Archive for the Martial Law Category
.alternet.org
JULY 06, 2011
http://goldsilver.com/news/why-do-the-police-have-tanks-the-strange-and-dangerous-militarization-of-the-us-police-force/
The federal government has supplied local police departments with military uniforms, weaponry, vehicles, and training.
July 5, 2011 |
Just after midnight on May 16, 2010, a SWAT team threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of a 25-year-old man while his 7-year-old daughter slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. The grenade landed so close to the child that it burned her blanket. The SWAT team leader then burst into the house and fired a single shot which struck the child in the throat, killing her. The police were there to apprehend a man suspected of murdering a teenage boy days earlier. The man they were after lived in the unit above the girl’s family.
The shooting death of Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones sounds like it happened in a war zone. But the tragic SWAT team raid took place in Detroit.
Shockingly, paramilitary raids that mirror the tactics of US soldiers in combat are not uncommon in America. According to an investigation carried out by the Huffington Post’s Radley Balko, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 30 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
Some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. And as demonstrated by the case of Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley-Jones, these raids have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries.
How did we allow our law enforcement apparatus to descend into militaristic chaos? Traditionally, the role of civilian police has been to maintain the peace and safety of the community while upholding the civil liberties of residents in their respective jurisdiction. In stark contrast, the military soldier is an agent of war, trained to kill the enemy.
Clearly, the mission of the police officer is incompatible with that of a soldier, so why is it that local police departments are looking more and more like paramilitary units in a combat zone? The line between military and civilian law enforcement has been drawn for good reason, but following the drug war and more recently, the war on terror, that line is inconspicuously eroding, a trend that appears to be worsening by the decade.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is a civil war-era law that prohibits the use of the military for civilian policing. For a long time, Posse Comitatus was considered the law of the land, forcing militarization advocates to come up with creative ways to get around it. In addition to assigning various law enforcement duties to the military, such as immigration control, over the years Congress has instituted policies that encourage law enforcement to emulate combat soldiers. Hence, the establishment of the SWAT team in the 1960s.
Originally called the Special Weapons Attack Team, the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units were inspired by an incident in 1966, when an armed man climbed to the top of the 32-story clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin and fired randomly for 90 minutes, shooting 46 people and killing 15, until two police officers got to the top of the tower and killed him. This episode is said to have “shattered the last myth of safety Americans enjoyed [and] was the final impetus the chiefs of police needed” to form their own SWAT teams. Soon after, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) formed the country’s first SWAT team, which acquired national prestige when used against the Black Panthers in 1969.
Use of these paramilitary units gradually increased throughout the 1970s, mostly in urban settings. The introduction of paramilitary units in America laid the foundation for the erosion of the barrier between police and military, a trend which accelerated in the 1980s under President Reagan, when the drug war was used as a pretext to make exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act.
In 1981, Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which amended Posse Comitatus by directing the military to give local, state and federal law enforcement access to military equipment, research and training for use in the drug war. Following the authorization of domestic police and military cooperation, the 1980s saw a series of additional congressional and presidential maneuvers that blurred the line between soldier and police officer, ultimately culminating in a memorandum of understanding in 1994 between the US Department of Justice and Department of Defense. The agreement authorized the transfer of federal military technology to local police forces, essentially flooding civilian law enforcement with surplus military gear previously reserved for use during wartime.
Between 1995 and 1997 the Department of Defense gave 1.2 million pieces of military hardware, including 3,800 M-16s, 2,185 M-14s, 73 grenade launchers and 112 armored personnel carriers to civilian police agencies across the country. But this was only the beginning.
In 1997, Congress, not yet satisfied with the flow of military hardware to local police, passed the National Defense Authorization Security Act which created the Law Enforcement Support Program, an agency tasked with accelerating the transfer of military equipment to civilian police departments. Between January 1997 and October 1999, the new agency facilitated the distribution of 3.4 million orders of Pentagon equipment to over 11,000 domestic police agencies in all 50 states.
By December 2005, that number increased to 17,000, with a purchase value of more than $727 million of equipment. Among the hand-me-downs were 253 aircraft (including six- and seven-passenger airplanes, and UH-60 Blackhawk and UH-1 Huey helicopters), 7,856 M-16 rifles, 181 grenade launchers, 8,131 bulletproof helmets, and 1,161 pairs of night-vision goggles.
