OMNI: US
This sad collection of
reports must stiffen our spines: we must even more than ever act as though the
Constitution and its Bill of Rights are alive, but even more than ever we must
work assiduously to ensure they are. Educate political leaders and work
for politicians who know what is happening and are trying to defend and restore
our liberties. Dick
Write or Call the White House
President
Obama has declared his commitment to creating the most open and accessible
administration in American history. That begins with taking comments and
questions from you, the public, through our website.
Call
the President
PHONE NUMBERS
Comments:
202-456-1111Switchboard: 202-456-1414
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Comments:
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Write a letter to
the President
Here are a
few simple things you can do to make sure your message gets to the White House
as quickly as possible.1. If possible, email us! This is the fastest way to get your message to President Obama.
2. If you write a letter, please consider typing it on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper. If you hand-write your letter, please consider using pen and writing as neatly as possible.
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The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington , DC 20500
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters: http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.
STEPS TOWARD DICTATORSHIP AND
WHAT’S DRIVING US THERE
See Index to Newsletters on:
assassination, capitalism/market system, control of information, corporations,
covert ops, fascism, FBI, fear, Homeland Security, imperialism, militarism,
military industrial complex, nationalism, NSA, patriotism, Patriot Act, Pentagon, Pentagon arming police, police Swat
teams, right wing, secrecy, surveillance, torture, wars, and many more. Once you begin to read on these subjects you
discover how connected they are.
Contents #1
Contact the President
Militarization Expanding, Bill of Rights Under Assault, Citizens
Resist!
Whitehead, Emerging Police State
Amy Goodman, William Binney, NSA, Surveillance, National Security State
Susan Herman, Taking
Liberties
Detention List for Martial Law
Hedges, Repression and Rebellion
Militarized Police
Balko, Militarization of Police (essay, book, review)
Finley, Warrior Cops Out of Control
Tomgram and Chace Madar, Criminalization of Everyday Life
Contact Arkansas
Congressional Delegation
A Government of Wolves: The Emerging
American Police State [Hardcover]
June 25, 2013
In A Government of Wolves: The Emerging
American Police State,
John W. Whitehead charts America's transition from a society governed by
"we the people" to a police state governed by the strong arm of the
law. In such an environment, the law becomes yet another tool to oppress the
people. As a constitutional attorney of national prominence, and as president
of The Rutherford Institute, an international civil liberties organization,
Whitehead has been at the forefront of the fight for civil liberties in this
country.
The recurring theme at the heart of A Government of Wolves is that the American people are in grave danger of losing their basic freedoms. The simple fact is that the Constitution - and in particular the Bill of Rights - is being undermined on virtually every front. Indeed, everythingAmerica
We were once a society that valued individual liberty and privacy. But in recent years we have turned into a culture that has quietly accepted surveillance cameras, police and drug-sniffing dogs in our children's schools, national databases that track our finances and activities, sneak-and-peek searches of our homes without our knowledge or consent, and anti-terrorism laws that turn average Americans into suspects. In short,America
A Government of Wolves not only explains these acute problems but is a call to action offering timely and practical initiatives for Americans to take charge of present course of history and stop the growing police state. But time is running out. We are at critical juncture and every citizen who values his or her personal freedom needs to pay close attention to the message in this book!
The recurring theme at the heart of A Government of Wolves is that the American people are in grave danger of losing their basic freedoms. The simple fact is that the Constitution - and in particular the Bill of Rights - is being undermined on virtually every front. Indeed, everything
We were once a society that valued individual liberty and privacy. But in recent years we have turned into a culture that has quietly accepted surveillance cameras, police and drug-sniffing dogs in our children's schools, national databases that track our finances and activities, sneak-and-peek searches of our homes without our knowledge or consent, and anti-terrorism laws that turn average Americans into suspects. In short,
A Government of Wolves not only explains these acute problems but is a call to action offering timely and practical initiatives for Americans to take charge of present course of history and stop the growing police state. But time is running out. We are at critical juncture and every citizen who values his or her personal freedom needs to pay close attention to the message in this book!
US NATIONAL SECURITY
STATE
Timothy Vaslett
tvaslett@yahoo.com via uark.edu
4-20-12
Today's Democracy Now focuses on the
NSA with one of the top insider whistle
blowers and others who reveal the real goings on with the totalitarian
security state.
Democracy Now Stories April
20, 2012
In his first
television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over
its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s
massive power to spy. http://www.democracynow.org/
It has become all too clear, especially when you listen to the stories
on this program, that it is not and has not been about terrorism. It is about
consolidation of power and control over every aspect of our lives and
against all dissent against the movement in this direction. It's breathtaking how rapidly the clampdown
is moving ahead. Here is the link:
http://www.democracynow.org/
SECURING YOURSELF FROM THE NSS
And after you have hopefully become more aware of the danger
that is here now and not in some inestimable future then the next immediate
step is to try to become more secure from what is ostensibly our security
apparatus. Link on some ways to do this are posted here:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
http://www.hushmail.com/
These are search engines that use the Google engine but are
much more secure - at least for now.
http://www.mool.com/
http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html
Because freedom can't protect itself.
