The point of "Dr. Strangelove" is that we are ruled by a class of madmen who actually want to blow the world to smithereens. It is their mission in life. "We'll Meet Again" indeed.
This movie was released in 1964, not long after the assassination of President Kennedy (a 20th century pivot point) and just as President Johnson was ramping up the Vietnam War due to the false reports of an NV attack on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. False reports. It didn't happen, but because killing gooks or whomever is a necessity for new presidents, it was used to justify the escalation of US force in Vietnam regardless.
In Dr. Strangelove's world, such a non-event would be perfect to justify launching the nukes. It didn't matter whether it was real; nuclear annihilation certainly would be. Yippee! We're all gonna die!
Here we are more than 50 years later, and we see a kind of twisted replay is taking place. What actually happened in Syria or N. Korea or any of the other hot spots the US is making hotter doesn't matter a whit. What matters is whether the propaganda sufficiently justifies more bloody business up to and including nuclear annihilation.
For all the unsupported belief that Trump would keep the US out of war while Mrs Clinton was sure to get us into a nuclear war with Russia post-haste, some of us Boomers actually had an understanding of the mindset of both candidates, where they were coming from when it came to Use of Force. Neither was pristine by any means, and both came of age during the "Dr. Strangelove" era.
I'm sure both saw the movie during the summer or fall of 1964 as well, and they've probably both seen it several times since.
The impression it made on them, however, was probably quite different.
The issue is simple enough. Hillary went to public school in Chicago. Public school students of the era were socialized (and propagandized) to fear Communism and to fear the Bomb more. Ms. Ché and I were in Los Alamos yesterday (home of the nuclear annihilation labs, dontchaknow). She was reading some of her poetry at the White Rock Library. One of her poems deals with the topic of duck and cover, instant incineration, and all of that and what we were trained to do and believe if the final button was pushed. That kind of conditioning stays with you. It doesn't go away. You can't really free yourself from.
The upshot of it is that you do not push that button no matter what.
In "Dr. Strangelove" of course, while leaders tried to prevent the catastrophe, the madmen (militaryjakes) had their way anyway, and Oops! Apocalypse ensued.
Trump had a different kind of conditioning and socialization during the era; he was a student at the New York Military Academy, they say because he'd been such a trouble-maker at his previous private school. Yes, well.
NYMA was at the time associated with West Point which was just down the road. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, West Pointers on President Kennedy's staff were advocating launching a nuclear first strike against Cuba and the Soviet Union; "it would be survivable."
Yes, right.
It's always been known that some people would survive an all out nuclear war, and that the ruins would only glow for a relatively short time. Reconstruction might be difficult but it would be possible, and the horror of what happened would eventually fade from the survivors' memories. Life of a sort would go on.
None of this was shared with public school students who were being conditioned in one way regarding the Bomb and its effects, but it was an article of faith in the military and was a kind of doctrine in military schools throughout the country.
That's what Trump was taught. And it looks like he still believes it wholeheartedly.
"You can survive, and it's worth the wreckage." To win.
Trump may or may not try for an alliance with Russia -- I'd say he wants to do it, but the current situation won't allow it. But what would this alliance gain? In alliance, the two most heavily armed nuclear powers would be able to threaten annihilation of any competing power (eg: China) and they would be able to follow through. I think that's the point.
It's not to make peace, it's to threaten and control the rest of the world -- and to destroy it if there is a lack of compliance.
Gangster rule, in other words.
Sounds like a plan, no?
Meanwhile, our military has apparently been given free rein to do as they will wherever they are engaged in combat, and the other day, they dropped the Mother of All Bombs on what they said was a "ISIS cave and tunnel complex" in Afghanistan. Whether or not it was targeted on such a facility and whether or not there were casualties is still a matter of some dispute, much as the missile action against the Syrian airfield was maybe not as effective as it was touted to be -- intentionally.
Both actions, it seems to me, were designed to "message" rivals and enemies: Watch that shit or you're next.
It is unlikely that Mrs Clinton would do this sort of thing so overtly, but you never know.
If the skeptics are right, neither action really did all that much, and the demonstrations of US might may have been counter-productive much as the Special Forces raid in Yemen was.
Massacres for the sake of messaging do not inspire confidence or loyalty.
Bombing just to bomb likewise. Vietnam was a good example of how these things unravel. But lessons learned are soon forgotten.
The nuclear annihilation clock edges closer to midnight.
And there's essentially nothing we, the Rabble, can do about it but hunker down and pray.
Rough times indeed.
Showing posts with label bombing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bombing. Show all posts
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Sunday, June 2, 2013
The Boston Marathon Thing Keeps Getting Stranger And Stranger
The story of the Boston Marathon Bombing has developed into a nearly incomprehensible mish-mash of action/reaction, yarn-spinning and story-telling... not to mention the death and dismemberment...
Each version of the story leads to ever more speculation about what is and was really going on.
Who are these people, and what are they doing to us?
Of course, all the many variations in the story of what happened, how, and who was involved quite naturally give rise to any number of conspiracy theories and theatrics, and I've long been under the impression that conspiracy theories are actually the point of all the many conflicting "official" stories that always seem to come from some Anonymous Official Familiar With the Case and which are breathlessly written down and sent on their merry way by credulous reporters who haven't a clue that they might be hearing blarney. Or that's the way it looks, but the situation could well be less naive than that; it could well be that the reporters and their editors, the Officials and the publications are all in on it, all well aware of the many levels of deceit going on, and that none of them really give a good gott-damb about what's really going on or the Truth in any rational sense.
As the Busheviks were proud to point out, "We're history's actors... you just study what we do..."
This was one of the cleverer aspects of the whole Soviet system of rule that never quite caught on in the West -- not until the Soviet Union collapsed at any rate, and then this sort of propaganda became all the rage in Western halls of power.
Yes, it is a propaganda tactic, as is the creation of false leads and fantasy conspiracy theories. They are completely harmless to the apparat that create them while keeping would-be Exposers of Great Wrong on the trail of... nothing at all.
It works like a charm, especially on the Internet, where sleuthing and gaming are widespread user-hobbies if not outright obsessions. Fabricate some sort of Mystery or Conspiracy around a traumatic event and the Internet Gumshoes are on it like white on rice; it keeps them busy tracking down "leads" and "inconsistencies" and speculating and arguing endlessly on the "meaning" of this or that "clue."
Meanwhile, there's a whole other world (maybe Reality) that they're either never aware of at all, or that they only come to recognize after years and years of running down "clues" and "leads" that go nowhere.
The deaths and arrests of suspects in the Boston Marathon Thing have given the impression to some observers that something else entirely is going on than What We Are Told. The recent death in Orlando of someone who knew the dead suspect in Boston (at least we are to assume he is dead) is one of those things.
