Freedom Is A Myth: We Are All Prisoners Of The Police State's Panopticon Village

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

"We"re run by the Pentagon, we"re run by Madison Avenue, we"re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don"t revolt we"ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we"re at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people"s Villages, but we are all prisoners.”

- Patrick McGoohan

First broadcast in Great Britain 50 years ago, The Prisoner - a dystopian television series described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka” - confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly tranquil retirement community known only as the Village.

The Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.

The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan, is Number Six.

“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by McGoohan.

In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six is told that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”

Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.

Number Six refuses to comply.

In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.

Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s getaways are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”

Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog’s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.

The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and so-called democracy.

As Thill noted when McGoohan died in 2009, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”

The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.

Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be and funding its existence.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the police state and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Instagram, etc.).

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.

It is a prison from which there will be no escape if the government gets it way.

Even now, the Trump Administration is working to make some of the National Security Agency’s vast spying powers permanent.

In fact, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pushing for Congress to permanently renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows government snoops to warrantlessly comb through and harvest vast quantities of our communications.

And just like that, we’re back in the Village, our escape plans foiled, our future bleak.

Except this is no surprise ending, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People: for those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior, we never stopped being prisoners.

So how do we break out?

For starters, wake up. Resist the urge to comply.

Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that"s the great thing. It"s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that"s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”

We have come full circle from Bentham’s Panopticon to McGoohan’s Village to Huxley’s Brave New World.

You want to be free? Break out of the circle.

Konstantin Richter: "The Dirty Dozen" - 12 'Things' That Ruined The EU

Authored by Konstantin Richter via Politico.eu,

Last weekend, European leaders gathered in Rome for the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. They discussed, not for the first time, how to get the EU back on track. And they told each other they are still committed to the Union and believe in its future. (We’ve heard that one before, too.)

But let’s just suppose that, when the European leaders sat down for lunch at the Quirinal Palace, some of them had a little too much of the pinot grigio and waxed nostalgic about the days when the idea of a united Europe was still young and promising and beautiful. And then they talked about this week and how British Prime Minister Theresa May would send her goodbye letter and they started slurring their words, saying Grexit, Brexit, Frexit, and they finally admitted to each other that something has gone horribly wrong.

When they stood up and got ready to leave, they were devastated, saying to each other: “Good God, how did it come this and, more importantly, who is to blame?” We’ve gathered a dozen suggestions.

1. Zeus

Whenever Europe is in trouble, its advocates claim the EU lacks a proper narrative. The whole idea of an “ever-closer union” is still a fine one, they argue, and the only thing that’s needed for people to understand it is a memorable story. The most memorable story about Europe, of course, is the one about Zeus. The Greek God disguised himself as a white bull in order to approach a beautiful girl called Europa. When Europa, perhaps naively, climbed on his back, the God-turned-bull abducted and ravished her. No need to take the story too literally when analyzing the EU’s current malaise (no white bulls there). But it is good to keep in mind that Europe’s founding myth doesn’t exactly bode well for its future. If negative narratives about the EU seem to resonate far more than positive ones, maybe it’s because the Greek gods loaded the dice.

2. Edith Cresson

Going straight from Zeus, ruler of Mount Olympus, to good old Edith Cresson may seem a bit of a stretch. But as a strong contender for the title of worst European commissioner ever, the Frenchwoman does have a claim to fame, too. In the early 1990s, Cresson was a French prime minister who quickly fell out of favor and was forced to resign after less than a year in office. That apparently qualified her for a high-powered job in Brussels. As commissioner for science, research and development, Cresson famously paid her dentist to be a scientific adviser. In 1999, allegations of fraud intended to target Cresson ended up bringing down the entire Commission. To put it crudely: Cresson did to the EU what Zeus did to Europa.

Christoph Blocher in Bern during a session of the Swiss National Council in 2013 | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

3. Christoph Blocher

Look at any map of the European Union and what stands out is the blank spot at its core. The holdout is Switzerland, mountainous, beautiful and immensely wealthy. The Swiss owe their status as successful non-members to a man named Christoph Blocher. Back in the early 1990s — when Geert Wilders was still a young parliamentary assistant with funny hair, Marine Le Pen just the daughter of right-wing populist Jean-Marie Le Pen, and in Germany the letters AfD stood for Allgemeiner Finanzdienst, a financial services firm that has since changed its name — the Swiss industrialist led a successful referendum campaign against the path to EU membership.

