As you may have heard, police and Swat teams in Ferguson, Missouri have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters, and outlawed peaceful assembly.
Police are also using stun grenades and ear-damaging military sound cannons against peaceful protesters.
Reporters are among those shot at with rubber bullets and tear gas, assaulted and arrested. Glenn Greenwald notes:
Last night, two reporters, The Washington Post‘s Wesley Lowery and The Huffington Post‘s Ryan Reilly, were arrested and assaulted while working from a McDonald’s in Ferguson. The arrests were arbitrary and abusive, and received substantial attention — only because of their prominent platforms, not, as they both quickly pointed out upon being released, because there was anything unusual about this police behavior.
Reilly, on Facebook, recounted how he was arrested by “a Saint Louis County police officer in full riot gear, who refused to identify himself despite my repeated requests, purposefully banged my head against the window on the way out and sarcastically apologized.” He wrote: ”I’m fine. But if this is the way these officers treat a white reporter working on a laptop who moved a little too slowly for their liking, I can’t imagine how horribly they treat others.”
Reporters have been told to turn off their cameras. And a no-fly zone was established above Ferguson in order to keep news helicopters away.
A state senator was teargassed along with protesters.
Congressman Amash tweets:
Images & reports out of
#Ferguson are frightening. Is this a war zone or a US city? Gov’t escalates tensions w/military equipment & tactics.
And:
Someone identifying himself as an 82nd Airborne Army veteran, observing the Ferguson police scene, comment[ed] that “We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone” …
If you want to visually see how extreme the reaction of police is in Ferguson, compare what’s going on in Ferguson to what’s happening in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan (or scroll through this page of pictures.)
What’s really going on? And how did we get here?
We explained in 2011:
Journalists from across the spectrum have documented the militarization of police forces in the United States, including, CNN, Huffington Post, the Cato Institute, Forbes, the New York Times, Daily Kos, Esquire, The Atlantic, Salon and many others.
Many police departments laugh at and harass Americans who exercise their right to free speech. Here’s one example of police laughing at a civil rights lawyer after she was shot in the head with a rubber bullet:
Indeed – especially since police brutality against protesters has been so blatant in recent months, while no top bank executives have been prosecuted – many Americans believe that the police are protecting the bankers whose fraud brought down the economy instead of the American people ….
Some are comparing police brutality towards the Occupy protesters to that used by Israeli forces against Palestinian protesters. Indeed, numerous heads of U.S. police departments have traveled to Israel for “anti-terrorism training”, and received training from Israeli anti-terrorism experts visiting the U.S. See this, this, this, this, this.
Indeed, the Ferguson police chief received training in crowd control in Israel in 2011.
And Gaza residents are literally tweeting info on how to handle tear gas to help Ferguson citizens.
Even the mainstream media is picking up on the militarized police. USA Today headlines, “Pentagon fueled Ferguson confrontation“. And Newsweek runs with, “How America’s Police Became an Army.”
But they’re still blaming 9/11 as the reason for the militarization of the police. As we explained in 2011, that’s not accurate:
Most assume that the militarization of police started after 9/11. Certainly, Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans on September 11th that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.) On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up to today.
But the militarization of police actually started long before 9/11 … in the 1980s.
Radley Balko testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime in 2007:
Militarization [of police forces is] a troubling trend that’s been on the rise in America’s police departments over the last 25 years.
***
Since the late 1980s, Mr. Chairman, thanks to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, millions of pieces of surplus military equipment have been given to local police departments across the country.
We’re not talking just about computers and office equipment. Military-grade semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel vehicles, tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and all manner of other equipment designed for use on the battlefield is now being used on American streets, against American citizens.
Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century.
SWAT teams were originally designed to be used in violent, emergency situations like hostage takings, acts of terrorism, or bank robberies. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, that’s primarily how they were used, and they performed marvelously.
But beginning in the early 1980s, they’ve been increasingly used for routine warrant service in drug cases and other nonviolent crimes. And thanks to the Pentagon transfer programs, there are now a lot more of them.
(And see this.)
