Tyranny in Practice

In a new piece called "We're Watching Big Brother," Kevin Carson reflects on Amy Goodman being held up at a Vancouver border crossing last month, where she was invited to give a speech to a packed house. Goodman was held up rather than detained because the nature of the confrontation turned out to be inconvenient more than anything else. Imagine an eight-foot giant being tugged from behind by two-foot dwarfs. The situation, Carson writes, is more comical than oppressive:

Rather than a relatively small number of people hearing what Goodman thinks about the Winter Olympics, a very large number of people will hear about border guards trying to shut her up about the Winter Olympics. As Keith Olbermann said, if they’re worried about Goodman embarrassing them, it’s pretty counterproductive to provide her with a script for the next day’s show. Not only have the border goons done more to cause the Winter Olympics more negative publicity than Goodman could ever have dreamed of (assuming she’d been bored enough to bother), they’ve make themselves look like a bunch of incompetent buffoons in the process.

This is just another example of what a hard time the old state and corporate hierarchies are having adjusting to a networked world. We see them constantly being blindsided by negative publicity. They’re still encultured to a world of unidirectional broadcast communications with centralized, high-cost hubs, where a quiet phone call or lunch with the right person could hush things up just fine. They’re just beginning to learn that that world is gone forever.

Every attempt to nip bad publicity in the bud, by schmoozing with some gatekeeper, winds up exploding in their faces. And no matter how many times it happens, it never stops being funny. Imagining the looks on the faces of Trafigura management and those Canadian border clowns, I laughed the way I used to at the sight of Elmer Fudd after a shotgun blew up in his face.

The whole situation proves that authorities are panicky, dim-witted fools, who misjudge their own brainwashing as 'inside information.' They hopelessly think they have people figured out, especially those who are not on their side, but quickly turn insecure and reach for their gun the moment somebody doesn't act the way he or she is supposed to in their presence. Only their scooping activities should be considered dangerous, but even there they go through people's information not as Sherlock Holmes but as Clumsy Joe.

When interviewed about the experience by CBC, which is available to watch here, Amy Goodman answered, "I'm deeply concerned because, you know, here I'm talking about it, how many people does this happen to where we don't know about it. And it makes you feel you're being watched, and that's not to be paranoid, it's clear that it's true. And this is very serious because I think dissent is what will save us. And I think a media that documents that dissent is extremely important."

Goodman is of course right about the gravity of the negative engagement between the State and the media, but I can't help but feel sorry for the poor creatures who detained her. They are like puppies acting as if they were full-grown pit bulls. They failed to do what they wanted to achieve, which we can suspect on good evidence, was to detain Goodman and refuse her entry into the country. And they attracted a media storm for their feeble efforts. But that's not their fault, by any means. The blame falls on their masters, who have not yet given them the full go-ahead to oppress at will, and treat all prisoners as bothersome scum.

Unless Canada decides to take the path of China, and fully shed its democratic skin, then the country's police goons and border guards will continue to be ineffective against curtailing the movement of activists and journalists. At least the well-known ones.

And really, both America and Canada are stuck in a political limbo, in the middle of the transition from a somewhat free and open society to a totalitarian one. What the elites on the continent refer to as the "new world order," will obviously not be established without forceful resistance. A minority of dissenting people in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world, are saying to the elites: "We're not giving you our consent," leaving the rulers of the world no other choice than to take a much more deadlier approach to defeat the free will of these people - the path of conquest. As a result, the certainty of success is no longer guaranteed - the consent of the majority of the people is now in question, due to image of their leaders as bloody tyrants, and the availability of contradictory information in society about their government. In other words, the Western elite are finding out that what they once thought was in the bag, are now getting nervous and starting to blow and blow, making it more likely that the bag will eventually pop in their face, spilling everything about their corrupt agenda out in the open for all of Mankind to see.

The trouble is that the State's grip in North America and Europe is not sure of itself, unlike its most confident cousin in China, and its deceased relatives Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. America and Canada have not underwent any major crises yet, citizens of these two countries have lived in peaceful conditions for more than a century, and nobody in these countries have starved on the level of Chinese peasants or Soviet farmers. China went through its 'collectivist's cleansing' period in the last century. And Nazi Germany was only realized after an intense period of hyperinflation and massive unemployment, that left many middle-class Germans helpless in the face of the future and crying for a strong leader to guide them to a better life. Americans and Canadians can't relate to this yet, at least not yet. The elites of the West are hoping that this global economic depression will hit America the hardest, thus weakening the spirit of the population, who will then be more open to a new type of government to fix its ills, even if that government has to use a heavy hand. And have no doubt, we are halfway there, but so far, both the population and the government are still in limbo, one is afraid of fully oppressing, and the other is afraid of fully resisting. Of course, there have been skirmishes between the rulers and the people here and there, but with the exception of the battle of Seattle, nothing of major significance has happened in the last ten years.

The detention of Goodman, and anybody else who decides to resist, whether only at a border crossing like Peter Watts, or everywhere on the continent, is a sign of things to come. What we are witnessing now is a not a fully practiced tyranny, but a tyranny in practice, where guards are beginning to learn the playbook, but denied to use it frequently - to make a habit of it. Only when the games officially begin, and I'm not talking about the Olympics, will these goons in uniform be able to shut people up at will and detain them for longer than a lunch break. And when that moment finally arrives, detention won't no longer be a laughing matter but a very serious concern to human liberty. Some believe, as Amy Goodman does, that it is already a serious concern now, and I would generally agree, but it's also still so very funny because after all, Goodman did make it across the border, she did give the speech, and the border guards, too, got their chance to feel some little power for a little while, so in a way, everybody won. To me, the fact that our border guards and police goons are impotent fools is funny. But if Amy was detained in Iran or in China then it would've been a totally different matter.Thankfully, though, she was detained by men and women weaker than her.

A part of me hopes that these government authorities stay impotent, but another part wishes that they get their shit together quickly, because my spirit deserves better. If I'm going to resist, then I want to resist against hungry animals, not happily fed clowns.