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'Taking Liberties' — New Book on What We All
Lost After 9/11
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'Taking Liberties' — New Book on What We All Lost After 9/11
Susan Herman, ACLU
President, is the author of Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of American
Democracy. In this eye-opening work,
Herman takes a hard look at the human and social costs of the War on Terror. A
decade after 9/11, it is far from clear that the government's hastily adopted
antiterrorist tactics — such as the Patriot Act — are keeping us safe, but it
is increasingly clear that these emergency measures in fact have the potential
to ravage our lives — and have already done just that to countless Americans.
For example,
·
Under the so-called “library provision” of the USA PATRIOT
Act, the government can demand that custodians of records – including
librarians, schools, social work institutions, and internet service providers
(who, in these days of cloud computing, have access to a mind-boggling array of
information about us) — turn over those records without having to explain to a
court why they want those records, or whether the person who is the subject of
the records has done anything suspicious.
·
Under the expanded “National Security Letter,” the FBI and
other agencies can demand some records from telecommunications and financial
services providers without any court order at all and then gag the recipients.
·
Patriot Act amendments let the government spy on Americans
using a Cold War era statute designed for tracking the covert activities of
Soviet agents.
More about Taking Liberties:
|
"Taking
Liberties offers a compelling case that the basic constitutional protections
most Americans take for granted, including the rights to free speech, a fair
trial and due process, as well as freedom from unreasonable searches and
seizures, were seriously compromised after 9/11 as a result of the
government's well-meaning but ill-conceived efforts to safeguard the country
against another attack. . . [P]ersuasively fair and reasonable . . . A
valuable contribution to the growing body of literature regarding the War on
Terror's impact on our constitutional rights." — Kirkus Reviews
|
Keep America Safe and Free
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INFOGRAPHICS
![Guantánamo by the Numbers [Infographic]](file:///C:/DOCUME~1/DICKBE~1/LOCALS~1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image006.jpg "Guantánamo by the Numbers [Infographic]")
DETENTION LIST FOR US MARTIAL LAW
http://intellihub.com/2013/06/11/main-core-a-list-of-millions-of-americans-that-will-be-subject-to-detention-during-martial-law/
http://intellihub.com/2013/06/11/main-core-a-list-of-millions-of-americans-that-will-be-subject-to-detention-during-martial-law/
Main Core: A List Of Millions Of
Americans That Will Be Subject To Detention During Martial Law By Michael Snyder
from: Intellihub.com
Are you on the list? Are you one of the millions of Americans that have been designated a threat to national security by theU.S.
End of the American Dream
June 11, 2013
http://intellihub.com/2013/06/11/main-core-a-list-of-millions-of-americans-that-will-be-subject-to-detention-during-martial-law/
Will you be subject to detention when martial law is imposed during a major national emergency? As you will see below, there is actually a list that contains the names of at least 8 million Americans known as Main Core that theU.S. Washington
So I decided to look into Main Core, and what I found out was absolutely stunning – especially in light of what Edward Snowden has just revealed to the world. It turns out that theU.S. U.S.
The following is how Wikipedia describes Main Core…
Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of theUnited States U.S. U.S.
Are you on the list? Are you one of the millions of Americans that have been designated a threat to national security by the
End of the American Dream
June 11, 2013
http://intellihub.com/2013/06/11/main-core-a-list-of-millions-of-americans-that-will-be-subject-to-detention-during-martial-law/
Will you be subject to detention when martial law is imposed during a major national emergency? As you will see below, there is actually a list that contains the names of at least 8 million Americans known as Main Core that the
So I decided to look into Main Core, and what I found out was absolutely stunning – especially in light of what Edward Snowden has just revealed to the world. It turns out that the
The following is how Wikipedia describes Main Core…
Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of the
REPRESSION AND CALL FOR REBELLION
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May 19, 2013
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from
the poorest pockets of the United
States
What
has taken place in these sacrifice zones—in postindustrial cities such as
Camden, N.J., and Detroit, in coalfields of southern West Virginia where mining
companies blast off mountaintops, in Indian reservations where the demented
project of limitless economic expansion and exploitation worked some of its
earliest evil, and in produce fields where laborers often endure conditions
that replicate slavery—is now happening to much of the rest of the country.
These sacrifice zones succumbed first. You and I are next.
Corporations
write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the
political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum.
They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries.
They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as
well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights
of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the
primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless
against corporate power.
The
Department of Justice seizure of two months of records of phone
calls to and from editors and reporters at The Associated Press is the latest
in a series of dramatic assaults against our civil liberties. The DOJ move is
part of an effort to hunt down the government official or officials who leaked
information to the AP about the foiling of a plot to blow up a passenger jet.
Information concerning phones of Associated Press bureaus in New
York , Washington , D.C., and Hartford , Conn.
Seizing
the AP phone logs is part of the corporate state’s broader efforts to silence
all voices that defy the official narrative, the state’s Newspeak, and hide from public view the inner
workings, lies and crimes of empire. The person or persons who provided the
classified information to the AP will, if arrested, mostly likely be prosecuted
under the Espionage Act. That law was never intended when it was instituted in
1917 to silence whistle-blowers. And from 1917 until Barack Obama took office
in 2009 it was employed against whistle-blowers only three times, the first
time against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The
Espionage Act has been used six times by the Obama administration against
government whistle-blowers, including Thomas Drake.
