Now Koch -- my longtime friend, Jerry -- faces up to a year and a half in jail himself. He is the latest anarchist in the U.S. to have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury. He will not cooperate and his silence could land him months in federal custody, without charge or conviction for a crime. I have written at some length in recent months about the federal grand jury system, which I describe as one of the blackest boxes in the judicial arsenal. I noted, for example, how four anarchists in the Pacific Northwest were jailed for resisting cooperation with a Seattle grand jury, believed to be investigating property damage wrought against the city on May Day 2012.

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In the aftermath of the attack, some people assume it was the work of a sinister global conspiracy against America, despite little evidence. Others see an unemployed and alienated loner, unable to connect to the promise of the American dream, who turned to extremism out of personal despair or mental illness. Many political commentators call for a crackdown on immigration, the restriction of civil liberties and an aggressive military-style counterattack against anti-American radicalism, both at home and abroad. As the nation’s energetic young president puts it, counteracting this tide of violence is the most significant question facing the United States, and one that could even endanger the nation’s future.

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Another young woman, 24-year-old Leah Lynn Plante, was also taken into federal custody last year when she refused to talk. Unlike Olejnik and Duran, however, Plante was released after one week. Anarchist networks following the case feared that Plante's resolve broke and that she had agreed to cooperate when faced with the reality of a potential 18 months or more in prison -- the details of Plante's case remain unknown. Both Olejnik and Duran maintained their resistance and walked free Thursday without having shared information with the authorities on other Northwest activists. Their release came after a federal judge agreed to a request for release issued by Olejnik and Duran's attorneys.

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What better proof that there is no one black bloc group or organization than the emergence in recent days of black blocs in Egypt's protest-filled streets? As the AP reported, "youths with faces hidden under black masks have appeared among stone-throwing protesters in clashes with police around Egypt the past five days in the wave of political violence that has shaken the country. During protests in Cairo on Monday, masked youths celebrated around a police armored vehicle in flames in the middle of Tahrir Square, waving their hands in V-for-victory signs."

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Just days before the Chicago NATO summit last May, Senakiewicz drunkenly told undercover agents that he had two homemade explosives hidden in his Chicago residence in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book. A search of his home found the bombs to be as fictitious as the boy wizard -- there weren't even any Harry Potter books at the address. But the 24-year-old anarchist, who Tuesday pleaded guilty to one felony count of falsely making a terrorist threat, could face deportation.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

At a hearing in the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Judge Nicholas Ford imposed the 4-year prison term and recommended that Senakiewicz be admitted into a prison boot camp. If he successfully completes the program he could be released in as little as 6 months, but prosecutors said the Polish native would be subject to deportation on completing his sentence.

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Plante's support network announced Friday that she was released from federal prison a couple of days ago after spending a week in solitary confinement. The announcement says that information is scarce and that Plante, having believed she would face 18 months behind bars, is too traumatized to speak to the media. For unknown reasons, the announcement notes, Plante was classified as "different" from the two other Seattle grand jury resistors also taken in to federal custody in recent months. Matt Duran and Kteeo Olejnik remain incarcerated. Little is known about Duran's prison conditions, but it is believed he has been kept largely in solitary confinement. The statement from Plante's support network Friday noted that the freed grand jury resistor "urges people to step up support for Matt and Kteeo on all fronts."

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After their arrests, most of the suspects quickly agreed to discuss their plans with FBI agents during middle-of-the-night interviews. One of the would-be bombers said he just wanted to go to sleep and forget everything, court documents disclose.

Douglas L. Wright, 26, of Indianapolis; Brandon L. Baxter, 20, of Lakewood, Ohio; and Connor C. Stevens, 20, of Berea, Ohio, all pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. district court in Cleveland. Each admitted conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, and attempted use of an explosive device to destroy property used in interstate commerce.

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In this sense, the new music video for Kanye West and Jay-Z's track "No Church in the Wild" is the best actual riot porn I've ever seen. The video, directed by Romain Gavras, is five minutes of a graphic, fiery and entirely staged riot. It opens with a young man lighting a Molotov cocktail and lobbing it at a line of riot cops as masked comrades behind him raise their arms in support. Filmed in Prague, but presented as a non-specific yet decidedly European urban battleground, riot cops on horses violently beat the masked crowd, who fight back with fire and fists while Greco-Roman statues look on. Were it not for the surprising appearance of a chained elephant amidst the fray in the video's final frames, the footage looks (almost) like something straight out of Athen's Syntagma Square. Jay-Z and Kanye don't feature in the video at all, which makes artistic sense: I'd be more surprised to see Hove in a riot than a two-tonne elephant.

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I wrote here last week, following up on a Rolling Stone piece by Rick Perlstein, about the proliferation of FBI entrapment schemes aimed at activists and anarchists in the past decade. Following the arrest of five individuals in Chicago over the weekend who now face terrorism charges, the question of entrapment perpetrated by law enforcement seems more important than ever.

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Using some recent examples, Perlstein paints a startling picture. He notes the arrest this month of a small group of self-identified anarchists, participating in Occupy Cleveland, who -- strung along in an FBI sting -- planned to blow up a large Ohio bridge. The target was suggested and (fake) C-4 explosives were provided by an FBI infiltrator. As Perlstein put it, the episode was one among numerous law enforcement schemes since 2001 in which "the alleged terrorist masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage."

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Five young men from Cleveland are now in jail, accused of plotting to "blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area," according to the FBI's triumphant press release/criminal complaint. As is always the case with FBI terror stings, the "sting" part involved the bureau's informant/agent provocateur mostly inventing the plot the accused have now been arrested for. In this case, the five planned to detonate smoke bombs as a distraction as they "topple[d] financial institution signs atop high rise buildings in downtown Cleveland." But the informant (as usual, a sketchy unnamed character with a checkered past) strongly pushed the group to seriously consider different, more extreme plots. At the end, some or all of them were going to plant C-4 on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

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Breitbart obtained a couple thousand listserv emails from some Occupy Wall Street participants and organizers arguing strategy and planning events, and he has "crowdsourced" his analysis of these emails because he doesn't really understand any of it.

Despite his inability to grasp who these people are and what they want, he has determined "the true purpose" of the movement, based on a couple of random things some anarchist organizers wrote to one another:

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The Guardian reported that the police raided five squats across the U.K. capital on Thursday, issuing arrests for petty crimes. But few are convinced that the arrests are not directly connected to Friday’s festivities.

A spokesman denied the raids had anything to do with the royal wedding. Police said the raid at a squat known as Ratstar in Camberwell was carried out under a section 18 warrant to search for stolen goods.

A spokesman said once officers arrived at the address they found that those inside were bypassing the electricity meter and were arrested for "electricity abstraction".

"It's business as usual," a spokesman said. "This is nothing to do with the royal wedding."

As the Guardian notes, senior police officers stated explicitly last week that "they would be taking preemptive action, including raiding squats and making arrests, in advance of the wedding to ensure that no criminal activity took place on the day," which makes apparent that today's arrests have little to do with "electricity abstraction" and more to do with containing unwanted elements in advance of the wedding day.

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Dignified to the end, Marie Antoinette reportedly apologized for stepping on the executioner's foot: "Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose." Her husband, Louis XVI, also faced the end bravely, although his attempt to give a long-winded speech forgiving his enemies and calling for God's mercy was, quite literally, cut short. Robespierre, the revolution's greatest orator, went to his death with his jaw shattered from a gunshot wound, and could say nothing.

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