Huffington Post notes:
Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper published an essay arguing that the current epidemic of police brutality is a reflection of the militarization (his word, not mine) of our urban police forces, the result of years of the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror. Stamper was chief of police during the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, and is not a voice that can be easily dismissed.
And Jamie Douglas notes:
Ever since Ronald Reagan in 1981 helped draw up the Military Cooperation With Law Enforcement Act, quickly passed by a very cooperative congress, effectively circumventing the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by codifying military cooperation with law enforcement, the military has been encouraged to give any and all law enforcement agencies unfettered access to all military resources, training and hardware included. The military equipment was designed to be used by American fighting forces in combat with “the enemy,” but since a law was passed in 1994, the Pentagon has been able to donate all surplus war materiel to America’s police departments. The National Journal has compiled a number of statistics showing that in the first three years after the 1994 law came into effect, the “Department of Offense” stocked police departments with 3800 M-16 assault rifles, 2185 M-14’s, 73 grenade launchers, and 112 armored personnel carriers, as well as untold number of bayonets, tanks, helicopters, and even some airplanes.
Regardless who will be in power in the future, the militarization of the police will continue. After all, who wants to appear as being soft on crime? These days, a chief of police’s office is like a doctor’s office, but instead of getting swamped with drug salesmen, they have very congenial visits with the merchants of popular oppression, the salesmen of weapons, various chemical agents, Tasers, body armor, and all kinds of tracking software, surveillance gear, and anything else the department may need for crowd control and to infiltrate dissidents, which are no more than US citizens wanting to restore the republic to its rightful place.
The government treats copyright infringers as terrorists, and swat teams have been deployed against them. See this, this, this and this.
***
It’s not just intellectual property. The government is widely using anti-terror laws to help giant businesses … and to crush those who speak out against their abusive practices, labeling anyone who speaks out as a potential bad guy.
Remember:
- Journalists are considered terrorists in modern America.
- Peaceful protest is considered terrorism. As one example, the FBI treated the peaceful protesters at the Occupy protests as terrorists. More here and here
- Americans have lost virtually all of our Constitutional rights
- The U.S. government considers the entire world – including American soil – to be a battlefield
As Greenwald writes:
Ultimately, police militarization is part of a broader and truly dangerous trend: the importation of War on Terror tactics from foreign war zones onto American soil. American surveillance drones went from Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia into American cities, and it’s impossible to imagine that they won’t be followed by weaponized ones. The inhumane and oppressive conditions that prevailed at Guantanamo are matched, or exceeded, by the super-max hellholes and “Communications Management Units” now in the American prison system. And the “collect-it-all” mentality that drives NSA domestic surveillance was pioneered by Gen. Keith Alexander in Baghdad and by other generals in Afghanistan, aimed at enemy war populations.
***
As part of America’s posture of Endless War, Americans have been trained to believe that everything is justified on the “battlefield” (now defined to mean “the whole world”): imprisonment without charges, kidnapping, torture, even assassination of U.S. citizens without trials. It is not hard to predict the results of importing this battlefield mentality onto American soil, aimed at American citizens: “From Warfighter to Crimefighter.” The results have been clear for those who have looked – or those who have been subject to this – for years. The events in Ferguson are, finally, forcing all Americans to watch the outcome of this process.
No upvote for you Monty...not that I didn't try.
my votes don't show as registering unless i refresh the page. strange, I though it was just my computer acting up.
Thanks chubbar. When it comes to spinning cold blooded murder and intimidation, the PTB goes into overtime. If it's an article about the LIBOR scandal or Fast and Furious, they couldn't care less.
COG is in effect.
Are you enjoying the just for show gov't?
COG or ZOG, that is the question.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article185074.html
I've tried to prove it for years, but no one I've talked to - including Congressional staffers and high-level former intelligence officials - knows one way or the other ...
The SOURCE of the runaway fascist police state was the success of the international bankers taking back control over the American "money" supply. After the biggest gangsters, the banksters, took over control of the powers of government, by applying the methods of organized crime to the political processes, then it automatically followed at an exponential rate that the government became more and more of a runaway fascist police state, in order to back up the runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut, that the banksters' oligarchy had created.
