The American KGB

It looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck . . .

First, let's make sure you know what the KGB was.  Back in the Soviet Union days, the KGB was the internal police ('Committee for State Security') for the Soviet Union.  They rounded up offensive people, tortured and executed them as needed.  They served the Soviet government as a stability tool.

In the United States, the military is prohibited from carrying out such actions by the 18th Amendment.

So we're safe, right?

The DHS (Department of Homeland Security) has acquired 2 billion rounds of military small arms ammo (about 30 years' worth for a Vietnam - level conflict) and ordered 2700 mine-resistant armored vehicles.  

What for?

The DHS 'agents' aren't bound by the 18th Amendment.  Thirteen years ago - well before the 9/11 attacks, which were used as an excuse to create the DHS - your Ostrich Killer wrote a prediction that such an agency would inevitably be formed.  I called it the Bureau of Internal Stability, but what's in a name?  It's the intent that matters.

Wait, you say.  The DHS is for anti-terrorism.  Yes, that may have been what we were all told at the time, but all that ammo, those armored vehicles - what terrorist threat are they arming themselves for?

Your Ostrich Killer will now go out on a limb and answer that the arms and equipment are for use against a revolutionary citizenry, since the Federal armed forces cannot be used for that purpose.  The DHS is an analog to the KGB: a tool to help maintain internal stability.  Simple as that.  It looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck.  It's a duck, genus KGB. It may be a kinder and gentler KGB - that remains to be seen - but it's a duck nonetheless.

Our elected officials see a revolution coming.  They are preparing.  Are you?  Or are the blinders still firmly attached?

THE AMERICAN TRADITION

"DEMS FEAR VIOLENT BACKLASH," shouts today's Drudge Report headline. As though, somehow, that should be a surprise or even news-worthy.

I heard one of the more civilized conservative talk show commentators say yesterday that Americans don't get violent, they go to the ballot box.

I wonder if he forgot how this country was wrested away from a tyrannical government in the first place? True, back then there was no ballot box. But look what it's done to us lately. And what is the recourse? To shrug it off and condemn generations of our descendants to fiscal servitude - servitude to an overlord government, that rules instead of carrying out the duties the citizens assign it?

Isn't a tyrannical government one that governs without or against the consent of the people? And didn't this government recently ram multi-trillion dollar spending down our throats despite the sure knowledge that the overwhelming majority of us did NOT want them to do that? And aren't they promising to do the same again, on other issues?

"DEMS FEAR VIOLENT BACKLASH." I wonder if they think they're exempt from suffering the consequences of their actions.

Let the Ostrich Killer make it crystal clear: in no way do I condone violence (other, maybe, than a quick trip out behind the barn with an offending legislator and a belt) to solve the problem of a runaway congress and executive branch. But that doesn't mean I don't completely understand it.

It should be no surprise. Screw with the people enough, they will screw right back. That's in the American tradition.

THE WAR ON PERSONAL MOBILITY

Your government is doing all it can to restrict your ability to move anonymously around the country. Here's how:

1. Traffic Cams. They're everywhere. Ten years ago the average citizen was photographed / taped 18 times a day as they carried out their normal daily routines. Today most of these cameras are linked to servers, so they can be viewed by interested parties in near real time. So the capability to monitor your every movement exists. Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy?

2. Transmitters and receivers embedded in your new cars, probably to be followed soon by mandated retrofits for older vehicles. You've seen that commercial where OnStar is used to slow a stolen vehicle so that police could capture it? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that police might not be the only ones interested in that capability, under certain circumstances.

3. Legislation whose hidden agenda is to drive the cost of oil so high that few will be able to fill their fuel tanks.

4. RFID tags on your car, which today you pay for if you want to use certain bridges or traffic lanes, but tomorrow (? or sooner?) may be factory-installed and hidden and used to track your movements. Maybe in that 'black box' that some in congress keep talking about adding to all new cars.

What would be the motive for this war on mobility? The government is getting increasingly nervous about the citizens of this country getting fed up and doing something decisive about them. The citizenry needs to be controlled, many of our elected officials might think. Limit their mobility. Threaten them with less than optimum health care if we say or do anything they don't like. Find ways to abridge the first and second amendment rights of all citizens. A citizenry that must depend on government-provided transport (buses, ferries, light rail, trains, air) and government-provided health care is a citizenry that can be controlled - especially if that same citizenry is given a check every month, that might go away if they misbehave.

The war on mobility is part of the greater effort to 'harness' (euphemism for subjugate and enslave) the citizenry. Oh, and just because I might be paranoid doesn't mean I'm not right about this. Pay attention to the news and see if you don't eventually come to the same conclusion.