War on Black America

War on Black America



Black Americans are in the eye of the storm. Militarized cops target them nationwide.

According to Operation Ghetto Storm, police, security guards, and other self-appointed enforcers kill black youths and adults on average every 28 hours.
http://www.operationghettostorm.org/
“(S)tate-sanctioned killings.” Casualties of war. Ongoing daily against black Americans. Compounded by other systemic abuses.

Including judicial unfairness. Get tough on crime policies. Mandatory minimum sentences. Guilty unless proved innocent. Three strikes and you’re out.

Racist drug laws. Stop-and-frisk. Driving while black. Filling the world’s largest gulag. Mostly with people of color.

One in every eight black males is incarcerated on any given day. According to Law Professor Michelle Alexander:

“More black men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850 before the Civil War began.”

Mostly because of the racist war on drugs. Waged “almost exclusively in poor communities of color.”

In some inner-city ones, around 80% of Black youths can expect criminal injustice prosecutions one or more times in their lifetimes.

Around 70% return to prison within two years of release. If we returned to pre-1980 prison levels, “(m)ore than a million people working in the system would see their jobs disappear,” said Alexander.

Billions of dollars are at stake. America’s prison/industrial complex is by far the world’s largest. Bigger than China’s with four times the population.

Over 60% of black men born in 1965 or later without high school degrees have prison records. Marking them for life.

Vulnerable to re-arrest. Targeted by militarized cops. Arrested for any reason or none at all. Murdered by police unaccountably.

In big cities. Small ones. Urban areas. Rural ones. Militarized cops make their own rules. Operating extrajudicially. Killing with impunity.

On December 20, two police officers patrolling Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant community were shot and killed in their car.

NYPD deputy chief Kim Royster said Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were struck in their upper bodies.

The assailant fled to a nearby subway station. Identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley. Dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo condemned “this deplorable act of violence.” Ordered flags on all state government buildings lowered to half staff. Honoring Liu and Ramos. Saying:

“I join with all New Yorkers in mourning the loss of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.”

“Like all law enforcement personnel, Officers Liu and Ramos put their lives on the line in order to serve their communities, and it is with great sadness that we mourn their passing after a senseless and deplorable act of violence.”

“My thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones of these two brave men. We will remember their service with pride and endless gratitude.”

“Tonight, we all come together to mourn the loss of these brave souls.”

On Saturday, thousands from New York and elsewhere gathered in and around Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens. Attending Ramos’ funeral. Honoring the slain men.

Including police and mourners. The Washington Post reported “a sea of police officers watch(ing) on big screens set up for the ceremony.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio attended. So did Governor Cuomo and Vice President Joe Biden. “At the end of the day, we are one,” said Cuomo.

“One people, one state, one community, one family. Somos uno. Somos uno. Somos uno.” We are one in Spanish.

“Our hearts ache for you,” Biden told Ramos’ family. “Your husband, and his partner, they were a part of New York’s finest, and that’s not an idle phrase.”

“When an assassin’s bullet targeted two officers, it targeted this city and it touched the soul of an entire nation.”

Mayor de Blasio called the shootings “a particularly despicable act.”

“When a police officer is murdered, it tears at the foundation of our society. It is an attack on all of us.”

“It is an attack on everything we hold dear. We depend on our police to protect us against forces of criminality and evil.”

Obama issued a statement on the day of the killings, saying:

“I unconditionally condemn today’s murder of two police officers in New York City.”

“Two brave men won’t be going home to their loved ones tonight, and for that, there is no justification.”

The New York Times headlined “Long Line of Blue, Mourning the First of Two Slain Comrades.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/nyregion/funeral-for-slain-nypd-officer-rafael-ramos.html?_r=2

Reporting “an overwhelming display of solidarity and sorrow.” Saying “tens of thousands of police officers from across the country joined with (their New York comrades) to pay their respects…”

Who mourns for killer cop victims? For Trayvon Martin. Unarmed. Threatening no one. Murdered by Sanford, FL neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman.

A killer cop equivalent by any standard. An earlier article discussing his acquittal asked when is killing a non-threatening unarmed teenager not murder?

When civil rights don’t matter. When Jim Crow justice prevails.

When victims are black. When mostly or entirely white jurors call cold-blooded murder self-defense.

When a jury of peers representing both sides fairly is verboten. When killing black males in America is OK when whites do it.

When a culture of violence prevails. When institutionalized racism is longstanding. When conventional wisdom says black males aren’t victims. They’re prone to violence.

When equity and justice are four-letter words. When human life has no value. When society doesn’t give a damn if a black male dies. When lawlessness is part of the national culture.

Cold-blooded murders is considered self-defense when killer cops are involved.

Who mourned for 18-year-old Michael Brown. Murdered by police officer Darren Wilson. Exonerated despite killing an unarmed youth. Posing no threat. With no criminal record.

An independent autopsy revealing six bullet wounds showed Wilson wanted him to die.

Who mourned for 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Playing in a park. With his sister and friend. Gunned down by Cleveland police.

What about Eric Garner. Father of six. Called a “neighborhood peacemaker.” A generous, congenial person.

Threatening no one. Deserving to live. Murdered by police officer Daniel Pantaleo’s chokehold. “I can’t breathe” cries for help were ignored.

What about Oscar Grant. Unarmed. Threatening no one. Oakland, CA transit officer Johannes Mehserle thrust him face-down on the ground.

Claiming he resisted arrest. Despite having committed no crime. Shot in the back. Murdered in cold blood. Five bystanders witnessed it. Videotape on at least four cameras confirmed it.

Convicted of involuntary manslaughter. A rarity. Sentenced to two years in prison. Reduced to 292 days. For time served in jail. Free since June 2011.

Grant’s family, relatives and friends were outraged. Demanded first-degree murder. His mother Wanda said “Oscar was murdered and the law has not held the officer accountable.” Jurors didn’t comment.

What about Amadou Diallo. New York cops fired 41 shots. Struck him 19 times. Killing him while standing unarmed in his apartment building vestibule.

What about Sean Bell. New York cops murdered him in cold blood. Celebrating the eve of his wedding. Struck dozens of times. As he emerged from a nightclub unarmed. Unthreatening. Prosecutions didn’t follow.

NYPD cops illegally entered unarmed Ramarley Graham’s home. With no search warrant or probable cause. Murdering him in his kitchen.

Similar incidents occur often. Killer cops are absolved. Occasionally, disciplinary reprimands follow. Cops lie.

Claiming self-defense. Deadly force used only when threatened, they say. Hundreds of cases annually show indiscriminate violence.

Black lives don’t matter. Cold-blooded murder is called justifiable homicide. Nearly one black victim daily proves otherwise.

Who mourns for society’s most vulnerable? Nameless, faceless victims. Blacks most often. Justice in America remains denied.

Stephen Lendman

Judge the Feds by Their Own Standards

What is the State?
Mind Your P’s as Cues

Here is an alliterated definition of the state:

The state is:

Power over persons and plunder of property

privileged by a plenary pardon, popularly provided

to a pack of predators preying on producers and

prudentially progressing into provident parasites and potentates

in a penal priesthood propped up by propaganda.

Let’s unpack this, and see how each part of this definition refers to a basic concept in libertarian state analysis.

Power over Persons and Plunder against Property
As Hans Hermann Hoppe wrote, the state is an “institution built on aggressive violence.” Aggression is the violation of an individual’s right to self-ownership or his property rights over external resources.http://mises.org/library/theory-socialism-and-capitalism-0

 
Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Self-ownership refers to the individual’s right to have exclusive disposal over his own person, or body. Under the classical liberal rights framework of “life, liberty, and property,” this refers to the rights of life and liberty. An individual’s self-ownership is violated, and therefore aggression occurs, when someone else exercisespower over his person, by destroying his person (violating his right to life, e.g. murder) or otherwise commandeering his person (violating his right liberty, e.g. assault, kidnapping, enslavement, etc).

