Amerika, 2007

"Freeway Blogging": A problematic but inventive method of political protest.


Jonas Phillips is the third resident of Asheville, North Carolina to be arrested in recent weeks for displaying a pro-impeachment sign.

Unlike Mark and Deborah Kuhn, who were targeted for official abuse because of a display erected on their own property, Phillips was arrested for "freeway blogging" -- that is, displaying a sign on an overpass spanning the interstate near his workplace.


















While different considerations apply to protests on "public" property, it's significant that Asheville authorities are finding it difficult to identify a specific offense with which to charge Phillips. That difficulty is symptomatic of institutional dishonesty: The Asheville Police Department can't afford to admit that it arrested Phillips because of the content of his sign, rather than because of some danger he protest posed to the public.

Last Wednesday (August 15), Phillips was "standing alone with my [Impeach Bush-Cheney] sign for about 10 minutes, when I was approached by Police Officer Russell Crisp," he recounted. "He asked me how long I was planning to stay there and I told him just a few more minutes because I had to go to work at 8:00. He asked for my ID and I obliged. I asked him if I was doing something wrong, and he said that his Sergeant was on the way and he was going to wait for him. So, I went back to my sign holding over the interstate."

If Phillips had been obstructing pedestrians, or imperiling motorists, Officer Crisp could have addressed the problem by warning the cooperative protester to leave. He didn't issue such a warning.

A few minutes later the Sergeant, Officer Randy Riddle, "showed up with a paper in his hand," continues Phillips. "He spoke briefly to Crisp, then walked over to me and told me to put down my sign, put my hands behind my back, and that I was under arrest! I was shocked and almost thought he was joking until he told me again to put down the sign and put my hands behind me and I was under arrest. So I peacefully agreed and he cuffed me. I asked him why I was being arrested, he told me I was in violation County Ordinance 16-2, (the print out in his hand that he didn't bother to read to me or show me.) He told me I was obstructing the sidewalk. I told him I was not and that officer Crisp had witnessed a guy walk by me moments before."

"Riddle yelled at me, `You were obstructing the sidewalk!' and `I'm sick of this sh*t!' then he said, `Here's your 15 minutes of fame buddy!' I looked back to see his name plate and he said in a mean condescending tone, `Yea, that's "Sergeant Riddle" get it right!' He then put me in Officer Crisp's police car. Riddle took my sign with him and I was taken downtown and booked by Crisp. I was never read my Miranda rights."

Two days later, the charges against Phillips had mutated from the relatively innocuous offense of "obstructing the sidewalk" -- which would hardly merit being handcuffed and stuffed into a police car -- to "endangering motorists."

“The intent [behind arresting Phillips] was public safety and the banner being a hazard,” insisted Asheville police Capt. Wade Wood. “That’s basically to the benefit of the motoring public," which ran an imperceptibly small chance of being endangered should the activist lose control of his 5'X1' sign. It's likelier that motorists would be killed in a bridge collapse, or perhaps in an accident involving falling space debris. But Wood had to pull some charge out of his emunctory aperture, and this was the best he could do.

Similar dishonest ingenuity has been on display in Kent, Ohio, where City Law Director James Silver announced plans to charge activist Kevin Egler with "littering" -- an offense carrying a fine of up to $500 -- for posting an "Impeach Bush" sign in a public garden. The original charge, advertising in a public space, proved useless because Engler's sign had no commercial content.

The littering charge is obviously an instance of content-based selective prosecution: Egler has presented dozens of photographs documenting the display of other posters -- including commercial advertisements and military recruiting pitches -- that were displayed without incident.

As I've noted before, many police departments increasingly operate under the "we'll find a reason" standard -- meaning that when given an opportunity officers will contrive some excuse to cite or arrest individuals who have committed no immediately recognizable offense. Cases like those of Jonas Phillips, Kevin Egler, and the Kuhns -- remember: three or more instances constitute a pattern -- suggest that police are particularly prone to display their creativity when dealing with certain forms of political protest.