The Official Story of what happened in Orlando is frankly jibberish, a word salad of conflicting and mutually incompatible statements by Officials Familiar With the Case who are clearly not telling the truth to the media.
Friends and family, as in Boston regarding the prime suspects in the bombing, are offering a very different picture of the man who was killed in Orlando, and the Official Story has changed so many times by now ("He had a knife! He was going for a gun! He had a pole! He had a broomstick! He had a sword! He pushed a table! He was unarmed! He was SCARY!!!!1") nothing the Officials say is believable. But then, there is no other source of information about what happened, either. There are some other sources of information about what happened in Boston during the pursuit and capture of the surviving suspect, but there are no other sources of information after his capture, except for statements of his mother in Russia regarding her telephone conversation with him while he was recovering from his (apparently rather minor) wounds in a prison hospital.
"Wait," I said. He was on the phone with his mother in Russia? While in a prison hospital? How? I mean really. Something like this is not exactly protocol, as phone calls in and out of any sort of prison environment in the United States are so tightly regulated and monitored and so fiercely restricted that a call in from Russia or out to Russia is all but inconceivable.
But the gamers and amateur gumshoes don't even question it; they take it on faith that the call happened and that the suspect said what the mother is reported to have said he said ("I'm innocent!")
Mkay.
The only way that something like this could have happened, in my view, is if the FBI or one of the other Agencies Involved set the call up as part of the investigation. But it's conceivable the call never happened at all.
It's been pointed out that at least part of this (ethnic) Chechen family -- including potentially the dead Boston suspect -- has all the earmarks of being Assets of some Agency or other in the Great Global Game. That being so, could the dead suspect in Orlando also be an Asset? Isn't there a Program to eliminate Assets Who Go Rogue? Is that what's taking place? Or part of it?
If that were the case, how, exactly, would "guilt" or "innocence" work under the circumstances?
Wheels within wheels.
Maybe in fifty years -- or maybe never -- something like the Real Truth will out. Until then, it's all just wheels spinning...
Each version of the story leads to ever more speculation about what is and was really going on.
Who are these people, and what are they doing to us?
Of course, all the many variations in the story of what happened, how, and who was involved quite naturally give rise to any number of conspiracy theories and theatrics, and I've long been under the impression that conspiracy theories are actually the point of all the many conflicting "official" stories that always seem to come from some Anonymous Official Familiar With the Case and which are breathlessly written down and sent on their merry way by credulous reporters who haven't a clue that they might be hearing blarney. Or that's the way it looks, but the situation could well be less naive than that; it could well be that the reporters and their editors, the Officials and the publications are all in on it, all well aware of the many levels of deceit going on, and that none of them really give a good gott-damb about what's really going on or the Truth in any rational sense.
As the Busheviks were proud to point out, "We're history's actors... you just study what we do..."
This was one of the cleverer aspects of the whole Soviet system of rule that never quite caught on in the West -- not until the Soviet Union collapsed at any rate, and then this sort of propaganda became all the rage in Western halls of power.
Yes, it is a propaganda tactic, as is the creation of false leads and fantasy conspiracy theories. They are completely harmless to the apparat that create them while keeping would-be Exposers of Great Wrong on the trail of... nothing at all.
It works like a charm, especially on the Internet, where sleuthing and gaming are widespread user-hobbies if not outright obsessions. Fabricate some sort of Mystery or Conspiracy around a traumatic event and the Internet Gumshoes are on it like white on rice; it keeps them busy tracking down "leads" and "inconsistencies" and speculating and arguing endlessly on the "meaning" of this or that "clue."
Meanwhile, there's a whole other world (maybe Reality) that they're either never aware of at all, or that they only come to recognize after years and years of running down "clues" and "leads" that go nowhere.
The deaths and arrests of suspects in the Boston Marathon Thing have given the impression to some observers that something else entirely is going on than What We Are Told. The recent death in Orlando of someone who knew the dead suspect in Boston (at least we are to assume he is dead) is one of those things.
The Official Story of what happened in Orlando is frankly jibberish, a word salad of conflicting and mutually incompatible statements by Officials Familiar With the Case who are clearly not telling the truth to the media.
Friends and family, as in Boston regarding the prime suspects in the bombing, are offering a very different picture of the man who was killed in Orlando, and the Official Story has changed so many times by now ("He had a knife! He was going for a gun! He had a pole! He had a broomstick! He had a sword! He pushed a table! He was unarmed! He was SCARY!!!!1") nothing the Officials say is believable. But then, there is no other source of information about what happened, either. There are some other sources of information about what happened in Boston during the pursuit and capture of the surviving suspect, but there are no other sources of information after his capture, except for statements of his mother in Russia regarding her telephone conversation with him while he was recovering from his (apparently rather minor) wounds in a prison hospital.
"Wait," I said. He was on the phone with his mother in Russia? While in a prison hospital? How? I mean really. Something like this is not exactly protocol, as phone calls in and out of any sort of prison environment in the United States are so tightly regulated and monitored and so fiercely restricted that a call in from Russia or out to Russia is all but inconceivable.
But the gamers and amateur gumshoes don't even question it; they take it on faith that the call happened and that the suspect said what the mother is reported to have said he said ("I'm innocent!")
Mkay.
The only way that something like this could have happened, in my view, is if the FBI or one of the other Agencies Involved set the call up as part of the investigation. But it's conceivable the call never happened at all.
It's been pointed out that at least part of this (ethnic) Chechen family -- including potentially the dead Boston suspect -- has all the earmarks of being Assets of some Agency or other in the Great Global Game. That being so, could the dead suspect in Orlando also be an Asset? Isn't there a Program to eliminate Assets Who Go Rogue? Is that what's taking place? Or part of it?
If that were the case, how, exactly, would "guilt" or "innocence" work under the circumstances?
Wheels within wheels.
Maybe in fifty years -- or maybe never -- something like the Real Truth will out. Until then, it's all just wheels spinning...
Monday, April 22, 2013
The Lies That Continue to Suffuse the Terror War
Who is fighting whom, and over what, are among the chief lies we've come to accept as part of the New Normal. So many of us are convinced that we are at war with some Arab "Other" which wants to slaughter us all in our beds, and that's why Boston happened.
Except Arabs had nothing to do with it. Or maybe they did...
We were at a literary event over the weekend. One of the local authors in attendance is a former CIA analyst, and he was asked about the Boston Thing and its relationship to the general problem and issue of terror(ism) and terror wars. He brought up the fact that "these people" (meaning Chechens) had been on the radar for quite some time, and at least when he was at the Agency, there would have been tabs kept if reports had come that a pro-Chechen immigrant had gone back to Russia within the last year and stayed for a good part of the year doing... what? They would have found out, they would have known. But once he returned to the USA, he became the FBI's responsibility. And the FBI, as far as he knew, was keeping track of the older of the brothers at least. Something must have gone wrong. He doesn't know what.
