Thanks to internal mission briefings received through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we now know that the Missouri National Guard used highly charged, militarized terms when describing Ferguson protesters ahead of its deployment. Terms such as “enemy forces” and “adversaries” were used to describe American citizens justifiably angry about police violence, which is not isolated to the area, but appears to be an epidemic (see: U.S. Police Kill More Civilians in March than UK Police Killed in 100 Years).
The use of such language when describing a deployment to an American city takes on an elevated degree of significance when coupled with the fact that the Ferguson unrest served as the initial wakeup call for most Americans with regard to the militarization of domestic police. I wrote about this at the time in the post, “A Good Time Was Had By All” – The Obamas Dance the Night Away as Ferguson, Missouri Burns. Here’s an excerpt:
I believe Ferguson will be seen as a major turning point. The point in which many well-intentioned, but incredibly naive folks in white mainstream America woke up to what we have become. Many people, particularly those in the media, have been willfully ignorant about the destruction of freedom and civil liberties in America. The events in Ferguson have taken a gigantic mirror and successfully pointed it squarely at our civil society and the image it has reflected back is one of a horrific, militarized, authoritarian monster.
The following, reported by CNN, won’t help ease the above perceptions:
As the Missouri National Guard prepared to deploy to help quell riots in Ferguson, Missouri, that raged sporadically last year, the guard used highly militarized words such as “enemy forces” and “adversaries” to refer to protesters, according to documents obtained by CNN.
The National Guard’s language, contained in internal mission briefings obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, is intensifying the concerns of some who objected to the police officers’ actions in putting down riots. They broke out after the August 9 shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by city police officer Darren Wilson. A grand jury declined to indict Wilson in the case.
“It’s disturbing when you have what amounts to American soldiers viewing American citizens somehow as the enemy,” said Antonio French, an alderman in St. Louis.
Days before the announcement of the grand jury’s decision, an email from Boyle warned of potential consequences from using language that could be “construed as potentially inflammatory.” Two days after that, notification was sent to commanding officers stating that “all reference of ‘enemy’ were changed to state ‘criminal elements’.”
At least Col. David Boyle (referenced above), Army chief of staff at the Missouri National Guard, realized how politically poisonous these terms were and put a stop to it. Nevertheless…
Still, National Guard spokesman Capt. Quinn defended the militarized language as standard for the planning process ahead of deployment.
In an email to CNN, he said the documents used in the Ferguson mission briefings were “a generic military planning format utilized in a wide range of military missions, so the term ‘enemy forces’ would be better understood as ‘potential threats.’ Often in Guard operations, threats would include inclement weather, heat, failing levees, etc.”
A document titled “Operation Show-Me Protection II,” which outlines the Missouri National Guard’s mission in Ferguson, listed players on the ground deemed “Friendly Forces” and “Enemy Forces.” Among groups characterized as hate groups were the KKK, the RgB Black Rebels and the New Black Panther Party, but also “General Protesters.”
One thing I’ve noticed ever since the banker bailouts, is that the status quo will not under any circumstances reform. The only way out of the current predicament is through paradigm level change. While such change is already happening gradually under the surface, it will probably take another monumental display of incompetence and a collapse of the current system for a fundamentally different way of doing things to dominate our social, political and economic world. Something like the 2008 crisis or worse, when it arrives, will provide an opportunity to shake more people from their apathy and discredit humanity’s current top down, pyramidal/hierarchical corporate-government structure, in favor of a networked and decentralized approach.
Of course, the status quo is well aware of the threat and opportunity that another collapse provides to all interest parties and it has been preparing its response. This is where the surveillance state comes into play. It isn’t there to stop terrorist attacks, it is there to stop you. It’s there to keep the centralized top down tyranny in place for generations to come.
Just yesterday, I warned of the dangers of public-private partnerships and how they are being used to surreptitiously solidly the corporate-statist surveillance panopticon in the post, Meet Cyber P3 – The U.S. Military’s Public-Private Partnership to Create Corporate/Government “Cyber Soldiers”. I wrote:
The corporate-statist power structure is moving frantically to solidify its dominance in all areas of human life. Edward Snowden confirmed just how monolithic the NSA’s dominance had become by “partnering” with the technology, defense and telecoms industries. Despite current pushback, the NSA and government agencies have no intention of backtracking. In fact, it appears the latest maneuver is to continue this public-private panopticon udder the guise of preventing cyber attacks.
Cyberattacks is one excuse being used. Crime is another. I found it particularly telling that one of the most ambitious public-private spy partnerships recently unveiled is happening in St. Louis, which of course is less than 15 miles from Ferguson. We learn from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that:
ST. LOUIS • When a 911 call comes in, St. Louis police now may be able to see the scene before responding officers have time to arrive.
It’s part of the Real Time Crime Center, opened Thursday to bring together an array of electronic resources — including a network of public and private surveillance cameras that could put eyes on a location within seconds.
There’s another guaranteed public-private screw job.
Eight officers and a sergeant will run the around-the-clock operation inside police headquarters, at 1915 Olive Street. They will have access to data from cameras, license plate readers, red light cameras, hot-spot crime mapping and the ShotSpotter microphone system that can track the source of gunfire.
“This is a big step toward mass surveillance of the city’s population,” Chasnoff complained. “People going about their business who have given no indication they have committed an offense are still being watched by their government and police.”
The system already connects with the St. Louis Port Authority, Locust Business District, South Grand Business Association and street department. Donations from the Police Foundation, asset forfeiture money, a federal port security grant and partnership with Motorola Solutions paid for the approximately $435,000 effort.
The center has access to 140 cameras now, but Dotson envisions a network encompassing the surveillance capabilities of many neighborhood associations and businesses. Chicago police have access to 10,000 cameras, about 3,000 of them publicly owned, the chief said.
Access to private cameras also means not having to wait for a business to open to examine its recorded images, Lt. Brent Feig said. “We’re really leveraging the public space,” he said.
Jeanine Molloff of Overland attended Thursday’s protest and expressed concern that the participation of business interests would influence how police patrol the city. “When the police department accepts private money for public services, it creates a pay-to-play system, whereby the rich get preferential treatment in the form of better police service,” she said.
Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, is skeptical of the way it was planned. “Maybe everyone will say the policies the city has drafted are great, but there should be a process for review and public comment first,” he said.
Mittman cautioned that once private cameras were used by the government, they must be treated as public cameras, operated in accordance with the Constitution.
“Now they can follow you, keep data, store it and go back and search through it, so we’re going from what might seem like a benign observance of a public square to a Big Brother 24/7 surveillance society,” Mittman suggested.
Once again, you have been warned.
For related articles, see:
“A Good Time Was Had By All” – The Obamas Dance the Night Away as Ferguson, Missouri Burns
Picture of the Day – Iraq or the United States? A Photo from Ferguson, Mo
The “War on Terror” Turns Inward – DHS Report Warns of Right Wing Terror Threat
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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