On the week of February 20th
2006, a Boston University student tweaked out. Micah Lee,
an Allstonian anarchist transplant from Asheville, NC ratcheted his
blitzkrieg protest scheme up into high gear. While living in an
Easton Street nu-hippy settlement, trying to ressurect the SDS, and
writing articles for the BU Student Underground, he conceived
Operation: Over. "O:O" is a series of sustained and disruptive
protests and actions against capitalism and the military infrastructure
of the United States.
Having previously published instructions on how to spam companies, QUOTE: "mailbombing a political target
is not "spam."[...] if this is done in conjunction with a protest
[...] you won't get any work done at all. [...] it's to disrupt
business, to lower profits [...]" , sympathy letters to ELF
arrestees, and after gathering unsatisfactory readership, Lee helped
mastermind a late night pot and pan banging outside of the home of the
BU official involved with approving the BSL-4 bioweapons lab.
Then he dropped out of BU and began a campaign of disrupting campus
tours to inform parents and high school students that they should not
attend BU.
Micah is an intelligent, creative, but intensely bitter and idealistic
individual. The word individual is used lightly in this case to
indicate "individuals" of similar belief to scrubby vegan backpacker
eco-revolutionary socialist late model teens of the college
freshman/sophomore persuasion. In an era where all
anti-establishment tactics have decayed into street hustling
annoyances, Boston's clubhouse anarchists have found a new way to
justify bicycle riding, garbage eating, Mansonian behavior. The
Wellesley and Cambridge danish, jewish, and hungarian tribesmen have
found room on the bandwagon that is Micah Lee and O:O.
Here is the debate which Haters Magazine had with Micah and O:O on
Boston Indymedia Center:
Such: While I agree with a majority of
the principles of this protest, I fail to see how harassing BU tour
guides, who are, mind you, student volunteers and have nothing to do
with the Biolab, achieves any forward progress on your objective. In
the end, you only make yourselves look like jackasses in an otherwise
counterproductive demonstration. There are far better ways to
demonstrate your position and likely, more constructive ways to achieve
better results.
Btpatty:
I agree with this-student led tours are not the appropriate forum. You
are simply attacking volunteer tour guides who are expressing an
opinion and preforming a community service. You too are allowed to
express your opinion, but on your own time.
Eric: The difference between the argument
made above and what happened is that 1. the
demonstration was not to harrass tour guides but to spread information
to students 2. you are assuming that students would receive information
about the biolab if Operation :Over didnt do this 3. the reason that it
IS an appropriate forum for that discussion is that the bioweapons lab
will affect the entire community and surrounding area. this is an issue
that directly threatens our safety, and because of that people have a
right to start discussions about it anywhere, including during BU tours.
Btpatty:
I agree that the public needs to be informed. In actuality, there was
nothing being assumed, since
1) It is
obvious by the third picture that the tour was disrupted. The article
itself says: "Seven Boston University (BU) campus tours were
INTERRUPTED..another spoke about the issue, occasionally having to
SPEAK OVER the tour guides". Why could the information not be passed
out at the conclusion of the tour?
2) There ARE
other ways students can receive information without doing this. As
mentioned, flyers could be handed out at the conclusion, at which point
you would have the audience solely for yourself.
3) Yes,
conversations have the right to be started anywhere, anytime. If this
is the case, then why not interrupt classes, or labs, or
extracurricular activities? In this case tours were used becuase they
are an easy target. Again, appropriate time and place for everything.
Micah:
me and two other people were the ones disrupting tours. we didn't
harrass tour guides at all, and in fact we didn't even talk to the tour
guides. except for when one of the tour guides grabbed my arm and told
me to stop disrupting the tour, there was no communication between us
and the tour guides. we even tried being polite and making it easier
for the tour guides at first. we waited until they were done speaking
about the building they were in front of, then when they were about to
move the tour we went in to speak, but the tour guides started
interrupting us and telling the tour to ignore us. after we decided to
simply walk up to the tour, tell the people on the tour about the
biolab, hand out our fliers, and then leave. we were in no way
harrassing tour guides, other than maybe making them have to answer
questions about the biolab, which is something they should be doing
anyway. if there were a way to talk to prospective students without
getting in the way of the tour guides, we would have done it, but there
really isn't. BU is trying to hide the fact that its building a biolab
(and especially the fact that there's a boycott of BU going on) from
prospective students, and it's something that they definitely need to
hear about before choosing what college to go to. most prospective
students won't hear about this unless we go out and tell them. this has
nothing to do with tour guides.
