When Should You Shoot a Cop

The New Defense Bill May Give Veteran's Affairs Right To Deny Vets Gun Ownership

Business Insider

Courtesy of Maine State Police

GUNS, GUNS, GUNS!!!

Now that I have your attention…

The new Defense Bill, which has a fight going due to the desire of a few politicians to, get this, protect Veterans’ rights by amending the bill.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, in all its glorious wisdom, believes in having the right to place the names of Veterans who are said to be of a certain mental state into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. This prevents anyone whose name is in the database from purchasing a firearm anywhere that conducts background checks. Furthermore, it prevents those who live under the same roof of that Veteran from owning or purchasing a firearm, as well.


There are several layers worth of stupid to peel back on this one.

First, here’s the most common argument for this kind of legislation: “hey, I’m all for gun ownership, but if someone is ruled mentally incompetent, they shouldn’t be allowed that responsibility … ”  While that may seem reasonable on the surface, it’s a flawed premise for multiple reasons.

One, who judges whether a person is mentally incompetent or not? It’s one thing to have a trained psychiatrist make that claim; it’s entirely another for a counselor to put down “PTSD” on someone’s chart and have that end up in the bureaucratic black hole of the VA—a system that can’t process your claim in any reasonable amount of time but you can bet your a** they will fast-track your file to a background investigation unit.

Two, if a person is ruled incompetent by a psychiatrist, shouldn’t he or sh
e, perhaps, just maybe, have a say in it? We have these things called “courts” you see…

That is exactly what Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is fighting for currently. He wants Veterans to have their day in court before their “fundamental right given under the Constitution” is taken away, and is proposing amendments to the Defense Bill providing for that very thing.

But that’s not how things are now. Under the current system, a Veteran can lose their right to own a firearm simply by receiving a PTSD diagnosis and having it handed over to the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) or their name placed in the national criminal database. And therein lays the bigger issue in this topic that needs to be addressed.

I don’t care how psychologically troubled a veteran is; I don’t care if they can’t tie their own shoes anymore; I don’t care if they can’t pay their own bills; I don’t care if they can’t feed themselves; I don’t care if they are being fed from a tube or if they are in a wheel chair:


NONE OF THESE THINGS IN ANY WAY MAKES THEM CRIMINALS.

This, my friends, is why any discussion on this topic is completely flawed from the beginning—the very fact that there is a “criminal database” that someone’s name would go into prior to them ever committing a crime is demonstrably wrong on both the ethical and Civil Rights levels of government. The idea that a Veteran—someone who has sacrificed for their country—would be labeled as a criminal for doing nothing other than that sacrifice is an injustice, to be sure. Yet somehow, when concerning the topic of the Second Amendment, that injustice is seen as perfectly reasonable.

The Police State Looms Larger

Daily Bell

Watch 2 Canadians Discover That The US Is Now A Police State ... Welcome to Amerika! Exactly when did she become a police state? "We don't need any grounds. We're the United States" ... These jack boots understand the climate they create with such REPREHENSIBLE behavior! Then they JUDGE YOU on how polite you are? While millions pour across Mexican border ILLEGALLY, Canadians must beware of attempting to LEGALLY go shopping in the US? ...You hear the officer admit that HE recorded. In a free country a person arrested has a right to demand the evidence. – YouTube

Dominant Social Theme: We are protecting you from yourself.

Free-Market Analysis: This is basically an "audio" video but it is probable you won't mind the lack of pictures. It's quite compelling and makes a strong point about what is really going on.

Still, many people don't quite "get it." But what these individuals are experiencing is neither random nor coincidental. There is a very clear pattern to what's taking place in the West these days.

These are policies that have been put in place determinedly and with malice aforethought. The dominant social theme has to do with "terrorism" – a very vague word.

George Orwell predicted it long ago. The powers-that-be are creating a world where anyone can be placed under suspicion at any time. It's all about maximizing control. This is the reason for the "war on terror."

Bin Laden probably died ten years ago. There are plenty of questions about what happened on 9/11 – and the "official" narrative makes little sense. There was no reason for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and as we often point out, the current wars in the Middle East make little sense, either.

The only way any of this DOES make sense is as a kind of directed history. Bit by bit a meme has been constructed that justifies any and every authoritarian action. Each of us is a potential terrorist, after all. And everyone needs to be tracked and spied upon.

The future of our civilization, such as it is, can be heard on this audio-video. But it is not the only "future," of course; we are convinced there are other ones. The people planning this kind of authoritarianism didn't count on what we call the Internet Reformation.

Remember that while you listen to this. Nothing is predetermined. You can take your own human action. Increasingly, people will.

'Another One Bites the Dust'

Daily Bell

Noel Polanco, Unarmed Man Killed By NYPD, Was National Guardsman ... An unarmed 22-year-old man shot and killed by a New York City police officer during a traffic stop in Queens Thursday morning was a member of the New York Army National Guard, authorities said. Police said Noel Polanco was speeding and driving erratically near LaGuardia Airport just after 5 a.m. when he was pulled over by officers. New York Police Department sources initially told news outlets that as two officers approached the car, Polanco reached under his seat, prompting Detective Hassam Handy to shoot him once in the stomach. Polanco died shortly after being taken to a nearby hospital. – Huffington Post

Dominant Social Theme: Police officers are serious people and crime is a serious occurrence. In America, you can die even if you just go a little bit over the speed limit, or if law enforcement believes you might have been doing so.

