The Contractor Connection

Discussion of the rampant domestic spying going on in the United States (which all the officials like to claim isn't "REALLY" spying, rightsurewhatevah) now and then turns to the private sector operatives (like Young Snowden, who has apparently defected, who knows where -- disappeared from his Hong Kong luxury digs at any rate) who actually do the grunt work to collect and analyze the overabundance of data that pours into the system by the hour.

Ah yes The Contractors. On one of the Sunday Shows, an R congressman was quoted as saying that this sort of thing should all be done by the private sector ("as it used to be") and I thought WTF? The private sector basically runs this system as it is, along with a great deal else of ostensibly government responsibility, and he wants to turn it all over to the private sector? Great. What a maroon.

After this settled in for a while, I came to realize this is essentially the position of most Libertarians (and their small "l" variants as well). Most of them don't have a problem with universal surveillance -- as long as it is not being done by the government. In fact, they seem to be quite in favor of private sector spying on individuals, no matter how intrusive, especially if it is done for marketing purposes. The claim is that the private sector is benign because it doesn't have the power or authority to arrest, incarcerate, compel, and execute. I've even heard supposed liberals in congress express this view.

This position strikes me as either hopelessly naive or so deepy deceptive and cynical it reeks.

These days, elements of the private sector very much do have the "powers and authorities" once thought to be reserved to governments, powers and authorities which they cheerfully and fully exercise at will. One of Young Snowden's points was that he, as a lowly (private sector) analyst, had the power and authority to "wiretap" anyone at any time, and that the upshot of this power and authority is that the life of anyone who a (private sector) analyst took an interest in could be destroyed with no recourse whatever for the victim.

We may think of the Imperial Heyday of Great Britain as another example of private sector powers and authorities. Until the Sepoy Mutiny in India, for example, British rule of the subcontinent was exercised through a private corporation, the East India Company, that had even more extensive powers and authorities than the Crown itself.

The notion that there is something benign about private sector/corporate rule as opposed to government rule is absurd and disingenuous, ahistorical, and very, very wrong.

But it is routinely parroted in defense of the constant private sector spying on individuals with almost no recognition that nearly all the work of the NSA among the other (government) domestic spying agencies is being done by private sector contractors. More and more government functions are being turned over to the private sector every day, at home and abroad, and it doesn't appear on its face to have made ordinary lives any better, nor had it enhanced accountability or ended corruption in any perceptible way.

In fact, it could be -- and should be -- argued that a big part of the problem we face as peoples of the United States and the World is directly due to the passion for privatization that has afflicted governments far and wide. By turning over so much of the responsibility of government and governing to unelected and unaccountable institutions, executives and boards, and by placing so much power and authority over the lives of most of us into the hands of these people and institutions, government itself has become the handmaiden to them.

Universal surveillance of the population is necessary to protect and defend the government and its (private sector) sponsors -- which, BTW, include the very corporate spy agencies that are doing most of the domestic surveillance being railed about these days.

In all the passionate OUTRAGE!!!! ® over the domestic spying revelations currently featured in the media, that simple fact is often neglected -- or outright denied.

How It Could All Shake Out...

The last couple of days have displayed one of the most remarkable news cycles in quite a long time. I'd say there's been nothing quite like it since the opening of the Pentagon Papers fracas all those many years ago. Certainly the Bradley Manning Thing has never reached this level of hoarse-throated media screaming frenzy. Nor did even the recent AP Thing reach this level of extremity.

Glenn breaks a story in the Guardian (in a piece that was clearly and rather heavily massaged by someone else; I'm pretty sure that was Spencer Ackerman, though it may have been simply the Guardian's editorial department) touching on the breadth and depth of domestic spying in this country, using -- for the first time that I know of -- an actual FISA court order as the primary documentation. There is a good deal of to-do over this breaking story, not so much because the information it presents is all that "new" (it isn't, not to those who have been following the metastasizing Security State) but because it is now firmly documented in black and white for the first time. It's no long a matter of what "sources familiar with the program(s)" are saying about them, it is now directly a matter of what a top secret court has ordered.

