Showing posts with label militarized police. Show all posts
Showing posts with label militarized police. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

'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.



Monday, June 18, 2012

THE COUP OF 2012: Encroachment upon Basic Freedoms, Militarized Police State in America

Global Research
Frank Morales

Back in 1992 the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff held a "Strategy Essay Competition."
The winner was a National War College student paper entitled, "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012." Authored by Colonel Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. the paper is a well documented, "darkly imagined excursion into the future." The ostensibly fictional work is written from the perspective of an imprisoned senior military officer about to be executed for opposing the military takeover of America, a coup accomplished through "legal" means. The essay makes the point that the coup was "the outgrowth of trends visible as far back as 1992," including "the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses," particularly law enforcement.

Dunlap cites what he considered a dangerous precedent, the 1981 Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act, an act that sanctioned US military engagement with law enforcement in domestic “support operations,” including “civil disturbance” operations. The act codified the lawful status and use of military “assets” in domestic police work. 

Encroachment upon Basic Freedoms
Since that time the American people have been subject to a series of deeper and deeper encroachments upon our basic freedoms, increasingly extensive deployment of military operations on the home front, perpetrated by a corporate driven military mission creep that now claims the right and duty to arrest and detain us on the word of a Pentagon or White House operative. President Obama’s signing of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) whose Section 1021 sanctions the military detention of American citizens without charge, essentially aims to put the last nail in the coffin of our Constitution, our teetering Republic and our most basic democratic traditions. 

The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration (“you can trust me”) would use the authorities granted by the NDAA, and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations. The White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA, but reversed course (of course) shortly before Congress voted on the final bill, which the President signed on the 31st of December 2011, a day that will go down in infamy.
“President Obama's action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.” According to Senator Dianne Feinstein. "Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," she said. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge." Think again. (Guardian, 12/14/11)
Under the legislation, suspects can be held without trial  "until the end of hostilities." They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue. A spokesperson for Human Rights Watch implied that the signing of such a bill by a President would have once been unthinkable, noting that “the paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people's minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is." Further, "it wasn't asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs." 

In fact, the heads of several “security agencies,” including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. Even some within the Pentagon itself said they were against the bill. No matter, and no matter the intention inherent in lip service opposition, the corporate elite who drive the disastrous and inhumane polices of this country see it otherwise, and they, not the generals or anyone else, call the shots! 

And they’ve been at this for some time. A persistent and on-gong counter-insurgency directed against the American people, the detention provisions embedded in the NDAA are about more than “social control.” It amounts to a direct attack on the person, an “unreasonable search and seizure” in the cause of maintaining the shaky capitalist ship of state; suppressing popular resistance, dissent and protest, movements of peace and justice, recast as “civil disorder,” “civil disturbance” and “domestic terror.” 

Friday, May 18, 2012

Fighter Jets In Skies Over Chicago On Friday Morning Before NATO Summit

CHICAGO (CBS) – U.S. fighter jets will be actively flying over Chicago on Friday as part of a security drill in the days before the NATO Summit.

The U.S. North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command Region fighters–including Air Force KC-135 tankers, Air Force F-16s, and a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopters–will be visible on Friday morning, beginning around 9 a.m..

Residents in the Chicago area can expect flights to continue for approximately two hours.

“Providing the air defense for special security events like this year’s NATO Summit is a part of our day-to-day mission,” said Lt. Gen. Sid Clarke, Continental U.S. NORAD Region commander said in a statement. “Our interagency partnerships are a key component to the air defense shield for events like this.”

During the NATO Summit, Air Force fighter jets will be on alert to enforce the Federal Aviation Administration’s Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) zone during the summit. Military jets have been authorized to shoot down any aircraft that violates secure airspace over Chicago.

Also on Thursday, the Pentagon commented about a You Tube video posted earlier this week that purportedly showed a surveillance drone flying over an athletic field in Elgin–about 40 miles from McCormick Place, where NATO leaders will meet on Sunday and Monday.

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet reported the issue came up at a Pentagon press briefing.
Defense Department spokesman George Little said he couldn’t comment on the specific incident but added that “the U.S. military is providing a support role .. to support security for the summit. That’s in accordance with American law.”

It is unclear whether the video is authentic. Military sources contacted by CBS 2 said they did not recognize the markings on the unidentified object.



Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Government 'may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters', scientists fear

The Independent


Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of nerve agents for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.


A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop "incapacitating chemical agents" for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control.

The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

The 1993 convention bans the development, stockpiling and use of nerve agents and other toxic chemicals by the military but there is an exemption for certain chemical agents that could be used for "peaceful" domestic purposes such as policing and riot control.