Free-Market Analysis: This is a sad article posted at the Huffington Post but we have given this article a foolish and insensitive title to show how easy it is to get inured to this kind of police brutality.

There is no other description for it but "brutality." Over and over – almost every day now, it seems – there comes some report of an officer of the law shooting someone who has been stopped for a potential infraction as minor as a traffic ticket.

In too many cases, the individual is proven to have not actually done anything confrontational. The gun the individual was reaching for, or knife, or whatever, turns out not to exist. Yet these people bleed to death, or go into shock and die, or have heart attacks from tasers.

One is simply left with a series of victims commemorated often on YouTube. But what is even sadder is that while an initial video report goes up – or in this case an article is written – the follow-up is lacking.

We never find out about the officers themselves. Almost invariably they are placed on "desk duty" while an investigation is marshaled. But it is hard to find out the results of such investigations. It is hard to find out the aftermath of any of it.

Are the officers disciplined? Are they sent back out into the community to murder again? It IS murder, after all. There is no other word for it.

Civilians can spend the rest of their lives in jail if they shoot and kill someone. But officers who kill may be given back their guns, tasers and badges and released from their desks to go back out into the community. Presumably, this takes place if it can be reasonably shown the officer was in fear for his life.
Another one bites the dust ... like a bad pop song. Meaningless. Lives are destroyed ... for what? We are so inured to it that it barely registers.

Someone was stopped for speeding. Imagine dying because you were driving "too fast." Realistically, it doesn't even matter. Many studies have proven that driving quickly does little if anything to increase mortality and that enforcing low speed limits is basically a waste of time. Talk about a meaningless death. Here's some more from the article:

No weapons were recovered from the car, but a hand drill was found under the driver's seat, police said. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Thursday afternoon that a passenger in the car described as false the initial account that Polanco reached under the seat.

"The last thing she saw was his hands on the steering wheel," Browne told The New York Post. The shooting is now under investigation by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, a spokeswoman for his office confirmed.
Amanda Reyes, Polanco's sister, was shaken when reached by The Huffington Post on her brother's cell phone. She said her father had died earlier this year. "I already lost my father three months ago, and now my brother?" Reyes said. "There's nothing to say. I have nothing to say. I just feel hurt. There's only hurt."

According to an Army spokesman, Polanco enlisted in the New York Army National Guard in April 2008 and was assigned to the 156th Engineer Company out of Kingston, N.Y. He did not serve in Iraq or Afghanistan and had no record of misbehavior. He lived in LeFrak City in Queens.

Perhaps Polanco did mean to assault the officer with a drill. But probably not. He died because an officer thought he was driving too fast. He was shot because an officer supposedly misinterpreted his gesture – though the only witness says Polanco's hands remained on the wheel.

We cover the memes of the elite. Our theory – borne out by research and reporting – is that these dominant social themes are meant to scare people into giving up wealth and power to globalist facilities. The idea is to create world government.

In the past decade, what we call the Internet Reformation has made it much more difficult, in our view, for thesepower elite to propagate these promotions.

As a result, they've turned to three historical tools: War, economic ruin and regulatory authoritarianism.
From our point of view, the rising tide of police violence and brutality is no accident. It is being orchestrated to make people fearful and confused.

The idea is to make people so cowed by "officers of the law" that they will put up with almost anything – any degradation of freedom – to avoid being maimed or killed.

Even more perniciously, this sort of brutality acts as a kind of divide-and-conquer mechanism. People begin to doubt that they can have any impact on "their" communities and cease to believe they have the ability to affect public policy.

Their own civic enterprises become estranged from them. Their law enforcement officials become a kind of occupying force for the larger central government.

Enough police brutality erodes our ability to feel shock. It sends a message that we are insignificant beings in the scheme of things, that our lives are forfeit on the whim of authority. But what is even more worrisome is that such acts of violence erode the bonds of civil society itself.

Conclusion: Police are taught to believe the public at large carries within itself the ever-present seeds of incipient criminality. Citizens increasingly feel isolated by the very organs of government once created to keep them safe.

Marine Corps Creates Law Enforcement Battalions

Global Research

Julie Watson

The Marine Corps has created its first law enforcement battalions - a lean, specialized force of military police officers that it hopes can quickly deploy worldwide to help investigate crimes from terrorism to drug trafficking and train fledgling security forces in allied nations.

The Corps activated three such battalions last month. Each is made up of roughly 500 military police officers and dozens of dogs. The Marine Corps has had police battalions off and on since World War II but they were primarily focused on providing security, such as accompanying fuel convoys or guarding generals on visits to dangerous areas, said Maj. Jan Durham, commander of the 1st Law Enforcement Battalion at Camp Pendleton.

The idea behind the law enforcement battalions is to consolidate the military police and capitalize on their investigative skills and police training, he said. The new additions come as every branch in the military is trying to show its flexibility and resourcefulness amid defense cuts.

Marines have been increasingly taking on the role of a street cop along with their combat duties over the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they have been in charge of training both countries' security forces. Those skills now can be used as a permanent part of the Marine Corps, Durham said.

The war on terror has also taught troops the importance of learning how to gather intelligence, secure evidence and assist local authorities in building cases to take down criminal networks. Troops have gotten better at combing raid sites for clues to help them track insurgents.

