Tag Archives: State Crime

Local Police and Much Else Will Be Militarized As Long As Federal Government Is

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Outrage In Missouri Town After Police Shooting Of 18-Yr-Old Man

By David Swanson

Source: OpEdNews.com

“Groups on the ground in St. Louis are calling for nationwide solidarity actions in support of Justice for Mike Brown and the end of police and extrajudicial killings everywhere.”

As they should. And we should all join in.

But “nationwide” and “everywhere” are odd terms to equate when discussing police militarization. Are we against extrajudicial killings (otherwise known as murder) by U.S. government employees and U.S. weapons in Pakistan? Yemen? Iraq? Gaza? And literally everywhere they occur? The militarization of local police in the United States is related to the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, which has now reached the point that bombing and “doing nothing” are generally conceived as the only two choices available. Local police are being militarized as a result of these factors:

  • A culture glorifying militarization and justifying it as global policing.
  • A federal government that directs roughly $1 trillion every year into the U.S. military, depriving virtually everything else of needed resources.
  • A federal government that still manages to find resources to offer free military weapons to local police in the U.S. and elsewhere.
  • Weapons profiteers that eat up local subsidies as well as federal contracts while funding election campaigns, threatening job elimination in Congressional districts, and pushing for the unloading of weapons by the U.S. military on local police as one means of creating the demand for more.
  • The use of permanent wartime fears to justify the removal of citizens’ rights, gradually allowing local police to begin viewing the people they were supposed to protect as low-level threats, potential terrorists, and enemies of law and order in particular when they exercise their former rights to speech and assembly. Police “excesses” like war “excesses” are not apologized for, as one does not apologize to an enemy.
  • The further funding of abusive policing through asset forfeitures and SWAT raids.
  • The further conflation of military and police through the militarization of borders, especially the Mexican border, the combined efforts of federal and local forces in fusion centers, the military’s engagement in “exercises” in the U.S., and the growth of the drone industry with the military, among others, flying drones in U.S. skies and piloting drones abroad from U.S. land.
  • The growth of the profit-driven prison industry and mass incarceration, which dehumanize people in the minds of participants just as boot camp and the nightly news do to war targets.
  • Economically driven disproportionate participation in, and therefore identification with, the military by the very communities most suffering from its destruction of resources, rights, and lives.

But policing is not the only thing militarized by what President Eisenhower called the “total influence — economic, political, even spiritual” of the military industrial complex. Our morality is militarized, our entertainment is militarized, our natural world is militarized, and our education system is militarized. “Unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex” is not easily opposed while maintaining the military industrial complex. When Congress Members lend their support to a new war in Iraq while proposing that the U.S. Post Office and a dozen other decent things not be defunded, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. The United States cannot live like other wealthy nations while dumping $1 trillion a year into a killing machine.

The way out of this cycle of madness in which we spend more just on recruiting someone into the military or on locking them up behind bars than we spend on educating them is to confront in a unified and coherent manner what Martin Luther King Jr. called the evils of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism. Not racism, extreme materialism, and what the military does to the local police. Not racism, extreme materialism, and what the military does to weapons testing sites. Not racism, extreme materialism, and what the military does to the people of Honduras causing them to flee to a land that then welcomes them with an attitude of militarism. Not any of these partial steps alone, but the whole package of interlocking evils of attitude and mindset.

There is a no-fly-zone over Ferguson, Missouri, because people in the U.S. government view the people of the United States increasingly as they view the people of other countries: as best controlled from the air. Notes the War Resisters League,

“Vigils and protests in Ferguson — a community facing persistent racist profiling and police brutality — have been attacked by tear gas, rubber bullets, police in fully-armored SWAT gear, and tank-like personnel carriers. This underscores not only the dangers of being young, Black, and male in the US, but also the fear of mobilization and rebellion from within racialized communities facing the violence of austerity and criminalization.

“The parallels between the Israeli Defense Forces in Palestine, the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro, the Indian police in Kashmir, the array of oppressive armed forces in Iraq, and the LAPD in Skid Row could not be any clearer. . . .

“This is not happening by accident. What is growing the capacity of local police agencies to exercise this force are police militarization programs explicitly designed to do so. As St. Louis writer Jamala Rogers wrote in an article on the militarization of St. Louis Police this past April, ‘It became clear that SWAT was designed as a response to the social unrest of the 1960s, particularly the anti-war and black liberation movements.’ Federal programs such as DoD 1033 and 1122, and the Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI), in which St. Louis Police are active participants, provide weapons and training to police departments across the country, directly from the Pentagon. Commenting on the ominous growth of the phenomenon, Rogers continues: ‘and now, Police Chief [of St. Louis Police] Sam Dotson wants to add drones to his arsenal.’

“The events in Ferguson over these last few days demonstrate that the violence of policing and militarism are inextricably bound. To realize justice and freedom as a condition for peace, we must work together to end police militarization and violence.”

The War Resisters League is organizing against Urban Shield, an expo of military weapons for police and training event planned for Oakland, Calif., this September 4-8. The Week of Education and Action will take place in Oakland from August 30-September 5. Read all about it here.