The military surplus program and paramilitary units feed off one another in a cyclical loop that has caused an explosive growth in militarized crime control techniques. With all the new high-tech military toys the federal government has been funneling into local police departments, SWAT teams have inevitably multiplied and spread across American cities and towns in both volume and deployment frequency. Criminologist Peter Kraska found that the frequency of SWAT operations soared from just 3,000 annual deployments in the early 1980s to an astonishing 40,000 raids per year by 2001, 75-80 percent of which were used to deliver search warrants.
In 1997, Kraska observed that close to 90 percent of cities with populations exceeding 50,000 and at least 100 sworn officers had at least one paramilitary unit, twice as many as in the mid 1980s. Radley Basko correctly points out that the trends giving rise to SWAT proliferation in the 1990s have not disappeared, so it’s safe to assume these numbers have continued to rise and are significantly higher today.
Then there are the effects of the war on terror, which sparked the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the introduction of DHS grants to local police departments. These grants are used to purchase policing equipment, although law enforcement is investing in more than just bullet-proof vests and walkie talkies. DHS grants have led to a booming law enforcement industry that specifically markets military-style weaponry to local police departments. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is law enforcement’s version of the military-industrial-complex.
By instituting public policies that encouraged the collaboration of military and domestic policing, the US government handed a massive and highly profitable clientele to private suppliers of paramilitary gear. Following the breakdown of Posse Comitatus in the 1980s and ’90s, Peter Cassidy writes in Covert Action Quarterly that ”gun companies, perceiving a profitable trend, began aggressively marketing automatic weapons to local police departments, holding seminars, and sending out color brochures redolent with ninja-style imagery.”
Private suppliers of military equipment advertise a glorified version of military-style policing attire to local police departments and SWAT teams. One such defense manufacturing company, Heckler and Koch, epitomized this aggressive marketing tactic with its slogan for the MP5 submachine gun, “From the Gulf War to the Drug War—Battle Proven.”
Today’s latest in paramilitary fashion sweeping through local police departments is the armored tank, which is making appearances all over the country at an increasingly alarming rate. The police department in Roanoke, Virginia paid Armet Armored Vehicles, a private company that specializes in military vehicles, $218,000 to assemble a 20,000-pound bulletproof tank with a $245,000 federal grant.
Not to feel left out, the Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) in Lancaster, Penn., was recently seen sporting the Lenco BearCat, a camouflage colored Humvee-styled tank that can knock down a wall, pull down a fence, withstand small-arms fire and deliver a dozen heavily armed police officers to a tense emergency scene. The BearCat was purchased a year and a half ago with a $226,224 grant from DHS, yet it has spent nearly two years sitting in a garage at the county’s Public Safety Training Center.
The most widely used justification for the purchase of heavily armored war machines is that violence against police officers has increased exponentially, necessitating the tank for protection of the men and women who serve our communities. But examination of the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, a database that tracks the number of law enforcement officers killed and assaulted each year, reveals that this is simply not true. According to the UCR, since 2000 an average yearly toll of about 50 police officers have been feloniously killed, the highest reaching 70 in 2001. So the notion that militarization is a necessary reaction to a growth in violence against police officers is absurd, considering that violent crime is trending downward.
Others argue these tanks are needed in case of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. But on September 11, 2001, I do not recall the NYPD complaining that a lack of armored tanks was impeding its policing efforts. And during the catastrophic tornado that tore through Joplin, Missouri earlier this year, heavily armored vehicles weren’t present nor were they needed to assist in the aftermath.
The majority of paramilitary drug raid proponents maintain that military-style law enforcement is required to reduce the risk of potential violence, injury and death to both police officers and innocents. The reality is that SWAT team raids actually escalate provocation, usually resulting in senseless violence in what would otherwise be a routine, nonviolent police procedure.
Just consider your reaction in the event of a SWAT team breaking down your door in the middle of night, possibly even blowing off the hinges with explosives, while you and your family are asleep. Imagine the terror of waking up to find complete strangers forcing their way into your home and detonating a flash-bang grenade, meant to disorient you. Assuming nobody is hurt, what thoughts might be raging in your mind while the police forcefully incapacitate you and your loved ones, most likely at gunpoint, while carrying out a search warrant of your home. Assuming you were able to contain the mix of fear and rage going through your body, consider how helpless you would feel to know that any perceived noncompliance would most certainly be met with lethal force.
