Are We Allowed to Talk About Martial Law?

[conniption]

Consortium News

America’s Locked-Down Insecurity State

By Phil Rockstroh
April 26, 2013

Emerging evidence from the Boston Marathon bombings suggests the brutal attack on innocent civilians was motivated by the fury of two brothers against overseas crimes of the U.S. government. In that, the martial-law lockdown of Boston may be a glimpse at the future to come, says Phil Rockstroh.


Life, as lived, moment to moment, in the corporate/consumer state, involves moving between states of tedium, stress, and swoons of mass media and consumer distraction. Therein, one spends a large portion of one’s economically beleaguered life attempting to make ends meet and not go mad from the pressure and the boredom.

Where does a nebulous concept such as freedom even enter the picture, except to be a harbinger of an unfocused sense of unease … that all too many look to authority to banish? Finding a balance between anxiety and freedom is not something that comes easy to us.

A photograph released by the FBI of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, later identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

In a society beset with a lack of purpose and meaning, it is easy to mistake patriotism, empty self-promotion and jingoism for strength and character, when, in fact, they are anathema.

Weakness compensates by affecting a cretinous swagger. Those who lack a centering core crave power. Beneath it all, quakes one who fears risking intimacy … is terror stricken by the vulnerability attendant to risking love. Those who fear the uncertainty inherent to intimacy and freedom perceive a world fraught with ubiquitous danger. They terrorize themselves; therefore, they see terrorists everywhere.

Recently, a U.S. city was placed in lockdown due to the search for a solitary, 19-year-old suspect. Thirty different law-enforcement agencies were involved. This is the sort of authoritarian overkill that is emblematic of a police state, i.e., all sense of proportion is lost, and conveniently so…

Why? Because these bloated, overfunded police agencies have a need to justify their existence. And one means of doing so … is to maintain a ramped-up level of fear, by creating a culture-wide, self-resonating feedback loop of hysteria.

Hence, if there exists a perpetual, looming menace to all we hold dear, the operatives of the police state can maintain their authority, and the political class can operate sans public oversight.

The events that followed in the wake of the bombs set off at the Boston Marathon have served as an object lesson in how the police state/militarist madness of authoritarian excess becomes normalized. How belligerently ignorant, sorehead nationalists and jumpy ninnies will forfeit their rights for the illusion of safety.

Under the tedium, angst and ennui of corporate-state rule, people get high on the adrenal rush induced by the mass media feedback loop. Also, there is the illusion of breaking the spell of alienation and becoming part of a larger order.

It is troubling that the adrenaline-tweaked, news-as-mass-spectacle audience/primed-for-authoritarianism citizenry of the U.S. seems indifferent to, or oblivious of, the following: The test of a free society comes when that society is put under duress, e.g., not allowing the power-besotted, authoritarian freaks in charge to use the acts of a few violent, lost souls as a means to curtail freedom and consolidate unaccountable power for themselves.

The flacks, operatives and enforcers of corporate state/militarist imperium retail in fear, specifically, in false, displaced and exaggerated fears. The collective mind of empire is a house of distortion mirrors wherein appearances cannot be trusted, all sense of proportion is lost. Perception is thrown askew; thus, the most wily, dangerous enemy of all becomes one’s own mind.

Minor threats are perceived as looming dangers — a Rumpelstiltskin in Reverse Effect comes into play. Pressing matters are neglected, as obsession with trivia trumps all things. An empire bristles with armaments, indiscriminately, aimed at invisibles.

Misdirected fear is a phantom. You can attempt to strike him all day long … but to no end, other than to leave you agitated and spent. Keep at it and you will collapse from exhaustion. This is the way empires meet their end. A giant goes mad, addled by the buzzing of flies he hallucinates a squadron of dragons.

Accordingly, meet your fears, look them in the eye, live among them for a time. Discern whether they consist of an insect buzzing at your windowpane or is a dragon on the roof.

After suffering or witnessing a traumatic event, long after the painful event has passed, one will continue to fear a reoccurrence of the incident. All too often, one becomes locked in a state of hypervigilance … installing a police state of the mind, and, in so doing, a lockdown of empathy and imagination comes to pass.

The legacy of a fear-ridden past denudes the future of possibility. Time passes, yet one stands frozen in place, shackled to the singular moment of a trauma that has long since passed. The imagination atrophies; one’s ability to love fades.