Darius: I think that there certainly
should be a conversation about any potentially unethical development
undertaken by BU. however, disruption of tours (and you certainly
cannot claim your actions as not having disrupted tours) is not
acceptable. There are proper forums for discussion, campus tours not
being one of them. I agree with btpatty and such that tour guides are
volunteers expressing opinions about their university. Instead of
stealing the time that parents and prospective students expect on an
official university tour, Operation: Over should try approaching their
targets by other means.
Operation
Over's inability to gain a legitimate audience, for example, one that
they coordinated themselves, indicates their disorganization and lack
of support. While I wish you well, I hope you can achieve your goals
via logical channels.
Micah:
how is a group of prospective students who have come to BU to learn
about the school an illegitimate audience? yes, they signed up for an
official university tour, but that tour pretends that BU's biggest
controversy doesn't exist. the biolab is an issue that everyone who's
considering applying to BU should know about before they make their
final decision.
So a "proper
forum for discussion" would be, maybe, getting some key people in BU's
administration and some anti-biolab community organizers on a panel
together to answer questions from the public, maybe, and invite all
interested BU students and other members of the larger community? when
this was tried a couple years ago (and BU only agreed to it because
disrupting tours back then gave the anti-biolab people a lot of
leverage with the administration), when BU realized that klare allen,
the head of safetynet, was going to be on the panel, they pulled out of
the bargain and refused to be on the panel themselves. BU is doing
everything they can to make sure that this issue doesn't get raised any
more than necessary, and they will continue to do so until we make it
impossible for them. disrupting campus tours is a good first step.
If you have
any better suggestions, i'd love to hear them. we'll probably do that
too. and again, saying that these tour disruptions have anything to do
with harassing tour guides is ridiculous. we aren't even talking to
tour guides. by the way, [advertisement].
BrianOC:
This is a great way to inform people about the bio lab. I think that
targetting student tours is EXACTLY the RIGHT WAY to go.
To respond
to a previous post about the tour guides having nothing to do with the
bio lab...I must whole heartedly disagree. The student tours are meant
to sell the school and get students to enroll, BU is funding research
and development of WMD's....that's only two degrees of separation. We
have to take a closer look at the interconnectedness of the issues and
our own actions.
Keep up the
good work, turn up the heat!
Matt:
I think that the reason that people are having strong reactions to the
tour tactic is that it's an escalation. It IS disruptive--don't kid
yourselves. And people will react strongly to that. Being disruptive
does not mean that it's not legitimate. But whenever you escalate,
you'll get a strong reaction.
I have to
guess that's why you picked this tactic--becfause it gets BU in a spot
where they're most vulnerable. No?
FLIPSIDE:
My basic problem with Micah is the same as my problem with Matt
Carroll. That a couple of privileged white kids are in denial publicly
about the nuisance which privately they congratulate themselves for
being.
Micah is in denial about the fact that he relishes annoying these
parents and stealing from the university this time and effort which
they have invested in making a career -- a thing which Micah has dumped
down the toilet personally to become a career protester.
He says the "tour pretends that BU's biggest controversy doesn't
exist." It does no such thing. That is anthropomorphism. Micah has
CONSTRUED the tour as being a pretentiopus spectacle of denial.
Operation: Over has used this as the lame excuse to TRANSFORM it into
spectacle of denial.
I don't even disagree with Micah wanting to be a dork and a nuisance.
It would just be great if he didn't weasel out of it with
pseudo-highbrow rationales.
One must recognize that Micah planned these repeated and constant
protests himself (and designed the web page for it), and that they now
consume so much personal time that he has dropped out of school to do
it. That is the proper context in which to view his dire need to be
annoying. People don't just drop out of the system unless they plan to
yank everyone else out of it too.
Micah:
flipside, i congradulate you in giving a response that
actually sort of has substance, but you left the whole biolab part out
of the equation. sure, if BU weren't trying to build a BSL-4 lab in the
middle of roxbury, then disrupting BU tours would just be an annoying
nuisance. but that's not the case, and many of the parents and students
on the tours are actually glad that we provided them with the
information we did. the simple fact is the biolab is an issue that BU
is trying to hide, and we're not letting them.
and i did
not plan these protests myself. i designed the operation:
over website, but that's just because i'm a huge computer nerd and i
know how to do things like that. these protests, along with everything
else we've done, have been planned collectively with other people in
operation: over, and we have the full support of other groups fighting
the biolab, like safetynet and boston mobe, and even some of the city
councilors.