It is impossible to imagine how this could ever get any better in the foreseeable future, and only barely possible to imagine how fast it will get worse. The basic FACTS are the best organized gangs of criminals have been able to take over almost total control of the powers of government, thereby transforming government into more and more blatantly becoming the biggest form of organized crime. THIS DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO DEMOCIDAL MARTIAL LAW WILL FAIL SPECTACULARLY. HOWEVER, THAT DOES MEAN THAT IT WILL NOT HAPPEN ANYWAY, SINCE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE ESTABLISHED SYSTEMS BASED ON ENFORCED FRAUDS TO DO ANTHING ELSE BUT CONTINUE TO TRY TO ENFORCE THEIR FRAUDS.
That it is NEVER possible for the violence backing up lies to ever make those lies become true will not stop the established systems from continuing to attempt to do that. Meanwhile the deeper paradoxes are that human realities are always organized lies operating robberies, while those who were the most successful at doing that were those who lied about actually doing that the most. Moreover, for generation after generation, the majority of Americans have been the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy, so that they were conditioned to not want to understand that the American democratic republic's rule of law was originally destroyed when the banksters were able to capture control over its monetary system, whereafter the results were cascades of consequences, so that America is now irreversibly being sucked into the social black hole of too much successfully enforced frauds, dominating everything for too long.
The worst aspect of this continues to be that the social polarization effects of controlling civilization with systems of enforced frauds are relatively trivial compared to the larger, longer term, environmental effects from having done that! We have barely begun to see anything yet! Behind the irreconcilable social polarization driven by the enforced frauds that dominate the political economy are the much worse consequences for the general ecologies. The banksters' fascist plutocracy and police state is NOT going to "win." RATHER, EVERYONE IS GOING TO LOSE!
For the police intelligence or thinking is not acceptable. http://politicalblindspot.com/police-officially-refuse-to-hire-applicant...
Stupidity MANDATED! Epic find.
Every recent article that lists some of the military hardware given by the United State_ military & Dept. of Fatherland Tyranny to their domestic storm troopers forgets to mention the 2 billion rounds of ammo and these:
http://www.infowars.com/obama-dhs-purchases-2700-light-armored-tanks-to-...
http://planet.infowars.com/preparedness/dhs-buy-new-mrap-armored-vehicle...
No wonder our framers warned against the dangers of a standing army.
For centuries, the primary duty of an army was to protect against foreign invasion. These days, the feds leave our borders wide open, allowing million of anonymous foreigners to invade the states, while groping our women and irradiating children traveling between states and spying on everyone else.
Bad cop costumes were removed. Hooray, Constitution on.
I'm a white guy. But for an African-American reaction to the shooting of the black teen in Ferguson which set off the confrontation, here are Brown University students:
Explanation: Witnesses say the black teen had his hands up and was complying with police instructions when they gunned him down.
Sorry GW but that photo is taken at Howard University. The tip off is that Brown is an Ivy League school that couldn't possibly be this black if it was actually enforcing it's admittance selection criteria. I don't mean for that to be racist but it's a fact. Brown university is extremely selective and takes only the cream of the crop. While there are blacks that fit that description and some that are admitted under some sort of diversity clause, it certainly couldn't be the 90%+ (looks like 100%) black faces that I see in that photo. That's why I went to your link and noticed that it said "howard" university. Which for those of you unfamiliar, is a black only or minority only institution (that statement I'm not 100% sure of but is my understanding). Strangely enough, the students that go there apparently don't see the incongruence of an admittance policy based on skin color vs. the classes they attend dealing with racism in america or if they do, don't seem to be bothered by it as I've never seen a demonstration, such as the one in the picture posted, that attempts to change this policy? Just an observation.
yeah, well, whether or not I should - every person I see there makes me think of the better qualified Asian or non-Jewish white whose place they took for "diversity" at a school which is about 30% Jewish - i.e. a school that preaches diversity and affirmative action has one wealthy powerful ethnoreligious group over-represented by a factor of 10.
And I am sure these people know which "whites" have the most power.
I'll de-escalate the black/white thingy and not mention the out-of-towners who showed up.
Or not...
