Gisteren
bracht John Whitehead een opiniestuk op de site van The Rutherford
Institute, waarin hij aangeeft ‘hoe makkelijk’ hele steden op slot
kunnen worden gedaan…..
In zijn
woonplaats Charlottesville maakte hij het zelf mee: een jaar geleden
waren er rellen in Charlottesville waarbij een fascist een moord
pleegde op een demonstrant die zich tegen de fascistisch parade in
Charlottesville keerde*. Dezelfde dag een jaar later werd voorafgegaan door het met veel bombarie op slot gooien van de stad, waarbij de bewoners werden geacht zoveel mogelijk in huis te blijven. De noodtoestand en de staat van beleg werden afgekondigd, zonder dat daar ook maar één aanwijsbare reden voor was (bijvoorbeeld de aankondiging van de neonazi’s dat ze weer een parade zouden houden in Charlottesville…)….
De
politie in de VS is in hoge mate gemilitariseerd, inclusief
automatische wapens die de VS o.a. gebruikt in haar illegale
oorlogen in het Midden-Oosten en Afrika…… Hetzelfde geldt voor
een deel van het rollend materieel van de politie: pantserwagens en
zelfs een klein soort tank….. Dit nog naast de National Guard, in feite een paramilitaire organisatie met reservisten, die bij grote rellen e.d. regelmatig te zien is in de straten van de
VS en de beschikking heeft over een veel groter deel van het oorlogstuig dat de VS in het buitenland gebruikt (zoals gezegd in illegale oorlogen), dus ook tanks en ‘oorlogshelikopters…….’
Al moet aan het voorgaande worden toegevoegd dat de ‘gewone’ politie meer en meer wordt gemilitariseerd en daarmee de beschikking krijgt over steeds meer oorlogsmaterieel en er steeds minder verschil is te zien tussen de politie en de National Guard….. Uiteraard ‘met dank’ aan de lobby van de wapenfabrikanten…………
De VS is
dan ook verworden tot een politiestaat en dat al enige jaren, het
ontbreekt nog net aan volledige censuur, al wordt daar met hulp van
Facebook en Google hard aan gewerkt…..** Hoewel de VS keer op keer als excuus voor militair ingrijpen aanvoert dat het democratie wil brengen, terwijl in eigen land ‘de democratie’ wordt gekocht met enorme bakken geld en het buitenspel zetten van grote groepen (arme en veelal gekleurde) kiezers……
De
schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel van The Rutherford Institute, John Whitehead, is het ‘niet helemaal eens’ met het
voorgaande, hij ziet de VS transformeren in een politiestaat. Whitehead gaat o.a. in op de manier waarop de bevolking monddood wordt gemaakt en op bepaalde momenten zelfs geen vrijheid van bewegen heeft in de eigen stad…… Voorts noemt hij o.a. Göring die na WOII op het proces van Neurenberg aangaf wat er nodig is om een bevolking te manipuleren.
Lees en
oordeel zelf:
From
Boston to Ferguson to Charlottesville: The Evolution of a Police
State Lockdown
August
17, 2018 at 8:17 am
Written
by John
Whitehead
“It
takes a remarkable force to keep nearly a million people quietly
indoors for an entire day, home from work and school, from
neighborhood errands and out-of-town travel. It takes a remarkable
force to keep businesses closed and cars off the road, to keep
playgrounds empty and porches unused across a densely populated place
125 square miles in size. This happened … not because armed
officers went door-to-door, or imposed a curfew, or threatened
martial law. All around the region, for 13 hours, people locked up
their businesses and ‘sheltered in place’ out of a kind of
collective will. The force that kept them there wasn’t external –
there was virtually no active enforcement across the city of the
governor’s plea that people stay indoors. Rather,
the pressure was an internal one – expressed as concern, or
helpfulness, or in some cases, fear – felt in thousands of
individual homes.” —
Journalist Emily Badger, “The Psychology of a Citywide Lockdown”
(RI) — It
has become way too easy to lockdown this nation.
Five
years ago, the
city of Boston was locked down while
police carried out a military-style manhunt for suspects in the 2013
Boston Marathon explosion.
Four
years ago, the city of Ferguson, Missouri, was locked down, with
government officials deploying a massive SWAT team, an armored
personnel carrier, men in camouflage pointing heavy artillery at the
crowd, smoke bombs and tear gas to
quell citizen unrest over
a police shooting of a young, unarmed black man.
Three
years ago, the
city of Baltimore was put under a military-enforced lockdown after
civil unrest over police brutality erupted into rioting. More than
1,500 national guard troops were deployed while residents were
ordered to stay inside their homes and put under a 10 pm curfew.
