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Thursday, July 30, 2015
Darker Horizons Ahead: Rethinking the War on ‘IS’
Darker Horizons Ahead: Rethinking the War on ‘IS’
As much of the Middle East sinks deeper into division between competing political camps, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (‘IS’) continues its unhindered march towards a twisted version of a Muslim caliphate. Many thousands have lost their lives, some in the most torturous ways, so that ‘IS’ may realize its nightmarish dream.
Of course, violence meted out by ‘IS’ is hardly an anomaly, considering that the group was spawned in a predominantly violent environment. It is difficult to imagine, for example, that, if the Syrian regime and its opposition had sought a political solution from the early days of the uprising, ‘IS’ would have found a stable foothold for itself in Syria.
It was during the emergence of violence by the Syrian regime that ‘IS’, a dark force that neither believes in democracy, civil rights nor co-existence, appeared. The same scenario was repeated in Iraq and a host of other countries. In an article in the Independent newspaper, Patrick Cockburn highlighted seven countries where the influence of ‘IS’ is great or growing: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north-east Nigeria.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-a-year-of-the-caliphate-who-is-strong-enough-to-fight-the-islamic-state-10351402.html
The group’s “successes have been possible because it is opposed by feeble, corrupt or non-existent governments and armies,” he wrote.
However, very little emphasis has been placed on the root cause of the problem and its resulting violence. Western governments and media are not the only party guilty of discussing the brutality of ‘IS’ outside proper political or socio-economic contexts; Arab governments and media are particularly invested in misconstruing the narrative. Arab countries’ official media often misinterpret each crisis in the region in so convenient a way in order to justify their own foreign policy or military adventures.
Yemen, which has undergone several stages of political crises – government corruption and violence, a popular uprising followed by a political stalemate, a civil war and finally a regional war – is a case in point. ‘IS’ bombs targeting mostly houses of worship, are now another staple in Yemen’s bloody conflict.
‘IS’ thrives on conflicts and calamities that are rooted in poor, fragmented Arab societies, where youth are disenchanted with their governments and where they have little or no hope for the future due to corruption and the protracted violence. Such embitterment is a perfect recruiting ground for ‘IS’, which enjoys multiple revenue streams and a self-sufficient economy.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-isis-economy-just-got-a-huge-boost-2015-6
Of course, more violence is seldom the solution, as the ‘Arab Spring’ amply demonstrated. In fact, the ferocity and ruthlessness of the many conflicts currently under way in the region have achieved little, aside from setting the stage for extreme polarization in political, ideological and sectarian discourses.
While sectarianism in the region dates back many years, its current expressions are mostly political, with unambiguous agendas and goals. Initially, sectarianism distracted from the genuine push for reforms and meaningful political changes as sought by various Arab collectives. At a later stage, it served as a space for regional rivalries between Shia-majority Iran, and Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia.
Regardless of its ideological or religious claims, it is evident that the violent vision of ‘IS’, if allowed to endure, would constantly translate into greater death tolls from all sides – Sunni, Shia, Christians, and other minority groups.
With Turkey entering the fray now by bombing ‘IS’ targets in Syria, the landscape of the war is stretching beyond its usual confines and methods, into whole new territories.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/24/turkish-jets-carry-out-strikes-against-isis-in-syria-reports
After resisting pressure to join the US-led coalition against ‘IS’, Turkey has now also agreed to allow the coalition access to its Incirlik Airbase. Meanwhile, Turkish F-16 continued to pound ‘IS’ targets, while Turkish security reportedly rounded up hundreds of suspected militants, not only of ‘IS’ supporters, but also Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other radical groups.
The local dimension in Turkey’s newly started war on ‘IS’ should be of particular interest. While ‘IS’ is a common denominator among various Middle East countries, each country seems to have a local component that serves as a native host for ‘IS’, as was the case in Libya following the NATO-led war, and of course, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.
The Egyptian case is also telling. The chaos that preceded the ‘IS’ entry into Sinai was mostly related to internal Egyptian affairs. The Sinai Peninsula is poor and neglected by the Egyptian Government. For decades, it has been a testament to corruption and unfair distribution of wealth. The Bedouin tribes in Sinai, which were once at the forefront of the fight to liberate the Peninsula from Israel, grew rebellious over time. The desert became rife with drug and human trafficking. The celebrations in Sinai, following the Egyptian revolt in Jan 2011, were short-lived and were quickly replaced by an armed revolt, when hope turned into anger.
Until recently, the Sinai violence was largely a local affair. Mauritanian journalist, Sidiahmed Tfeil, argues that Egypt’s militant factions, such as ‘Ansar Beit al-Maqdis’, resisted calls to join al-Qaeda ranks. But their need for alliances and support finally pushed them into the arms of ‘IS’, which now considers the war in Sinai – led by the ‘Sinai Province’ – another extension of its regional fight.
http://justpaste.it/lmom
Tfeil lists countries where ‘IS’ is moving in full force, flushing out al-Qaeda influence and competing with local actors there. They include Yemen and Libya, but also Algeria, Mali, Somalia and others.
Aside from Algeria, the same malaise of internal conflict, external meddling and intervention seems to unite the rest, which have either become – or teeter at the edge of being – failed states.
In other words, the success of ‘IS’ has worked in tandem with the failures of regional governments to offer roadmaps out of security chaos, economic crises and chronic corruption. With access to massive funds, ‘IS’ is able to latch on to local militant groups which were formed as a result of real grievances, buying leverage and loyalty, as they have done in Libya, Syria and Sinai.
Another weapon in the ‘IS’ arsenal that also proved effective is the fact that the Middle East is split between the Saudi and Iranian camps, and that there is not one single united fight aimed at eliminating or, at least, slowing down the progress of ‘IS’ armies. While ‘IS’ military camps are reportedly targeted in Syria, other regional conflicts, especially in Yemen, are facilitating the expansion of ‘IS’.
The war on ‘IS’ and other extremist groups cannot possibly be won if the region remains divided, where corrupt, violent regimes remain the only alternative to radicalization and extremism.
It is the lack of political prospects, and the smothering of any attempt at freedom and fair economic opportunity, that lead to extremist violence in the first place. As long as this reality remains intact, ‘IS’ will tragically find new recruits, latch on to local militant groups, and continue to expand into new borders – and even darker horizons.
By Ramzy Baroud
– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net .
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
As much of the Middle East sinks deeper into division between competing political camps, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (‘IS’) continues its unhindered march towards a twisted version of a Muslim caliphate. Many thousands have lost their lives, some in the most torturous ways, so that ‘IS’ may realize its nightmarish dream.
Of course, violence meted out by ‘IS’ is hardly an anomaly, considering that the group was spawned in a predominantly violent environment. It is difficult to imagine, for example, that, if the Syrian regime and its opposition had sought a political solution from the early days of the uprising, ‘IS’ would have found a stable foothold for itself in Syria.
It was during the emergence of violence by the Syrian regime that ‘IS’, a dark force that neither believes in democracy, civil rights nor co-existence, appeared. The same scenario was repeated in Iraq and a host of other countries. In an article in the Independent newspaper, Patrick Cockburn highlighted seven countries where the influence of ‘IS’ is great or growing: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north-east Nigeria.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-a-year-of-the-caliphate-who-is-strong-enough-to-fight-the-islamic-state-10351402.html
The group’s “successes have been possible because it is opposed by feeble, corrupt or non-existent governments and armies,” he wrote.
However, very little emphasis has been placed on the root cause of the problem and its resulting violence. Western governments and media are not the only party guilty of discussing the brutality of ‘IS’ outside proper political or socio-economic contexts; Arab governments and media are particularly invested in misconstruing the narrative. Arab countries’ official media often misinterpret each crisis in the region in so convenient a way in order to justify their own foreign policy or military adventures.
Yemen, which has undergone several stages of political crises – government corruption and violence, a popular uprising followed by a political stalemate, a civil war and finally a regional war – is a case in point. ‘IS’ bombs targeting mostly houses of worship, are now another staple in Yemen’s bloody conflict.
‘IS’ thrives on conflicts and calamities that are rooted in poor, fragmented Arab societies, where youth are disenchanted with their governments and where they have little or no hope for the future due to corruption and the protracted violence. Such embitterment is a perfect recruiting ground for ‘IS’, which enjoys multiple revenue streams and a self-sufficient economy.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-isis-economy-just-got-a-huge-boost-2015-6
Of course, more violence is seldom the solution, as the ‘Arab Spring’ amply demonstrated. In fact, the ferocity and ruthlessness of the many conflicts currently under way in the region have achieved little, aside from setting the stage for extreme polarization in political, ideological and sectarian discourses.
While sectarianism in the region dates back many years, its current expressions are mostly political, with unambiguous agendas and goals. Initially, sectarianism distracted from the genuine push for reforms and meaningful political changes as sought by various Arab collectives. At a later stage, it served as a space for regional rivalries between Shia-majority Iran, and Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia.
Regardless of its ideological or religious claims, it is evident that the violent vision of ‘IS’, if allowed to endure, would constantly translate into greater death tolls from all sides – Sunni, Shia, Christians, and other minority groups.
With Turkey entering the fray now by bombing ‘IS’ targets in Syria, the landscape of the war is stretching beyond its usual confines and methods, into whole new territories.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/24/turkish-jets-carry-out-strikes-against-isis-in-syria-reports
After resisting pressure to join the US-led coalition against ‘IS’, Turkey has now also agreed to allow the coalition access to its Incirlik Airbase. Meanwhile, Turkish F-16 continued to pound ‘IS’ targets, while Turkish security reportedly rounded up hundreds of suspected militants, not only of ‘IS’ supporters, but also Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other radical groups.
The local dimension in Turkey’s newly started war on ‘IS’ should be of particular interest. While ‘IS’ is a common denominator among various Middle East countries, each country seems to have a local component that serves as a native host for ‘IS’, as was the case in Libya following the NATO-led war, and of course, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.
The Egyptian case is also telling. The chaos that preceded the ‘IS’ entry into Sinai was mostly related to internal Egyptian affairs. The Sinai Peninsula is poor and neglected by the Egyptian Government. For decades, it has been a testament to corruption and unfair distribution of wealth. The Bedouin tribes in Sinai, which were once at the forefront of the fight to liberate the Peninsula from Israel, grew rebellious over time. The desert became rife with drug and human trafficking. The celebrations in Sinai, following the Egyptian revolt in Jan 2011, were short-lived and were quickly replaced by an armed revolt, when hope turned into anger.
Until recently, the Sinai violence was largely a local affair. Mauritanian journalist, Sidiahmed Tfeil, argues that Egypt’s militant factions, such as ‘Ansar Beit al-Maqdis’, resisted calls to join al-Qaeda ranks. But their need for alliances and support finally pushed them into the arms of ‘IS’, which now considers the war in Sinai – led by the ‘Sinai Province’ – another extension of its regional fight.
http://justpaste.it/lmom
Tfeil lists countries where ‘IS’ is moving in full force, flushing out al-Qaeda influence and competing with local actors there. They include Yemen and Libya, but also Algeria, Mali, Somalia and others.
Aside from Algeria, the same malaise of internal conflict, external meddling and intervention seems to unite the rest, which have either become – or teeter at the edge of being – failed states.
In other words, the success of ‘IS’ has worked in tandem with the failures of regional governments to offer roadmaps out of security chaos, economic crises and chronic corruption. With access to massive funds, ‘IS’ is able to latch on to local militant groups which were formed as a result of real grievances, buying leverage and loyalty, as they have done in Libya, Syria and Sinai.
Another weapon in the ‘IS’ arsenal that also proved effective is the fact that the Middle East is split between the Saudi and Iranian camps, and that there is not one single united fight aimed at eliminating or, at least, slowing down the progress of ‘IS’ armies. While ‘IS’ military camps are reportedly targeted in Syria, other regional conflicts, especially in Yemen, are facilitating the expansion of ‘IS’.
The war on ‘IS’ and other extremist groups cannot possibly be won if the region remains divided, where corrupt, violent regimes remain the only alternative to radicalization and extremism.
It is the lack of political prospects, and the smothering of any attempt at freedom and fair economic opportunity, that lead to extremist violence in the first place. As long as this reality remains intact, ‘IS’ will tragically find new recruits, latch on to local militant groups, and continue to expand into new borders – and even darker horizons.
By Ramzy Baroud
– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net .
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLIONSTAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
It’s Not the Muslims Stupid!
It’s Not the Muslims Stupid!
"The Saker" - @TomiLahren’s rant heard round’ the world was the first I’ve ever heard of her. I listened to it a couple of times and a few of her other shows to understand her perspective and motivation. The way she repeatedly ties radical terrorism to Islam and then backs off half a step before letting loose another salvo against Muslims and president Obama is almost artistic.
I live in Donbas and there are currently over 200 ISIL terrorists operating here. Should the US bomb them and everyone that supports them Tomi?
Its Not the Muslims Stupid
From the late 1950’s onward scholars started documenting the movement that became known as radical Islam today. The only problem is, it’s not Islam. It never was. It is western fascist political philosophy that’s been tailored to suite the Middle East. Going into the new millennium new groups used “Muslim, Islam, and Islamic” as a means to self identify within the vastly larger Muslim communities in an effort to draw fire from the West and radicalize populations while trying to establish themselves by putting the communities under fire.
The Terrorists are in fact only as Muslim as Adolf Hitler could be considered a Christian in any context. “As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.” –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
If terrorists such as Al Qaeda or ISIL are not Muslim then what are they?
The Millennial Studies project at Boston University is engaged in the study of groups and ideology that pose existential threats and will eventually destroy the modern world. Hence, they named the dangerous time we live in post-modern. It is quite literally the study of an impending apocalypse. The project reports to the government on the real nature of these groups and ideologies to give the government a basis for dealing with them.
“I don’t want to dwell on Islamicist ideology; I don’t know that much about it. Still, we should note that recent Islamicist terrorists quote Evola with facility…One of the features of political Tradition has been the search for a school of the transcendent that could serve as the organizing principle of a new society.
