> No need. The Feds just count on human nature: gossip and bragging. Al Q
> activities weren't much of a Sekrit, as we are learning. In part, they
> couldn't be kept Sekrit because, even with something that big at stake,
> people couldn't keep their yaps shut.
That's true. I've been through this in activist circles.
> You've just blabbed to 400 e-mail addresses plus a number of lurkers who
> don't subscribe. How many of them do you suppose are going to mention it
> to someone, who mentions it to someone else, etc. and all because of a
> normal, human tendency: they want to appear kewl to all their friends
> because they're "in the know". ('coz they read this guy, chuck0, who's
> always talking about how central he is to the anarchist movement. and
> then they want to associate themselves with chuck0, so they can be "in
> the know".)
No big deal. Very few of you overlap with activists organizing for the protests. I haven't mentioned any details. Most of you will forget this thread by next week.
<waves hand> These aren't the droids you are looking for.
Several of you pooh-poohed the idea of secrecy in conjunction with demos. I'm all for openness and transparency ir organizing, but the police and their spying pretty much mandate secrecy concerning various facets of protest organizing. If you are organizing an illegal direct action, you pretty much have to keep things quiet.
And let me point out that when it comes to secrecy, the big liberal orgnaizations, labor unions, and NGOs are very secretive when it comes to protests. Just go back to last year, when the AFL-CIO cut secret deals with the police concerning the Miami FTAA protests. I *warned* my comrades going to Miami that the liberals would pull this shit on them, but everybody always disses the radicals for being "provocateurs" or "upstaging the protests." You know, some of us tried to work with the AFL-CIO prior to the September 2001 protests. They weren't exactly forthcoming with their plans. The black bloc folks were trying to play along with the AFL-CIO, but the bastards wouldn't participate in the dialogue.
Chuck0