Coleen Rowley of Moussaoui Case fame has put up a long and rather confusing piece over at Consortium News that unravels some of the threads of the Chechen Connection. It's not quite as cut and dried as I would have thought in the past -- that Chechen separatists use terror tactics against Russians, not Americans. I would think they have no beef with America.
Well, maybe they do, though. According to Rowley, this all goes back to the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan, just as the Osama Thing goes back to that time and place, when the United States was recruiting and utilizing various Muslim and Jihadist resistance outfits to fight the Soviets as our proxies. This recruitment included Chechen separatists and jihadists.
According to her, the Chechen resistance was being led by one Ibn al Khattab -- which she somewhat surprisingly doesn't mention was a Saudi national who seemed to have been involved in all kinds of Muslim resistance movements in Europe and the Caucasus as well as Afghanistan back in the day. He was apparently everywhere, much as the late Osama sometimes seemed to be.
The Saudi connection has long been obscured in all the hoo-hah over terror(ism) and contemporary terror war. In some sense, the terror(ism) we are supposedly fighting all seems to flow out of the Arabian Peninsula, and it's getting tiresome to keep rationalizing what's going on as some sort of aberration.
As everyone knows, the House of Saud is and long has been a client of the United States Government. The House of Saud is so intimately attached to the United States Government, there is no daylight between the one and the other; the House of Saud seems to be a far more dedicated client of the United States Government than even our bosom companion Tel Aviv and Jerusalem clients.
And the House of Saud rules the Arabian Peninsula with a rod of iron and a sword of steel.
It is my impression that nothing happens on or from the Arabian Peninsula that the House of Saud is not aware of and has not signed off on. Perfidy writ large. And yet the House of Saud continues to be the close client and ally of the United States. It's always struck me as odd.
It's all about the oil, of course, but there is -- there must be -- more.
The Boston Thing started off bizarre and remains bizarre to this day because it had all the marks of a domestic terrorist act in every respect, including the subsequent shootouts and eventual suspect capture. A suspect who, conveniently, is so badly wounded in his throat that he can't talk. The other suspect, of course, is very conveniently dead.
It took an amazing degree of propagandizing to convince America that despite all the domestic-terror signs and signals, the Boston Bombings were actually the result of al Qaeda inspiration or training, as the bombs were apparently produced using the information found on the al Qaeda magazine website -- easily accessible by anyone, of course, but frequented mostly by jihadist/terrorists. For some reason, I've always thought that website (which I've never visited) was a honeypot, but what do I know? Wheels within wheels.
So then it turns out the suspects were immigrants (whew!) from some foreign land, not directly from Chechnya, no, but from the part of Russia bordering Chechnya, and they are ethnically Chechen, and by religion Muslim. Oh, well, that's all that's necessary to understand what's happened. Case closed.
Foreign Muslims on the rampage against the United States yet again. Only it's not that simple by any means.
In a lot of ways, it's still a domestic terror(ist) act, in part because though the suspects are ethnically Chechen, one is an American citizen and the other was on the path to citizenship. The family seems quite certain that there was no foreign interest or terrorist connection at all, despite the fact that the young mens' father moved back to Russia at some point, and lives there now, and the older brother apparently lived with him for six months last year.
Then he came back to set bombs at the Boston Marathon? But why? Just to do it? To show how easy it is?
Or was there something else? There was no statement, no manifesto, no claim of responsibility, nothing. Just bombs, and in this way, it was absolutely characteristic of domestic terrorist acts, which usually have neither claim of responsibility nor manifesto. They just "are." So it was in Boston.
It takes a while for authorities to sort out whether such acts are domestic or something else, but in this case, despite all the signs of its being domestic, there was nearly immediate and universal suspicion that it was a "foreign fighter" act, al Qaeda no less, because it had to be. This is propaganda in action.
Someone interviewed on the teevee over the weekend said straight out, "The battlefield now includes the United States," therefore any act by the government to suppress this sort of terror(ist) act is justified.
We are at war, and the war is right here in front of us, at least according to this view. Of course, it is compromised by the fact that the United States is officially at peace, but whether we are living under war or peace time conditions depends on the advantage to the government and its sponsors from one or the other designation, such that we are often simultaneously under wartime and peacetime conditions and authorities.
It's disorienting to say the least, but that's a problem for the People, not for the Government. I'd say it's deliberate intent.
There is as yet very little truth in the narrative of and the reaction to the Boston Marathon Bombing and the subsequent manhunts and shootouts. The lies will congeal into a version of "truth" that will be defended to the end.
Except Arabs had nothing to do with it. Or maybe they did...
We were at a literary event over the weekend. One of the local authors in attendance is a former CIA analyst, and he was asked about the Boston Thing and its relationship to the general problem and issue of terror(ism) and terror wars. He brought up the fact that "these people" (meaning Chechens) had been on the radar for quite some time, and at least when he was at the Agency, there would have been tabs kept if reports had come that a pro-Chechen immigrant had gone back to Russia within the last year and stayed for a good part of the year doing... what? They would have found out, they would have known. But once he returned to the USA, he became the FBI's responsibility. And the FBI, as far as he knew, was keeping track of the older of the brothers at least. Something must have gone wrong. He doesn't know what.
Coleen Rowley of Moussaoui Case fame has put up a long and rather confusing piece over at Consortium News that unravels some of the threads of the Chechen Connection. It's not quite as cut and dried as I would have thought in the past -- that Chechen separatists use terror tactics against Russians, not Americans. I would think they have no beef with America.
Well, maybe they do, though. According to Rowley, this all goes back to the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan, just as the Osama Thing goes back to that time and place, when the United States was recruiting and utilizing various Muslim and Jihadist resistance outfits to fight the Soviets as our proxies. This recruitment included Chechen separatists and jihadists.
According to her, the Chechen resistance was being led by one Ibn al Khattab -- which she somewhat surprisingly doesn't mention was a Saudi national who seemed to have been involved in all kinds of Muslim resistance movements in Europe and the Caucasus as well as Afghanistan back in the day. He was apparently everywhere, much as the late Osama sometimes seemed to be.
The Saudi connection has long been obscured in all the hoo-hah over terror(ism) and contemporary terror war. In some sense, the terror(ism) we are supposedly fighting all seems to flow out of the Arabian Peninsula, and it's getting tiresome to keep rationalizing what's going on as some sort of aberration.