Theoretically, any of the great religious traditions might serve. In practice, though, Traditionalists have usually chosen a radical version of Islam or some kind of neopaganism;… Tradition can be scary, however. Sometimes this knowledge of the inevitable collapse of the modern world inspires nothing more than the formation of groups of adepts who hope to manage the transition when civilization collapses. Sometimes, however, Tradition has sparked the creation of anarchist political groups that hope to accelerate the collapse.” After the Third Age Eschatological Elements of Postwar International Fascism , presented by Professor John Reilly at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Center for Millennial Studies, Boston University, November 2 to 4, 2002
Julius Evola was one of the founders of what became known as the “Tradition” and has adherents infecting all major religions with a fascist/ nationalist construct. According to the fascist Evola (esoteric fascism), immortality is attained by the conscious act that ignores the ramifications of death while plunging headlong into it without a thought. This has nothing to do with the type of religion an adherent is or its afterlife traditions.
This type of thought today isn’t isolated to political Islam, it infects Judaism and Christianity on a world wide scale. It’s not religion, its politics with a religious face. Fascist nationalism seems more pronounced in political Islam today because it is not governments attacking, its groups we identify as terrorist.
In an article titled “Terror, Islam and Democracy,” Ladan and Roya Boroumand state that“Most young Islamist cadres today are the direct intellectual and spiritual heirs of the Qutbist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.” And further, “When the authoritarian regime of President Gamel Abdel Nasser suppressed the Muslim Brothers in 1954 (it would eventually get around to hanging Qutb in 1966), many went into exile in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Morocco. From there, they spread their revolutionary Islamist ideas – including the organizational and ideological tools borrowed from European totalitarianism.”
The Independent’s John Gray argues in an article entitled “How Marx turned Muslim” that Qutbism is not rooted in the Islamic tradition, but rather, is very much a Western based ideology.
The work of these Phd’s was done to put context around what was happening before, during, and after September 11th and the twin towers attack. Our America has been at war ever since that day, but has it been at war with the those responsible? Iraq wasn’t involved and Afghanistan was going to give Osama bin Laden over to justice.
From a real Muslim perspective Shaykh Rabee’ ibn Hadi al-Madkhali, a renowned Salafi scholar concludes the following about Qutbism: “The Qutbists are the followers of Sayyid Qutb… everything you see of the tribulations, the shedding of blood and the problems in the Islamic world today arise from the methodology (of this man).”
It wasn’t the Muslims that Attacked Us on 9/11
Simon al Zawaheri was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Brotherhood with regard to their religious and mystical leanings are Sufi or more specifically, Qutbist; named for those who follow Sayyid Qutb. This philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood is essentially NeoPlatonic and does not distinguish between matters of belief, so long as people adhere to their movement. This is why the outwardly Shia al Zawaheri and the outwardly Sunni bin Laden could be comrades and brothers.
If you know anything about Islamic history, Shia and Sunni belief are not reconcilable and each are apostate to the other. Because neither al Zawaheri or bin Laden promoted Islam it just didn’t matter that they should be mortal enemies. Both were political operators and not religionists. As long as you agree with the political philosophy or simply get out of the way they don’t have a “religious problem” with you.
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The Twin Towers weren’t destroyed by Muslims but by believers in this same fascist political philosophy that is now spread throughout the Mideast thanks to the so called Arab spring or spring of nations. Each country was initially taken over by this same Muslim Brotherhood.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/05/analysis-al-nusrah-front-committed-to-ayman-al-zawahiris-orders.php
This isn’t isolated cases of small or even just one large terrorist group. Fascist/ nationalist ideology is the across the board reality that defines them. This case study which was done in 2009 just ahead of the Arab Spring explored the possibilities of working and cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood in spite of their overt harsh fascist/ nationalist agenda. It is a great study because it details how many secular and humanitarian angles terrorists indoctrinate a region or society with.
http://www.asharqalarabi.org.uk/ruiah/i-m-e.pdf
From the other side of the coin ½ of the Pam Geller- Brigitte Gabriel dynamic duo spoke at a Heritage Foundation panel discussion in June 2014 . The following is excerpted from that.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/weaponizing-wikipedia-invasion-scale-info-war.html
“ I know that we portray Islam and all Muslims as bad , but there are 1.8 billion [followers] of Islam,” the law student, who identified herself as Saba Ahmed, began. “We have 8 million plus Muslim Americans in this country, and I don’t see them represented here. But my question is: how can we fight an ideological war with weapons? How can we ever end this war? The jihadist ideology that you talk about, it’s an ideology. How can you ever win this thing if you don’t address it ideologically?”
http://toinformistoinfluence.com/2014/09/22/political-correctness-be-damned/
Terrorism expert Brigitte Gabriel, the CEO of ACT! for America responded- The peaceful majority were irrelevant. I’m glad you’re here, but where are the others speaking out? As an American citizen, you sat in this room and instead of standing up and [asking] something about our four Americans that died [in Benghazi] and what our government is doing to correct the problem, you stood there to make a point about peaceful, moderate Muslims.
Ahmed did not seem defensive or angry over Gabriel’s response, kindly responding that “as a peaceful American Muslim,” she would like to think that she is not “irrelevant.”
What we have is even though it is acknowledged that Fascist/ nationalist ideology(which has been identified) is the problem, it is an called issue with Islam. Muslims can’t address this because the thought is as foreign to their normal religion as it is to religious Christianity or Judaism.
How do you explain the same type of Fascist/ nationalist ideology present in Kiev’s “Christian” Ukraine which carries the same type of atrocities at the same levels? Are they secretly Muslim? If not why is ISIL actively helping Ukraine kill and torture Donbas people?
This ideology is as foreign to Islam as it should be to Christianity and yet political operatives trying to claim either religion believe the same totalitarianist thought. To solve this we need to stop looking at the host religion and root out the nationalism that has attached itself before it gets normalized.
What you have in front of you, no matter how shocking to your system are the real facts. This short form look at them just shows you the extent to which the facts are ignored.
ISIL, IGIL, ISIS, WHAT-EVER
Recently the New York Times broke a story that said ISIL was now operating in Ukraine working under Dimiti Yarosh’s Pravy Sektor. The problem with the shock value in this is that the story is over a year old and was reported in the spring of 2014. I wrote one of those stories. When Crimea held their referendum, the leader of the dissident Crimean Tartars recalled 200 ISIL fighters from Syria to join Kiev’s ATO. He did this at a Kiev press conference with the leaders of Ukraine’s government standing beside him.http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/world/europe/islamic-battalions-stocked-with-chechens-aid-ukraine-in-war-with-rebels.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140314-crimea-tatars-referendum-russia-muslim-ethnic-history-culture/
This isn’t surprising in the least. The Tartar leader’s father was a Nazi SS officer just the same as Reverend Olexandr Torchinov’s father was. This should further drive home the fact that is making your head spin right now. It was never the Muslims, …stupid.
ISIL battalions are torturing and murdering Christian men, women, and children for their friends, the Poroshenko government in Kiev.
The Muslim Response
What should be big news and isn’t even though it has been written about by journalists including myself in Ukraine is that the real Muslims also came. I’ve spoken to handfuls of these volunteers at different times. They are from countries like Chechnya and Afghanistan. They are fighting here for the same reasons. After news of ISIL coming to Ukraine spread through Asia and the Middle east, the Muslim volunteers came.
They are in Donbass to fight “the Terrorists” that hijack their religion, kill their own people, commit atrocity, and now are spreading across the world. The second reason they came is the true religious reason for them. They came to protect innocent lives from these fascist marauders. Muslims are volunteering to protect Orthodox Christian lives. This isn’t just happening here in Donbas. Look at Syria and Iraq.
Who’s fighting the ISIL terrorists? The same Muslim’s the Tomi Lahren wants to bomb. Does the equation get any simpler than this?
Across the world and the centuries Christian and Muslim communities that aren’t forced to be cloistered have protected each other and built strong communities together.
Stopping Terrorists
If America is going to finally get serious about stopping terrorists, shouldn’t we investigate people that have a history of giving terrorists group hugs? Should we investigate Congressional members that include funding for terrorists in their spending bills?
John McCain -Never Met a Terrorist He Didn’t Like
John McCain’s history and heroism are under fire today for good reason. In 2011 he met with and gained support for Al Qaeda Libya. “ McCain called on all nations, especially the U.S. , to recognize the National Transitional Council in Benghazi. He said some of the Gadhafi regime’s frozen assets should be redirected to the rebels and the U.S. should facilitate the delivery of weapons to rebel fighters.”http://www.globalresearch.ca/senator-john-mccain-foreign-relations-adviser-to-al-qaeda-death-squads-in-syria/5348383
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2011/04/25/does-john-mccain-support-al-qaeda/
This group became the core group for what would become ISIL. John McCain’s support for terrorists never wavered until it became a hot potato in an election cycle. In Syria, McCain once again openly demanded the US arm the terrorists. As late as January 2015, John McCain was illegally visiting his ISIL friends in Syria.http://www.globalresearch.ca/senator-john-mccain-foreign-relations-adviser-to-al-qaeda-death-squads-in-syria/5348383
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-al-qaeda-ally-now-leading-isis-in-libya/5435574
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/syria-accuses-john-mccain-entering-illegally
In Ukraine McCain gives group hugs to Dnepr Battalion which has been cited for torture, murder, and rape of civilians.http://www.globalresearch.ca/senator-john-mccain-foreign-relations-adviser-to-al-qaeda-death-squads-in-syria/5348383
http://novorossia.today/tag/dnepr-battalion/
Can a US Senator or Citizen McCain consort with, arm, and otherwise group hug known terrorists that are on our own watch lists?
Back to you Tomi Lahren!
Now that we know the real facts . We know Muslims are not threatening, fascist ideologies are. Where does Tomi Lahren go from here?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/religion/man-behind-mosque/america-and-muslims-by-the-numbers/
If its the House and Senate that are responsible for a lot of the terrorist start ups by over stepping their authority, will she apologize to president Obama and take the Republican and Democratic parties to task?
Will Tomi Lahren demand that John McCain gets water-boarded at Guantanamo? If she does, should we listen? During Lahrens rant against President Obama she neglected one thing…the facts, any facts. John McCain is just the tip of the iceberg when the subject turns to both Houses of Congress financial and emotional support for terrorism around the world. They control the budgets. They tie funding into major spending bills. They dare the president to veto them.
Will Tomi Lahren go after the “rich, white, old politicians she addressed at CPAC? I won’t hold my breath waiting.
If you think the US should bomb ISIL, start in Ukraine. The Baptist, Evangelical, Lutheran, Greek Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox that make up the fascist/ nationalist government and punisher battalions hold the same beliefs as them. They invited them and support them. Just think of it, US Army trainers working with ISIL that are in Ukrainian uniform.
Better yet, if America really has had enough the PATRIOTIC THING TO DO IS to cut off weapons and funding, and start prosecuting the members of our government that are making millions of dollars supporting them.
Its not the Muslims stupid…
By GH Eliason
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
"The Saker" - @TomiLahren’s rant heard round’ the world was the first I’ve ever heard of her. I listened to it a couple of times and a few of her other shows to understand her perspective and motivation. The way she repeatedly ties radical terrorism to Islam and then backs off half a step before letting loose another salvo against Muslims and president Obama is almost artistic.
I live in Donbas and there are currently over 200 ISIL terrorists operating here. Should the US bomb them and everyone that supports them Tomi?
Its Not the Muslims Stupid
From the late 1950’s onward scholars started documenting the movement that became known as radical Islam today. The only problem is, it’s not Islam. It never was. It is western fascist political philosophy that’s been tailored to suite the Middle East. Going into the new millennium new groups used “Muslim, Islam, and Islamic” as a means to self identify within the vastly larger Muslim communities in an effort to draw fire from the West and radicalize populations while trying to establish themselves by putting the communities under fire.
The Terrorists are in fact only as Muslim as Adolf Hitler could be considered a Christian in any context. “As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.” –Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
If terrorists such as Al Qaeda or ISIL are not Muslim then what are they?
The Millennial Studies project at Boston University is engaged in the study of groups and ideology that pose existential threats and will eventually destroy the modern world. Hence, they named the dangerous time we live in post-modern. It is quite literally the study of an impending apocalypse. The project reports to the government on the real nature of these groups and ideologies to give the government a basis for dealing with them.
“I don’t want to dwell on Islamicist ideology; I don’t know that much about it. Still, we should note that recent Islamicist terrorists quote Evola with facility…One of the features of political Tradition has been the search for a school of the transcendent that could serve as the organizing principle of a new society.
Theoretically, any of the great religious traditions might serve. In practice, though, Traditionalists have usually chosen a radical version of Islam or some kind of neopaganism;… Tradition can be scary, however. Sometimes this knowledge of the inevitable collapse of the modern world inspires nothing more than the formation of groups of adepts who hope to manage the transition when civilization collapses. Sometimes, however, Tradition has sparked the creation of anarchist political groups that hope to accelerate the collapse.” After the Third Age Eschatological Elements of Postwar International Fascism , presented by Professor John Reilly at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Center for Millennial Studies, Boston University, November 2 to 4, 2002
Julius Evola was one of the founders of what became known as the “Tradition” and has adherents infecting all major religions with a fascist/ nationalist construct. According to the fascist Evola (esoteric fascism), immortality is attained by the conscious act that ignores the ramifications of death while plunging headlong into it without a thought. This has nothing to do with the type of religion an adherent is or its afterlife traditions.
This type of thought today isn’t isolated to political Islam, it infects Judaism and Christianity on a world wide scale. It’s not religion, its politics with a religious face. Fascist nationalism seems more pronounced in political Islam today because it is not governments attacking, its groups we identify as terrorist.
In an article titled “Terror, Islam and Democracy,” Ladan and Roya Boroumand state that“Most young Islamist cadres today are the direct intellectual and spiritual heirs of the Qutbist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.” And further, “When the authoritarian regime of President Gamel Abdel Nasser suppressed the Muslim Brothers in 1954 (it would eventually get around to hanging Qutb in 1966), many went into exile in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Morocco. From there, they spread their revolutionary Islamist ideas – including the organizational and ideological tools borrowed from European totalitarianism.”
The Independent’s John Gray argues in an article entitled “How Marx turned Muslim” that Qutbism is not rooted in the Islamic tradition, but rather, is very much a Western based ideology.
The work of these Phd’s was done to put context around what was happening before, during, and after September 11th and the twin towers attack. Our America has been at war ever since that day, but has it been at war with the those responsible? Iraq wasn’t involved and Afghanistan was going to give Osama bin Laden over to justice.
From a real Muslim perspective Shaykh Rabee’ ibn Hadi al-Madkhali, a renowned Salafi scholar concludes the following about Qutbism: “The Qutbists are the followers of Sayyid Qutb… everything you see of the tribulations, the shedding of blood and the problems in the Islamic world today arise from the methodology (of this man).”