This is the miserable legacy of occurrences such as the Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent police-state siege of the city. If you are curious as to why U.S. culture has become increasingly stultifying — why daily life in the nation has been drained of resonance, inspiration and bereft of a vital core — look no further than the emotional blowback borne of the national (in)security state.

It is only when one chooses to dismiss the cracked-brain guardians of perpetual and displaced fear — personal and collective — does one regain the ability to move freely in the world. The shackles upon one’s incarcerated heart are broken. One is free to be held in the embrace of the present moment. The future, less circumscribed by an oppressive legacy, can unfold like the dawn of a newborn day.

Experiencing fear does not amount to weakness; instead, when buffeted by fear, courage entails putting one foot in front of the other. Attempting to banish fear from consciousness is not a viable option. It is not possible to obliterate angst and trauma by an evocation of will. Even if they appear to be banished, they will return as kvetching ghosts and keening demons of the mind. Your heart will be haunted by their unaddressed grievances.

How can the U.S. not be a haunted land? The country’s blood-soaked soil chants songs of lamentation. Corpse choruses comprised of African slaves and Indigenous People wail out imprecatory hymns from the tormented earth beneath us. As, all the while, the voices of those slaughtered worldwide by our pursuit of empire surround the nation in an enveloping, raging nimbus of accusation. Is it any wonder that we, as a people, are so prone to collective panic?

You cannot outrun a ghost that has taken possession of your heart. You must hear his grievances, grieve with him over the injustices inflicted upon him, then sing him to the next world. And to ensure he will not return to haunt you: You must tell his tale and do it justice.

If you refuse, as we have on a collective basis in the U.S., you will live out your days in a haze of nebulous dread, and the empire’s vast armaments and the entire apparatus of the national security/surveillance state will not serve to placate your unease.

Because what is lost to time can never be retrieved, memory is a ghost. This is the reason the past is our constant companion. We hear these ghosts within the melancholic sigh that brings up short a moment of laughter, as ghosts within mourn things irretrievable.

Secrets do not remain buried. Their voices, vaulted just beneath the contours of one’s awareness, filter up from the underworld. When we catch a snatch of their murmurings, inchoate longing transforms into nebulous dread. We panic in the market place at noonday; the heat of eros can only be experienced in acrimony e.g., a nation with millions of unacknowledged Indian dead buried in its soil finds an inexhaustible supply of enemies abroad.

The ground is not solid, when it has been seeded with the restless dead. At any moment, the earth beneath one’s feet threatens to give way. What you bury sans ceremony will in turn bury you. The dead will bring you down to their level for a chthonic tête à tête.

Late empire is a charnel house. Within its confines, the dead become one’s most ardent suitors. And this is the reason: “Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.” James Joyce, Ulysses

It is a dangerous thing to fear the uncertainty inherent to freedom; this is the means by which freedom is exchanged for a sense of false security. As a consequence, one sense of proportion is thrown askew.

For example, an American is ten thousand times more likely to be killed or injured at work than in an act of terrorism (and that does not include the dangers involved in commuting back and forth to and from the workplace and the stress-related pathologies and premature death resultant from life squandered as an economic animal).

How about let’s declare a War on Work. Let’s have a nationwide mass mobilization for inspired leisure. In this case the terrorists (i.e, the economic terrorists) truly do hate us for our freedoms.

It is a given in human affairs that we will be guided by our misapprehensions of one another. We receive fragments of information through a lens of bias. We stumble through life blinkered by preconceptions. We come upon others whose self-deceptions match our own (in form, of course, but not matching content) and we express bafflement at the extent of their fatuousness.

So it goes with human interactions, from brief encounters to decades in a marriage bed. Yet, when you embrace the impossible nature of it all, a breakthrough of sorts occurs. When you become willing to admit fallibility, to bask in the warm glow of your bafflement, another fallible soul is apt to be drawn to you seeking a communion of restorative confusion.

Comforted by mutual, benign bafflement (a given when confronted with the sublime) each relaxes enough to notice and be drawn close to the mysterious heart of the other.

Although we are convinced we experience anxiety due to the unpredictable nature of life and the impossibility of apprehending the future, what we are often anxious about is the nettling knowledge that the world we cling to is subject to ineluctable forces of change.