The British Government has traditionally taken the view that only a relatively mild class of irritant chemical agents that affect the eyes and respiratory tissues, such as CS gas, are exempt from the treaty, and then only strictly for use in riot control.

But the Royal Society working group says the Government shifted its position to allow the development of more severe chemical agents, such as the type of potentially dangerous nerve gases used by Russian security forces to end hostage sieges. "The development of incapacitating chemical agents, ostensibly for law-enforcement purposes, raises a number of concerns in the context of humanitarian and human-rights law, as well as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)," the report says.

"The UK Government should publish a statement on the reasons for its apparent recent shift in position on the interpretation of the CWC's law enforcement position." The Royal Society group points to a 1992 statement by Douglas Hogg, the then Foreign Office Minister, who indicated that riot-control agents were the only toxic chemicals that the UK considered to be permitted for law-enforcement purposes. But in 2009 ministers gave a less-restrictive definition suggesting the use of "incapacitating" chemical agents would be permitted for law-enforcement purposes as long as they were in the categories and quantities consistent with that permitted purpose.

Professor Rod Flower, a biochemical pharmacologist at Queen Mary University of London, said the latest scientific insights into human brain is leading to novel ways of degrading human performance using chemicals.

Neuroscientists to Top Brass: Mess With Minds… Carefully

Wired
Katie Scott


A working group led by the Royal Society has warned the scientific community and the Government to tread carefully when entering the ethical minefield that is the use of neuroscience.

A report published today by the Royal Society tackles the divisive issue of the potential uses of neuroscience research by the military or security forces — whether to improve the performance of our troops, to “diminish” the performance of the enemy or, perhaps most controversially, in law enforcement.

The paper, entitled Brain Waves Module 3: Neuroscience, conflict and security, is one of four that have been published looking at the current and potential impact of neuroscience on society and policy, the law, and education.

This, the final report to be released, looks at the neuroscience research that is already being deployed by the military and what is being developed.


In a military context, the report authors have looked at the potential and current uses of neuroscience in every step of a soldier’s career, from recruitment to rehabilitation after injury. There are neuroimaging techniques that could help determine the best recruit for the role based on their propensity for risk-taking or specific skills that could help them train in a specialist area, for example, reconnaissance.

It also discusses the benefits of using brain stimulation technology to improve learning; and neuropharmacological agents to enhance cognition or attenuate effects of sleep deprivation, or treat post-traumatic stress disorder. The potential of neural interface systems (NIS) — a person controlling a computer with their mind — could go beyond “the restoration of function to individuals with sensory or motor deficits” (such as Braingate), says the report. “The ability to control a machine directly with the human brain could, for example, provide the potential to remotely operate robots or unmanned vehicles in hostile territory.”

However, NIS could also be deployed on a smaller scale as sensory enhancers, add the authors. They state: “For example, research has been conducted on the ability of individuals to feel the heat and distance of an object of interest in a room by a simple procedure involving a small magnetic implant on a fingertip or anywhere else on the human body. Placing a small coil of wire around the finger can cause the magnet to vibrate. If the coil is connected up to an external sensor then signals from the sensor will alter the vibrations of the magnet, which are detected by the recipient.

“In this way a sonar sensor or an infrared sensor can be used to operate with the magnet — hence the recipient ‘feels’ how far away an object is or remotely ‘feels’ how hot an object is. Unobtrusive neural interfaces like these sensory implants might provide an edge to the law enforcement fields in small but tangible ways.”

However, a clear emphasis from the authors, who include psychologists, life scientists and international security experts, is the legislation that needs to be put into place to protect civilians and military personnel alike. In particular, the report calls for governmental clarification on a recent interpretation of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s (CWC) law enforcement provision, which, as the paper details, “suggests that the use of incapacitating chemical agents for law enforcement purposes would be in compliance with the CWC as long as they were in types and quantities consistent with that permitted purpose”.

Rod Flowers was chairman of the working group that produced the paper and is Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London. He says: “We know that neuroscience research has the potential to deliver great social benefit — researchers come closer every day to finding effective treatments for diseases and disorders such as Parkinson’s, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and addiction. However, understanding of the brain and human behaviour coupled with developments in drug delivery also highlight ways of degrading human performance that could possibly be use in new weapons, especially incapacitating chemical agents.

“This is why it is so important that UK government is clear about its reasons for the changes made to its interpretation of the law enforcement exemption in the CWC. It’s absolutely crucial that countries adhering to the CWC address the definition of incapacitating chemical agents under the CWC at the next Review Conference in 2013.”
Flowers also argues that neuroscientists need to be aware of the potential dual usage of their research at an early stage of their training. “The neuroscientists conducting this research also need to be aware that knowledge and technologies used for beneficial purposes can also be misused for harmful purposes,” he argues.