In his valuable new book You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression, Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, has compiled dozens of accounts from Americans who endured harassment, arrest, and various forms of official mistreatment after exercising their right to protest peacefully.

In May 2004, Joe Previtera, a student at Boston College, staged a protest of the Abu Ghraib abuses outside a military recruiting center. He chose to mimic the iconic photograph of a hooded detainee standing atop a box with his arms outstretched and electrodes attached to his body.

Previtera was surrounded by four policemen who told him the bomb squad was on its way. He was arrested an jailed overnight on $10,000 bond, accused of making a "false bomb threat"; obviously, he hadn't made a bomb threat, but because one of the heroes in blue (they're all heroes, don't you know?) claimed to think the milk crate and wires could be a bomb, Previtera was charged with making a false threat. In the middle of his night in jail, Previtera was awakened by police who tried to catechize him about the virtues of the Iraq war: They "showed me pictures of U.S. soldiers with smiling Iraqi children," he recalled. "The officers told me these were pictures I'd never see in the media...."

Eventually the charges were dropped, but the point is that Previtera, like a growing number of others, spent time in jail for conducting a peaceful, legal protest the local police didn't like.

Rothschild describes how police in Miami, with $8.5 million in federal funding tucked into an $87 billion war appropriation, waged a literal street war against protesters during the December 2003 Free Trade of the Americas Summit. Police eagerly used tasers, pepper spray, rubber bullets, billyclubs, and other "non-lethal" weapons against peaceful and largely cooperative protesters.





At one point, riot police firing rubber bullets shot a female protester several times in the back; during the next morning's briefing, the black-clad champions of public order enjoyed a giddy laugh at the victim's expense:




According to Rothschild, Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who insisted that his troops had acted with proper "restraint," won praise nation-wide "for what is being called the `Miami Model'" of protest management.

The "Miami Model" could be described as Tiananmen Square minus the tanks, with non-lethal ammo ... for now:




With those images of our heroic local police in action fresh in your mind, please review this trailer for the 1986 ABC mini-series "Amerika," which portrayed the USA as a Soviet-dominated vassal state in which public order is maintained by Soviet-controlled UN peacekeeping troops in Imperial Stormtrooper outfits:



Adjusting for present geopolitical circumstances and relatively minor differences in the dominant ideology, "Amerika" in 1997 (as shown in the program of that name) is often not that radically different from America, 2007. Life is still relatively normal, despite the Terrorist Event That Changed Everything (a Soviet-engineered Electromagnetic Pulse in the television program, 9-11 for us).

Occasionally an armored personnel carrier will be seen ferrying ominously clad riot police to the site of some disturbance, and if you push just a little too far you can find yourself with a boot on your neck, rotting in a miserable dungeon, or receiving the unwanted attention of officials skilled in "enhanced interrogation techniques." You might even be summarily killed on the street for no good reason, by police officials who are entirely unaccountable.

At least the inhabitants of "Amerika" could point out that they had been conquered by a wily and resourceful foreign enemy. What's our excuse?

"Amerika" the mini-series ended on a note of ambiguous optimism. For us, I'm afraid, it only gets worse from here.


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Briefly Considered: Red Phoenix Rising?

Item: "According to a poll last month by the Moscow-based Levada Center, 54 percent of Russians between 16 and 19 believe Stalin was `a wise leader,' and a similar number thought the collapse of the Soviet Union was `a tragedy.' (Two thirds also thought that America was a `rival and enemy' and 62 percent believed that the government should `deport most immigrants.') `Many of my classmates believe that some kind of Soviet golden era existed before the West came in and destroyed everything,' says Fillip Kuznetsov, an international-relations student at Moscow University. `They also believe the state is justified in doing anything it likes to its citizens in the name of some great cause.'"


