Weapons of Mass Coercion - Freedom From Covert Harassment ...

acceleration of the use of EM weapons on activists: What is now under way, statedjournalist Ando Arike ominously, is “what appears to be the first arms race in which theopponent is the general population.”To explain the advent of “soft” weapons (today’s nonlethal arsenal that includesenergy weapons), Arike briefly cites the lessons learned by ruling elites from the modernhistory of escalating conflicts between police and demonstrators. Beginning with anumber of disturbing street clashes during the civil rights era in the fifties, the problemreached a new level of intensity with the “police riots” at the Democratic PartyConvention in Chicago in 1968 and the shootings of students and activists at Kent Stateand elsewhere in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. After a hiatus in which each sidehoned its strategies and tools of confrontation, a major turning point was marked by thefierce and highly successful anti-globalization demonstrations that famously shut down aWorld Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999.At each turn, authorities increasingly learned a hard lesson: Cops may have theirguns, truncheons, tear gas, water canons, jails, wiretaps, and they may plant spies andclever provocateurs at mass rallies, but dissidents and demonstrators also wield powerfulweapons in the form of TV cameras and public opinion—the ability of electronic mediato galvanize increased resentment and create a legitimacy crisis for rulers, especiallywhen graphic images of the cruelty of state power flash across television or computerscreens.None of this concern is completely new, of course; controlling volatile mobs hasalways been worrisome for elites throughout history, especially since those days in 1792when overwhelming crowds of enraged Parisians toppled King Louis XVI to initiate themost radical wave of the French Revolution. But Arike explains how far this concern hasevolved over two centuries: “The ultimate goal, it seems, is to fight ‘Military Operationson Urban Terrain’ (MOUT), using weapons with a rheostatic [i.e., scalable] capabilitythat, like Star Trek’s ‘phasers,’ will allow military commanders to fine-tune the amountand type of force used in a given situation, and thereby to control opponents’ behaviorwith scientific precision.”After their relative success in Seattle, protesters targeted economic summits inrapid succession, swarming meetings of the World Economic Forum, the G8, and othergatherings in a dozen major cities. But without Seattle’s advantage of surprise, they facedincreasingly elaborate MOUT tactics. The July 2001 G8 summit in Genoa was aconflagration, with 100,000 protesters confronting 15,000 police and troops on streetslocked down under a terrorism red alert, leading to one death and hundreds of injuriesin street fighting. 21The next big demonstration was planned for the September 2001 World Banksummit in Washington, D.C., but organizers wisely backed away after the attacks on theWorld Trade Center and the Pentagon.“With the launch of the Global War on Terror, ‘the gloves were off,’ as theWhite House put it: authorities had free rein to target protesters as potential terrorists,”writes Arike. Domestic “anti-terrorism” legislation would now increasingly target theAmerican population itself, not just the alleged overseas terrorists. This began with theUSA Patriot Act, and was extended by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, whichgrants the president the power to identify American citizens as “unlawful enemycombatants” and detain them indefinitely without charge, as well as permitting secrettrials for citizens. Then, in 2007, the White House quietly issued National SecurityPresidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure “continuity of government” in the event16