It wasn’t the Muslims that Attacked Us on 9/11
Simon al Zawaheri was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Brotherhood with regard to their religious and mystical leanings are Sufi or more specifically, Qutbist; named for those who follow Sayyid Qutb. This philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood is essentially NeoPlatonic and does not distinguish between matters of belief, so long as people adhere to their movement. This is why the outwardly Shia al Zawaheri and the outwardly Sunni bin Laden could be comrades and brothers.
If you know anything about Islamic history, Shia and Sunni belief are not reconcilable and each are apostate to the other. Because neither al Zawaheri or bin Laden promoted Islam it just didn’t matter that they should be mortal enemies. Both were political operators and not religionists. As long as you agree with the political philosophy or simply get out of the way they don’t have a “religious problem” with you.
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The Twin Towers weren’t destroyed by Muslims but by believers in this same fascist political philosophy that is now spread throughout the Mideast thanks to the so called Arab spring or spring of nations. Each country was initially taken over by this same Muslim Brotherhood.http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/05/analysis-al-nusrah-front-committed-to-ayman-al-zawahiris-orders.php
This isn’t isolated cases of small or even just one large terrorist group. Fascist/ nationalist ideology is the across the board reality that defines them. This case study which was done in 2009 just ahead of the Arab Spring explored the possibilities of working and cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood in spite of their overt harsh fascist/ nationalist agenda. It is a great study because it details how many secular and humanitarian angles terrorists indoctrinate a region or society with.
http://www.asharqalarabi.org.uk/ruiah/i-m-e.pdf
From the other side of the coin ½ of the Pam Geller- Brigitte Gabriel dynamic duo spoke at a Heritage Foundation panel discussion in June 2014 . The following is excerpted from that.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/weaponizing-wikipedia-invasion-scale-info-war.html
“ I know that we portray Islam and all Muslims as bad , but there are 1.8 billion [followers] of Islam,” the law student, who identified herself as Saba Ahmed, began. “We have 8 million plus Muslim Americans in this country, and I don’t see them represented here. But my question is: how can we fight an ideological war with weapons? How can we ever end this war? The jihadist ideology that you talk about, it’s an ideology. How can you ever win this thing if you don’t address it ideologically?”
http://toinformistoinfluence.com/2014/09/22/political-correctness-be-damned/
Terrorism expert Brigitte Gabriel, the CEO of ACT! for America responded- The peaceful majority were irrelevant. I’m glad you’re here, but where are the others speaking out? As an American citizen, you sat in this room and instead of standing up and [asking] something about our four Americans that died [in Benghazi] and what our government is doing to correct the problem, you stood there to make a point about peaceful, moderate Muslims.
Ahmed did not seem defensive or angry over Gabriel’s response, kindly responding that “as a peaceful American Muslim,” she would like to think that she is not “irrelevant.”
What we have is even though it is acknowledged that Fascist/ nationalist ideology(which has been identified) is the problem, it is an called issue with Islam. Muslims can’t address this because the thought is as foreign to their normal religion as it is to religious Christianity or Judaism.
How do you explain the same type of Fascist/ nationalist ideology present in Kiev’s “Christian” Ukraine which carries the same type of atrocities at the same levels? Are they secretly Muslim? If not why is ISIL actively helping Ukraine kill and torture Donbas people?
This ideology is as foreign to Islam as it should be to Christianity and yet political operatives trying to claim either religion believe the same totalitarianist thought. To solve this we need to stop looking at the host religion and root out the nationalism that has attached itself before it gets normalized.
What you have in front of you, no matter how shocking to your system are the real facts. This short form look at them just shows you the extent to which the facts are ignored.
ISIL, IGIL, ISIS, WHAT-EVER
Recently the New York Times broke a story that said ISIL was now operating in Ukraine working under Dimiti Yarosh’s Pravy Sektor. The problem with the shock value in this is that the story is over a year old and was reported in the spring of 2014. I wrote one of those stories. When Crimea held their referendum, the leader of the dissident Crimean Tartars recalled 200 ISIL fighters from Syria to join Kiev’s ATO. He did this at a Kiev press conference with the leaders of Ukraine’s government standing beside him.http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/world/europe/islamic-battalions-stocked-with-chechens-aid-ukraine-in-war-with-rebels.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140314-crimea-tatars-referendum-russia-muslim-ethnic-history-culture/
This isn’t surprising in the least. The Tartar leader’s father was a Nazi SS officer just the same as Reverend Olexandr Torchinov’s father was. This should further drive home the fact that is making your head spin right now. It was never the Muslims, …stupid.
ISIL battalions are torturing and murdering Christian men, women, and children for their friends, the Poroshenko government in Kiev.
The Muslim Response
What should be big news and isn’t even though it has been written about by journalists including myself in Ukraine is that the real Muslims also came. I’ve spoken to handfuls of these volunteers at different times. They are from countries like Chechnya and Afghanistan. They are fighting here for the same reasons. After news of ISIL coming to Ukraine spread through Asia and the Middle east, the Muslim volunteers came.
They are in Donbass to fight “the Terrorists” that hijack their religion, kill their own people, commit atrocity, and now are spreading across the world. The second reason they came is the true religious reason for them. They came to protect innocent lives from these fascist marauders. Muslims are volunteering to protect Orthodox Christian lives. This isn’t just happening here in Donbas. Look at Syria and Iraq.
Who’s fighting the ISIL terrorists? The same Muslim’s the Tomi Lahren wants to bomb. Does the equation get any simpler than this?
Across the world and the centuries Christian and Muslim communities that aren’t forced to be cloistered have protected each other and built strong communities together.
Stopping Terrorists
If America is going to finally get serious about stopping terrorists, shouldn’t we investigate people that have a history of giving terrorists group hugs? Should we investigate Congressional members that include funding for terrorists in their spending bills?
John McCain -Never Met a Terrorist He Didn’t Like
John McCain’s history and heroism are under fire today for good reason. In 2011 he met with and gained support for Al Qaeda Libya. “ McCain called on all nations, especially the U.S. , to recognize the National Transitional Council in Benghazi. He said some of the Gadhafi regime’s frozen assets should be redirected to the rebels and the U.S. should facilitate the delivery of weapons to rebel fighters.”http://www.globalresearch.ca/senator-john-mccain-foreign-relations-adviser-to-al-qaeda-death-squads-in-syria/5348383
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2011/04/25/does-john-mccain-support-al-qaeda/
This group became the core group for what would become ISIL. John McCain’s support for terrorists never wavered until it became a hot potato in an election cycle. In Syria, McCain once again openly demanded the US arm the terrorists. As late as January 2015, John McCain was illegally visiting his ISIL friends in Syria.http://www.globalresearch.ca/senator-john-mccain-foreign-relations-adviser-to-al-qaeda-death-squads-in-syria/5348383
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-al-qaeda-ally-now-leading-isis-in-libya/5435574
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/syria-accuses-john-mccain-entering-illegally
In Ukraine McCain gives group hugs to Dnepr Battalion which has been cited for torture, murder, and rape of civilians.http://www.globalresearch.ca/senator-john-mccain-foreign-relations-adviser-to-al-qaeda-death-squads-in-syria/5348383
http://novorossia.today/tag/dnepr-battalion/
Can a US Senator or Citizen McCain consort with, arm, and otherwise group hug known terrorists that are on our own watch lists?
Back to you Tomi Lahren!
Now that we know the real facts . We know Muslims are not threatening, fascist ideologies are. Where does Tomi Lahren go from here?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/religion/man-behind-mosque/america-and-muslims-by-the-numbers/
If its the House and Senate that are responsible for a lot of the terrorist start ups by over stepping their authority, will she apologize to president Obama and take the Republican and Democratic parties to task?
Will Tomi Lahren demand that John McCain gets water-boarded at Guantanamo? If she does, should we listen? During Lahrens rant against President Obama she neglected one thing…the facts, any facts. John McCain is just the tip of the iceberg when the subject turns to both Houses of Congress financial and emotional support for terrorism around the world. They control the budgets. They tie funding into major spending bills. They dare the president to veto them.
Will Tomi Lahren go after the “rich, white, old politicians she addressed at CPAC? I won’t hold my breath waiting.
If you think the US should bomb ISIL, start in Ukraine. The Baptist, Evangelical, Lutheran, Greek Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox that make up the fascist/ nationalist government and punisher battalions hold the same beliefs as them. They invited them and support them. Just think of it, US Army trainers working with ISIL that are in Ukrainian uniform.
Better yet, if America really has had enough the PATRIOTIC THING TO DO IS to cut off weapons and funding, and start prosecuting the members of our government that are making millions of dollars supporting them.
Its not the Muslims stupid…
By GH Eliason
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLIONSTAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
Obama’s Africa Hypocrisy
Obama’s Africa Hypocrisy
The president’s visit to East Africa has been the occasion for the same kind of hypocritical finger pointing Barack Obama usually reserves for his frequent hectoring of Black America, this time using “gay rights” as the standard. It’s a standard which he would never use to lecture America’s other vassals like the bloodstained beheading backward Saudi regime.
On January 20, 2017 Barack Obama will leave the presidency and those black people capable of critical thought will have many reasons to breathe sighs of relief. They will no longer have to submit to condescending lectures directed exclusively at them. From the moment he ran for president Obama has harangued black people on a wide variety of issues. It doesn’t matter if his audience is made up of church congregants, graduating students, or Kenyan dignitaries. Every black person unlucky enough to be in his vicinity risks being treated like a dead beat dad, career criminal or cousin Pookie, Obama’s own imaginary Willie Horton.
During his trip to east Africa the president chastened Kenyans about gay rights, domestic violence, genital cutting, forced marriage and equal rights for women. He went on and on with no mention of how well his country lives us to any accepted standards of human rights.
American presidents have no business chastising others. The country with the world’s largest prison state, military and history of aggressions is on shaky ground when giving anyone else advice. In the neighboring country of Somalia the United States regularly sends drones intended to kill al-Shabaab fighters but they deliver collateral damage to other people too. The blowback has killed many Kenyans, who are targeted by al-Shabaab because of their country’s role as an American puppet.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/why-al-shabaab-kills
Because hypocritical Americans have made gay rights the new measurement of societal well being all over the world, the president took the opportunity to castigate Kenyans about that too. Of course homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, America’s partner in crime. Yet there is no record of public shaming for any Saudi prince or king on that or any other issue. Their sensibilities are deemed too delicate for tongue lashing. It must be pointed out that Saudis take lashing quite literally.
Those countries that are considered important are never called to account about American concerns du jour. They can even be praised no matter how awful their behavior. The president regularly genuflects to Israel, a country which violates every norm of international law, including the Geneva Conventions prohibitions against collective punishment. In Gaza civilians of every age and gender are massacred and Israel maintains the right to continue the bloodshed, and always with American financial and military support.
Obama even compared the establishment of Israel’s apartheid state to black Americans’ fight for liberation. That statement was a lie, a grotesque distortion of history. The slander is akin to a blood libel but Africans cannot expect the recitation of bizarre statements on their behalf when Obama comes to town.http://blackagendareport.com/obama-defends-Israel-via-civil-rights
The recipients of American hypocritical condemnation are many. While Obama was brow beating Africans, Syrian president Bashir al-Assad was telling the world about his nation’s suffering at the hands of the United States. More than 200,000 of his citizens are dead, and up to 9 million are refugees because the United States claims the right to decide who should control that country.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/26/421935/Syria-PreAssad-ISIS-UN
“They [the Western countries] call it terrorism when it hits them, and [they call it] revolution, freedom, democracy and human rights when it hits us.” For four years the United States and allies like Saudi Arabia have waged a terror campaign against Syria. The Islamic State, ISIS, is also part of the terror mix, but it wouldn’t even exist without the United States. Now ISIS is used as a subterfuge in the effort to finish off Assad and what is left of his country.
In Obama’s finger wagging about the treatment of Kenyan women he made a point that he would do well to remember about himself and the United States. “Every country has traditions that are unique. Just because something is a part of your past doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean that it defines your future.”
If those words were applied to his country all the jails would be emptied, the banks would be nationalized, and the United States military would start closing up foreign military bases and heading for home. There would be no need for Africom because imperialism would be off the table. Saudi princes would have to look elsewhere to destabilize other nations. Israel would have to free Palestine and Iran could enrich all the uranium it wanted. There would be no income inequality based on race and brutal police would be prosecuted.
Yes Mr. President, the past shouldn’t define the future. You would do well to take those words seriously.
By Margaret Kimberley
Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as athttp://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
The president’s visit to East Africa has been the occasion for the same kind of hypocritical finger pointing Barack Obama usually reserves for his frequent hectoring of Black America, this time using “gay rights” as the standard. It’s a standard which he would never use to lecture America’s other vassals like the bloodstained beheading backward Saudi regime.
On January 20, 2017 Barack Obama will leave the presidency and those black people capable of critical thought will have many reasons to breathe sighs of relief. They will no longer have to submit to condescending lectures directed exclusively at them. From the moment he ran for president Obama has harangued black people on a wide variety of issues. It doesn’t matter if his audience is made up of church congregants, graduating students, or Kenyan dignitaries. Every black person unlucky enough to be in his vicinity risks being treated like a dead beat dad, career criminal or cousin Pookie, Obama’s own imaginary Willie Horton.
During his trip to east Africa the president chastened Kenyans about gay rights, domestic violence, genital cutting, forced marriage and equal rights for women. He went on and on with no mention of how well his country lives us to any accepted standards of human rights.
American presidents have no business chastising others. The country with the world’s largest prison state, military and history of aggressions is on shaky ground when giving anyone else advice. In the neighboring country of Somalia the United States regularly sends drones intended to kill al-Shabaab fighters but they deliver collateral damage to other people too. The blowback has killed many Kenyans, who are targeted by al-Shabaab because of their country’s role as an American puppet.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/why-al-shabaab-kills
Because hypocritical Americans have made gay rights the new measurement of societal well being all over the world, the president took the opportunity to castigate Kenyans about that too. Of course homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, America’s partner in crime. Yet there is no record of public shaming for any Saudi prince or king on that or any other issue. Their sensibilities are deemed too delicate for tongue lashing. It must be pointed out that Saudis take lashing quite literally.
Those countries that are considered important are never called to account about American concerns du jour. They can even be praised no matter how awful their behavior. The president regularly genuflects to Israel, a country which violates every norm of international law, including the Geneva Conventions prohibitions against collective punishment. In Gaza civilians of every age and gender are massacred and Israel maintains the right to continue the bloodshed, and always with American financial and military support.
