Counterpunch: Mysterious Photographers of Nothing

[lady lib]

Mysterious Photographers of Nothing
Life in the Shadows of the Empire

By EAMON MARTIN
Counterpunch March 18/19, 2006


"It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." Sandra Day O'Connor, March 9, 2006
___________________

I help publish a small, nonprofit, independent newspaper in western North Carolina called the Asheville Global Report. We print under-reported news that casts an often-critical eye on the doings of our government at home and abroad, in the hope that our fellow citizens will find the inspiration and motivation to hold our government accountable. In doing so, our explicitly nonpartisan goal has always been to fulfill the traditional role of the press in a democratic society.

Since we began our project seven years ago, members of our staff have encountered a few unmistakable incidents of surveillance --by whom, we cannot say for certain. Although one episode back in 2000, when the retired local field director of the FBI came by the used bookstore where I worked at the time, leaves me with some suspicions. It had been two months since I'd been arrested in Seattle during the WTO
demonstrations, and one month since my step-brother had died from a heroin overdose in New Jersey. I was ringing up some books for this older man --who I later discovered was named John Quigley -- when he casually uncorked the shocking comment: "Oh, Eamon...did I read somewhere that your brother was sick? You're a writer, right?"

I'd never met this man before and was stunned, speechless. He'd blind-sided me. After a quick and intensely strange interaction in which I explained that my brother had in fact suddenly died recently, and the sheer impossibility of his having read anything about my brother anywhere, he disingenuously apologized and left. He would continue to shop at the store regularly, almost always parting with a "be careful" farewell. Then of course, there was the time almost three years ago when I'd confronted two men videotaping my fellow editor and I outside of the cafe where she had been working that Sunday afternoon. A few months later, one of these gentlemen had the audacity to appear at one of our benefits, merely to hang out by the club entrance, not speak with anyone and enjoy several cups of water. For some reason, this man who had been our very first patron that night, suddenly lost interest in the show and quickly disappeared after I approached him to chat a little.

But last week was special. There are moments in time when historic change emerges from its sublimated status in the mundane and crystallizes itself into personal consciousness and awareness. These are what I call "WAKE UP" moments. It is in these jolting moments when one discovers that what they are experiencing is endemic of something larger and much greater than themselves. Last week I experienced one of those "WAKE UP" calls. On a whim, I'd decided to drive to a favorite cafe to get breakfast. After I'd finished eating, I went outside to small-talk with a friend of mine. After a few minutes, my friend pointed out to me that somebody up the street was taking our picture.

Continues at
http://www.counterpunch.org/martin03182006.html

[peacetalksforall]

1. The 'photographer' seems to have been so unprofessional that it

remindsd me of the group known (to me) as the 'door pounders' - the DeLay and James Baker kids who pretended to be Dade Co residents and who pounded on the Dade Co door where another count was to take place in the 2000 election to demand that the count not take place. They and the people who sent them thought that they would not be caught. There faces with names will be in the history books.

Why didn't Eamon Martin tell us how the license numbers checked out. Part II?

Can you imagine that someone was getting paid and running up expenses to do that?

We need more cajones in Congress. Or we need a Citizen Oversight Commission to correct our mistakes starting with sleeping on the job and voting in representatives who are scared or who are getting paid off.

[lady lib]

2. It's unbelievable that we're PAYING these people

to try to intimidate and silence us. And as far as Congress is concerned, I have to wonder what the big lens captured them doing that it's rendered them so spineless.

[ThomCat]

3. being a non-corporate news organization makes you a terrorist?

:wtf:
What the fuck is the FBI thinking? Worse, what the fuck are they doing?

[lady lib]

4. Apparently.

For anyone who missed this, it's 4 paragraphs up from the bottom:

...the FBI has listed Indymedia -- an open source newswire born out of the WTO protests which disseminates news very similar to our newspaper -- as one of the current, top ten domestic terrorist threats in the US. Did you catch that? The FBI now considers disseminating news an act of terrorism.