This
year, it was my hometown
of Charlottesville, Va., population 50,000, that was locked
down while
government officials declared a state of emergency and enacted
heightened security measures tantamount to martial law, despite the
absence of any publicized information about credible threats to
public safety.
As
Tess Owen reports for Vice:
One
year after white supremacists paraded through the streets, the face
of downtown Charlottesville was transformed once again – this
time with checkpoints, military-style camps for National Guard, and
state police on every corner. When
residents woke up Saturday, all entrances to the downtown mall were
blocked off, apart from two checkpoints, where police looked through
people’s bags for lighters, knives or any other weapons. Up above,
standing atop a building site, two national guard members
photographed the individuals coming in and out… A National Guard
encampment was set up in McGuffey Park, between the children’s
playground and the basketball court, where about 20 military police
officers in camouflage were snoozing in the shade of some trees. A
similar encampment was set up a few blocks away.
More
details from journalist Ned Oliver:
Downtown
Charlottesville felt like the green zone of a war-torn city
Saturday. More
than a thousand local and state police officers barricaded 10 blocks
of the city’s popular pedestrian district, the Downtown Mall, to
prepare for the one-year anniversary of the white supremacist rally
last year that left dozens injured and one dead. To enter, people had
to submit to bag checks and searches at one of two checkpoints…
Preparations aside, unlike last year, no white supremacist groups had
said they were going to visit the city, and, by week’s end, none
had. Instead, it was a normal day on the mall except for the heavy
security, a military helicopter constantly circling overhead, and
hundreds of police officers milling around.
Make
no mistake, this was a militarized exercise in intimidation, and it
worked only too well.
For
the most part, the residents of this city—once home to Thomas
Jefferson, the nation’s third president, author of the Declaration
of Independence, and champion of the Bill of Rights—welcomed the
city-wide lockdown, the invasion of their privacy, and the
dismantling of every constitutional right intended to serve as a
bulwark against government abuses.
Yet
for those like myself who have studied emerging police states, the
sight of any American city placed under martial law—its citizens
essentially under house
arrest (officials
used the Orwellian phrase “shelter in place” in Boston to
describe the mandatory
lockdown), military-style
helicopters equipped with thermal imaging devices buzzing
the skies, tanks
and armored vehicles on
the streets, and snipers perched
on rooftops, while thousands of
black-garbed police swarmed the streets and
SWAT teams carried out house-to-house searches—leaves us in a
growing state of unease.
Watching
the events of the lockdown unfold, I couldn’t help but think of
Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering’s remarks during the Nuremberg
trials. As Goering noted:
It
is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a
democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to
the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in
every country. (Goering was een vuile fascistische ploert, maar dit is wel een waarheid als een koe!!!)
As
the events in Charlottesville have made clear, it does indeed work
the same in every country.
Whatever
the threat to so-called security—whether it’s civil unrest,
school shootings, or alleged acts of terrorism—government officials
will capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and
fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state.
These
troubling developments are the outward manifestations of an inner,
philosophical shift underway in how the government views not only the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but “we the people,” as
well.
What
this reflects is a move away from a government bound by the rule of
law to one that seeks total control through the imposition of its own
self-serving laws on the populace.
Unfortunately,
it doesn’t take much for the American people to march in lockstep
with the government’s dictates, even if it means submitting to
martial law, having their homes searched, and being stripped of one’s
constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.
In
Charlottesville, most of the community fell in line, except
for one gun-toting, disabled, 71-year-old war veteran who
was arrested for purchasing cans of Arizona iced tea, a can of bug
spray and razor blades, all of which were on the City’s list of
temporarily prohibited, potentially “dangerous” items.
Incidentally, the veteran’s guns (not among the list of prohibited
items) caused no alarm.
Talk
about draconian.
This
continual undermining of the rules that protect civil liberties will
inevitably have far-reaching consequences on a populace that not only
remains ignorant about their rights but is inclined to sacrifice
their liberties for phantom promises of safety.
Be
warned: these lockdowns are just a precursor to full-blown martial
law.
The
powers-that-be want us acclimated to the sights and sounds of a
city-wide lockdown with tanks in the streets, military encampments in
cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead.
They
want us to accept the fact that in the American police state, we are
all potentially guilty, all potential criminals, all suspects waiting
to be accused of a crime.
They
want us to be meek and submissive.
They
want us to report on each other.
They
want us to be grateful to the standing armies for their so-called
protection.
They
want us to self-censor our speech, self-limit our movements, and
police ourselves.
