This is Eve. If you haven’t already, please help spread the word about the shockingly expensive, terrorist-level harassment the TSA engaged in against former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Matt Taibbi has written a lengthy account of how the TSA repeatedly subjected Gabbard to excessive screening, including thoroughly searching her clothes and bags as if she were carrying explosives. There is no justification for this, and it is clearly an attempt to intimidate her into silence.
Tom Neuberger’s article below gives a good overview, but I question his notion of a pre-revolutionary period. The French Revolution was unexpected. Despite periods of poor harvests, growing conditions improved so food shortages were no longer an issue. The revolution was led by the King himself. Cahier de Doréans Requests were made through each of the three estates, who in turn addressed grievances to local people. They were written as requests to the king and proposals for reform. Later scholars have explained that they typically assumed that the king was unaware of the poor conditions that were being sought to be improved. In other words, there was no indication that the legitimacy of the king’s authority was being questioned.
Less than three years later, Louis XVI was beheaded, a very short time for this overthrow, bearing in mind the deeply rooted position of kings in society across Europe, where they were even given near-godlike status, including healing powers.
More importantly, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. In Duran’s new broadcast, Said Mohammad Marandi: Nobody expected a revolution to happen..
So I remain skeptical of the revolutionary argument. Neoliberalism has been hugely successful in weakening social and community ties and making people see themselves as isolated individuals. Increasingly, violence and rebellion seem likely, but it seems more likely that we will move towards anarchy and fragmentation rather than organised or large-scale revolution. And yet, evidence of the insecurity of our supposed superiors continues to accumulate. The FBI searched Scott Ritter’s home earlier this week. In the UK, The government is considering making it a criminal offence to retweet posts deemed hateful..
Schedule Notes: PromisedI will be away for a while so I will not be posting for the next week or two, or just occasionally. It’s August, so let’s see what’s blooming outside my door.
“Quiet Sky”
If you don’t read anything else this week, thisand the birth of the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Crime Prevention. A nation of fear.
EXCLUSIVE – Federal Air Marshal whistleblower reports Tulsi Gabbard is being actively surveilled through the Quiet Skies program
In an exclusive breaking news release, several Federal Air Marshal whistleblowers have come forward with information indicating that former U.S. Congressman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is currently participating in the Quiet Skies program, a TSA surveillance program that provides individual surveillance of suspected terrorists. WatchlistThis is the same program being weaponized against the J6 defendants and their families. Quiet Skies is allegedly being used to protect traveling Americans from suspected domestic terrorists. …
The whistleblowers first provided information to Sonia LaBosco, executive director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC), a national advocacy group for Federal Air Marshals (FAMs). At least one of the whistleblowers is ready to make a public report with supporting documentation, LaBosco said. She said she was unaware that every flight Gabbard takes has two explosives detection dog teams, a transportation security specialist (explosives), a plainclothes TSA supervisor, and three federal air marshals on board.
The inconvenience cannot be understated. Matt Taibbi, who interviewed Gabbard, added: this:
The story began two weeks ago, when the former Hawaii congresswoman returned from a short trip abroad. At one airport after another, she and her husband, Abraham Williams, encountered roadblocks. First a flight from Rome to Dallas, then a connecting flight to Austin, and then separate flights for the couple to cities like Nashville, Orlando, and Atlanta, where their boarding passes bore the following warning:SSSS” designationThe “Quad-S” markers, which stand for “secondary security selection,” often indicate that a traveler has been placed on a threat list, subjecting Gabbard and Williams to extensive “random” screening that lasted up to 45 minutes.
“It’s happened every time I’ve flown,” said Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran and current Army reservist who tends to pack light, but that’s not a problem.
“I had some blazers in there, and they squeezed the entire collar, the sleeves, every inch of the edges of the blazer,” she said. “They squeezed and stuffed every inch of underwear, bras, workout clothes, every inch of clothing.” Agents unzipped the inside zipper of her suitcase’s rollerboard and patted down every inch of the liner. Gabbard was asked to remove and turn on all her electronic devices, including her military phone and computer.
As both Gabbard and Sonia Labosco, president of the United States Air Marshals Advocates, say, she is not alone in this treatment — others are.
Is it politically motivated or something else?
Gabbard and LaBosco believe this is politically motivated — in Gabbard’s case, not just retribution for past offenses, but more recently, publicly He criticized “unelected warmongers – the military-industrial complex and the national security state that profit from war.” Bosco believes the connection to January 6th is relevant.
My take: This may or may not be true. No one can be sure. I’m sure the sheriffs think they’re doing the right thing.
I think there is something more general at stake. Think about it: what happens when a population becomes rebellious, egged on by economic hardship and an oligarchy that will not yield?
This is clearly what happened in France.
Despite the final outcome of the revolution, the process lasted decades in bloody chaos. It was awful. It was more than a liberty that led the people. They also produced some of the greatest tyrants in world history. Nobody wants to live in revolutionary times.
and And yet we are here“We have a government that has shipped our manufacturing overseas to make our wealthy richer. They impoverish our workers. Predatory Domestic companies Pick up cash from bones“And on cable TV, they trumpet the only battle that doesn’t hurt their own interests. As a result, we just watch the political parties fight each other while the real culprits – the rich who aren’t rich enough yet – rake in the money.”
This isn’t going to end soon, or well. We’ve been watching this for decades, while Democrats have (mostly) ignored it and Republicans have cruelly lied about it. (Oh, I want another Lincoln, or a gutsy Sanders!)
What will a nation do in the face of chaos?
But leaving political parties aside, let us consider the nation. that What to do when internal anxiety rises? What happens? If authorities determine that the public is at risk?
That’s why I don’t think this crackdown is just political: Certainly, people who had any connection to January 6th have received special attention, so it may (or may not) be natural for conservatives to feel like they’re being targeted.
but, Many Reasons for the arrogance of our people. Think of the George Floyd riots. The unbridled anger of people who are preyed upon by the rich. And there is a big problem on the horizon: the mother of all storms, wealth-driven climate change.
What will the “authorities” do?
The day is approaching when the people will demand change, compensation, and retribution. How will the elites respond? Governments, including the national security sector, have only two choices, similar to the choice faced by Anchorage, Alaska.
The elites who run the country can:
- Should we change our policies now to protect our citizens?
- Protect yourself and your friends from the victim’s wrath.
We know the wealthy like the back of our hands, and as a class, they serve only themselves. Why should they change?
Of course, from the establishment’s point of view, none of this is acceptable. No unauthorized rebellion. No BLM, no Proud Boys, no Stop the Steal, no Student Loan Strikes, no Occupy Wall Street 2.0, no movements that pose an actual threat to the “nothing changes” order that gives meaning to the lives of the few that bind the lives of the many.
The few exploit the many and live in pleasure on the back of their forced labor, while the subjugated majority are unable to voice their dissent.
How do we enforce these constraints in a pre-revolutionary era? The January 6th insurrection provides the perfect excuse to crack down on any dissent to “the way things have always been.”
But more than that, this one-off event has allowed for a fundamental and lasting redefinition of political crime as an act of thought, rather than an act of violence. We are entering a world of preventative arrests, imprisonment, and prosecution for political crimes that are described as steps on the “path to radicalization.”
We may not have come close to preventive arrests (as far as I know), but as the Gabbard case shows, we have come close to preemptive harassment, with no end in sight. And now here we are.