FLIPSIDE:
It is truly wonderful that Chuck Turner and Eve Lyman
have decided to romp around on your behalf. Notwithstanding this
marvelous support, it still stands that you romanticize the protester
lifestyle, which is essentially an aggressive but necessarily reactive
and generally losing-side philosophy.
The truth is that bioweapons labs have:
1) Enormous Financial Potential
2) Stringent Special Safety Protocols
But here is a more important consideration. In order to discover cures
to various diseases, it is necessary to cultivate both the diseases as
agents and the cures as counteragents. In this way man masters
pathogens. You might as well complain that a kung fu dojo or a gun
factory teaches or manufactures ways to kill people.
The flaw in your personality is that you have a penchant for seeing
only the abuse, and imagining only the suffering caused by exerting
one's power over the germ. In this sense you are a decadent.
I think, beyond that, your playing of the race card does nothing to
lend credibility to your essentially confrontational pacifist agenda.
It would be more honest to admit that you like disrupting events and
forcing your views on captive audiences.
Amelia:
As one of the other Operation: Over members that was interrupting tours
I can say this is not planned an indulgent exhibition, but part of a
larger strategic plan to put pressure on BU and to ban this BSL-4 lab.
This tactic was extremely successful in the past, and BU is already
alarmed and defensive about only two days of tour interruptions.
This threat
of bioterrorist acts against the US and this supposed need for a cure
for diseases like anthrax is not based in any intense international
risk but the risk we create for ourselves by developing these
pathogens. The gun factory metaphor does not fit the biolab situation.
If we do not develop these bioweapons, there will not be a need for
cures. The anthrax used in 2001 terrorist acts in the US has been
traced back to the US biolab Ft. Detrick, Maryland. If this lab was
about the necessity of cures it would be devoted to diseases like AIDS
that present very real and troubling risks to the world. Or if the US
really wanted to ensure safety from biweapons, and not military
superiority, it would advocate and follow international bans on
bioweapons development which it has circumvented.
Supporter:
Iwant to know how I know that Operation: Over's tactics are working? I know
someone who is friends with President Brown (the head of BU) and he's
been talking to people about the demonstrations at his house.
Operation: Over is getting to him and the rest of the BU
administration. And things are only just beginning- I mean relatively
speaking this organization is very young... I look forward to seeing
what the group will do in the future.
FLIPSIDE:
Re: Amelia's Argument "BU is already alarmed and defensive about only
two days of tour interruptions."
I won't say that is not amusing. But don't be surprised if they simply
hire armed guards.
"this supposed need for a cure for diseases like anthrax is not based
in any intense international risk but the risk we create for ourselves
by developing these pathogens."
You ignore the basic fact that man is destined to exert absolute power
over the pathogen as part and parcel to his mastery of genetic
engineering. It has nothing to do with warfare, which is merely a way
that man subdues other populations while developing his advantage. Man
will control pathogens the same way he controls physical particles,
atoms, and electrons. This is part of the overall mastery of the
universe to which homo sapiens lays claim. It is a grandiose claim, but
it befits such an advanced creature, since it is within his ability to
acheive.
Curing AIDS is not the end-all-be-all of biological research.
Civilization is not organized around the principle of curing sexually
transmitted diseases. The development of bioweapons and cures are just
a preliminary phase in the synthetic cultivation of human beings and
the fusion of biological and cybernetic components. You guys are
fighting for nineteenth century priorities in the 21st century. It is
tedious.
It is laughable that you place such a low priority on military
superiority and such a high value on the opinions of the European Union
and and the "international community" which are nothing more than
products of our military superiority and our economic superiority. This
is just your self interest as expressed from the coziness of the
college industrial complex.
Micah: how many people do you know who
have had the flu? how many people do you know who have had ebola? if
more BSL4 research needs to be done at all, which is debatable, why
should it be in boston? why not in another BSL4 facility that's already
there? isn't it a lot safer to centralize all the insane deadly
research rather than spread it around the country? if BU and boston
want prestige and useful research, they should work on curing aids, or
influenza, which are BSL2 pathogens, or asthma- which so many people in
roxbury have.
flipside,
maybe you should see someone about the whole "man mastering the
universe"
stuff. it can't be healthy.
Iron Council:
3 responses to specific things *&$%@? Flipside has brought up:
1. "annoying
these parents and stealing from the university this time and effort
which they have invested in making a career"
This is
incoherent. The university has invested in making "a career"? Or the
parents? If you mean the former, then yes, that is the target. If you
mean the latter, OO is supplying them information with which to make a
better decision about their families' investments--it's absurd to
describe that as stealing.
2. "In order
to discover cures to various diseases, it is necessary to cultivate
both the diseases as agents and the cures as counteragents. In this way
man masters pathogens."