Obama even compared the establishment of Israel’s apartheid state to black Americans’ fight for liberation. That statement was a lie, a grotesque distortion of history. The slander is akin to a blood libel but Africans cannot expect the recitation of bizarre statements on their behalf when Obama comes to town.http://blackagendareport.com/obama-defends-Israel-via-civil-rights
The recipients of American hypocritical condemnation are many. While Obama was brow beating Africans, Syrian president Bashir al-Assad was telling the world about his nation’s suffering at the hands of the United States. More than 200,000 of his citizens are dead, and up to 9 million are refugees because the United States claims the right to decide who should control that country.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/26/421935/Syria-PreAssad-ISIS-UN
“They [the Western countries] call it terrorism when it hits them, and [they call it] revolution, freedom, democracy and human rights when it hits us.” For four years the United States and allies like Saudi Arabia have waged a terror campaign against Syria. The Islamic State, ISIS, is also part of the terror mix, but it wouldn’t even exist without the United States. Now ISIS is used as a subterfuge in the effort to finish off Assad and what is left of his country.
In Obama’s finger wagging about the treatment of Kenyan women he made a point that he would do well to remember about himself and the United States. “Every country has traditions that are unique. Just because something is a part of your past doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean that it defines your future.”
If those words were applied to his country all the jails would be emptied, the banks would be nationalized, and the United States military would start closing up foreign military bases and heading for home. There would be no need for Africom because imperialism would be off the table. Saudi princes would have to look elsewhere to destabilize other nations. Israel would have to free Palestine and Iran could enrich all the uranium it wanted. There would be no income inequality based on race and brutal police would be prosecuted.
Yes Mr. President, the past shouldn’t define the future. You would do well to take those words seriously.
By Margaret Kimberley
Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as athttp://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLIONSTAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
Viet Nam a Half Century Later
Viet Nam a Half Century Later
Jimmy Carter called a war waged in Vietnam by the United States — a war that killed 60,000 Americans and 4,000,000 Vietnamese, without burning down a single U.S. town or forest — “mutual” damage. Ronald Reagan called it a “noble” and “just cause.” Barack Obama promotes the myth of the widespread mistreatment of returning U.S. veterans, denounces the Vietnamese as “brutal,” and has launched a 13-year, $65 million propaganda program to glorify what the Vietnamese call the American War:
“As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor. We pay tribute to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to serve bravely, a world away . . . They pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans.”
Which ideals might those have been? Remember, this was the bad war in contrast to which World War II acquired the ridiculous label “good war.” But the Pentagon is intent on undoing any accurate memory of Vietnam. Members of the wonderful organization, Veterans For Peace, meanwhile have launched their own educational campaign to counter the Pentagon’s at VietnamFullDisclosure.org, and the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee has done the same at LessonsOfVietnam.com. Already, the Pentagon has been persuaded to correct some of its inaccurate statements. Evidence of the extent of the killing in Vietnam continues to emerge, and it has suddenly become universally acceptable in academia and the corporate media to acknowledge that presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon secretly sabotaged peace talks in 1968 that appeared likely to end the war until he intervened. As a result, the war raged on and Nixon won election promising to end the war, which he didn’t do. There would seem to be at work here something like a 50-year limit on caring about treason or mass-murder. Imagine what it might become acceptable to say about current wars 50 years hence!http://davidswanson.org/node/4479
And yet, many lies about Vietnam are still told, and many truths are too little known. After Nixon sabotaged peace negotiations, U.S. and Vietnamese students negotiated their own People’s Peace Treaty, and used it to pressure Nixon to finally make his own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Peace_Treaty
“Suppose Viet Nam had not enjoyed an international solidarity movement, particularly in the United States,” writes Madame Nguyen Thi Binh. “If so, we could not have shaken Washington’s aggressive will.”
The People’s Peace Treaty began like this:
“Be it known that the American and Vietnamese peoples are not enemies. The war is carried out in the names of the people of the United States and South Vietnam but without our consent. It destroys the land and people of Vietnam. It drains America of its resources, its youth and its honor.
“We hereby agree to end the war on the following terms, so that both peoples can live under the joy of independence and can devote themselves to building a society based on human equality and respect for the earth. In rejecting the war we also reject all forms of racism and discrimination against people based on color, class, sex, national origin, and ethnic grouping which form the basis of the war policies, past and present, of the United States government.
“1. The Americans agree to the immediate and total withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Vietnam.
“2. The Vietnamese pledge that, as soon as the U.S. government publicly sets a date for total withdrawal, they will enter discussions to secure the release of all American prisoners, including pilots captured while bombing North Vietnam.”
Nine leaders of the U.S. antiwar movement of the 1960s have put their current thoughts down in a forthcoming book called The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement. The movement of the 1960s and early 1970s was widespread and dynamic beyond what we know today. It was part of a wider culture of resistance. It benefitted from the novelty of televised war and televised protest. It benefitted from hugely flawed but better-than-today economic security, media coverage, and election systems, the impact of the draft, and — of course — the creativity and courage and hard work of peace activists.http://justworldbooks.com/
Those contributing to this book, and who recently returned to Vietnam together, are Rennie Davis, Judy Gumbo, Alex Hing, Doug Hostetter, Jay Craven, Becca Wilson, John McAuliff, Myra MacPherson, and Nancy Kurshan. Their insights into the war, the Vietnamese culture, and U.S. culture, and the peace movement are priceless.
This was a war that Vietnamese and Americans killed themselves to protest. This was a war in which Vietnamese learned to raise fish in bomb craters. This was a war in which U.S. peace activists illegally traveled to Vietnam to learn about the war and work for peace. This is a war in which people still die from weapons that explode these many years later or from poisons that take this long to kill. Third-generation victims with birth defects live in the most contaminated areas on earth.
Nixon recorded himself fretting about the People’s Peace Treaty with his staff. Two years later, he eventually agreed to similar terms. In the meantime, tens of thousands of people died.
And yet the Vietnamese distinguish clearly, as they always did, U.S. peace advocates from the warmongering U.S. government. They love and honor Norman Morrison who burned himself to death at the Pentagon. They carry on without bitterness, hatred, or violence. The rage still roiling the United States from the U.S. Civil War is not apparent in Vietnamese culture. Americans could learn from Vietnamese attitudes. We could also learn the lesson of the war — and not treat it as a disease called “the Vietnam syndrome” — the lesson that war is immoral and even on its own terms counter-productive. Recognizing that would be the beginning of health.<--break->
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLION
STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
David Swanson is an American activist, blogger and author. www.warisacrime.org
Jimmy Carter called a war waged in Vietnam by the United States — a war that killed 60,000 Americans and 4,000,000 Vietnamese, without burning down a single U.S. town or forest — “mutual” damage. Ronald Reagan called it a “noble” and “just cause.” Barack Obama promotes the myth of the widespread mistreatment of returning U.S. veterans, denounces the Vietnamese as “brutal,” and has launched a 13-year, $65 million propaganda program to glorify what the Vietnamese call the American War:
“As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor. We pay tribute to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to serve bravely, a world away . . . They pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans.”
Which ideals might those have been? Remember, this was the bad war in contrast to which World War II acquired the ridiculous label “good war.” But the Pentagon is intent on undoing any accurate memory of Vietnam. Members of the wonderful organization, Veterans For Peace, meanwhile have launched their own educational campaign to counter the Pentagon’s at VietnamFullDisclosure.org, and the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee has done the same at LessonsOfVietnam.com. Already, the Pentagon has been persuaded to correct some of its inaccurate statements. Evidence of the extent of the killing in Vietnam continues to emerge, and it has suddenly become universally acceptable in academia and the corporate media to acknowledge that presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon secretly sabotaged peace talks in 1968 that appeared likely to end the war until he intervened. As a result, the war raged on and Nixon won election promising to end the war, which he didn’t do. There would seem to be at work here something like a 50-year limit on caring about treason or mass-murder. Imagine what it might become acceptable to say about current wars 50 years hence!http://davidswanson.org/node/4479
And yet, many lies about Vietnam are still told, and many truths are too little known. After Nixon sabotaged peace negotiations, U.S. and Vietnamese students negotiated their own People’s Peace Treaty, and used it to pressure Nixon to finally make his own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Peace_Treaty
“Suppose Viet Nam had not enjoyed an international solidarity movement, particularly in the United States,” writes Madame Nguyen Thi Binh. “If so, we could not have shaken Washington’s aggressive will.”
The People’s Peace Treaty began like this:
“Be it known that the American and Vietnamese peoples are not enemies. The war is carried out in the names of the people of the United States and South Vietnam but without our consent. It destroys the land and people of Vietnam. It drains America of its resources, its youth and its honor.
“We hereby agree to end the war on the following terms, so that both peoples can live under the joy of independence and can devote themselves to building a society based on human equality and respect for the earth. In rejecting the war we also reject all forms of racism and discrimination against people based on color, class, sex, national origin, and ethnic grouping which form the basis of the war policies, past and present, of the United States government.
“1. The Americans agree to the immediate and total withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Vietnam.
“2. The Vietnamese pledge that, as soon as the U.S. government publicly sets a date for total withdrawal, they will enter discussions to secure the release of all American prisoners, including pilots captured while bombing North Vietnam.”
Nine leaders of the U.S. antiwar movement of the 1960s have put their current thoughts down in a forthcoming book called The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement. The movement of the 1960s and early 1970s was widespread and dynamic beyond what we know today. It was part of a wider culture of resistance. It benefitted from the novelty of televised war and televised protest. It benefitted from hugely flawed but better-than-today economic security, media coverage, and election systems, the impact of the draft, and — of course — the creativity and courage and hard work of peace activists.http://justworldbooks.com/
Those contributing to this book, and who recently returned to Vietnam together, are Rennie Davis, Judy Gumbo, Alex Hing, Doug Hostetter, Jay Craven, Becca Wilson, John McAuliff, Myra MacPherson, and Nancy Kurshan. Their insights into the war, the Vietnamese culture, and U.S. culture, and the peace movement are priceless.
This was a war that Vietnamese and Americans killed themselves to protest. This was a war in which Vietnamese learned to raise fish in bomb craters. This was a war in which U.S. peace activists illegally traveled to Vietnam to learn about the war and work for peace. This is a war in which people still die from weapons that explode these many years later or from poisons that take this long to kill. Third-generation victims with birth defects live in the most contaminated areas on earth.
Nixon recorded himself fretting about the People’s Peace Treaty with his staff. Two years later, he eventually agreed to similar terms. In the meantime, tens of thousands of people died.
And yet the Vietnamese distinguish clearly, as they always did, U.S. peace advocates from the warmongering U.S. government. They love and honor Norman Morrison who burned himself to death at the Pentagon. They carry on without bitterness, hatred, or violence. The rage still roiling the United States from the U.S. Civil War is not apparent in Vietnamese culture. Americans could learn from Vietnamese attitudes. We could also learn the lesson of the war — and not treat it as a disease called “the Vietnam syndrome” — the lesson that war is immoral and even on its own terms counter-productive. Recognizing that would be the beginning of health.<--break->
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLION
STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
David Swanson is an American activist, blogger and author. www.warisacrime.org
Social Worker Blows Whistle On Private Prison In Texas
Social Worker Blows Whistle On Private Prison In Texas
RESIST! FAMILIES, HUNGER STRIKE, IMMIGRATION, MASS INCARCERATION, SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, TORTURE
WASHINGTON - Olivia López thought she’d be working with migrant mothers and children in a group-home setting when hired as a social worker at a Texas family detention center.
But when she arrived at the concrete facility and the doors were unlocked to let her in, she was startled by the cacophony of cell doors clanging.
“I walked in and thought, ‘oh my Lord, this is really a prison,’” she said.
In an exclusive interview with McClatchy, López shared an inside perspective of troubling operations at the Karnes County Residential Center, which has been at the center of controversy over the Obama administration’s family detention policy. She described a facility where guards isolated mothers and children in medical units, nurses falsified medical reports, staff members were told to lie to federal officials and a psychologist acted as an informant for federal agents.
WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE IS TANTAMOUNT TO TORTURE.Oliva López, former social worker at Karnes County Residential Center
The facility is operated by the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, Boca Raton, Fla.,-based GEO Group, and overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
López’s story is a troubling counter narrative to the accounts given by federal officials and company representatives who describe the facility as a safe and comfortable place where mothers and children can stay during their asylum proceedings.
There is state-of-the-art medical equipment, yoga for the moms and soccer and video games for the children. But López said nothing changes the fact that the children were locked up and under the threat of being deported at any moment. She met a 3 year old who regressed to breastfeeding and a 5-year-old girl who was wearing diapers.
“It might look like they’re having fun playing soccer, but that’s certainly not the narrative of their lives,” she said. “They know where they’re at. They know they’re in a prison. They know they can’t leave.”
The Obama administration this month began to release hundreds of migrant mothers and children – some of whom had been locked up more than a year — under intense congressional and media scrutiny.
Approximately 1,700 parents and children continued to reside in three family detention centers in Karnes and Dilley, Texas and Berks County, Pa.
Geo officials did not address López’s specific charges, but said they “strongly refuted” the allegations. Spokesman Pablo Paez declined an interview request, but said in an email to McClatchy that the facility provides “high-quality care in a safe, clean and family-friendly environment.”
He noted the Karnes facility operates under the guidance of on-site ICE officials and cited a Homeland Security inspector general report that found no evidence of sexual abuse and harassment at the Karnes center.https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mga/OIG_mga-010715.pdf
“Since its activation, the Karnes County Residential Center has, under direction and guidance from ICE, created an open and transparent policy of allowing visits to the Center by the public, elected local and national officials, federal officials from ICE and other government agencies, as well as nongovernmental organizations,” he wrote.
While announcing the end of long-term detention, ICE officials emphasize that they will continue to place families at the facilities, which they describe as an “effective and humane alternative” and a way to keep families together as they go through immigration proceedings. Spokeswoman Nina Pruneda, while declining to answer specific questions, said in a statement that the facilities include medical care, play rooms, social workers, educational services and access to legal counsel.
“ICE takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care,” she said. “The agency is committed to ensuring that individuals housed in our family residential centers receive timely and appropriate medical health care.”
But López’s account corroborates allegations made by many past and current detainees who reported threatening treatment and being placed in isolation for speaking out and separated from their children.