Training and technology-sharing between the defense and civilian law enforcement seems responsible for the pervasive culture of militarism plaguing domestic law enforcement. In fact, an estimated 46 percent of paramilitary units were trained by “active-duty military experts in special operations.” Lawrence Korb, a former official in the Reagan administration, famously said that soldiers are “trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.” As police officers continue to emulate soldiers in their weaponry, language, tactics, uniform, and mindset, it won’t be long before they vaporize instead of Mirandize as well.
We have created circumstances under which the American people are no longer individuals protected by the Bill of Rights, but rather “enemy combatants.” The consequences of such a mindset have proven time and again to be lethal, as we now rely on military ideology and practice to respond to crime and justice. For some insight into the implications, one needn’t look any further than minority communities, which have long been the victims of paramilitary forces posing as police officers. Black and Latino communities in the inner-cities of Washington DC, Detroit and Chicago have witnessed first-hand the deadly consequences of militarization on American soil. Military culture now permeates all aspects of our society. Does anyone really believe that heavily armed soldiers trained to kill are capable of maintaining an atmosphere of nonviolence?
It’s important to remember that police officers are not responsible for instituting these policies. Over the last three decades local police departments supplied with military uniforms, weaponry, vehicles, and training, were told they were fighting a war on drugs, crime and terror. The politicians who instituted these policies are responsible for the militarization creeping into civilian law enforcement. What might the end result be if the distinction between police and military ceases to exist? The answer is a police state — and certain segments of our society are already living in one.
Original source
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28
10
2010
Posted by: WeAreChangeLA in 9-11 truth, Architects and Engineers, Building 7, CIA, Controlled Demolition, FOIA, Global Awakening, Independent Media, Los Angeles, Martial Law, Mike Gravel, Military Industrial Complex, New World Order, Pentagon, Politicians speak out, We Are Change, YouTube
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02
10
2010
Posted by: WeAreChangeLA in Afghanistan, Anti-War, Big Brother, Blackwater, CIA, Declaration of Independence, Evidence, Global Awakening, Martial Law, Mercenary armies, Military Industrial Complex, Military policing citizens, Monsanto, Mossad, Police State, Privatization, cointelpro, treason
Documents reveal that Blackwater has been busy expanding its corporate reach by providing intelligence services for agencies such as the Canadian Military, Netherlands Police and corporations like Monsanto.
Blackwater is a private, mercenary army. They’ve been called the ’shadow army,’ and most notoriously worked for the United States in Iraq, where the company courted controversy. Journalist Jeremy Scahill, who wrote a book about Blackwater, wrote an exclusive for The Nation, revealing general details of the extent of the Blackwater business operations. Scahill managed to obtain documents that, according to Scahill, show
“… entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater’s work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater’s owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation.”
A spokesperson for Monsanto, reached by Scahill, first denied the relationship with Blackwater, but then admitted that Monsanto had paid Total Intelligence for intelligence reoprts
“… about the activities of groups or individuals that could pose a risk to company personnel or operations around the world which were developed by monitoring local media reports and other publicly available information. The subject matter ranged from information regarding terrorist incidents in Asia or kidnappings in Central America to scanning the content of activist blogs and websites.”
The spokesperson told Scahill he was told Total Intelligence was completely separate from Blackwater. The news that Monsanto hired a Blackwater company for intelligence reports is rocketing around the world via anti-GMO activists. Blogger Rady Ananda summed up the relationship between Monsanto and Blackwater as
“… A death-tech firm weds a hit squad.”
Citing the growing movement to destroy GMO crops, Ananda thought Monsanto was hoping to be able to quell dissent through infiltrating actvist groups that take direct action. Ananda concluded his article saying
“… Monsanto, by hiring a mercenary army and former CIA field agents, is deadly serious about protecting its deadly products. Yet, this contract further discredits the company. The public can now paint an even bleaker picture of the firm that brought us Agent Orange, PCBs, rBST, DDT, aspartame and, now, hitmen.”