Property (private property) refers to an individual’s right to have exclusive disposal over any resource he has either originally appropriated (homesteaded) or received in voluntary transfer from a previous owner. Property is violated, and therefore aggression occurs, when someone else plunders an owned resource, by destroying (e.g. vandalism) or taking (e.g. theft) it against the owner’s will.

 
Murray N. Rothbard
The state regularly commits acts of aggression, or crimes, and drape them with euphemism: including murder (“war,” etc), kidnapping (“incarceration,” etc), enslavement (“conscription,” etc), and theft (“taxation,” etc).

The essentially criminal nature of the state has been noted by Murray Rothbard who called the state, “a bandit gang writ large,” and Lysander Spooner, who wrote:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/lysander-spooner/no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority/

“The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account”

Privileged by a Plenary Pardon, Popularly Provided
However the state is not a common criminal, but a decidedly uncommon one. It is fundamentally different from the common criminal in that the majority of its subject populace sees its acts of aggression as uniquely legitimate. They privilege agents of the state with a sweeping moral “pass,” or pardon, for acts which, if committed by anybody else, would be publicly denounced as crimes. For more on this, see my essays, “The Ring of Impunity,” and “The State Lives in the Minds of its Victims.”
http://www.dansanchez.me/feed/the-ring-of-impunity

http://www.dansanchez.me/feed/the-state-lives-in-the-minds-of-its-victims

 
Lysander Spooner

This makes state criminals fundamentally more pernicious than common criminals. As Rothbard argued, “private crime is, at best, sporadic and uncertain,” and its “lifeline can be cut at any time by the resistance of the victims.” The state, on the other hand, “provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel” for plunder. Its lifeline is much harder to cut by resistance, because its Stockholm Syndrome-afflicted victims are much less likely to even offer any.

The state is also fundamentally more “dastardly and shameful” than common criminals, as vividly argued by Spooner:http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/lysander-spooner/no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority/

“The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a ‘protector,’ and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to ‘protect’ those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful ‘sovereign,’ on account of the ‘protection’ he affords you. He does not keep ‘protecting’ you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.”

To a Pack of Predators Preying on Producers

This line harkens to “libertarian class analysis,” which goes back to the French classical liberal “Industrialist” thinkers Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. Ralph Raico summarized their analysis as follows:http://mises.org/library/classical-liberal-roots-marxist-doctrine-classes

“In any given society, a sharp distinction may be drawn between those who live by plunder and those who live by production. The first are characterized in several ways by Comte and Dunoyer; they are ‘the idle,’ ‘the devouring,’ and ‘the hornets.’ The second, are termed, among other things, ‘the industrious’ and ‘the bees.’ The attempt to live without producing is to live ‘as savages.’ The producers are ‘the civilized men.’

Cultural evolution has been such that whole societies may be designated as primarily plundering and idle, or as productive and industrious. Industrialism is thus not only an analysis of social dynamics, but also a theory of historical development. Indeed, much of Industrialist theory is embedded in its account of historical evolution.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggles between the plundering and the producing classes.”

 
Charles Dunoyer
Living by production is self-sustaining. On the other hand, living by plunder (aggression), as the state does, is essentially predatory. Franz Oppenheimer called the former “the economic means” of acquiring wealth and the latter “the political means.”

As Rothbard put it,http://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto

“The political means… requires previous production for the exploiters to confiscate, and it subtracts from instead of adding to the total production in society.”

The most simple kind of human predation can be seen in the ravaging, barbarian hordes of past ages that descended upon settled, civilized communities, massacring most of the inhabitants, carting off all of the portable wealth, and burning everything else to the ground.

Progressing to Provident Parasites and Potentates

But such unbridled predation is short-sighted, for it leaves its prey too devastated to resume production. It is more provident for a horde to observe some restraint in its ravages, which allows for some economic recovery, so it can return again and again for fresh loot. As Oppenheimer put it:
http://mises.org/library/state-its-history-and-development-viewed-sociologically

“…it begins to dawn on the consciousness of the wild herdsman that a murdered peasant can no longer plow, and that a fruit tree hacked down will no longer bear. In his own interest, then, wherever it is possible, he lets the peasant live and the tree stand.”


Franz Oppenheimer

Thus does the predator evolve into a parasite. A further step along this path is when the productive prey regularly deliver loot to the plundering predators as tribute, obviating the costly arbitrament of battle. Next it may be prudential for the conquerors to settle in with and live among their prey as rulers. Thus the predator becomes the parasite becomes the potentate.

The above, in a nutshell, is Oppenheimer’s “conquest theory of state formation,” which he illustrated with copious historical examples in his classic book, The State.http://mises.org/library/state-its-history-and-development-viewed-sociologically

In a Penal Priesthood
Predators don’t like competition from other predators. So a state naturally tries to establish for itself an exclusive territorial priesthood of power, or “monopoly of crime,” as Albert Jay Nock put it, excluding all other states as well as common criminals from exploiting its subjects, just as a farmer would prevent another farmer from butchering or milking his cow.

As Nock wrote:

“[The state] forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien.”

The state’s self-interested practice of punishing rival aggressors can easily be mistaken for the state protecting its subjects for their own sake.


Propped up by Propaganda
The state happily exploits that source of confusion, posing as the ultimate protector of the lives, liberties, and property of its subjects. It misleads the public into getting the nature and function of the state precisely backwards; to believe that the state only taxes so it can protect, when in reality only (ineptly) protects so it can tax. This is the chief myth that the state propagates to cover up its criminality.

And it this and other myths which are the basis for the “privilege of plenary pardon, publicly provided” discussed above. It is myths about the benevolent nature and societal necessity of the state that cause people to grant state agents a special dispensation to commit acts of aggression with impunity. Such acts are no longer considered “crimes” so long as they are done “under color of authority.” This is how plunder is sublimated into tribute, and then further sublimated into taxation.

Without this myth-made special dispensation, a state’s power would collapse. In fact, it would no longer even essentially be a state, but rather just relatively small (since sustainable parasitic states must be much smaller than their productive host populations) band of common (if heavily armed and highly organized) criminals. The people would make short work of such gangsters.

So myth-propagation is a vital prop for the state. That is why, as Rothbardtaught, potentates have always partnered with intellectuals, like priests, academics, journalists, and schoolteachers to brainwash and bamboozle the public into seeing the state as legitimate.
http://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto

And that is why the chief task of libertarians is to debunk statist myths. Remove its props, and a structure will crumble under its own weight.

These 22 P’s of the state can serve as a handy mnemonic device for recalling some of the most profound contributions to the analysis of the state by some great thinkers: Rothbard, Spooner, Nock, Hoppe, Oppenheimer, Comte, and Dunoyer.


By Dan Sanchez

The Imperial Collapse Playbook

The Imperial Collapse Playbook 



Some people enjoy having the Big Picture laid out in front of them—the biggest possible—on what is happening in the world at large, and I am happy to oblige. The largest development of 2014 is, very broadly, this: the Anglo-imperialists are finally being forced out of Eurasia. How can we tell? Well, here is the Big Picture—the biggest I could find. I found it thanks to Nikolai Starikov and a recent article of his.

Now, let's first define our terms. By Anglo-imperialists I mean the combination of Britain and the United States. The latter took over for the former as it failed, turning it into a protectorate. Now the latter is failing too, and there are no new up-and-coming Anglo-imperialists to take over for it. But throughout this process their common playbook had remained the same: pseudoliberal pseudocapitalism for the insiders and military domination and economic exploitation for everyone else. Much more specifically, their playbook always called for a certain strategem to be executed whenever their plans to dominate and exploit any given country finally fail. On their way out, they do what they can to compromise and weaken the entity they leave behind, by inflicting a permanently oozing and festering political wound. “Poison all the wells” is the last thing on their pre-departure checklist.