It was interesting that the WaPo and NYT jumped into the fray with their own stories, apparently independently sourced, almost immediately, presenting the same information in pretty much the same way, essentially confirming the Guardian story in detail and actually expanding on the story in some ways.

These didn't look to be stories written in haste to play catch up, either. It was almost as if these stories were mostly pre-written.

Then almost immediately thereafter, we had the stories about the internet being hoovered by the Agencies, now being slightly walked back ("foreign internet only, don'tchaknow.")

Both the WaPo and the NYT are notorious for their close associations with the American spy shops, government agencies and factional players within the government. They are often doing the bidding of one or another of the agencies or factions, and frequently they act as little more than propaganda organs for the government sequentially or simultaneously. This is well-known, but it doesn't seem to be so well understood, as many people still rely on them as primary news sources and believe that what they read in the Times or the Post is credible and correct. There are plenty of people who continue to believe that if something isn't in the NYT or the WaPo, it isn't really "news" at all.

The Guardian has always been outside this nexus, or so it would seem, being British and all. But I started to wonder about it when the Guardian, along with the NYT,  became primary publisher of Wikileaks material.

This became very much a Spy vs Spy issue in my mind as all kinds of mainstream -- and compromised -- outlets were added to the primary publisher category for Wikileaks. My suspicions were heightened that Wikileaks was not just a matter of a honey-pot, but of a serious effort to tightly control the what and how of information release. Julian's eventual fallings-out with the media he himself had chosen as publishers of the trove he had received from Manning were signs to me that Julian wasn't terribly bright -- or that he was as compromised as the outlets he had chosen. The extraordinary level of drama surrounding his various run-ins with The Law and his eventual running to ground over Swedish/Interpol warrants really took away from anything Wikileaks presented to the World, and has by this point made Wikileaks into a very marginal player in the numberless rounds of charge and counter charge in the whole "sekrits" game.

Ever since the Correspondents' Dinner, Team Obama has been under an apparently withering assault from the Right and parts of the media over this or that "scandal" -- to wit, the IRS Thing, the AP Spying Thing, the FOX Reporter Thing, etc. Each one has been ginned up to a frenzy and then left dangling. Now there's this.

When the media Things got all that attention, I -- among a few others -- said, "Wait just a damned minute. This surveillance shit has been perpetrated against the People of the United States for years and years, and you want some kind of special exemption for the highly compromised media? The answer is NO! The issue is the general surveillance of the American People, and until and unless the media makes that a Big Deal, I'm not going to have much sympathy for the AP or FOX."

And would ya lookit now.

Some observers have questioned both the timing and the content of the current leaks regarding domestic surveillance. Given the widespread rightist ideological framework of the previous leaks -- and the OUTRAGE!!!® produced by the current ones -- and the highly personal tenor of the anti-Obama frenzy that's being manufactured over all of them ("I voted for this man TWICE!!! He betrayed me!!!!") I wouldn't be at all surprised if every bit of it isn't part and parcel of a carefully engineered Get Obama! Campaign being waged by the rightist of rightist factions within the government/media-plex for the purpose of ending Obama's already highly constrained ability to govern.

The personal character of the OUTRAGE!!!!® is a tell that there is no intent to curtail the Surveillance State. The intent is merely to hamstring the President.

Who would be interested in that, one wonders. Well, of course, it's the Cheneys and those they serve. This has been obvious as sin since day one of the Obama Administration -- since even before it began. That harpie-spawn of the Devil Dick was carrying on like a total madwoman -- and she was on all the shows, too -- over Obama's announced plans to review and revise and reconsider all the elements of the Great And Glorious Cheney Wars, and her relentless carping had an obvious effect.