The government’s fierce persecution of the
press—an attack pressed by many of the governmental agencies that are arrayed
against WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and activists such as Jeremy
Hammond—dovetails with the government’s use of the 2001 Authorization for Use
of Military Force to carry out the assassination of U.S. citizens; of the FISA
Amendments Act, which retroactively makes legal what under our Constitution was
once illegal—the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of tens of millions of
U.S. citizens; and of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act,
which permits the government to have the military seize U.S. citizens, strip
them of due process and hold them in indefinite detention. These measures,
taken together, mean there are almost no civil liberties left.
A
handful of corporate oligarchs around the globe have everything—wealth, power
and privilege—and the rest of us struggle as part of a vast underclass,
increasingly impoverished and ruthlessly repressed. There is one set of laws
and regulations for us; there is another set of laws and regulations for a
power elite that functions as a global mafia.
We
stand helpless before the corporate onslaught. There is no way to vote against
corporate power. Citizens have no way to bring about the prosecution of Wall
Street bankers and financiers for fraud, military and intelligence officials
for torture and war crimes, or security and surveillance officers for human
rights abuses. The Federal Reserve is reduced to printing money for banks and
financiers and lending it to them at almost zero percent interest; corporate
officers then lend it to us at usurious rates as high as 30 percent. I do not
know what to call this system. It is certainly not capitalism. Extortion might
be a better word. The fossil fuel industry, meanwhile, relentlessly trashes the
ecosystem for profit. The melting of 40 percent of the summer Arctic sea ice
is, to corporations, a business opportunity. Companies rush to the Arctic and extract the last vestiges of oil, natural gas,
minerals and fish stocks, indifferent to the death pangs of the planet. The
same corporate forces that give us endless soap operas that pass for news, from
the latest court proceedings surrounding O.J. Simpson to the tawdry details of
the Jodi Arias murder trial, also give us atmospheric concentrations of carbon
dioxide that surpass 400 parts per million. They entrance us with their
electronic hallucinations as we waiver, as paralyzed with fear as Odysseus’
sailors,between Scylla and Charybdis.
There
is nothing in 5,000 years of economic history to justify the belief that human
societies should structure their behavior around the demands of the
marketplace. This is an absurd, utopian ideology. The airy promises of the
market economy have, by now, all been exposed as lies. The ability of
corporations to migrate overseas has decimated our manufacturing base. It has
driven down wages, impoverishing our working class and ravaging our middle
class. It has forced huge segments of the population—including those burdened
by student loans—into decades of debt peonage. It has also opened the way to massive
tax shelters that allow companies such as General Electric to pay no income
tax. Corporations employ virtual slave labor in Bangladesh
and China
More
than 100 million Americans—one-third of the population—live in poverty or a
category called “near poverty.” Yet the stories of the poor and the near poor,
the hardships they endure, are rarely told by a media that is owned by a
handful of corporations—Viacom, General Electric, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Clear
Channel and Disney. The suffering of the underclass, like the crimes of the
power elite, has been rendered invisible.
In
the Lakota Indian reservation at Pine Ridge , S.D. , in the United States Haiti West Virginia Appalachian Mountains , which provide
the headwaters for much of the Eastern Seaboard, are dotted with enormous
impoundment ponds filled with heavy metals and toxic sludge. In order to
breathe, children go to school in southern West Virginia
Rebel.
Even if you fail, even if we all fail, we will have asserted against the
corporate forces of exploitation and death our ultimate dignity as human
beings. We will have defended what is sacred. Rebellion means steadfast
defiance. It means resisting just as have Bradley Manning and Julian Assange,
just as has Mumia Abu-Jamal, the
radical journalist whom Cornel West, James Coneand I visited in prison last week in
Frackville , Pa.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
It is time to build radical mass movements that defy all formal centers of power and make concessions to none. It is time to employ the harsh language of open rebellion and class warfare. It is time to march to the beat of our own drum. The law historically has been a very imperfect tool for justice, as African-Americans know, but now it is exclusively the handmaiden of our corporate oppressors; now it is a mechanism of injustice. It was our corporate overlords who launched this war. Not us. Revolt will see us branded as criminals. Revolt will push us into the shadows. And yet, if we do not revolt we can no longer use the word “hope.”
Herman
Melville’s “Moby-Dick” grasps the dark soul of global capitalism. We are all
aboard the doomed ship Pequod, a name connected to an Indian tribe eradicated by genocide, and Ahab is in
charge. “All my means are sane,” Ahab says, “my motive and my object mad.” We
are sailing on a maniacal voyage of self-destruction, and no one in a position
of authority, even if he or she sees what lies ahead, is willing or able to
stop it. Those on the Pequod who had a conscience, including Starbuck, did not
have the courage to defy Ahab. The ship and its crew were doomed by habit,
cowardice and hubris. Melville’s warning must become ours. Rise up or die.
