Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com
The NATO summit held in Chicago, Illinois has been hailed as a success
by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and President Barack Obama. But has America’s
police state erased its 1968 “police riot” or did administration media
shills merely apply white out?
The lack of incidence was a testament to, among many things, the continued abdication by the American left of their traditional anti-war stance, having since 2008, been demonstrably inoculated
by the Obama presidency. Those who did make it to the protest, an
estimated 3,000 souls marching last Friday, were reported to be representing over 100 groups of international origin or part of the Occupy movement at large.
The relative peace enjoyed by the City of Chicago during the protests
was also likely due to the last minute decision to move the G8
conference to Camp David. Had the G8 simultaneously occupied Chicago
beside its military arm – NATO – the affair may have been more, well –
lively.
In order to secure the City of Chicago the summit was declared a
“National Special Security Event” by the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) and according to reports it sure felt special. Pepe Escobar of Asia Times opined:
"It’s lockdown time – complete with Iraq-style concrete barriers; battalions sporting upgraded riot gear; “extraction teams” to snatch and grab pinpointed protesters in a “low intensity conflict” environment; and an Orwellian guest star, the LRAD (long-range acoustic device) – a sound cannon bound to “ensure a consistent message is delivered to large crowds”, according to the Chicago Police Department."
Not only was there extensive drilling, planning and canvassing prior
to the event NATO appropriately established its patented no-fly zone
over Chicago lest an Occupy ultra-light plane a la Mad Max or some crazed anarchist decided to drop any airborne presents.
The scene once again reminded the nation that any U.S. city can
transform instantly into highly controlled environment where safety is
subordinated to any and all other concerns. As Bernard Harcourt of the London Guardian
reports, “The NATO summit will come and go, but Mayor Emanuel has
authorized a ‘new normal’ of militarized social control in Chicago.”
Eight-foot tall, anti-scale security fencing went up all over that perimeter and downtown, including Grant Park; and the Chicago police – as well as myriad other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and the US secret service – were out in force on riot-geared horses, bikes, and patrols – batons at the ready. Philadelphia Police Department is sending over reinforcements to help out; Chicago has also asked for recruits from police departments in Milwaukee and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC. Meanwhile, F-16 warplanes “screamed through the skies as part of a pre-summit defense exercise” and helicopters hovered incessantly.
Orchestrating the massive symphony of security from an “undisclosed location” were over 40 federal agencies.
On the ground tactics were also utilized, namely herding protestors
in order to “tire them out” and utilizing layered maneuvers with bike or
foot patrols passively monitoring protests while heavily armored
contingents awaited out of sight.
The most startling of all the strategies used to diminish the
possibility of making an international scene was classic gumshoe
investigative work – no, not really.
Chicago Police didn’t mob down protestors like they did in 1968 they just pre-emptively raided and arrested “selected protesters considered dangerous.”
It later turned out that the “NATO 3” who were officially charged with
terrorism were in fact patsies set up once again by informants under the
employ of the U.S. Government’s Terror Factory. The evidence purportedly discovered has since been claimed to have been “planted” by law enforcement.
In
the final analysis the NATO summit was a microcosm. The U.S.
government displayed an overwhelming force posture replete with bells
and whistles, its respective agencies and the city spent more than was
needed, it trumped up terrorism to malign forces it perceived as a
threat, the entire affair received little media coverage and an anemic
anti-war movement since the rise of Barack Obama failed to attract any
meaningful attention. Don’t they get it? Nobody finds “eat the rich”
or Robin Hood tax programs newsworthy. It was a non-event just as the
state had hopped it would be.
Perhaps the summit was a non-event
precisely because it wasn’t important. Not one person in Chicago and
relatively few in the media drew attention to the fact this
“international event” was in fact quite parochial. NATO is a powerful
minority in the world. The grand military alliance, which represents a
crumbling western economic bloc, based on the G8, and comprising 28
other countries is being challenged.
Notice that Vladamir Putin,
an ostensible member of the G8 didn’t attend Camp David. Many of the G8
members have in fact been outpaced economically by the BRICS. China is
obviously bigger than everyone save the U.S. Brazil is bigger than
Canada, Italy and the U.K., according to the IMF. India is larger than
Brazil…
Under this lens is it not understandable that creating a missile ring in defense of Europe might be viewed as just another expensive entitlement program as we have discussed before?
Vladamir Putin seems to understand what it’s meant to delineate and
where the missiles are pointing - so do the Chinese. With the rise of
new nations and severe debt crisis riddling western democracies the
world is in the throws of an obvious re balancing act, what will emerge
is unknown, perhaps a tripolar world?
 |
| Where and when do Russia and China have their say? When and where will a tripolar world assert itself? |
The
global military industrial entitlement complex is merely another type
welfare program similar to domestic liabilities crippling Greece and
other nations. The wildly expensive missile defense shield around
Europe furthers the analogy of the microcosm mentioned above. According
to Harcourt:
"...this police state serves, in reality, as our new welfare state. The security mania represents our truly unique way of stimulating the economy, of employing piece labor, of creating government jobs and subsidized contracts. Just think of the amount of overtime pay that we are disbursing with all this policing. Instead of investing in schools and education, in job training, or in re-entry programs, this is how we invest in our future. And we never think of it as government welfare because it falls in that sacred space of security…"
