GlobalResearch: H.R. 675. The bill would amend United States Code and extend to civilian employees of the Department of Defense the authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms.
“Sec. 1585b. Law enforcement officers of the Department of Defense: authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms for any offense against the United States.”
The Posse Comitatus Act limits the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits members of the federal uniformed services from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property within the United States.
H.R. 675 sidesteps Posse Comitatus by defining “law enforcement officer of the Department of Defense” as “a civilian employee of the Department of Defense,” including federal police officers, detectives, criminal investigators, special agents, and game law enforcement officers.
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Obama administration preparing order for indefinite detentions (WSWS): The Obama administration is drafting an executive order that would give the US president the power to arrest without charge, and imprison indefinitely without trial, foreign nationals it accuses of being terrorists, according to several senior government officials who spoke with the Washington Post and a reporter for non-profit news source ProPublica on condition of anonymity.
The order, should it be released, would likely reuse arguments made by the previous administration of George W. Bush that the laws of war allow the executive branch to disregard the established judicial system and domestic laws and rights, such as those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
The establishment of a Guantánamo-style system of indefinite detention without trial, on US soil, run by the military, has the most far-reaching implications for democratic rights in the US. It would also mark an end-run around Congress, which the administration had previously hoped could craft legislation to establish new extra-judicial forms of trial and incarceration—potentially including a special “national security court.”
Obamapologists have their work cut out for them [and their blinders securely on]…Rb
How can so many believe America has lost its manufacturing edge? We manufacture more lies than weapons, and our “factory” runs 24/7/365. Foreigners may no longer buy them, but thank God even the most indebted American is able to stock up…Rb
Chris Hedges: We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat.
We are morally no different from the psychopaths within the Taliban, who Afghans remember we empowered, funded and armed during the 10-year war with the Soviet Union. Acid thrown into a girl’s face or beheadings? Death delivered from the air or fields of shiny cluster bombs? This is the language of war. It is what we speak. It is what those we fight speak.
Taxi to the Dark Side — a 2007 Academy Award nominated documentary directed by Alex Gibney (watch it online, here and now!) — tells the story of the death of an Afghan taxi driver, Dilawar, and reveals the depths to which America’s military men and women are willing to sink (in service to the State, the Federal Reserve, and corporate masters) as America’s “citizens” turn a blind eye.
Dilawar was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention at Bagram. Taxi to the Dark Side examines America’s practice of torturing other human beings, use of illegal and barbaric interrogation tactics, and the CIA’s “research” into sensory deprivation.
The film is said to be the first to contain images taken by anyone not involved in the torture and cover-ups. November 19, 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named Taxi to the Dark Side one of fifteen films on its Oscar shortlist, and it was ultimately one of five films nominated for “Best Documentary Feature.”
Few things have cost me more of my lunches than the braying of those who would insist “freedom isn’t free,” and that [for all intents and purposes] “soldiers give me my freedom.” What kind of disconnect is necessary for one to believe that “Americans are free?” Brain from stem? Sounds about right…Rb
Anyway, the week after they ran Scoville’s ill-tempered tirade in praise of police brutality, the POLICE magazine website decided to run this funny little web poll:
WEB POLL: Have you ever wanted to kick a suspect who was surrendering for endangering the public and being a total dirtbag?
You can see the results for yourself here. 45.4% of POLICE readers responding to the poll said that they have at some point wanted to kick suspect people after they’ve already surrendered to police. The cop editors of POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine thought they’d add a funny little joke option for their cop readers, To hell with kick, I wanted to shoot him. 31.9% of POLICE readers responding to the poll went with that one.
Ho, ho, ho.
Speaking of which, in Oakland, Officer Johannes Mehserle is now on trial for murder in the execution-style shooting of Oscar Grant. Here’s some recent testimony from the trial:
(05-27) 17:00 PDT OAKLAND — A colleague of the former BART police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man early New Year’s Day testified Wednesday that the victim would still be alive if he and his friends had cooperated with police.
