City Market certainly dodged a bullet when you consider that weeks later Cropp was inspired to open a "Really, Really Free Market" in downtown Burlington as an alternative to local merchants in the immediate area (see 1 min 27 sec mark here) rather than take his "Market" to one of the big box stores that he was speaking about. Now there's a not-so-winning message for the next loser secesher candidate willing to let Matt run his campaign - "Fuck The Local Economy!"

Little wonder then that Naylor, who's condemned virtually every Vermonter alive who won't drink his secesher Kool-Aid, finds Cropp to be such a compelling organizer. Like Naylor, Cropp favors treating his string of false starts and failures as inspirational. One need look no further than the example Naylor cited as one of Cropp's accomplishments: a seven month old website with two pages here and nothing to show for it, much like Cropp's promise last year to organize programs to benefit Vermonters. So far, Cropp's most recent "organizing" effort has produced some serious unintended collateral damage - one dead. One of Cropp's colleagues at the camp made a sad situation worse by falsely claiming that the dead man was a military veteran entitled to "better services (for) troubled military veterans," and the irony escaped the organizers when they "released a statement... saying the incident gave (Occupy Vermont Burlington) an 'ever deeper resolve to stand with our most vulnerable citizens.'"

Yeah, they were already doing that and now he's dead.

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Occupy Vermont-Burlington Has Dipped Its Toe Into The Anti-Semitic Cesspool

One of Occupy Vermont-Burlington's administrators has called the well known anti-Semitic, Rothchild family slander something that is "useful" to look at.

This OVB admin has promoted a post that resorted to not so sublime Jew-baiting by using source material from a renown racist, 9-11 Truther and very longtime anti-Semite, Eustace Mullins. Among Mullins' writings greatest hits are "Jewish TV: Sick, Sick, Sick", "Jewish War Against The Western World", "The Holocaust Explained", "Mullins' New History of the Jews" and, my personal favorite, "Adolph Hitler: An Appreciation" (search Eustace Mullins here - pg. 5 & 14).

The post I'm referring to was a direct allusion to a notorious anti-Semitic canard about the Rothschild (read: Jewish) family, the Federal Reserve and Mullins' "research" here. The poster further suggested that this sort of filth "be required reading for every high school student in the country after our movement is successful."

When clearly proper objections were raised to the anti-Semitic basis for the post, the OVB website administrator responded on October 24 in two posts at around 7:00 AM here:

"We don't need to split hairs about percentage points with respect to the Rothschild holdings, primarily because they are very good at concealing their direct connections and we might never be able to trace down all of it... Please, it's one article and a useful one at that."

Really?

An article by a irrefutable bigot whose conspiracy theories have been promoted by none other than (drumroll, please) Glenn Beck here?

Truly a disgusting display by an OVB admin who's insisted on being an indisputable leader of the rest of us 99 percenters in Vermont. Perhaps an OVB working group is in order for further examination of such pricelessly inspiring works as the afore-noted Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the "struggles" of the author of Mein Kampf.

In a recent piece about institutional quandries and solutions regarding child molesters that are sometimes labeled "sins committed in the name of a higher good," essayist John Zmirak wrote of such ethical issues and predicaments that they “smell and look like lilies. But they flank a coffin. Lying dead and stiff inside that box is natural Justice." Will the leadership, and oh yes, there certainly is one, of OVB be just another purveyor of "situational justice" in America?

Is that all there is?

Of course, by now regular visitors to this blog are probably wondering, "What's this all got to do with Vermont secessionists?"

Patience...

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Vermont Gets Its Very Own Occupy Cyberterrorist - AntiSecOp

In the wake of the tragic suicide of a disturbed occupier at the Occupy Vermont-Burlington City Hall Park camp that is directly attributable to what clearly has to be the most incompetent and inept Occupy group to be found in the country - a group demonstrably unable to to deal with obviously illegal alcohol, drugs and weapons in the midst of their score or so tents - apparently there's now to be a effort to foment criminal acts at the urging of another probably associated group/person calling itself AntiSecOps against the Burlington Vermont Police Department and others including a Vermont National Guard member (see below). Some clod, er, "male", who says that he operates the Facebook page for AntiSecOp and who claims to be a Vermonter wrote there:

"Greetings Vermont,"

"Allow us to introduce ourselves, we are AntiSec."