In fact, her efforts and those of her father's seemed to terrify the White House into compliance with the wishes of House Cheney in almost every particular. Ever since, any time a Cheney arises from the crypt to lambaste the White House and Obama for this or that failing or overreach, the White House complies with their demands.

Cheney, in effect, is still President. Who the Cheneys serve is another question, though, isn't it.

At any rate, the Surveillance State is a Cheney innovation, and the likely shakeout of all this hoo-hah is that surveillance will be redoubled, not curtailed. There is no doubt in my mind that the Constitution will not be restored to viability, and there is no intention whatsoever that it be revived. In fact, the intent seems to me to be to ensure its perpetual irrelevance from now on. I can see no real intent to get rid of Obama, but there is plenty of intent to control him, and the Cheneys have shown they can do that with barely a curl of their lip. The media has already declared Obama's Second Term Agenda (whatever it might have been, and I surely don't know) to be Dead, Dead, Dead; his only choice is to follow the dictates of the Rightists who've been in charge all along anyway.

OUTRAGE!!!!® is a product, these days it's a packaged product traded for attention and favors. The internet cannot exist without it in abundant measure. The fact that Americans are being surveilled in their multitudes has long been discussed, but not necessarily documented the way it is now. There is no sign -- at all -- that the White House or the Congress (and certainly not the courts) will back off even an inch from the level of universal surveillance currently in place, nor is there much evidence (at least so far) that the People will be up in arms about it. As is so often the case, leftish internet OUTRAGE!!!!® will have no perceptible effect on policy. On the other hand, the existence of leftish OUTRAGE!!!!® at Team Obama will have the effect of further constraining any effort at adopting or expanding positive policies on behalf of the People.

The Surveillance State, after all, exists to preserve, protect and defend the (rightist) government and its sponsors from the People. So far, so good.

We'll see. There may be many more shoes left to drop. I would bet money though that the upshot will be even more surveillance and repression, more inverted totalitarianism.

We are not getting out of this handbasket anytime soon.

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Scott Creighton continues to cast his jaundiced but gimlet eye on the Whole Thing. Check it out. You and I may not agree with his perspective, but then again...

From the AntiFa Trenches, c.1938 (contd)

Spanish Civil War Poster: "¡No pasarán!" c. 1936

No, we are nowhere near the point of an armed rebellion or civil war, though the United States was not as far from it as we may like to believe during the Great Depression. Some of the factors that mitigated against it in the 1930's were the size of the country, always an impediment to popular uprisings, and the generally beat down condition of the People. There was no social safety net in those days, except to the extent that individuals and private institutions were able to provide one for some of those who were suffering from economic hardship. That began to change toward the end of the 1930's, but getting to that point was difficult and dangerous. Fascism was abroad in the land, as it was all over the world, and there was remarkably little resistance to it at home as was the case abroad. Spain was a singular exception, and Spain's valiant resistance to Franco's fascism was ultimately unsuccessful. As the Generalissimo was wont to say: ""Hemos pasado."

Yes. Well.

We've been considering "The Peril of Fascism" by Magil and Stevens, published in 1938 by International Publishers (the American publishing wing of the Communist Party of the United States if anyone was wondering). The book is subtitled, "The Crisis of American Democracy," and it was, I believe, prescient.

Further excerpts:

The Crusade Against Civil Liberties

To the Chamber of Commerce fell the task of more openly and directly assaulting civil liberties under the guise of a crusade against Communism. In 1934, the Chamber set up a Committee Combating Subversive activities under the chairmanship of Felix Marcus McWhirter, president of the People's State Bank of Indianapolis. Other members were James A. Farrell, former president and still a director of United States Steel Corporation; Walter C. Teagle, president of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of New Jersey; Lewis E. Pierson, chairman of the board of the Morgan-influenced Irving Trust Company of New York and a former president of the Chamber of Commerce; Silas Strawn, former president of the Chamber, chairman of the executive committee of Morgan's Montgomery Ward & Company, and counsel for Morgan's Pullman Company; Fred Clausen chairman of Holeproof Hosiery and at the time vice-president of the National Founders Association; Phillip Fay of the aggressively anti-union San francisco Industrial Association; and Adolph Schleicher of Los Angeles, a supporter of the Better America Foundation, an organization of the most strident West Coast professional patriots.

