Category Archives: police state

Government Shutdown: Hate the Players, Hate the Game

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Today marks the first day of the latest government shutdown due to failure of the House and Senate to agree on a spending bill. The main point of contention was Obamacare, which Republicans fought to repeal or delay. This conflict can be seen as a symptom of political polarization which, as multiple studies have shown, increases as economic inequality increases. This might seem counter-intuitive to those aware of how both parties receive money from the same corporations. Still, they get paid varying amounts from different corporations and they need to at least appear to be responsive to needs of constituents. Differences between the majority of Democrat and Republican representatives are analogous to differences between neoliberals and neoconservatives. There’s subtle differences in approach and emphasis but both ultimately serve the corporate-security state.

Many will blame the shutdown on Republicans who oppose Obamacare, but will it really increase access to affordable healthcare? It may have been better to delay implementation in order to work out glitches in the bureaucracy and computer systems. Obamacare has already had the unfortunate side-effect of businesses replacing full-time positions with part-time positions, and without any controls over the rising cost of premiums we should expect to see further rate increases. There may be minor improvements but far less than what would have been provided through single-payer and public option alternatives. If we had a Medicare-for-all system as Green Party candidate Jill Stein proposed, we’d have a system people already support providing comprehensive coverage with far less bureaucratic waste and at a fraction of the cost.

One of the many sickening aspects of the government shutdown is that government agencies that truly need to be shutdown, like the NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA, etc., remain essentially untouched. What will be shutdown or reduced are services related to health, work safety, food assistance, housing, education, parks and museums, regulatory agencies, and labor. Once again, money junkies in power have demonstrated their incompetence at doing things they care little about (ie. providing jobs and services that actually help poor and working class people). However, they have proven to be extremely good at funneling more money to themselves and their cronies while consolidating power. On the surface, the shutdown may appear self-defeating, but both parties can benefit by blaming the other side and can more easily push through questionable legislation in an atmosphere of crisis. Just like the sequestration last Spring, it’s a form of austerity which benefits big banks while screwing over average citizens.

Does the Government Only Label Bad Guys As Terrorists?

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Perhaps, if one’s definition of a “bad guy” is so broad it becomes meaningless.

Among the findings in this must-read article recently posted at Washington’s Blog, Does the Government Only Label Bad Guys As Terrorists?, the following characteristics could get you labeled as a terrorist by the  government:

As you can see the list is pretty long, but sure to get longer as the government becomes even more corrupt, ineffectual, and fearful of revolt. Having such a loose definition of “terrorist” will do nothing to make anyone any safer (except perhaps the wealthy elite). In fact, it will only discourage dissent and encourage obedience to the corporate state which ultimately endangers the health of society.

fusion-center

Suppressed Details of Navy Yard Shooting

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Much information has already come out indicating the recent DC Navy Yard shooting follows a repeating pattern for such events including:

Other anomalies and discrepancies are noted at James Tracy’s “The Memory Hole” blog: http://memoryholeblog.com/2013/09/18/artifacts-from-the-dc-navy-yard-shooting/

A recent Washington Post article reported how shortly after Aaron Alexis started hearing voices and feeling vibrations sent through his hotel-room walls, :

On Aug. 23, he went to a VA hospital in Providence. Five days later, he went to another one in Washington, seeking a refill of the medication he had been prescribed in Rhode Island, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

In both cases, doctors sent Alexis home with the medication, identified by law enforcement officials as Trazodone, a generic antidepressant that is widely prescribed for insomnia.

What are some of the side-effects of Trazodone listed at Drugs.com ?:

  • Burning, crawling, itching, numbness, prickling, “pins and needles”, or tingling feelings
  • confusion about identity, place, and time
  • trouble with sleeping
  • continuing ringing or buzzing or other unexplained noise in the ears

More troubling is the drug’s psychiatric warning:

Psychiatric side effects have been reported and include mania, paranoia, hypomania (during and following therapy), increased libido, delirium, agitation, psychosis, hallucinations and self- destructive behavior.

