NATO occupies sweet home Chicago

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
May 19, 2012

So the anthem now goes something like this: C’mon, baby don’t you wanna go/back to that same old place/sweet home ring of steel Chicago.

Robert Johnson must be spitting fire in his bluesy grave because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), for its 25th summit, is occupying Chicago like it was Kabul – with Americans treated as concentric circles of Taliban. The Department of Homeland Security has branded the summit a “National Special Security Event”; that means the Secret Service, in practice, has taken over Chicago.

It’s lockdown time – complete with Iraq-style concrete barriers; battalions sporting upgraded riot gear; “extraction teams” to snatch and grab pinpointed protesters in a “low intensity conflict” environment; and an Orwellian guest star, the LRAD (long-range acoustic device) – a sound cannon bound to “ensure a consistent message is delivered to large crowds”, according to the Chicago Police Department.

It sounds like a zany remake of John Landis’s immortal The Blues Brothers. So what role would US President Barack Obama, the Drone Godfather, play? Aretha Franklin singing Think ? Or Godfather of Soul James Brown leading the gospel choir to “see the light”? Obama, after all, is on a Mission from God himself – the MC of the militarization of Chicago mirroring NATO’s militarization of the planet.

Full article here

This article was posted: Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 3:57 am

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