Key will be communication between scientists and those in power. The paper says: “The UK government…should improve links with industry and academia to scope for significant future trends and threats posed by the applications of neuroscience.” The authors also call for the bodies such as the World Medical Association to study “the legal and ethical implications of biophysical degradation technologies (such as directed energy weapons) targeted at the central nervous system”.

Ethical issues aside, Flower questions whether the resources being used for neuroscience research for potential military applications might not be better deploted elsewhere: “The application of neuroscience research in the development of enhancement and degradation technologies for military and law enforcement use raises significant ethical considerations. Support for this type of research is potentially diverting funding and resources away from other important social applications such as the treatment of neurological impairment, disease and psychiatric illness. This is why it should be subject to ethical review and as transparent as possible.”


Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Press-Free NATO Summit? Filming Cops on the Street Illegal in Chicago

IntelHub

Intel Hub Note: With the passing of these anti American laws in Chicago, the end of America as we know it is HERE.

It is 100% illegal and unconstitutional to pass or enforce any of the laws and rules listed in the below article and those that do are committing open treason.

We are basically being told that Chicago cops will BEAT any protester they please and if someone tries to film their criminal actions they will be arrested.

Russia Today
February 7, 2012

Chicago, Illinois plans to host more than 7,500 international dignitaries and 3,000 journalists at the G8 Summit this spring.

But if history is any indication, those numbers will be dwarfed by tens of thousands of demonstrators descending on the Windy City this year to protest the massive gathering of world leaders.

And as police prepare to clash with protesters who picket the annual meeting of the minds, the crime scenes that are expected to be marred by messy arrests might never be made available outside of Chicago.

In the state of Illinois, an obscure eavesdropping law prohibits recordings of unknowing individuals. Even if a cop is caught clobbering a protester on the streets of Chicago, recording the incident can land both amateur photographers and seasoned journalists alike behind bars, where they could face sentencing on par with charges of rape and murder.

The law in question is an antiquated eavesdropping rule that can bring about felony charges for producing an audio recording without ones’ consent. Critics have come after the law and challenged its constitutionality — or lack thereof — but as of now the offense is on the books and is likely to stay that way come springtime. For the Chicago cops that will be tasked with controlling a swarm of protesters at the summit, it could be to their benefit. The same, sadly, can’t be said for the freedom of the press.

To say Chicago will become the scene of a mass protest might be an understatement. By comparison, the 1999 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington spawned 600 arrests and prompted police to use tear gas, pepper spray and physical force on protesters.

A decade later, the 2009 G-20 Summit in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania yielded 190 arrests and still more incidents of police violence. The same summit a year later in Toronto, Canada caused police to put more than 1,000 citizens in handcuffs, making it the largest mass arrest in the country’s history.

With riots rendering nearly a million dollars worth of damages as well, it was also one of the biggest uprisings that Canada has seen in recent memory.

With the Occupy Wall Street movement only heightening awareness of corrupt politics in America and across the globe, dissatisfaction with the establishment and its decisions that impact the world are more rampant than ever.

Protesters are already planning how they will respond to the summit scheduled for this May, but under current law, video cameras that capture sound are just as illegal as assault weapons.

Under the Eavesdropping Act in Illinois, catching a cop crack down on a protester is a Class 1 felony. If budding videographers think they might be the exception come this spring, think again.

Christopher Drew thought he was exercising his First Amendment when he recorded an altercation with cops in 2009, but for the Chicago, Illinois artist, he couldn’t be further from the truth. He was approached by an officer with the Chicago Police Department three years ago and questioned about the artwork he was selling on the city’s State Street.

When law enforcement realized that they were being recorded, Drew was dished felony charges under the eavesdropping law and ended up spending a few days in jail. Drew asked an Illinois judge to dismiss the hefty felony charge, but the court rejected his plea. Later this year his case is expected to go to trial, and if found guilty, Drew could serve 15 years in prison.
“In a democracy you are suppose to oversee your public servants. If they’re doing wrong you’re suppose to bring it to the attention of other citizens and to the court,” Drew explained to RT. “They have no privacy right, they are in public and they are on the public dime and doing public duty. That means that we’re their employer. We have a right to record our employees and bring that evidence to the system that they are doing wrong.”
Michael Allison has become a victim of the police state’s bizarre law, too. He was at his mom’s house in Illinois when cops showed up and questions the automobiles he had parked on the property.
When Allison began recording his conversation with the cops, he was cuffed and charged with violating the eavesdropping law. Those charges included five counts of eavesdropping, each with a maximum of 15 years in prison.

