Outlawing dissent: Rahm Emanuel's new regime
Outlawing dissent: Rahm Emanuel's new regime
On the pretext of policing upcoming G8 and Nato summits, Chicago's mayor has awarded himself draconian new powers
Bernard Harcourt
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012
It's almost as if Rahm Emanuel was lifting a page from Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine as if he was reading her account of Milton Friedman's "Chicago Boys" as a cookbook recipe, rather than as the ominous episode that it was. In record time, Emanuel successfully exploited the fact that Chicago will host the upcoming G8 and Nato summit meetings to increase his police powers and extend police surveillance, to outsource city services and privatize financial gains, and to make permanent new limitations on political dissent. It all happened very rapidly and without time for dissent with the passage of rushed security and anti-protest measures adopted by the city council on 18 January 2012.
Sadly, we are all too familiar with the recipe by now: first, hype up and blow out of proportion a crisis (and if there isn't a real crisis, as in Chicago, then create one), call in the heavy artillery and rapidly seize the opportunity to expand executive power, to redistribute wealth for private gain and to suppress political dissent. As Friedman wrote in Capitalism and Freedom in 1982 and as Klein so eloquently describes in her book:
Today, it's more than mere ideas that are lying around; for several decades now, and especially since 9/11, there are blueprints scattered all around us.
Step 1: hype a crisis or create one if there isn't a real one available. Easily done:with images from London, Toronto, Genoa, and Seattle of the most violent anti-G8 protesters streaming on Fox News and repeated references to anarchists and rioters, the pump is primed. Rather than discuss the peaceful Occupy Chicago protests over the past three months, city officials and the media focus on what Fraternal Order of Police President Michael Shields calls "people who travel around the world as professional anarchists and rioters" and a "bunch of wild, anti-globalist anarchists". The looming crisis headlines Rahm Emanuel's draft legislation, now passed: "Whereas, Both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ("Nato" and the Group of Eight ("G8" summits will be held in the spring of 2012 in the City of Chicago" and "whereas, the Nato and G8 Summits continue to evolve in terms of the size and scope, thereby creating unanticipated or extraordinary support and security needs " The crisis calls for immediate action. ..............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/19/outlawing-dissent-rahm-emanuel-new-regime
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)mojowork_n
(2,354 posts)what can we be done for the folks in Chitown?
Fearless
(18,421 posts)Not.
bvar22
(39,909 posts).....so he did one for himself in Chicago.
"What are they gonna to do?
Vote for a Republican!!??
Hahahahahahahaha"
[font size=5 color=green][center]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
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Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)and a toxic liver which both add up to delusional thinking.
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)Scumbag.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)right up to the time he was elected mayor...
but since stories like this have been coming out, they've been silent
Stuart G
(38,414 posts)AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)IMO, Rahm Emanuel seems to be Republican lite these days. Fuck 'im.
Heathen57
(573 posts)It is reprehensible but not unexpected. He was the one who first started dissing all progressives for not being in lockstep.
Now he has got the power he wanted and it has gone to his head. The 'D' behind his name is nothing but a sham.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)He's turned Chicago into a RepubliCON haven. Soon they will be voting in real RepubliCONS and not just one labeled as a Democrat.
tomp
(9,512 posts)2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)I need to contact the Chicago Occupy and see what's up, I guess. I think the anti-war groups have a march planned for the 15th with a larger one on the 19th. I would think that they will all join together.
Anyone that has any info on this, please let me know.
City Lights
(25,171 posts)He's disgusting.
meow2u3
(24,759 posts)The only reason he's a "Democrat" (really, a DINO) is that he could never win as a repuke in heavily Democratic Chicago. He's such a scourge to the country that he needs to be removed from power by any and all means necessary.