Darkening Future for Protesters
Thanks to some dogged sleuthing on the part of investigative journalists at The Intercept, we can hear the pitter-patter of little security-agent feet taking baby steps toward a police state in the good old land of the free and the home of the brave. See:
As you read the article, you may find yourself wondering, who is better entitled to be paranoid—pipeline builders and their private police forces or pipeline protestors? OK, that’s rhetorical question, but I say it to underscore the imbalance between the two forces. The language used by security agency “TigerSwan” would be comical if it were not so darkly ominous: protestors are likened to jihadists, and combating the “anti-DAPL [anti-Dakota Access Pipeline] diaspora” calls for “aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield.”
Yeah, “the battlefield.” Where one side has all the guns and the other side has mostly principle. What kind of “battle” is that?
TigerSwan goes so far as to describe the anti-pipeline movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component.”
“Strong religious component” meaning what? Native American spirituality? The basis, presumably, of a North American Indian jihad. Watch out! Those Native Americans whose land we stole and people we slaughtered are coming to get theirs. Armed with, with, with. . . with what? Tomahawks? Are you really, TigerSwan, expecting suicide bombers?
If You Think You’re Under Surveillance, You Probably Are
Whew. It’s sort of like the Trump presidency: it’s kind of funny but it’s more not-funny. One hugely not-funny aspect is the existence, thanks to Tigerswan security defending the besieged plutocracy, of the “Intel Group”—a network of agents from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Justice Department (hey there, Mr. Sessions, here’s another opportunity to get in more stabbings to the left).
So we have the spectacle of law enforcement beefing up resources to counter a conspiracy of allegedly dangerous activists, while forming their own conspiracy for the activists to attempt to outwit. They are constructing a public-private hybrid police force with enough technical competence to map our every move. They are, after all, tracking the “diaspora” and who knows how you might get connected to that bunch?
This might not portend, in the not-too-distant future, a complete police state; you can already hear the shrieks of libertarians. It may only cover areas where big-money interests are at stake. Which should be fine with the libertarians. Which covers. . . a lot of ground, a lot of water, a lot of machines, a lot of roads, and a lot of buildings.
And where does it all end?