For videotaping his own conversation with a cop on his family property, Allison could have served the rest of his life behind bars.

Circuit Court Judge David Frankland would later say that the case against Allison was unconstitutional, but that decision was just a small exception. The eavesdropping law still stands today, even if it has opponents sitting on judicial benches.
“A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusions into a citizen’s privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right of privacy in their public duties,” the judge wrote.“Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right to gather such information,” added Judge Frankland.
Drew, Allison and Judge Frankland are just a small sampling of many opponents of the controversial law, but unless those numbers grow before the G8, the protests that are almost certain to be countered with excessive police force will be illegal to record.

Some state lawmakers are trying to overturn the legislation before this spring, but it is a challenge that stands to be complicated with a goal only a few months into the future. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked the state Supreme Court for a new decision on the constitutionality of the law and others have come to her side.

Some have even proposed an exception that will allow citizens to record the police, which is allowed in most jurisdictions in America.
“I don’t believe there is an expectation of privacy for public officials on public property doing public duties,” Rep. Elaine Nekritz, a local sponsor of the re-write, tells the Associated Press.
The US Court of Appeals in Boston, Massachusetts countered a similar wiretapping law last year, with a judge ruling in August that filming the police is a “basic and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.” 

Many outside of Boston agree, and if the law isn’t changed in Illinois before spring, Chicago’s G-8 summit is expected to still be caught on film, law notwithstanding.

But as thousands plans to flood the streets of the city to demonstrate against the meeting of leaders from the US, France, Russia, Italy and elsewhere, cops will be tasked with countering not just riled protesters, with journalists of all sorts gripping their cameras.

Come springtime, the Chicago PD will have to determine which First Amendment guarantee is more important to crush: the freedom of the press or the freedom to assemble.

Luckily America’s most well-known constitutional law professor and former Chicago resident will be in town that week. What do you think Barack Obama has to say about the law?



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Sunday, January 29, 2012

A Call For Mass Action Against The Suppression of The Occupy Movement

SIGN THIS CALL TO ACTION
Contact: dontsuppressows@yahoo.com

These past several months have witnessed something very different in the U.S. People from many different walks of life came together to occupy public space in nearly 1,000 cities in the U.S. They stood up to vicious police violence, they broke through the confines of “protest as usual,” and in the middle of all that, they built community. Even in the face of media attempts to ridicule, distort, and demonize these protests, their basic message began to get through. People throughout the U.S.—and even the world—took notice of and took heart from these brave and creative protesters.

The political terms of discourse began to shift; the iced-over thinking of people in the U.S. began to thaw. Standing up to the unjust brutality and arrests became a badge of honor.
People began to listen to and read the stories of some of the victims of this economic crisis, and to share their own. And most of all, as the protests spread to city after city, the fact of people occupying public space forced open debate and raised big questions among millions as to what kind of society this is, and what it should be. Why does such poverty and need exist in the face of a relative handful of people amassing obscene amounts of wealth? Why do the political institutions of society seem only to serve that handful?  Why do so many youth feel they face such a bleak future? Why does the insane destruction of the environment continue to accelerate?  And what is needed to overcome all this?

Those who actually wield power in this country regarded these protests, and these questions, as dangerous, and reacted accordingly. Time and again those who wield power violated their own laws and ordered police to pepper spray, beat with clubs, and shoot tear gas canisters at the heads of people who were doing nothing more than non-violently expressing their dissent and seeking community. This reached a peak in the recent coordinated and systematic attacks of the past few weeks against all the major occupations. In fact, the mayor of Oakland admitted on BBC to being part of conference calls that coordinated national strategy against the occupiers. On top of all that, and in another blatant show of illegitimate force and power, they attempted to prevent journalists and photographers from covering these acts of repression—unless they were “embedded” with the police.

To put the matter bluntly, but truly: the state planned and unleashed naked and systematic violence and repression against people attempting to exercise rights that are supposed to be legally guaranteed. This response by those who wield power in this society is utterly shameful from a moral standpoint, and thoroughly illegitimate from a legal and political one.

Now this movement faces a true crossroads. Will it be dispersed, driven into the margins, or co-opted? Or will it come back stronger? This question now poses itself, extremely sharply.

One thing is clear already: if this illegitimate wave of repression is allowed to stand… if the powers-that-be succeed in suppressing or marginalizing this new movement… if people are once again “penned in”—both literally and symbolically—things will be much worse. THIS SUPPRESSION MUST BE MASSIVELY OPPOSED, AND DEFEATED.

