James Petras: the operation and strategy of our growing police state

yes, it's growing as we watch...

james petras via information clearing house...

The key to the police state operations of the US in the 21st century is to repress pro-democracy citizens and pre-empt any mass movement without undermining the electoral system, which provides political theater and legitimacy. A police state ‘boundary’ is constructed to ensure that citizens will have little option but to vote for the two pro-police state parties, legislatures and executives without reference to the conduct, conditions and demands of the core, inner and outer circle of victims, critics and activists. Frequent raids, harsh public ‘exemplary’ punishment and mass media stigmatization transmit a message to the passive mass of voters and non-voters that the victims of repression ‘must have been doing something wrong’ or else they would not be under police state repression.

The key to the police state strategy is to not allow its critics to gain a mass base, popular legitimacy or public acceptance. The state and the media constantly drum the message that the activists’ ‘causes’ are not our (American, patriotic) ‘causes’; that ‘their’ pro-democracy activities impede ‘our’ electoral activities; their lives, wisdom and experiences do not touch our workplaces, neighborhoods, sports, religious and civic associations. To the degree that the police-state has ‘fenced in’ the inner circles of the pro-democracy activists, they have attained a free hand and uncontested reach in deepening and extending the boundaries of the authoritarian state. To the degree that the police state rationale or presence has penetrated the consciousness of the mass of the US population, it has created a mighty barrier to the linking of private discontent with public action.

[...]

Ideologically, the police state depends on identifying the expansion of police powers with ‘national security’ of the passive ‘silent’ majority, even as it creates profound insecurity for an active, critical minority. The self-serving identification of the ‘nation’ and the ‘flag’ with the police state apparatus is especially prominent during ‘mass spectacles’ where ‘rock’, schlock and ‘sports’ infuse mass entertainment with solemn Pledges of Allegiance to uphold and respect the police state and busty be-wigged young women wail nasally versions of the national anthem to thunderous applause. Wounded ‘warriors’ are trotted out and soldiers rigid in their dress uniforms salute enormous flags, while the message transmitted is that police state at home works hand in hand with our ‘men and women in uniform’ abroad. The police state is presented as a patriotic extension of the wars abroad and as such both impose ‘necessary’ constraints on citizen opposition, public criticism and any real forthright defense of freedom.

open your eyes... it's all around you...

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Occupy is poised to wash over American society vs. If ever I saw a dead movement, it is surely Occupy

take your pick...

bill zimmerman in truthout...

The Aftermath of Occupy Will Surpass the Gains of 1960s Activism

A tsunami of citizen activism, initiated by Occupy Wall Street, is poised to wash over American society. The coming battle to correct the grotesquely unequal distribution of wealth and power in this country is likely to have an even more profound impact on our society than what occurred in the 1960s.

[...]

But the difficulty in actually achieving economic reform leaves many skeptical that a new movement can succeed. Granted, true economic reform is a greater challenge than the battles for political and human rights that we waged in the 1960s. But the other side of that coin is that such a movement can have tremendous staying power because the economic conditions provoking it are unlikely to change and the supply of ready new protesters will not diminish.

Skeptics also argue that the activists of the Occupy demonstrations and foreclosure protests are incapable of forging lasting organization, that despite their tactical creativity and their remarkable impact on the national dialogue, they lack leadership and a systematic analysis. True enough, but today's activism remains in the first blush of its growth and is still perfecting its social media organizing techniques. Political movements can mature with blistering speed.

[...]

A new movement is being born. Jobless young troublemakers being thrown away by society understand that the extreme disparities in wealth and power that are the cause of their problems will not disappear on their own. Behind these young people will be millions of dissatisfied workers pursuing the American dream denied. That is why the coming era of citizen activism is likely to dwarf what my generation accomplished in the 1960s. We altered the country, culturally, socially, sexually and spiritually. The next wave of activism will change it economically.

or alexander cockburn in counterpunch...

Biggest Financial Scandal in Britain’s History, Yet Not a Single Occupy Sign; What Happened?

People have written complicated pieces trying to prove it’s not over, but if ever I saw a dead movement, it is surely Occupy.

Has it left anything worth remembering? Yes, maybe.  With Bob Diamond squirming before British MPs, and politicians jostling to apportion blame for the Barclays scandal, memories of the 99 per cent and the one per cent are surely at least warm in the coffin.

Everything leftists predicted came true, just as everything hard-eyed analysts predicted about the likely but unwelcome course of ecstatic populism in Tahrir Square also came true. ·I do think it’s incumbent on those veteran radicals who wrote hundreds of articles more or proclaiming a religious conversion to Occupyism,  to give a proper account of themselves, otherwise it will  happen all over again.

to me, zimmerman sounds like he's whistling past a graveyard and cockburn sounds like an arrogant, cranky old man...

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Adbusters on Occupy: burned out, out of money, out of ideas; putting our movement back on track will take nothing short of a revolution

i'm beginning to think that adbusters is desperately trying to replicate the amazing buzz that led to occupy wall street... i'd certainly like to see a re-birth but it doesn't appear one is on the near horizon despite adbusters best efforts...

Flash Encampments

Occupy morphs into a new model!

Hey all you wild cats, do-gooders and steadfast rebels out there,

Our movement is living through a painful rebirth… “There has been a unfortunate consolidation of power in #OWS,” writes one founding Zuccotti. “This translates into ideological dominance and recurring lines of thought. We are facing a nauseating poverty of ideas.” Burned out, out of money, out of ideas… seduced by salaries, comfy offices, book deals, old lefty cash and minor celebrity status, some of the most prominent early heroes of our leaderless uprising are losing the edge that catalyzed last year’s one thousand encampments. Bit by bit, Occupy’s first generation is succumbing to an insidious institutionalization and ossification that could be fatal to our young spiritual insurrection unless we leap over it right now. Putting our movement back on track will take nothing short of a revolution within Occupy.