SINCE ITS ACTIVATION, THE KARNES COUNTY RESIDENTIAL CENTER HAS, UNDER DIRECTION AND GUIDANCE FROM ICE, CREATED AN OPEN AND TRANSPARENT POLICY OF ALLOWING VISITS TO THE CENTER BY THE PUBLIC, ELECTED LOCAL AND NATIONAL OFFICIALS, FEDERAL OFFICIALS FROM ICE AND OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, AS WELL AS NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS.Pablo Paez, The Geo Group, which operates the detention center
When she was hired in October, López, 57, saw working at Karnes as a dream opportunity. She has been passionate about immigrant rights for decades.
She grew up with migrant workers near Modesto, Calif., where her father helped run an alfalfa and corn farm in the Central Valley. Her masters’ thesis looked at the living conditions of immigrants. Her dissertation for her Ph.D. focused on immigrant women and health.
She was not naive to the mothers’ immigration status. She knew many would be deported, but López felt she could make a positive difference by helping them with the transition either back home or into the United States.
It was not her expertise that company officials sought, she said. They hired her to help give the appearance of a well-supported medical unit, she said.
Several initiatives she launched were met with fierce opposition, she said, including establishing an open-door policy for detainees, sharing with them geographic information about where the facility was and improving documentation of the mothers’ care and concerns.
“Social work is different here,” she said she was told.
If a mother expressed a problem, the only thing she could write was that the detainee asked and was informed about how to access services.
The real goal, she soon learned, was a clean paper trail. The facility was often the subject of audits of various agencies and organizations. The company didn’t want any evidence that could draw more attention, she said.
“If a document is clean, there aren’t any follow-ups,” she said. “The audit stops at the document.”
But she did write down what she learned, albeit in a personal notebook. In a Dec. 22 entry in the yellow notebook, she wrote a directive from her boss regarding the government agency. “ICE: We don’t tell them anything.”
She said she once treated a mother whose 5-year-old daughter, a victim of sexual assault during the journey to the border, suffered from nightmares and refused to eat. López said the girl lost four pounds and started wearing a diaper. But when she reported the conditions to her boss, a psychologist, he discharged the girl with a note saying she was sleeping and eating better. When López later submitted a note that the girl had lost weight, another supervisor took the note and chart. She returned telling López that the girl had actually gained weight.
At a weekly staff meeting with ICE, the psychologist once told ICE agents that a group of women who had crossed together all had similar stories, which therefore must be fabricated, López said. The psychologist didn’t say the women’s names, but the agents said they could figure who the detainees were based on the dates they arrived.
“You just put a nail in their coffin,” López said she told him.
Advocates such as Mohammad Abdollahi, advocacy director with the Texas-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, said López’s account proves what the mothers have been saying all along about poor conditions and being held in solitary confinement.
Earlier this year, dozens of the women at the Karnes facilitylaunched a hunger strike to protest conditions. Several of the leaders of the demonstration reported being placed in isolation in the medical unit with their children.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/immigration/article24782686.html
A deported teen mom who cut her wrist at the Karnes facility told McClatchy about how she was taken from her young son, put into isolation and then hidden at a hotel before being deported to Honduras.http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/17/270224/teen-mom-who-attempted-suicide.html
“They just clearly do not have the capacity or the infrastructure to run such a facility,” Abdollahi said. “What this facility is, in reality, it’s an internment camp.”
During the strike, López remembers her supervisor announcing that the warden wanted the leaders placed in isolation. She said it was common practice.
They were often isolated with their children, but not always. If a mother was deemed a suicide risk, even under questionable circumstances, the children would be removed and placed in another room under the care of guards who, Lopez said, had no training or licenses as child care providers. The children could be separated from their mothers for up to four days with only brief opportunities to see each other on the last two.
Lopez sees the treatment as child abuse. She should have reported the company to Child Protective Services, she said. She didn’t report the allegations to ICE because, she said, they were involved in the mistreatment. On Tuesday, she will travel to Washington, D.C., to speak to House Democrats about her experience.
López said she quit in April because she could no longer work in a facility that asked her to withhold information from federal officials, punished residents who required medical treatment and required her to follow policies that she said were in violation of her license.
“What is happening there is tantamount to torture,” she said.
By Franco Ordoñez, www.mcclatchydc.com
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLION
STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article28696174.html#storylink=cpy
RESIST! FAMILIES, HUNGER STRIKE, IMMIGRATION, MASS INCARCERATION, SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, TORTURE
WASHINGTON - Olivia López thought she’d be working with migrant mothers and children in a group-home setting when hired as a social worker at a Texas family detention center.
But when she arrived at the concrete facility and the doors were unlocked to let her in, she was startled by the cacophony of cell doors clanging.
“I walked in and thought, ‘oh my Lord, this is really a prison,’” she said.
In an exclusive interview with McClatchy, López shared an inside perspective of troubling operations at the Karnes County Residential Center, which has been at the center of controversy over the Obama administration’s family detention policy. She described a facility where guards isolated mothers and children in medical units, nurses falsified medical reports, staff members were told to lie to federal officials and a psychologist acted as an informant for federal agents.
WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE IS TANTAMOUNT TO TORTURE.Oliva López, former social worker at Karnes County Residential Center
The facility is operated by the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, Boca Raton, Fla.,-based GEO Group, and overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
López’s story is a troubling counter narrative to the accounts given by federal officials and company representatives who describe the facility as a safe and comfortable place where mothers and children can stay during their asylum proceedings.
There is state-of-the-art medical equipment, yoga for the moms and soccer and video games for the children. But López said nothing changes the fact that the children were locked up and under the threat of being deported at any moment. She met a 3 year old who regressed to breastfeeding and a 5-year-old girl who was wearing diapers.
“It might look like they’re having fun playing soccer, but that’s certainly not the narrative of their lives,” she said. “They know where they’re at. They know they’re in a prison. They know they can’t leave.”
The Obama administration this month began to release hundreds of migrant mothers and children – some of whom had been locked up more than a year — under intense congressional and media scrutiny.
Approximately 1,700 parents and children continued to reside in three family detention centers in Karnes and Dilley, Texas and Berks County, Pa.
Geo officials did not address López’s specific charges, but said they “strongly refuted” the allegations. Spokesman Pablo Paez declined an interview request, but said in an email to McClatchy that the facility provides “high-quality care in a safe, clean and family-friendly environment.”
He noted the Karnes facility operates under the guidance of on-site ICE officials and cited a Homeland Security inspector general report that found no evidence of sexual abuse and harassment at the Karnes center.https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mga/OIG_mga-010715.pdf
“Since its activation, the Karnes County Residential Center has, under direction and guidance from ICE, created an open and transparent policy of allowing visits to the Center by the public, elected local and national officials, federal officials from ICE and other government agencies, as well as nongovernmental organizations,” he wrote.
While announcing the end of long-term detention, ICE officials emphasize that they will continue to place families at the facilities, which they describe as an “effective and humane alternative” and a way to keep families together as they go through immigration proceedings. Spokeswoman Nina Pruneda, while declining to answer specific questions, said in a statement that the facilities include medical care, play rooms, social workers, educational services and access to legal counsel.
“ICE takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care,” she said. “The agency is committed to ensuring that individuals housed in our family residential centers receive timely and appropriate medical health care.”
But López’s account corroborates allegations made by many past and current detainees who reported threatening treatment and being placed in isolation for speaking out and separated from their children.
SINCE ITS ACTIVATION, THE KARNES COUNTY RESIDENTIAL CENTER HAS, UNDER DIRECTION AND GUIDANCE FROM ICE, CREATED AN OPEN AND TRANSPARENT POLICY OF ALLOWING VISITS TO THE CENTER BY THE PUBLIC, ELECTED LOCAL AND NATIONAL OFFICIALS, FEDERAL OFFICIALS FROM ICE AND OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, AS WELL AS NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS.Pablo Paez, The Geo Group, which operates the detention center
When she was hired in October, López, 57, saw working at Karnes as a dream opportunity. She has been passionate about immigrant rights for decades.
She grew up with migrant workers near Modesto, Calif., where her father helped run an alfalfa and corn farm in the Central Valley. Her masters’ thesis looked at the living conditions of immigrants. Her dissertation for her Ph.D. focused on immigrant women and health.
She was not naive to the mothers’ immigration status. She knew many would be deported, but López felt she could make a positive difference by helping them with the transition either back home or into the United States.
It was not her expertise that company officials sought, she said. They hired her to help give the appearance of a well-supported medical unit, she said.
Several initiatives she launched were met with fierce opposition, she said, including establishing an open-door policy for detainees, sharing with them geographic information about where the facility was and improving documentation of the mothers’ care and concerns.
“Social work is different here,” she said she was told.
If a mother expressed a problem, the only thing she could write was that the detainee asked and was informed about how to access services.
The real goal, she soon learned, was a clean paper trail. The facility was often the subject of audits of various agencies and organizations. The company didn’t want any evidence that could draw more attention, she said.
“If a document is clean, there aren’t any follow-ups,” she said. “The audit stops at the document.”
But she did write down what she learned, albeit in a personal notebook. In a Dec. 22 entry in the yellow notebook, she wrote a directive from her boss regarding the government agency. “ICE: We don’t tell them anything.”
She said she once treated a mother whose 5-year-old daughter, a victim of sexual assault during the journey to the border, suffered from nightmares and refused to eat. López said the girl lost four pounds and started wearing a diaper. But when she reported the conditions to her boss, a psychologist, he discharged the girl with a note saying she was sleeping and eating better. When López later submitted a note that the girl had lost weight, another supervisor took the note and chart. She returned telling López that the girl had actually gained weight.
At a weekly staff meeting with ICE, the psychologist once told ICE agents that a group of women who had crossed together all had similar stories, which therefore must be fabricated, López said. The psychologist didn’t say the women’s names, but the agents said they could figure who the detainees were based on the dates they arrived.
“You just put a nail in their coffin,” López said she told him.
Advocates such as Mohammad Abdollahi, advocacy director with the Texas-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, said López’s account proves what the mothers have been saying all along about poor conditions and being held in solitary confinement.
Earlier this year, dozens of the women at the Karnes facilitylaunched a hunger strike to protest conditions. Several of the leaders of the demonstration reported being placed in isolation in the medical unit with their children.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/immigration/article24782686.html
A deported teen mom who cut her wrist at the Karnes facility told McClatchy about how she was taken from her young son, put into isolation and then hidden at a hotel before being deported to Honduras.http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/17/270224/teen-mom-who-attempted-suicide.html
“They just clearly do not have the capacity or the infrastructure to run such a facility,” Abdollahi said. “What this facility is, in reality, it’s an internment camp.”
During the strike, López remembers her supervisor announcing that the warden wanted the leaders placed in isolation. She said it was common practice.
They were often isolated with their children, but not always. If a mother was deemed a suicide risk, even under questionable circumstances, the children would be removed and placed in another room under the care of guards who, Lopez said, had no training or licenses as child care providers. The children could be separated from their mothers for up to four days with only brief opportunities to see each other on the last two.
Lopez sees the treatment as child abuse. She should have reported the company to Child Protective Services, she said. She didn’t report the allegations to ICE because, she said, they were involved in the mistreatment. On Tuesday, she will travel to Washington, D.C., to speak to House Democrats about her experience.
López said she quit in April because she could no longer work in a facility that asked her to withhold information from federal officials, punished residents who required medical treatment and required her to follow policies that she said were in violation of her license.
“What is happening there is tantamount to torture,” she said.
By Franco Ordoñez, www.mcclatchydc.com
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLION
STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article28696174.html#storylink=cpy
Where the Nanny State is taking the middle class
Equality, Efficiency, Dependency
Where the Nanny State is taking the middle class
Countries run more efficiently when there is less government intervention. Government certainly has its role in providing a strong military, adequate border defense, police and fire protection, and education.
Unfortunately government intervention in the free market has caused again and again more harm than good. And government has now become a Hydra that we fail to legally slay. Voting in a new government has been discouraging; it is now impossible to rid ourselves of the encroaching octopus with sharped-edged suckers.
Contrary to economic laissez faire, President Bush said in 2008, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” In other words, because his administration attempted unsuccessfully to reign in the Democrats with their entitlement plans to lend money for homes to people who could not afford them and then disabled regulations that would have checked bank loans and mortgages, he had to prop up the too-big-to-fail bankers whose bankruptcy would have sent painful shockwaves around the world and would have upset the crony capitalists. The taxpayers were forced to the rescue.
The non-stop tirade of the “rich do not pay their fair share” and “you did not build that” began the vilification of small and large businessmen, followed by the marginalization and destruction of the middle class, the very geese that lay the golden eggs. The government nanny must be in total control of every facet of our lives.
Productivity, the industrial revolution, manufacturing are better left to other parts of the world. The new global order dictates that we must now be a service society, government-catering to the “hope and change” new citizens coming from far-flung corners of the illiterate third-world kingdom.
You can’t make a “living wage” at your minimum-wage job? It’s the fault of the rich! You vote for a living, stay on welfare, have out-of-wedlock babies, drop anchor-babies, and keep bringing in the flotsam of the world to replace the millions of babies aborted since Roe v. Wade. Make sure you vote into office the same corrupt politicians that keep you perennially poor under the guise of protection; you are dumb enough after graduating from a Common Core school to believe that it’s the fault of the rich who keep you “down.”
Do you accept any personal responsibility for your boorish behavior, drug use, lack of motivation, poor education, sloth, and lack of job skills? Nanny government tells you it is not your fault; you are entitled to the wealth of the rich. And when the rich run out of money, because socialists always run out of other people’s money, they can fleece the middle class, people who worked hard for a living, got an education, and paid taxes.
Today’s rich pay taxes to support the government and the welfare state. The rich of long ago, after taxation, even though still wealthy, did not enjoy the comforts that you have in your alleged poverty of today. In the winter of 1695, when the climate change industry did not exist, the wine at the palace of Versailles froze in the fancy goblets at King Louis XIV’s table. Even in the nineteenth century America, the ink froze in the inkwells in winter time, that’s how cold and miserable life was.
The Pennsylvania legislature almost destroyed George Washington’s army quartered at Valley Forge. The government decided to try price controls on commodities that were needed by Washington’s army. No farmer with a large family to support was dumb enough to sell their produce at controlled prices when the British were paying in gold. The army almost starved to death in the winter of 1777-1778. The unwise government price controls brought the army to its knees.