• When the British got tossed out of their American Colonies, they did all they could, using a combination of import preferences and British “soft power,” to bolster the plantation economy of the American South, helping set it up as a sort of anti-United States, and the eventual result was the American Civil War.

• When the British got tossed out of Ireland, they set up Belfast as a sort of anti-Ireland, with much blood shed as a result.

• When the British got tossed out of India, they set up Pakistan, as a sort of anti-India, precipitating a nasty hot war, followed by a frozen conflict over Kashmir.

• When the US lost China to the Communists, they evacuated the Nationalists to Taiwan, and set it up as a sort of anti-China, and even gave it China's seat at the United Nations.

The goal is always the same: if they can't have the run of the place, they make sure that nobody else can either, by setting up a conflict scenario that nobody there can ever hope to resolve. And so if you see Anglo-imperialists going out of their way and spending lots of money to poison the political well somewhere in the world, you can be sure that they are on their way out. Simply put, they don't spend lots of money to set up intractable problems for themselves to solve—it's always done for the benefit of others.

Fast-forward to 2014, and what we saw was the Anglo-imperialist attempt to set up Ukraine as a sort of anti-Russia. They took a Slavic, mostly Russian-speaking country and spent billions (that's with a “b”) of dollars corrupting its politics to make the Ukrainians hate the Russians. For a good while an average Ukrainian could earn a month's salary simply by turning up for an anti-Russian demonstration in Kiev, and it was said that nobody in Ukraine goes to protests free of charge; it's all paid for by the US State Department and associated American NGOs. The result was what we saw this year: a bloody coup, and a civil war marked by numerous atrocities. Ukraine is in the midst of economic collapse with power plants out of coal and lights going off everywhere, while at the same time the Ukrainians are being drafted into the army and indoctrinated to want to go fight against “the Muscovites.”

But, if you notice, things didn't go quite as planned. First, Russia succeeded in making a nice little example of self-determination in the form of Crimea: if it worked for Kosovo, why can't it work for Crimea? Oh, the Anglo-imperialist establishment wishes to handle these things on a case-by-case basis, and in this case it doesn't approve? Well, that would be a double-standard, wouldn't it? World, please take note: when the West talks about justice and human rights, that's just noise.

Next, the Russians provided some amount of support, including weapons, volunteers and humanitarian aid, to Ukraine's eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, which declared themselves People's Republics and successfully fought Ukraine's so-called “anti-terrorist operation” to a stalemate and an imperfect, precarious cease-fire. Very significantly, Russia absolutely refused to get involved militarily, has withheld official recognition of these republics, has refused to consider breaking up Ukraine, and continues to insist on national dialogue and a peace process even as the bullets fly. According to Putin, Ukraine must be maintained as “a contiguous political space.” Thus, the Russians have responded to the Anglo-imperialists' setting up of an anti-Russia in the form of Ukraine by setting up an anti-Ukraine in the form of DPR and LPR, thereby shunting the Anglo-imperialist attempt to provoke a war between Ukraine and Russia into a civil war within Ukraine.

You might also notice that the Anglo-imperialists have been getting very, very angry. They have been doing everything they can to vilify Russia, comparing Putin to Hitler and so on. This is because for them it's all about the money, and they didn't get what they paid for. What the Anglo-imperialists were paying for in corrupting Ukraine's politics was a ring-side seat at a fight between Ukraine and Russia. And what they got instead is a two-legged stool at a bar-room brawl between Eastern and Western Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine accounts for a quarter of the Ukrainian economy, produces most of the coal that had formerly kept the lights on in the rest of the country, and contains most of the industry that had made Ukraine an industrialized nation. Western Ukraine is centered on the unhappy little rump of Galicia, where the political soil is so fertile for growing neo-Nazis. So, paying billions to watch a bunch of Ukrainians fight each other inconclusively while Russia gets to play peacemaker is not what the Anglo-imperialists wanted, and they are absolutely livid about it. If they don't get the war they paid for PDQ, they will simply cut their losses, pack up and leave, and then do what they always do, which is pretend that the country in question doesn't exist, which, the way things are going in the Ukraine, it barely will.

Note that leaving, and then pretending that a place doesn't exist, is something the Anglo-imperialists have been doing a lot lately. When they left Iraq, they did succeed in setting up a sort of anti-Iraq in the form of Iraqi Kurdistan, but that all blew up in their face. Their attempts to set up an anti-Syria or an anti-Libya died in their infancy, and they don't seem to have any plan at all with regard to Afghanistan, unless it is to repeat every single blunder the Soviets made there as carefully and completely as possible.

What's more, it's starting to look like they are about to get kicked out of Eurasia altogether. Most of the major Eurasian players—China, Russia, India, Iran, much of Central Asia—are cementing their ties around the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to which the United States isn't even admitted as an observer. As for the European Union, the current crop of EU politicians is very much bought and will be paid for upon retirement by the Anglo-imperialists, but the only reason they are still in power is that there are lots of older voters in Western Europe, and older people tend to cling to what they know even after it stops working—for them or, especially, for their kids. If it was up to the young people, the Anglo-imperialists would face open rebellion. In fact, the trends in voting patterns show that their departure from the region is a matter of time.

Here is a preview of possible coming attractions. On their way out, the Anglo-imperialists will of course try to set up an anti-Europe, and the obvious choice for that is Britain. Of all the European nations, it is the most heavily manipulated by their Anglo cousins from across the pond. It would take minimal effort for them to hurt Britain economically, then launch a propaganda campaign to redirect the blame for the bad economy toward the continent. They wouldn't even have to hire translators for their propaganda—a simple “spelling-chequer” (or whatever) would suffice. And so, to make sure that their efforts to provoke a large-scale, hugely destructive, festering conflict between Britain and Europe fail, Europe would do well to set up an anti-Britain within Britain.

And the obvious choice for an anti-Britain is of course Scotland, where the recent independence referendum failed because of... the recalcitrance of older voters. A dividing line between the Anglo empire and Eurasia running through the English Channel/La Manche would be a disaster for Europe and moving it somewhere west of Bermuda would pose a formidable challenge. On the other hand, suppose that line ran along Hadrian's Wall, with the traditionally combative and ornery Scots, armed with the remnants of North Sea oil and gas, aligning themselves with the Continent, while England remains an ever-so-obedient vassal of the Anglo-imperialists? That would reduce the intercontinental conflict to what Americans like to call a “pissing contest”: not worth the high price of admission. Yes, there would be some strong words between the two sides, and some shoving and shouting outside of pubs, and even some black eyes and loose teeth should diplomacy fail, but that should be the extent of the damage. That I see as the best-case outcome.

So that's the big picture I see heading into 2015, which I am sure will be a most tumultuous year. Not to make a prediction as to timing (don't worry, you won't ever get one out of me!) but 2015 could be the year the Anglo-imperialist franchise finally starts shutting down in obvious ways. We know it will have to shut down eventually, because failing all the time is not conducive to its survival. The bonus question is, what sort of anti-America will these parasites set up inside America before they abandon their host and scatter to their fortified compounds in undisclosed locations around the world? Or will they not even bother, and just provoke a war of all against all?

I would think that they would at least try to leverage their expensively engineered red/blue divide within the United States. This fake cultural/political divide, with all the pseudoliberal/pseudoconservative indoctrination and university- and church-based brainwashing that put it in place, cost them a pretty penny. It was engineered to produce the appearance of choice at election-time while making sure that there isn't any. But could it not be pressed into service in some more extreme manner? How about leveraging it to organize some sort of rabidly homophobic racist fundamentalist separatist enclave somewhere down south? Or perhaps one somewhere in the north, where zoophilia is de rigeur while heterosexual intercourse requires a special permit from a committee stocked with graduates in women's studies? Now, fight, you idiots! Don't you see how well that could work in practice? Would they waste such a nice opportunity to set up a system of controlled mayhem? I think not!