As everyone knows, the House of Saud is and long has been a client of the United States Government. The House of Saud is so intimately attached to the United States Government, there is no daylight between the one and the other; the House of Saud seems to be a far more dedicated client of the United States Government than even our bosom companion Tel Aviv and Jerusalem clients.
And the House of Saud rules the Arabian Peninsula with a rod of iron and a sword of steel.
It is my impression that nothing happens on or from the Arabian Peninsula that the House of Saud is not aware of and has not signed off on. Perfidy writ large. And yet the House of Saud continues to be the close client and ally of the United States. It's always struck me as odd.
It's all about the oil, of course, but there is -- there must be -- more.
The Boston Thing started off bizarre and remains bizarre to this day because it had all the marks of a domestic terrorist act in every respect, including the subsequent shootouts and eventual suspect capture. A suspect who, conveniently, is so badly wounded in his throat that he can't talk. The other suspect, of course, is very conveniently dead.
It took an amazing degree of propagandizing to convince America that despite all the domestic-terror signs and signals, the Boston Bombings were actually the result of al Qaeda inspiration or training, as the bombs were apparently produced using the information found on the al Qaeda magazine website -- easily accessible by anyone, of course, but frequented mostly by jihadist/terrorists. For some reason, I've always thought that website (which I've never visited) was a honeypot, but what do I know? Wheels within wheels.
So then it turns out the suspects were immigrants (whew!) from some foreign land, not directly from Chechnya, no, but from the part of Russia bordering Chechnya, and they are ethnically Chechen, and by religion Muslim. Oh, well, that's all that's necessary to understand what's happened. Case closed.
Foreign Muslims on the rampage against the United States yet again. Only it's not that simple by any means.
In a lot of ways, it's still a domestic terror(ist) act, in part because though the suspects are ethnically Chechen, one is an American citizen and the other was on the path to citizenship. The family seems quite certain that there was no foreign interest or terrorist connection at all, despite the fact that the young mens' father moved back to Russia at some point, and lives there now, and the older brother apparently lived with him for six months last year.
Then he came back to set bombs at the Boston Marathon? But why? Just to do it? To show how easy it is?
Or was there something else? There was no statement, no manifesto, no claim of responsibility, nothing. Just bombs, and in this way, it was absolutely characteristic of domestic terrorist acts, which usually have neither claim of responsibility nor manifesto. They just "are." So it was in Boston.
It takes a while for authorities to sort out whether such acts are domestic or something else, but in this case, despite all the signs of its being domestic, there was nearly immediate and universal suspicion that it was a "foreign fighter" act, al Qaeda no less, because it had to be. This is propaganda in action.
Someone interviewed on the teevee over the weekend said straight out, "The battlefield now includes the United States," therefore any act by the government to suppress this sort of terror(ist) act is justified.
We are at war, and the war is right here in front of us, at least according to this view. Of course, it is compromised by the fact that the United States is officially at peace, but whether we are living under war or peace time conditions depends on the advantage to the government and its sponsors from one or the other designation, such that we are often simultaneously under wartime and peacetime conditions and authorities.
It's disorienting to say the least, but that's a problem for the People, not for the Government. I'd say it's deliberate intent.
There is as yet very little truth in the narrative of and the reaction to the Boston Marathon Bombing and the subsequent manhunts and shootouts. The lies will congeal into a version of "truth" that will be defended to the end.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
After Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Thing
One of my visceral and more or less immediate reactions to the Boston Marathon Bombing Thing was, "Damn, this must be something like what folks in Baghdad (and elsewhere) have been going through for years now." Random acts of brutal violence like this suffuse the regions of the Middle East and Africa where Our Valiant Warriors and their Native clients have been active in suppressing the Popular Will while simultaneously Unseating Dictators Who Don't Toe The Line.
Terror bombings per se are quite rare in the United States, comparatively speaking, though they have been remarkably frequent overseas (and not just in Baghdad) wherever and whenever resistance movements are engaged with a weak state -- or one that's not necessarily weak but is perceived to be vulnerable to violent terror tactics. Certainly, the British Isles and Europe have faced long term resistance movements which used all kinds of terror tactics, including bombings, over the years, and there was a time when such tactics were not unknown in this country as well.
But terror tactic bombings have been so infrequent in the recent past, Americans are shocked and stunned when they happen, making Americans surprisingly vulnerable to the terror such tactics produce. The British came to accept the fact that the Provisional IRA was going to plant bombs in various locations like pubs and parades and the bombs would go off and innocent people would be maimed and killed; it was taken as something that would happen, there was little could be done about it -- except to round up ever more Paddys and torture them. That's what Her Majesty's Government did in reaction to the IRA bombings, and I'm sure they believed it was "working." They wouldn't have done it otherwise, would they?
Of course, it never occurred to the British Government to quit Northern Ireland or even to mitigate their harsh regime there that gave rise to the resistance... It was a vicious circle that was only broken when some clever dick realized that this relatively low-key, relatively permanent terror-war between the British and the Irish wasn't really necessary. It was stupid and counterproductive and cruel. How about trying something else? So they did, and now, while the conflict is far from resolved, at least they're not blowing each other up and murdering and torturing one another with glee and abandon the way they once did.
In the case of the Boston Marathon Thing, however, it's all very peculiar, so peculiar that it doesn't make the least bit of sense. There is no Chechen resistance movement in this country; at least none that I'm aware of. The Chechens have a long-time animosity and resistance toward Russia, and for cause, too. This is no idle matter. The Chechens have been horribly abused by Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union, with all of the panoply of state terror applied to them on a routine basis. Grozny was completely destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Chechens murdered, millions put to flight. All to ensure Russian control of Chechnya in perpetuity and to suppress the Chechen independence movement as thoroughly and completely as possible.
The excuse, of course, is suppression of Jihadi Islamism, as is the case practically everywhere state terror is employed these days. Must stamp out Jihadi Islamism or Civilization Is Doomed. Or something.
Yes, yes, but what's this got to do with Boston, with the Boston Marathon specifically, with the United States in general, and with these two purported bombers who created extraordinary levels of mayhem and chaos -- shutting down an entire major metropolitan area -- for what?
For what? What was this all about?
From beginning to end it was just bizarre, and I for one am not about it accept it as yet another advance in the New Normal.
The Ratchet Effect was absolutely in play, but that's the routine reaction of the US Government to any and all security events. That has been the New Normal for years, and there's apparently no way to reverse course.