The Chamber's vendetta against "subversive activities" was another indication that the anti-democratic practices of big business had entered a new stage. Prior to the war, employer-inspired attacks on civil liberties and legislative proposals for restricting the rights of labor and radical organizations were by no means rare. But it was in the wartime Espionage and Sedition Acts, in the state criminal syndicalism and sedition laws, and in the Palmer Red raids after the war that the drive against civil liberties for the first time achieved as highly organized and concentrated character. The Chamber of Commerce crusade in 1934, conducted on a nationwide basis, with the co-operation of the Hearst press, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the American Legion, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and other organizations, marked a new expression of essentially the same trend toward imposing nationally and in every state fascist methods of government. And this campaign was no longer directed merely against labor and radical groups, but against liberal teachers and students, peace organizations, and in fact every expression of progressive thought.

The character of the investigation made by the Committee Combatting Subversive Activities may be judged from the following statement by one who was employed as its publicity man, but soon resigned in disgust:

Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling's The Red Network was the accepted guide in appraising the degree of radicalism in men and organizations. That book, and the Lusk, Fish, and McCormack committee reports, formed the four gospels of the Red-baiters. But a strange discrimination was exercised in the case of the McCormack report. Much of that report deals with anti-Semitic and fascist organizations, in addition to the sections dealing with Communists. In the Chamber's work these parts were ignored.

The report of the Committe on Combating Subversive Activities was embodied in a pamphlet which the Chamber issued in November, 1934. Its recommendations were: enactment of a federal sedition law making it a criminal offense to advocate or be a member of an organization advocating the violent overthrow of government; denial of the use of the mails to "subversive" literature; tightening of the alien deportation and naturalization laws; enactment of federal legislation making it a criminal offense "to incite disaffection or insubordination among the armed forces of the United States"; and establishment of a special espionage agency under the Department of Justice "to investigate subversive activities, with particular attention to the Communist Party and its members and their domestic and foreign relationships."

These recommendations were adopted in full by the 23rd annual convention of the Chamber of Commerce in May, 1935. And the Chamber became the chief organizer of the campaign for suppressive state and federal legislation....

The major aim of this plethora of patriotism was laconically stated by L. L. Baleisen, industrial secretary of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce:

What we want to do is to destroy the whole A. F. of L. It's a racket from top to bottom... Oh, we're not against unions. In fact, we help to organize lots of them.

From the destruction of the trade unions (this would today include, of course, the C. I. O. as well as the A. F. of L.) to the destruction of the rights of all citizens save a few at the top is not such a long step as Hitler and Mussolini have shown. And the Chamber of Commerce patriots have not contented themselves with seeking to save the country through legislative means but have in city after city taken a hand in the organization of anti-labor violence.

One of the chief collaborators in the Chamber's crusade against civil liberties has been its kid brother, the Junior Chamber of Commerce. At its 15th annual convention in June, 1934, the Junior Chamber adopted a program that was even more raucously reactionary than its elder brother's. Announcing that it was "absolutely proven that the United States is even now in the midst of an incipient Communist revolution," it called for what would be tantamount to a clear sweep of every vestige of democratic liberties. Among the proposals was:

We think a federal law should be passed under the terms of which an individual convicted of revolutionary activities should be incarcerated, and continually held in a concentration camp, and that, in the case of an alien so convicted, he should be kept in confinement until such time as laws may be passed and deportation treaties entered into providing for his return to his native land.

Apart from its subversive syntax, the above statement is obviously one which the founding fathers would find difficulty in recognizing as the offspring of the revolutionary traditions of 1776.