Also by Hedges: The
World As It Is: Dispatches on the
Myth of Human Progress A collection of Truthdig Columns by
Chris Hedges. Keep up with Chris Hedges’ latest columns,
interviews, tour dates and more atwww.truthdig.com/chris_hed
[Forwarded by David Druding—D]
MILITARIZED POLICE
RADLEY BALKO, RISE OF THE WARRIOR COP: THE
MILITARIZATIONOF AMERICA
How did America ABA
snip-
Police departments across the country now sport armored
personnel carriers designed for use on a battlefield. Some have helicopters,
tanks and Humvees. They carry military-grade weapons. Most of this equipment
comes from the military itself. Many SWAT teams today are trained by current
and former personnel from special forces units like the Navy SEALs or Army
Rangers.
BALKO’S NEW BOOK
The last days of colonialism taught America America
Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of earlyAmerica Clinton
In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.
Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early
In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.
July 24, 2013 8:48 pm
I’m kicking off a new feature in my
blogging: reviews of books or movies I think are relevant to current issues and
events. I’ve made occasional oblique references to books like Three Felonies a Day or Declaration of Independents.
But this will be a little more in depth. Not anticipating this will happen
often.
On this blog, I regularly link to the
work done by Radley Balko so it won’t surprise anyone that I just read his new
book Rise of the Warrior Cop and have a high opinion of it. But I
thought it was worth a post to spell out just why I think this is an important book.
It’s not for the reasons that you think.
Balko’s blog has become
one-stop-shopping on law enforcement abuses. From the misguided and tragic raid
on Corey
Maye to the killing of Kathryn Johnston, he’s documented hundreds of
wrong-door raids, overamped raids and militaristic excesses that have trashed
civil liberties and all too often left the bodies of innocent people and police
on the ground.
But the book is very different from his
blog. While the blog tends to focus on specific incidents of abuse, the book
takes a step back to break down how we’ve gotten here: how all of our civil liberties have slowly
been chipped away by the legislatures and the courts through hysteria over
crime, drugs and terrorism. It chronicles how our approach to law enforcement
has changed from colonial times (when we didn’t have professional law forces)
to today, with a heavy focus on the last forty years.
The thing about wrong door raids or the
shooting of innocent people by police is that focusing on particular horrifying
incidents gives one the impression that are isolated or very rare events. Balko
shows that they are not that rare. Ray Kelly admitted that at least 10% of the
hundreds of raids launched in NYC every month hit innocent people. Others
estimate the problem is much larger. Hard numbers are difficult to get because
there is very little documentation of what goes on in police raids and
legislators and law enforcement have resisted efforts to document it.
But wrong door raids are
only the tip of a much larger and much scarier iceberg. The militarization of
law enforcement is
deeply problematic even when it doesn’t result in harm to innocent people. Over
50,000 armed raids are launched every year in this country and something like
90+% of armed raids are for consensual non-violent crimes (drugs, principally).
The problem isn’t just innocent people getting hurt: it’s about the guilty people too.
How did it become reasonable to routinely send armed tactical squads for drug
busts? If someone has some pot, why should cops bang on the door at 4 am, wait
15 seconds, crash it down, throw everyone to the floor and point guns at their
head while screaming profanities? Before you answer, remember that guns of any
kind are only recovered in a tiny fraction of these raids. Before you answer,
remember that armed resistance to cops has been rare even when crime reached its awful peak
in the early 90′s (assaults on police are at an all-time low). Before you
answer, remember that these tactics, with court approval, have been used to
bust up small-time gambling “rings”, people selling raw milk, guitar
manufacturers using illegal wood and even barbers practicing without a license.
Raids have been launched against legal pot shops in California
A man’s home is his castle, even if he is breaking the law. The Constitution
applies to all of use, lawmakers and lawbreakers. Our Founding Fathers rebelled
for far less than this. They thought daytime searches were out of line.
These tactics have only ramped up and
expanded as the crime rate has fallen. Supporters like to say that the
militarization of police is the reason crime has fallen. But they have a
problem: cities that have eschewed such tactics, like San Diego
Rise of the Warrior Cop is definitively not anti-cop. I would say that at least
60% and probably more of the interviewees are in law enforcement. Some of the
most telling passages in the book are from the 1970′s when police officers resisted the militarization of policing
precisely because they feared what eventually happened: the creation of groups
of armed officers with little connection to the community busting down doors in
the process of ordinary law enforcement; communities that see cops as dangerous
rather than helpful; the majority of good decent community-oriented cops being
eclipsed by gung-ho warriors.
The problem is not that cops are bad;
the problem is that cops are human.
And because of panic-mongering over the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, we
have given these humans military weapons, enormous discretionary power and
little accountability. Cops in the book talk about the adrenaline rush that
comes with a no-knock raid, the sense of power that guns, body armor and tanks
give them. It’s a testament to the basic goodness of most of our cops that
there aren’t more abuses.
Balko is clear in his closing argument:
we do not live in a police state. Only a small minority of Americans are being
impacted by this. But I would say that the mechanism of a police state has been
slowly worked into our society thanks to the War on Drugs and the War on
Terror. Think about 2016. In 2016 we will get a new President. Here are just
some of the powers that this new President will have:
· The
power to surveil any overseas communication of any type through a secret court
and the infrastructure to surveil any electronic communications, period.