They also have changed their approach, realizing that marching into towns to show force alienates communities. Instead, they are being taught to fan out with interpreters to strike up conversations with truck drivers, money exchangers, cellphone sellers and others. The rapport building can net valuable information that could even alert troops about potential attacks.

But no group of Marines is better at that kind of work than the Corps' military police, who graduate from academies just like civilian cops, Durham said. He said the image of military police patrolling base to ticket Marines for speeding or drinking has limited their use in the Corps. He hopes the creation of the battalions will change that, although analysts say only the future will tell whether the move is more than just a rebranding of what already existed within the Corps.

The battalions will be capable of helping control civil disturbances, handling detainees, carrying out forensic work, and using biometrics to identify suspects. Durham said they could assist local authorities in allied countries in securing crime scenes and building cases so criminals end up behind bars and not back out on the streets because of mistakes.

"Over the past 11 years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, some lessons learned painfully, there has been a growing appreciation and a demand for, on the part of the warfighter, the unique skills and capabilities that MPs bring to the fight," Durham said. "We do enforce traffic laws and we do write reports and tickets, and that's good, but we do so much more than that."

Durham said the Marine Corps plans to show off its new battalions in Miami later this month at a conference put on by the Southern Command and that is expected to be attended by government officials from Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize.

Defense analyst Loren Thompson said the battalions make sense given the nature of today's global threats, which include powerful drug cartels and other criminal gangs that often mix with religious and political extremists, who use the profits to buy their weaponry.

"This is a smart idea because the biggest single problem the Marines have in dealing with low-intensity types of threats is that they basically are trained to kill people," he said. "It's good for the Marines to have skills that allow them to contain threats without creating casualties."

Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor and judge who teaches law of war at Georgetown University, said Marines have already been doing this kind of work for years but now that it has been made more formal by the creation of the battalions, it could raise a host of questions, especially on the use of force. The law of war allows for fighters to use deadly force as a first resort, while police officers use it as a last resort.

If Marines are sent in to do law enforcement but are attacked, will they go back to being warfighters? And if so, what are the implications? Solis asked.

"Am I a Marine or a cop? Can I be both?" he said. "Cops apply human rights law and Marines apply the law of war. Now that it's blended, it makes it tougher for the young men and women who have to make the decision as to when deadly force is not appropriate."

Durham said that military police understand that better than any Marine since they are trained in both.

"They are very comfortable with the escalation of force," he said. "MPs get that. It's fundamental to what we do."

POLICE STATE USA: The Paranoid Style of American Governance

Global Research
Prof. James F. Tracy

In 1964 Harper's magazine published the now famous essay, "The Paranoid Style of American Politics," by historian and public intellectual Richard Hofstadter. Appearing in the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater's Republican presidential nomination, the tract remains emblematic of liberal anxiety toward serious and in many cases unresolved questions regarding the forces behind American governance. "The Paranoid Style" overall helped establish the term "conspiracy theory" as perhaps the most powerful epithet in the American political lexicon.  "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," Hofstadter wrote.

"In recent years, we have seen angry minds at work, mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated, in the Goldwater movement, how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But, behind this, I believe, there is a style of mind that is far from new, and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style, simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." (emphasis added)

Americans typically comfort themselves in the notion that they live in a democracy, with a government that is rational, responsible, and accommodative of their needs. Yet what if the government Americans look to for protection of personal property, the creation and enforcement of fair and just laws, and defense of the nation's borders and interests abroad exhibits the paranoia Hofstadter attributed to John Birchers and Goldwater supporters, complete with deep suspicions and conspiratorial fantasies toward those it is supposed to serve and protect?

The New York Times Health Guide explains a prevailing symptom of Paranoid Personality Disorder as being "highly suspicious of other people." Those afflicted "often feel that they are in danger, and look for evidence to support their suspicions. People with this disorder have trouble seeing that their distrustfulness is out of proportion to their environment." Other symptoms include "concern that other people have hidden motives, expectation that they will be exploited by others, inability to work together with others," "detachment"  and "hostility."

US legislation exhibiting undue suspiciousness toward allegedly strange "others" suggests how the paranoid style has thoroughly imbued American governance, particularly over the past 10 years. An especially strong onset of symptoms is evidenced in the blizzard of new laws, programs, and executive orders dating from September 11, 2001.

Indeed, the US government's dramatic increase in suspicion and contempt toward others over the last decade, combined with its accelerated violent and criminal aggression toward innocents at home and abroad, indicates a potential onset of what might even be deemed paranoid schizophrenia. With the development of such a condition the subject as a whole suffers from acute delusions of persecution and is tormented by illusory forces that it perceives as seeking to inflict harm on it.

Obama hails police state methods in Chicago

World Socialist Website
Patrick Martin

President Barack Obama on Monday praised the performance of Chicago city officials and the Chicago Police Department after a week of violence, repression and frame-ups directed against antiwar demonstrators in the city.

Footage of Police Van Running Over Demonstrators



Speaking at the conclusion of the NATO summit, Obama paid tribute to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his political crony and former White House chief of staff, and added, referring to the thousands of police mobilized against protesters, “Chicago’s finest did a great job under significant pressure and a lot of scrutiny.”

What was this “great job?”