I leave all of that up to you to imagine.

Happy New Year!

Specter of Debtors’ Prisons Looms Over Americans Who Just Can’t Pay: “You Can’t Squeeze Blood From a Turnip”

Specter of Debtors’ Prisons Looms Over Americans Who Just Can’t Pay: “You Can’t Squeeze Blood From a Turnip”



A special report highlights the growing disparity in America, and the issues many are having in keeping up with payments, which can even lead to incarceration for failure to pay – in spite of constitutional protections.

Thanks in part to the growing trend of private collection agencies – including those who service fines and penalties assessed by government agencies – the inability or failure to pay debts is resulting in arrest warrants, mounting costs and, yes, jail time.

And things are only going to get worse:




The ACLU highlighted the growing issue of “Court-Sanctioned Extortion by Private Probation Companies.” On Debtors’ Prisons:

Across the country, in the face of mounting budget deficits, states are more aggressively going after poor people who have already served their criminal sentences and jailing them for failing to pay their legal debts. These modern-day debtors’ prisons impose devastating human costs, waste taxpayer money and resources, undermine our criminal justice system, are racially skewed, and create a two-tiered system of justice.

This case started with traffic violations and trouble with serious medical expenses:

PBS reported:http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/return-debtors-prison/

Cities across the country are increasingly turning to what are known as private probation companies to collect unpaid fines. But are indigent people ending up in jail because they can’t afford to pay? Since NewsHour Weekend’s first story on this issue aired last spring, the Childersburg Municipal Court issued a “standing order” stating that “In no case shall an indigent defendant be incarcerated … based solely on his or her inability to pay fines.” But the practice continues elsewhere in the country. Special correspondent John Carlos Frey takes an in-depth look at what some are calling the return of the debtors’ prison.

From the transcript:http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/return-debtors-prison/

In 1971 The Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution prohibits imposing “a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full.”

1,000 people every month are going to jail in Alabama because they cannot afford to pay a fine.”

[...]

TIM FUGATT: It was all at one time, just– just hit us all at once. And I explained it all to them. But we– you know, it was either pay or go to jail.

JOHN CARLOS FREY: Being threatened with a jail sentence, did that help you to come up with the money?

TIM FUGATT: It helped to try a little harder. But, you know, still. I mean, as the old saying goes, you know, you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.

JOHN CARLOS FREY: Over the next 8 months with JCS monthly fees adding up, the couple missed at least one court date each and were fined additional fees for failure to appear. Then a warrant for their arrest was issued. By the time of their arrest in February of 2012, the Fugatt’s had racked up $2,500 in additional court fines. Remember all this began with three traffic violations for which they were found not guilty.

Mac Slavo

State Departments of Agriculture are Attempting to Regulate Seed Banks Out of Existence

State Departments of Agriculture are Attempting to Regulate Seed Banks Out of Existence



Last year, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture officials sent ‘a friendly letter’ to a seed bank/seed exchange group in Mechanicsburg, telling them they need to test every variety of seed with extremely impractical and pointless tests to ensure that they are up to standards with regulations.

‘Agri-Terrorism’ was cited by officials as a reason why such regulations should be enforced on something as natural as the right to exchange and possess seeds.

There are laws in every state regulating the possession and exchange of seeds. The actual enforcement of these laws is spotty, because a lot of law is actually too complex most often to even decode, and just about any crazy thing that was once written in law can be enforced if law enforcement wants to. Also, who wants to enforce laws regulating and stifling such a productive, natural right?

“There’s almost no danger,” said John Torgrimson, the executive director of the Seed Savers Exchange. “This is not a risk to agriculture in any state. This is not a risk to our food supply.”

Pennsylvania is not alone in this fight. Regulators in Nebraska are also looking at local seed banks.

David Svik, the head of Nebraska’s ‘Seed Control Office’, says he will ‘see how to proceed’ with the many seed banks of the state who are not complying with regulations.

To quote a farmer from Nebraska on the issue, Betsy Goodman, on her opinion: “Regenerating your own seed is a human right.”

In other words, the recent development here is that Nebraska state bureaucrats being paid to enforce laws that only benefit big agriculture, wish to proceed with severely limiting the ability for the people to do what they should fundamentally have a right to: collect and exchange seeds. They’re trying to proceed with enforcing regulations at any cost. This is fundamentally a move to help stifle the empowerment of these people with their agricultural practices.

Will there be a standoff? Will anyone be arrested, fined, or feel the force of the state over saving and trading seeds?

Hopefully we will not see the state inflict violence on peaceful people exercising their rights.

The only real ‘Agri-Terrorists’ that exist are corporations like Monsanto who influence laws like this, and bureaucrats paid to enforce and deal with the laws that inhibit people from taking action to be well off with their agriculture. It seems Big Agriculture corporations support these laws so that farmers will have to annually buy seeds that are patented GM or hybrid, instead of harvesting their own seeds to plant.

Maintaining our natural right to simply possess seeds and freely practice agriculture is something we absolutely need to do.

It’s an overall dangerous position for a society to be in, where most of us don’t know how to possess seeds, grow food, and survive without a Wal-Mart or Taco Bell. I think in the future this will become more painfully apparent, and people will start cultivating crops again. But when they do, will these Departments of Agriculture try to stifle it with laws? We must be opposed to these laws to the fullest in order to guarantee our simple right to be prosperous.

Please share this with as many people as possible, as it’s fundamentally important to be aware of developments in bureaucratic efforts to stifle our natural, basic rights.



Cassius Methyl

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_bank

http://www.shareable.net/blog/pennsylvania-seed-library-investigated-by-department-of-agriculture

http://www.shareable.net/blog/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-legality-of-seed-libraries

http://www.amseed.org/issues/state-federal/resources/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/28/seed-libraries-struggle-with-state-laws-limiting-e/?page=2

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/28/seed-libraries-struggle-with-state-laws-limiting-e/

2014: The Year the American Justice System Officially Died

2014: The Year the American Justice System Officially Died



In 2014, the problem of police brutality forced itself to the forefront of the national conversation following the brutal killing of Americans at the hands of the police. This increased attention has been a success for activists from all walks of life and for the well-being of citizens. The problem of racism and police murders that involve it is finally receiving widespread acknowledgment and opposition.

But as much as the issue of police abuse needs attention, it remains that injustice in America permeates layers of society that transcend law enforcement, race, and problems of direct violence against citizens.

Rather, police brutality is a symptom of much deeper decay in the concept and system of “justice” in the United States. As much as murderous cops escaping punishment is outrageous, here are other travesties that occurred in 2014:

The Senate attempted to stifle the free speech of any journalist it did not define as “press,” calling the bill a protection of the first amendment. Most of Congress cheered Israel on from June through the summer while it pummeled Gaza. They authorized hundreds of millions in material support. At the end of the summer, President Obama began illegally bombing Syria while drone attacks exposed for killing civilians and children continued.

In just the time since the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, the government has committed a litany of offenses: it stole 2400 acres of Apache native lands to give to a foreign mining company that had been lobbying Congress for a decade. The FDA approved an addictive painkiller to combat addiction to painkillers. Congress moved to invalidate the electoral vote in Washington D.C. that legalized marijuana. It further enabled the NSA to spy on Americans in spite of empty rhetoric promising reform.

Naturally, lawmakers continued the state of perpetual war by renewing the military funding bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (where it gave away the Apache lands). It still guarantees the government’s right to indefinitely detain Americans without trial and it can still torture non-Americans however it likes.

All of these cruel, violative, and often violent instances prove that “justice,” which is supposed to mean “moral rightness,” is as dead as unarmed black men at the hands of police in America. But within the so-called “justice system,” there are more flagrant, direct examples of this lack of justice:

The government, via the IRS and DOJ, is authorized to confiscate the life savings of law-abiding Americans who are not suspected of crimes. There is little redress for the robbery committed against them (cops are also guilty of stealing possessions under the shelter of the DOJ).  At the same time, the IRS directly funds tangible, violent crimes by federally funding murderous police and military. Further, banks tied to illegal money laundering for drug cartels (a clearly illegal action) are given what amount to slaps on the wrist.