Government does not believe in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand;” there is no such thing as people, by pursuing their own self-interest, are led by an invisible hand to promote the well-being of the community. The government must intervene because they know best.
If government does not dictate every last rule and regulation in great detail, how much and what we can eat, what we can drink, how much salt we can ingest, what doctors we can see, what homes we can live in, what cars we can drive, how much electricity we use, how much water we can have, what crops to plant, we are doomed to failure.
To avoid massive voter fraud, by the time the drive for a national “voter” I.D. becomes reality, we will all be chipped and the government will know where we are at all times, just like dogs and cats.
Government intervention to slay the war on poverty has perpetuated and deepened poverty after spending trillions of dollars. In spite of Affirmative Action programs and other wealth redistribution schemes aimed at destroying social injustice, people are still differently-abled by birth; some like to work more than others; some are risk takers and others are comfortable in their status-quo; some like to work the night shift while others no shift at all, they are happy with government handouts; some like to go to school and learn new things, while others enjoy partying and living it up; some don’t stay on any job long enough to get work experience; why try if welfare is literally forced upon the sloth and unmotivated; some have inherited wealth that must be confiscated for the common good; others who built an enterprise did not really built that, it just happened by magic, it came via the public roads; and others were just plain lucky and thus do not deserve the fruits of their labor.
Keynesian economists have been telling us for decades that “America has more income inequality than other wealthy nations” and this miscalculated inequality “has been on the rise in the last 25 years.” But none of these calculations include welfare, free medical care, WIC, and other similar programs. They are strictly looking at income disparities born by many factors connected to lacking personal responsibility, education, and the dissolution of the family.
You can tweak statistics to prove whatever you set out to prove so calculations of this “inequality” does not include the many financial dependency programs currently in place. According to the U.S. Census, there are over “100 million Americans who receive at least one welfare program run by the federal government and it does include Social Security and Medicare.”
Even Keynesian economists admit that policies that redistribute wealth or income reduce the rewards of high income earners, raising the rewards of low-income earners, thus reducing the incentive to earn high income. We trade economic efficiency for equality and create a nation of dependents who would rather stay home and draw benefits from those who still work.
It is a fact that 70 percent of all government spending involves programs that create government dependence. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 60 percent of all U.S. households get more transfer payments than they pay in taxes. “Terrence P. Jeffrey calculated that 86 million Americans work full-time in the private sector while 148 million Americans receive benefits from the government.” http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/18-stats-that-prove-that-government-dependence-has-reached-epidemic-levels
Education was for many generations a way out of poverty when the family was intact. But when the family unit was destroyed by a government that stepped in as the daddy for generations of fatherless children, college costs have escalated, and professional jobs were shipped overseas at an alarming rate, it was hard to sell education anymore. Government and Democrats have advocated spending more money on pre-school programs and on inner-city children but the results were dismal. And the uneducated adults could not be lifted out of poverty; they remained on inter-generational government dole.
We have certainly tried for generations to alleviate poverty through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed forms of discrimination in rates of pay and hiring standards and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Equal pay for equal work was a daunting if not impossible parameter because we are different in our ability, education, experience, etc. Affirmative action stepped in with hiring quotas for minorities and females.
The problem was that many who were given this preferential treatment over other hires were really less qualified or not qualified at all. They were expected to learn on the job. Critics argued that numerical quotas and compulsory hiring of unqualified workers was certainly a problem in many professions, including the field of education. Replacing qualified “white males” with “other, less qualified workers” was certainly counterproductive and inefficient. Proponents of quotas countered that it was necessary to redress past wrongs, especially slavery. “Putting more women and members of minority groups into high-paying jobs would certainly make the income distribution more equal,” affirmative action supporters argued.
Today the important economic balance of efficiency over equality is completely discounted by Democrats and their supporters who are arguing for a complete replacement of the free market system with socialism on the ideological belief that everything white men have accomplished has been tinged with racism, bigotry, and inequality and only adopting the Marxist ideology would redress that problem. Certainly these Democrats have not studied the recent case of Venezuela and its economic woes resulting from a full-blown socialist poverty state established by the late Hugo Chavez.
There is a lot to be said about government control from cradle to grave. A population fully dependent on an omnipotent government is easier to control in a high-rise city dwelling setting than spread out over miles on the land. And when government runs out of other people’s money, it will have to scale back and possibly withdraw the largesse to the generationally dependent.
The free market mechanism is efficient but it does not promote the total equality desired by Marxist supporters. Such equality must be achieved by force, by government fiat, redistributing to the world the “unjust and unearned income and wealth” of billions of enterprising people. When that is achieved, we will have reached Orwellian utopia.
Lucky for us, total government control works because they know what is best for us – nuclear armament of Iran, our sworn enemy, and a peaceful invasion with illegal immigrants brought from third world nations that will quietly complete the fundamental transformation of our expansionist evil empire into a malleable tin pot dictatorship.
We will be turned into an irrelevant impoverished nation as envisioned by the Washington political elites, a nation ruled by a one-party government that worships primitive cultures and obedient welfare-dependent subjects and favors global economic de-development.
The low information voters and welfare recipients will be satisfied with a minimum, grateful that the “man” sends them a check every month in exchange for nothing. The fact that governments do not produce anything of value seems to escape their understanding and, without the hard labor of many, their undeserved and unearned “entitlements” would not arrive promptly every month.
By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
Where the Nanny State is taking the middle class
Countries run more efficiently when there is less government intervention. Government certainly has its role in providing a strong military, adequate border defense, police and fire protection, and education.
Unfortunately government intervention in the free market has caused again and again more harm than good. And government has now become a Hydra that we fail to legally slay. Voting in a new government has been discouraging; it is now impossible to rid ourselves of the encroaching octopus with sharped-edged suckers.
Contrary to economic laissez faire, President Bush said in 2008, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” In other words, because his administration attempted unsuccessfully to reign in the Democrats with their entitlement plans to lend money for homes to people who could not afford them and then disabled regulations that would have checked bank loans and mortgages, he had to prop up the too-big-to-fail bankers whose bankruptcy would have sent painful shockwaves around the world and would have upset the crony capitalists. The taxpayers were forced to the rescue.
The non-stop tirade of the “rich do not pay their fair share” and “you did not build that” began the vilification of small and large businessmen, followed by the marginalization and destruction of the middle class, the very geese that lay the golden eggs. The government nanny must be in total control of every facet of our lives.
Productivity, the industrial revolution, manufacturing are better left to other parts of the world. The new global order dictates that we must now be a service society, government-catering to the “hope and change” new citizens coming from far-flung corners of the illiterate third-world kingdom.
You can’t make a “living wage” at your minimum-wage job? It’s the fault of the rich! You vote for a living, stay on welfare, have out-of-wedlock babies, drop anchor-babies, and keep bringing in the flotsam of the world to replace the millions of babies aborted since Roe v. Wade. Make sure you vote into office the same corrupt politicians that keep you perennially poor under the guise of protection; you are dumb enough after graduating from a Common Core school to believe that it’s the fault of the rich who keep you “down.”
Do you accept any personal responsibility for your boorish behavior, drug use, lack of motivation, poor education, sloth, and lack of job skills? Nanny government tells you it is not your fault; you are entitled to the wealth of the rich. And when the rich run out of money, because socialists always run out of other people’s money, they can fleece the middle class, people who worked hard for a living, got an education, and paid taxes.
Today’s rich pay taxes to support the government and the welfare state. The rich of long ago, after taxation, even though still wealthy, did not enjoy the comforts that you have in your alleged poverty of today. In the winter of 1695, when the climate change industry did not exist, the wine at the palace of Versailles froze in the fancy goblets at King Louis XIV’s table. Even in the nineteenth century America, the ink froze in the inkwells in winter time, that’s how cold and miserable life was.
The Pennsylvania legislature almost destroyed George Washington’s army quartered at Valley Forge. The government decided to try price controls on commodities that were needed by Washington’s army. No farmer with a large family to support was dumb enough to sell their produce at controlled prices when the British were paying in gold. The army almost starved to death in the winter of 1777-1778. The unwise government price controls brought the army to its knees.
Government does not believe in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand;” there is no such thing as people, by pursuing their own self-interest, are led by an invisible hand to promote the well-being of the community. The government must intervene because they know best.
If government does not dictate every last rule and regulation in great detail, how much and what we can eat, what we can drink, how much salt we can ingest, what doctors we can see, what homes we can live in, what cars we can drive, how much electricity we use, how much water we can have, what crops to plant, we are doomed to failure.
To avoid massive voter fraud, by the time the drive for a national “voter” I.D. becomes reality, we will all be chipped and the government will know where we are at all times, just like dogs and cats.
Government intervention to slay the war on poverty has perpetuated and deepened poverty after spending trillions of dollars. In spite of Affirmative Action programs and other wealth redistribution schemes aimed at destroying social injustice, people are still differently-abled by birth; some like to work more than others; some are risk takers and others are comfortable in their status-quo; some like to work the night shift while others no shift at all, they are happy with government handouts; some like to go to school and learn new things, while others enjoy partying and living it up; some don’t stay on any job long enough to get work experience; why try if welfare is literally forced upon the sloth and unmotivated; some have inherited wealth that must be confiscated for the common good; others who built an enterprise did not really built that, it just happened by magic, it came via the public roads; and others were just plain lucky and thus do not deserve the fruits of their labor.
Keynesian economists have been telling us for decades that “America has more income inequality than other wealthy nations” and this miscalculated inequality “has been on the rise in the last 25 years.” But none of these calculations include welfare, free medical care, WIC, and other similar programs. They are strictly looking at income disparities born by many factors connected to lacking personal responsibility, education, and the dissolution of the family.
You can tweak statistics to prove whatever you set out to prove so calculations of this “inequality” does not include the many financial dependency programs currently in place. According to the U.S. Census, there are over “100 million Americans who receive at least one welfare program run by the federal government and it does include Social Security and Medicare.”
Even Keynesian economists admit that policies that redistribute wealth or income reduce the rewards of high income earners, raising the rewards of low-income earners, thus reducing the incentive to earn high income. We trade economic efficiency for equality and create a nation of dependents who would rather stay home and draw benefits from those who still work.
It is a fact that 70 percent of all government spending involves programs that create government dependence. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 60 percent of all U.S. households get more transfer payments than they pay in taxes. “Terrence P. Jeffrey calculated that 86 million Americans work full-time in the private sector while 148 million Americans receive benefits from the government.” http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/18-stats-that-prove-that-government-dependence-has-reached-epidemic-levels
Education was for many generations a way out of poverty when the family was intact. But when the family unit was destroyed by a government that stepped in as the daddy for generations of fatherless children, college costs have escalated, and professional jobs were shipped overseas at an alarming rate, it was hard to sell education anymore. Government and Democrats have advocated spending more money on pre-school programs and on inner-city children but the results were dismal. And the uneducated adults could not be lifted out of poverty; they remained on inter-generational government dole.
We have certainly tried for generations to alleviate poverty through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed forms of discrimination in rates of pay and hiring standards and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Equal pay for equal work was a daunting if not impossible parameter because we are different in our ability, education, experience, etc. Affirmative action stepped in with hiring quotas for minorities and females.
The problem was that many who were given this preferential treatment over other hires were really less qualified or not qualified at all. They were expected to learn on the job. Critics argued that numerical quotas and compulsory hiring of unqualified workers was certainly a problem in many professions, including the field of education. Replacing qualified “white males” with “other, less qualified workers” was certainly counterproductive and inefficient. Proponents of quotas countered that it was necessary to redress past wrongs, especially slavery. “Putting more women and members of minority groups into high-paying jobs would certainly make the income distribution more equal,” affirmative action supporters argued.
Today the important economic balance of efficiency over equality is completely discounted by Democrats and their supporters who are arguing for a complete replacement of the free market system with socialism on the ideological belief that everything white men have accomplished has been tinged with racism, bigotry, and inequality and only adopting the Marxist ideology would redress that problem. Certainly these Democrats have not studied the recent case of Venezuela and its economic woes resulting from a full-blown socialist poverty state established by the late Hugo Chavez.
There is a lot to be said about government control from cradle to grave. A population fully dependent on an omnipotent government is easier to control in a high-rise city dwelling setting than spread out over miles on the land. And when government runs out of other people’s money, it will have to scale back and possibly withdraw the largesse to the generationally dependent.
The free market mechanism is efficient but it does not promote the total equality desired by Marxist supporters. Such equality must be achieved by force, by government fiat, redistributing to the world the “unjust and unearned income and wealth” of billions of enterprising people. When that is achieved, we will have reached Orwellian utopia.
Lucky for us, total government control works because they know what is best for us – nuclear armament of Iran, our sworn enemy, and a peaceful invasion with illegal immigrants brought from third world nations that will quietly complete the fundamental transformation of our expansionist evil empire into a malleable tin pot dictatorship.
We will be turned into an irrelevant impoverished nation as envisioned by the Washington political elites, a nation ruled by a one-party government that worships primitive cultures and obedient welfare-dependent subjects and favors global economic de-development.
The low information voters and welfare recipients will be satisfied with a minimum, grateful that the “man” sends them a check every month in exchange for nothing. The fact that governments do not produce anything of value seems to escape their understanding and, without the hard labor of many, their undeserved and unearned “entitlements” would not arrive promptly every month.
By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLIONSTAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
Ten Rules For Black Youth In Police Encounters
Ten Rules For Black Youth In Police Encounters
A protester wearing a shirt that reads "I Can't Breathe," a reference to the police killing of Eric Garner, is arrested in Cleveland on Saturday night. (Photo: AP)
EDUCATE! BLACK YOUTH, POLICE BRUTALITY
By Marian Wright Edelman, www.childrensdefense.org
Democracy cannot breathe, and will die, if those enjoined to protect and uphold the law snuff it out unjustly and without consequence. Justice cannot breathe when Black men and boys and women and girls are routinely profiled, abused, arrested, and killed with impunity by police officers. We must stop this. We must protect the lives of our young people—all of them. God did not make two classes of people or children and America continues to do so at its peril.
Like so many I have been deeply disturbed by the senseless loss of Black male lives at the hands of law enforcement officials. I was particularly affected by Tamir Rice’s senseless death—a 12-year-old sixth grader who loved drawing, basketball, playing the drums, and performing in his school’s drumline. Sometimes his teacher had to remind him not to tap a song on his desk with his fingers. When Tamir, a mere boy child, was shot and killed last November, who was there to protect him?