· The
power to collect meta-data on all Americans, which includes their location, who
they call and where they go.
· A
surveillance state that is governed by secret laws that
no citizen can see.
· The
power to kill American citizens overseas based on secret internal evaluations.
· The
power to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens.
· A post
office that routinely photographs our mail.
· Armed
paramilitary SWAT teams in almost every city with a population of more than
25,000. Some cities of just a few thousand have them. Many now have armored
vehicles and military grade weapons. Some even have massive .50 machine guns.
That’s in addition to 73 different federal agencies that have tactical squads
and employ tens of thousands of armed agents who are authorized for raids.
· A
judiciary that thinks the exclusionary rules is old-fashioned, that warrants
should almost always be granted and that police always act “in good faith”. A
judiciary that thinks, if you’re arrested for so much as a bogus parking
ticket, the police should be to take your DNA and see what else you might have
been up to. A judiciary that thinks the smell of pot justifies a warrantless
search and that your silence can incriminate you.
Maybe you think some of those policies
above are reasonable. The problem is that this is not multiple choice. The
President and the state now have all of
those powers and privileges. And that list will only grow if left unchecked.
One of the things we’ve seen is that the powers bequeathed by one President to
the next only get extended further. As Alex has said many times, Obama has
engaged in War on Terror policies far in excess of what Bush did. What might
the next President do? Are you willing to trust anyone with that kind of power?
This isn’t about party. Republicans
have played their role in chipping away at our civil liberties (Nixon
especially). But one of the biggest enablers of law enforcement militarization
has been Joe Biden, a liberal Democrat. When Obama took office, he massively increased the amount of money going
into grants and giveaways to provide military-grade equipment to cops in even
the tiniest safest cities. Under Obama, raids on legal pot growers have increased. Surveillance has increased. Civil liberties have decreased. And the only
problems the Democrats have had with even the most invasive anti-crime
legislation is it not going
far enough. This is a bipartisan problem.
A lot of people talk about the Second
Amendment and its critical role in protecting us from tyranny. I agree on the
importance of the Second Amendment. But where are these people when the actual
pieces are put in place that could, under the right man, enable tyranny? Where
are they as the Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are effectively gutted? Even
the First Amendment is in danger. It is now routine for teams of cops to show
up to protests in full riot gear and arrest peaceful protesters who won’t
disperse. Medical marijuana activists have been specifically targeted for
raids.
If you really care about liberty, you
should not respond to violent raids on non-violent drug dealers with “that’s
what they get for dealing drugs.” If you really care about liberty, you
shouldn’t dismiss concerns over Waco
We see blazing hypocrisy on this issue
all the time. Conservatives who rightfully screamed bloody murder over the
Elian Gonzalez raid were almost gleeful when cops beat and pepper-sprayed
Occupy protesters. Liberals who howled when Occupy protesters were beaten broke
out the pompoms when it was the ATF (Rachel Maddow specifically said the nature
of the opposition justified the tactics). Liberals who objected to profiling of
Muslims thought it was just fine when the DHS did it with Right Wing groups.
It is precisely that kind of partisanship and division
which has enabled this. People looking the other way as the War on Drugs raged
out of control because it was only hurting dirty hippies and poor black people.
People looking the other way at ATF raids because it was only hurting gun nuts.
People biting their tongues on War on Terror excesses because they’re not
Muslim. People dismissing IRS abuses because the Tea Party deserved it.
We have to get this through our heads:
civil liberties belong to all of us. If anyone’s civil liberties are
under attack, then all of our civil liberties are under attack.
Balko seems a bit optimistic that we
will reach a tipping point on this. I’m not so sure. I thought the Columbia raid, in which video captured the
killing of two dogs and the terrorizing of a child over a minor drug bust,
would have changed things, but it didn’t. I fear that, if things don’t change
soon, it will take something truly horrible to wake the American people up.
50,000 raids a year may not sound like
a lot in a country of 300 million. The vast majority of Americans will never
have to worry about this. But the potential danger lurks out there. Anyone in
this country — anyone who isn’t a Congressman at least — is a vague pile of
evidence away from having their door knocked down, their house searched and any
complaint being dismissed depending on which group our government decides is
dangerous. This week, it’s legal pot dealers in California
Is that they kind of country we want to
live in? That’s the question the book asks.
I’ve only talked about a tiny fraction
of what’s in Rise of the
Warrior Cop. It’s a quick read but packed with facts that are alternatively
enraging, alarming and, on occasion, darkly hilarious. But if you care about
this issue — either because you agree with me that this is alarming or because
you think I’m a hysterical nut — you should take a look.
The New “Warrior Cop” is Out of
Control
by Klint Finley JULY 10, 2013
The iconic Occupy Portland photograph by The Oregonian‘s Randy L. Rasmussen
You may have seen this
article already, but it’s worth a read if you haven’t. Over the years I’ve
linked to a lot of Radley Balko’s coverage of the over the top use of SWAT
teams in the U.S.
