The New Constables

Don't say Chipster didn't tell ya' -- Constabularism has arrived in uh'Murka.  The crowd control scenes from the Republoscum convention  show that the only difference between the Goon Staat thugs in Iraq and those in St. Paul is the colour of the Keflar.

As this article shall explain the militarization of domestic police forces is the necessary correlative of the constabularization of the military abroad.  Both are aimed at maintaining a state-of-seige in which the civilian population is regarded as a “suspect enemy”.  The result is the brutalization of everything. 

Constables in Minneapolis & Baghdad

For those who haven't been diligently following this blog: What is Constabularism?

"Constabularism" is Neo-con double-talk for imposed regimes of ongoing state-intimidation and oppression.  The word was first forged on the anvils in Smirky Billy Kristol's Cave known as Project for the New American Century, to describe a military strategy formulated "to secure and expand the 'zones of democratic peace."   In case anyone didn't quite get it, this entails equipping and training the military to "shape the security environment in critical regions.”  The shaping entails a blend of military, intelligence, propaganda, policing, and provocation simultaneously working externally from the zone and internally into it.  This "full spectrum" military blurs the distinction between military and civilian, war and peace.   And don't think that "the Homeland" isn't a "critical region."

In order to grasp the malignant perverseness of everything Neo-con scum do, it is necessary to understand what is meant by "zones of democratic peace."  Although claiming lofty antecedents in Kantian idealism, the phrase denotes a post- World War ("II") sociological wackjob which "argues" that states adhering to so-called democratic values tend not to go to war against one another; ergo world peace can be maintained by extending zones of democratic peace! 

Of course, the "hypothesis" is prima facie ridiculous.  "Democracy & Peace!"  Sounds great.  But even to those inculcated with our cultural prejudices, the vexing question arises: what is "democracy"?  The prevailing view among the Zones Crowd is that a "democracy" is any kind of elected government where at least 10 percent of the population votes.  Oh Wow!  By that definition neither Athens nor the Roman Republic would ever have lifted a finger against their neighbours. When it comes to "what is peace?" the whole hypothesis collapses as sociologists make attempts at arguing international law only to peter out into unscientifically reaffirming certain "self-evident" contemporary, plati-truths which may be summed up as "Hitler started it". 

Without pressing the matter too hard, the zones of democratic peace theory is the simply the catch-phrase for a polemic that seeks to extend capitalist materialism as a way of life.  This is nothing particularly new.  It was, after all, the "Liberal Agenda" throughout the 19th century. The Monroe Doctrine was the first Zonal Declaration used to "mark out" the Spanish Empire for the extension of Anglo-American political liberalism and free trade.  If anyone wants to get an idea of what zones of democractic peace look like, they need only go to Latin America.  The post-War neo-liberal agenda simply trumpets an old tune; and it bears remarking that every US president at least since Wilson has blown this horn in one fashion or another.  In other words, the Zones Theory simply asserts that Free Trade and a Global Market Economy will bring peace and prosperity to all but a few.

The best that can be said for this theory is that anyone is free to  proselytize his favorite snake oil.  The murderous neo-con perversion consists in advocating the extension of democratic peace through war and semi-war. Scumbag Kristol's core tenet is that the United States should  “preserve and extend” its military “preeminence” by simultaneously fighting “multiple theater wars” in order to “shape the security environment" and "extend zones of democratic peace."  What Kristol and his PNAC gutter-buddies have done is to fuse "liberalism" with "preeminence" and "extension" with "conquest". It is one thing to commercially compete, to argue,  tempt and persuade; it is quite another to bring "democratic values" at the tip of a sword and under the heel of a boot.


Under the heel of a boot -- because constabularism is the necessary next step in "securing" the peace once democracy has been "extended".

The September 2000 PNAC Report (Rebuilding America's Defenses) emphatically urged that "constabulary missions" were not to be confused with traditional "peacekeeping" roles.  Why not?  Because "peacekeeping", as it has been understood in international law, is basically a question of buffering between belligerents or maintaining basic services and public order during an occupation.  When armed belligerents are involved, the military peacekeepers (like the U.N. White Hats) simply position themselves and patrol between them.  It's a very basic proposition.  In terms of occupation which presupposes a conquest of territory, the peacekeeping basically amounts to being a big proctor over society.  The military stand guard, while the country's normal and domestic police, postal and hospital services continue to operate as usual, reporting to the occupying military authority instead of the erstwhile government.