Often, the greater the imperative to view the world with new sight, the more blinkered and myopic one’s vision becomes. We clutch a handful of dust. Rather than revisiting and remaking the world anew, we spend our hours in desperate devotion to constructing and dwelling in a crumbling mausoleum of doomed conceptions.

Late U.S. Empire is a cult of death. The body count rises in direct proportion to the putrefying, nationalist myths we insist on holding sacrosanct. Ask me about my sense of patriotism, and you will receive only silence … because what does not exist cannot speak.

But ask me about my sense of affinity with the whole of humanity — about the golden fire of our imagination that binds us to all things, about the cathedral of our bones that binds us to the sorrows of the earth — only if you desire to risk having your ear bent beyond repair by my soliloquies.

Fate will favor those who maintain their dignity, retain their sense of humor, and struggle to keep alive their sense of beauty, even in ugly times. Hold to your vital center, stay in the vivid moment, if only for the sake of those you love.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com/ And at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/phil.rockstroh

[conniption]

c4ss

Living the Lockdown Life

Posted by Thomas L. Knapp
Apr 16, 2013

While watching coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath, I couldn’t help but notice multiple uses and variations of the word “lockdown” (e.g. “Boston is locked down”). Nor could I help thinking that I’ve been hearing that word used more and more frequently over the last few years, and finding its connotations are troubling.

Internet etymological sources inform me that the word “lockdown” emerged in the 1940s to describe mechanical processes such as shutting down machines in an ultra-safe manner for maintenance (by the time I worked in factories, the term was “lockout,”). Its most well-known usage, however, dates from the early 1970s. Until the last decade or so it was nearly unique to “correctional institutions.”

A prison lockdown occurs in the context of a riot or other exceptional disciplinary situation: All inmates are ordered to their cells (as opposed to the cafeteria, the exercise yard or, in prisons which operate slave labor schemes, their work stations). The facility is temporarily closed to visitors, deliveries, etc. — only “essential personnel” may enter, leave, or move within the grounds.

A useful term to describe a common, or at least standardized, process. But in the early 1990s, the term vaulted over the prison wall and into more general usage. Google’s Ngram service, which traces the frequency of words in books, graphs slow, steady increase in the term’s appearance until 1990, followed by a ”hockey stick”: Between 1990 and 2008, use of the term “lockdown” in English-language books ballooned to ten times that 1990 baseline.

Suddenly lockdowns were no longer just a prison thing. They became a school thing, and then an area, neighborhood, city thing.

As of Tuesday morning, April 16, 2013, Google News reported more than 50,000 uses of the word “lockdown” in the news media in the previous 30 days.

“Salem [Massachusetts] schools hold lockdown drills.” “[Dallas, Texas] elementary to dismiss at normal time after lock down” (for nearly five hours because of a single shooting nearby, but not on campus). “Fallston [Maryland] High, Middle schools briefly placed on lockdown” (because a “suspicious person” was reported nearby). Lockdowns at hospitals. Lockdowns at military bases. Neighborhoods locked down for politicians’ social calls and cities locked down for politicians’ funerals.

Ironic? Portentous? Certainly not mere coincidence. The term is becoming so common because it works. It’s descriptive. Not just of the process, but of the societies in which the process is applied.

America in particular and western societies in general have, over the same decades producing that increased usage, degenerated into open air prisons. The inmates — us — although under nearly ubiquitous surveillance, are mostly left free to wander around (not all of them; last time I checked, one of every 32 Americans was “in the correctional system” — imprisoned or on parole, probation or house arrest), as long as we can produce paperwork on demand and “explain ourselves” to the guards if interrogated. And, of course, until the guards pick one of fifty bazillion reasons to “lock down” the block we happen to be on.

That’s not freedom. It’s highly conditional sufferance. And until we reject the lockdown life and abolish the states which impose it, things are going to get more and more conditional and less and less tolerable.

[conniption]

dissenter.firedoglake

Canadian Government Under Harper Reclaims Authoritarian Counterterrorism Powers

By: Kevin Gosztola
April 26, 2013


Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama, along with President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, at a North American Leaders summit in April 2012

Security forces in Canada arrested two people on Monday afternoon and announced a terrorist plot backed by al Qaeda had been disrupted. The Federal Bureau Investigation had been working for the past year with Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which tracked suspects who were allegedly planning to attack a passenger train headed from the United States to Toronto.

