Comply, or else

I've been meaning to write something about this post from Glenn Greenwald on the surreal news that Army troops will be deployed here in the U.S. for, among other things, crowd control in what seems to be a direct violation of Posse Comitatus. An Army Times article has some of the details. This is when the water gets hot enough to truly boil us frogs.

However, I couldn't do better than to direct you to Digby's extraordinary addition to the discussion:

So men who've been fighting in Iraq will now be armed with tasers on the streets of the United States. You can be fairly sure that after what they've been trained for they'll believe that tasering someone is completely benign. After all, you get up again.

But as bad as putting more tasers on the streets, there's an even worse possibility.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

I think you have to wonder if this is what they might be talking about:

The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds.

Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling. [...]

It can penetrate clothes, suddenly heating up the skin of anyone in its path to 50C.

But it penetrates the skin only to a tiny depth - enough to cause discomfort but no lasting harm, according to the military.

A Reuters journalist who volunteered to be shot with the beam described the sensation as similar to a blast from a very hot oven - too painful to bear without diving for cover.

But that's not all! Raytheon is also developing a "non-lethal" weapon for the Army -- "Silent Guardian." Here's a description Digby found on Silent Guardian's effectiveness:

When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings.

It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile.

Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury.

But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonising sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about. [...]

Silent Guardian is supposed to be the 21st century equivalent of tear gas or water cannon - a way of getting crowds to disperse quickly and with minimum harm. Its potential is obvious. [...]

This machine has the ability to inflict limitless, unbearable pain.

What makes it OK, says Raytheon, is that the pain stops as soon as you are out of the beam or the machine is turned off.

And still that's not all. Read about the Pulsed Energy Projectile weapon, designed to raise bubbles of superhot gas on the skin of people up to a mile and a half away. This is the stuff of conspiracy thrillers and bad sci-fi movies of authoritarian dystopias run amok.

There has never been a weapon invented (outside of some WMD) that hasn't been used. And the supposed "non-lethality" of these weapons assures that they'll be used in "crowd control," i.e., dispersing political protesters. "Free speech zones" aren't nearly as satisfactory as zapping the fucking hippy traitor bastards.

And if you get trampled to death in the stampede, or your eyes get permanently burned by superheated contact lenses, or your pacemaker goes haywire -- well, that just serves you right for hating America. That'll teach all you malcontents to stay at home and STFU.

This is America in the 21st Century. Paid for by our tax dollars. Who will stop this madness and how?