Take the problem of dogs murdered by police. While individuals who harm police dogs are viciously charged with assaulting an officer and sent to jail for decades, it is a rare occurrence to see a cop reprimanded for murdering a dog while on duty. In some cases cops have been put on paid leave, but police are rarely charged for killing family pets. The same can be said for a civilian killing a cop versus a cop killing an unarmed civilian: to kill a cop is capital punishment. To kill a civilian is a paid vacation and maybe some bad press for police.

At this discrepancy rages on, non-violent individuals are thrown in jail for possessing marijuana (fortunately in 2014, the tide began to turn) while pharmaceutical companies that produce lethal pills are not only emboldened by the FDA, but free from punishment in court.

While the government spies on all American citizens, collects their data, and cops create “threat ratings” based on social media posts, there is zero transparency on the part of the state. On multiple occasions the DOJ has argued in court to keep documents sealed.

It took years for the government to release the legal “justification” for the president’s kill list. It did so only when pressed.

2014 made it clear that there is not only an utterly destroyed sense of justice in the United States, but that the justice system in particular is a sham.

While the problem of racist police forces and more systemically, universally violent cops (whose violence affects people of all colors more and more each day) is absolutely necessary to discuss, it is important not to forget the system that enabled such problems in the first place. Police are the enforcement class of the government and the more power a government exercises, the more power their foot soldiers will, as well.

This fact demonstrates that stopping police brutality will not solve the much deeper problems of corrupt institutions. Even if all racial profiling, police brutality and corruption were stopped, the justice system would still destroy lives. It will still favor the elites and warmongers.

In 2015, the fight against police injustice must continue. But that fight must not forget the multitude of other ways that justice is trampled.

In fact, if the system is allowed to continue, any small, superficial wins made in the fight against brutality will surely be reversed at the hands of a government whose foundational power is never questioned.


Carey Wedler


Sources:

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/04/09/the-senates-media-shield-law-is-toothless-and-arbitrary

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/01/israel-soldier-abduction/13462253/

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/09/24/day-two-illegal-us-led-bombing-syria-obama-asks-help-fighting-network-death

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147

http://theantimedia.org/ndaa-gives-native-american-land-to-foreign-mining-corporation/

http://theantimedia.org/fda-approves-addictive-painkiller-to-combat-addiction-to-painkillers/

http://theantimedia.org/congress-plans-to-overturn-d-c-marijuana-legalization/

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/226322-obama-renews-nsa-program-after-reform-bill-fails

http://www.ibtimes.com/us-senate-passes-585-billion-ndaa-military-authorization-1752207

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/206953-house-passes-2015-defense-authorization

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-the-cia-torture-report.html

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/justice

http://theantimedia.org/irs-abuses-criminal-law-steal-money-innocent-americans/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/us/police-use-department-wish-list-when-deciding-which-assets-to-seize.html?_r=0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/avinash-tharoor/banks-cartel-money-laundering_b_4619464.html

http://theantimedia.org/k-9-puppy-wears-bullet-proof-vest-police-put-bullets-canines/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/edsilverman/2013/06/24/in-supreme-court-ruling-drugmakers-win-and-consumers-lose/

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/12/12/police-data-mining-looks-through-social-media-assigns-you-a-threat-level/

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140829/07210728361/doj-pretends-no-fly-guidelines-havent-been-leaked-claims-state-secrets-to-avoid-revealing-them-to-judge.shtml

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-lawyer-and-the-kill-list-memo

‘You’re Either a Cop or Little People’: The American Police State in 2014

‘You’re Either a Cop or Little People’: The American Police State in 2014

“You’re either a cop or little people.”—Police captain Harry Bryant in Blade Runner

For those of us who have managed to survive 2014 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.

We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.

As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.

We’ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after “accidental” encounters with marauding SWAT teams. We’ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered “Constitution-free zones.” We’ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.

We’ve been given the runaround on government wrongdoing, starting with President Obama’s claim that the National Security Agency has never abused its power to spy on Americans’ phone calls and emails. All the while, the NSA has been racing to build a supercomputer that could break through “every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.” Despite the fact that the NSA’s domestic surveillance program has been shown to be ineffective at preventing acts of terrorism, the agency continues to vacuum up almost 200 million text messages a day.

We’ve seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state. From Boston to Ferguson and every point in between, police have pushed around, prodded, poked, probed, scanned, shot and intimidated the very individuals—we the taxpayers—whose rights they were hired to safeguard. Networked together through fusion centers, police have surreptitiously spied on our activities and snooped on our communications, using hi-tech devices provided by the Department of Homeland Security.

We’ve been deemed suspicious for engaging in such dubious activities as talking too long on a cell phone and stretching too long before jogging, dubbed extremists and terrorists for criticizing the government and suggesting it is tyrannical or oppressive, and subjected to forced colonoscopies and anal probes for allegedly rolling through a stop sign.

We’ve been arrested for all manner of “crimes” that never used to be considered criminal, let alone uncommon or unlawful, behavior: letting our kids walk to the playground alone, giving loose change to a homeless man, feeding the hungry, and living off the grid.

We’ve been sodomized, victimized, jeopardized, demoralized, traumatized, stigmatized, vandalized, demonized, polarized and terrorized, often without having done anything to justify such treatment. Blame it on a government mindset that renders us guilty before we’ve even been charged, let alone convicted, of any wrongdoing. In this way, law-abiding individuals have had their homes mistakenly raided by SWAT teams that got the address wrong. One accountant found himself at the center of a misguided police standoff after surveillance devices confused his license plate with that of a drug felon.

We’ve been railroaded into believing that our votes count, that we live in a democracy, that elections make a difference, that it matters whether we vote Republican or Democrat, and that our elected officials are looking out for our best interests. Truth be told, we live in an oligarchy, politicians represent only the profit motives of the corporate state, whose leaders know all too well that there is no discernible difference between red and blue politics, because there is only one color that matters in politics—green.

We’ve gone from having privacy in our inner sanctums to having nowhere to hide, with smart pills that monitor the conditions of our bodies, homes that spy on us (with smart meters that monitor our electric usage and thermostats and light switches that can be controlled remotely) and cars that listen to our conversations and track our whereabouts. Even our cities have become wall-to-wall electronic concentration camps, with police now able to record hi-def video of everything that takes place within city limits.

We’ve had our schools locked down, our students handcuffed, shackled and arrested for engaging in childish behavior such as food fights, our children’s biometrics stored, their school IDs chipped, their movements tracked, and their data bought, sold and bartered for profit by government contractors, all the while they are treated like criminals and taught to march in lockstep with the police state.

We’ve been rendered enemy combatants in our own country, denied basic due process rights, held against our will without access to an attorney or being charged with a crime, and left to molder in jail until such a time as the government is willing to let us go or allow us to defend ourselves.

We’ve had the very military weapons we funded with our hard-earned tax dollars used against us, from unpiloted, weaponized drones tracking our movements on the nation’s highways and byways and armored vehicles, assault rifles, sound cannons and grenade launchers in towns with little to no crime to an arsenal of military-grade weapons and equipment given free of charge to schools and universities.

We’ve been silenced, censored and forced to conform, shut up in free speech zones, gagged by hate crime laws, stifled by political correctness, muzzled by misguided anti-bullying statutes, and pepper sprayed for taking part in peaceful protests.

We’ve been shot by police for reaching for a license during a traffic stop, reaching for a baby during a drug bust, carrying a toy sword down a public street, and wearing headphones that hamper our ability to hear.