In the wake of the arrests, it was reported by Embassy in Canada that Canadian and US police agencies were “locked in private talks over how to effectively launch pilot projects that would allow American agents from organizations like the FBI and the US Drug Enforcement Administration to be accredited as police officers in Canada, with the power to arrest individuals on the street like any Canadian cop.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and conservatives also used the shock of the moment to pass restore authoritarian counterterrorism powers that had been part of anti-terrorism legislation, which had passed after the September 11th attacks. Yet, there has been essentially no coverage of these developments in US media. (In fact, because the men were tracked for a year, it was suspected the arrests may have been made on Monday to increase support for the bill.)

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was asked during a press brief about Canada working with the US to thwart a terror plot on April 23. She would not answer the question. “Sorry to disappoint, but I really refer you to the Department of Justice and the FBI in terms of law enforcement cooperation.” (The FBI and Justice Department put out no press releases on the arrests by the RCMP.)

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation put up an article that clearly outline the powers the anti-terrorism bill had restored:

1. Investigative hearings are reinstated

An individual can be forced to appear at a secret hearing without any charges being laid if authorities believe he or she has knowledge of a terrorist activity. The individual must appear and answer questions or risk being jailed for up to 12 months.

2. Preventive detentions are reinstated

An individual can be held for up to three days on suspicion of being involved with terrorism. Upon release, he or she can be ordered to uphold probation-like conditions, such as not contacting certain people, for up to 12 months, without ever being charged with any offence.

Both measures passed with sunset provisions, as they did in 2001. That is how they went off the books in 2007; they were not renewed.

When the measures were last on the books, according to The Globe and Mail, neither of these measures were used. There was an investigation into the bombing of an Air India plane. A court order had granted authorization for an investigative hearing. The order was challenged. The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that investigative hearings were not unconstitutional, however, the hearing never was held.

Harper invoked the Boston bombing and the two arrests in order to justify expanding the government’s power. He also said, “This is not a time to commit sociology.”

“Global terrorist attacks, people who have agendas of violence that are deep and abiding, are a threat to all the values that our society stands for and I don’t think we want to convey any view to the Canadian public other than our utter condemnation of this kind of violence, contemplation of this violence and our utter determination through our laws and through our activities to do everything we can to prevent and counter it,” he declared.

A US State Embassy cable released by WikiLeaks and sent on June 10, 2009, when Conservatives in Canada were making their third attempt to restore the two measures, suggests the US State Department has never opposed the measures, even though they have been controversial.

Here’s how US Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, described the measures and made a point to emphasize “safeguards” in the provisions:

6. (U) Investigative hearings compel a person with information or materials about a past or future terrorist offense to appear before a judge and answer questions or provide material. The purpose is to gather information, not to prosecute. The hearings are limited to cases where reasonable grounds exist to believe that a terrorism offense had been or would be committed. A police officer must obtain the consent of the Attorney General to invoke the tool and apply to a provincial court or higher court judge of a superior court for an order for the hearing. The person compelled to appear has the right to counsel at any stage of the proceedings. A witness who evades the order, or is deemed by authorities about to abscond, can be arrested without warrant and detained for up to thirty days for the purpose of giving evidence at the hearing. The information gained from the person cannot be used against him or her in any criminal proceeding, except for perjury. An additional safeguard in the bill requires police to satisfy the judge that “reasonable” attempts have been made to obtain the information by other means.

7. (U) Recognizance with conditions (preventive arrest) gives the police the authority to arrest a person without a warrant to disrupt nascent terrorist activity and prevent [???]. A detained person must be brought before a judge within 24 hours of his/her arrest or “as soon as possible” up to a maximum of 72 hours of detention before a hearing. If the judge is satisfied that reasonable grounds for suspicion exist, the person could be required to enter into a recognizance of conditions or conditional commitment (such as having no contact with specified persons). The person could be imprisoned for up to 12 months if he/she refuses to enter into the recognizance.

Wilkins provided no comment at the end of the cable to indicate whether he supported the effort by conservatives. Then, again, he did not express concern over the commitment of Conservatives to ensuring these measures were re-instituted either.