But things have
progressively gotten worse. Now he has a book out on the subject. Here’s an excerpt about police killing dogs:
Toward the end of the
2000s there were hints that the public was beginning to want a change, though
that desire could manifest in unexpected ways. A former colleague at the Cato
Institute, Tim Lynch, has told me that when he gives talks about the Waco raid,
he finds that people are somewhat sympathetic to the argument that the
government overreacted, but that they still can’t get past the weirdness of the
Branch Davidians themselves—their stockpile of weapons and the claims of sexual
abuse and drug distribution in the community. Even the children who died are
sometimes dismissed with guilt by association. But when he mentions that the ATF
agents killed the Davidians’ dogs, Lynch tells me, people become visibly angry.
I have found the same thing to be true in my reporting on drug raids.
At first, that may seem
to indicate that people callously value the lives of pets more than the lives
of people. But the fact that killing the dog during these raids has become
nearly routine in many police agencies demonstrates just how casually those
agencies have come to accept drug war collateral damage. When I started logging
cop-shoots-dog incidents on my blog (under the probably sensational term
“puppycide”), people began sending me new stories as they happened. Cops are
now shooting dogs at the slightest provocation. As of this writing, I’m sent
accounts of a few incidents each week.
It’s difficult to say if
this is happening more frequently. There are no national figures, and estimates
are all over the map. One dog handler recently hired to train a police
department in Texas Milwaukee
Full Story: Salon: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new
warrior cop is out of control
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December 8, 2013
Sometimes a
single story has a way of standing in for everything you need to know.
In the case of the up-arming, up-armoring, and militarization of police
forces across the country, there is such a story. Not the police, mind
you, but the campus cops at Ohio State University now possess an MRAP; that
is, a $500,000, 18-ton,
mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle of a sort used in the Afghan
War and, as Hunter Stuart of the Huffington Post reported, built to
withstand "ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IEDs, and nuclear,
biological, and chemical environments.” Sounds like just the thing for
bouts of binge drinking and post-football-game shenanigans. Tomgram: Chase Madar, The Criminalization of Everyday Life That MRAP came, like so much other equipment police departments are stocking up on -- from tactical military vests, assault rifles, and grenade launchers to actual tanks and helicopters -- as a freebie via a Pentagon-organized surplus military equipment program. As it happens, police departments across the country are getting MRAPs like OSU’s, including theDakota County Sheriff’s Office in When questioned on the utility of its new MRAP, Warren County Sheriff Bud York suggested, according to the Post-Star, the local newspaper, that “in an era of terrorist attacks on You can imagine just how useful an MRAP is likely to be if the next Adam Lanza busts into a school in Just thinking about that MRAP at OSU makes me feel like I grew up in Neolithic America. After all, when I went to college in the early 1960s, campus cops were mooks in suits. Gun-less, they were there to enforce such crucial matters as “parietal hours.” (If you’re too young to know what they were, look it up.) At their worst, they faced what in those still civilianized (and sexist) days were called “panty raids,” but today would undoubtedly be seen as potential manifestations of a terrorist mentality. Now, if there is a sit-in or sit-down on campus, as infamously at the University of California, Davis, during the Occupy movement, expect that the demonstrators will be treated like enemies of the state and pepper-sprayed or perhaps Tased. And if there’s a bona fide student riot in town, the cops will now roll out an armored vehicle (as they did recently in Seattle). By the way, don’t think it’s just the weaponry that’s militarizing the police. It’s a mentality as well that, like those weapons, is migrating home from our distant wars. It’s a sense that the U.S., too, is a “battlefield” and that, for instance, those highly militarized SWAT teams spreading to just about any community you want to mention are made up of “operators” (a “term of art” from the special operations community) ready to deal with threats to American life. Embedding itself chillingly in our civilian world, that battlefield is proving mobile indeed. As Chase Madar wrote for TomDispatch the last time around, it leads now to the repeated handcuffing of six- and seven-year-olds in our schools as mini-criminals for offenses that once would have been dealt with by a teacher or principal, not a cop, and at school, not in jail or court. Today, Madar returns to explain just how this particular nightmare is spreading into every crevice of American life. Tom
Just thinking about that MRAP at OSU makes me feel like I grew
up i Just thinking about that MRAP at OSU makes me feel like I
grew up in Neolithic America. After all, when I went to college in the early
1960s, campus cops were mooks in suits. Gun-less, they were there to
enforce such crucial matters as “parietal hours.” (If you’re too young
to know what they were, look it up.) At their worst, they faced what in
those still civilianized (and sexist) days were called “panty raids,” but
today would undoubtedly be seen as potential manifestations of a terrorist
mentality. Now, if there is a sit-in or sit-down on campus, as
infamously at the University of California, Davis, during the Occupy
movement, expect that the demonstrators will be treated like enemies of the
state and pepper-sprayed or
perhaps Tased. And if there’s a bona fide student riot in town, the
cops will now roll out an armored vehicle (as they did recently in Seattle).