David Swanson is a member of the National Committee of the War Resisters League and wants you to declare peace at http://WorldBeyondWar.org His new book is War No More: The Case for Abolition. He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.uson

Six Week Cycle Continues With FBI Manufacturing Another Hoax Terror Plot

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teausant

Nicholas Teausant

By Lee Daniels

Originally posted at DailySlave.com

The Federal Bureau of Investigation otherwise known as the FBI is an embarrassment to humanity.  Since I started tracking this phenomenon late last year it has become clear that the FBI is busting fake terror plots they create, staging terror hoax events or investigating fake mass shootings roughly every six weeks.  One of the primary reasons why they do all of this is for job security.  Since part of their job is to fight terrorism, if they can’t find any real terrorists it eliminates the need for certain people at the FBI to be employed.  Since there is a lack of real terrorists, they create these hoax events and entrap different dupes and morons to make the American sheep believe that there are actual terror threats.  More importantly, it projects an illusion that America needs the FBI to keep them safe.  In short, it is nothing more than FBI sanctioned criminality which warrants a full Congressional investigation.  Too bad we’ll never get one because the FBI like most organizations in the federal government appears to be above the law.

Let’s review the previous hoax events which the FBI has either been involved in staging or investigating.

January 26th 2014 – Columbia Maryland Mall Shooting Hoax (analysis)

December 13th, 2013 – Wichita Airport Bomb Threat Hoax

November 1st, 2013 – Los Angeles Airport Shooting Hoax (analysis)

September 16th, 2013 – Washington Navy Yard Shooting Hoax

Based upon the six week cycle the next staged event was scheduled to happen in mid-March right around now.  The FBI did not disappoint as another fake terror hoax hit the news wires on March 17th, 2014.  This is one of the more absurd entrapment operations they’ve pulled off in quite some time.

According to the FBI a 20 year-old college student and National Guard member named Nicholas Teausant was arrested near the Canadian border under allegations that he was attempting to join Al-Qaeda fighters in Syria.  Furthermore, the FBI is claiming that he was plotting to bomb the Los Angeles subway system.  They have charged him with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Teausant allegedly made the following comment under the name Assad on an Instagram app.

“I would love to join Allah’s army but I don’t even know how to start,” he allegedly posted on May 31.

From there an undercover FBI agent befriended him.  Teausant allegedly told the agent that he wanted to go to Syria to fight jihad with Al-Qaeda.  He also allegedly talked to the agent about potentially bombing the Los Angeles subway system.  Growing suspicious that he might be talking to federal agents he started to distance himself from people he talked to online right before his supposed arrest.

Assuming this story is even real to begin with, it is obvious that this guy did not represent any sort of legitimate threat.  Hell, look at the photos of this guy.  Does he look like a dangerous terrorist to you?  If anything he looks like the bastard child of Ukraine’s Western backed stooge Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

According to the FBI, he didn’t even know how to become a terrorist.  The FBI befriended him and entrapped him into making statements that would later be used against him.  The FBI has done this countless times since the 9/11 attacks with this just being the most recent example.

So there you have it, another FBI related hoax event that satisfies the six week cycle.  If anyone out there knows someone who works in the upper levels of the FBI can you please tell them to stop this insanity?  Nobody believes that any of the FBI’s staged terror hoaxes and bogus terror plots are real.  This is especially true considering that the FBI is literally doing something like this every six weeks.

We’ll see if the FBI got the message around the first week of May.  That’s when the next FBI related hoax event is slated to take place.

Wrapping up the article, I wanted to mention a quick plug for the guys over at the No Agenda Show.  They’ve been exposing this phenomenon for quite some time now.  Be sure to check out their upcoming podcast this Thursday which will undoubtedly provide coverage of this latest FBI hoax.

Open Letter to BoA from Anonymous Olympia

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In the wake of recent revelations of documents confirming Bank of America’s use of social media trolling teams to spy on activist groups, Anonymous Olympia has released an open letter (reposted below) stating that they will hold them accountable. Whether or not they follow through on their promise, they make good arguments for why we should not be giving our money to such banks. There’s plenty of alternatives more deserving of our trust and which make better investments, such as public banks, community banks, credit unions, community currencies, digital currencies (do careful research first) and safe deposit boxes for physical precious metals. Currently, only North Dakota has a state-owned bank, but it’s been such a success, at least 20 other states are considering proposals to create their own.

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Dear Bank of America,

Thank you for your interest in Anonymous Olympia. After careful review

of your actions, we have prepared the following open letter:

Your institution is like a large, festering carcass that smothers all

of the life beneath it as it wallows, decaying in its own gluttonous

vastness. Nobody pretends that you’re a decent banking institution

these days except you, and we all know you’re not. You’re swollen,

sallow with your own misdeeds.

It blows our minds how anyone could still bank with you, or why they

would want to. Your commercials smile and lie, but everyone can smell

the bullshit wafting from behind those carefully constructed scenes of

gentle middle-class life that you promote on television and in the

lobbies of your bank branches.