Any victims of Police terror who have been tased, hit with tear gas, rubber bullets or live fire call: (572) 223-9329 Legal council for all victims of Police Terror in St. Louis ALL VICTIMS MEET WITH US 11:00 am Thurs 8/14 in front of the Ferguson Pig Pen
http://www.newblackpanther.com/
"The chicken have come home to roost."...lol.
Really? ;-)
What most of the protesters don't realize is that the local DA protects the police. The locals need to demand to speak to any grand jury sitting in St. Louis County and present their case. If the grand jury indicts, then the DA can refuse to prosecute and take all the heat. The reason most prosecutors have a 98% conviction rate is that the police testi-lie. DA's need police lying to maintain 98% conviction rates. The protests need to be outside the courthouse where the DA works. Our founders believed grand juries would not be restricted from examining all evidence by a prosecutor. Elections can change DA's.
Fuck grand juries.
No grand jury is necessary. A kid was shot in the back. He was unarmed. The police know who did it. That person needs to be brought up on a murder charge. He can explain why he thinks it was in self-defense.
More belief in the wacked system of DA enforcing "justice". They can jail you as a flight risk based on anything. You can plea bargain, or face 20 years of hard time based on some fantasy they cooked up. Yeah, sure elections can change DA's but they don't change the abuse of power.
Yo, GW, assface:
and prc, and nz, and oz, and dprk, and...
assface
- Ned
Its like Georgie Spring!!! around here, I'm feelin it! ;-)
i have to thank all fucking dumb twits that identify as repubs or dems and voted for bush and/or obama. you fucking cunts literally ruined it for everyone else.
you vote for these blood thirsty heathens and then complain when they execute their plans.
its your uneducated vote that initiated this shit. you are all fucking traitors and deserve not safety nor liberty.
pieces of shit you are
If you believe the voting system isn't co-opted, then I have a fine deal on a set of bridges that I own in NJ that are for sale.
Gona need more than haji armour
Isralmaerica says Palestine must be eradicated. You Murrikinz support this because 'iz tha durty mooslims!'. Karma's a bitch, fucktards.
They live amongst you. How long before you take action in retaliation? When actions have no consequences ............what do you get?
"When did these guys...become these guys?"
Love that George, thanks. A crying shame.
This is a trial run for the "man" on upcoming violence.
Learn from it.
no longer the good guys--the police have lost the moral high ground--transfering hate of meth heads to every one that is'nt in blue(or black swat regalia) sense of duty being replaced by sense of privilage --more and more SS look a likes--when Fergson spreads to other big cities and that white father of three is stopped at a road bock and his teen son is pulled from the car and shot and its on utube then things may start to turn--untill white guys (en mass) see the state and its cohorts as enemies the situation will stay the same--
It sounds like Zero Hedge is having Time Magazine do its articles. Don't blame the Fascist, we have no power. It's the Bolsheviks who have the power in the USSA.
Blussman: I have no idea what you're trying to say, but welcome:
Seemed BlussMann was linking your top notch work with that of Time. They are renown world over for highly sourced, referenced & truth laden articles. Wait, he said Time - OK, scratch that. :)
as for George, this Time is different
Out of curiosity, how many weeks of membership are required before a member's comments are judged simply on the merits of the ideas expressed?
And unrelated, thanks for all the great posts! I don't see how you keep it going. I would get extremely disheartened and loose my mind if I had to address the topics you cover as often as you cover them. I hope you have a lot of quality support.
some comments (especially repeated similar comments) suggest they are paid establishment stooges and trolls -remember who owns and controlls the mainstream media. These criminals have unlimited money, power and influence -and do not like competition -especially when the competition promotes Truth -rather than government propaganda
consider the possibility that the paid trolls target only a limited amount of relatively large traffic sites [ZH isn't on that list], but also realize that Israeli/Hasbara trolls sit around waiting for new stories about Israel to be posted and flock there, not merely to protest naked antisemitism or present a different viewpoint, but to lie, obfuscate, shout antisemite, and generally make rational, empirically-driven discussion impossible.