We saw repeated "gunfights" in the streets of Watertown, Massachusetts -- whether there were actual gunfights or merely extreme levels of police gunfire at the fugitives (or potentially at nothing at all) we'll leave for historians to sort out. There were claims that the fugitives threw crude bombs and grenades at the police as they tried to make their escape -- after carjacking a citizen's Mercedes (but then, one of them was also said to own a Mercedes so who knows...?) If it was a carjacking, how did they cart around all their bombs and grenades, crude as they were? And what has become of the carjack victim? What's become of the Naked Guy? What's become of the student who was repeatedly shown spreadeagled on the ground -- supposedly a suspect -- as the manhunt continued. People who were witnessing and reporting what was going on behind the police tape in real time saw and reported gunfire, multiple arrests and interrogations, and much else, most of which never made it to the mass media news.
What's become of the people who were so directly affected by the zeal of the manhunt?
We saw an entire major city and its suburbs put on lockdown, something unprecedented in the history of the United States [correction: apparently this is the first time a major metropolitan area was put on lockdown due to a fugitive hunt, but according to reports, this is the third time Boston has been put on lock down in recent times, the previous two being due to storms -- the most recent a blizzard, the previous one Hurricane Sandy], while one fugitive was unsuccessfully sought by authorities. The fugitive was found by an alert civilian minutes after the lockdown was lifted, so what was that all about, anyway? My own sense was that the lockdown of Boston and its suburbs was a trial run -- a remarkably successful one at that -- for the eventual imposition of a kind of National Martial Law to control a suddenly restive and rebellious People. The authorities wanted to see if the people would comply with arbitrary orders like "shelter in place," and behold. For the most part they did, and once they saw how harsh and humiliating was the treatment of those who failed to comply, few very few dared leave their "shelter" for the duration of the order. It worked. Amazingly. People not only complied, they seemed to be eager to do so.
The lockdown of Boston and its suburbs was a form of martial law without a declaration, and that -- like the whole concept of "lockdowns" -- may become a New Normal that Americans just accept without question, though it is something that runs completely counter to American values and culture. If an entire major American city and its suburbs, a state capital at that, can be put on indefinite curfew and placed under undeclared martial law at the command of the governor (who was acting at the behest of whom?) then there is no effective limit to the imposition of state power under the current regime.
Those who claim this development does not represent the further evolution of the American Security State into a full on Police State are akin to other sorts of denialists. Those who express their worshipful admiration of the authorities under the circumstances -- and who question none of what's gone on -- seem to me to have fallen down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world.
No, this was something new and dangerous.
While the reaction of the American authorities can be rationalized as something they were prepared to do given the right cues, the bombing itself still seems inexplicable. Some "experts" have been trying to draw conclusions about it from the Chechen connection, and it just falls to pieces. Americans are not the targets of Chechen resistance, at least they haven't been up till now, and there is no sign whatsoever that the Boston Marathon Bombing was in any way connected with the Chechen resistance. So, what the fuckity fuck?
I'm sure there are plenty of conspiracy theories and there will be many more, most of them (I'm convinced) spun by operatives and apparatchiks.
Another issue is the usefulness of "crowd-sourcing," something engaged in enthusiastically and sometimes disastrously by a wide range of enthusiasts on the internet during the course of the pursuit.
There were several widely publicized misidentifications due to enthusiast efforts to find the perpetrators of the bombing based on FBI and other pictures.
On the other hand, it was a civilian who noted blood on a tarp covering his boat -- after he was released from lockdown -- who located the surviving fugitive and reported it to the police. Had civilians been free to leave their "shelters", the fugitive might have been found much sooner and there might have been much less mayhem and chaos as well.
There will be questions about these incidents for years to come. On the other hand, if there are no rational answers, it may just fade away into the background noise of terror and counter terror.
They say the surviving young bomber-suspect was shot in the throat, is intubated and cannot speak, so there is little that can be learned from him at this point. There may not be a whole lot to learn from him in any case.
But I'd sure like to know what the hell was going on.
Terror bombings per se are quite rare in the United States, comparatively speaking, though they have been remarkably frequent overseas (and not just in Baghdad) wherever and whenever resistance movements are engaged with a weak state -- or one that's not necessarily weak but is perceived to be vulnerable to violent terror tactics. Certainly, the British Isles and Europe have faced long term resistance movements which used all kinds of terror tactics, including bombings, over the years, and there was a time when such tactics were not unknown in this country as well.
But terror tactic bombings have been so infrequent in the recent past, Americans are shocked and stunned when they happen, making Americans surprisingly vulnerable to the terror such tactics produce. The British came to accept the fact that the Provisional IRA was going to plant bombs in various locations like pubs and parades and the bombs would go off and innocent people would be maimed and killed; it was taken as something that would happen, there was little could be done about it -- except to round up ever more Paddys and torture them. That's what Her Majesty's Government did in reaction to the IRA bombings, and I'm sure they believed it was "working." They wouldn't have done it otherwise, would they?
Of course, it never occurred to the British Government to quit Northern Ireland or even to mitigate their harsh regime there that gave rise to the resistance... It was a vicious circle that was only broken when some clever dick realized that this relatively low-key, relatively permanent terror-war between the British and the Irish wasn't really necessary. It was stupid and counterproductive and cruel. How about trying something else? So they did, and now, while the conflict is far from resolved, at least they're not blowing each other up and murdering and torturing one another with glee and abandon the way they once did.
In the case of the Boston Marathon Thing, however, it's all very peculiar, so peculiar that it doesn't make the least bit of sense. There is no Chechen resistance movement in this country; at least none that I'm aware of. The Chechens have a long-time animosity and resistance toward Russia, and for cause, too. This is no idle matter. The Chechens have been horribly abused by Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union, with all of the panoply of state terror applied to them on a routine basis. Grozny was completely destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Chechens murdered, millions put to flight. All to ensure Russian control of Chechnya in perpetuity and to suppress the Chechen independence movement as thoroughly and completely as possible.
The excuse, of course, is suppression of Jihadi Islamism, as is the case practically everywhere state terror is employed these days. Must stamp out Jihadi Islamism or Civilization Is Doomed. Or something.
Yes, yes, but what's this got to do with Boston, with the Boston Marathon specifically, with the United States in general, and with these two purported bombers who created extraordinary levels of mayhem and chaos -- shutting down an entire major metropolitan area -- for what?
For what? What was this all about?
From beginning to end it was just bizarre, and I for one am not about it accept it as yet another advance in the New Normal.
The Ratchet Effect was absolutely in play, but that's the routine reaction of the US Government to any and all security events. That has been the New Normal for years, and there's apparently no way to reverse course.
We saw repeated "gunfights" in the streets of Watertown, Massachusetts -- whether there were actual gunfights or merely extreme levels of police gunfire at the fugitives (or potentially at nothing at all) we'll leave for historians to sort out. There were claims that the fugitives threw crude bombs and grenades at the police as they tried to make their escape -- after carjacking a citizen's Mercedes (but then, one of them was also said to own a Mercedes so who knows...?) If it was a carjacking, how did they cart around all their bombs and grenades, crude as they were? And what has become of the carjack victim? What's become of the Naked Guy? What's become of the student who was repeatedly shown spreadeagled on the ground -- supposedly a suspect -- as the manhunt continued. People who were witnessing and reporting what was going on behind the police tape in real time saw and reported gunfire, multiple arrests and interrogations, and much else, most of which never made it to the mass media news.