On the other hand, this too is true: movements grow, and can only grow, by answering repression with even greater and more powerful mobilization.
The need to act is urgent.

As a first step in the necessary response, there must be a massive political mobilization on a day, or days, very soon to say NO! to this attempt to suppress thought and expression with brutality and violence. This mobilization should most of all be in New York, where this movement started… but it should at the same time be powerfully echoed all around the country and yes, around the world.  This is a call for massive demonstrations—soon—carried out in public spaces where they can have maximum impact and exposure and where the authorities cannot pen in, suppress, and otherwise attempt to marginalize these demonstrations.

These demonstrations must be large enough to show clearly that people will not tolerate that which is intolerable… that people will not adjust to that which is so manifestly unjust. Such demonstrations, along with the efforts to reach out and build them, can draw many more people from passive sympathy into active support and can awaken and inspire even millions more who have not yet been reached. Such demonstrations can powerfully answer the attempt by “the 1%” to crush and/or derail this broad movement. Thousands and thousands in the streets, acting together, can seize new initiative and change the whole political equation. The urgent questions raised by Occupy—and other urgent questions that have yet to be raised in this movement—can once more reverberate, and more powerfully than before.

The repression of the Occupy movement must not stand. Act.
Contact: dontsuppressows@yahoo.com
Signers of this Call include:
Prof. Cornel West
Gbenga Akinnagbe, actor on the HBO series “The Wire”
Carole Ashley
Fr.  Luis Barrios
Renate Bridenthal, Professor of History, Brooklyn College, CUNY, retired
Elaine Brower, World Can’t Wait & Military Families Speak Out
Craig Phipps, Ombudsman, Casa Esperanza
Cynthia Carlson, artist
Nina Felshin, independent curator
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
Harmony Hammond
Barry Holden
Camille Hankins, Founder and Director: Win Animal Rights and No Kill New York
Ray Hill, producer/host of Ray on the Raydio Internet radio show, Houston, TX
Lee Siu Hin, National Coordinator, National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Judith Henry
Rev. Dr. James Karpen, Church of St Paul and St Andrew, New York City
Chuck Kaufman, Executive Director, Alliance for Global Justice
Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Harlem
Jim Long, artist
Waqas Malik, artist
Lydia Matthews, Dean of Academic Programs, Associate Dean of Parsons/ Professor
Ann Messner, artist
Travis Morales
Dorinda Moreno, Fuerza Mundial / FM Global / Hitec Aztec, U.S. Liaison Secretariat, International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement/TICPM
Nick Mottern, ConsumersforPeace.org & kNOwdrones.org
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Bradley Olson, Psychologist, Activist
Rosemary O’Neill
Lindsay O’Neill-Caffrey
The Rt. Rev. George E. Packard, Retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
Ana Ratner 
Suzanne Ross, PH.D., Clinical Psychologist
David E. Rousline, Ph.D. Berkeley CA
Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, New Sanctuary Movement
Jayce Salloum, artist, Vancouver
Irving Sandler 
Donna Schaper, Senior Minister, Judson Memorial Church
Stephen Soldz, Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis,* Past President, Psychologists for Social Responsibility*
Bob Stein
Rev. Max Surjadinata, Area Coordinator of Friends of Sabeel North America
David Swanson, warisacrime.org
Matthew Swaye
Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait
Athena Tacha
Dennis Trainor, Jr, Writer, Producer & Host of Acronym TV
Marina Urbach, independent curator, other projects,  New York
Nancy Vining Van Ness, Director, American Creative Dance
Jim Vrettos, Adjunct Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice*
Jen Waller
Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights*
Andy Zee, Spokesperson, Revolution Books
David Zeiger, Displaced Films

*For identification purposes only


Police confirm over 400 arrests at Occupy Oakland rally



Riot police fired tear gas and arrested more than 400 Oaklanders, as hordes of anti-Wall Street protesters tried to take over downtown buildings including City Hall, police said.

The clashes began just before 3 p.m. on Saturday when protesters marched toward the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center and began to tear down construction barricades. The Oakland police said in a statement that the crowd was ordered to disperse when protesters “began destroying construction equipment and fencing.”

Several hours later, some protesters broke into City Hall, the police said. On Sunday, Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland toured City Hall to survey the damage to the building. Glass display cases had been smashed and graffiti was splashed on the walls, The Associated Press reported. At one point during the protest, The AP quoted Mayor Quan as saying that demonstrators, who broke into the hall burned flags they found inside, broke an electrical box and damaged art displays, including an exhibit of recycled art that had been made by children.