But taking Israel's "pro-active peacekeeping" in the West Bank as a paradigm, the neocon Report insisted on dispensing with U.N. auspices and limits.  "Shaping the security environment" meant more than patrolling the streets. It included "maintaining" such things as "no-fly zones," conducting its own intelligence operations and be configured with "combat service support personnel with special language, logistics and other support skills."

What has to be understood (and few have) is how the word-drones in the neocon workshop interwove traditionally distinct and even exclusive categories.  The technique was to speak in conjunctives and then to cross over categories which didn't match.  A perhaps key example was their speaking of "extending" and "securing" zones while maintaining operative intelligence capacities. Military intelligence needed for extending (i.e. conquering) territory is one thing, police intelligence for securing occupied (i.e. no longer hostile) territory is quite another.

Traditional military intelligence consists in finding out where the opposing forces are and what their game plan is so that you can go out and kill them before they kill you.  But what is involved in police intelligence, conducted by the military, in an zone which is no longer the theatre of hostilities and the occupants of which are supposedly peaceable (if resentful) civilians?  Traditional police intelligence, even in the 20th century, has been fairly limited.  It involves undercover work with organized crime or drug dealing, keeping tabs on specific suspects and maintaing contacts with various snitches and other  unpleasant people.  None of this is particularly useful in terms of occupying and "securing" a "zone of democratic peace."  Nor was it anything the PNAC needed to fuss about since the use of existing police forces by the occupying authority is well established in practice and under international law. 

No.  Although the PNAC was intentionally confusing issues for those not cued into their neocon speak, they were not in the least concerned with anything that a normal person would think of as "constabulary."  What they meant was that the occupying army would continue to presume that the entire population within the new "democratic zone of peace" was in fact hostile and therefore suspect. But unlike an opposing army or even opposing guerillas, ordinary civilians do not wear uniforms and are not in any particular place "over there" to be shot at.  Unlike ordinary criminal elements, ordinary civilians under occupation aren't doing anything suspect other than being a "potential enemy" in an asymetrical situation.  Of necessity, the mission of the so-called constabulary forces would comprise security-shaping actions against anyone on an ongoing basis.  These actions would include random searches and arbitrary detentions not guided by any constitutional limits; the use of snitches, double agents, to penetrate and provoke;  the use of "turned" locals to act as propagandists or spreaders of disinformation.   In short, in the militarization of civil police procedures and the reduction of civil society to a new form of battlefield. According to the PNAC report itself these "constabulary missions" are "likely" to "generate" violence. Gee.... why would that be?  The purpose of all of this has nothing to do with policing or "intelligence" and everything to do with letting those we have "freed from tyranny" know who their new master is. 

Welcome to Abu Grahib

Thus, under the infected language of the neocon bacillus "securing and extending zones of democratic peace" meant turning a liberated country into a vast terrorized and degraded concentration camp.

 

“Suspect enemy.”  We no longer hear the cynical ambiguity. A suspect is someone who might be something, or might not. Conjoined with “enemy” it does not mean that the person is an enemy, only that he might be.  But the phrase has come to sound and mean the same as “enemy suspect” -- ie. a definite enemy who might be doing something wrong. But in war being an enemy is the “wrong.” What the phrase does is to destroy the concept of civil society.  Societas means and is founded on a principle of unsuspecting fellowship. I see you - you see me and we are friends.  The Fiend's “shaping the security environment”  destroys this principle.

Smirking Billy Kristol and his Gutter-Buddies, understood that such constabulary missions could not be carried out with traditional military hardware alone.  Maintaining no-fly zones and blitzing rural villages off the map can only go so far.  For that reason, the PNAC report called for using "transformation technologies”  and for taking the battle to the internet itself.

What are some of these technologies?  Spy drones, developed by the Israelis, some almost as small as an insect that can fly into homes and hovels to "monitor" and -- hey, why not? -- kill the inhabitants. Sonic Cannon (Long Range Acoustical Device -LARD), which make noise so loud it prevents thinking and turns you into a stupid,  passive zombie.  Slippery Goo, a slick ground spray that is so hyper-slick that it prevents even the minimal friction required to stand.  Not only are you brain-blasted dead, you are become a flopping fish on the ground, if that.  Lastly, there are laser burn rays, that will give you the exquisite feeling of being burned alive, without leaving a mark. All of this is nothing super-secret.  It has been reported quite openly here and there on the internet.  But they are facts that do not exist in the weltanachauung of the New York Times and other official media.