"We have been watching your situation arise for the past days, and saw the corrupt actions of The Burlington Police Department to keep you out of your encampment during your mourning of Josh. What we saw will not be tolerated, and Burlington Police Department, you will have wished you acted with more honor in the time of tragedy. We will not sit idly by and watch Police Officers abuse their power, and unjustly keep everyone from Occupying there belongings, and holding peaceful citizens for no reason."

"This is bigger than you or I, this is about justice and equality. The time has come to show the City Of Burlington, and the Police Department of Burlington what it feels like to be brought down to their knees. I ask you this, are you going to let police harass your fellow man? Fellow citizens, I ask not what we can do for you, but rather what we all can do together. We are not as different as you may think. We are your cashiers, your college students, your lawyers, we are everywhere, and we are nowhere."

"We will not tolerate your abuse of power by shutting down the encampment in City Hall Park, so we will be sending our vessel to fight alongside the occupiers, and tear down the walls of injustice."

"We are simply an idea, an idea that is bleeding with pride, and honor."

"In response to this, we will be launching campaign OpVermont, effective November 20th at 9 p.m Eastern Standard Time. Join us."

"We are AntiSec."
"We are legion."
"We do not forget."
"We do not forgive."
"Burlington, Expect us."

Source

Yeah, whatever.

AntiSecOp's "announcement" can (for the moment) be found on their Youtube channel that contains the first announcement and a follow-up "second message" directed at BPD on Saturday. It seems that in his "second message" though that he's walking back a bit from his earlier threatening posture, but not by much.



Then his second notice.



Of course, coupled with that first announcement is this thinly hardly veiled threat to agencies such as the Burlington PD:

We encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path. We fully endorse the flaunting of the word "AntiSec" on any government website defacement or physical graffiti art...
(his trail off, not mine)

Source

Someone should tell the jerk at AntiSecOp that advocating violence, hacking, offering to collude with such acts or even childishly urging that pizzas be sent to the homes of people like cops whose addresses they post happens to be a crime, mostly felonies (maybe not the pizzas but what about the pizza shop owners who won't get paid for product or delivery - that's the 1% they're going after?), not protected speech.


Interestingly, AntiSecOp's "Likes and Interests" are "Anonymous (Occupy America), Occupy Vermont, Occupy Vermont-Burlington" since it began, supposedly sometime in June or so of this year, although a few new ones have been added in recent days. Go figure.

Also, AntiSecOp offers this warning at their Facebook page:

**PRIVACY NOTICE:Warning--any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency of any governmental structure including but not limited to the United States Federal Government also using or monitoring/using this website or any of its associated websites, you do NOT have my permission to utilize any of my profile information nor any of the content contained herein including, but not limited to m...y photos, and/ or the comments made about my photos or any other "picture" art posted on my profile. You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein. The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee(s), agent(s), student(s) or any personnel under your direction or control. The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law...

Sure, whatever again. I'm certain that AntiSecOp has considered the ramifications involved in an anonymous Facebooker suing anyone. Idiot - try thinking beyond someone else's template.

Methinks this particular fraud, AntiSecOp, is as full of shit as the guy.fawkes.vendetta@hotmail.com faker, however he's now straying into threats against individual Vermonters. Here's post about someone that he says is an active duty Vermont National Guard member here and here:




"bitches"? Keepin' it classy, eh scumbag? Is this personal attack on a Vermont National Guard member a preliminary salvo of the Nov. 20, 9:00 PM assault on Vermont that you've promised as what you've called OpVermont? If so, I believe I can speak for the 99% of Vermonters who would say to you, "Bite me, asshole." Ain't nothing like some old fashioned misogyny to make a movement hit the wall.