By the way, don’t think it’s just the weaponry that’s militarizing the police. It’s a mentality as well that, like those weapons, is migrating home from our distant wars. It’s a sense that the U.S., too, is a “battlefield” and that, for instance, those highly militarized SWAT teams spreading to just about any community you want to mention are made up of “operators” (a “term of art” from the special operations community) ready to deal with threats to American life. Embedding itself chillingly in our civilian world, that battlefield is proving mobile indeed. As Chase Madar wrote for TomDispatch the last time around, it leads now to the repeated handcuffing of six- and seven-year-olds in our schools as mini-criminals for offenses that once would have been dealt with by a teacher or principal, not a cop, and at school, not in jail or court. Today, Madar returns to explain just how this particular nightmare is spreading into every crevice of American life. Tomn Neolithic By the way, don’t think it’s just the weaponry that’s militarizing the police. It’s a mentality as well that, like those weapons, is migrating home from our distant wars. It’s a sense that the U.S., too, is a “battlefield” and that, for instance, those highly militarized SWAT teams spreading to just about any community you want to mention are made up of “operators” (a “term of art” from the special operations community) ready to deal with threats to American life. Embedding itself chillingly in our civilian world, that battlefield is proving mobile indeed. As Chase Madar wrote for TomDispatch the last time around, it leads now to the repeated handcuffing of six- and seven-year-olds in our schools as mini-criminals for offenses that once would have been dealt with by a teacher or principal, not a cop, and at school, not in jail or court. Today, Madar returns to explain just how this particular nightmare is spreading into every crevice of American life. Tom
If all you’ve got is a hammer, then everything starts to look
like a nail. And if police and prosecutors are your only tool, sooner or
later everything and everyone will be treated as criminal. This is
increasingly the American way of life, a path that involves “solving” social
problems (and even some non-problems) by throwing cops at them, with
generallydisastrous results. Wall-to-wall criminal law encroaches ever
more on everyday life as police power is applied in ways that would have been
unthinkable just a generation ago.
By now, the militarization of the police has advanced to the
point where "the War on Crime” and “the War on Drugs” are no longer
metaphors but bland understatements. There is the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams, even in
small towns; the use of shock-and-awe tactics to bust small-time bookies;
the no-knock raids to recover trace amounts of drugs that often result in the
killing of family dogs, if not family members; and in communities where drug
treatment programs once were key, the waging of a drug version of
counterinsurgency war. (All of this is ably reported on journalist
Radley Balko’s blog and in his book, The Rise of
the Warrior Cop.) But American over-policing involves far
more than the widely reported up-armoring of your local precinct. It’s
also the way police power has entered the DNA of social policy, turning just
about every sphere of American life into a police matter.
Just thinking about that MRAP at OSU makes me feel like I grew up in Neolithic America. After all, when I went to college in the early 1960s, campus cops were mooks in suits. Gun-less, they were there to enforce such crucial matters as “parietal hours.” (If you’re too young to know what they were, look it up.) At their worst, they faced what in those still civilianized (and sexist) days were called “panty raids,” but today would undoubtedly be seen as potential manifestations of a terrorist mentality. Now, if there is a sit-in or sit-down on campus, as infamously at the University of California, Davis, during the Occupy movement, expect that the demonstrators will be treated like enemies of the state and pepper-sprayed or perhaps Tased. And if there’s a bona fide student riot in town, the cops will now roll out an armored vehicle (as they did recently in Seattle). By the way, don’t think it’s just the weaponry that’s militarizing the police. It’s a mentality as well that, like those weapons, is migrating home from our distant wars. It’s a sense that the U.S., too, is a “battlefield” and that, for instance, those highly militarized SWAT teams spreading to just about any community you want to mention are made up of “operators” (a “term of art” from the special operations community) ready to deal with threats to American life. Embedding itself chillingly in our civilian world, that battlefield is proving mobile indeed. As Chase Madar wrote for TomDispatch the last time around, it leads now to the repeated handcuffing of six- and seven-year-olds in our schools as mini-criminals for offenses that once would have been dealt with by a teacher or principal, not a cop, and at school, not in jail or court. Today, Madar returns to explain just how this particular nightmare is spreading into every crevice of American life. Tom The Over-Policing of Police Overkill Has Entered the DNA of Social Policy By Chase Madar If all you’ve got is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. And if police and prosecutors are your only tool, sooner or later everything and everyone will be treated as criminal. This is increasingly the American way of life, a path that involves “solving” social problems (and even some non-problems) by throwing cops at them, with generallydisastrous results. Wall-to-wall criminal law encroaches ever more on everyday life as police power is applied in ways that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago. By now, the militarization of the police has advanced to the point where "the War on Crime” and “the War on Drugs” are no longer metaphors but bland understatements. There is the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams, even in small towns; the use of shock-and-awe tactics to bust small-time bookies; the no-knock raids to recover trace amounts of drugs that often result in the killing of family dogs, if not family members; and in communities where drug treatment programs once were key, the waging of a drug version of counterinsurgency war. (All of this is ably reported on journalist Radley Balko’s blog and in his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop.) But American over-policing involves far more than the widely reported up-armoring of your local precinct. It’s also the way police power has entered the DNA of social policy, turning just about every sphere of American life into a police matter. Click here to read more of this dispatch. |
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Just thinking about that MRAP at OSU makes me feel like I
grew up in Neolithic America. After all, when I went to college in the early
1960s, campus cops were mooks in suits. Gun-less, they were there to
enforce such crucial matters as “parietal hours.” (If you’re too young to
know what they were, look it up.) At their worst, they faced what in
those still civilianized (and sexist) days were called “panty raids,” but today
would undoubtedly be seen as potential manifestations of a terrorist
mentality. Now, if there is a sit-in or sit-down on campus, as infamously
at the University of California, Davis, during the Occupy movement, expect that
the demonstrators will be treated like enemies of the state and pepper-sprayed or
perhaps Tased. And if there’s a bona fide student riot in town, the cops
will now roll out an armored vehicle (as they did recently in Seattle).