In contrast, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), which opposed reinstating the anti-terror measures, wrote in a letter to leaders in Parliament:

…Individuals subject to these provisions do not necessarily have to be suspected of committing any crime. It is enough that they are alleged to have information relating to a terrorism offence, or that they are alleged to be associated with another individual suspected of committing (or about to commit) a terrorism offence, or that they are otherwise suspected of potential future involvement with a terrorism offence. Furthermore, the scope of Bill S-7 extends beyond Canada’s borders and could potentially result in reliance on foreign intelligence. Without the ability to challenge that the evidence is accurate or was not obtained from a third country or source that conducts or condones torture as a method to elicit information. [It should be noted that the Canadian government has already given the green light to law enforcement agencies to accept information that may have been derived through torture, in violation of international agreements and standards].

In all such cases, individuals may find themselves caught up in these detention and interrogation provisions without any effective legal recourse…

Additionally, it is worth noting the Conservatives chose to claim new powers. Individuals, according to CBC, “can be charged with leaving or attempting to leave the country with the intent of committing an act of terrorism. This provision could apply if someone travelled from Canada to attend a terrorist training camp overseas.” It gives Canada the authority to prosecute individuals for “hijacking an aircraft or endangering safety on a plane or at an airport in another country if that person is found in Canada.” It also grants the authority to prosecute “anyone who knowingly facilitates the communication of false information — such as by knowingly lending someone his or her cellphone, outside Canada, to make an emergency call about a false bomb threat against an aircraft.”

And, since this being written from the perspective of an American and primarily for an American audience, this Globe and Mail editorial from 2010 in defense of “preventive detention” merits attention. It suggested, “Canada’s system of preventive detention is, by the standards of the democratic world, a modest and reasonable attempt at an emergency measure when other protections fail. It should be made law once again.”

Citing a widely referenced Canadian expert, Craig Forcese, the newspaper further argued:

It is “extremely modest in its reach and impact,” he said after comparing it to systems that give Britain and Australia a much wider set of reasons for holding individuals pre-emptively, and for much longer – 28 days in the Britain and 14 days in Australia. (The latest wrinkle in the U.S. is preventive, but much stronger than detention: the government is claiming it has the right to assassinate a U.S. citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico, believed to be in Yemen; human-rights lawyers are contesting that authority.) In Canada, the upper limit on preventive detention is three days, the situation needs to be urgent and a judge considers the matter promptly. [emphasis added]

In other words, an actual defense in Canada for granting government these authoritarian powers is at least we are not claiming the power to target and assassinate terror suspects like the US government and, therefore, in comparison, the measures are entirely reasonable. Out of countries that have terrorism policies violating human rights and civil liberties, Canada is not winning the race to the bottom nor does it have any intention to try and win.

The BCCLA stated it best when it argued to parliament that renewing the provisions “would normalize exceptional powers inconsistent with established democratic principles and threaten hard-won civil liberties.”

Even though it undermines and likely violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada, which has in the past decade provided some constraints to the government’s ability to exercise authoritarian powers, the FBI and parts of the national security state in America may fully endorse this development. The Obama administration may trust the government has safeguards and the Justice and State Departments may believe that this is all acceptable in the effort to build greater cooperation between the intelligence apparatuses of the two countries to fight terrorism.

One of 7 comments:
Synoia April 26th, 2013 at 9:11 pm
The US’ poisonous policies permeate populations planetwide.
Where were the policies when IRA Terrorism was funded from the US?

_______

I have a question, Canada -
Are the police forces in Canada locking down schools and communities, conducting door-to-door searches in pursuit of whoever, these days? (Like they did in this story from the AP?)

[Bruce Dazzling]

Regarding the reported post on page two...

C_W,

The "cheerleader for killing" and "bloodlust" accusations were a bit over the top.

Fourth Base,

Telling C_W to "blow something out her ass" was also a bit over the top.

Keep it civil and on topic going forward.

[Canadian_watcher]

Bruce,
I appreciate you being evenhanded however I'm pretty sure there was already a warning about this. it seems weird that it is being brought up again so long afterward.

[FourthBase]

I kind of agree with Canadian_watcher.
However: Duly noted.

I really, really absolutely have to perfect the art of underreacting.
Also, I need to be more empathetic. Constantly. My apologies, all.