Everybody
involved understands this idea. What you seem to be unable to wrap your
mind about is that there's no reason "man" has to "master pathogens" in
the middle of low-income residential zone.
3. "But don't
be surprised if they simply hire armed guards."
It would be a
marvelous success for OO if BU sent thugs with guns to keep them from
telling tours about their bioweapons lab.
FLIPSIDE:
It's nice that NEFAC is weighing in on the issue now. Just make sure no
high school dropouts are giving pointers to the college dropouts. That
would be impertinence of the highest sort.
Attacking the "Edukation System" just because you hate "skool" is a
lively and amusing endeavor. Just don't try to vest your caucasian
insufferability with any ideological merit of global significance.
Above all don't try to pose as facilitators of the informed financial
decision, because that would be a bunch of crock. Dumpster divers do
not give out good career advice. You are most certainly stealing the
time and effort of schools, parents, and students. Just stop lying
about it. You love doing this. You hate paying for school, learning a
useful skill, and being active instead of reactive.
You also try to armor this honkified reactivity with black skin. This
makes you a skin-grafter. And you have the nerve to attack bio-science!
There is more twisted bio-science in your CLICHED defense of Roxbury
and in your selective dismissal of Indian and Egyptian geneticists than
in any gene laboratory. To you territory allocated to pathogenic
research would be better used for street shootings. Your priorities are
severely skewed. You automatically consider the tragedy to be: "nobody
from Roxbury will work there" and not "nobody from Roxbury CAN work
there." You ignore the greater tragedy as well as the facts.
You are of course thrilled that BU would hire armed guards to defend
their legal activity. This is because you drama queens thrive on
reaction.
Your modus operandum is here utterly exposed: harass people who
are
peaceably going about their business. Force legitimate organizations to
hire security guards in defense against your harassment. Shove the
security guards. Get shoved by the security guards. Complain loudly.
Attract police attention. Get arrested. Photograph yourselves being
arrested. Send letters to yourselves in prison. Complain about the
quality of food in prison.
Your lifestyle is entirely scripted.
Verushka: ctrl+F "edukation" ... Flipside
seems to have brought this up
FLIPSIDE:
Of course I brought it up. It is the subtext, the true motivation for
anti-skool activity.
Verushka: Is Safety Net doing "anti-skool
activity"?
FLIPSIDE:
That is an inane question. Saying "Safetynet" you might as well be
saying Boston Mobe, Rob Mirabito, WFN, Dan the Bagelman, PLP, CPUSA,
Chuck Turner, and the same old circle jerk. Playing the minor key in
this case still keeps you within the Boston All-Campus Hydra.
Verushka:
You just throw stuff up there to see what sticks, huh?
Verushka:
Hilarious... you took some people or groups who spoke at an antiwar
rally put on by a fairly broad coalition, added CP-USA, and grouped
them all together on this?
You have no
idea what Roxbury Safety Net is, do you?
FLIPSIDE:
You are incapable of revoking my ghetto pass.
Notagovagent: I had my doubts before, but now
I'm convinced that flipside is a volunteer with the FBI or NSA whose
aim is to disrupt anything in the Boston social movement that might be
indeed working. It's amazing the time he takes to "chain" together
people in the movm't and assume that we all work together in a
conspiracy to bring the white-run gov't that he cherishes down. He has
tried over and over again to create a schism at the BIMC by ridiculing
members on this site and others IMC sites. He now is attacking
Operation Over because they are doing effective work against a
war-profeetiring group of rich men, and discrediting those members that
do effective work w/in them. He also often posts
racists/sexist/homophobic comments on the site to cause disruption and
disencourage new readers from coming back. Unfortunately his tactics
don't work because sadly for him: a) we can read him like a book, b) we
work autonomously from each other and that drives him crazy, c) we know
just what a white supremacist he is. If you don't believe me, check out
his website at: http://www.contextflexed.com/flipside.html
FLIPSIDE:
Thanks for the free advertisement and for contributing to what is sure
to be a fun and exciting issue of Haters Magazine. But you really are
bent out of your mind. Imagine: coherent and fast epistemological
skills automatically make one a member of the FBI. What FBI do you
study? Guffaw! I have been living in Boston since 1995 and doing the
same thing I do every day -- which includes making fun of paranoid
honkey mooks. I have already spelled out for you the inherent flaws in
a decentralized, leaderless local area network. Check out also the
beginning of the article http://www.contextflexed.com/storyopo.html
wherein I clearly stated my reasons for making fun of Operation: Over.