• Downtown Chicago was effectively shut down for four days, Friday through Monday, not by the protesters, never more than 5,000 people, but by a huge mobilization of police and paramilitary forces who frequently outnumbered the demonstrators. The entire area around McCormick Place, site of the summit, was under lockdown.

• Police arrested well over 100 demonstrators in the course of the week, including more than 60 Sunday, a day of tense confrontations in which police continually vented their hostility towards the demonstrators, who were opposing the US-NATO war in Afghanistan and other imperialist military interventions.

• The violent dispersal of the protesters late Sunday afternoon was entirely one-sided, as described by the Chicago Sun-Times—a staunchly pro-police tabloid—which headlined its account, “Riot Gear Cops Rain Down Blows on Protesters.” The beatings were so widespread and indiscriminate that one of the newspaper’s own reporters was among those bloodied. At least 25 demonstrators were injured, with a dozen requiring hospital treatment.

• Most ominously, five protesters were arrested in police raids targeting individuals supposedly preparing “terrorist” attacks on the NATO summit. The same two informants fingered all five men, after the undercover cops had circulated widely among the protesters looking for anyone they could instigate or entrap.

The Government Admits That TSA Body Scanners Are A Huge Waste Of Money

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

A new congressional report  highlights "serious inefficiencies" in the Transportation Security Administration’s "management and deployment of screening technology" at U.S. airports.

The report, published Wednesday and titled "Airport Insecurity: TSA’s Failure to Cost Effectively Procure, Deploy and Warehouse its Screening Technologies," states that the TSA "is wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by inefficiently deploying screening equipment and technology to commercial airports."

The report comes days after the Electronic Privacy Information Center unearthed a November 2011 report by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that "identified vulnerabilities" in the scanners, which cost up to $200,000 each and are now being used as primary screening apparatus at 45 airports.
The federal government has invested $87 million so far into a fleet of 800 scanners, and the TSA plans to buy nearly 1,000 more in the next two years.


The disclosures seem to corroborate claims made in March by blogger Jonathan Corbett that the $1 billion dollar fleet of nude body scanners are worthless. Corbett posted a video showing him smuggling a metallic object through security at two airports, and subsequently interviewed a TSA whistleblower who admitted that the scanners routinely fail to pick up prohibited items.

The embarrassment for the TSA doesn't end there as Congress may force the TSA to test the scanners for problematic levels of radiation and multiple recent encounters have shown TSA personnel being grossly negligent and mistreating passengers.

The incidents include accusing a four-year-old girl of carrying a gun, breaking the $10,000 insulin pump of a diabetic Colorado teenager, allowing a man to fly after finding gun parts inside stuffed animals, removing an 18-month-old girl (of Middle Eastern descent) from a flight because she was on the no-fly list, allowing drugs through an LAX checkpoint in exchange for up to $2,400 and several cases in which passengers have allegedly been sexually groped during patdowns.

The TSA was created after 9/11 to "secure travelers through improved passenger and baggage screening operations" and its aviation security program received more than $5 billion in 2009.

You Are All Suspects Now. What Are You Going to Do About It?

Truthout
John Pilger

You are all potential terrorists. It matters not that you live in Britain, the United States, Australia or the Middle East. Citizenship is effectively abolished. Turn on your computer and the US Department of Homeland Security's National Operations Center may monitor whether you are typing not merely "al-Qaeda," but "exercise," "drill," "wave," "initiative" and "organization": all proscribed words. The British government's announcement that it intends to spy on every email and phone call is old hat. The satellite vacuum cleaner known as Echelon has been doing this for years. What has changed is that a state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming Western democracy.

What are you going to do about it?

In Britain, on instructions from the CIA, secret courts are to deal with "terror suspects." Habeas Corpus is dying. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five men, including three British citizens, can be extradited to the US even though none except one has been charged with a crime. All have been imprisoned for years under the 2003 US/UK Extradition Treaty which was signed one month after the criminal invasion of Iraq. The European Court had condemned the treaty as likely to lead to "cruel and unusual punishment." One of the men, Babar Ahmad, was awarded 63,000 pounds compensation for 73 recorded injuries he sustained in the custody of the Metropolitan Police. Sexual abuse, the signature of fascism, was high on the list. Another man is a schizophrenic, who has suffered a complete mental collapse and is in Broadmoor secure hospital; another is a suicide risk. To the Land of the Free they go - along with young Richard O'Dwyer, who faces ten years in shackles and an orange jump suit because he allegedly infringed US copyright on the Internet.

As the law is politicized and Americanized, these travesties are not untypical. In upholding the conviction of a London university student, Mohammed Gul, for disseminating "terrorism" on the Internet, appeal court judges in London ruled that "acts ... against the armed forces of a state anywhere in the world which sought to influence a government and were made for political purposes" were now crimes. Call to the dock Thomas Paine, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela.

What are you going to do about it?

So Many Military Veterans Are Going To Jail This Georgia Town Built A Vets Only Wing

Military/Defense

There are over one million veterans sitting in jails and prisons throughout America, but in towns close to military bases home to combat units, the ratio of discharged soldiers having a brush with the law is even greater.

Troops get home from combat and wartime duty eager to get out of the military and start a new life, but once they're discharged many have a hard time finding a place in the community they left behind.

The problem is so extreme that many judicial systems have set up separate trial proceedings for veterans. Philadelphia launched their separate Veterans Court nearly two years ago, and now a first-of-its kind veterans only jail dorm is open in Georgia.