[Canadian_watcher]

below is a link. It's a long interview from radio 3fourteen - so anyone who hates Henrik Palmgren might as well pass it by, since there are some people who cannot deal with information if it isn't presented to them on a specific type of china from a specific side of the table.. and not all of it is specifically on point, but it is all about the way the justice system has been co-opted and perverted, the way that ordinary people very often are too lazy, greedy or cowardly to do the right thing, etc. Caveat: I do not agree with everything this guy says, okay? I don't know this fellow - I do not advocate for his point of view. it's just INFORMATION. neutral. thanks.

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio3fo ... 130213.php

[Joe Hillshoist]

Regarding the reported post on page two...

"Reported Post"??? On a thread about martial law?

Kind of says it all really.

[FourthBase]

Regarding the reported post on page two...

"Reported Post"??? On a thread about martial law?

Kind of says it all really.

Oh, does it?

What does it say, Joe?
Spell it out.

Quite sick and tired of needlessly cryptic stuff like that.

[coffin_dodger]

I fully understand that Paul Craig Roberts is a former Servant of the State - however, he does seem to have turned somewhat renegade -

[snip] "...The public’s response to the Boston Marathon Bombing is even more discouraging. Not even King George and his Redcoats could achieve what Homeland Security just pulled off–locking down 100 square miles of Boston and its suburbs with heavily armed troops tramping through citizens’ homes barking harsh orders, all justified by a hunt for one 19-year old suspect. It was the Third Reich’s Gestapo in operation right here in “freedom and democracy” America. Ron Paul is correct that the suspension of civil liberty is a greater threat than the bombing. Note the government’s euphemism for martial law–”shelter-in-place..."

full text here - http://snipurl.com/26yirfy

[Joe Hillshoist]

Regarding the reported post on page two...

"Reported Post"??? On a thread about martial law?

Kind of says it all really.

Oh, does it?

What does it say, Joe?
Spell it out.

Quite sick and tired of needlessly cryptic stuff like that.

I honestly didn't think it needed spelling out.

Because martial law and the associated tropes or whatever you want to call them - the things that go with it rely on an external authority and people submitting to it. The total in totalitarianism comes from a population that is complicit.

Authoritarian is enabled by people reporting other people instead of sorting it out among themselves.

For example, if you're a mod and someone reports a post then the community has put an onus on you to do something, to exercise that authority whether its required or not. Those posts that Bruce is referring to are really pretty mild and while they involve some disagreement its the sort that we as a mature internet community should be able to sort out by discussion not appeal to authority.

This is a feedback loop. The more it happens the more its gonna happen.

We always hear that the evil gubbmint is gonna impose martial law from above, but the reality is that the legal protections that hundreds of years of dissent and work toward democracy achieved are undermined by things like the Patriot Act or the even worse provisions in Australia's anti terror and anti gang laws. To the point where now in NSW where I live the right to silence is no longer in existence. This undermining happened with the consent and support of democratic populations.

ie The reality is this stuff isn't imposed by governments without consent of people.

I see the exact same process being mirrored in that little tiff having been brought to the attention of the moderators.

Sorry if I wasn't clear about it, I wasn't trying to be cryptic. But I do find it disturbing.

[Canadian_watcher]

Joe you are so patient it's incredible.

[FourthBase]

You are...totally right, Joe.

Trying. Failing, still. But, trying. Trying real hard.
Failing real hard, too, occasionally, lol, hopefully less and less. Sorry.

[conniption]

vigile

How The Boston Bombing Is Already Being Exploited To Introduce Tyranny

Brandon Smith
http://www.alt-market.com
mercredi 24 avril 2013

I have no personal experience in the business of false flag terrorism, but I imagine that engineering a successfully staged terror attack to be blamed on innocent or semi-innocent parties with the goal of psychologically manipulating a population requires that one also be an accomplished storyteller. It demands an avid imagination and an organized sense of foresight. And, most of all, it requires a consistency of narrative. Without consistency, the audience’s ability to suspend its disbelief is damaged, and they become disconnected from the fantasy being portrayed.

If I were the “writer” behind the “story” of the Boston Marathon Bombing, I would consider my efforts an abject failure.