Oh my yes, we've been down very similar pathways lately -- at least since the advent of the Great and Glorious (oh, and BTW Endless) War on Terror. Our Betters never shy from such opportunities.
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NOTE: Of course, I'm old enough to remember the House Un-American Activities Committee -- one of the successors to the Chamber of Commerce Committee on Combating Subversive Activities of 1934.

The fusion of government and corporate/"business"/finance interest in this country is nothing new.It has been a feature -- not a bug -- of our government pretty much from Day One.

Nor is the notion new that "subversion" is entirely a matter of the underclass and Communists (and now Socialists) acting against the interests of the United States of America. (Inc.) What would be new, in my view, would be to turn that around, to assert that "subversion" and "subversives" are in actuality to be found in the present day neo-con, neo-lib, neo-colonial, neo-fascist sectors that seek to permanently overthrow the tattered remnants of what's left of the Republic and substitute a New Model Imperial Autocracy, a project that has been under way for the last 40 years in earnest, though we can see the earlier kernel of it in the reports in "The Peril of Fascism" documenting the rise of fascism in America in the 1930's.

The BART Protests

BART Protests Shut Down Several Stations: "A protest has shut down three BART stations in Downtown San Francisco on Monday. Protesters are upset over a recent decision to shut down cell service to thwart a previous demonstration. Joe Vazquez reports."



Protest at the Civic Center BART station July 11, 2011

BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit; it's the subway system that serves San Francisco and the surrounding area, and it's recently been in the news for a number of unpleasant incidents in which the transit police have seen fit to fire their side-arms into the bodies of... well... Negroes [and others]

[Note: One loses track of all the shootings. Kenneth Harding was shot and left to bleed out by SFPD officers on July 16, 2011 at the Hunters Point-Bayview Muni Station, allegedly after failing to pay his fare. I initially confused him with Charles Hill, who was shot and killed by a BART policeman at the Civic Center BART station on July 3, 2011. Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a BART policeman at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland on January 1, 2009. His killer, Johannes Mehserle, resigned from the BART police force, was tried for second degree murder and was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to two years, and was released in June of 2011.]

This has caused more than a little consternation among certain BART riders who have taken to protest, on a fairly regular basis, especially after the shooting of Charles Hill on July 3 of this year at the Hunter's Point Civic Center Station, ostensibly for not paying his fare. (Exactly how that would be done, I'm not too sure because you can't get to the trains without a ticket unless you jump over the turnstiles like they do in New York.)

A protest planned for last week, August 8, was apparently thwarted when BART officials ordered cell phone service to the Civic Center station turned off, in what is apparently the first such effort to interfere with cell service by a public agency on record.

A protest of that action, as well as the police shootings of Charles Hill and Arthur Oscar Grant was scheduled for Monday evening, August 15, at 5pm at the Civic Center Station, but rather than shut off phone service, the BART authorities decided to close the station instead. They also closed the rest of the Downtown San Francisco BART Stations and suspended MUNI (bus) service in Downtown.

In addition, as they have done at other BART protests, the Authorities deployed their heavily armored, black-clad riot squads in close formation and threatened the protesters with swift and sure dispersal and/or arrest.

Meanwhile, the notorious international hacker squad called Anonymous retaliated for August 8th's cell phone shut down by gaining access to and publishing online the personal information of some 2000 BART riders and calling on participants in the August 15 protest to wear red and Guy Fawkes masks. If you click on the link at the very top of this installment, you'll go to a video of live coverage of the August 15 protest, and you will hear commentary to the effect that few were wearing red and that the mask is supposed to represent some British 17th Century revolutionary.

A fairly comprehensive news story appears in this morning's Chron -- though it was actually more comprehensive last night when posted shortly after the Downtown stations were reopened.

It appears that the majority of BART riders in Downtown San Francisco were seriously discommoded during rush hour by the disruption of service brought on by the protest and the police reaction to it. But at least cell phones weren't interfered with. So there is that. From the comments I've read and heard about last evenings action, the riders were not amused.