We’ve had our tax dollars spent on $30,000 worth of Starbucks for Dept. of Homeland Security employees, $630,000 in advertising to increase Facebook “likes” for the State Dept., and close to $25 billion to fund projects ranging from the silly to the unnecessary, such as laughing classes for college students and programs teaching monkeys to play video games and gamble.

We’ve been treated like guinea pigs, targeted by the government and social media for psychological experiments on how to manipulate the masses. We’ve been tasered for talking back to police, tackled for taking pictures of police abuses, and threatened with jail time for invoking our rights. We’ve even been arrested by undercover cops stationed in public bathrooms who interpret men’s “shaking off” motions after urinating to be acts of lewdness.

We've had our possessions seized and stolen by law enforcement agencies looking to cash in on asset forfeiture schemes, our jails privatized and used as a source of cheap labor for megacorporations, our gardens smashed by police seeking out suspicious-looking marijuana plants, and our buying habits turned into suspicious behavior by a government readily inclined to view its citizens as terrorists.

We've had our cities used for military training drills, with Black Hawk helicopters buzzing the skies, Urban Shield exercises overtaking our streets, and active shooter drills wreaking havoc on unsuspecting bystanders in our schools, shopping malls and other “soft target” locations.

We've been told that national security is more important than civil liberties, that police dogs’ noses are sufficient cause to carry out warrantless searches, that the best way not to get raped by police is to “follow the law,” that what a police officer says in court will be given preference over what video footage shows, that an upright posture and acne are sufficient reasons for a cop to suspect you of wrongdoing, that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous tip, and that police officers have every right to shoot first and ask questions later if they feel threatened.

Now there are those who still insist that they are beyond the reach of the police state because they have done nothing wrong and have nothing to fear. To those sanctimonious few, secure in their delusions, let this be a warning: the danger posed by the American police state applies equally to all of us: lawbreaker and law abider alike, black and white, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, blue collar and white collar, and any other distinction you’d care to trot out.

The lesson of 2014 is simply this: in a police state, you’re either a cop or you’re one of the little people. Right now, we are the little people, the servants, the serfs, the grunts who must obey without question or suffer the consequences.

If there is to be any hope in 2015 for restoring our freedoms and reclaiming our runaway government, we will have to start by breathing life into those three powerful words that set the tone for everything that follows in the Constitution: “we the people.”

It’s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen and, as Gandhi once advised, be the change you want to see in the world.

Get mad, get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.

In other words, get moving. Time is growing short, and the police state is closing in. Power to the people!

By John W. Whitehead :https://www.rutherford.org/

Sources:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/17/nsa_surveillance_reform_every_scary_weird_thing_we_know_the_agency_can_do.html

http://www.amazon.com/Government-Wolves-Emerging-American-Police/dp/1590799755/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

https://www.change.org/p/ardmore-police-department-justice-for-cali?share_id=mSaXZTnlHU&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&v=control&x=~open_graph_autopublish_experiment

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/swat-raid-casualties

http://rt.com/usa/court-upholds-laptop-border-searches-041/

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140916/09090628533/fbi-rolls-out-biometric-database-schedule-accompanying-privacy-impact-assessment-still-nowhere-to-be-found.shtml

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/technology/when-no-one-is-just-a-face-in-the-crowd.html

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/31/nsa-powers-have-been-abused

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-seeks-to-build-quantum-computer-that-could-crack-most-types-of-encryption/2014/01/02/8fff297e-7195-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-phone-record-collection-does-little-to-prevent-terrorist-attacks-group-says/2014/01/12/8aa860aa-77dd-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html?tid=auto_complete

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/roadside-violation-drivers-passengers-say-police-s/nc7kd/

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/02/big_brothers_little_siblings_how_local_police_departments_are_spying_on_us_now_too/

http://www.hstoday.us/focused-topics/border-security/single-article-page/dhs-fbi-fear-increasing-attacks-by-extremist-domestic-anti-government-groups/5cdec96ecd6336ead66dfb78d68b2ff8.html

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/14/new-mexico-man-given-forced-colonoscopy-by-cops-wins-16-million-settlement

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-son-park/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-90-arrested-week-feeding-homeless-article-1.2002790

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-10/off-the-grid-in-florida-robin-speronis-fights-municipal-code

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/09/chicago_cops_accused_of_raping_man_with_a_gun/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/swat-raid-casualties

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-drive-to-spy-80c4f85b4335

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/06/our_quantified_toothbrush_future/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/26/5753026/google-and-nest-considering-home-security

http://rt.com/usa/car-companies-tracking-drivers-habits-334/

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/sheriffs-deputy-compares-drone-surveillance-of-compton-to-big-brother/360954/?

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/05/9-year-old_led_away_in_handcuf.html

http://www.lebanondemocrat.com/article/schools/402286

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/30/new_idea_from_the_surveillance_state_collect_students_data_partner/

http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2014/09/biometic-spying-on-school-kids-lunches.html?m=1

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/what-is-an-enemy-combatant-90436.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/border-patrol-drones-being-borrowed-by-other-agencies-more-often-than-previously-known/2014/01/14/5f987af0-7d49-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html

http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537

http://eagnews.org/schools-stockpile-grenade-launchers-m16-rifles-armored-vehicles-and-other-military-equipment/

http://rt.com/usa/first-amendment-us-law-colleges-029/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/30/justices-weigh-limits-free-speech-over-internet/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/children-parents-pay-hefty-fines-bullying-article-1.1786371

http://www.masslive.com/news/boston/index.ssf/2014/12/eric_garner_protests_massachus.html

http://abcnews.go.com/US/dashcam-captures-south-carolina-trooper-shooting-unarmed-man/story?id=25749239

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/new-hampshire-grandma-shot-by-cops-after-reaching-for-infant-during-dea-raid/

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/15/3567345/why-was-this-black-man-killed-by-cops-in-utah/

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/20-year-executed-slc-police-allegedly-wearing-headphones-unable-hear-orders/#Dx2kvCtwyD0Hd8mA.99

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/wp/2014/10/31/report-dhs-employees-put-30000-worth-of-starbucks-on-government-credit-card/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/07/03/ig-report-state-department-spent-630000-to-increase-facebook-likes/

http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=8027c30b-ce84-48bf-ae81-be99ac74eb12

http://scgnews.com/facebooks-psychological-experiments-connected-to-department-of-defense-research-on-civil-unrest

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140905/07011828427/cop-to-cameraman-if-youre-invoking-your-rights-you-must-be-doing-something-wrong.shtml

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/undercover-cops-arresting-men-touching-urinating-public-bathrooms/#EuJksJwb5CgWg6Lh.99

http://www.offnow.org/license_to_steal_civil_forfeiture_implications_of_dea_nsa_spy_program

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/02/3477866/private-prison-investors-see-profit-in-central-american-migrant-influx/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/06/heavily-armed-drug-cops-raid-retirees-garden-seize-okra-plants/

http://www.blacklistednews.com/DHS_will_ask_stores_to_spy_on_customers%27_buying_habits_for_terrorist_clues/37858/0/38/38/Y/M.html

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/ok-trooper-tells-local-news-best-way-not-to-get-raped-by-cops-is-to-follow-the-law/

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140405/17142626817/indiana-supreme-court-declares-officers-testimony-is-more-reliable-than-video-evidence.shtml

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/43/4394.asp

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/22/305993180/court-gives-police-new-power-to-rely-on-anonymous-tips

People I Don’t Like

Islamic State, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Obama administration, people crying racism, Environmentalists, Illegal Aliens

People I Don’t Like



At the end of every year it is customary to offer up lists of all kinds—the best this, the worst that—and it is a brief, generally amusing exercise.

I don’t usually make lists, but lately though I have been thinking a lot about people I don’t like and at the top of the list are the monsters of the Islamic State, the Taliban, and Boko Haram, all “militant” Islamists who justify their barbaric immoral slaughters, kidnappings, and other crimes in the name of Allah. I have had a bellyful of these horrid people and am weary of hearing they are only a small part of Islam.

