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 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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