The AntiSecOp jerkoff isn't the only OVB clown seeking jail time. A former OVB admin and present leader of the fizzling Occupy Rutland group posted this last Friday:

If anybody else has any skills with computers, writing scripts, installing keyloggers, etc, I am putting together a team to do a swift response to Burlington, and it's police department. I do not care about posting publicly, if your interested Private Message me, and we will let the City Of Burlington have it. Even if you have BASIC computer skills, but can catch on, I need numbers, not talent... So if you cant make it up there today, this would be a way to contribute. Again, I am doing this on my own, I do not condone "hacking", but I also don't condone excessive police tactics...

Source

Note to Zach: A "disclaimer" that you don't "condone 'hacking'" isn't going to cut it in court when it's plain to see that you're seeking help from people with skills to install "keyloggers" for a team tasked for "swift response to Burlington, and it's police department" to "let the City Of Burlington have it." Soliciting others to engage in criminal activity is a crime, putz, er, Zach.

If it doesn't wish to see its credibility erode any further than it already has, Occupy Vermont-Burlington must distance itself from this AntiSecOp thug and cool off hotheads like Zach Cavacas. Immediately.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Vermont Secessionist Faker Poses As An Occupy Movement Style Activist

NOTE: For a number of reasons I've been withholding comment on recent developments in the small Vermont secession group and its blatant attempt to coӧpt the Occupy Vermont-Burlington group. That ends tonight.

During the coming days leading up to 9:00 PM on November 20, a time and date set by an ally of the OVB group, AntiSec, when they/it/he will "show the City Of Burlington, and the Police Department of Burlington what it feels like to be brought down to their knees," I'll be posting on a number of relevant topics.

This multi-pronged attack on Vermonters is coming from OVB's ally, who also posts informational links pertaining to the children of police officers, as well as threatening acts of cyberterrorism, sexistly threatens a female Vermont National Guard member with physical assault if she reports what she considers to be threats of violence to the appropriate investigative authority - "snitches get stitches... like little bitches" - and from OVB, a group that entertains anti-Semitic canards and tropes based on the hatred of Jews by a Hitler sympathizer. Sadly, although not terribly surprising, a number of OVB commenters appear to be positively giddy over AntiSec's threats.

This ain't gonna be pretty, folks. So hang on, here we go...

In addition to attracting the ire of Vermont's "small community of secessionists", I've now "caught (the) attention" of someone who's using an email address that is, from what I can find, little more than an homage to a terrorist and would-be mass murderer, Guy Fawkes - guy.fawkes.vendetta@hotmail.com. It seems that our present-day Mr. "Fawkes" has taken a recent interest in this blog that coincides with a number of other peculiar coincidences that I'll be posting about in the coming days. Here's his query:

"Mr. Rowley,"

"An interesting blog. The 'Independence' (s/read secesher) movement has caught our attention."

"A question though. You state: "I thought that secession was worthy of discussion but was troubled by what I had learned about SVR's associations." You have alluded, in other areas of your blog, that secession may be viable but not with the current people who are advocating it."

"Having reviewed the SVR and the Vermont Commons as well as your blog, are you saying that in the proper context secession is a viable option outside of the aforementioned "associations"?

"We look forward to your response."

Really? Here's the deal, Guy: If you want to try to intimidate someone into answering what is obviously a loaded question cobbled together from unrelated statements by glomming onto the "Anonymous," not-so-much, sensation, don't leave your IP address attached to your email. You've unwittingly (read: stoopidly) left compelling evidence as to your identity.

Good luck with that Vermont senate seat you're now supposedly seeking as one of the vaunted secesher "30" who'll be seeking to take over the Vermont Senate in 2012. Normally the secesher clowns that the poseur from guy.fawkes.vendetta@hotmail.com is closely affiliated with collectively poll in the single digit (as in 1% or less). We'll see how Vermonters view a senatorial candidate who uses a fictitious email address based on the identity of a murderous terrorist and how that affects his electability.

Buh-bye, Guy... for now.