What's become of the people who were so directly affected by the zeal of the manhunt?
We saw an entire major city and its suburbs put on lockdown, something unprecedented in the history of the United States [correction: apparently this is the first time a major metropolitan area was put on lockdown due to a fugitive hunt, but according to reports, this is the third time Boston has been put on lock down in recent times, the previous two being due to storms -- the most recent a blizzard, the previous one Hurricane Sandy], while one fugitive was unsuccessfully sought by authorities. The fugitive was found by an alert civilian minutes after the lockdown was lifted, so what was that all about, anyway? My own sense was that the lockdown of Boston and its suburbs was a trial run -- a remarkably successful one at that -- for the eventual imposition of a kind of National Martial Law to control a suddenly restive and rebellious People. The authorities wanted to see if the people would comply with arbitrary orders like "shelter in place," and behold. For the most part they did, and once they saw how harsh and humiliating was the treatment of those who failed to comply, few very few dared leave their "shelter" for the duration of the order. It worked. Amazingly. People not only complied, they seemed to be eager to do so.
The lockdown of Boston and its suburbs was a form of martial law without a declaration, and that -- like the whole concept of "lockdowns" -- may become a New Normal that Americans just accept without question, though it is something that runs completely counter to American values and culture. If an entire major American city and its suburbs, a state capital at that, can be put on indefinite curfew and placed under undeclared martial law at the command of the governor (who was acting at the behest of whom?) then there is no effective limit to the imposition of state power under the current regime.
Those who claim this development does not represent the further evolution of the American Security State into a full on Police State are akin to other sorts of denialists. Those who express their worshipful admiration of the authorities under the circumstances -- and who question none of what's gone on -- seem to me to have fallen down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world.
No, this was something new and dangerous.
While the reaction of the American authorities can be rationalized as something they were prepared to do given the right cues, the bombing itself still seems inexplicable. Some "experts" have been trying to draw conclusions about it from the Chechen connection, and it just falls to pieces. Americans are not the targets of Chechen resistance, at least they haven't been up till now, and there is no sign whatsoever that the Boston Marathon Bombing was in any way connected with the Chechen resistance. So, what the fuckity fuck?
I'm sure there are plenty of conspiracy theories and there will be many more, most of them (I'm convinced) spun by operatives and apparatchiks.
Another issue is the usefulness of "crowd-sourcing," something engaged in enthusiastically and sometimes disastrously by a wide range of enthusiasts on the internet during the course of the pursuit.
There were several widely publicized misidentifications due to enthusiast efforts to find the perpetrators of the bombing based on FBI and other pictures.
On the other hand, it was a civilian who noted blood on a tarp covering his boat -- after he was released from lockdown -- who located the surviving fugitive and reported it to the police. Had civilians been free to leave their "shelters", the fugitive might have been found much sooner and there might have been much less mayhem and chaos as well.
There will be questions about these incidents for years to come. On the other hand, if there are no rational answers, it may just fade away into the background noise of terror and counter terror.
They say the surviving young bomber-suspect was shot in the throat, is intubated and cannot speak, so there is little that can be learned from him at this point. There may not be a whole lot to learn from him in any case.
But I'd sure like to know what the hell was going on.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Authority Worship
The situation in Boston seemed to spiral into the weeds yesterday as more and more of the city and its suburbs were placed on enforced lockdown (euphemistically called "shelter in place"), public transport was suspended, and all citizens, except those directly involved in the manhunt for "Suspect #2" were forbidden to go outside or engage in normal activities like walking their dogs, taking their children to school or checking their mail.
The incident of the Naked Guy was just one of a number of examples of police going bonkers because of some generally inadvertent citizen rule breaking or police suspicion of something. There was semi-live blogging at dKos of some of what was going on by someone who lived close to the house where "Suspect #2" was thought to be cornered (though he was apparently hiding in a boat a number of blocks away) -- people were being dragged from their homes in handcuffs and questioned, others were being taken away. Gunfire was erupting periodically. A neighborhood in Watertown resembled a war zone while the entire city of Boston and its suburbs were shut down -- and there was no escape.
Yet within mere minutes of lifting the lockdown, a lockdown which had lasted all day (and in some areas since the previous night), an alert citizen noticed blood on a tarp covering the boat in the backyard of his house, opened the tarp and saw the bloody body of "Suspect #2" inside, a sight which he promptly reported to the authorities leading to more intense gunfire and the eventual apprehension of the suspect.
In other words, the lockdown was completely ineffective in locating the suspect; it was only when people were allowed out of their homes that he was found. But the lockdown was extraordinarily effective in inspiring fear and dread in the public -- who knew where this suspect could be and OMG! what he might do? -- and in enforcing compliance with orders -- who knew what the police might do if you didn't comply?
The people of Watertown burst into spontaneous and rapturous applause once the suspect was apprehended and citizens we allowed to freely congregate outdoors once again. They cheered the police, they even cheered the ambulance that drove the suspect out of the neighborhood and to the hospital -- where he is apparently recovering satisfactorily from whatever wounds he sustained in the numerous shootouts that took place through the streets of Watertown. It felt like a war zone to at least some of those caught in the midst of it.
Some people, however, were very troubled by what they witnessed. It wasn't martial law, but it was like martial law in that more than a million supposedly free citizens were under the orders of armed and itchy fingered authorities, orders which they were compelled to obey or face -- at minimum -- humiliating consequences, perhaps deadly ones. It's unknown how many citizens were suspected or arrested and man-handled, or forced to strip naked in the streets, or how many housing units were forcibly entered and inspected -- or how many were voluntarily opened to inspection.
It's unknown and unremarked what the consequences for those on lock down were -- a prison control tactic that's been extended to schools and businesses and now for the first time in American history to an entire major metropolitan area -- but if generating and sustaining fear and dread, and compelling compliance to arbitrary authority were intentions, they sure worked like a charm.
The lock down did not help at all, in fact it hindered, the search for and capture of the fugitive.
Yet today I've seen plenty of authority worship on the teevee and the internet, worship that should be a cautionary and disturbing to everyone who values the idea of true liberty -- as opposed to the libertarian ideal of liberty to impose authority without interference from... anyone.