If they would have followed orders, this wouldn’t have happened, said Officer Marysol Domenici at a preliminary hearing in Oakland for former Officer Johannes Mehserle, who is charged with murder.
According to Officer Marysol Domenici, ordinary civilians like you and me are always under the command of the police, so that when a cop gives an order you’d damn well better follow, and if you don’t, well then, you’re resisting, and you have nobody to blame but yourself when they slam you into the wall, throw you to the ground and shoot you in the back while you’re prone and physically restrained.
Also:
Domenici said she did not see Mehserle shoot Grant because she had been facing the other direction. Immediately after the shot was fired, she said, some train riders were so angry that she started thinking about using her gun.
**I said to myself, Oh, Jesus Christ, if I have to, I’m going to have to kill somebody, Domenici said.
Note that when her buddy-cop shot a man who was prone on the ground and physically restrained by the police, her first thought was not that she might have to defend the public from this killer cop; it was that she might have to open fire on the crowd of bystanders.
In Metro Detroit, the Warren city government’s police chased down Robert Mitchell — an unarmed, 16 year old black boy, weighing in at about 110 pounds — and killed him with non-lethal force in an abandoned house of Eight Mile.
This extrajudicial electrocution of an unarmed young man was carried out in the attempt to arrest him; the reason the cops were chasing him down and trying to force him to surrender himself to them is that he jumped out of the passenger side of his cousin’s car during a traffic stop for an expired license plate. For, that is, trying to leave the scene in a situation where he himself was not suspected of any crime.
Boss cop William Dwyer believes that his forces had no alternative to blasting an unarmed 16 year old with a 50,000-volt electric shock in order to force him to surrender to arrest. Of course they did have an alternative; they could have let him leave, since they had no probable cause to suspect him of any particular crime.
But government cops in America aren’t actually interested in dealing with crimes; they are interested in targeting suspects, and are willing to summarily declare you a suspect sort of guy based solely on your failure to follow their arbitrary bellowed commands, or your decision to try to leave the scene when they are present.
They are quite willing to say that running away from cops, just as such, without any evidence of any specific crime, is considered good enough grounds for chasing you down, beating, shooting, or electrocuting you first and asking questions later, and arresting you on suspicion of resisting arrest. Presumably because the sheep are supposed to stay where they’ve been herded.
The commissioner called Mitchell’s death a tragedy, but said police who watch someone run from them can only assume he committed a crime or is wanted for a crime.
Boss cop William Dwyer adds that, since the cops have been trained by a bunch of other cops to use 50,000-volt electric shocks to torture anyone resisting arrest until they surrender, regardless of the risks involved and even if their chosen target is unarmed and poses no physical threat to anyone present, as a form of pain compliance, well, that makes it O.K. for them to do so. Just following orders, you know:
The officers had been trained to use Tasers on people resisting arrest, so there was nothing wrong with using that Taser, Dwyer said.
Renea Mitchell, the mother of the victim, says They are here to protect us. There’s no reason for what they’ve done…. There’s no reason, no excuse. She also calls what happened to her son a murder at the hands of police. And that’s about the size of it. Her son was not suspected of any crime; he was not even on the scene for anything more serious than an expired license plate.
He tried to leave because he doesn’t feel safe around cops — and, given that cops are the ones who eventually killed him, why should he have? — and the cops took this as good enough reason to treat him as presumptively criminal, and therefore to use any level of violence necessary to stop him from leaving — whether or not they have any knowledge of his having been involved in any specific crime, or even whether or not any specific crime has been committed, and regardless of the fact that he was completely unarmed and posed no threat to absolutely anyone’s person or property. They had no reason to use force at all, let alone the potentially lethal force of a taser.
Meanwhile, back over at POLICE magazine, editor David Griffith believes that political correctness is killing a lot of Americans because cops in some major cities can’t use suspicion of immigration violation as [Probable Cause] to roust any gang member.