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Second Vermont Republic's Thomas Naylor Clumsily Attempts to Co-opt the Occupy Wall Street Movement

The first hint that the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, was about to make his move to begin his attempt at co-opting what he can of the Occupy Wall Street movement came in a screed pissing on virtually every New Yorker now living in NYC (except for, of course, Brooklynite secessionist flack, Christopher Ketcham). Kind of like Naylor's repeated past condemnation of all Vermonters that I wrote about here.

A week later Naylor showed where he was heading in a post at his website titled, The Wall Street Occupation Gets It, Almost, where he wrote:

"I view myself as an enthusiastic supporter of the Wall Street Occupation (WSO) movement."

Thing is, Tom, that isn't what the movement is called, nor is that the acronym universally used. It's much like the same problem you've had here with Vermonters - you arrogantly label everyone as you wish and then blow a gasket when someone objects, even minutely. Naylor then immediately undermines his claim of being an "enthusiastic supporter" when he notes that the "WSO"(sic) falls short of his own nihilistic standard:

"Unfortunately, many WSO(sic) supporters seem to believe that the United States Government is still fixable. They fail to realize that because of its size, the United States is unsustainable, ungovernable, and, therefore, unfixable."

and

"Regrettably, many of those in the WSO(sic) movement subscribe to the view that campaign finance reform will solve all of our problems."

And then in possibly one of Naylor's most cynically obvious, opportunistic flimflam attempts at co-option, he writes:

"But a word of caution to these idealistic revolutionaries. Avoid like the plague allowing your movement to be co-opted by the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, George Soros’s moveon.com(s/be .org), or political opportunists such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Also, resist the temptation to get in bed with some particular political ideology. No political ideology can save America from itself.

The Wall Street Occupation(sic) movement could be onto something very big – a paradigm shift in the way Americans view the political process. Is it possible to create a window of opportunity which might be open to heretofore unimaginable political options such as... secession..."

Too bad Naylor hasn't the honesty to tell the OWS movement that he hates Bernie Sanders because Bernie failed to resign his US Senate seat to run as Naylor's handpicked secesher candidate for Vermont governor, as Naylor had demanded years earlier.

Naylor also failed to disclose to OWS and Occupy Vermont (his real intended target audience) of his Vermont secesher movement's longtime association with white supremacists (League of the South), homophobes (Christian Exodus) and his promotion of virulent anti-Semites (like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to name just one), including past SVR board of advisor members like Franklin Sanders (neo-Confederate executive board member of the LOS), Thomas DiLorenzo (neo-Confederate, anti-union, anti-14th Amendment and whose work has been published in a Holocaust Denial journal), Jason Sorens (who's done work for the Koch brothers, founded the Free State Project and then has failed to New Hampshire as he requires of his followers, and favors limiting the voting rights of public employees) etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Even now, full blown Vermont secessionists like Matt Cropp (Vermont secesher ideologue and former campaign manager for the supremely failed secesher gubernatorial run of fringer, Dennis Steele) have embedded themselves into the Occupy Vermont-Burlington group.

It'll be interesting to see how the secesher crowd will do at co-opting the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Vermont movements. Given the Vermont secesher track record for failure, from elections to print publications like the soon to be defunct Vermont Commons journal, the OWS and OVB movements seem to be safe for the moment.

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Facts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts!!

Just when I start to think that Peter Garritano, the handpicked 2010 Lt. Governor candidate of the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the Dixie singin' Magnolia Vermonter, Thomas Naylor, couldn't become more paranoid, more incoherent and more detached from the real world, he belts out another factless conspiracy theory.

In a blog post at Rob Williams' nearly defunct "Vermont Commons Journal" website titled Wall Street Hit Squad, Garritano asserts that,

"Nobody likes to be ridiculed and the con men on Wall Street have had enough of the protests. The recent allegations that the Mexican drug cartel teamed up with an Iranian to hatch a terror plot has all the markings of the made for TV events that the FBI has been sponsoring for the last ten years..."