Though it seems adverse reactions to Trazodone may have been one factor leading to the shooting, it doesn’t rule out the possibility of electronic harassment (which may create similar symptoms) nor explain the para-political aspects of the case. To take us further down the rabbit hole, there’s this interesting piece by Clyde Lewis: http://www.groundzeromedia.org/away-team-the-cosmic-suicide-trope/

The shooter’s purported Facebook page mentioned in the article:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aaron-Alexis/488209661277662

Whether or not the profile was created by Aaron Alexis, it’s extremely odd. If it was created by someone other than Alexis, whether a handler or hoaxer, it reflects a pretty twisted mind not only for the cryptic poem, but because info on the site indicates it was created on April 15 in Boston, the day of the marathon bombing.

Post the Wrong Link, Get 105 Years in Jail

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What kind of link does the government think warrants such punishment? Documents revealing the secrets-sharing relationship between government and private security companies, apparently. That was what Barrett Brown linked to, and was the root cause of his 105 year sentence. Brown is an author and activist journalist best known for his “spokesperson” role for the hacker collective “Anonymous”. He was also a close friend and associate of fellow journalist Michael Hastings, who was working on a story with Brown shortly before his death in a suspicious car explosion. In his last published article, Hastings wrote:

Transparency supporters, whistleblowers, and investigative reporters, especially those writers who have aggressively pursued the connections between the corporate defense industry and federal and local authorities involved in domestic surveillance, have been viciously attacked by the Obama administration and its allies in the FBI and DOJ.

…Barrett Brown, another investigative journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, among others [sic] publications, exposed the connections between the private contracting firm HB Gary (a government contracting firm that, incidentally, proposed a plan to spy on and ruin the reputation of the Guardian’s [Glenn] Greenwald) and who is currently sitting in a Texas prison on trumped up FBI charges regarding his legitimate reportorial inquiry into the political collective known sometimes as Anonymous.

…Perhaps more information will soon be forthcoming.

Christian Stork of WhoWhatWhy wrote a great piece on the connections between Michael Hastings, Barrett Brown, and Edward Snowden here: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/08/07/connections-between-michael-hastings-edward-snowden-and-barrett-brown-the-war-with-the-security-state/

In 2010, Brown formed his own online collective called Project PM to investigate documents uncovered by Anonymous, Wikileaks and others. Among the documents they analyzed were ones involving the security company Stratfor Global Intelligence revealing close relationships between them, several other security contractors and several agencies of the government (including the NSA).

A recent article by Alfredo Lopez of OpEdNews.com covers the important details about the case and why it matters for all of us who believe in freedom of speech and freedom of information. The following excerpts outline why Barrett Brown’s case may also be of concern for everyone who uses the internet:

To make this personal, do you use links? Or, a less absurd question, are you sure the links you post don’t include criminal information? Today, there are an estimated 4500 federal criminal statutes and that means that, at some point in your life, you’ve probably violated federal law without knowing it. The same is true of the people who posted the material you are linking to. As ridiculous as it may seem, based on the Brown prosecution, you could be charged with a crime without having any involvement in it by linking to material posted by people who have no idea they committed a crime.

For example, here’s the link to the Stratfor files. While it indicates that these linked documents have now been cleansed of credit card information, I can’t be sure of that. Nor do I know that other information the government considers illegal (or may in the future) isn’t in there. I haven’t read all the documents. But based on what prosecutors are saying, if these files do contain information they eventually consider illegal, I could be charged with spreading it.

On the one hand, they attack privacy, which makes the Internet useful for us. Now they’re attacking links, the protocol that makes the Internet…well, the Internet. That’s something we can’t afford to lose

For those who might want to do something about this, there’s a website of people trying to organize a campaign in his support.

Read the entire article here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/When-Posting-a-Website-Lin-by-Alfredo-Lopez-Information_Internet_Internet_Internet-130918-548.html

At Traces of Reality Radio, host Guillermo Jimenez recently interviewed Christian Stork, author of the WhoWhatWhy article about the connections between Hastings, Brown and Snowden. They discuss Brown’s work and how he became a target of the FBI, how Project PM exposed HB Gary and Romas/COIN, the State Department and their use of “persona management software” and social media “sock puppets,” among other topics:

Show link: http://tracesofreality.com/2013/09/17/tor-radio-09172013-christian-stork-on-barrett-brown-project-pm-and-the-hidden-world-of-intelligence-contractors/

Two For Tuesday

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Lupe Fiasco getting forced off stage by security at the presidential inaugural party on 1/20/13 with commentary by Tommy Sotomayer:

Bonus Clip: Lupe Fiasco, Guy Sebastian and The Roots team up for an exceptional live performance of “Battle Scars” (no longer available on YouTube): http://www.metatube.com/es/videos/166177/Jimmy-Fallon-Lupe-Fiasco-Guy-Sebastian-Perform-Battle-Scars/

Workers of the World…Relax

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Though written more than 20 years ago, this essay by Bob Black is more relevant today than ever. It is possible to find personally fulfilling and rewarding work that allows for a decent standard of living, but is far too rare and inaccessible for too many people within the current dominant system. From “The Abolition of Work” :

But modern work has worse implications. People don’t just work, they have “jobs.” One person does one productive task all the time on an or-else basis. Even if the task has a quantum of intrinsic interest (as increasingly many jobs don’t) the monotony of its obligatory exclusivity drains its ludic potential. A “job” that might engage the energies of some people, for a reasonably limited time, for the fun of it, is just a burden on those who have to do it for forty hours a week with no say in how it should be done, for the profit of owners who contribute nothing to the project, and with no opportunity for sharing tasks or spreading the work among those who actually have to do it. This is the real world of work: a world of bureaucratic blundering, of sexual harassment and discrimination, of bonehead bosses exploiting and scapegoating their subordinates who—by any rational-technical criteria – should be calling the shots. But capitalism in the real world subordinates the rational maximization of productivity and profit to the exigencies of organizational control.

The degradation which most workers experience on the job is the sum of assorted indignities which can be denominated as “discipline.” Foucault has complexified this phenomenon but it is simple enough. Discipline consists of the totality of totalitarian controls at the workplace—surveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching-in and -out, etc. Discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital. It is something historically original and horrible. It was beyond the capacities of such demonic tators of yore as Nero and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible. For all their bad intentions they just didn’t have the machinery to control their subjects as thoroughly as modern despots do. Discipline is the distinctively diabolical modern mode of control, it is an innovative intrusion which must be interdicted at the earliest opportunity.

…Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren’t free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to the higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.

Read the entire essay here: http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm

Nationwide Active Shooter Drills

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Via: GlobalResearch.org:

The FBI has teamed up with an existing active-shooter training program —Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) — begun in Texas after the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and funded in part by the US Department of Justice. The FBI sent roughly 100 tactical instructors to ALERRT training and then placed them throughout the US to oversee mock terror exercises with local law enforcement agencies.

…Since these exercises are designed to be as realistic as possible, students, school personnel and the broader public may be unsuspectingly caught up in the contrived terror, unable distinguish whether the “actors” alongside the accompanying gunfire and explosions are real or fake. This important facet is left up to the relevant agencies to explain to the press.

Further, such events are purportedly carried out to ensure civilians’ “safety” while sharpening police officers’ skills in “real life” environments. Yet local communities and the families of frightened children might wonder why military training-style maneuvers have to be carried out with their loved ones as props, especially in light of the fact that the entire program is based on an event the public still has only limited information about.

Read the full story at :http://www.globalresearch.ca/nationwide-post-sandy-hook-terror-drills/5346612

Such “mock terror excercises” carried out in the name of “safety” and “preparedness” also serve as conditioning for increased militarization of society and is terrorism in the literal sense of the word (the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims). It wouldn’t be surprising if kids victimized in the drills suffer some form of combat shock, but that’s not a problem for authorities and pharmaceutical companies who’ll gladly hook them on SSRI drugs.

Perhaps if government was less power hungry and violent it wouldn’t have to waste valuable resources on wars, weapons, SWAT teams, prisons, active shooter drills, etc. Antoinette Tuff recently demonstrated how potentially dangerous situations can be effectively diffused non-violently. If corporations were less driven by the bottom line there would be more ethical considerations regarding the physical, mental and economic health of all citizens. This is relevant to food, mass media, education, and medicine (especially in light of correlations between SRRI use and violent behavior). With a more ethical banking system that didn’t profit from bubbles, crashes and bailouts, there would be more opportunities for fulfilling work, affordable housing and better social services which could also prevent people from cracking.

Not surprisingly, those who profit most from the current system would rather keep the status quo despite increasing problems while providing authoritarian solutions that benefit them even more.