There are more than a billion Muslims in the world and, if the Islamists are “just” ten percent, that means there are a hundred million who are active waging their “holy war” or who support them. Among those whom I do not like are the millions of silent Muslims who do nothing to organize and speak out against them. It is true, however, that the handful that do speak out literally risk being killed. What kind of a religion is predicated on making war on all other religions?

Closer to home among the people I do not like are those who joined marches to denigrate our nation’s police corps, defaming them with charges of racism and murder. The events that followed the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, one of self-defense by a white cop against a black thug and the death in Staten Island that resulted when a long-time offender refused to be arrested, were simply an excuse by those who apparently prefer the streets to be filled with criminals whom the police are not supposed to “profile.”  Well, cops make judgments about the people on their beat all the time, black, white, or otherwise. That’s their job!

I do not like people crying “racism” every time the commission of a crime goes badly for a black perpetrator are people I do not like. People in high office who use these events to exacerbate racial divisions are high on my list of those I don’t like.

Among the much discussed social issues, I am less than sympathetic for those women who enter into consensual sex and then cry “rape.” If they have been raped, they need to contact the police. I am not sympathetic to those colleges and universities who think it is their job to regulate the private sexual activities of students with all manner of “codes” that one can add to those that crimp freedom of speech and other Constitutionally-protected behavior.

At this time of year, I really don’t like those people who insist that one cannot or should not say “Merry Christmas” or that communities should not display Christmas scenes on public property. These are the same dreadful people forever declaiming against any public display of religious belief such as the kind that has for centuries opened government and legislative meetings of every description in America. The atheists among us have every right to be atheists, but they have no right to insist we deny a greater power because they refuse to do so. Even the Supreme Court has ruled against them.

While I see no practical or even moral way to deport the eleven million illegal aliens among us, that doesn’t make them any less illegal. Like a lot of others, I want to see our borders made more secure and less open to swarms of invaders—not “refugees”—that we saw occur when 75,000 children and their families who invaded the U.S. this year and who must now be absorbed at a cost that comes out of the pockets of every native-born and naturalized citizen. That must stop. For those illegals who have been born here or lived here for five years or so, they should be permitted to go to the back of the line and seek naturalization. For others, temporary work permits are a common sense option.



A group of people I have not liked for decades are the environmentalists. The reason is very simple. They lie about everything they champion in the name of “global warming” or “climate change.” Both are hoaxes that, like most everything else the Greens protest, result from the way they debase meteorological science or their absurd claims about the use of fossil fuels. As far as Greens are concerned, anything that benefits mankind from new housing to more industry producing more jobs, and anything that requires the use of chemicals in their manufacture (that is everything!) is just a tiresome scare campaign that is promulgated to line their pockets with the millions they receive every year. I don’t like the liberal foundations that give them millions.

In America politics has always been a blood sport. It’s vigorous. It sometimes produces real leaders. It increasingly requires millions of dollars to run for high office and that has led to a high degree of control by those entities that have deep pockets. I suspect it has always been thus though not at the levels of cost that exist today. I am not a big fan of those politicians of the Far Left or the Far Right. Those in the middle and those who understand that a republic requires compromise are often seen as too willing to go along, but finding a middle way to solve problems is usually the best way.

In the last midterm elections those who showed up to vote sent a clear message to Congress and to a President who claimed he heard them as well as those who didn’t vote. Those who didn’t vote should shut their mouths because their message was surrender.

I don’t like the Obama administration that has produced six years of unrelenting failure domestically and internationally. That’s what happens when the voters put a Marxist and very likely a Muslim in office. I don’t like Barack Hussein Obama, a man many regard as the worst President this nation has ever had.http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2056

If the last two midterm elections are any indication, voters have learned their lesson—which leaves the 2016 election. Don’t listen to anyone who says they know who will run or who will win. Two years in American politics is an eternity and people vote differently in national elections than in midterms.

There are a lot of people I do like.

*I like the ones who go to sporting events or concerts and share the enjoyment with everyone around them without regard to race, gender, or any other reason.
*I like the ones who volunteer in their community to make it a better place in which to live and raise children.
*I like the ones who put their lives on the line—police and firemen—for the rest of us.
*I like those who are members of our armed forces at a time when they are being treated in a shabby fashion, but believe enough in America to defend it.
*I like those in the medical professions who devote themselves to helping cure and treat the ill.
*I like the legion of caregivers who look after older family members and others.

There are others I like, but this is a pretty good list, right?

Alan Caruba,

Today’s Protests Are Centuries In The Making

Today’s Protests Are Centuries In The Making



EDUCATE! NEW YORK CITY, POLICE BRUTALITY, RACIAL JUSTICE 

The tragic deaths of Eric Garner, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu offer New Yorkers an opportunity to have a real conversation about our city’s sordid racial history. Racial politics may have come a long way in a city that prides itself on multiculturalism and progressivism, but community memories are long, and discussing the past must be part of moving forward. Mayor de Blasio recently acknowledged that some of the conflicts that have surfaced in recent weeks “go back centuries in their origins.”

In New York City’s black community, those origins are rooted in nearly 400 years of distrust and mistreatment. From slavery to Jim Crow, from unchecked white mobs to oppressive white police forces, the black experience in New York has been marked by pain, destruction, and neglect. There is no question that many in power have made an effort in recent decades to correct the wrongs of the past. But examining our history has to be part of the healing. Doing so will reveal that the recent protests are not just about Eric Garner, and not even just about policing. They are indeed about whether black lives matter in New York City.

Although the Dutch practiced slavery in New Amsterdam, the British assumption of New York in 1664 commenced a crueler period of slaves’ treatment. One night in 1712, two dozen slaves revolted, torching houses and killing owners. The rebels were killed or captured, with those in the latter group suffering torturous executions – slowly burned alive, dragged through town by a horse, mutilated on “the wheel,” and suspended by chains until death by dehydration – their heads left on stakes for weeks afterwards. In the aftermath of that rebellion, harsh new slavery provisions were passed, and even free blacks lost the right to own land.

These conditions worsened already tenuous race relations, leading to the 1741 slave conspiracy: part uprising and part witch trials for black people. After a white servant attributed an outbreak of arson around the city to a mass slave uprising, dozens of slaves were tortured into “confessing” the involvement of others before being deported, burned at the stake or hung. The historical record is ambiguous – it is possible that some slaves were plotting with abolitionist whites, but the trials were not serious inquiries. Every lawyer in town was enlisted in the prosecution. Only when prominent whites began accusing each other did New Yorkers realize the charade had gone too far.

The American Revolution did not end slavery in New York State. In fact, slavery within New York City actually increased significantly in the years immediately following independence. The end of slavery in New York, which finally took effect in 1827, did not herald any improvement in race relations. Abolitionists, both black and white, met at their peril. White mobs could be driven to fits of rage at any moment, such as one night in 1834 when the presence of a British lead actor at a theater (the British were anti-slavery) provoked a rampage, rioters beating any black people they found in the streets.

The Civil War draft riots are considered by local historians to be the absolute low point in New York City’s history. Politicians and business leaders steeped in racism and cotton trade interests were already stirring up anti-black hysteria – Mayor Fernando Wood hadproposed seceding from the Union – when an 1863 federal conscription requirement ignited a fury among the city’s Irish.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/mayor-woods-recommendation-of-the-secession-of-new-york-city/

Angry white mobs, who had no desire to fight a war to free black people from slavery, ransacked the city, focusing on federal property, wealthy elites, and especially black people, who were hunted throughout the city for days. Many were murdered, some hung in the streets. A black orphanage was burned to the ground, though thankfully the children escaped. The police performed admirably in protecting hundreds of blacks from the rioting crowds, which were finally beaten back by the Union Army. The draft riots are considered the worst civil uprising in American history.

