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Alan Ginsberg wrote

Very scary

https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/

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I just sent this to a long-time friend in Manhattan, who had told me that his Black grandson, who has been at U of Oregon in Eugene and is now at home in Portland, was hit by a rubber bullet at a protest this week. That's all that my friend knows. He has told me that his two grandchildren of a "mixed marriage" have said they are now afraid to drive across country to visit him. I had just sent him the article by Hedges.

This may seem a little off topic, maybe not. I also just finished, this morning, Hazan's book A Peoples History of the French Revolution. There too there was confusion, hysteria around protection of property and seigniorial privilege against popular protest amidst starvation and hoarding and speculation, "public safety" commissions, guillotining unrestrained, extremism run rampant, at any cost. And worldwide reaction. Coincidentally, federal officers were first reported seen on the Portland streets on July 14.

Think I'm paranoid? So be it. Beats heedless. Unless we see effective, massive protest around this too, going over to permanent revolution. The fire this time.

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Case in point. This is really frightening.

https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/

I have to say that there's every reason to be afraid for your grandson if he's involved in this. Homeland Security, or its equivalents in the government, has been operating kind of in the shadows for at least the past 20 years and must have a sizeable dossier. It's chilling but it's what we can expect, and get out the way. Trump may even be planning a coup or its equivalent (even possibly with Democrats' collusion) if, despite current confusion and division, he and his cohorts think they can get enough middle class Americans to conclude in this fluid period that law and order are essential to prevent chaos.

The men in this video https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/17/after-trump-deploys-secret-police-portland-imagine-what-happens-if-he-gets-four-more?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email are wearing combat garb, drab-type masks concealing identity, the only identifying information is "police" on chests, no identifying names or badge numbers visible or readable, nothing showing that they are even federal marshals, could be private goons employed by Eric Prince (Trump would like that), in hired, unmarked private vans. We don't know. A shot across the bow?

I no longer think that this is hyperbole, although part of me would surely like to believe so. I think it's part and parcel of the developing breakdown of capitalist legitimacy worldwide.

I remember how cointelpro has operated to provoke incidents and demoralize protesters, from the Black Panthers, blackmailing Martin Luther King, forged documents, their liaison with local police department surveillance, you name it, I'm sure it's ongoing, and there's no limit to what they can do. Today we learn that Ruth Bader Ginsburg's liver cancer has recurred, prospect of a 6-3 rightwing Court; and we no longer have a Bill of Rights. The justification in Portland, of course, is protection of federal property and the inability of local authorities to contend with it. Federal property is everywhere; so is cointelpro.

Why should Americans think that we are somehow insulated from the most draconian measures to ensure capitalist "domestic tranquility," just because historically we have had a vibrant consensus on the part of a relatively prosperous middle class around "democratic values?" Why should we think that rabid US transnational corporate reaction only applies beyond our borders? Think "special forces," think Guantanamo, satellite surveillance, drones and destruction and the erosion of so-called national sovereignty among nation-states, when they can assassinate or permanently detain without charge or even acknowledgment anyone they please at will, anywhere.

The Corona virus pandemic, its follow-ons and unknown fortuitous happenings may give further impetus to the upending of our economy, as we can well imagine, and accelerate both protest and repression.
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