Apparently suspicion of immigration violation means looking Latino. Griffith asks and answers a few clarifying questions: Would that be profiling? Absolutely. Would some American citizens get hassled? Surely. Would there be a lot less violent crime in our cities if we deported many gang members who are probably illegal aliens [sic]? You tell me.
In other words, in the name of controlling crime by controlling entire populations, Griffith wants for cops to have unilateral authority to roust absolutely anyone based solely on their ethnic status, without any evidence of having committed any crime whatsoever, and so to bring them under the control of the police unless and until they can prove, to the police’s own satisfaction, that they have a permission slip from the government for existing in this country.
Griffith asks, rhetorically, What is our priority? Do we want to make Americans safer? But which Americans does he have in mind, and what does he hope to make them safer from? Apparently not the Americans he explicitly expects to be hassled, that is, terrorized, manhandled or, if necessary, killed in order to put them under, and to keep them under, the physical control of those cops who Griffith would like to grant unlimited discretionary authority to detain anybody that they want, for absolutely any reason or for no reason at all, based solely on their ethnic status, and without any connection to any known crime.
In the same article, Griffith mentions an Atlanta cop, Scott Kreher of the local Fraternal Order of Pigs, who is pissed off about inadequate bennies for Atlanta city cops; so he told the city council that the situation made him want to beat Mayor Shirley Franklin in the head with a baseball bat. (Griffith doesn’t have anything worse to say about this than a weak joke about how he hopes that Kreher does not command the APD’s crisis negotiation team.)
Does a police state, staffed by men who deal with stress like Sergeant Scott Kreher does, with the powers that David Griffith wants to give them, make you feel safer? Probably depends on what side of the taser, or the baseball bat, you expect to end up on.
Robert Higgs: No one should be surprised by the cultural proclivity for violence, of course, because Americans have always been a violent people in a violent land. Once the Europeans had committed themselves to reside on this continent, they undertook to slaughter the Indians and steal their land, and to bullwhip African slaves into submission and live off their labor — endeavors they pursued with considerable success over the next two and a half centuries.
Absent other convenient victims, they have battered and killed one another on the slightest pretext, or for the simple pleasure of doing so, with guns, knives, and bare hands. If you take them to be a “peace-loving people,” you haven’t been paying attention. Such violent people are easily led to war.
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Boys & Their Toys
In violation of its pledge to the United Nations not to recruit children into the military, the Pentagon “regularly target(s) children under 17.”
The Pentagon “heavily recruits on high school campuses, targeting students for recruitment as early as possible and generally without limits on the age of students they contact,” states a 46-page report titled “Soldiers of Misfortune.” This is in violation of the U.S. Senate’s 2002 ratification of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Pentagon recruiters are enrolling children as young as 14 in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) in 3,000 middle-, junior-, and high schools nationwide, causing about 45 percent of the quarter of million students so enrolled to enlist, a rate much higher than in the general student population. Clearly, this is the outcome of underage exposure.
In some cities, such as Los Angeles, high school administrators have been enrolling reluctant students involuntarily in JROTC as an alternative to overcrowded gym classes! In Lincoln high school, enrollees were not told JROTC was involuntary. In Buffalo, N.Y., the entire incoming freshman class at Hutchinson Central Technical High School (average age 14) was involuntarily enrolled in JROTC. In Chicago, graduating eighth graders (average age 13) are allowed to join any of 45 JROTC programs.
“Wartime enlistment quotas (for Iraq and Afghanistan) have placed increased pressure on military recruiters to fill the ranks of the armed services.” Trying to fill its quotas without reinstituting a draft “has contributed to a rise in…allegations of misconduct and abuse by recruiters” that “often goes unchecked.”
“It is the person who says ‘No’ whom we must seek to understand. It
is not melodramatic or engaging in overstatement to say that he or she
is our salvation.”