Nor did the Civil War’s conclusion bring racial justice to New York City. Tammany Hall, a political machine fueled by Irish and Italian votes and commensurate patronage, enforced the worst of Jim Crow Laws during its decades of dominance. Several of the worst incidents are spelled out in Jonathan Gill’s excellent book, Harlem.

For example, on Christmas Day, 1901, three Irish teenagers beat down a black man in Harlem. A few white people actually came to his aid, but in the confusion they were in turn attacked by blacks, leading to a massive racially-charged street brawl. A white mob chased one wounded black man into the local drugstore, destroying it in the process, and the police beat another into unconsciousness with their batons.

In 1917, not far from Ferguson, Missouri, East St. Louis and other cities were ripped apart by a mass lynching that left hundreds of black people dead and thousands homeless. Harlem’s NAACP chapter, which had been organized only recently by W.E.B. Du Bois, organized the Silent Protest Parade down Fifth Avenue, with hundreds of women and children in white leading thousands of men in black who held a banner reading, “Bring Democracy to America Before You Take it To Europe” – a sign the police took as provocation, attempting to break up the protest.

A few weeks later, Patrolman Robert Holmes was killed in the line of duty. One of four black officers in a police force that had only been racially integrated in 1911, his funeralwas attended by 20,000 Harlemites.http://www.odmp.org/officer/6655-patrolman-robert-h-holmes

Holmes was an exception. Through World War II, the number of black police officers remained extremely low, and they were confined to beats in poor black neighborhoods. The majority of white police officers assigned to such neighborhoods were there as department punishment, leading to community tension that would periodically erupt. In 1935, a misunderstanding over a shoplifting incident led to a frenzy on 125th Street that ended with three deaths and the wanton destruction of property.

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, initially popular among the City’s racial minorities, appointed a commission to investigate the incident, but then tried to repress the commission’s report. The commission had found that anger over racism and discrimination – nearly every institution in Harlem, from schools to hospitals to social service agencies, was whites-only – had been the underlying cause, noting, “As long as these conditions persist, no one knows when they will lead to recurrence, with possibly greater violence.”

Only eight years later, in 1943, Harlem was again engulfed in flames after a white police officer shot a black soldier during a street confrontation. During the ensuing pandemonium six black men were killed by the police, a thousand were arrested, and hundreds of civilians and policemen were injured. That this could take place at the height of nationalistic war fever was in part due to black New York being entirely left out of the economic opportunities that the war had brought to the city, as well as the vast infrastructure projects that had improved much of the city under the New Deal. This time LaGuardia attempted to address the community’s grievances, but the damage was traumatic and severe, leading to exodus of the white and black middle class. Many prominent black leaders denounced the rioters, but resident-poet Langston Hughes countered, “All the best colored people declare that they have been set back fifty years. I don’t know from what.”

In 1964, following a tragically familiar script, an off-duty police officer shot and killed 15-year-old James Powell on the Upper East Side, claiming Powell was advancing on him with a knife. The whole incident had begun when a building superintendent named Patrick Lynch (no relation to the current police union boss, we presume) turned a garden hose on a group of black teenagers who had been taunting him. When Lynch began chasing Powell, an undercover police officer joined in pursuit, with deadly consequences.

Six weeks later the District Attorney exonerated the officer of wrongdoing. As an enormous crowd gathered in Harlem, the NYPD’s Tactical Patrol Force, comprised largely of former marines, charged it wielding batons. In the ensuing mayhem, more than 100 people were hospitalized, and chaos spread to Bedford Stuyvesant, lasting in both neighborhoods for six days. (The only silver lining, you might say, was Mayor Lindsay’s response: forming the Civilian Complaint Review Board in 1966.)

In 1967, El Barrio was overrun by what Mayor Lindsay inartfully called “a disturbance” after the police shot a young Puerto Rican named Renaldo Rodriguez. Four people were killed and over a hundred were injured in the chaos.

If this all sounds like old history, New York City has had more recent heart-wrenching incidents of racial divisiveness. In 1992, long-simmering tensions between the black and Jewish communities in Crown Heights led to three days of unrest in the streets.

It is surprising how many transplants to New York are completely unfamiliar with the story of Amadou Diallo, a young immigrant from Guinea. Four white officers from the Street Crimes Unit (3% of which was black) fired 41 shots at Diallo as he stood outside of his Bronx building vestibule, reaching for his wallet to show his identification. When the police officers were acquitted by an Albany jury (the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division had held that the officers could not receive a fair trial in the Bronx) and assigned to desk duty, organizers took to the streets with major, peaceful demonstrations.

The marches, noted for their interracial composition, lasted for weeks, with activists making very similar policy demands to those being made in the aftermath of Eric Garner’s death and the Staten Island grand jury’s non-indictment. In 1999, Reverend Al Sharpton and PBA President Patrick Lynch were both players, obviously with opposing bullhorns. The Coalition Against Police Brutality, which had formed a few years earlier after a different set of policing incidents, drove many of the protests, and its lawsuit,Daniels v. City of New York, led to the disbanding of the Street Crimes Unit and the release of police arrest data.

The stop-and-frisk data released after Daniels served as the basis of Floyd v. City of New York, the landmark lawsuit against stop-and-frisk that concluded in the plaintiffs’ favor this year when Mayor de Blasio declined to pursue an appeal and agreed to reform certain police procedures. The Coalition Against Police Brutality was a precursor to Communities United for Police Reform, which is now responsible for many of the “#BlackLivesMatter” actions. Thus, in some respects, today’s protests are part of an ongoing 20-year movement.
http://changethenypd.org/

William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The young minority organizers of the Black Lives Matter protests say that the ongoing demonstrations are not only about Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Akai Gurley, but about expressing the emotions of a community that has always been discriminated against. Today’s activists respond to demands that they “respect the rule of law” by asking for whom laws are designed, and for whom they are enforced. Politicians who unconditionally back the NYPD or call for “law and order” fail to acknowledge that for some communities, the rule of law has been seen and felt as a weapon and not a shield for centuries. Even today, racial disparities in the criminal justice system amplify this legacy. Changing that perception and that reality will take time.

Much about police and minority community relations is slowly improving. The NYPD is more diverse than it has ever been, as the tragic deaths of Officers Wenjiang Liu and Rafael Ramos illustrate. However, as recently as 1980 the force was 90% white, which is reflected in today’s command and union leadership.

Today the city’s elected officials look more like the city they represent than ever before, especially in the City Council. Both Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bratton havepublicly discussed the need to build community trust, and the mayor has noted that the conversation moving forward must acknowledge “centuries of racism.”http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/de-blasio-called-eric-garner-death-unnecessary-blog-entry-1.2032884

The crowds marching in the street are diverse in race, age, and income and have broad support for their demands. Protesters and police officers are not hurting each other or physical property in bloody street clashes; in fact, with the exception of a few fringe protesters and fringe officers, these have been perhaps the most respectful demonstrations in recent city memory, a dynamic that inflammatory comments by the PBA’s Lynch risk jeopardizing.

Yet despite these positive steps forward, we are still not a city of racial trust, let alone peace and harmony. For those who can envision a unified city, and want to put in the work, perhaps the first step is to admit that the past is real, and as long as we share these streets, it’s not even past. Perhaps a Truth and Reconciliation Process could move New York City forward.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/this-country-needs-a-truth-and-reconciliation-process-on-violence-against-african-americans

In a city of constant change, replenished with new immigrants, professional transplants, and dream-seekers who work and live alongside communities that have passed down these stories for generations, perhaps New Yorkers need to have this conversation more explicitly than most. As we begin 2015, let us respect how far we have come, and let us respect how far we have to go.

***
Janos Marton is an attorney, writer and activist. In January 2015 he will launchjanos.nyc, a site that will revisit New York City’s history to contextualize current events. Find him on Twitter @JanosMarton.https://twitter.com/janosmarton
 For people looking for a readable history of the city, Janos recommends The Epic of New York City by Edward Robb Ellis.