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What The %#@!$*

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

The following link was sent to me by Otteray Scribe, who is among the most erudite and respected people among those who frequently comment on this blog. He is an extremely well educated man, with masterful writing ability and a creatively active mind. The title of his E mail to me and the other guest bloggers was WTF? and this is what he wrote:

“This is beyond strange.  Horace Boothroyd III is disabled and apparently has nothing to do but sit at his computer.  He monitors everything going on regarding OWS and police misconduct.  I won’t try to describe this, but it is more than passing strange. Might be worth following up.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/03/1088516/-Occupy-Minnesota-WTF-Cops-picking-up-sober-Occupiers-and-Drugging-them-for-Training-

When someone who I like and respect as much as I do Otteray Scribe, is at a loss for words to describe something, I take notice. When I clicked the link and read this story from Daily Kos, my own reaction mirrored his: WTF? It took me more than twelve hours to respond to his E mail because I needed to let it gestate in my own mind and figure out just what to write about.

Rather than me regurgitating the story I think it is an important one for the readers to view for themselves and present their own take on the why, wherefore and implications inherent in the story.

While allowing you make your own judgments, let me give my bottom line opinion on all of the issues and questions the story raises and let’s see what you the reader makes of it on your own. I believe that the actions detailed in this story are indicative of our beloved America fast moving towards becoming a police state, in the same manner that the USSR, its successor Russia and China are police states. That is that all protest against the status quo is to be repressed. The police/security/intelligence/military forces are not only to act as agents of this repression, in many instances on their own volition without sanction, but also are taking part in the use of counter-insurgency techniques towards those elements within the society deemed dangerous to the status quo. In the minds of those in power openly and behind the scenes the question of what is threatening to the country is in most instances a self-serving rationale for what is politically/economically threatening to them. We must ask ourselves are we to be mere observers meekly silent for fear of our own security, or will we act openly to oppose the destruction of the Constitution of the United States and with it our rights and freedoms?

60 thoughts on “What The %#@!$*”

  1. Michael Murry, thank you. I’m beginning to understand.
    But I believe we were doing this to ourselves even before we did it to others, weren’t we?

  2. Watching the imperial blowback eat away at the rotten reactionary republic, reminds me of a scene from the remake of The Count of Monte Christo, where Edmond Dantes and his sidekick Yacopo look on through an open casino door as Fernand de Mondego, the profligate aristocrat, squanders his family fortune at the roulette wheel. Observes Yacopo: “He’s losing, and they’re not even cheating him.”

    How humiliating.

  3. I once took some college classes in Buddhism from a former Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States and France. Over lunch one day the subject of his country’s Tamil insurgency came up and I told him of my own experiences with America’s disastrous counter-insurgency program in Vietnam. He said that his government had taken a lesson from that and so when America offered military assistance to Sri Lanka to help combat the Tamil insurgency, his government politely declined. As the Ambassador explained the decision:

    “If the Americans come they will just draw an arbitrary line through a temporary problem and make it permanent.”

    America’s hyper militarized cops and corporate mercenaries have already started their search-and-destroy missions through an alien and threatening landscape populated by sullen and inscrutable foreigners — the American people. And understand, you gooks, wogs, rag-heads, etc., that when the COIN books say “win their hearts and minds” they really mean “grab ’em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow.” I know. I graduated from this school over forty years ago and have never seen Americans do anything more than make a bloody mess everywhere they’ve tried to implement this this discredited slogan masquerading as a doctrine of “pacification.”

    So now what you have done to others, you will now do to yourselves. Karma.

  4. “The police/security/intelligence/military forces are not only to act as agents of this repression, in many instances on their own volition without sanction, but also are taking part in the use of counter-insurgency techniques towards those elements within the society deemed dangerous to the status quo.” — Mike Spindell
    .
    ” … there is a vast difference between being a boobie and having boobies. Just to avoid confusion. One can be a very good thing and the other is almost never a good thing.” — Gene H

    I’ve got the counter-insurgency and Boobie thing covered in Boobie Counter Insurgency, yet another episode in the never-ending verse epic Fernando Po, U.S.A., America’s post-linguistic retreat to Plato’s Cave.

    The verse structure derives from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” my mother’s favorite poem, and the idea of culturally devolved, linguistically incompetent aborigines comes from the epigram to Chapter One of The Meaning of Meaning, by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards:

    “Let us get closer to the fire, so that we may see what we are saying.” — the Bubis of Fernando Po”

    It all just fits so perfectly.

  5. bettykath,

    I think the operative word is “solicitation” in a school or park zone. I don’t know if it matters where you actually take them for distribution once the solicitation has occurred. A good prosecutor could make it work.

  6. TalkinDog, I’m with you. My grandwhippet had this thing he did with his eyebrows when we did, and we realized the error of our ways.

  9. Wow, I just read this thread. There is not a word or implication in it that I have trouble believing, unfortunately. I think that the drugging-youngsters thing has been a minor part of the semi-organized RICO-Police state action for many decades. The drug war is an effective way of making sure there is always an exploitable class, even after the 13th Amendment made it harder to decide who fits into it and for how long.

    The police have plenty of drugs around to use in ways they choose; we all know that; it gives rise to a little gasp of “surprise” now and then when some ordinary cop gets prosecuted for dealing. I knew an Army CID officer who dealt drugs until the time that he made a case against someone powerful enough to turn the tables against him and get HIM prosecuted. But they have the drugs, they have the incentive to misuse them (especially if they feel righteously indignant about someone who is demonstrating “against” them and “against” the establishment that they protect), and they have pretty good cover. (All they really have to say if things get to looking suspicious is that they are being accused by a bunch of druggies.)

    There is, in addition to all the other factors, the unpleasant specter of mind control and naturally, drugging people is part of the most rudimentary techniques used. It’s very demoralizing, but I think we have reached the point in this society where contact with people in any of the three branches of government is only about as safe as unprotected sex. It doesn’t HAVE to turn out badly, but it could.

  10. I can only hope that all this ends up with a reaction by the public that is similar to the reaction of Bull Conner and the Birmingham police. That horror story contributed to enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  11. Mike,

    I just wanted to say don’t feel bad about the 12 hour thing. I haven’t had much to say on this story because quite frankly I’m still trying to digest all the (seemingly sinister) implications of it. You and OS both know me well enough to know how rare a loss for words is in my case.

  12. OS, I doubt that these officers (more than one is involved) have much respect for their mothers or their sister either.

  13. Anyone want to speculate what that officer’s reaction would be if somebody treated his mother or sister that way? Some people are functionally incapable of empathy.

  14. At this point, I’d like to point out there is a vast difference between being a boobie and having boobies. Just to avoid confusion. One can be a very good thing and the other is almost never a good thing.

  17. raff, an officer has to watch out for boob attacks. Those things could be loaded.

  18. OS,
    She must have attached the officer in order to cause his violent reaction to her..right????He had to defend himself somehow!!! 🙂

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