Item: "President Vladimir Putin said he had ordered strategic bombers to resume regular long-range patrols Friday as the Air Force carried out maneuvers involving 20 strategic bombers over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans," reported the Moscow Times. "One of those drills, involving 11 aircraft, prompted NATO member Norway to scramble F-16 fighter jets to observe and photograph the Russian planes as they flew over the Norwegian Sea. The group of strategic bombers, early warning aircraft, fighter jets and refueling planes represented the biggest show of Russian air power in that region since the early 1990s, said Brigadier General Ole Asak, chief of the Norwegian Joint Air Operations Center."

Item: "After a newly self-confident, oil-rich Russia teamed up with China in joint military exercises Friday, it is moving to reclaim the former Soviet Union's status as a global military power. A seven-year, $200-billion rearmament plan signed by President Vladimir Putin earlier this year will purchase new generations of missiles, planes, and perhaps aircraft carriers to rebuild Russia's arsenal."


My first thought, prompted particularly by the comment about the State "doing anything it likes to its citizens in the name of some great cause," was: The same neo-con cabal that has seized the U.S. executive branch has taken control of Moscow as well.

It makes more sense to believe that the Putin regime's embrace of a watered-down variant of Stalinism is at least in part a reaction to the militarist mania that has characterized Washington since the neo-cons -- who could be considered Trotsky's distant offspring -- took over. As I've noted elsewhere, Washington years ago replaced Moscow as the headquarters of the global collectivist revolution.

Managing relations with Russia would always be a challenge, even absent the ambitions of Putin and his siloviki. But in a display of the perverted genius peculiar to Washington, the Bush Regime has not only cultivated the worst elements of Russia's ruling clique, its behavior has provoked understandable concerns among the long-suffering Russian people and provided their rulers with a plausible foreign enemy.

For people living in Russia's "near abroad" -- Estonia, for example -- things are probably going to get unpleasant very soon. And Russia's status as a rising power in the most important economic realm -- energy -- will soon give Moscow greater leverage than its arsenal ever could.

Meanwhile ...

The U.S. is deeply in debt to foreign lenders, particularly China. Washington's military (I don't know that the collective possessive pronoun "our" still applies) has been all but used up in the Idiot King's Mesopotamian war. Because of that war, and the sanctimonious bellicosity of the Bush Regime, our nation's international prestige is at its lowest ebb. The machinery for a domestic police state akin to Stalin's is in place.

It seems to me that the last thing we need -- however useful it would be to our rulers, who are ever in search of new rationales for regimentation -- is a revived stand-off with Russia, particularly one that in relative terms is a more plausible rival than the Soviets. But that's just what we're likely to get.

On the lighter side, it's always fun to see The Simpsons vindicated as a source of political prophecy. Here's their take on the Golitsyn thesis:






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Our Ripening Reich

George W. Bush's chief delinquency as Chief Executive, according to Philip Atkinson, is leniency. He has been too indulgent of the masses and their delicate moral sensibilities, which would be offended by the spectacle of blood and horror that is necessary to pacify Mesopotamia and terrify the Islamic world into acquiescence.

At the outset of the 2003 assault on Iraq, wrote British expat Atkinson in an August 3 essay for Family Security Matters (a project of the Center for Security Policy), Bush should have used "his" nuclear weapons "to slaughter Iraqis until they compiled with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed."

"The simple truth," continues Atkinson, is that "modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide." But Bush's options are limited by "his cowardly electorate," and outright nuclear genocide simply isn't a viable option ... for now.

Thus Bush should emulate the actions of Julius Caesar in the conquest of Gaul, which he "pacified by mass slaughter," thereby building a rapport with an army he later used to crush domestic opposition in Rome.

"If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (thereby turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege [sic] while terrifying American enemies."

"He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military ... to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court," concludes Atkinson. "President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, but becoming `ex-president' Bush or he can become `President-for-Life' Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons."