How else do you build settlements for 30 years, bulldoze Arab homes, destroy Arab crops, murder thousands of civilians after repeatedly breaking ceasefires and pointing to the nearly harmless response as "the aggressive act Israel must defend against" and still claim to only want peace. It should be obvious that the intent is obviously to take over all of what the whackos call "Judea and Samaria" - it's a bit like the Scots calling France Gaul and insisting on the right to eject the Frankish natives.
People don't understand government because they aren't psychopaths, and I mean that in the true sense, as many in government and the people behind government - it just doesn't compute. They haven't stared into the abyss - they've worried about which stock to buy and how the team is doing.
As to who controls the media [and so much more] the accusation of "hate" is actualy brilliant mass conditioning and quasi-hypnosis to prevent further thought/analysis. Just because someone who actually does hate all of group x says y, it doesn't necessarily mean y is false. Indeed, the truth of y [and inability to address politically or even discuss] likely lead to the group hate.
Morals aside hatred of a group is a category mistake {a 'group' doesn't act, it's also not a monolith} and illogical as to assessment of any agent. This requires a level of intermediate philosophical thinking most people aren't capable of, hence I've come to believe that most people, e.g., shouting anti-Semite, actually believe it - irrationally.
But the true trolls deploy it as a still-effective tactic. People would be better off discussing "Jewish privilege" along with "minority disinfranchisement."
Well, unfortunately, I am a pessimist and unlike some of my brothers, I don't think the public in the US, or UK are either intelligent or well-informed enough to stop the slide.
Judging by the sheer weight and volume of "Jews are evil" commentary on ZH as well as the vote tallies, if there are paid media monitors out in force, they work for someone other than your theoretical troll army.
I have noticed those. It really gums up the works. I even learned what the word "Hasbra" means. I'm sure most "concerns" are represented in these comments. It is extremely hard to establish any sense of the truth, especially if you are reading. And writers are expected to stay consistent, even if they have discovered new information that has changed their perspective because if they change their message their old writing will be dragged out to make them look foolish. And so, few can admit they were previously wrong and even if they do, as a reader, it's hard to know what caused their change of heart. I'll just try and stay skeptical and remember that power corrupts and that centralization establishes power.
I don't see how you keep it going.
Sort of like the Fed, eh?
I'm really just trying to say that I admire GW's work and I imagine that it must be really difficult because there aren't a lot of hopeful developments and it must take a toll. I can also appreciate how uncovering the truth can be extreamly satisfying. I hope GW feels a great deal of satisfaction.
Just showed your colors with that comment, GW.
Sure did: the colour of truth showing when troll accounts join. Thanks GW again for showing the real truth no matter how many pro-tribe trolls fall into the Hasbara payroll.
Are you Kevin, Stuart, or Dave?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB4KJrl4ZZ0
Ikey, Mikey, Dave and Sam we're the boys who eat no ham!
Is ad hominem made from corn? It's not GMO corn is it? Maybe I'm thinking of something else...no...it's ad hominem.
Gee who knew there'd be repercussions from sending po-dunk cops over to the Tribe's homey-land for training.
Really.
No one saw this coming?
Gazans know better:
"Israel is also doing business with the situation in Gaza. Those who have visited exhibitions of defence systems in the US and Europe, should have noticed that the weapon systems used in conflicts between countries have been replaced by other systems for controlling population in urban areas. Israelis are using videos from previous attacks in Gaza to demonstrate, for example, drones or other military equipment which has been used against Palestinians."
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/07/other-reasons-for-ongoing-cri...
I'd like to see the advice from Gazan's on how to protect against tear gas. Anybody have the link?
scroll down here:
http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201408141902-0024060
It would appear the tear gas advice was being tweeted from Ramallah in the West Bank... not Gaza. That may sound like nitpicking on my part but ...
Check this out: Israeli tear gas cannisters used as planting pots for West Bank Garden of Remembrace:
http://geekstroke.com/miscellaneous/woman-plants-flowers-in-spent-tear-g...
Put that on the front page of the NY Times.
M-14s? Wow they stopped giving this good stuff to soldiers outside of the USA dueing LBJ's Vietnam War for MIC. The sucker draftees got that Mattel rifle with no cleaning kits.