After each of these awful events, whether it's another one of America's unique mass shooting incidents or a domestic or foreign terrorist attack of some sort, the domestic security ratchet is tightened just a little more (sometimes a lot more). Fear is ratcheted up. "Safety" becomes paramount, but always with the idea that some authority figure (preferably in a RoboCop outfit) will provide safety from peril rather than enabling the People to do it themselves.
Ultimately, the People become passive.
And who benefits from that?
Friday, April 19, 2013
Shootout In Watertown -- It's A Dirty Little War
[Three Five Zero Zero]
Jeebus.
How much more bizarre is this Boston Marathon Thing going to get?
For whatever reason, I wasn't able to sleep much past 3:00am MDT this morning, so I got up and was puttering around doing my morning routine, fixing coffee, having a donut, the usual. I opened up the laptop and was tooling idly around the InterTubes and something caught my eye in a column about the Torture Report that's been pretty much buried by Other Events. It was a link to a column in The Atlantic that was interesting but had nothing to do with the Torture Report, it had to do with misidentifying or misinterpreting what one was seeing in film of the Kennedy Assassination in Dallas and how that related to the manhunt under way for the suspects in the Boston bombing.
Over in the corner of the page was a "Just In" piece by Connor Friedersdorf: "What Happened Overnight In Watertown: 1 Suspect Dead, Another On the Run." There was no indication from the headline that it had anything to do with the Boston Marathon Thing at all, but Watertown is close enough to Boston, thought I, that it might be worthwhile opening the link.
Sure enough. What a story. An extended shootout with police took place in Watertown after a robbery and carjacking overnight, according to a witness, at least one bomb was thrown at police and exploded in the street, a police vehicle was shot up and crashed, at least two police officers were shot, one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was shot and later died at the hospital, and the other one who was with him got away. The manhunt continues.
Uh. This read like a television script, and at first, still a bit groggy from recently getting up, I discounted the story, because it did not seem real. So often, media acts as a propaganda arm of the authorities, and so anything that is reported -- especially a story as dramatic as this one -- has to be taken with at least a little bit of skepticism. The press lies, constantly. Prior to reading this story, for example, I was watching the Chris Hayes takedown of CNN and FOX over their erroneous reporting about an arrest of a "dark skinned" suspect who was said to be in custody in Boston and would be taken for arraignment momentarily. All of it was bogus, but there you are. They will say in their defense it was an "honest mistake" -- they had received "information" and had run with it. So does everybody else. Except that too often these bogus stories are actually being planted by interested agencies and individuals who seek to gain from them. What they gain is control of the narrative. My own sense was that this bogus arrest story was an intentional distraction and that potentially, Hayes was being very naive about it. But that's beside the point.
What I'm getting at is that -- at least at first read -- the Shootout In Watertown story seemed just as bogus, if not more so, especially given the early hour of the the morning these events were being reported, and such witness commentary as the following produced by the New York Times:
I don't know.
Maybe.
So anyway, these are the preliminary reports and they are so far all the reports I have read about the Shootout in Watertown, and at this point, I'm pretty skeptical.
Time to cruise the other news reports...
------------------------------------
Having done my best to sit through various teevee reports and having read a few other news items on the Shootout In Watertown (it's a dirty little war), I say my skepticism was warranted -- get a load of Cocktailhag's summary of the stoopid this week at FDL -- and yet the incidents of war in the streets of Watertown appear to have been all too real. The witness quoted above by the NYT has been doing all the shows with his Skype connection, and he appears to be credible as heck (in fact, though, his detailed reporting of what he witnessed, so carefully couched in almost baroque terminology, sets off my Spidey sense, but that's probably just me...)
All of Boston is on "lockdown?" I don't even know what that means. But apparently, the Other Suspect is still on the loose (after running over his brother while trying to escape?) so the whole city has to come to a standstill while the pursuit takes place. Protocol.
Chechens? WTF? In what way do Chechens see mayhem at the Marathon as a useful tool in their struggle? Or was it something else again?
Very bizarre.
Jeebus.
How much more bizarre is this Boston Marathon Thing going to get?
For whatever reason, I wasn't able to sleep much past 3:00am MDT this morning, so I got up and was puttering around doing my morning routine, fixing coffee, having a donut, the usual. I opened up the laptop and was tooling idly around the InterTubes and something caught my eye in a column about the Torture Report that's been pretty much buried by Other Events. It was a link to a column in The Atlantic that was interesting but had nothing to do with the Torture Report, it had to do with misidentifying or misinterpreting what one was seeing in film of the Kennedy Assassination in Dallas and how that related to the manhunt under way for the suspects in the Boston bombing.
Over in the corner of the page was a "Just In" piece by Connor Friedersdorf: "What Happened Overnight In Watertown: 1 Suspect Dead, Another On the Run." There was no indication from the headline that it had anything to do with the Boston Marathon Thing at all, but Watertown is close enough to Boston, thought I, that it might be worthwhile opening the link.
Sure enough. What a story. An extended shootout with police took place in Watertown after a robbery and carjacking overnight, according to a witness, at least one bomb was thrown at police and exploded in the street, a police vehicle was shot up and crashed, at least two police officers were shot, one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was shot and later died at the hospital, and the other one who was with him got away. The manhunt continues.
Uh. This read like a television script, and at first, still a bit groggy from recently getting up, I discounted the story, because it did not seem real. So often, media acts as a propaganda arm of the authorities, and so anything that is reported -- especially a story as dramatic as this one -- has to be taken with at least a little bit of skepticism. The press lies, constantly. Prior to reading this story, for example, I was watching the Chris Hayes takedown of CNN and FOX over their erroneous reporting about an arrest of a "dark skinned" suspect who was said to be in custody in Boston and would be taken for arraignment momentarily. All of it was bogus, but there you are. They will say in their defense it was an "honest mistake" -- they had received "information" and had run with it. So does everybody else. Except that too often these bogus stories are actually being planted by interested agencies and individuals who seek to gain from them. What they gain is control of the narrative. My own sense was that this bogus arrest story was an intentional distraction and that potentially, Hayes was being very naive about it. But that's beside the point.
What I'm getting at is that -- at least at first read -- the Shootout In Watertown story seemed just as bogus, if not more so, especially given the early hour of the the morning these events were being reported, and such witness commentary as the following produced by the New York Times:
A Watertown resident, Andrew Kitzenberg, 29, said he looked out his third-floor window to see two young men of slight build in jackets engaged in "constant gunfire" with police officers. A police SUV "drove towards the shooters," he said, and was shot at until it was severely damaged. It rolled out of control, Mr. Kitzenberg said, and crashed into two cars in his driveway.
The two shooters, he said, had a large, unwieldy bomb. "They lit it, still in the middle of the gunfire, and threw it. But it went 20 yards at most." It exploded, he said, and one of the two men ran toward the gathered police officers. He was tackled, but it was not clear if he was shot, Mr. Kitzenberg said.