Sara Pauff at the Ledger-Enquirer reports the Muscogee County Jail opened the new dormitory with the goal of providing vets treatment and services they need to transition back to civilian life: PTSD treatment, a veterans only court, mental health counseling, and even housing assistance.

County Sheriff John Darr told Pauff the dorm can hold 16 inmates, is the only one of its kind in a county jail, and is funded solely by community resources.

From the Ledger-Enquirer:

The Veterans Court offers legal help to incarcerated veterans diagnosed with a mental illness. Superior Court Chief Judge John Allen said they've found that some of the inmates they see don't identify as veterans and that sometimes, their problems can be traced back to their military service.
"There ought to be a place in our city that provides a facility where veterans can stay for a period of time while being treated, physically and mentally," Ret. Col. Roy Plummer said. Veterans typically stay in the house for three to six months, until they can manage their own affairs.

Muscogee County is home to the city of Columbus, where "The Home of the Infantry"— Fort Benning— lives and breathes.

Benning serves more than 120,000 military members and their dependents and hosts more than 15 Army infantry units as well as many specialized schools like the Army Sniper School, Jump School, and the Armor School.

Wilbert Cox, who is now in jail on theft and trespassing charges, was in the Army for 10 years and told the Ledger "This is the first time I've been in jail ... [and now] we're not just thrown into the wolves' den. There is something available to us for our service to our country."

DHS won't explain its order of 450 million hollow point bullets

Russia Today

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) researchers use advanced modeling
and simulation equipment as they work on the DHS Control Systems Security Program (CSSP)
in this handout photo taken April 28, 2010 at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho

After 9/11, the United States government created the Department of Homeland Security to prevent future acts of terrorism and deal with other domestic issues. Now in order to keep doing such, the agency is asking for 450 million hollow point bullets.

The DHS has signed off on an “indefinite delivery” from defense contractors ATK that will include, for some reason, nearly 500 million high-power ammunition for .40 caliber firearms. The department has yet to discuss why they are ordering such a massive bevy of bullets for an agency that has limited need domestically for doing harm, but they say they expect to continue receiving shipments from the manufacturer for the next five years, during which they plan to blow through enough ammunition to execute more people than there are in the entire United States.

“We are proud to extend our track record as the prime supplier of .40 caliber duty ammunition for DHS,” reads an official statement from Ron Johnson, ATK’s president of Security and Sporting, who adds that his group will also be giving up weaponry to the DHS subdivision of ICE, or Immigrations and Custom Enforcement.

While ammunition itself seems not too unreasonable of a request by a major federal entity that emphasizes domestic durability and safeguarding the country from coast to coast, the choice — and quantity — of its hollow point order raises a lot of questions about future plans for the DHS. ATK says they won their contract with the US government by being able to provide them with 450 million HST bullets, which it describes as “the next generation in high performance duty ammunition.”

What does that mean, exactly? On their website, the contractor claims that the ammunition is specifically designed so that it can pass through a variety of obstructions and offers “optimum penetration for terminal performance.” Or, in other words, this is the kind of bullet designed to stop any object dead in its tracks and, if emptied into the hands of the DHS a few hundred million times, just might do as much.

Since its inception, the Department of Homeland Security has not only absorbed ICE and other government entities, but has arguably extended its powers much more broadly than many had imagined. Under the recently authorized Trespass Bill, H.R. 347, protesters that allegedly disrupt occurrences acknowledged by the DHS of being a National Special Security Event will be charged with a federal crime. As the DHS gains more and more ground in fighting terrorism domestically, the US at the same time has turned the tables to make its definition of terrorist way less narrow. With any American blogger or free thinking on the fringe of what the government can go after under H.R. 347, or the National Defense Authorization Act that allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens without charge, the DHS could just be blasting through what’s left of its budget to make sure that its roster of agents across the country can get in their target practice over the next few years.

Of course, the government might just want to ensure that each one of those agents is more than able to assassinate Americans not just around the globe, but on their own soil. After all, for all of those angsty alleged Americans engaged in terrorism abroad, the US has the largest military in the history of the world to deal with them. In that case, they could argue that it only makes sense to equip their armed forces at home as well.

It's Official White House and DHS Behind #OWS Thug Crackdowns Nationwide

12160

 

 

Atlanticwire

Update (2:33 p.m. EST): NBC New York reports that the city has closed a garage where it was storing things police seized at Zuccotti Park Tuesday morning. Sanitation Department workers said broken glass amid the piles of belongings posed a safety hazard.

Update (2:24 p.m. EST): Ydanis Rodriguez, the New York City Council member arrested early Tuesday morning as part of the sweep of Zuccotti Park, is still in custody.* At a press conference to discuss his arrest, his council colleague Tish James said his legal team still hadn't been able to see him, tweets New York Times reporter Kate Taylor. Taylor also tweeted: "Ppl at @ydanis presser using human mic to report on proceedings in courtroom; report that "it looks positive," triggers twinkle fingers."

*Correction: This update initially said Rodriguez had been released from custody. He has not.

Update (2:03 p.m. EST): Primary document fans can take a look at the city's filing in response to the injunction against it courtesy of The New York Times posting on Document Cloud. In short, deputy mayor Cas Holloway argues in the document that the protest encampment represented a safety threat, and that protesters detracted from the neighborhood's quality of life.