Blocher knew how to push the right buttons and arouse in the Swiss a deep fear of outsiders, be they from Brussels or the Balkans. His blend of anti-immigration and anti-EU politics would provide the blueprint for populist campaigns elsewhere. What’s more, the Alpine nation made a strong case that the economic benefits of close relations with the EU can be had without fully joining the club. (Norway provides another fine example.)

4. Brussels

Some decades ago, when the EU’s founding member countries were looking for a place to house institutions such as the European Commission and the European Council, they thought they had found something suitable. It was a city located halfway between the glamorous French capital of Paris and the not-so-glamorous West German capital of Bonn. And it was called Brussels, like the famous sprouts. The French hoped the Belgian capital would turn into a twin city of Paris, populated by sophisticated graduates of the Grand Écoles. What they got instead was the European Quarter, an architectural nightmare, more Brasilia than Paris, that is oddly isolated from the indigenous people in its vicinity. Brussels may not be the “hellhole” U.S. President Donald Trump described but, as anyone who has worked there knows, the EU capital lacks atmosphere. As a result, Europe’s de facto capital has been struggling to attract the kind of talent that would happily flock to more inspiring places, such as Paris or Amsterdam. Maybe even Bonn would have been a better choice.

François Mitterrand in 1983 at China’s Great hall of the people, in Beijing | Gabriel Duval/AFP via Getty Images

5. François Mitterand

There are quite a few people who’ve been given the moniker “Father of the euro.” (The mother of the euro wasn’t around when the currency was conceived.) Most of these fathers were economists. But Europe’s single currency was predominantly a political project, not an economic one — and blaming economists for its failings is missing the point. François Mitterand, the charismatic French president, knew a lot about the art of political intrigue and far less about monetary policy. Looking to subdue the strong Deutschmark (which he called “Germany’s force de frappe,” or nuclear weapon), he kept pushing for a single currency — and found an ally in German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, also more of a political animal than an economic one.

When the Berlin Wall fell and Kohl needed international support for Germany’s reunification, the French president, allegedly, negotiated a quid pro quo, convincing the Germans to give up the Deutschmark. But the father of the euro did not live long enough to see that things wouldn’t go according to plan. The German economy flourished in the eurozone, the French one didn’t, and the EU, as a whole, would have been better off without its wayward child.

6. Antigone Loudiadis

This list of villains would be incomplete without at least one specimen of the scheming investment banker. Our candidate goes by the name of Antigone Loudiadis. Accordingly, there’s a whiff of Greek drama to her story. Loudiadis was a whip-smart Goldman Sachs banker and worked with Costas Simitis’ government back in the early noughts, when the Greeks were desperately seeking to join the eurozone. The Anglo-Greek banker was instrumental, allegedly, in devising complex derivative trades to hide the country’s true debt level. In a Sophocles play, our heroine would have met a terrible fate, perhaps buried alive and mourned by a chorus of elderly Thebans. In contemporary Europe, she lived happily ever after, eventually founding a London-based insurance company and running it as CEO.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

7. The unnamed EU official

There are some 50,000 people working for the EU, depending on how you count. Though their names can be looked up in the organization’s vast databases, they mostly toil in anonymity, and the vast majority of EU citizens would likely not be able to name a single commissioner. In the popular imagination, Brussels has become a present-day version of Kafka’s castle, dominated by faceless paper pushers who work for opaque entities called DG something-or-other and invent regulations concerning the length of cucumbers.

That sentiment may not do justice to what unnamed EU officials actually do. But what do they do? It’s safe to say that the EU hasn’t done enough to capture the hearts and minds of the people. There’s no stylish image campaign, no employee-of-the-month program, not even a Pirelli calendar with sexy bureaucrats posing in attractive office cubicles.

