A Construction Drill Provides A Martial Law Drill

Construction Drill Provides A Martial Law Drill

Capitol shutdown highlights manic panic of post-9/11 mentality[align=left]Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.tv | May 29 2006

The over hyped false alarm of a construction drill that caused a mass panic over rumors of gunshots in the Rayburn Building on Friday and the way in which it was reported by the servile media was a means of indoctrinating Americans to the procedure of martial law lock down of a major city.

Following reports of gunfire in the Rayburn Building, House members were ordered to stay inside and shut all the doors. Parts of the Capitol complex, including the Capitol itself, were locked down during the height of the search.

Police went door to door inside the buildings as an FBI SWAT team ordered House members to put their hands on their heads and frog marched them out of a committee room and through a metal detector.

Two women reported a man with a gun inside a Rayburn gym as another panicked and had to be taken to hospital. The gunman turned out to be a plain clothed police officer and the source of the 'gunfire' was an air hammer or a pneumatic drill being used in construction work on nearby elevator.

The construction drill created the perfect mandate for another type of drill, that of authoritarian martial law city shutdown. The opportunity to parade SWAT teams, sniffer dogs, police with assault weapons and armed FBI tactical units wearing flak jackets did not go to waste.

Americans were told in no uncertain terms that in times of crisis, the men in black uniforms enforcing mandatory relocation and quarantines were here to help.

Fox News were salivating over the non-incident to the same degree that they rubbed their hands over the Pentagon tape flop. After two and a half hours of continual coverage and with it becoming blindingly obvious that there was no shooting incident, Fox told its viewers that they were seeing "our government work and work the way it is supposed to do," despite the fact that the lurking enemy to which our omnipotent government was responding was nothing more than a work tool.

As News Hounds pointed out, Fox was not going let an opportunity to showcase the police state go to waste.

"Why did Fox News stick with blanket coverage so long, preempting its regular coverage? Fox News loves pictures of people in uniforms with guns. Such images reinforce the perception that Americans live in constant danger and must keep the growing police state atmosphere in place regardless of the cost in terms of civil liberties. In other words, "See what could happen, America? This is why the government needs to spy on you, track your phone calls, and who knows what else. We're here to protect you."

Fox's Catherine Herridge even went so far as to say that the whole incident was a learning curve for terrorists to judge police reaction. The pounding fear-driven specter of terrorists, alarm and panic was carefully interwoven into what otherwise was a complete non-event.

Following the confirmation that the whole charade was a false alarm, Fox relentlessly pressed on and bizarrely interlinked the concept of jailing reporters who publish sensitive information with misinterpreted construction noises.

Regular panics and false alarms plague the House and Senate complex and the frenzy and trepidation of the scare is always paraded across television networks to full effect.

In May 2004 US News and World Report and others reported that the US election could be cancelled in the event of a terror attack on the Capitol Building in Washington. The magazine said that White House officials were under a "working premise" that an attack was inevitable and that it was "going to happen." It was reported that the administration was conducting secret antiterrorism exercises in preparation for this scenario.

So it follows that on June 10 2004, the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court were evacuated when a small plane entered restricted airspace during the funeral procession of former President Ronald Reagan.

The terror and consternation was encapsulated by a Washington Post report on the incident.

Scores of members of Congress and thousands of staffers poured out the doors as police officers shouted, "This is not a drill!"

"As they fled, some people dropped briefcases and women flung off high heels. Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), said police told people to "run, get out of the Capitol," because of the "imminent" approach of an airplane.

Nearby on the Mall, U.S. Park Police and Capitol Police ordered people to flee. "Do not stop," officers yelled. "Keep moving."

"Ladies and gentlemen, let's move like our lives depend on it. I mean it!" a D.C. police officer screamed."

Similar alarms occurred again in 2004 and 2005, providing the media with images of panic-stricken politicians and others running from the Capitol as armed SWAT teams swarmed around barking orders, invoking memories of people clamoring to escape the wave of dust on New York City streets as the twin towers collapsed on 9/11.

These scenes have become the archetype for the post-9/11 American security obsessed mentality and they are being ceaselessly recreated in order to inculcate Americans with a sense of dread and a prevailing message that in times of emergency, whether real or manufactured, the government is your boss and you will follow their every order, no matter how brutal, in order to ensure everyone's safety.
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Fox News: Capitol Alert Shows Government Works!