Obama is a tool, and anyone who buys his act is an idiot. It’s just that simple. Falling for propaganda is easy; remaining conscious is difficult. We get the leaders we deserve…Rb
[Excerpted from Principals of Tyranny] Perhaps one of the things that most distinguishes those with a fascist mentality from most other persons is how they react in situations that engender feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Both kinds of people will tend to seek to increase their power, that is, their control over the outcome of events, but those with a fascist mindset tend to overestimate the amount of influence over outcomes that it is possible to attain.
This leads to behavior that often brings them to positions of leadership or authority, especially if most other persons in their society tend to underestimate the influence over outcomes they can attain, and are inclined to yield to those who project confidence in what they can do and promise more than anyone can deliver.
This process is aided by a common susceptibility which might be called the rooster syndrome, from the old saying, “They give credit to the rooster crowing for the rising of the sun.” It arises from the tendency of people guided more by hope or fear than intelligence to overestimate the power of their leaders and attribute to them outcomes, either good or bad, to which the leaders contributed little if anything, and perhaps even acted to prevent or reduce. This comes from the inability of most persons to understand complex dynamic systems and their long-term behavior, which leads people to attribute effects to proximate preceding events instead of actual long-term causes.
The emergence of tyranny therefore begins with challenges to a group, develops into general feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, and falls into a pattern in which some individuals assume the role of “father” to the others, who willingly submit to becoming dependent “children” of such persons if only they are reassured that a more favorable outcome will be realized.
This pattern of co-dependency is pathological, and generally results in decisionmaking of poor quality that makes the situation even worse, but, because the pattern is pathological, instead of abandoning it, the co-dependents repeat their inappropriate behavior to produce a vicious spiral that, if not interrupted, can lead to total breakdown of the group and the worst of the available outcomes.
In psychiatry, this syndrome is often discussed as an “authoritarian personality disorder”. In common parlance, as being a “control freak”. [Read the complete article here.]
I used to adore Jon Stewart…until my ISP said they’d give me a $10/month discount on internet access if I’d take free cable for a year. Think they were tired of sending techs out to try and catch us stealing cable. Accepted only because $10 is $10, and the upside was that I could finally watch the Daily Show, en toto, rather than in the occasional clip…
Didn’t take long to see that Stewart may get a jab in, here and there, but lets his guests off easily. Friends say, “but he wouldn’t get guests if he really went after them.” To me, for “guests” who’ve been negatively affecting the entire planet and all lifeforms, that’s fascilitating evil for a paycheck. Said “guests” get to walk away looking as though they’re “nice guys” who’ve done nothing more than make a mistake, here and there. And, gollygeewhiz…who hasn’t made mistakes [which wreaked havoc upon billions]. It pisses me off. It’d be better to have ten more minutes of scathing commentary re words spoken elsewhere, and no guests.
There are those [including Stewart, himself] who insist, “but, he’s just a comedian! He’s not a reporter.” Considering the state of the world, anyone and everyone who can get within shouting distance of death-dealing whores should be asking questions. What is this “only reporters should ask serious questions” bullshit? That makes about as much sense as “only comedians should mock the answers.”
Now, the “blogosphere” is giddy re Stewart’s interview with Cramer, claiming Stewart nailed Cramer’s ass to the wall. Oh, really? Then why did Stewart keep harping on Cramer’s responsibility as a “journalist,” while completely ignoring the fact that, by his own admission — an admission he obviously believed would never be subject to public scrutiny — Cramer was complicit!
Cramer has [had?] a television show [and God only knows what else. Newsletters? Books? A radio show? Speaking engagements? Not a font of information re Jim Cramer], and was promoted as someone to whom others should listen when it comes to money and investments. Stewart showed several clips wherein Cramer spoke about actively manipulating the market; breaking others in order to enrich himself and his clients. And rather than say, “you were one of those guys,” Stewart kept asking why Cramer simply believed and quoted “those guys” rather than doing some actual reportage.
I couldn’t believe my ears when Cramer began professing his moral outrage, and hopes that there are many more perp walks to come. He should be facing some serious time!