As
Glenn Greenwald notes in The
Intercept:
“Americans
are now so accustomed to seeing police officers decked in camouflage
and Robocop-style costumes, riding in armored vehicles and carrying
automatic weapons first introduced during the U.S. occupation of
Baghdad, that it has become normalized… The dangers of domestic
militarization are both numerous and manifest. To begin with… it
degrades the mentality of police forces in virtually every negative
way and subjects their targeted communities to rampant brutality and
unaccountable abuse… Police
militarization also poses grave and direct dangers to basic political
liberties, including rights of free speech, press and assembly.”
(!!!)
Make
no mistake: these are the hallmarks of a military occupation.
Militarized
police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored
vehicles. Mass arrests.
Pepper
spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal
weapons. Less-than-lethal
weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber
bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd
control tactics. Intimidation
tactics. Brutality.
We
are already under martial law, held at gunpoint by a standing army.
Take
a look at the pictures from Charlottesville, from Baltimore, from
Ferguson and from Boston, and then try to persuade yourself that this
is what freedom in America is supposed to look like.
A
standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into
revolution—strips the American people of any vestige of freedom.
It
was for this reason that those who established America vested control
of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian
commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by
force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law:
the U.S. Constitution.
Unfortunately,
with the Constitution under constant attack, the military’s power,
influence and authority have grown dramatically. Even the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878,
which makes it a crime for the government to use the military to
carry out arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other activities
normally handled by a civilian police force, was greatly weakened by
both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who ushered in exemptions
allowing troops to deploy domestically and arrest civilians in
the wake of alleged terrorist acts.
Now
we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in
the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look
and act like the military and
have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the
NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain
American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American
people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military
encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.
We’ve
already gone too far down this road.
Add
these lockdowns onto the list of other troubling developments that
have taken place over the past 30 years or more, and the picture
grows even more troubling: the expansion of the military industrial
complex and its influence in Washington DC, the rampant surveillance,
the corporate-funded elections and revolving door between lobbyists
and elected officials, the militarized police, the loss of our
freedoms, the injustice of the courts, the privatized prisons, the
school lockdowns, the roadside strip searches, the military drills on
domestic soil, the fusion centers and the simultaneous fusing of
every branch of law enforcement (federal, state and local), the
stockpiling of ammunition by various government agencies, the active
shooter drills that are indistinguishable from actual crises, the
economy flirting with near collapse, etc.
Suddenly,
the overall picture seems that much more sinister.
The
lesson for the rest of us is this: once a free people allows the
government to make inroads into their freedoms or uses those same
freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a
slippery slope to outright tyranny. And it doesn’t really matter
whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican at the helm, because the
bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody
the same philosophy of authoritarian government.
Remember,
a police state does not come about overnight.
It
starts small, perhaps with a revenue-generating red light camera at
an intersection.
When
that is implemented without opposition, perhaps next will be
surveillance cameras on public streets. License plate readers on
police cruisers. More police officers on the beat. Free military
equipment from the federal government. Free speech zones and zero
tolerance policies and curfews. SWAT team raids. Drones flying
overhead. City-wide lockdowns.
No
matter how it starts, however, it always ends the same.
Remember,
it’s a slippery slope from a questionable infringement justified in
the name of safety to all-out tyranny.
These
are no longer warning signs of a steadily encroaching police state.
As
I make clear in my book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People, the
police state has arrived.
By John
Whitehead / Republished with permission / Rutherford
Institute / Report
a typo
===============================
* Zie:
‘Among the Racists‘ (met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)
‘Before Trump, Clinton Democrats Invoked the Term ‘Alt-Left’ to Demonize Critics‘
‘Charlottesville: wat er fout ging voor de verzamelde gewelddadige en bewapende fascisten……….‘
‘Charlottesville: twee schuldigen? Of is het de taak van eenieder te vechten tegen fascisme?‘
‘Charlottesville: Trump haalt antifascisten toch onderuit………‘
‘Neonazi terreuraanslag in VS, westerse media spreken ‘op hun best’ over ‘een daad van agressie……’‘
** Met deze censuur wordt tevens de berichtgeving van de reguliere media als enig zaligmakend neergezet en daarmee wordt de hersenspoeling van het volk geïnstitutionaliseerd…. Zie wat dat betreft ook:
‘Censuur op het internet met vliegende start in de VS, ‘het land van het vrije woord….‘
‘Eis een nee tegen censuur op het internet!‘
‘Facebook wil samen met door Saoedi-Arabië gesubsidieerde denktank censureren…. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!‘