The way you nickel and dime your customers to financial death is

disgusting, and you should be ashamed. A fee to close an account, a

monthly fee to have an account, a thirty five dollar over-draft fee

for as little as a $0.01 over-draft, a fee for bill-pay, the five

dollar debit-usage fee.

You’re a vampire, Bank of America. You’re a parasite, bloated with the

blood that you suck from the financial life of your customers.

Shall we mention your colluding with Visa and MasterCard to keep ATM

fees outrageously high? Or all the times that you illegally and

wrongfully foreclosed on the homes of families that banked with you,

leaving those families homeless, their lives ruined? Or the miniscule

amount of taxes that you’re supposed to pay, but don’t?

What about the six former Bank of America employees who came forward

and revealed your despicable practices, including rewarding employees

who managed to place ten or more mortgage accounts into foreclosure in

one month with a $500.00 bonus?

We suppose a financial institution with your track record of being

evil could justify spying on a group of average citizens who were

attempting to exercise their right to air grievances through public

assembly, but that doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make what we

do any of your business, either.

In fact, your actions directly violate our constitutional right to

privacy. The fact that you worked with Washington State Patrol to

share information represents a terrifying fusion of financial and

state interest, one that I hope keeps your employees up at night.

Fascism is defined as a merging of state and corporate interest, so

make of that what you will, Bank of America.

We know that you were asked to comment on your spying, but declined to

do so- this leaves us with little hope that you will hold yourself

accountable for this and other actions, so we’re going to start

holding you accountable, instead, and we’re going to ask all of our

brothers and sisters to join us.

You may have been watching us, Bank of America, but we’ve been

watching you, too, and our memories are long.

We do not forgive, we do not forget.

Regards,
Anonymous Olympia

Police Teargas Family’s Vigil for Handcuffed Teen Shot in the Back of the Head

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Suspect Death

Besides being one of the saddest headlines I’ve seen in awhile, it says a lot about the current state of law enforcement in America. This is the full story behind it as reported by Jean Paul Zodeaux of Collapse.com:

A vigil for the deceased Jesus Huerta yesterday went from peace to pandemonium last night in Durham, North Carolina after police, who showed up in full riot gear tear gassed those at the vigil, including the family of the deceased, and arresting six people.

A month ago, in North Carolina, Jesus Huerta, a teen aged boy living in Durham, North Carolina allegedly committed suicide sitting in the back of a police cruiser, after being searched, with hands cuffed behind his back, shooting himself in the head. It is as implausible a story as one can think of. Of course, a good writer will take the implausible and make it look plausible. Too bad the Chief of Police, Jose Lopez in Durham doesn’t have any writers on hand. Instead, what Chief Lopez did was wait a few weeks, issue a statement that Jesus Huerta was found slumped over and dead in the back of a patrol car after the officer who was driving the vehicle heard what he thought to be a gunshot:

“Our department continues to investigate the origin of the weapon but can confirm that it was not a departmental weapon and no officer fired a weapon during this incident.”

Not only lacking good enough writers to make the implausible seem plausible, Chief Lopez also appears to lack any valid public relations department. At a press conference a week ago, presumably for the purposes of calming the public, Lopez only made matters worse by stating the investigation was seeking to find whether Huerta “shot himself’ on purpose or if it was accidental. Understandably, much of the public was interested in an investigation of the police involved. Instead they got Chief Lopez.

Crazy things can happen, this much is understood, and even if we’re are to accept the story that a teenage boy who was searched by a police officer before handcuffed and placed in the back seat of his patrol car wound up producing a gun missed in the search and shot himself, it would take a person disconnected with reality to think that the reaction to such a story would be one of quiet acceptance. Of course people are going to be suspicious of the story, particularly since Jesus Huerta is not the first person who has died while in the custody of Durham Police in the last five months.

On July 27th of this year, police responding to reports of a stabbing, and surrounding Jose Ocampo who was holding a knife and refused to drop it, shot him four times in the chest. Ocampo did not speak English and did not understand the commands being given him. Of course, no matter what language you speak, it should be common sense that when you are surrounded by police while holding a knife you drop it, but it was once common sense that shooting a man four times in the chest because he’s not relinquishing a knife sounds an awful lot like excessive force.

According to a friend of Ocampo’s who was on the scene, that Ocampo was attempting to give the knife to police:

“You know the part you use to cut? He put his hand on that part and gave the other end to police.”

Still, and in today’s environment, it should be expected that police will find such an thing as an excuse to open fire, but people are getting quite tired of what is to now be expected, and any police officer, and certainly a police chief should understand this, and instead of responding with defiance and more dubious tactics of force such as the full force in riot gear at a vigil for a teenager who was shot in the head while in handcuffs in the back seat of a Durham police patrol car.

Chief Lopez’ strategy of intimidation and his clear lack of compassion for the Huerta family only makes the Durham police come off as more suspicious. That is no way to sell the implausible story they’re attempting to sell the public. What Lopez should have done was accept responsibility for his part in the death of Jesus Huerta, which would be to admit that there is an obvious break down of procedure and put the whole police department on review. This is not what Lopez did, and increasingly, as more police departments expect a suspicious public to buy implausible stories, this is not what is getting done.