And what a little weasel Cramer is. Spent all of his time trying to paint himself as a “journalist wronged.” Just a regular guy who made a couple of mistakes and a few bad calls. He was sweating bullets, praying no one would notice he wasan active participant.
Stewart actually helped Cramer distance himself from that complicity. He certainly pushed Cramer harder than he did Pelosi, but still missed the mark by an Irish mile…and then the interview ended with hopes for better journalism in the future? Are you freakin’ kidding me?!? Sure, Jon. If Cramer can do that from prison! Watch the interview again and then tell me I’m wrong…Rb [who longs for the day she could, once again, adore Jon Stewart.]
I’ve been following this story since it broke, and didn’t think it was possible to feel any more disgusted, or angrier. Watch these videos and try to believe it’s “an isolated incident.” Cogitate the fact that we name prisons for children “Childcare.” Think about our “private [for (obscene) profit] prison system” and know that the judges in question, here, simply cannot be the only ones selling us to the highest bidder. The law of averages + human nature makes that a veritable impossibility. Factor in the pharmaceutical industry, and we the people are worth even more when incarcerated than when free. Gives new meaning to “fishers of men.”
More than FIVE THOUSAND teens [in just one county] did time for the crime of being teens? And the judges will get SEVEN YEARS for selling [more than FIVE THOUSAND] children to the prison system?! They should get life without the possibility of parole.
Recently, I read that almost a third of Americans feel very secure in their jobs. My immediate thought was — a third of Americans now works for either the government or prisons? Sounds about right. How long ’til that number rises? Soon, half of us will be paid to trespass against the rest of us…Rb
P.S. Eli Lilly & Company’s rap sheet as a public menace is so long that for Lilly watchers to overcome the “banality-of-Lilly-sleaziness” phenomenon, the drug company must break some type of record measuring egregiousness. Lilly obliged earlier this year, receiving the largest criminal fine ever imposed on a corporation. [The fine was chump-change for the likes of Eli Lilly, of course...as would be expected. And this case was regarding victims who willingly swallowed their lies and their poisons. How many of Eli Lilly's "miracle drugs" are being forced down children's throats? How many of the "chemical restraints" used on adult populations, in prisons and nursing homes, feed Lilly's beast and serve their bottom line?]
Us, Good/Everyone Else, Bad.
God Loves Us Best!
GlobalResearch: H.R. 675. The bill would amend United States Code and extend to civilian employees of the Department of Defense the authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms.
“Sec. 1585b. Law enforcement officers of the Department of Defense: authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms for any offense against the United States.”
The Posse Comitatus Act limits the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits members of the federal uniformed services from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property within the United States.
H.R. 675 sidesteps Posse Comitatus by defining “law enforcement officer of the Department of Defense” as “a civilian employee of the Department of Defense,” including federal police officers, detectives, criminal investigators, special agents, and game law enforcement officers.
*** ** ***
Obama administration preparing order for indefinite detentions (WSWS): The Obama administration is drafting an executive order that would give the US president the power to arrest without charge, and imprison indefinitely without trial, foreign nationals it accuses of being terrorists, according to several senior government officials who spoke with the Washington Post and a reporter for non-profit news source ProPublica on condition of anonymity.
The order, should it be released, would likely reuse arguments made by the previous administration of George W. Bush that the laws of war allow the executive branch to disregard the established judicial system and domestic laws and rights, such as those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
The establishment of a Guantánamo-style system of indefinite detention without trial, on US soil, run by the military, has the most far-reaching implications for democratic rights in the US. It would also mark an end-run around Congress, which the administration had previously hoped could craft legislation to establish new extra-judicial forms of trial and incarceration—potentially including a special “national security court.”
Obamapologists have their work cut out for them [and their blinders securely on]…Rb
Posted in: KoolAid Man, Madness, Second Opinions.
Tagged: detention · illegal · immoral · Obama · Obamapologists · Posse Comitatus · terrorists