“I do understand that people were enraged by the brutality that they had already seen,” said Omar Yassin, 42, a member of the group's media committee.

Yassin echoed comments made by other group members that protesters found the door to City Hall ajar on Saturday evening.

The Occupy Oakland Media Committee group issued a statement on Sunday charging that officers had violated the police department's code of conduct for dealing with protesters, calling the mass arrests “illegal.”

Most of the arrests occurred late Saturday, when large groups were corralled in front of the Downtown Oakland Y.M.C.A. on Broadway.

On a livestream broadcast on the Web site oakfosho.com, dozens of protesters could be seen sitting cross-legged in the darkness in front of the Y.M.C.A. Their hands appeared to be bound behind them while officers stood watch. The protesters occasionally sang or cheered. In a statement on Sunday afternoon, the police said the marchers “invaded” the Y.M.C.A.

Caitlin Maning, 55, a film professor who is a member of the Occupy Oakland media team, said protesters had been invited into the Y.M.C.A. to escape being kettled on Broadway, but ended up being prevented from exiting through a rear door by police.

The events were part of a demonstration dubbed “Move-In Day,” a plan by protesters to take over the vacant convention center and use it as a communelike command center, according to the Web site occupyoaklandmoveinday.org.

“We were going to set up a community center,” said Benjamin Phillips, 32, a member of the Occupy Oakland media team. “It would be a place where we could house people, feed people, do all the things that we have been doing.”

In an open letter to Mayor Quan on the Move-In Day site, the group also said it was considering “blockading the airport indefinitely, occupying City Hall indefinitely” and “shutting down the Oakland ports.” Occupy protesters did briefly shut down the city's port in November.

In a statement issued before the march, Ms. Quan said that “the residents of Oakland are wearying of the constant focus and cost to our city.” On Saturday night, she added: “Once again, a violent splinter group of the Occupy movement is engaging in violent actions against Oakland. The Bay Area Occupy movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground.”

Ms. Quan has spent her first term embattled by Occupy protesters who set up camp at the Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in October. After initially embracing the protest, she ordered the camp removed.

After a series of violent episodes, including a clash in which a Marine veteran who served in the Iraq war suffered a fractured skull when struck by a projectile in a confrontation with the police, Ms. Quan relented and permitted the protesters to return. But two weeks later, in response to fears of renewed violence, she ordered the plaza to be cleared again. NY Times
IM/

Mr. Phillips, the Occupy media team member, who said he was an Air Force veteran, spoke Saturday night from his home on Grand Avenue, where he had stopped to rinse tear-gas residue from his contact lenses. He described the scene in front of the Y.M.C.A. as “terrifying.”

“This is disgusting, because this is not the way that America is supposed to work,” he said. “You're supposed to be able to have something like freedom to assemble and air your grievances.”

“It's bizarre,” he said of the police reaction. “It's not something you expect to see in the United States, and we've seen it over and over in Oakland.”

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Former police chief: LAPD coordinated with CIA on terrorism

Raw Story
Eric W. Dolan

Former New York City Police Commissioner and Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said Tuesday that it was important for local police agencies to exchange and coordinate information with the CIA regarding terrorism.

“In dealing with information intelligence as it relates to terrorism, the CIA has a lot of information that is appropriate for use by American police forces,” he said.

He noted that most terrorists were homegrown, not foreigners.

“So what you really do need is a cohesive exchange of information — always within the law,” Bratton added. “And if you recall the law actually helped to create the 9/11 incident, when the law prohibited the CIA and the FBI from exchanging information.”

It was recently revealed that the New York Police Department may have illegally collaborated with the CIA to establish a domestic intelligence program. The CIA is allowed to provide local law enforcement with “specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel,” but only if the agency’s general counsel approves of the arrangement.

Bratton said that the LAPD had coordinated with the CIA as well.

“We had interactions with the CIA in the sense of meeting with them from time to time, certainly, just in order to make them aware of our capabilities and our needs,” he explained. “There is nothing that precludes that.”
Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:



Saturday, January 21, 2012

Top CIA Lawyer Never Approved NYPD Collaboration in Muslim Spy Program

NBC

Such approval would have been required under the presidential order that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said authorized the unusual assignment.


The CIA's top lawyer never approved sending a veteran agency officer to New York, where he helped set up police spying programs, The Associated Press has learned.

Such approval would have been required under the presidential order that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said authorized the unusual assignment.

Normally, when the CIA dispatches one of its officers to work in another government agency, rules are spelled out in advance in writing to ensure the CIA doesn't cross the line into domestic spying. Under a 1981 presidential order, the CIA is permitted to provide "specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel" to local law enforcement agencies but only when the CIA's general counsel approves in each case.