Boris Johnson at St Paul’s Cathedral in London | WPA pool photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images

8. Boris Johnson

They say the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane somewhere thousands of miles away. In the early 1990s, Boris Johnson (the butterfly in this case) was the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Brussels — and an early exponent of a literary genre called the “Euromyth.” One such Euromyth, headlined “Delors plans to rule Europe,” was read in far-away Denmark where the Danes were holding a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. In Johnson’s telling (not to be trusted, of course), the Telegraph story mysteriously tipped the balance, triggering a Nej and leading to all kinds of repercussions that still reverberate today. What’s more, the incident sold Johnson on the fun of flapping his wings, which he did to even greater effect in early 2016 when he joined the Vote Leave campaign, eventually effecting a tornado called Brexit. If Johnson has his way, he’ll enter the history books as the only man who ruined the EU not once, but twice.

9. The Swabian housewife

Rumors that the Germans are making sacrificial offerings to a deity called the Swabian housewife are probably exaggerated. But Chancellor Angela Merkel did invoke the German goddess of austerity when the financial crisis hit, saying that, like the Swabian housewife, she thinks one shouldn’t live beyond one’s means. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is a believer, too, stubbornly opposing debt relief and stimulus programs. Keynesian economists countered by coining the term “Swabian-housewife fallacy.” They argue that what makes sense on an individual level, meaning personal finances, can wreak havoc in international politics, meaning the EU. (But then again, some EU governments could have used a tad of that Swabish housewifeliness in the run-up to the euro crisis.)

Belgian soccer player Jean-Marc Bosman at the European Court of Justice in December 1995 | STF/AFP via Getty Images

10. Jean-Marc Bosman

This Belgian football player didn’t have much of a career. He stopped playing in his twenties, was sentenced to jail for assault and now lives unemployed and underfunded in Liège. Nevertheless, Bosman had more of an impact on European club football than any other player around. In the early 1990s, when his contract had lapsed, he sued his Belgian club for, effectively, not letting him go. The case went to the European Court of Justice, which ruled that clubs cannot demand transfer fees when contracts have expired. The court also decided that quotas restricting the number of EU foreigners in club teams had to go.

All of that made sense from a legal perspective. But football fans only see what happened as a result: sky-high salaries and transfer fees for star players, a handful of elite clubs who came to tower above the rest, club teams composed entirely of non-nationals. The fans feel that football had been taken away from them. Most of them vent their anger against the evil forces of globalization, liberalization and commercialization. But those in the know blame Bosman — and EU law.

11. Viktor Orbán

What was Angela Merkel thinking when she opened the German borders to refugees in September 2015? Critics charged the German chancellor with failing to consult with the rest of the bloc before she made her decision, and with aggravating a refugee crisis that has threatened to tear Europe apart. What is often overlooked is that Merkel didn’t act entirely of her own volition. The Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán put refugees on buses heading for Austria and Germany — and tricked the chancellor into taking an idealistic stand on migration. There would have been no German Willkommenskultur without Hungarian idegengyülölet, or xenophobia.

Signature of the Treaty of Rome on March 25, 1957 | AFP via Getty Images

12. The Treaty of Rome

Rome stood at the beginning of a proliferation of treaties. Keeping track of what exactly was agreed upon in Nice, Maastricht, Lisbon and elsewhere has become increasingly difficult. There have simply been too many meetings and too many documents named after too many cities. If EU leaders keep meeting like this, we’ll eventually have the Toledo Treaty and the Clermont-Ferrand Regulations. Incidentally, Rome is also where the principle of the “ever-closer union” first popped up. Entire dissertations have been written in defense of that idea. Indeed, closer reading shows that, according to the document, only the European people were meant to engage in “ever-closer union,” not (necessarily) governments, central banks or entire armies. But somehow “ever-closer union” became a synonym for the EU’s self-aggrandizement anyway.

Now that Britain is leaving, a little more modesty wouldn’t hurt. So here’s an idea: EU leaders could meet again next weekend, have some more wine and solemnly agree that their utmost goal is to keep the European people “from drifting ever-further apart.” That sounds about right and not too fancy. All that’s needed is a suitable name. How about the Pinot Grigio Declaration?

'Policing For Profit' Goes To The Next Level

Submitted by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

It’s bad enough getting arrested – especially when you didn’t do anything to warrant it. This happens all the time, because the the threshold for arresting someone is very low. It can be done by any cop, pretty much anytime – without much in the way of legal justification. He has the gun – and the handcuffs, after all. If he wants to arrest you, he will arrest you. Maybe the courts will sort it out later; eventually you are released, your record “cleared.”

This isn’t new – or news.