Update (1:57 p.m. EST): On Twitter, the buzz from many sources is that a verdict in the injunction hearing is expected to come down by 3 p.m. Meanwhile, at Zuccotti Park, protesters mill around, drumming and cracking wise about the cops and private security (those in the green vests, someone told our live feed cameraman) who continue to guard the empty park:

Update (1:39 p.m. EST): The legal wrangling continues at Manhattan Supreme Court. City Hall News has some good updates on the arguments via its Twitter stream:

Update (1:29 p.m. EST): For a bit of background on Tuesday morning's legal wrangling, The Daily News's Celeste Katz posted both the letter from Brookfield requesting the eviction, and the temporary court order telling the city to allow protesters back into Zuccotti park.

Update (1:20 p.m.EST): Lawyers for the city are making their case before Judge Stallman, arguing that protesters in Zuccotti Park pose a safety threat. The New York Times tweets: "City tells court, "Protesters may have had significant number of items that could potentially be used as weapons." Incl. mace, knives. But lawyers for the occupation say "this isn't a camping case, like Brookfield is arguing, but a free speech case," according to City Hall News's Twitter. Furthermore, "OWS lawyer argues Brookfield created no camping rules in response to occupation. Determined response to free speech activity." Meanwhile, the live feed at UStream reports that a march from Duarte is starting to arrive at Zuccotti with as many as 500 people.

Update (12:38 p.m. EST): Judge Michael Stallman has been assigned to the hearing on a court order to allow protesters back into Zuccotti Park, tweets The New York Times. You can read his official profile here, for starters. Meanwhile, the actual location of the hearing seems to be causing a problem for those trying to attend. Tweets writer Nancy Scola:

Update (12:31 p.m.EST): Protesters who remained at Duarte have decided to march back to Zuccotti in anticipation of a court order they hope will allow them back in. A judge is expected to rule at any minute on whether the city had cause to evict the Zuccotti encampment.

Update (12:20 p.m. EST): Police have cleared Duarte Square entirely, Student Activism reports, sharing this photo:



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Bloomberg Unleashes Riot Police on Occupy Wall Street Zuccotti Park | Police Defy Court Order

    

NYC, NYC (Nov 15) – Mayor Bloomberg unleashed the NYC PD on peaceful protesters encamped at Zuccotti Park around 1 am local time today setting off a chain reaction of protests throughout the area. The news media was blacked out inclusive of an order to clear the airspace above the park by the mayor’s office.

Accordingly, a group of OWS NYC occupants at the camp peacefully resisted until the end eventually forcibly arrested and removed from the private park by police in full riot gear, some protesters left the area prior to the raid.

At least one local official was seriously injured and arrested during the initial wave of arrests that have top 200 so far.
Bloomberg had agreed to allow the protesters back into the park following cleanup operations at the park however, the NYCPD have the park ringed and barricaded from the crowds.

Meanwhile, the National Lawyers Guild had obtained a restraining order against the city from preventing OWS protesters to return, and camp at that location. The court has issued an 11:30am hearing for Bloomberg to appear in court to show probable cause for the actions.

Riot clad police destroyed thousands of dollars of personal property smashing camera equipment, laptops, tents, and what the OWS protesters describe as, their media tent.

How the War on Terror Militarized the Police

RSN

Over the past 10 years, law enforcement officials have begun to look and act more and more like soldiers. Here's why we should be alarmed."

t around 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2011, officers with the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team surrounded the home of 26-year-old José Guerena, a former US Marine and veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq, to serve a search warrant for narcotics. As the officers approached, Guerena lay sleeping in his bedroom after working the graveyard shift at a local mine. When his wife Vanessa woke him up, screaming that she had seen a man outside the window pointing a gun at her, Guerena grabbed his AR-15 rifle, instructed Vanessa to hide in the closet with their four-year-old son, and left the bedroom to investigate.

Within moments, and without Guerena firing a shot - or even switching his rifle off of "safety" - he lay dying, his body riddled with 60 bullets. A subsequent investigation revealed that the initial shot that prompted the SWAT team barrage came from a SWAT team gun, not Guerena's. Guerena, reports later revealed, had no criminal record, and no narcotics were found at his home.

Sadly, the Guerenas are not alone; in recent years we have witnessed a proliferation in incidents of excessive, military-style force by police SWAT teams, which often make national headlines due to their sheer brutality. Why has it become routine for police departments to deploy black-garbed, body-armored SWAT teams for routine domestic police work? The answer to this question requires a closer examination of post-9/11 US foreign policy and the War on Terror.

Ever since September 14, 2001, when President Bush declared war on terrorism, there has been a crucial, yet often unrecognized, shift in United States policy. Before 9/11, law enforcement possessed the primary responsibility for combating terrorism in the United States. Today, the military is at the tip of the anti-terrorism spear. This shift appears to be permanent: in 2006, the White House's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism confidently announced that the United States had "broken old orthodoxies that once confined our counterterrorism efforts primarily to the criminal justice domain."

In an effort to remedy their relative inadequacy in dealing with terrorism on US soil, police forces throughout the country have purchased military equipment, adopted military training, and sought to inculcate a "soldier's mentality" among their ranks. Though the reasons for this increasing militarization of American police forces seem obvious, the dangerous side effects are somewhat less apparent.

