Agent Provocateur from Air & Space museum Identified

Get to know his face.

He is an agent provocateur. His name is Mike Stack.

From OccupyWallSt.org:

Patrick Howley confessed in a piece in The American Spectator where he is an Assistant Editor. Michael Stack was identified from OpEdNews photos and video on YouTube. Stack is the very large individual who charged the Museum guard starting off what turned into mayhem. The one big question for identifications this morning is whether James O'Keefe was also present wearing a disguise, in violation of his parole conditions in New Jersey.

Howley and Stack have been involved for years with right wing organizations including Leadership Institute people, plus having ties to the Koch brothers. Their actions at Air&Space resulted in dozens of peaceful demonstrators getting hit with pepper spray -- resulting in eye pain, nausea, and headaches. Media coverage of the event was turned to imply that these people had acted unlawfully.

Was this Howley-Stack-Unknown start-a-riot scheme replicated in New York and Boston? Did peaceful demonstrators find themselves hit with police batons (a.k.a. night sticks) and pepper spray as a direct result of right wing conspiracies?

The Smithsonian pepperspray incident

Here is footage of the spraying as it happened from OpEdNews.com

h/t @CodePinkAlert

And here are a few mainstream media stories that need correction:

Fox News reports that "At least one" person was pepper sprayed. Not the case. 12-15 people were sprayed.

This article from the Washington Post takes the Smithsonian at their word that protesters were told that they could not enter carrying banners. That is false.

The protesters were not told anything. I was inside the museum when this happened. After the first three people entered the vestibule, the security guards rushed the doors, started shoving people, and the use of pepper spray was almost immediate. The protesters were told NOTHING. They were simply met with force, and sprayed with mace.

I also recieved word that the New York Times article on this story first took the Smithsonian's word that "only one" protester was sprayed. We talked with them, and it was later changed to "12-15". Since last night, they've dropped any mention of pepperspray from the article altogether. The New York Times is doing a lot of story changing-- about the kettling on the Brooklyn Bridge, and now about this incident with the pepper spray at the smithsonian air and space museum.

Stop The Machine- Day 3

So we went to the Air and Space museum to do a silly little demonstration. We were going to do a banner drop at the drone exhibit, a display of military fetishism that our tax dolars pay for.

I had gotten ahead of the march with my camera to video tape us entering the lobby. What happened instead was just insane.

The security guards rushed the entrance like linebackers, shoving people out the doors, flailing their arsm, pushing people in the face, and then pepper-sprayed the crowd, including women like Linda Wiener, 54, of Portland Oregon, from no more than a few inches away from their faces. In the ensuing chaos, the guards sprayed a few of their own. One security guard, seen in the video above, was choking on the pepper spray, and remarked, "God, that stuff is nasty."

Yeah, no shit.

I was pushed out of the lobby into the still-hanging cloud of pepper spray. The air was impossible to breathe. If you've ever put a 9volt battery to your tongue, that's what it felt like, but in your eyes, your nose, and your mouth and lungs. I ran outside of the cloud of spray, took a deep breath of air, and ran back into the crowd of people being flushed and treated by our first aid team.

I had no idea things were going to go like this. I figured we might be denied entry, but to be maced? Really? They shut down the museum for the rest of the day. That wasn't our intent. Our intent was to do a silly little banner drop and die-in. Pure theater.

Instead, our theatrical demonstration against unlawful use of force, was met by an unlawful use of force. Ironic.