What is new – and ought to be news – is that several states have begun charging people “processing” and “incarceration” fees for their bogus arrest and subsequent just-as-bogus caging.

Minnesota and Kentucky are among the states that levy fees on people who are merely arrested and taken to the clink… even if they are never convicted of anything. In some cases, the people being charged for “services” rendered are never formally charged with any crime (which is something a prosecutor must do; a cop hasn’t got the power to do more than arrest you on suspicion of violating a statute).

It’s policing for profit taken to the next (entirely predictable) level.

Why not, after all?

Most states already have “just take it” laws on the books that empower cops to simply seize cash and other property prior to any judicial proceeding  – and to keep it, even if there never is a judicial proceeding.

The mere fact that you have “excessive” cash on your person is sufficient legal justification in many states to result in its forfeiture – until you prove to their satisfaction it wasn’t “drug” money.

It is not their burden to establish… anything.

Franz Kafka, phone home.

We also have the equally egregious precedent of for-profit enforcement of traffic laws – coincident with the suspension (or at least, the watering down) of any semblance of procedural innocent-until-proved guilty. Cities and counties contract with a private company (the notorious Redflex being the chief profiteer) to install automated red light and speed cameras that chuck tickets to offenders automatically, via the mail – with the offender presumed guilty until he proves himself innocent.

The ticket is sent to the registered owner of the vehicle – who is not necessarily the person who was driving when the camera snapped the photo of the car’s plates and chucked a ticket to the owner. But the owner must prove it wasn’t him – as opposed to the former necessity of the state/county having to prove it was.

Meanwhile, pay up.

So it’s not surprising that states have decided to begin charging people for charging them – that is, accusing them of something. There’s even more potential profit in this since a cop can arrest anyone at any time – just about.

The evidentiary bar has been set extremely low – and whole categories of “crime” have been confected or defined so loosely (e.g., “disorderly conduct,” “interfering” with a law enforcer) as to make an arrest almost a matter of whim.

Now add a profit motive to the mix.

In economic terms, hanging a dollar sign on every citizen within handcuffing range of a cop is an incentive to handcuff as many citizens as possible. They are, after all, paying customers.

Can arrest quotas be far behind? Remember, many state/county cops already have ticket quotas, precisely because of the profit motive. And note that, in some states, even if you successfully fight a traffic ticket, you are still hit with a “processing” fee which you must pay – or else.

So it’s no surprise that Colorado doesn’t give money (fines and restitution levied) back to people whose convictions have been overturned.

Soon, the Unelected Nine (the Supreme Court) will weigh in on the “constitutionality” of this business.  A case headed their way involves a man named Corey Statham, who was arrested in Ramsey County, MN and charged with “disorderly conduct.” He was taken to the clink but released after the charges against him were dropped.

His money, however, was not released.

He was charged a $25 “booking fee” and other assorted “processing” fees by his gaolers. He is contesting this theft under color of law on the basis that he wasn’t convicted of any crime, hence why should he be punished?

The Unelected Nine are not likely to be sympathetic, having previously legitimated assault and battery upon the Fourth and Fifth as well as other amendments. For example, the ex-constitutional requirement that the accused be presumed innocent until proved guilty (in a court of law) has been gotten rid of by declaring things like automated red light/speeding tickets to be mere administrative affairs. Since there’s no prospect of jail time, you (the accused) lose the right to your day in court, including your ex-right to confront your accuser. Instead, you may be allowed to file some kind of written appeal, which may or may not be read by anyone – who may or may not be interested in anything you have to say.

And – naturlich – you must pay first and regardless. Red Queen style. Maybe they’ll give you your money back. Probably not.

It’s dirty pool, old man.

And the game is getting more serious.

But there is an upside. The fools have showed us their hand. It is clear now to all but the terminally stupid what’s up – and why. We see behind the curtain and know what the man is up to.

It isn’t coincidental that contempt for law enforcement is no longer a feeling felt only by the criminal class. The working and middle classes understand that it’s not about their “safety.”

Or the “safety” of the cops, either.

It’s about separating them from their money using any means necessary. About abusing them as badly as any Redcoat, those many years ago. Which brings up the line in the Declaration about sending hither “swarms of officers” to “eat out their substance.”

Rings a bell, doesn’t it?