700 arrested after protest on NY's Brooklyn Bridge

 Wall Street Journal

NEW YORK — More than 700 protesters demonstrating against corporate greed, global warming and social inequality, among other grievances, were arrested Saturday after they swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge and shut down a lane of traffic for several hours in a tense confrontation with police.
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The group Occupy Wall Street has been camped out in a plaza in Manhattan's Financial District for nearly two weeks staging various marches, and had orchestrated an impromptu trek to Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. They walked in thick rows on the sidewalk up to the bridge, where some demonstrators spilled onto the roadway after being told to stay on the pedestrian pathway, police said.
The majority of those arrested were given citations for disorderly conduct and were released, police said.

Some protesters sat on the roadway, chanting "Let us go," while others chanted and yelled at police from the pedestrian walkaway above. Police used orange netting to stop the group from going farther down the bridge, which is under construction.

Some of the protesters said they were lured onto the roadway by police, or they didn't hear the calls from authorities to head to the pedestrian walkway. Police said no one was tricked into being arrested, and those in the back of the group who couldn't hear were allowed to leave.

"Multiple warnings by police were given to protesters to stay on the pedestrian walkway and that if they took roadway they would be arrested," said Paul Browne, the chief spokesman of the New York Police Department.

Erin Larkins, a Columbia University graduate student at who says she and her boyfriend have significant student loan debt, was among the thousands of protesters on the bridge. She said a friend persuaded her to join the march and she's glad she did.

"I don't think we're asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again," Larkins wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "No one is expecting immediate change. I think everyone is just hopeful that people will wake up a bit and realize that the more we speak up, the more the people that do have the authority to make changes in this world listen."

Several videos taken of the event show a confusing, chaotic scene. Some show protesters screaming obscenities at police and taking a hat from one of the officers. Others show police struggling with people who refuse to get up. Nearby, a couple posed for wedding pictures on the bridge.

"We were supposed to go up the pedestrian roadway," said Robert Cammiso, a 48-year-old student from Brooklyn told the Daily News. "There was a huge funnel, a bottleneck, and we couldn't fit. People jumped from the walkway onto the roadway. We thought the roadway was open to us."

Earlier Saturday, thousands who joined two other marches crossed the Brooklyn Bridge without problems. One was from Brooklyn to Manhattan by a group opposed to genetically modified food. Another in the opposite direction marched against poverty organized by United Way.

Elsewhere in the U.S. on Saturday, protesters assembled in Albuquerque, N.M., Boston and Los Angeles to express their solidarity with the movement in New York, though their demands remain unclear. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have been camped in Zuccotti Park and have clashed with police on earlier occasions. Mostly, the protests have been peaceful, and the movement has shown no signs of losing steam. Celebrities including Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon made recent stops to encourage the group.

During the length of the protest, turnout has varied, but the numbers have reached as high as about a few thousand. A core group of about two hundred people remain camped throughout the week. They sleep on air mattresses, use Mac laptops and play drums. They go to the bathroom at the local McDonald's. A few times a day, they march down to Wall Street, yelling, "This is what democracy looks like!"

There has been a growing swell of coverage in mainstream media, but there has been loud complaining the cause hasn't been championed fast enough — or in the way protesters want.

Misinformation has added to the confusion. For instance, a rumor sprang up on Twitter that the New York Police Department wanted to use tear gas on protesters — a crowd-control tactic the department doesn't use. The claim was eventually retracted, one of several such retractions over the past several days. On Friday, a message said Radiohead would be performing in solidarity for the cause, but the band's management said it wasn't playing.

Earlier clashes with police have resulted in about 100 arrests. Most were for disorderly conduct. Many were the subject of homemade videos posted online.

One video surfaced of a group of girls shot with pepper spray by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. The woman claimed they were abused and demanded the officer resign, and the video has been the subject of several news articles and commentary. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said internal affairs would look into whether Bologna acted improperly and has also said the video doesn't show "tumultuous" behavior by the protesters.

A real estate firm that owns Zuccotti Park, the private plaza off Broadway occupied by the protesters, has expressed concerns about conditions there, saying in a statement that it hopes to work with the city to restore the park "to its intended purpose." But it's not clear whether legal action will be taken, and police say there are no plans to try to remove anyone.

Seasoned activists said the ad-hoc protest could prove to be a training ground for future organizers of larger and more cohesive demonstrations, or motivate those on the sidelines to speak out against injustices.

"You may not get much, or any of these things on the first go-around," said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime civil rights activist who has participated in protests for decades. "But it's the long haul that matters."

SWAT tactics are killing us

Examiner
William Heuisler

SWAT tactics in our neighborhoods put us all in danger.

More importantly, SWAT tactics in the Jose Guerena search warrant turned our justice system upside down.

Don’t believe it? Try this: Ask friends about Jose Guerena’s death. Likely they will say, “Well, he was a bad guy, right?” They might add, “He was involved in home invasions and drug dealing.”  They will be repeating unproven allegations actively propagated by County Sheriff’s Attorney, Mike Storie.
No matter what Storie says, Jose Guerena had no criminal record on May 5th, 2011.

For the truth, Tucsonans should read SWAT supervisor, Sergeant Krygier’s debriefing statement (12 pages available for download). (Echavarri, 2011)

Krygier said SWAT members’ pre-raid briefing included,” This house on Red Water is where what we call the bad guy lives”…”involved directly with cartels” and “associated with a homicide where a husband and wife got killed.” And more, “We briefed, if something were going to happen, it was probably going to happen at Red Water.”