Alrighty then, if it's in the Times then it must be true, right?The explosions, said another resident, Loretta Kehayias, 65, "lit up the whole house. I screamed. I've never seen anything like this, never, never, never."
I don't know.
Maybe.
So anyway, these are the preliminary reports and they are so far all the reports I have read about the Shootout in Watertown, and at this point, I'm pretty skeptical.
Time to cruise the other news reports...
------------------------------------
Having done my best to sit through various teevee reports and having read a few other news items on the Shootout In Watertown (it's a dirty little war), I say my skepticism was warranted -- get a load of Cocktailhag's summary of the stoopid this week at FDL -- and yet the incidents of war in the streets of Watertown appear to have been all too real. The witness quoted above by the NYT has been doing all the shows with his Skype connection, and he appears to be credible as heck (in fact, though, his detailed reporting of what he witnessed, so carefully couched in almost baroque terminology, sets off my Spidey sense, but that's probably just me...)
All of Boston is on "lockdown?" I don't even know what that means. But apparently, the Other Suspect is still on the loose (after running over his brother while trying to escape?) so the whole city has to come to a standstill while the pursuit takes place. Protocol.
Chechens? WTF? In what way do Chechens see mayhem at the Marathon as a useful tool in their struggle? Or was it something else again?
Very bizarre.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The Boston Marathon Bombing and The Propaganda Machine
The coverage of the bombing at the Boston Marathon we saw yesterday was a bizarre mixture of news and propaganda, little of it useful to understanding, but almost all of it intended to shape and control opinions about what happened and who might have been responsible.
This was the American major news media on full display for what it really is: a propaganda machine first and foremost, not much different than the propaganda ministries and their "news" outlets in former totalitarian countries.
Their function is not news by any stretch of the imagination.
Of course, we've known this for many a long year, but most of the time -- except for FOX -- the news media manages to curb its enthusiasm for propagandizing and opinion molding sufficiently to maintain the fiction of the Fourth Estate, dispassionately reporting the happenings of the day.
The idea that the press and media actually exist to make us believe something, and furthermore to make us buy something (including our beliefs), and what they want us to believe is what their corporate owners -- and to some extent sponsors -- want us to believe (and buy) , solely for the benefit of those owners and sponsors, seems so contrary to everything we've been taught about the Free Press and Media in This Land of Liberty that it practically defies belief itself.
The touching naiveté of so many on the Interwebs -- if naiveté is what it really is -- about the nature and purpose of the news media in modern society is one of the hoariest traditions of the Internet. There always seems to be a cohort of media critics online who all say the same thing, no matter what their ideological persuasion might be: the press and media are supposed to be an independent watchdog on the operations of government. It is their job to investigate and report on mal- and misfeasance. They are supposed to stand up for the public interest -- and Liberty! -- in the face of government lies and oppression. It's their job! Why don't they do their job!?
But of course we know that the news media really exists to serve the political and financial interests of its owners and sponsors -- and it has always been this way. There has never been a time when the press and media has not been actively promoting the pecuniary interests of those who hold the purse strings and pay the bills -- and for the most part, that's never been you and me. There have always been marginal media outlets that are more closely aligned with the People, but they can never become 'major mainstream' media for the simple fact that they don't have -- and are often actively denied -- the resources necessary. This is about as straightforward as it gets.
So yesterday, the coverage was bizarrely discordant as reporters on the scene attempted to simultaneously gather information and convey the company line about what happened.
Interestingly, this caused an almost automatic response among some of the audience: what happened was clear enough as it seems to have been a near carbon copy of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing of 1996, which was eventually found to be the work of a well-known right-wing domestic terrorist,
Thus, it is always a shock! to discover that the real terrorist is some white man with a grudge who wants attention.
In this case, it was pretty obvious, from the moment of the first explosion, that that's what this was likely to be. Yet I heard endless speculation about "al Qeda" and the supposed instructions in "al Qeda" sites on the internet about making and planting bombs at public events in the United States to cause the maximum disruption and destruction. Much later on came the reports of the Saudi man (in some reports injured) who had been tackled by a valiant citizen as he was running away from the scene who was turned over to the police.
Bit by bit -- without any evidence at all, and in spite of clear indications that the bombs were set by domestic rightists -- the media was building a case against "Arabs" even going so far as to broadcast pictures of the Boston skyline from across the Charles River to evoke the view of Lower Manhattan as the towers fell on September 11, 2001. There was much -- much -- chatter about how, "in this Post-9/11 World," security was of paramount importance, and how important it is to enhance security at public events such as the Boston Marathon.
Yet despite the fact that there were all these police and military personnel on scene as security for the event, someone, somehow, was able to plant at least two and possibly more bombs without detection. How is it that security was so lax? How could it be in this "Post-9/11 World?"
It's easy. White men are never subject to suspicion, are they? While surveillance is everywhere and is nearly 24/7, certain categories of individuals seem to be exempt from suspicion: they are the rich of any gender, ethnicity or persuasion, and white people in general, specifically relatively young white men.
And this goes directly to the nature of the current campaigns to arm "everybody" (except certain categories of people to be determined later) as "security" against "criminals."
It struck me as obvious yesterday that the bombings were part of the hostage taking process for the purpose of having the greatest public impact for very little expenditure, with the goal of terrifying the People in general into accepting without question yet another ratcheting of the security gears. This ratcheting has been going on pretty consistently since the OKC bombing, and the Arm "Everybody" (except...) crew has long been part of it. Any sort of rational gun control is held hostage to this "security" meme, and somehow it is always these scary brown people that White Americans need all this "security" to protect against.
The occasional bombing and mass slaughter are "the price we pay" not for Freedom, but for security against the Brown Hordes. Sometimes certain white guys get overenthusiastic. That's all. And also, too, there's the issue of Tyranny Which Must Be Fought.
As I think I've pointed out before, it's not really about fighting tyranny, it's about determining who shall impose tyranny.
There is no Liberty in this conception -- except the liberty to impose authority on others.
Of course it may turn out that yesterday's bombings had nothing to do with any of that, and I'm just spinning out a web of speculation and disbelief. It will never be entirely clear, in any case, because of the purpose and power of the Propaganda Machine to shape and control what people believe.
Even if it was what I think it was, an act by white men to get attention and to ultimately protect their privilege in the face of the Brown Horde by killing, maiming and scaring the crap out of random marathoners, the Propaganda Machine will ensure that the only version we are allowed to believe is one that protects the interests of the Highest of the Mighty against all comers, and that ensures that We, the People, accept an even greater level of surveillance and security.
Get ready for more and still more Security Theatre, more and more invasive surveillance, and no real progress at all on gun control.
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