"Wall Street was tired of the parades and signs questioning the integrity of the wealthy, so they made a call to members of their personal police force in the FBI. The people who once pretended to protect and serve us are now stuck writing bad scripts for the 49% of the population that still believes in Muslim boogie men. Wall Street has decided to show the 99% who’s boss by calling in a hit on Iran."

The only thing to be ridiculed in that hodge podge of unconnected dots is the thought processes of the declared 2012 secessionist candidate for one of the Vermont Senate seats of Chittenden county, Peter Garritano.

Back in May of this year in another of his rants here about the US gubmint and things he think have or haven't happened, Garritano said that,

"The Hall of Fame of (U.S. government) Fakery includes underwear bombs..."

Earth to Garritano: The so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, pled guilty after opening arguments at his trial began to all eight of the charges lodged against him, including conspiring to commit terrorism.

To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Garritano is entitled to his own opinion but he is not then supposed to create his own facts to support his alternate universe. This should be of interest to all Chittenden voters who may find Garritano's independence spiel even slightly appealing - facts promoted by a would-be legislator should not be independent of reality. Little wonder then that during his last political go-around in 2010 he garnered barely more than 3.6% of the statewide vote. And to think that his superiors believed that he might do better, according to Thomas Naylor's (13%) and Jim "Ethan Allen" Hogue's (18%) estimation of statewide voter support for secession.

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Consensus? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Consensus!

A friend wisely noted that I've taken my eye off the ball regarding secessionist "heavy hitters" while digressing into examination of some minor secesher links to the Occupy Vermont - Burlington group and I'm inclined to agree. The thing is that I've a rather low threshold of tolerance for posturing bullshit, a common stance of Vermont's seceshers, and they seem to have lent their talent for that sort of behavior to the OV-Bers; it all just makes me crabbier than usual.

A professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government has recently noted,

"The General Assembly at Zuccotti Park (site of the Occupy Wall Street encampment) is structured to allow participants to arrive at decisions through consensus. A central aim of this arrangement is to avoid subtle processes of domination by small factions and dogmatic leaders that have undermined many social movements."

So I was enthralled on Friday by an ongoing kerfuffle on the Facebook page of the Occupy Vermont - Burlington group. One admin at the page had posted,

"I've just been informed I suck at what i"m doing. And i"m trying to play leader. On that note, good luck guys. my attention will be focused where it will be appreciated."

From there things devolved into nearly a score of alternatively accusatory and sappy, kumbayaish comments of the sort one might expect in such a "decentralized" setting.

The occupier whose feelings got hurt was a Rutland area organizer by the name of Zach Cavacas. For someone who apparently objected to being labeled a "leader," he's sure been acting like one in Rutland; from being the one deciding to obtain and sign for park usage permits, to being the one to decide when or if an event was to be called off on account of rain. But that aside, what struck me was how the "problem" got handled.

Zach had followed up his first posting with a second that suggested that OV-B was sinking, followed by another half dozen or more comments. Not very collegial but certainly an opinion that he was entitled to openly express, as well as those who agreed or disagreed in their comments. Then the real leader of the pack arrived home and saw what had been going on. Result: all posts and comments related to Zach's complaint were deleted, with this statement,

"Good evening.I have NO idea what happened here this afternoon,but I can assure you it will not EVER happen again. Moderator in the house. Everyone is welcome here.Thank you."

The whole leadership issue, along with the superficial lip-service to the idea of consensus and openness, would seem to be a problem directly imported from the seceshers and their hacks who now frequent the ranks of OV-B.

Too bad.

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This Is What Democracy Looks Like?

I took a personal look this week at the Occupy Wall Street site and found myself not very impressed.

Certainly the actual participants are sincere but the whole setting has taken on a carnival-like atmosphere, complete with breathless Amy Goodman "interviews" and her irritatingly repetitive questions that start with "talk about" and then suggest the answers that interviewees should head to.

Occupation "peepers" vastly outnumber the not quite on Wall Street occupiers.