Writing on Above Top Secret, Airspoon commented on Monsanto’s hiring of Blackwater, saying (sic)
“The above quote is pretty scary and indicative of how corporate interests are acting against our own, though most of us already knew that. For any of the deniars who tried to refute that such tactics were used, one need only look at the plethora of information coming out about Xe and Blackwater due to the scandal in Iraq. I think that the best thing that could be done, is to boycott these companies as much as possible. Monsanto might be a little hard to boycott for some folks, though the other companies shouldn’t be. In fact, Monsanto shouldn’t be either for most folks. Blackwater (Xe) is one of the most dangerous entities facing the American people. It’s like the enforcement arm of corporate interests that does not have to operate under the same “restrictions” that
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25
09
2010
Posted by: WeAreChangeLA in Anti-War, Big Brother, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, FBI, First Amendment, International Bankers, Israel, Martial Law, Mercenary armies, Mossad, Palestine, treason
Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
September 25, 2010
On September 24, Jason Ditz reported on Antiwar.com that “the FBI is confirming that this morning they began a number of raids against the homes of antiwar activists in Illinois, Minneapolis, Michigan, and North Carolina, claiming that they are ‘seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.’”
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| FBI and ATF agents raid the home of Minneapolis activist of Mick Kelly on Friday, September 24, 2010. |
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Now we know what Homeland Security (sic) secretary Janet Napolitano meant when she said on September 10: “The old view that ‘if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won’t have to fight them here’ is just that – the old view.” The new view, Napolitano said, is “to counter violent extremism right here at home.”
“Violent extremism” is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning’s FBI’s foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience, it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with “the material support of terrorism,” just as conservatives equated Vietnam era anti-war protesters with giving material support to communism.
Anti-war activist Mick Kelly whose home was raided, sees the FBI raids as harassment to intimidate those who organize war protests. I wonder if Kelly is underestimating the threat. The FBI’s own words clearly indicate that the federal police agency and the judges who signed the warrants do not regard antiwar protesters as Americans exercising their Constitutional rights, but as unpatriotic elements offering material support to terrorism.
“Material support” is another of those undefined police state terms. In this context the term means that Americans who fail to believe their government’s lies and instead protest its policies, are supporting their government’s declared enemies and, thus, are not exercising their civil liberties but committing treason.
As this initial FBI foray is a softening up move to get the public accustomed to the idea that the real terrorists are their fellow citizens here at home, Kelly will get off this time. But next time the FBI will find emails on his computer from a “terrorist group” set up by the CIA that will incriminate him. Under the practices put in place by the Bush and Obama regimes, and approved by corrupt federal judges, protesters who have been compromised by fake terrorist groups can be declared “enemy combatants” and sent off to Egypt, Poland, or some other corrupt American puppet state – Canada perhaps – to be tortured until confession is forthcoming that antiwar protesters and, indeed, every critic of the US government, are on Osama bin Laden’s payroll.
Almost every Republican and conservative and, indeed, the majority of Americans will fall for this, only to find, later, that it is subversive to complain that their Social Security was cut in the interest of the war against Iran or some other demonized entity, or that they couldn’t have a Medicare operation because the wars in Central Asia and South America required the money.
Americans are the most gullible people who ever existed. They tend to support the government instead of the Constitution, and almost every Republican and conservative regards civil liberty as a coddling device that encourages criminals and terrorists.
The US media, highly concentrated in violation of the American principle of a diverse and independent media, will lend its support to the witch hunts that will close down all protests and independent thought in the US over the next few years. As the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels said, “think of the press as a great keyboard on which the Government can play.”
An American Police State was inevitable once Americans let “their” government get away with 9/11. Americans are too gullible, too uneducated, and too jingoistic to remain a free people. As another Nazi leader Herman Goering said, “ The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace-makers for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.” (Just like the JFK Assassination…ed.)This is precisely what the Bush and Obama regimes have done. America, as people of my generation knew it, no longer exists.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
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08
04
2010
Posted by: WeAreChangeLA in Afghanistan, Alex Jones, Anti-War, Architects and Engineers, Big Brother, Bilderberg, Building 7, Celebrities, Censorship, Constitution, Controlled Demolition, Declaration of Independence, Global Awakening, Independent Media, Iran, Iraq, Martial Law, Media reporting, Military Industrial Complex, Military policing citizens, New World Order, Obama, Operation Mockingbird, Pakistan, Pentagon, Police State, YouTube, news
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06
04
2010
Posted by: WeAreChangeLA in Alex Jones, International Bankers, Martial Law, Military Industrial Complex, Military policing citizens, Obama, Oklahoma City Bombing, Pentagon, Second Amendment, Trilateral Commission, U.N., USS Liberty, solidarity
Infowars.com
April 5, 2010
The team at Infowars.com is very pleased to announce that Netflix has put several of our films on their website on a trial basis including The Obama Deception and Fall Of The Republic, as well as our newest titles Invisible Empire and Police State 4. If enough people put these items in their queue list it will ensure that Netflix will carry these powerful info-weapons and more people will be exposed to the true political paradigm we live under.