By the way, don’t think it’s just the weaponry that’s militarizing the police. It’s a mentality as well that, like those weapons, is migrating home from our distant wars. It’s a sense that the U.S., too, is a “battlefield” and that, for instance, those highly militarized SWAT teams spreading to just about any community you want to mention are made up of “operators” (a “term of art” from the special operations community) ready to deal with threats to American life.
Embedding itself chillingly in our civilian world, that battlefield is proving mobile indeed. As Chase Madar wrote for TomDispatch the last time around, it leads now to the repeated handcuffing of six- and seven-year-olds in our schools as mini-criminals for offenses that once would have been dealt with by a teacher or principal, not a cop, and at school, not in jail or court. Today, Madar returns to explain just how this particular nightmare is spreading into every crevice of American life. Tom
By the way, don’t think it’s just the weaponry that’s militarizing the police. It’s a mentality as well that, like those weapons, is migrating home from our distant wars. It’s a sense that the U.S., too, is a “battlefield” and that, for instance, those highly militarized SWAT teams spreading to just about any community you want to mention are made up of “operators” (a “term of art” from the special operations community) ready to deal with threats to American life.
Embedding itself chillingly in our civilian world, that battlefield is proving mobile indeed. As Chase Madar wrote for TomDispatch the last time around, it leads now to the repeated handcuffing of six- and seven-year-olds in our schools as mini-criminals for offenses that once would have been dealt with by a teacher or principal, not a cop, and at school, not in jail or court. Today, Madar returns to explain just how this particular nightmare is spreading into every crevice of American life. Tom
|
The
Over-Policing of Police Overkill Has Entered the DNA of Social Policy By Chase Madar If all you’ve got is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. And if police and prosecutors are your only tool, sooner or later everything and everyone will be treated as criminal. This is increasingly the American way of life, a path that involves “solving” social problems (and even some non-problems) by throwing cops at them, with generally disastrous results. Wall-to-wall criminal law encroaches ever more on everyday life as police power is applied in ways that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago. By now, the militarization of the police has advanced to the point where "the War on Crime” and “the War on Drugs” are no longer metaphors but bland understatements. There is the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams, even in small towns; the use of shock-and-awe tactics to bust small-time bookies; the no-knock raids to recover trace amounts of drugs that often result in the killing of family dogs, if not family members; and in communities where drug treatment programs once were key, the waging of a drug version of counterinsurgency war. (All of this is ably reported on journalist Radley Balko’s blog and in his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop.) But American over-policing involves far more than the widely reported up-armoring of your local precinct. It’s also the way police power has entered the DNA of social policy, turning just about every sphere of American life into a police matter. Click here to read more of this dispatch. |
|
Visit
our sister sites: Recent Posts 3 days ago... Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, The Jason Bourne Strategy 5 days ago... Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, 1984 Was an Instruction Manual 1 week ago... Tomgram: Engelhardt, 2024 or Bust! 1 week ago... Tomgram: Laura Gottesdiener, Wall Street's Rental Empire
Recent
Highlights
7 weeks ago... Tomgram: Max Blumenthal, Expulsion and Revulsion in Israel 2 months ago... Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, The Age of Inhuman Scale |
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Arkansas
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SENATORS
Sen. John
Boozman
Republican, first term 320 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371 Arkansas offices: FORT SMITH: (479) 573-0189 JONESBORO: (870) 268-6925 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 372-7153 LOWELL: (479) 725-0400 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-0129 STUTTGART: (870) 672-6941 EL DORADO: (870) 863-4641 Website: www.boozman.senate.gov
Sen. Mark
Pryor
Democrat, second term 255 Dirksen Office Building Constitution Avenue and First Street NE Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908 Little Rock office: (501) 324-6336 Website: www.pryor.senate.gov |
REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Rick
Crawford
1ST DISTRICT Republican, second term 1771 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4076 Fax: (202) 225-5602 CABOT: (501) 843-3043 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-2075 Website: www.crawford.house.gov
Rep. Tim
Griffin
2ND DISTRICT Republican, second term 1232 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-2506 Fax: (202) 225-5903 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 324-5491 Website: www.griffin.house.gov
Rep. Steve
Womack
3RD DISTRICT Republican, second term 1119 Longworth Office Building New Jersey and Independence Avenues SE Washington 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4301 Fax: (202) 225-5713 Arkansas offices: ROGERS: (479) 464-0446 HARRISON: (870) 741-7741 FORT SMITH: (479) 424-1146 Website: www.womack.house.gov
Rep. Tom
Cotton
4TH DISTRICT Republican, first term 415 Phone: (202) 225-43772 HOT SPRINGS: (501) 520-5892 PINE BLUFF: (870) 536-3376 Website: www.cotton.house.gov |
END US
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