As for the internet, the PNAC Report chapter “Space and Cyber Space” says it all.  The rebuilt mission of the U.S. military was to dominate inner and outer space.  Needless to say, outer space will include more domestic and military spying and inner or cyber space will include proactive disinformation actions, aka “controlling the narrative.”

When any of this is disclosed in the press it is usually done under the myth of developing "more humane or effective" battle-field weapons. Some of it is. But a lot of it is really designed to be used in constabulary missions against essentially defenseless civilians in order to disable them when they get restless and terrorize them thereafter.  

That, in brief, is the New American Century's Global Dystopia.   It ought to be of some concern, therefore, when the following picture appeared in 2004

Is that the sort of Baghdad in Manhattan we want to see?  Not me.  But I did not hear or read a single expression of shock.  On the contrary.  Murkans were relieved that their security was being protected from the never seen but ever potential evil one. 

Cartoon, Le Monde, March 2003

It ought to be of some concern when it gets announced that the LAPD started experimentally using "spy drones" in its "fight against crime."  But the average Americaw is too goddamn stupid to put two and two together. What is taking place is the creation of a full spectrum police force that is a mirror image of the full spectrum military.

The coverage of the "riots" in St. Paul are a case in point.  It is essentially irrelevant who started it, whether the rioters were peaceably assembled until provoked or whether they were lawless anarchists.  It is also not particularly important whether the protesters or the police got out of hand. Riots happen, have happened and always will happened. They are a routine and uninteresting phenomenon. 

What is far more menacing is simply the fact that the police were decked out in body armour, no different from our constabulary forces in Iraq.  This, in itself, indicates a planned level of over-reaction that is not consistent with crowd in control in a civil society.  

But there was more.  The broadband farts that pass for mainstream news aren't worth mentioning.  Speaking duely and dully of 'pepper gas'and mass arrests, even the leftist  or "liberal" press glossed over some salient facts.  The police used used sound canon and stun grenades. They used police intelligence service to invade and disrupt entirely peaceful groups.

The neocon occupation forces that have taken over government are slowly inuring us to accepting the Thug Staat as a normal variant of civil society.  The presence of Borg-Units mechanically stomping down the street, is  seen as "normal".  Tasers are standard equipment, and standard equipment get used as standard operating procedure.  Four years on from 2004 and we now allow stun grenades and sound bombs to be used (at low levels for now to be sure).  Slowly but surely, and with hardly a whimper, we are being trained to live in a zone of democratic peace.

That this brutalization of society is taking place to varying degrees throughout the world is not to say that it is inevitable or desireable.  It is neither, but it does go to show the extent of global corporate police state, the undergirds the glitzy world of malls and consumer glitter.

Some may say that you can't arrest a person without a choke hold or taking him down.  Some may argue that there is no reason to expose our valiant Donutheads to being hit by bricks and bottles.  Some may argue that there is no way to effect mass arrests without herding people like cattle into holding pens.  But all of this misses the point.  Crowd control does not require militarization of government and the  employment of the most intimidating and thuggish means possible.  The message being sent is simply  "Our Boot.  Your Face"

It is a total canard to say that protestors are getting more cunning and violent.  They are not. Most protest assemblies are peaceable, and the scenes from St. Paul show ordinary people of all ages in ordinary clothes.  It was the police who were dressed for violence. 

It is nothing but cowardly ignorance to palaver about "lawn'order" and the intolerability of riots.  Riots are the price of freedom. 

“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

“It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.”  (Federalist Paper No. 10.)

That was James Madison, the chief architect of our Constitution.  All freedom runs risks.  Risks that people will abuse it or take things too far.  Any assemblage can get rowdy and when it does, it is entirely normal for the police to respond.  If it gets uglier, then the police can respond more forcefully.  But there is no need in a free society to preemptively cage and beat up protestors.  None.

Comparing pictures of Baghdad and St. Paul, of Iraq and Afghanistan and the U.S. it is misplaced to think that "what goes around comes around."  What is seen are aspects of the same underlying phenomenon taking place simultaneously. 

Some may wonder why we use such insulting language against neo-cons.  We do it because it is the only way to approach truth-in-reporting.  The neocons shaping external and domestic policy  are not "political opponents" they are malignant, corrosive, utterly evil excrescences on the body politic.  In their cunning but morally-mindless way they are out to destroy all civic good and will leave a brutalized wasteland where civilization once stood.

©2008 Woodchipgazette