"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

May 27, 2010

"The Commons As Policed Military Space"

"When the Obama administration unveils its National Security Strategy Thursday, it will be the first time a president explicitly recognizes the threat posed to the country by radicalized individuals at home.

"For the first time since 9/11, the NSS integrates homeland security and national security," according to highlights of the plan given to CNN by a senior administration official said.

The security strategy acts as a blueprint for how the White House intends to protect Americans. In the past, it has focused mostly on international threats. But National Security Adviser John Brennan explained Wednesday that a spate of terror-related plots in the United States recently prompted the Obama administration to include homegrown terrorism in the document. 

'Such a strategy must begin with the recognition that a clear-eyed understanding of our strategic environment -- the world as it is today -- is necessary to shape the world that we seek,
according to a summary of the plan.

Currently, the United States is focused on completing a responsible transition in Iraq, succeeding in Afghanistan, and defeating al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates, while moving our economy from deep recession to enduring recovery. Even as we confront these crises, our national strategy must take a longer view. We must adapt and lead in a rapidly changing, interconnected world in which interests of nations and peoples are increasingly shared.'

Homegrown terrorism represents a new phase of the terrorist threat, officials said..."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/05/27/homegrown.terror/

Please note the explicit connection made between economic recovery (for a greatly reduced client population) and the police-militarization of the res publica, or what's left of it.

The liberal capitalist state must consolidate its newly defined powers, shedding the excess weight of social amelioration outside of those zones which provide it with donor and subject populations.

It will cover this transformation with the veneer of reformism until such time as surplus populations no longer present a counter-weight of numbers, and as long as it can provide distractions.

The consolidation of the state power in the executive echoes the consolidation of economic mastery within liberated financial-banking-insurance combines. Liberated, as in from the social restraints of the welfare state, which recognized the potential for revolutionary insurrection by ameliorating against it.

It will use these newly arrogated police powers, or it it will serve no use to the capitalist powers which provide it with its leadership, and who benefit most from the cover it provides.

And use those powers it will.

Because cops and soldiers need people at whom they can point their weapons.

2 comments:

Richard said...

Stephen Graham has a book out, "Cities Under Siege", from Verso, that indirectly touches upon a lot of this, as it is about the militarization of urban space

Haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but I was very impressed by one of his articles on the subject as it related to the war in Iraq.

Jack Crow said...

I'm not familiar with the work, but I appreciate the heads up.

I was really just applying an observation made below (about the militarization of the border) to this latest move by Obama.

It's somewhat reassuring to know, though, that others have reached a similar conclusion.

Respect,

Jack