Not Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann—the man who shot him. Tamir was sitting outside a recreation center near his home holding a friend’s toy gun when Loehmann careened up in his squad car with his training officer. The surveillance video shows Loehmann took less than two seconds between getting out of the barely-stopped car and shooting Tamir. Worse, this child was left mortally wounded on the ground in agony for nearly four minutes while neither Loehmann nor his trainer Frank Garmback administered any first aid. An FBI agent who happened to be nearby responded to the police activity and was the first one to try to give Tamir help. When Tamir’s 14-year-old sister ran to see and comfort him she was tackled by a police officer, handcuffed, and put in the back of a squad car unable to comfort her stricken brother. When Tamir’s mother arrived at the same time as the ambulance the police wouldn’t let her get close to her son and she said they threatened to handcuff and arrest her too if she didn’t calm down. She was then denied entrance to the back of the ambulance to ride with or hold the hand of her son on the way to the hospital. I can only imagine the deep terror of both mother and child isolated from each other. Tamir died from his injuries the next day.
Who was there to protect Tamir? Not the Cleveland Police Department, who supposedly hired Officer Loehmann and put him out on their city’s streets before fully reviewing his previous record as a police officer. His personnel file from the Independence, Ohio Police Department shows he resigned in December 2012 just five months after he started training when he learned a disciplinary process of separation had already begun—appearing to have quit before he was fired. His previous supervisors said he displayed “a pattern of lack of maturity, indiscretion, and not following instructions,” a “dangerous loss of composure during live range training,” and an “inability to manage personal stress.” These red flags for the Independence Police Department should have been warning signs for Cleveland or any police department in assessing fitness for service. The Cleveland Police Department has a long history of bad policing that harms Black boys and men and those with mental illness. Just days after Tamir was killed the U.S. Department of Justice released harshly critical results of a civil rights investigation on overuse of force by the Cleveland police department and called for massive reforms.
The scene that unfolded in the minutes Tamir lay on the ground bleeding without comfort from anyone is perhaps the hardest part to understand. What kind of human beings and responsible law enforcement officials would act this way? Gunning down a 12-year-old, threatening his distraught sister and mother, and standing by watching a child just shot lying on the snowy ground dying?
Who was there to protect Tamir? In the end, no one. Now a child who might have become a musician or an artist or anything else he wanted to be is dead, and his mother has joined a long, long list of Black mothers crying out for justice. A few weeks after Tamir’s death she stood at a Washington, D.C. rally with Trayvon Martin’s mother and the families of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and other urnarmed Black boys and men killed by police and told the crowd: “I have one thing to say to the police force: Don’t shoot. Our children want to grow up.”
Our children want to grow up. Our children deserve to grow up. And it is the responsibility of every adult in every sector to see they grow up safely and respected and seen and are not subject to “othering”—as someone less than or apart from ourselves. Until we can achieve a profound change in law enforcement culture and their taking as much care in protecting Black boys’ lives as White boys’ lives, our children are going to remain at risk. That places a burden on Black parents and faith congregations and community leaders and educators and everyone who believes in justice to stand up and do everything possible to make sure our children get home safely and can reach adulthood.
Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival If Stopped by the Police
1.
Be polite and respectful when stopped by the police. Remember that your goal is to get home safely. Your goal is to get home safely.
2.
If you feel your rights have been violated, you and your parents have the right to file a formal complaint with the local police jurisdiction
3.
Do not, under any circumstances, get in an argument with the police.
4.
Always remember that anything you say or do can be used against you in court.
5.
Keep your hands in plain sight. Make sure the police can see your hands at all times.
6.
Avoid physical contact with police officers. Do not make any sudden movements and keep your hands out of your pockets.
7.
Do not, do not, do not, do not, do not, do not run—even if you are afraid.
8.
Even if you believe you are innocent, do not resist arrest.
9.
If you are arrested, do not make any statements about the incident until you are able to meet with a lawyer or public defender.
10.
Stay calm and remain in control. Watch your words. Watch your body language. Watch your emotions.
Remember, your goal is to get home safely.
I am so grateful that the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III is the Senior Pastor, is sharing the two-minute video message “Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival If Stopped by the Police” to help Black parents and every member of the community help stop the killing of Black children. We must talk to our children. We must show them this video. We must post these ten rules for survival everywhere:
These rules would not have saved Tamir Rice, who never got a chance to say a word. The officer never really saw Tamir. The dispatcher who had been told the gun he was holding was probably a toy must not have thought that information from an inner city address was important enough to transmit. I hope we will see justice served in Tamir’s case soon so that parents and children in Cleveland can see a sign of hope that Black boys’ lives truly matter. And I hope that Trinity’s rules will help save some children’s lives until we can build the kind of America and law enforcement culture that respects the sanctity of every child as if he or she were our own.
- See more at: http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/child-watch-columns/child-watch-documents/ten-rules-to-help-black-boys-survive.html?referrer=http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.childrensdefense.org%2Fnewsroom%2Fchild-watch-columns%2Fchild-watch-documents%2Ften-rules-to-help-black-boys-survive.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGe08I615_6MF5Aod246GGmCzdzKg#sthash.jPMwr6WO.dpuf
A protester wearing a shirt that reads "I Can't Breathe," a reference to the police killing of Eric Garner, is arrested in Cleveland on Saturday night. (Photo: AP)
EDUCATE! BLACK YOUTH, POLICE BRUTALITY
By Marian Wright Edelman, www.childrensdefense.org
Democracy cannot breathe, and will die, if those enjoined to protect and uphold the law snuff it out unjustly and without consequence. Justice cannot breathe when Black men and boys and women and girls are routinely profiled, abused, arrested, and killed with impunity by police officers. We must stop this. We must protect the lives of our young people—all of them. God did not make two classes of people or children and America continues to do so at its peril.
Like so many I have been deeply disturbed by the senseless loss of Black male lives at the hands of law enforcement officials. I was particularly affected by Tamir Rice’s senseless death—a 12-year-old sixth grader who loved drawing, basketball, playing the drums, and performing in his school’s drumline. Sometimes his teacher had to remind him not to tap a song on his desk with his fingers. When Tamir, a mere boy child, was shot and killed last November, who was there to protect him?
Not Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann—the man who shot him. Tamir was sitting outside a recreation center near his home holding a friend’s toy gun when Loehmann careened up in his squad car with his training officer. The surveillance video shows Loehmann took less than two seconds between getting out of the barely-stopped car and shooting Tamir. Worse, this child was left mortally wounded on the ground in agony for nearly four minutes while neither Loehmann nor his trainer Frank Garmback administered any first aid. An FBI agent who happened to be nearby responded to the police activity and was the first one to try to give Tamir help. When Tamir’s 14-year-old sister ran to see and comfort him she was tackled by a police officer, handcuffed, and put in the back of a squad car unable to comfort her stricken brother. When Tamir’s mother arrived at the same time as the ambulance the police wouldn’t let her get close to her son and she said they threatened to handcuff and arrest her too if she didn’t calm down. She was then denied entrance to the back of the ambulance to ride with or hold the hand of her son on the way to the hospital. I can only imagine the deep terror of both mother and child isolated from each other. Tamir died from his injuries the next day.
Who was there to protect Tamir? Not the Cleveland Police Department, who supposedly hired Officer Loehmann and put him out on their city’s streets before fully reviewing his previous record as a police officer. His personnel file from the Independence, Ohio Police Department shows he resigned in December 2012 just five months after he started training when he learned a disciplinary process of separation had already begun—appearing to have quit before he was fired. His previous supervisors said he displayed “a pattern of lack of maturity, indiscretion, and not following instructions,” a “dangerous loss of composure during live range training,” and an “inability to manage personal stress.” These red flags for the Independence Police Department should have been warning signs for Cleveland or any police department in assessing fitness for service. The Cleveland Police Department has a long history of bad policing that harms Black boys and men and those with mental illness. Just days after Tamir was killed the U.S. Department of Justice released harshly critical results of a civil rights investigation on overuse of force by the Cleveland police department and called for massive reforms.
The scene that unfolded in the minutes Tamir lay on the ground bleeding without comfort from anyone is perhaps the hardest part to understand. What kind of human beings and responsible law enforcement officials would act this way? Gunning down a 12-year-old, threatening his distraught sister and mother, and standing by watching a child just shot lying on the snowy ground dying?
Who was there to protect Tamir? In the end, no one. Now a child who might have become a musician or an artist or anything else he wanted to be is dead, and his mother has joined a long, long list of Black mothers crying out for justice. A few weeks after Tamir’s death she stood at a Washington, D.C. rally with Trayvon Martin’s mother and the families of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and other urnarmed Black boys and men killed by police and told the crowd: “I have one thing to say to the police force: Don’t shoot. Our children want to grow up.”
Our children want to grow up. Our children deserve to grow up. And it is the responsibility of every adult in every sector to see they grow up safely and respected and seen and are not subject to “othering”—as someone less than or apart from ourselves. Until we can achieve a profound change in law enforcement culture and their taking as much care in protecting Black boys’ lives as White boys’ lives, our children are going to remain at risk. That places a burden on Black parents and faith congregations and community leaders and educators and everyone who believes in justice to stand up and do everything possible to make sure our children get home safely and can reach adulthood.
Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival If Stopped by the Police
1.
Be polite and respectful when stopped by the police. Remember that your goal is to get home safely. Your goal is to get home safely.
2.
If you feel your rights have been violated, you and your parents have the right to file a formal complaint with the local police jurisdiction
3.
Do not, under any circumstances, get in an argument with the police.
4.
Always remember that anything you say or do can be used against you in court.
5.
Keep your hands in plain sight. Make sure the police can see your hands at all times.
6.
Avoid physical contact with police officers. Do not make any sudden movements and keep your hands out of your pockets.
7.
Do not, do not, do not, do not, do not, do not run—even if you are afraid.
8.
Even if you believe you are innocent, do not resist arrest.
9.
If you are arrested, do not make any statements about the incident until you are able to meet with a lawyer or public defender.
10.
Stay calm and remain in control. Watch your words. Watch your body language. Watch your emotions.
Remember, your goal is to get home safely.
I am so grateful that the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III is the Senior Pastor, is sharing the two-minute video message “Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival If Stopped by the Police” to help Black parents and every member of the community help stop the killing of Black children. We must talk to our children. We must show them this video. We must post these ten rules for survival everywhere:
These rules would not have saved Tamir Rice, who never got a chance to say a word. The officer never really saw Tamir. The dispatcher who had been told the gun he was holding was probably a toy must not have thought that information from an inner city address was important enough to transmit. I hope we will see justice served in Tamir’s case soon so that parents and children in Cleveland can see a sign of hope that Black boys’ lives truly matter. And I hope that Trinity’s rules will help save some children’s lives until we can build the kind of America and law enforcement culture that respects the sanctity of every child as if he or she were our own.
- See more at: http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/child-watch-columns/child-watch-documents/ten-rules-to-help-black-boys-survive.html?referrer=http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.childrensdefense.org%2Fnewsroom%2Fchild-watch-columns%2Fchild-watch-documents%2Ften-rules-to-help-black-boys-survive.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGe08I615_6MF5Aod246GGmCzdzKg#sthash.jPMwr6WO.dpuf
Experiencing Police Brutality Made Me An Activist
Experiencing Police Brutality Made Me An Activist
Photo: Monica Raye Simpson
Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, Black Women, Cleveland, police brutality, Social Change
By Monica Raye Simpson, www.huffingtonpost.com
This past weekend, I joined over 1500 other activists from across the country in Cleveland, Ohio for the Movement For Black Lives Convening. We were all together — black cis-gendered women and men, black queer women and men, trans women and trans men, black elders, black young people, black babies — from across all movements learning, strategizing, resisting, creating and healing together. For me, it was a truly spiritual experience. I was sad that I had to return to Atlanta early, especially when I realized that this powerful and historic weekend took an unfortunate turn when Cleveland law enforcement arrested a 14-year-old boy and used pepper spray on protestors who fought to protect him.
As I watched this ordeal unfold on social media, I wanted so desperately to be on the front lines with my sisters and brothers. I thought to myself, How could this weekend — one full of so much love and brilliance — end like this? Sadly, I already knew the answer to this question before the question finished formulating in my psyche. We live in a world where the system of white supremacy/racism is like a metastatic disease that we are all forced to live with. It shows up in every area of our lives.
I grew up in the rural South, where the racial divide was apparent in every facet of my lived experience. From our neighborhoods, to who was chosen to be in the honors classes, to our places of worship, black folk knew where they were allowed and where they weren’t welcome. So as one can imagine, the police in my town worked to ensure that the line of division stayed firmly in place.
No one I knew ever trusted the police. We never believed that they were there to protect and serve us. This became abundantly clear when I was 14 years old.
We lived beside the neighborhood car wash. This is where all the young men would come to talk, play their music and show off their cars. During the summer, I would babysit my sister and cousin while our mothers worked. On this day, like any other day, we were all on our front porch listening to the music floating over from the car wash and enjoying the sweetness of a North Carolina summer — until the police showed up.
We were used to the police harassing the men in our community. They assumed that they were all drug dealers, and even though this was true for some, the police never cared to understand why this was the only way that some of the families in our town survived.
With no public transportation, access to jobs with a decent wage was few and far between for many. But the police didn’t care. They were quick to over-criminalize and they prided themselves on keeping the streets clean.
On this particular summer day, they were determined to make a point by bringing out their K9 Unit to sniff for drugs. They focused heavily on my cousin, Lamont. He refused to have them search his car. Today, I know that he was exercising his rights, but his pushback infuriated the cops. Before we knew it, the officers had dropped the leash on the dog and my cousin was running our way to get away.
We were in a state of shock watching my cousin fight off this dog, who was trying to tear him apart. He made his way onto to the porch to try to run into our house, but the dog had us all cornered. I remember him pushing me, my sister and my cousin into the railing on the porch to protect us from the dog trying to bite us. Unfortunately, the dog’s teeth grazed my baby sister.
One of the cops ran up on the porch, and as we pleaded with him to get the dog, he sprayed all us — my cousin, a 14-year-old; an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old — with mace. We called my mother, we called 911 and we waited for the ambulance to come make sure my sister’s bite wasn’t infected.
At 14 years old, I was ready to protest. I was ready to sue the police department. I didn’t have all the answers, but I knew that them spraying adolescents had to be illegal in some kind of way. I remember hearing some rumblings about how they thought my sister was a grown woman — someone they had arrested before. I became even more enraged with how they saw my sister’s stature and immediately criminalized her.