Mr. Atkinson, as the quality of his prose suggests, is not a well-educated man (although some of his errors may reflect the difficulty of typing only with his left hand, his right being kept rigidly flat at the end of an outstretched arm in a perpetual fascist salute). Judging by his autobiographical essay, Atkinson's unbuttoned embrace of authoritarian politics and genocide as foreign policy are part of his personal psychodrama. Whatever.

Of critical importance here is the fact that this paean to genocidal dictatorship was published by a front group for a Washington think-tank that is intimately connected to the Bush Regime: The CSP's board members and advisers have included such people as Dick Cheney and Douglas Feith. This isn't a case in which a pseudonym-shielded degenerate posts something off-color in a reply thread on Daily Kos -- the kind of non-issue on which Bill O'Reilly can feast for a week or more.

While it is easy to exaggerate the significance of Philip Atkinson and his musings, it is nonetheless worth pointing out that the CSP, which is near the top of the Right Blogosphere's food chain, attracted the services of an undisguised fascist as a "contributing editor" for one of its front groups. (Thanks, once again, to Radley Balko for bringing Atkinson's post to my attention.)

















Atkinson's post was removed by the website's administrator. As Lew Rockwell pointed out, this was most likely done not out of substantive disapproval of the post, but because the author had revealed the "esoteric" neo-conservative agenda -- implementation of which would require mass slaughter and military dictatorship under a quasi-divine Dear Leader -- to the profane masses.

Although he was more candid in describing the human cost of that vision, Atkinson is hardly the first to depict Bush as a potential world-savior clothed in divine destiny. In late 2005 I took notice of an anonymously written acrostic poem entitled "The Leader," which was found in an English-language textbook used by 16-year-old Pakistani students. The poem -- which is perhaps half a step above doggerel -- is set out in rhyming couplets that spell out "President George W. Bush," the purported embodiment of the virtues described.


Before reproducing that poem, decency dictates that I warn readers who have eaten that reading it may have unfortunate consequences -- such as decorating their monitor screens and immediate environment with the partially-digested remnants of their most recent repast.

With that caveat in place, here is the hymn to the Divine Emperor Bush:























The author of this nauseating little composition was most likely someone employed by the Rendon Group, the Lincoln Group, or some other propaganda mill subcontracted by the White House. While earnest in his intention to praise the would-be world emperor, it's obvious this guy was no Virgil.

Heck, he's not even in the same league as the Brownshirted bard who churned out this official prayer to (not on behalf of) Adolf Hitler:

"Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, sent to me from God, protect and maintain me throughout my life. Thou who hast saved Germany from deepest need, I thank thee today for my daily bread. Remain at my side and never leave me, Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, my faith, my light. Heil my Fuhrer!"

Our descent into outright tyranny hasn't yet reached the point where we are instructed to pray to the Dear Leader. However, in the event that we're clobbered by a terrorist attack -- in fulfillment of the fondest wishes of some exceptionally depraved Bu'ushists -- the Department of Homeland Security is prepared to deploy "Clergy Response Teams" to preach the gospel of unconditional submission to the State, as Shreveport, Louisiana's KSLA-TV reports:

"Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us.... If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie `The Siege,' easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina. Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, `the primary thing that we say to anybody is, "let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over."'" (Emphasis added.)




"For the clergy team," continues the report, "one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the Bible itself, specifically Romans 13." As paraphrased by Dr. Tuberville, the message of that chapter is that "government's established by the Lord"; what he misses is that the text teaches that the sole legitimate function of government, which is subordinate to God's law, is to protect the innocent against lawless violence.

The Quislings in clerical garb employed by the DHS would preach to Americans a version of the same murderous idolatry taught by their forebears under the Third Reich: The role of religion is to sustain the State. The Nazis called this doctrine "Positive Christianity." I don't know what it would be called were our country to succumb to martial law, but I'm sure that the DHS is, even now, doing the appropriate market research.


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