Neither of those things happened in 2002, when CIA Director George Tenet sent veteran agency officer Lawrence Sanchez to New York, former U.S. intelligence officials told the AP. While on the CIA's payroll, Sanchez was the architect of spying programs that transformed the NYPD into one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies.

The CIA's inspector general cleared the agency of any wrongdoing in its partnership with New York, but the absence of documentation and legal review shows how murky the rules were as the CIA and NYPD formed their unprecedented collaboration in the frenzied months after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In a series of investigative reports since August, the AP has revealed that, with the CIA's help, the NYPD developed spying programs that monitored every aspect of Muslim life and built databases on where innocent Muslims eat, shop, work and pray. Plainclothes officers monitored conversations in Muslim neighborhoods and wrote daily reports about what they heard.

Kelly, the police commissioner, has vigorously defended the NYPD's relationship with the CIA. Testifying before the City Council in October, Kelly said the collaboration was authorized under the 1981 presidential order, known as No. 12333.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

New plan criminalizes Palestinian citizens of Israel

Alternative Information Center

On the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch (Israel Beteinu), presented a plan to the government today that will essentially criminalize Palestinian citizens of Israel under the guise of “improving personal and community security within the Arab sector.”


According to the plan, which the Ministry of Public Security has already begun to implement, three special police units, including detective and investigation units, were created in Nazareth, Tayibe and the Bedouin communities in the south. Some 11 additional units will be established within the next two years. According to the plan, neighborhood watches will be strengthened in Arab areas and the Arab sector will be given special priority for programs like “City Without Violence” and the war on drugs.

While the Aharonovitch plan is presented as a service to the Arab-Palestinian community in Israel, it further criminalizes Palestinian citizens of the state without addressing the root causes of crime.

According to Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the criminal justice system is regularly used as a means of delegitimizing Palestinian political acts. Police routinely use force against Arab demonstrators in order to silence voices of protest. Furthermore, Palestinian citizens encounter disproportionate and systematic mass arrests, primarily on the pretense of their mere presence at the scene.

In addition, more than 30 laws discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the current government coalition has proposed new racist and discriminatory bills which are at various stages in the legislative process. They include laws that will place restrictions on freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and access to the political system, including ideological limitations on the platforms of political parties. Such laws are used to curb the political freedom of Palestinian citizens and their elected representatives and are shrinking their already limited space for political action.

In addition to the legal restrictions imposed by the state, the Palestinian community within Israel is subject to constant racist attacks by law enforcement agencies and by Jewish citizens.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Pennsylvania cops do not have immunity from charges of urine, pepper spray torture

Washington Post
Elizabeth Flock

A federal judge ruled Monday that a Pennsylvania woman can go forward with her lawsuit claiming that state police pepper sprayed her, doused her in cold water and then urinated on her while she was in restraints, The New Jersey Herald reports.
Derena Madison was taken into custody after police arrested her friend for driving under the influence, Courthouse News Service reported Friday.

The troopers initially claimed sovereign immunity from the suit, saying that “subduing persons is one of the acts of law enforcement officers are employed to perform,” and that they were “serving the purposes of ... the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania” in doing so.
Judge Gary Lancaster ruled that sovereign immunity doesn’t apply in this case, as the alleged misconduct is not included in their duties.

Lancaster was not making a call on the merit of her allegations — only on the fact that the sovereign immunity can't be used.

Under sovereign immunity, a state is immune from lawsuits or criminal prosecution because it cannot commit a legal wrong. It is most often exercised in Pennsylvania.
 
According to Madison’s suit, she was arrested after she exited the car for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. An officer then “twice sprayed [her] face, head and body with pepper spray, without justification ... for the purpose of torturing her,” according to the suit.

After calling for help, Madison says several officers put large quantities of cold water over her head, which caused her to fall to her knees in the snow and briefly black out.
When she regained consciousness, Madison alleged that she “felt and smelled urine on her head, face, neck and person. She believes that while she was unconscious, one or more of the defendants urinated on her.”

Madison says she was manacled during all three instances, and so the police force was clearly used to “degrade and humiliate” her, not subdue her. She sued two officers, an individual identified as “Cooley,” and two other unidentified individuals.


Tuesday, January 3, 2012

More Police Brutality in Seattle

FreeThoughtBlogs

Only a week after the DOJ released a report that found Seattle police officers were guilty of misconduct in 20% of all uses of force by the department comes this story, where an officer allegedly got so out of line that the man he had pulled over called 911 to make sure he was a real cop.

