There are more than 2 million “private security” officers and guards on the streets of America and this number is growing by the day in Oakland and other cities.

By Jeremy Scahill

The United States is in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in its history. We see this in schools, health care, prisons, and certainly with the US military/national security/intelligence apparatus. There are almost 200,000 “private contractors” in Iraq (more than US soldiers) and Obama is continuing to use mercenaries there and in Afghanistan and Israel/Palestine. At present, 70 percent of the US intelligence budget is going to private companies.

This privatization trend is hardly new, but it is accelerating. While events such as the Nisour Square massacre committed in September 2007 by Blackwater operatives in Baghdad show the lethal danger of unleashing mercenary forces on foreign soil, one area with the potential for extreme abuses resulting from this privatization is in domestic law enforcement in the US. Many people may not be aware of this, but since the 1980s, private security guards have outnumbered police officers. “The more than 1 million contract security officers, and an equal number of guards estimated to work directly for U.S. corporations, dwarf the nearly 700,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States,” according to The Washington Post. Some estimate that private security actually operate inside the US at a 5-to-1 ratio with police.

In New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of the city, private security poured in. Armed operatives from companies like Blackwater, Wackenhut, Intercon and DynCorp spread out in the city. Within two weeks of the hurricane, the number of private security companies registered in Louisiana jumped from 185 to 235. In New Orleans at the time, I interviewed Israeli commandos from a company called Instinctive Shooting International as they operated an armed checkpoint on Charles Street after having been hired by a wealthy businessman. I also interviewed private guards who bragged of shooting “black gangbangers.” The abuses by private security guards in New Orleans and elsewhere has (more…)

From The August Review

by Patrick Wood

Patriots, Christians and concerned citizens are increasingly in the cross hairs of the U.S. intelligence community, and battle lines are being quietly drawn that could soon pit our own law enforcement and military forces against us.

A February 20 report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” was issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) that paints mainstream patriotic Americans as dangerous threats to law enforcement and to the country. Operating under the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the MIAC is listed as a Fusion Center that was established in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

Because authenticity of the report was questioned by some, this writer contacted Missouri state Representative Jim Guest (R-King City) who had personally verified that the report had indeed been issued. Rep. Guest is chairman of the Personal Privacy Committee and is a prominent leader in the national Blowback against the Real ID Act of 2005 that requires states to issue uniform driver’s licenses containing personal biometric data. (See Guest warns against Big Brother, Real ID)

Rep. Guest stated that he was “shocked and outraged” at the report, which clearly paints him and many other elected state leaders, as a potential threats to law enforcement.

Instead of focusing on actual criminal incidents of “home-grown” terrorism, the MAIC report instead lists issues that it believes are (more…)

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LAPD Chief Bratton Questioned about John O’Neil and Jerome Hauer and the plight of the First Responders.

Chief Bratton says that the health and lives of the FIrst Responders is not his area of responsibility.

Jerome Hauer is a Bio-Warfare expert who is well known in New York City for having created former mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in World Trade Center 7 the building that inexplicably imploded in a freefall on September 11, 2001, without having been hit by an airplane. Hauer’s corporate affiliations include SAIC, Batelle, CSC-DynCorp, Hollis-Eden, and one of the nation’s most powerful private investigative and security firms Kroll Inc., among others. Now BioPort has been added to his resume.

On the eve of 9/11, in NYC, Hauer was having drinks with his close friend, the recently retired FBI Agent and “Osama-Chaser,” John O’Neil. At that time O’Neil was the head of security at the World Trade Center complex, a position Hauer had helped him to get. O’Neil died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and it was Hauer who identified his body.

Hauer was quoted by Newsday staff writer Laurie Garrett on her personal blog as saying, “John O’Neill was head of the FBI’s counterterrorism branch in Washington. He led every important investigation you can name — the USS Cole, Tanzania, Kenya bombings. He retired three weeks ago. I helped him get the job as head of security for the World Trade Center. And the irony is, the guy he chased for most of his career killed him.”

http://www.wearechange.org
http://www.infowars.com

Camera and edit: Paul Wittenberger