I've long said that discommoding the powerful is essential for protest demonstrations to have an effect rather than being dismissed out of hand. That may mean, for example, actions that result in shutting down subway stations, streets, bridges, shutting off or disrupting communications, or what have you.

In the "cat-and-mouse" of yesterday's protest (as the Chron puts it) discommoding tactics were employed both by citizens and by the authorities, with the upshot being a standoff. According to reports and videos I've seen, the protesters marched above ground from the Ferry Building to the Civic Center Plaza (those familiar with San Francisco know these locations well) on Market Street, shutting the thoroughfare down; once they found they could not enter any of the BART stations along the route, they remained assembled at Civic Center Plaza (surrounded by Robo-cops) while a splinter group marched back to the Ferry Building chanting slogans and carrying signs.

For all the rage that is being expressed right now over the inconvenience to commuters, let alone the privacy invasion by Anonymous, in fact, the tactics being employed by the demonstrators are the kind of non-violent civil disobedience measures that are necessary for a protest to have an effect, and further, they are persisting in protest despite being thwarted in reaching their initial objectives.

This is how it is done, and no, one doesn't "like" it. These kinds of protests are disruptive and inconvenient, they disturb one's routine, and they interfere with one's comfort and convenience. That's what has to be done. The argument against this sort of non-violent disruptive protest is that it "punishes the innocent." Well, one might want to take that issue up with the corpses of Oscar Grant and Charles Hill.

BART cops have become notorious for their excessive use of force and for their very itchy trigger fingers. They have long been known for thuggishness toward a certain class of rider, ie: Black men, but they have become murderous, much as the Oakland police department did during the hey day of the Miami Vice-ified drug war. They'll shoot your ass to this day. Ordinary people seem to intellectually understand this is "wrong," but they don't want to be unduly inconvenienced, so they also declare these protests "wrong" because the protesters are getting in the way of their comings and goings. Yet getting in the way -- of ordinary people and the powerful -- is one of the few ways that Americans have left to them that can actually cause the Authorities to change their deplorable behavior.

"But the protesters are behaving deplorably!" Nonsense. Complete nonsense. They are bringing attention to issues and people that are important to them, and they are demanding positive changes in the behavior of Authority. One of the chants they use is: "We are all -- Charles Hill! We are all -- Oscar Grant!" I don't know if you have to live in the Bay Area under oppression to understand the deep emotion such a chant can touch, but it is very effective. What happened to Charles Hill, what happened to Oscar Grant can most certainly happen to anyone the BART cops target -- you, in your narcissistic bubble are not immune.

The protesters themselves are behaving effectively. Which is, of course, a threat to The Powers That Be, which is why such an overwhelming and uncalled for police reaction force is deployed to intimidate the protesters and -- theoretically -- to reassure ordinary BART riders that the Authorities have got their backs. No, that isn't what this deployment of overwhelming and unnecessary force communicates at all. WTF, they've got automatic weapons. No one in the crowd -- so far as we know -- is armed, and there is no hint of a threat of physical violence of any kind by the protesters -- unless of course you consider "protesting while Black" such a threat, which is just stupid.

This overreaction by Authority is one of the characteristics of The Powers That Be when they know they are being shamed and they refuse to take the shame and correct their evil ways. BART is a public agency and they are accountable to the People. They have done everything in their power to avoid accountability -- or shall we say to divert accountability -- in the ongoing struggle against police brutality and overall high-handedness and contempt of the public by the Agency.

I'm sure the BART (and area-wide civic) authorities are well aware that murderous brutality and high-handed contempt of the public by representatives of Authority are sure-fire triggers of civil unrest and disorder, not simply peaceful protest. (We saw this in Britain recently, eh?) BART seems intent on pushing the envelope just as far as they can, pushing the public's rage and reaction buttons to such an extent that there are riots (which there have already been -- on a small scale -- over Oscar Grant's killing and the blank-stare reaction of the BART honchos in their defense of the transit police.)