News Hounds | May 29 2006

Now that authorities have determined the "incident" at the Rayburn Office Building on Friday (May 26, 2006) was due to a Republican lawmaker over-reacting to the sounds of construction, the political agenda of Fox News' coverage of the non-event is more obvious. One item on the Fox News' "to-do" list: Make the Republican-run government look good.

"Dayside" programming was pre-empted during the event, even though the event had gone on for more than two and a half hours and it was becoming increasingly obvious that there was no shooting incident. Fox News stuck with its blanket coverage, even though as Fred Barnes, of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News regular, told viewers, "I'm hearing that nothing happened."

As Brad Blakeman, of the Fox News D.C. Bureau, told anchor Bill Hemmer at one point: "What youâ??re seeing here is something we all can be proud of, whether this is an actual incident or not. Weâ??re seeing our government work and work the way it is supposed to do. Itâ??s efficient, itâ??s sure, and it gives peace of mind to every citizen of the United States that we have these type of precautions.â?�

In other words, government is not screwing up as it did after Katrina. See, Republicans really can keep us safe.

Given that there was no incident at all, there was no natural disaster to deal with, no disruption in power or communications, why shouldn't things have gone smoothly? No one was shooting at them. Nobody was hiding from them. It basically was a drill. It's like a football team scrimmaging with only the offense. Shouldn't they score on every series?

Even after it was obvious nothing was going on, Catherine Herridge kept playing the terrorism card. "It's a learning opportunity for a terrorist organization," she said, claiming terrorists watch such incidents to learn how police react, what equipment they bring in, and so on. The message: Continue to be afraid, even though there is nothing to be afraid of in this particular incident.

By the next day, the public knew that the entire incident was prompted by a skittish Republican congressman. As Rep. H. James Saxton admited to Fox News, "I was on the elevator going down to my car, I heard what I thought to be between 6 and 10 shots."

As The New York Times reported in a story in Saturday's editions: "'The cause of the loud sound appears to have come from construction workers in the area during the course of their routine work,' said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a spokeswoman for the Capitol Police."

Why did Fox News stick with blanket coverage so long, preempting its regular coverage? Fox News loves pictures of people in uniforms with guns. Such images reinforce the perception that Americans live in constant danger and must keep the growing police state atmosphere in place regardless of the cost in terms of civil liberties. In other words, "See what could happen, America? This is why the government needs to spy on you, track your phone calls, and who knows what else. We're here to protect you."

Yeah, right.

Almost seamlessly, Fox News integrated the concept of jailing reporters who published leaked classified information into its coverage of the non-event on the Capitol by interviewing right-wing lawyer John Eastman of Chapman Law School in Orange, California. Eastman, a former clerk for Clarence Thomas, testified at a House hearing on the issue while the lockdown was going on.

"Things that are published on the front pages of The New York Times or aired on one of the networks are immediately available to our enemies, and weâ??ve got to be very careful about giving tactical information in an on-going war operation to our enemies. It would severely undermine our efforts," he said. "It's important that we start enforcing laws on classified information that we have.

"The notion that individual citizens or members or the media get to just ignore the law when in their judgment something was improperly classified or we ought to have more of a public debate about it, is really to undermine the very notion of a rule of law in this country."

Which I'm sure means he supports the investigation into who in the White House leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the news media.

Yeah, right

it's the culmination of these thousands of (mostly) fake drills preparing us for martial law.

there was a fake nuclear spill in Austin in '99 i think...i was driving back from houston one night with my friend, and it was about midnight and we were on 35 going back to the dorms, and there was a traffic jam...backed up for miles...

they went on tv and said there was some kind of nuclear accident, people started freaking out because we were told it was real...then they announce, oh yeah, that was just a drill...

there's been more in Austin, and thousands across the country.

fake bio spills, chemical attacks, drills where cops search buses and call out the special forces, now a fucking gun (actually a jackhammer) goes off and a slave sees a god with a gun (a plain clothes cop) and freaks out so they lockdown 140+ schools in the entire city, the nice men in black masks stop congressman from talking to the media...new freedom.

this is preparing us for the martial law that's going to keep us safe after the inevitable terrorist attack we're told is going to happen, and unless enough people refuse or enough people wake up to the lies, i don't even want to think about what's going to happen to this country...

Kiss the rest of your freedoms goodbye. The government knows what's best for us worker ants.