A local man called the cops on Seattle officers when he felt a traffic stop was spinning out of control – and the entire incident was captured on a police video that shows the man being yanked from his car and thrown to the ground…
The video shows Seattle police pulling a car over for speeding, then one officer walking up to the driver who was pulled over.

Although the dashboard camera captured the incident, the officer did not wear his microphone – a violation of department policy.
Once stopped, the driver, Amanuel Gebreselassie, says the talk went bad from the beginning.
“He’s using profanity. He’s not acting professional. He’s just not acting like an officer,” says Gebreselassie.
In their report, police said the driver was “extremely verbally aggressive.” But Gebreselassie denies it – and says the stop seemed so out of line, he called 911.
An audiotape of the 911 call recorded the conversation between Gebreselassie and the 911 dispatcher.
“911. What are you reporting?” the dispatcher says.
“Uhh, an illegal stop by an officer – you know, I just want to make sure he’s a real officer. … There’s an officer here, but he’s talking crazy to me, and I’m not really dealing with this guy.”
The conversation was cut short when a group of officers returned to the car.
“Get out of the car,” one officer can be heard saying on the 911 tape.
“For what?”
“Get out of the car, man.”
Police say Gebresellassie resisted, so they yanked him to the ground.
In the video, one officer appears to deliver a sharp kick – but it’s unclear where it lands.
The officers then performed an illegal search of the car. The department reprimanded three officers for the illegal search but did nothing about the violence inflicted on the man. Balko suggests a perfectly reasonable policy:
I propose a rule for cases like these: Any time a police officer inappropriately turns off his dash cam, turns off his uniform microphone, or illegally confiscates other audio or video of an incident which then ends up missing or destroyed, the courts will begin considering any disputed facts about the incident with a presumption that the citizen’s account is the correct one.
I couldn’t agree more.

Monday, December 5, 2011

The Constitution Is Dead: The Gradual Transition towards an Orwellian Police State

Global  Research
Devon DB

Many in America still believe that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and that politicians, both Republican and Democrat alike, still hold that view and ensure that any and all legislation passed does not violate it. However, in today’s America, the Constitution is effectively a null and void document, nothing more than a symbol politicians pay lip service to.

The destruction of the Constitution began soon after 9/11 when the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress. In the heat of the moment it seemed as if the legislation was meant to protect us from terrorism, however it was later revealed that certain provisions blatantly violated the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments. [1] Interestingly enough, however, this didn’t stop the Senate from to extending the Patriot Act earlier this year [2]. In doing this, the government revealed just how much they respect the Constitution.

The next unconstitutional act to take place was under President Obama. Despite his “hope and change” rhetoric during the campaign, the only thing Obama changed was to further erode the Constitution and the power of checks and balances in government. Obama argued that the UN mandate gave him the right to bombard Libya, however the mandate has nothing to do with the fact that such an action was unconstitutional [3] as the power to declare war in held solely by Congress, not to mention the fact that it violated the War Powers Act. In carrying out this action, Obama did even more to expand the imperial presidency and showed his blatant hypocrisy as in 2007 he clearly stated that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” [4] (emphasis added) However, in later months he would take this disregard of the Constitution to the extreme.

Just two months ago, Obama authorized the assassination of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. While al-Awlaki was a member of Al Qaeda, he was still a US citizen at the time of his death [5] and thus he still had rights as a citizen, specifically the right due process. This never occurred with al-Awlaki. Due to al-Awlaki’s assassination, it sets a legal precedent which allows the current and future Presidents to assassinate US citizens and withhold damning evidence- if there even is any- from the public under the guise of “national security.”

Today, we see due to the brutal crackdown of the Occupy Wall Street movement in Oakland, New York, and most recently Los Angeles, that Americans are being denied their First and Third amendment rights. Mayors are sending the message that if one decides to pose a serious challenge to the status quo, they will be violently crushed.

The Constitution is dead and with it the beliefs and ideals America was founded on have also passed away. The most terrifying occurrence, however, is that Americans are seeing their freedoms eroded are still in denial that a police state is slowly, but surely on its way.

Notes



Monday, November 21, 2011

Occupy Wall Street: Naomi Wolf calls attention to the disturbing involvement of Homeland Security in her arrest

Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Nov. 21, 2011

Naomi Wolf, political activist and author of “Give Me Liberty,” calls attention to the enormous power that the federal government can wield to prevent constitutionally guaranteed rights. “History shows they start with the Other and it gets closer and closer and closer and someday they come for you.”



Read and download the complete transcript for the October 21, 2011 edition of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”