I also remember thinking that maybe this was our way out of the hood. If we could win this case, they would have to pay us, right? My mother wouldn’t have to work so hard. My brother wouldn’t have to worry about being caught up with the wrong people. Maybe we could get a better house. The ordeal didn’t seem so bad then, but today it saddens me to think about the families of victims of police brutality that are offered “settlements” as if the money will settle their grief.
My “fantasy” never became a reality. My mother and my auntie were accused of being bad mothers who couldn’t raise descent men — which is why this whole ordeal happened. My cousin was still prosecuted. My sister’s wound was bandaged up. We stayed in the hood. But I became an activist.
Two decades after this incident, I can still recount it like it happened yesterday. I can still feel the sting of the mace. My throat still tightens. Two decades later, we are still battling police brutality. Two decades later, black mothers are still being shamed. Two decades later, black women and girls are under attack. Two decades later, black men are still filling our prisons. And two decades later, I am still advocating for the most marginalized communities.
What are we going to do to ensure that in the next two decades, young boys like my nephew, who just started school today, or the 14-year-old who was arrested in Cleveland, are able to live and lead in a world where this is no longer their reality? Fight.
We have to.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
In loving memory of my cousin, Lamont Taylor.
Photo: Monica Raye Simpson
Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, Black Women, Cleveland, police brutality, Social Change
By Monica Raye Simpson, www.huffingtonpost.com
This past weekend, I joined over 1500 other activists from across the country in Cleveland, Ohio for the Movement For Black Lives Convening. We were all together — black cis-gendered women and men, black queer women and men, trans women and trans men, black elders, black young people, black babies — from across all movements learning, strategizing, resisting, creating and healing together. For me, it was a truly spiritual experience. I was sad that I had to return to Atlanta early, especially when I realized that this powerful and historic weekend took an unfortunate turn when Cleveland law enforcement arrested a 14-year-old boy and used pepper spray on protestors who fought to protect him.
As I watched this ordeal unfold on social media, I wanted so desperately to be on the front lines with my sisters and brothers. I thought to myself, How could this weekend — one full of so much love and brilliance — end like this? Sadly, I already knew the answer to this question before the question finished formulating in my psyche. We live in a world where the system of white supremacy/racism is like a metastatic disease that we are all forced to live with. It shows up in every area of our lives.
I grew up in the rural South, where the racial divide was apparent in every facet of my lived experience. From our neighborhoods, to who was chosen to be in the honors classes, to our places of worship, black folk knew where they were allowed and where they weren’t welcome. So as one can imagine, the police in my town worked to ensure that the line of division stayed firmly in place.
No one I knew ever trusted the police. We never believed that they were there to protect and serve us. This became abundantly clear when I was 14 years old.
We lived beside the neighborhood car wash. This is where all the young men would come to talk, play their music and show off their cars. During the summer, I would babysit my sister and cousin while our mothers worked. On this day, like any other day, we were all on our front porch listening to the music floating over from the car wash and enjoying the sweetness of a North Carolina summer — until the police showed up.
We were used to the police harassing the men in our community. They assumed that they were all drug dealers, and even though this was true for some, the police never cared to understand why this was the only way that some of the families in our town survived.
With no public transportation, access to jobs with a decent wage was few and far between for many. But the police didn’t care. They were quick to over-criminalize and they prided themselves on keeping the streets clean.
On this particular summer day, they were determined to make a point by bringing out their K9 Unit to sniff for drugs. They focused heavily on my cousin, Lamont. He refused to have them search his car. Today, I know that he was exercising his rights, but his pushback infuriated the cops. Before we knew it, the officers had dropped the leash on the dog and my cousin was running our way to get away.
We were in a state of shock watching my cousin fight off this dog, who was trying to tear him apart. He made his way onto to the porch to try to run into our house, but the dog had us all cornered. I remember him pushing me, my sister and my cousin into the railing on the porch to protect us from the dog trying to bite us. Unfortunately, the dog’s teeth grazed my baby sister.
One of the cops ran up on the porch, and as we pleaded with him to get the dog, he sprayed all us — my cousin, a 14-year-old; an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old — with mace. We called my mother, we called 911 and we waited for the ambulance to come make sure my sister’s bite wasn’t infected.
At 14 years old, I was ready to protest. I was ready to sue the police department. I didn’t have all the answers, but I knew that them spraying adolescents had to be illegal in some kind of way. I remember hearing some rumblings about how they thought my sister was a grown woman — someone they had arrested before. I became even more enraged with how they saw my sister’s stature and immediately criminalized her.
I also remember thinking that maybe this was our way out of the hood. If we could win this case, they would have to pay us, right? My mother wouldn’t have to work so hard. My brother wouldn’t have to worry about being caught up with the wrong people. Maybe we could get a better house. The ordeal didn’t seem so bad then, but today it saddens me to think about the families of victims of police brutality that are offered “settlements” as if the money will settle their grief.
My “fantasy” never became a reality. My mother and my auntie were accused of being bad mothers who couldn’t raise descent men — which is why this whole ordeal happened. My cousin was still prosecuted. My sister’s wound was bandaged up. We stayed in the hood. But I became an activist.
Two decades after this incident, I can still recount it like it happened yesterday. I can still feel the sting of the mace. My throat still tightens. Two decades later, we are still battling police brutality. Two decades later, black mothers are still being shamed. Two decades later, black women and girls are under attack. Two decades later, black men are still filling our prisons. And two decades later, I am still advocating for the most marginalized communities.
What are we going to do to ensure that in the next two decades, young boys like my nephew, who just started school today, or the 14-year-old who was arrested in Cleveland, are able to live and lead in a world where this is no longer their reality? Fight.
We have to.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
In loving memory of my cousin, Lamont Taylor.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Police State on Wheels Drivers, Beware:
Police State on WheelsDrivers, Beware: The Costly, Deadly Dangers of Traffic Stops in the American Police State
“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-supreme-court-came-embrace-strip-searches-trivial-offenses/
Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly.
The odds weren’t in Walter L. Scott’s favor. Reportedly pulled over for a broken taillight, Scott—unarmed—ran away from the police officer, who pursued and shot him from behind, first with a Taser, then with a gun. Scott was struck five times, “three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-is-charged-with-murder-in-black-mans-death.html
Samuel Dubose, also unarmed, was pulled over for a missing front license plate. He was reportedly shot in the head after a brief struggle in which his car began rolling forward.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/prosecutors-rewiewiung-officers-fatal-shooting-unarmed-cincinnati-man-n396116
Levar Jones was stopped for a seatbelt offense, just as he was getting out of his car to enter a convenience store. Directed to show his license, Jones leaned into his car to get his wallet, only to be shot four times by the “fearful” officer. Jones was also unarmed.
http://www.people.com/article/south-carolina-police-officer-shoots-unarmed-suspect-dashcam
Bobby Canipe was pulled over for having an expired registration. When the 70-year-old reached into the back of his truck for his walking cane, the officer fired several shots at him, hitting him once in the abdomen.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579654/Police-dashcam-shows-South-Carolina-cop-shoot-70-year-old-Vietnam-veteran-man-reached-truck-cane-routine-traffic-stop.html
Dontrell Stevens was stopped “for not bicycling properly.” The officer pursuing him “thought the way Stephens rode his bike was suspicious. He thought the way Stephens got off his bike was suspicious.” Four seconds later, sheriff’s deputy Adams Lin shot Stephens four times as he pulled out a black object from his waistband. The object was his cell phone. Stephens was unarmed.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-florida-deputy-shoots-dontrell-stephens-20150424-story.html#page=1
If there is any lesson to be learned from these “routine” traffic stops, it is that drivers should beware.
At a time when police can do no wrong—at least in the eyes of the courts, police unions and politicians dependent on their votes—and a “fear” for officer safety is used to justify all manner of police misconduct, “we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.
According to the Justice Department, the most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop. On average, one in 10 Americans gets pulled over by police. Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers, or about 23 percent more likely than Hispanic drivers. As the Washington Post concludes, “‘Driving while black’ is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon.”
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=702
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/09/you-really-can-get-pulled-over-for-driving-while-black-federal-statistics-show/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/09/you-really-can-get-pulled-over-for-driving-while-black-federal-statistics-show/
As Sandra Bland learned the hard way, the reason for a traffic stop no longer matters. Bland, who was pulled over for allegedly failing to use her turn signal, was arrested after refusing to comply with the police officer’s order to extinguish her cigarette and exit her vehicle. The encounter escalated, with the officer threatening to “light” Bland up with his taser. Three days later, Bland was found dead in her jail cell.http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/23/us/sandra-bland-arrest-death/index.html
“You’re doing all of this for a failure to signal?” Bland asked as she got out of her car, after having been yelled at and threatened repeatedly. Had she only known, drivers have been pulled over for far less. Indeed, police officers have been given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/us/texas-sandra-bland-arrest/index.html
This approach to traffic stops (what I would call “blank check policing,” in which the police get to call all of the shots) has resulted in drivers being stopped for windows that are too heavily tinted, for driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to maintain speed, following too closely, improper lane changes, distracted driving, screeching a car’s tires, and leaving a parked car door open for too long.
Motorists can also be stopped by police for driving near a bar or on a road that has large amounts of drunk driving, driving a certain make of car (Mercedes, Grand Prix and Hummers are among the most ticketed vehicles), having anything dangling from the rearview mirror (air fresheners, handicap parking permits, troll transponders or rosaries), and displaying pro-police bumper stickers.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/10/13/cars-that-get-ticketed-most-police-speeding-lifestyle-vehicles-violations.html
Incredibly, a federal appeals court actually ruled unanimously in 2014 that acne scars and driving with a stiff upright posture are reasonable grounds for being pulled over. More recently, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that driving a vehicle that has a couple air fresheners, rosaries and pro-police bumper stickers at 2 MPH over the speed limit is suspicious, meriting a traffic stop.
http://truthinmedia.com/federal-appeals-court-driving-with-upright-posture-and-acne-is-sufficient-evidence-for-traffic-stop/
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/47/4750.asp
Unfortunately for drivers, not only have traffic stops become potentially deadly encounters, they have also turned into a profitable form of highway robbery for the police departments involved.
As The Washington Post reports, “traffic stops for minor infractions such as speeding or equipment violations are increasingly used as a pretext for officers to seize cash from drivers.” Relying on federal and state asset forfeiture laws, police set up “stings” on public roads that enable them to stop drivers for a variety of so-called “suspicious” behavior, search their vehicles and seize anything of value that could be suspected of being connected to criminal activity. Since 2001, police have seized $2.5 billion from people who were not charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/09/you-really-can-get-pulled-over-for-driving-while-black-federal-statistics-show/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/
“In case after case,” notes The Washington Post, “highway interdictors appeared to follow a similar script. Police set up what amounted to rolling checkpoints on busy highways and pulled over motorists for minor violations, such as following too closely or improper signaling. They quickly issued warnings or tickets. They studied drivers for signs of nervousness, including pulsing carotid arteries, clenched jaws and perspiration. They also looked for supposed ‘indicators’ of criminal activity, which can include such things as trash on the floor of a vehicle, abundant energy drinks or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/
If you’re starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed, intimidated and fearful for your life and your property, you should be. Never before have “we the people” been so seemingly defenseless in the face of police misconduct, lacking advocates in the courts and in the legislatures.
So how do you survive a police encounter with your life and wallet intact?
The courts have already given police the green light to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons. In an 8-1 ruling in Heien v. North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that police officers can pull someone over based on a “reasonable” but mistaken belief about the law.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/15/reasonable-mistake-of-law-can-generate-reasonable-suspicion-supreme-court-holds/
Of course, what’s reasonable to agents of the police state may be completely unreasonable to the populace. Nevertheless, the moment those lights start flashing and that siren goes off, we’re all in the same boat: we must pull over.
However, it’s what happens after you’ve been pulled over that’s critical. Survival is the key.
Technically, you have the right to remain silent (beyond the basic requirement to identify yourself and show your registration). You have the right to refuse to have your vehicle searched. You have the right to film your interaction with police. You have the right to ask to leave. You also have the right to resist an unlawful order such as a police officer directing you to extinguish your cigarette, put away your phone or stop recording them.http://www.newsnet5.com/news/state/heres-what-drivers-police-are-allowed-to-do-during-traffic-stops
However, as Bland learned the hard way, there is a price for asserting one’s rights. “Faced with an authority figure unwilling to de-escalate the situation, Bland refused to be bullied or intimidated,” writes Boston Globe contributor Renee Graham. “She understood her rights, but for African-Americans in encounters with police, the appalling price for asserting even the most basic rights can be their lives.”http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/here-are-your-rights-during-a-traffic-stop-in-the-united-states-10419511.html
So if you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, tasered, tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or killed, don’t say, do or even suggest anything that even hints of noncompliance when it comes to interactions with police.
One police officer advised that if you feel as if you’re being treated unfairly, comply anyhow and contest it in court later. Similarly, black parents, advising their kids on how to deal with police, tell them to just obey the officer’s orders. “The goal,” as one parent pointed out, “is to stay alive.”
It seems that “comply or die” has become the new maxim for the American police state.
Then again, not even compliance is a guarantee of safety anymore. “Police are specialists in violence,” warns Kristian Williams, who has written extensively on the phenomenon of police militarization and brutality. “They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.”
http://www.infoshop.org/pdfs/Our-Enemies-in-Blue.pdf
In other words, in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this mindset that any challenge to police authority is a threat that needs to be “neutralized” is a dangerous one that is part of a greater nationwide trend that sets the police beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, when police officers are allowed to operate under the assumption that their word is law and that there is no room for any form of disagreement or even question, that serves to chill the First Amendment’s assurances of free speech, free assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a casual “show your ID” request on a boardwalk, a stop-and-frisk search on a city street, or a traffic stop for speeding or just to check your insurance. If you feel like you can’t walk away from a police encounter of your own volition—and more often than not you can’t, especially when you’re being confronted by someone armed to the hilt with all manner of militarized weaponry and gear—then for all intents and purposes, you’re under arrest from the moment a cop stops you.
Sad, isn’t it, how quickly we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat us all like suspects and criminals?
Clearly, the language of freedom is no longer the common tongue spoken by the citizenry and their government. With the government having shifted into a language of force, “we the people” have been reduced to suspects in a surveillance state, criminals in a police state, and enemy combatants in a military empire.
By John W. Whitehead
The Rutheford Institute
Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
LAWFUL REBELLIONSTAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT
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