The new tone was set on Earth Day, April 22, in a suburb bordering Berkeley, California when a dozen occupiers quietly marched a small crowd to a tract of endangered urban agricultural land, cut through the locked fence and set up tents, kitchens and a people’s assembly. Acting autonomously under the banner of Occupy, without waiting for approval from any preexisting General Assembly, Occupy The Farm was notable for its sophisticated preplanning and careful execution — they even brought chickens — that offered a positive vision for the future and engendered broad community support. While encampments across the world were unable to re-establish themselves on May Day, this small cadre of farm occupiers boldly maintained their inspiring occupation for nearly four weeks.

In Minneapolis, a core of occupiers have launched an Occupy Homes campaign that is unique for its edgy tenacity. “What is unusual, in fact utterly unprecedented, is the level of aggression and defiance of the law by these activists,” a spokesperson for Freddie Mac, a U.S. corporation that trades in mortgages, told a local paper. “Over the past week … the city has tossed out protesters and boarded up the house, only to see the demonstrators peel back the boards and use chains, concrete-filled barrels and other obstacles to make it more difficult to carry them away,” the article reports. Last Friday, police were so desperate to prevent a re-occupation of the foreclosed home that they surrounded the house with “30 Minneapolis police officers with batons” and “over two dozen marked and undercover squad cars and a paddy wagon.” Occupiers responded by laughing and signing songs… joyous in their struggle to elevate the home into an symbol of democratic resistance to the banks.

In its own sweet way, our movement is now moving beyond the Zuccotti model and developing a tactical imperative of its own: Small groups of fired up second generation occupiers acting independently, swiftly and tenaciously pulling off myriad visceral local actions, disrupting capitalist business-as-usual across the globe.

The next big bang to capture the world’s imagination could come not from a thousand encampments but from a hundred thousand ephemeral jams… a global cascade of flash encampments may well be what this hot Summer will look like.

Meanwhile, tents are up once again in Tahrir Square and youth from Quebec to Auckland to Moscow to Oakland are rising up against a future that does not compute.

Stay loose, play jazz, keep the faith … Capitalism is crashing and our movement has just begun.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

i'd also like to see headlines like this one from today in new york magazine go away...

Even Adbusters Realizes Occupy Wall Street Isn’t Working

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Rapper Immortal Technique on Al Jazeera: The emcee of the voiceless

worth watching...

This episode of the Al Jazeera English show "The Stream" features an interview with rapper Immortal Technique about Occupy Wall Street, his lyrics and career, hip hop activism and more.  He is posed questions from The Stream's online community live from Twitter and Google Plus, and discusses his views towards gay marriage and his work in Afghanistan.

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In the eyes of the state we are ... no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants

chris hedges...

The widening use of militarized police units effectively nullifies the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the armed forces for civilian policing. City police forces have in the last few decades amassed small strike forces that employ high-powered assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, elaborate command and control centers and attack helicopters. Poor urban neighborhoods, which bear the brunt of the estimated 40,000 SWAT team assaults that take place every year, have already learned what is only dimly being understood by the rest of us—in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants.

watch your step, fellow citizens...!

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Silencing dissent through fear, intimidation, litigation and potential incarceration

glenn has a lengthy and very important post up today describing the all-out war the obama administration is waging against anyone who dares to raise a voice in opposition to our government, its policies and/or its unconstitutional and often downright criminal behavior...

[F]or anyone who is engaged in meaningful dissent from and challenge to government officials -- the Jim Risens and other real investigative reporters, the Thomas Drakes and other whistleblowers, the WikiLeaks supporters, the Midwest peace activists -- these prosecutions and these ever-expanding surveillance, detention and even assassination powers are inevitably intimidating. Regardless of how those powers are used or even whether they are, they will, as Risen put it, have "a chilling effect" on the exercise of core freedoms. As Risen explained in his Affidavit, even if Brian Ross' story turned out to be false, the mere claim by anonymous officials that the phone records of journalists are being monitored -- combined with threats of prison for their sources and even for reporters who are subpoenaed -- means "the Government further contributed to creating an atmosphere of fear for journalists who publish stories about national security and intelligence issues."

The most odious aspect of this Climate of Fear is that it fundamentally changes how the citizenry thinks of itself and its relationship to the Government. A state can offer all the theoretical guarantees of freedom in the world, but those become meaningless if citizens are afraid to exercise them. In that climate, the Government need not even act to abridge rights; a fearful populace will voluntarily refrain on its own from exercising those rights.

Nobody wants to believe that they have been put in a state of fear, that they are intimidated, so rationalizations are often contrived: I don't perceive any violations of my rights because there's nothing I want to do that I'm not able to do. Inducing a fearful population to refrain from exercising rights -- as it convinces itself no such thing is happening -- is a far more effective, and far more pernicious, means of suppressing freedoms. That's what a Climate of Fear uniquely enables. The vast National Security and Surveillance State has for decades been compiling powers -- and eroding safeguards and checks -- devoted to the strengthening of this climate, and the past two-and-a-half years have seen as rapid and concerted intensification as any other period one can recall. Read Jim Risen's Affidavit if you doubt that.

there are shockingly few activists, journalists and whistleblowers willing to speak out as it is... this kind of blatant oppression is calculated to guarantee even fewer...

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