The narrative of the event has changed multiple times in only a few days, following a hailstorm of conflicting observations from the government and the establishment-run media. The “villain” of the original plotline was clearly meant to be “rightwing extremism” as numerous mainstream talking heads, led by federal agency inferences, began repeating the “homegrown right wing terrorist” meme everywhere. This meme was partly abandoned after the alternative media and the Liberty Movement began its own investigation, revealing a large federal presence on the scene, including military Civil Support Teams often tied to the DHS and Northcom, as well as the witnesses who observed what on-scene officials called “training exercises” during the marathon. I have no doubt that these citizen investigations forced the establishment to change the direction of their crime tale, and use Plan B patsies instead. This, however, complicated the momentum of the fiction, and created even more questions.

The Chechen brothers now implicated in the attack have been revealed as long time FBI contacts. This is a bit awkward for the FBI considering they asked the American public to help them “identify the suspects in on-scene photos” while they failed to mention that they knew EXACTLY who the two young men were already (this is what we might call a contrived story arch). Today, the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is conveniently dead. The younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had his throat conveniently shot out. The feds are now supplying the media with “written confessions” from Dzhokhar to which there is no proof of legitimacy. For all we know the boy hasn’t written a word.

The new “villains” get no voice in this drama, and thus become two dimensional characters. They exist so that we can hate them. Understanding them, or hearing their side of events from their own lips, is certainly out of the question. Poorly fleshed out antagonists are a sure sign of a poorly constructed story.

Finally, we get to the “heroes”. Though the criminal elements of our federal government and adjoining alphabet agencies did not yet get the right wing patriot patsy they obviously wanted, they have still so far gleaned considerable social capital from the bombings. The point of a false flag is to frighten the population of any given nation into relinquishing freedom in the name of safety, which in the process gives the central government even more control. In the wake of the Boston attack, the establishment is having a field day…

Martial Law Conditioning

For a few days, Boston became an Orwellian nightmare. The city lockdown and subsequent militarization was swift, though any intelligent and guilty suspect could have easily left the area before hand. This kind of response to catch only two supposed perpetrators is outlandish, unless you understand that it was not about catching the bombers. Rather, it was an exercise designed to test the malleability of the American people during a crisis scenario. In Watertown, residents were not only forced into lockdown ; they were also subjected to house-to-house searches without warrant, pat downs, and numerous other violations of their 4th Amendment rights. Take note that almost everything you see in the video below is an illegal and unconstitutional action on the part of Boston authorities :



As this was occurring, officials were consistently pushing media cameras away from the area in the name of “safety”, even though media cameramen are sent into domestic shootouts and foreign warzones on a regular basis. The only real purpose that I can see to removing them from the scene was to reduce the amount of video footage depicting these illegal searches and seizures :

For those who can’t grasp what has happened here, let me explain ; the dynamics of liberty have just been erased. This kind of behavior on the part of government will not be limited to disasters like Boston, or New Orleans during Katrina ; a precedence is being set to use martial law-style tactics anywhere for any reason at anytime. The “national security argument” is being used as a free license to institute any measure regardless of law to achieve a particular combat objective. The environment we saw in the dark days of Boston is an environment we’ll soon see all over the country, and here is why…

Escalation

Boston represents a clear escalation of the use of NDAA and martial law measures in the aftermath of a security event. After the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2012, his Miranda Rights under the Constitution were denied due to “extraneous circumstances of national security”. Numerous lawmakers called for the suspect to be treated as an “enemy combatant” so that he could be interrogated under the laws of war without due process :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...

The Obama White House has cleverly called for a civilian trial of Tsarnaev in order to reduce criticisms of its support for numerous unconstitutional measures, including the NDAA and the use of assassination against American citizens. The White House has always claimed that it would not use the combatant provisions against American citizens, but has never denied that those provisions could be applied to us. The idea is that while the president does have these powers at his disposal, we’re supposed to have “faith” that he will not abuse them. During the debate over the passage of the NDAA, Obama opposed certain language within the legislation that REQUIRED him to treat accused domestic terrorists as enemy combatants, not because he thought it was wrong, or unconstitutional, but because he wanted the OPTION to decide whether he would or would not black bag a citizen and throw him into an unspecified hole. He has simply exercised his “option” for a citizen trial, at least this time around…

In the meantime, a simultaneous and so far poorly verified “train attack” has been averted in Canada, opening the door for more discussion on something the establishment has been trying to squeeze out of the populace for years : consent for the federalized lockdown of travel and public events. Whether through TSA, or the use of state authorities under the watch of the DHS, the government has been desperately clamoring to expand the control grid out of airports and federal buildings into the bus stations, subways, trains, highways and sidewalks of America :

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013...