There are many lessons to be learned in the ongoing struggle against the Police State being imposed on Americans from above. BART is only a tiny corner of the whole, but unless there is significant, persistent, and effective protest, nothing will stand in the way of its expansion.

Those Robo-cops are a threat to everyone.

In the immortal words of MDC (Born to Die):

No War
No KKK
No fascist USA

A People's Constitution

A Wiki Project is under way (click here to go there) to formulate a New Constitution for some version of a reconstituted United States of America -- whether Before the Fall or After the Revolution Comes, or some other catastrophe strikes, or just noodling about Building a Better Future, one of my persistent themes, especially this year of Revolution and Upheaval.

Some of those who pass by this blog may not know about it and might want to participate. There is plenty of room, and I'm told that everyone is welcome to visit, to check things out, and if they register, to participate just as fully as or as little as they want.

While there are many different perspectives and points of view being expressed already, I'd say the unifying theme is anti-Imperialism.

Ché says Check It Out!

Ian Welsh on Cuomo and the NY Gay Marriage Thing

This is so true and it cannot be made any clearer:

• 1) The left sells each other out for either small tactical gains, or nothing at all (hello national NARAL) all the time, so why shouldn’t the gays promise to help Cuomo in his next election for giving them gay marriage, even if it screws unions and helps an austerity governor?
  
  
• 2) The reason gays get anything is that unlike the rest of the left, they did two things: they cut off the donations, and they got ugly in people’s faces. They stopped playing nice. They stopped playing by the rules. They stopped worrying about whether people in power “liked” them (hello National NARAL) and started playing rough.
  
  
• 3) Given that the left doesn’t hang together, which means that the choice is “gay marriage + austerity”, or “no gay marriage + austerity”, well, why not gay marriage plus a shitty economy?

Of course it is impolite to say so. It is always impolite to point out that on the "left" there is no solidarity, only a competing series of discreet interests, vying for the Royal Nod, and in the case of gay marriage, it's been obvious for years.

(I've never been a fan of gay marriage as an issue at law. Marriage, in my humble opinion, is fundamentally a religious sacrament -- banging that Old Tyme Catholic gong, don't you know -- that has no place in Law. If religious/faith practitioners want to sanction same sex marriage, I say hurrah. Some have been doing just that for decades. No, these marriages have no legal standing in most jurisdictions, and that's a problem. But the way to deal with that, in my opinion, is to get the Law and the State out of the marriage business altogether. To the extent the Law and the State need to recognize and/or sanction marriage unions, it is solely as a civil matter, without regard to religious interests or issues. Therefore, the only legal and state interest should be in gender neutral "civil unions". That's it, period, nothing else at law. That way, religious freedom and custom is preserved and protected, and so is the interest of the people, community and the state. The whole push for gay marriage has in my view been off base -- and intentionally offensive to traditionalists. But that's not actually what Ian is pointing out...)

No, what's he's getting at, which I essentially agree with, is that the New York Gay Marriage measure is effectively a trade for votes, votes for policies that will cause great harm to millions of New Yorkers by advancing 'Austerity' and Bankster Protection. But, hey! Gay folk can get married now! Yay!

Ian's view about it may be too sour by half, but at the same time he's right.

Whatever Shall We Do About Civil Liberties?

The latest Civil Liberties OUTRAGE!!!!™ is the Memorial Day Weekend Incident at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC, in which a number of activists, including Medea Benjamin and Adam Kokesh were violently assaulted and arrested (literally, "put down") by DC Park Police for -- get this -- "dancing."

There are many videos of the incident, but Adam's posted version seems to be getting the widest currency:



What utter Police State® crap. This is not America!!! Except it is. We know it is. And we don't know what to do about it.

