Military Helicopters Buzz Berkeley

The past two days two large military troop transport helicopters have been conducting low flying maneuvers. Not since the days of the Free Speech era have we seen such military maneuvers over our peaceful city. Blowing, buzzing and rumbling their way across the many canyons of the
affluent hills, it would appear of no small significance that these burgeoning dual prop
troop transports happened to center their otherwise unexplained violations
of civilian airspace on the one place that has made the town world famous as a
cultural Mecca for the values and principles so renown to appose those of the
militarists and their killing machines. No, the reference here is not to the University.
That institution, itself a bastion of the "military industrial complex" about which
Eisenhower so sternly warned, is not a place of peace and love to be sure.
hence, a flight path that centered on the campus might well have been
appropriate for the occasion.
Instead, the mighty, roaring choppers chose as their destination the
vestige turf of a bygone era that served in its time as the very geographic epicenter
of all that went on in that long ago time of protest. The center of celebration to be sure,
this single parcel of land--to this day proudly named "Peoples' Park"--
served also in its time as a primary venue for confrontation.
These peculiar and grotesque machines--vultures of war--
circled about the grounds, round and round,
barely a couple of hundred feet off the ground. Round and round, for approximately
twenty minutes each day they made their menacing rounds.
A tremendous disruption for those in the immediate vicinity,
and certainly as "newsworthy" a series of incidents as has occurred in the region
this past week, to be sure. "Newsworthy" by any objective journalistic standard,
the story has strangely failed to make the pages of the local papers, and likewise
makes no appearance in local broadcasts on TV and radio.
Not even Pacifica's renown anti-military and putative leftist radio station
KPFA has appeared with so much as a peep about the peculiar
and ominous events. A very suspicious and deafening silence to be sure,
one can only ponder the degree of covert control, delegated to the ground
level of every major media outlet in the land. All in tandem, engaging
in an apparent black out...or so one might infer.
Of course, one might also suspect the onset of total civic zombification.
A quick run through the Google hits about the events yields a shocking pittance
of entries. Corporate press evasion is matched by civilian somnambulance.
Neither videos nor photos of the actual events have made it to the web.
Commentaries by concerned citizens number--as of the time of this writing--
at no more than two. Really, the numbers are that low. By inference,
one may infer the mental state of the local civic population.
A huge and historic event, itself pointedly contrived in a manner that can
only suggest the intent of incitement on behalf of a most
craven kind of right wing revenge, and by way of response, the crowd
targeted by the grotesque spectacle barely flinches. the passivity of silence
and evasion rules the day. A penchant for protest noted long ago,
lost forever it would appear,
a new historic milestone has been set.
and it's not cause for optimism.
Barely a remark made, it's as if we are all asleep at the civic wheel.
A silence more ominous than the whirring of the dual prop chopper blades themselves,
we see the great beast that for so long has sought to disguise its authentic
predatory nature by way of the dawning of the proverbial sheep's clothing,
finally emerging in the naked light of day, bearing fangs and making no
effort at false pretense. benign intent is not to be found here.
Paramilitary overflights bearing
down on Berkeley's historic bastion of freedom, running round and round
about the park, signaling, speaking by way of the symbolic,
and getting up in our collective civic face with a most appalling implication;
that the endtime is near, that OUR endtime is near. That the Beast is on the hunt
and "freedom" is its designated prey.
how else to regard a spectacle of copters and crowds?
the entire motif portrays us in a state of
abject, Orwellian decline. It's no wonder nobody's talking.
You'd have to be crazy to think that such a thing could
happen in Berkeley California, in broad daylight, with all manner of folk around.
And yet it did. something so terrible and ominous, that event itself goes unremarked.
unspeakable as it may seem; we'd all do well to raise our ostrich heads from
the sands of cognitive evasion and denial; we ought to aknowledge plainly that
the chips are down, that
the times of renewed social confrontation are at hand. The times are "a-changin'" alright,
"blowing in the wind" of chopper blades and the willful ignorance of those
who insist on keeping "eyes wide shut" while swimming in a not so proverbial
river called the Nile. same as it ever was.