This is a wonderful opportunity to spread the word to those who may not be aware of Infowars.com or Alex Jones and would not otherwise view the DVD’s. If this push is successful enough it will also be available for download on your Xbox360, Playstation 3, and Roku, a market that is desperately in search of content with actual substance and not establishment programming.
We ask you to please take this opportunity to send our Netflix links to your un-awakened friends and family across the globe. With your help we can reach thousands more in this fight for humanity. This is a call to action to all Infowarriors to help us expand our presence in all avenues of media.
Search for the titles using Netflix’s search feature.
- Police State 4: The Rise of FEMA
- Fall of the Republic
- The Obama Deception
- Invisible Empire
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28
12
2009
Posted by: WeAreChangeLA in Big Brother, Censorship, Constitution, First Amendment, Global Awakening, Independent Media, Martial Law, Media reporting, Military policing citizens, New World Order, Police State, Survival, YouTube, treason
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By: Kaswar Klasra | Published: November 06, 2009 http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/06-Nov-2009/Blackwater-hires-exarmy-men-on-hefty-amounts
ISLAMABAD – In order to achieve desired results as early as possible, Blackwater is said to have hired retired officials of Pakistan’s law-enforcement agencies at highest ever salary packages, TheNation has learnt reliably. To the surprise of many, the agency is said to have hired Pakistani officials at the rate of astonishing $60,000 per month salary package.
Most important thing is Blackwater has hired former CIA intelligence officer Steven Cash to operate as Commander In Charge of its operations in Peshawar. The Blackwater supervisory team in Peshawar includes James Bill William, Copper, Steven Cash, Roderick Christopher and Alisha Cambel.
According to the online edition of “ Pakistan Daily”, Blackwater has approached various journalists to implement the PSYOPs in newspapers and electronic media in Pakistan while offering them lucrative salary packages. They are pushing journalists to publish news stories of Taliban, as the Psychological Operations group of US Army has planned.
According to an article posted at website of “Pakistan Daily”, Blackwater is paying the recruited local journalists as high as $1000 per published news story in their relevant newspapers and online editions.
Meetings are being held in various houses rented in University Town, Peshawar and residents have reported jeeps with tinted glasses during late hours.
Steven Cash is a former senior US government official and served as an Intelligence Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, first as an Assistant General Counsel, and then with the Directorate of Operations. He also served as Chief Counsel to Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, and as Minority Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security. From 2001 to 2003 he was a Professional Staff Member and Counsel for the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It is pertinent to note that Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik has denied presence of Blackwater in Pakistan.
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Larken Rose
Police State
I keep wondering, just how stupid are the American people? Pretty dense, apparently, and Massachusetts seems to be well ahead of the curve in boneheadedness.
The Boston fascist brigade is proudly talking about how they’re trying out a massive registry and tracking system of people who have received a vaccine. The stated goal, of course, is to protect the public health. If, however, you believe that to actually be the goal, then maybe you should be forced to live in Massachusetts, as punishment for being such a moron.
Whether you approach the thing from practical terms, or from a question of motivations, the stated goal is just plain idiotic, while a more sinister motive is readily apparent.
For starters, if there were actually a dangerous plague spreading around (not the artificially hyped kind, like the swine flu), don’t you think everyone in the area would know about it? Of course they would. So if someone was in such an area, and hadn’t been vaccinated, it would almost certainly be because he didn’t want to be vaccinated, for whatever reason. The database and tracking system would, therefore, serve only one purpose: to help the fascists forcibly vaccinate people (or forcibly imprison people) who didn’t want to be vaccinated. If you had a bracelet, the control freaks would know that you’re a good little sheep, and would go terrorize someone else.
If people were dropping like flies, from a real epidemic, and if there was a vaccine that would prevent the disease, the public would be lining up for
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