Civil Liberties are being extinguished in this country right along with the Republic itself, and while there may be some alarm from time to time at what is happening, most people seem to understand that it has been worse, far worse, in the past.

The Liberationism that came to fruition beginning in the 1960's was an anomaly. In fact, the history of the nation is one of constant oppression and repression -- when it hasn't involved genocide and conquest. Civil Liberties have historically been more theoretical than real, at least for vast swaths of the People, and even if we don't know the History, I think Americans know in their DNA that in many ways there is more Liberty now for more Americans than there has been at pretty much any time in the past.

It sure doesn't seem like it, though, when we witness scenes like the one in the video above. That kind of official violence against non-resisting or mildly-resisting citizens is far more common than we'd like to believe. Certainly the people involved, Medea Benjamin and Adam Kokesh among others, are well aware of just how routinely violent American Authorities can be and often are.

What is their Problem, for cripes-sake? Authority seems to be terrified that unless they treat the public with such contempt and violence they won't be in control and and won't be "respected". Certainly this kind of violence toward citizens (and much worse than this) is more and more routine, enabled, even encouraged by officials terrified that some how their safety and security will be compromised if the Police aren't brutal enough often enough.

Certainly any American of not-so-white a hue can testify that this sort of police behavior has been employed relentlessly against People of Color since before the Founding of the Republic and it is still going on, day in and day out, in many marginal -- and some not so marginal -- communities.

Nevertheless, to see this kind of Police State® behavior at the Memorial to the author of the Declaration of Independence, over something as trivial as flash-mob dancing, is shocking and more than a little absurd.

The natural response of any sentient being is "WTF!?"

Yeah, well. Note, however, the sheep-like response of the civilians in the Memorial when this aktion went down, not intervening, not even saying "Stop!" but simply watching the show -- and some recording it -- as if it were some kind of performance art or entertainment. And when they are told to leave, they do.

With nary a word. Not even a "Baaaaah." (At least in the airport security lines, I've occasionally heard the patrons delicately "Moo" as they are herded along.)

What do you do under the circumstances? Of course, what Adam and Medea and others are trying to do with "installations" like this is to raise the consciousness of a somnolent Public to the real brutality and threats to the simplest Civil Liberties the People are under from a Government and its Stormtroopers who are out of control.

But I look at this incident and know that the People have seen these sorts of aktions by the Polizei over and over again and their response is either a blank stare or even approval of the police action against unlawful citizen activity.

One wonders if there is any "consciousness" to raise among such dullards, but one shouldn't fall into the trap of blaming the victims for their own plight. It is too easy to say they are too stupid to live and write them and their fate off to their own fault.

What Medea and Adam are doing is actually what has to be done, persistently and relentlessly, to trigger those consciences that can be -- and will be -- triggered when the out of control Authority is confronted again and again with scenes of such simplicity and absence of threat.

It's a simple statement -- over and over again -- that this kind of Authoritarian bullshit is WRONG. You can't just say it, you have to show it. Over and over and over again.

And the message clicks.

Apparently this incident was triggered by a judge declaring that "dancing" at the Jefferson Memorial (or "public facilities") in DC was illegal. So, Civil Liberties Activists decided to challenge Authority on the matter and this is what happened. It wasn't exactly the Incident at the Edmund Pettis Pettus Bridge, but still.

The way to deal with these Civil Liberties breaches is to demonstrate the insanity of Authority, just as these people -- and so many others -- have done throughout our history.

Authority will be shamed and Authority will yield. Though it may seem to take forever. And ever. And ever.

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UPDATE: The Jefferson Memorial Dance Party will continue next Saturday at Noon. All you DC denizens, be there!

Police State USA: Adam Kokesh: 'Dance party next Saturday at Jefferson Memorial!' - May 29, 2011 Vidéo mirrorthis2010 sélectionnée dans Actualité

BTW, wat.tv where this is from is a ton of fun. Check it out sometime. Oh, those Yurpeens.