So, SWAT officers were told Guerena was probably a murderer.

SWAT was briefed trouble was probably going to happen at the Guerena home.
But this was a search warrant. There was no evidence for an arrest warrant for Guerena!
SWAT was pointed like a gun at Jose Guerena.

Is it possible the former-Marine was tried, sentenced and executed by an unknowing Pima County Special weapons team because he was only suspected of crimes?
That horrible concept is quite likely.

And, reading Krygier’s statement, Guerena probably did not even hear SWAT commands.
SWAT arrived at the Guerena home with sirens blaring loud enough to drown out any police commands or identification. Eight seconds after sirens were turned off, the door was busted, a flash bang was tossed in, and Jose was shot down in the hallway in his white boxer shorts.
Arrival to killing took SWAT less than a minute.

Don’t listen to lawyers; read the SWAT supervisor’s eyewitness statement. Get the truth.
Our justice system is based on the principle we are innocent until proven guilty of a crime in a court of law. All Americans must be presumed innocent when dealing with police, or police will treat us all like criminals.
 
Echavarri, F. (2011). Arizona Daily Star. Complex drug probe triggered SWAT raid. Related documents (PDF: statements of officers involved in SWAT raid). http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/article_ffd3cd6b-6564-59a9-8b43-a1635ae66bd4.html

Group protests SWAT death of Tucson Marine

AZFamily



TUCSON, Ariz. – The death of a former Marine near Tucson continues to stir controversy.

A group spent this Memorial Day protesting the SWAT raid which led to his death. Investigation documents reveal officers seized guns, banking documents and other items from the home but did not find drugs or cash.

The original search warrants, along with other documents relating to the investigation, remain sealed.

Jose Guerena, 26, had no history of violent crime but was listed as a possible suspect in a complex drug investigation.

On May 5, officers raided four homes around Tucson including Guerena's in connection with the drug case.

When they arrived to serve the search warrant, Guerena reportedly grabbed a gun. He didn't aim it at officers but they opened fire, shooting him 60 times. 

The Pima County Sheriff's Office maintains the officers followed protocol during the raid.

A group called the Oath-keepers, made of former officers and service members, led a protest of the raid Monday.

"The SWAT team never should have been there. It's a problem to put trained individuals against each other. Having officers come face-to-face with a veteran Marine in his home is unnecessary," said Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath-keepers group.
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U.S. Troops To Deal With Rioting Americans

Prison Planet

Globalists Collapsing Society To Bring In Martial Law

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, October 14, 2010

U.S. troops now being trained to boss communities and run local governments are being readied to oversee a post-collapse America in which riots and civil unrest similar to that now exploding in Europe over austerity measures and pension cuts ravage the United States and are met with the iron fist of a militarized police state.

Reaction to our earlier story about the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division being prepared for a situation where “in essence they will become the local government” by working with local officials has been strong, with some refusing to believe that the program is geared towards anything other than operations overseas.

However, as we outlined in our article, similar deployments by Northcom are admittedly focused around “homeland patrols” and training troops to deal with “civil unrest” and “crowd control”.

We have documented numerous incidents over the past several years where active duty troops or national guard have been used in domestic law enforcement operations.

The military are now being called upon to undertake roles normally designated to police as Americans are incrementally acclimated to accept the presence of troops on the streets as an everyday occurrence, in preparation for them to be used should the United States enter a post-collapse period of turmoil and unrest.

We covered a case in Kingman Arizona last September, where National Guardsmen were filmed “providing security” and directing traffic.

Another example occurred in Newport Kentucky, when military checkpoints suddenly appeared downtown on September 6 last year. Military Police from the U.S. Army National as well as Marines were purportedly conducting “traffic control” because the city was strapped for funds and did not have enough police to do the job.

The excuse that troops are stepping in to help because there is a lack of police doesn’t wash. Crime is down over the last 20 years, there are around three times more police and the state is not calling out the National Guard, they are being put on the streets as a result of the harmonization of police and military, a process that has been ongoing for decades, long before the economic recession hit. Troops also have guns and their primary function is to search people and vehicles, not direct traffic.

Members of the WeAreChange Ohio group interviewed some of the troops, who when asked if they would be prepared to “confiscate guns, shoot resisters in the back of the head, or throw people into ovens to incinerate bodies,” refused to categorically deny that they would follow such orders.

However, this was by no means the first time that troops have been used to fulfill roles normally ascribed to police in Kentucky.

During the Kentucky Derby on May 2 last year, Military Police were on patrol to deal with crowd control. An Associated Press photograph shows armed MP’s detaining a man who ran onto the track following the 135th Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs.

“The military has NO BUSINESS policing the citizens except during extraordinarily exceptional times of national emergency by an executive order. This is very disturbing and completely un-American. Maybe even more disturbing is that no one seems to care how quietly and easily we have accepted the burgeoning police state,” one respondent to the photo stated.

As we reported in 2008, U.S. troops returning from Iraq are now occupying America, running checkpoints and training to deal with “civil unrest and crowd control” under the auspices of a Northcom program that by 2011 will have no less than 20,000 active duty troops deployed inside America to “help” state and local officials during times of emergency.

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