The old fake-an-attack-on-yourself trick—No dirty trick is too dirty to those trying to hold back popular democracy. |
By Eric W. Dolan
March 24, 2011 @ 7:32 pm
In Breaking Banner, Nation
Carlos Lam, a deputy prosecutor in Johnson County, Ind., says he did not write the email from his account encouraging Gov. Scott Walker to fake an attack against himself. Photo from a video debate posted at 3 Left Turns Make a Right.
AN INDIANA PROSECUTOR and Republican activist has resigned after emails show he suggested Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stage a fake attack on himself to discredit unions protesting his budget repair bill.
The Republican governor signed a bill on March 11 that eliminates most union rights for public employees.
In an email from February 19, Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos F. Lam told Walker the situation presented “a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation.”
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism [1] discovered the email among tens of thousands released to the public last week following a lawsuit by the Isthmus and the Associated Press.
“If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions,” Lam said in his email.
“Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest,” he continued. “Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions.”
Lam resigned from his position after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism published an article about his email.
On February 22, an alternative paper in Buffalo, New York managed to trick Walker into taking a call from their editor posing as tea party tycoon David Koch.
When the editor posing as Koch suggested planting some troublemakers in the protests, Walker responded that “we thought about that,” but said it was not necessary “because sooner or later the media stops finding ’em interesting.”
“My only fear would be is if there was a ruckus caused is that that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has gotta settle to avoid all these problems,” he said.
Walker had promised to lay off 1,500 state workers if the bill to curb collective bargaining rights for public employees didn’t pass.
In mid-February, 14 Democratic state senators left Wisconsin to stall a vote on the bill. There are 19 Republican senators, but the Senate needs a minimum of 20 members to be present to debate and vote on any bills that spend money.
While the 14 Democratic senators remained in Illinois, Republican state senators removed all references to spending from the bill and passed the proposal to limit public employees’ collective bargaining rights.
Wisconsin citizens upset withWalker’s attack on public employees’ collective bargaining rights have launched a boycott campaign [2] aimed at his campaign contributors.
URL to original source: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/24/indiana-prosecutor-told-wisconsin-governor-to-stage-false-flag-operation/
URLs in this post:
[1] Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism: http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2011/03/24/email-to-walker-suggested-faking-attack-on-governor/
[2] have launched a boycott campaign: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/15/boycott-targets-contributers-to-wisconsin-gov-scott-walker/
SELECTED COMMENT:
This will be a bit long, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to demonstrate that it isn’t just in the big sophisticated North that these things happen. Here’s one of my favorite stories of my hometown as told by the wonderful Molly Ivins.
But I submit to you that there is no chance that you will ever surpass the legacy of looniness in my home state.
One of my favorite legislators was a guy named Mike Martin. Mike was an early harbinger of the moral majority. He was from Longview, Texas. He ran on a platform of being pro-family and pro-American. It was pretty controversial but he won anyway.
Mike came down to the Legislature and turned out to be legislatively impaired. His problem was he was such a hopeless dipshit that he could not get a single bill passed. Not even memorial resolutions for people that had died in his district.
Well, came two years later and there’s Mike and he’s got zip on his record. Hard to get re-elected when you got zip. And Mike turned out to have more imagination than we gave him credit for. What he did was he paid his cousin, Eddie, to shoot him in the arm with a shotgun. A touch I especially liked. And then he claimed that it had been done by a satanic and communistic cult that was out to get him on account that he, Mike Martin, was so profoundly and pro-American. Boy, this worked amazingly well. There were headlines all over the state: “Legislator Attacked By Satanic Cult.” I mean it was a big deal. We sent the Texas Rangers out to find these people. Now I realize that your satanic, communistic cults are practically littering the ground out here in California but they’re a little scarce in central Texas and the Rangers had no luck.
And there was Mike back in Longview going around town with his arm in a red-white-and-blue sling. I mean it looked good for re-election.
But, as often happens in these situations, the whole deal came unstuck because Cousin Eddie got drunk in a honky-tonk one night and spilled the beans.
Now here’s where we in Texas can be proud. Not many Legislators had the foresight to make it illegal to pay somebody to shoot you. But in Texas…don’t y’all come down there and try and have that done.