I believe that we will soon see much greater presence of TSA VIPR teams at large public arenas and in transportation venues outside of airports, and that the Boston Bombing will be used as a primer for this expansion. Recent comments by NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg only reinforce my belief. Bloomberg, in reference to the marathon attack, stated that :

“…we live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11…”

“We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That’s good in some sense, but it’s different from what we are used to…”

Ironically, the only enemy out there that appears ready to “take our freedoms away” are men like Bloomberg ; snakes in the grass that pay lip service to the Constitution while constantly trying to undermine it.

Free Speech Is Next

The bombings in Boston took place, apparently by coincidence, just before Oath Keepers, a national organization of current serving military, police officers, and veterans promoting adherence to their constitutional oath was to hold a large rally at Lexington Green. The Lexington Green board, one member of which had been openly hostile to Oath Keepers in the past, decided to use the crisis as an excuse to deny the rally permit already attained by the liberty minded group.

The Lexington Selectmen claimed that under the suggestions of “state officials” the rally had to be cancelled due to the “lack of police” available to secure the area and ensure public safety. However, when Oath Keepers held a brief oath ceremony at the Green in protest of the decision, a police force was sent to watch them :

http://lexington.patch.com/articles...

This means that public safety was not the issue. Rather, safety and security were being used yet again to deny a constitutional right, and this time it was the most vital and valuable right of all – free speech.

During the height of the civil rights marches of the 50’s and 60’s, the exact same tactics were used to silence dissent. Black protesters were told that they could not obtain proper permits for peaceful marches because their “own safety” and the safety of the public could not be ensured. This matter of using broad hypothetical dangers as a catalyst for censorship was finally argued before the Supreme Court in Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham. The court sided with the protestors, pointing out that the use of undefined safety concerns and “prior restraint” to silence speech was unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the decision has not prevented the U.S. government from slowly undermining public protest rights ever since.

The fascinating thing about incremental tyranny is the way in which naïve members of our society try to rationalize it. They debate using logical fallacies like :

“How have your rights been violated in particular ? If your rights haven’t been violated, what right do you have to complain ?”

And how about this gem…

“Yeah, there are problems in this country, but at least we have some freedom. In many countries, you wouldn’t be allowed to complain the way you are…”

This is statist psychology at work. Freedom, in their minds, is a privilege doled out by governments, rather than an inborn attribute outside of the realm of law. They do not understand that the violation of the rights of one American is a violation of the rights of ALL Americans. They do not understand that the destruction of some constitutional protections will one day lead to the destruction of ALL constitutional protections.

The establishment and the useful idiots they manipulate want to make the “threat” the center of attention, but ultimately, the threat is irrelevant. There will always be the danger of terrorism and death. Always ! And, if our government is following the Operation Gladio false flag model (look it up, folks, it was openly admitted government funded terrorism), as I believe they are, then we can count on Boston-style bombings all over the U.S. very soon.

True crisis lay in what we refuse to see, and the greatest crisis today is not the bombing of a marathon, but the destruction of our freedoms in the name of “security”. The bottom line ? Our civil liberties are not up for compromise. Period. Shootings, bombs, nukes, nothing ! There is no rationalization that will ever make tyranny a moral enterprise. I, like many other Americans, do not care what boogeyman fantasy is paraded in front of me. We are not frightened, and we are not ignorant. No attack, no matter how heinous, will ever convince us to hand over our freedom.

***

You can contact Brandon Smith at : brandon@alt-market.com

[FourthBase]

I, like many other Americans, do not care what boogeyman fantasy is paraded in front of me. We are not frightened, and we are not ignorant.

Love the sentiment!

Also love the hilarious irony of it coming at the end of an article full of dumb shitless boogeyman fantasies. "I, like many other Americans, do not care what boogeyman fantasy is paraded in front of me...except for the one I just paraded in front of you. We are not frightened, and we are not ignorant...except when I'm needlessly frightening you with a grossly-ignorant misinterpretation of both the law and reality itself, wording it all with an insidiously-irresponsible doomsaying certainty."

So...

Love the sentiment in that first quoted sentence, but fuck that guy.
Brandon Smith, whoever you are, pay attention...ready? Great: FUCK YOU.