While some reports depict the various Occupy groups throughout the US as acting on behalf of 99% of Americans, that seems to be an inflation of representation on a par with some of the stratagems, tactics and imagery used by secessionists and Teabaggers. For instance, the Burlington group headed by (if you're the one quoted usually most frequently, you're the head/spokesperson, like it or not) Matt Cropp/OB uses an image from no, not Burlington, but rather an arrest in NYC. No context, no verifiable facts, just an arrest takedown with no other information.

Was a crime committed? By whom? What happened immediately before that arrest? Is there some relationship to the Burlington PD? Nope, just an image from somewhere else meant to evoke, you know, whatever it's hoped might be seen in it by whoever, although there's no absolutely relationship whatsoever to the Burlington PD.

Did Cropp or someone else slap that image onto their Facebook page for its emotional value? Who's to say? But its relevance to the Burlington PD or any inference regarding their treatment of the occupiers here would be a bullshit conclusion. It's just the sort of misinformation that can make the Occupy Burlington group as irrelevant to Vermonters as the secessionist organization that Cropp represents (or not, depending on who he's trying to stroke) has done to themselves over the years with their misrepresentations. Fostering bad relations with the Burlington PD without any basis can't serve Vermonters or the would-be occupiers. Any such movement must be based on truth if it's to take off, unless, of course, Cropp, et al, are following the Teabagger model.

Given "the amount of print and face time" that Cropp's managed to garner for himself up to now, he's most definitely the "spokesperson" for the Vermont Occupy groups.

Cropp has said,

"(T)he vast majority of people I met (at OWS NYC) were from places other than NYC; on the second trip it was majority New Yorker"

While the first statement by Cropp may have been true, his second statement is sheer bullshit. Zuccotti Park is crawling with tourists and tour buses clog the area streets to see the "action." If Cropp's actually been there, he'd know that or he's just lying to promote a political disinformation campaign.

What's missing from the OWS locale are any advocates of Cropp's signature issue - secession. I looked hard for any sign of secessionist sentiment and it ain't there. For those of you who've forgotten or who now wish to, Matt was the campaign manager of one of the most unsuccessful gubernatorial efforts in recent Vermont history, the secessionist campaign of the middle finger waving Connecticut native Dennis Steele; Occupy Burlington might want to take note of that fact.

Cropp is seen grinning here in an early warning by Occupy Burlington to the Burlington PD. With no problem yet having presented itself with the Burlington PD, why did the group seek to draw kind of some line in the sand? Looking for an incident that you think will inspire, Matt? Back in the day we use call that being a provocateur, not leadership.

The posturing by Cropp on behalf of Occupy Burlington seems to be pretty obvious, including the field trips to OWS that he's now involved in promoting while soliciting contributions. Hopefully there'll be a full, transparent, public financial accounting of this fundraising effort by Cropp's group and given its complaints about taxes one hopes that they'll make the necessary income tax declarations (I don't think that road trips to NYC will qualify as a charitable expenditure by an as yet to be applied for 501(3)(c) status).

In fact, when a Occupy Burlington supporter complained repeatedly about the junkets to New York, Matt sought to silence the public, transparent discussion on Facebook by directing the discussion to himself personally:

"Before throwing around baseless accusations imputing the goodwill of people who've been working damn hard to help build this movement, why don't you actually try and talk to us - I'm around this afternoon and available to talk through either skype or on the phone. Send me a private message with your contact info and let's discuss your concerns"
Source: Occupy Burlington, Matt's 10/11/11, 1:17 PM response to -Zach #AntiSec's 10/11/11, 11:14 AM complaint

According to tonight's news reports, the City of New York intends to assist the owner of Zuccotti Park assert its management rights in the park tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM.

Occupy Wall Street "spokesman" Patrick Bruner has "called on people to come to the site at 6 a.m. tomorrow, an hour before cleaning is scheduled to begin, 'to defend the occupation from eviction.'”

Here's an idea for Occupy Burlington spokespersons and organizers, Matthew Cropp and Jonathan Leavitt; instead of just "be(ing) here, strong and standing together in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.," they get on the road and be there in Zuccotti Park at 6:00 AM as is being asked for by OWS.

It's time to fish or cut bait, boys. You may want to download this app on the way there.

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