Didja hear? Sarah Palin is a Dumb Bitch!!11!1!!!!!!!~!

OK, let's start out with the basic premise that 99.7% of the ol' blogosphere simply DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT if something did not happen within the last two days. Beyond that, it's old. Icky. Spoiled news, not fresh. I mean, didn't you hear the hot poop about Obama's choice for Secretary of Who Gives a Fuck? Well, this post isn't about that.

It's about a little thing called NORTHCOM. So, about, ummm, let's say four and half months ago, a lot of my friends got the shit kicked out of them in St. Paul, MN. And these weren't "anarchists throwing urine on cops" or whatever. These people were running "know your rights" legal trainings.

And they got tear-gassed.

And shotguns pulled on them.

And arrested.



Now, I lived in Minneapolis for the majority of last year. Possibly my favorite city in America. But here's the thing. Minnesota is supposed to be a good government state. I was actually a lobbyist last year sorta, (seriously. can you believe that shit?) and I can assure you that their politics are just as corrupt and venal as any other state's. But that's not the point. The point is, the elected officials of MN worked hand in hand with the Bush administration to, ah well, hang on, let me let someone else (someone who is not wearing a tinfoil hat. someone who is the most widely read online political newspaper in Minnesota) tell it:

A very interesting presentation about the structure of 2008 Republican National Convention security operations got leaked onto WikiLeaks.org, a fun repository for spilled government documents around the globe. The doc, entitled "Special Event Planning: 2008 Republican National Convention," [PDF here] was evidently presented somewhere by Terri Smith, Branch Director for Response, Recovery and Mitigation at the Minnesota Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. It was labeled "Limited distribution - for official use only."

This doc hasn't gotten too much notice locally, but one scrutinizer of government plans, Tom Burghardt, posted a thorough analysis of its significance. Aesthetically, it's a choice primary source document: it combines the ugliness of PowerPoint with diagramming the ominous expansion of discreet government control. [PIM staff loves stuff like this!]

The most illuminating slide shows the layout of the 'Multi-Agency Communications Center' (MACC). In particular, it reveals that the Pentagon's new Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, had more seats than anyone else; fans of government intrigue will love the idea that this new, increasingly domestic-oriented military command had the most chairs. (According to the Army Times, no tinfoil rag, they are training troops for quelling "civil unrest and crowd control," Posse Comitatus notwithstanding.) Additionally, the RNC Committee on Arrangements also earned a seat in this center. We wonder if the activities of the Minnesota agencies here would be subject to the Minnesota Data Practices Act.

You got that? This was a military operation. They were tapping people's phones, and using satellites to track them in real time. And over 800 people were arrested. And houses and businesses were raided. And people were held in solitary confinement. And when released by the police, people were dropped off, with no money and no transportation, in random-ass places throughout the city, in the middle of the night, with no way of getting home safely. And while all this was going on, while whatever remaining mask of civility and the rule of law was being pulled off of American democracy's bloated corpse face, the fuckhead Democrat supporters spent the week talking shit about Sarah Palin.

Yes, Sarah Palin. I actually had this unfortunate conversation last week. I hate it when conversations turn to politics in real life (I use this blog to try to vent my spleen so that my friends and family don't have to hear this shit in real life. No one wants to hear this kind of stuff, I know that.) I was asked by a friend if I voted for Obama. I said no. Another friend then asked if it were McCain. Then another friend said "Ah ha! Fucking Naderite hippy, right?" Again, I said no. I didn't vote this past year.

I turned the tables on them, and asked them whom they voted for. Obama, all around, of course. As to why?

"Sarah Palin scared me. She is just so dumb. And John McCain is old. And had cancer. Haven't you seen the actuary tables? Can you imagine if that woman got her hands on the nuclear codes?" etc etc

To which I replied, "so fucking what?" and, "Joe Biden is fucking retarded. Come on, can't you do better than that?"

So that was your reason? That a woman well within the mainstream of political opinion in this country, a woman no worse (I don't know if she's better, I don't know how to rank utter shit) than George Bush or Dick Cheney (whom I never saw you protesting, in fact, wait, didn't you vote for Bush in 2000 or 2004?), her, being VP was the reason? That was the most common reason I heard for voting for Obama this past year, without a doubt. I heard it from all stripes, and I still hear it. Bullshit. Sounds a little, um, what do you call it.... Tribalistic? I sure hope somebody finally writes something about tribalism sometime soon...

Fuck man.

Oh wait, forgot, I was going to write about NORTHCOM. I get distracted sometimes. I really like to get high, and it affects my short-term memory.

So, tomorrow is the day that the "official" report on the RNC stuff gets presented to the St. Paul City Council. Can anyone in the blogosphere manage to realize that this stuff is really fucking important? I know that this didn't happen within this "media cycle." Andrew Sullivan and Wonkette aren't cracking jokes about it. Zombie Tim Russert won't be talking about it on Meet the Press. But we are now starting to see what "full spectrum dominance at home" might look like.

I can't think of anyone who has done a better job of discussing these issues, hell, practically breaking the goddamn story on NORTHCOM, other than Arthur Silber (Chris Floyd is great too). Here's Arthur, discussing less-lethal weapons, NORTHCOM, and The Army Times story where it was announced that a battalion of troops would be deployed to America:

"Nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them..." Frequently, it doesn't work out that way: "Obey or Die."

But you were being unruly. You might be dangerous, at least dangerous to those who rule us. And honestly, the fact that you may be homeless, starving and desperate is no reason to be rude or uncooperative.

This comes at the very end of the story, offered by the division operations officer:

“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”

I'm sure there are people in the military who believe this, or at least think they believe it. But if and when the order comes to fire on American citizens, what happens then? I don't think we want to find out. Many of these individuals are overly familiar with killing innocent people -- as indeed, our criminal war in Iraq is nothing but an operation dedicated to killing innocent people in ungraspably huge numbers -- so a new kind of target probably won't deter them for long, if at all.

Add in all the private mercenary forces now available to the government, and, well...

No, you're not crazy. The reasons for my argument will become clearer in the second and concluding part of this new essay of mine, "The State and Full Spectrum Dominance, Abroad and At Home" -- but this gives you an idea of why I chose the phrase "Full Spectrum Dominance," a phrase that usually refers to U.S. military capabilities in particular, and why I included "At Home."

You know what happened to all of those protestors in Minneapolis? They broke the goddamn rules. And good liberals, or progressives, or Democratic partisans, or whatever the hell they are calling themselves these days essentially said, "Fuck 'em. They got what they deserved. Shoulda stayed home like me and watched the Daily Show and laughed at how just plain fucking stupid that dumb bitch Sarah Palin is." Or, barring that, they ignored the fact that the St. Paul RNC protests ever even happened. Fuck that. Break the goddamn rules.

And solidarity forever.