Ferguson – Page 3 – The Burning Platform

Are we on the Verge of Renewed Race Riots with the Turn in the War Cycle in 2014?

There is an old saying that is very important in its depth – divide and conquer. Yes the Black Community is outraged. But have things really remained the same or are we dealing with a new movement of government against the people? Most Americans are at least aware of or remember the race-related riots that tore throughout numerous cities in the United States during the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1971, civil disturbances (as many as 700, by one count) resulted in large numbers of injuries, deaths, and arrests, as well as considerable property damage, concentrated in predominantly black areas.

What was amazing is that this civil unrest started precisely in 1964, which like 2014 now, was the turning point in the war cycle. What has taken place in Ferguson is simply outrageous. However, the Black Community needs to learn a lesson from history. They will only diminish their own position by characterizing this as simply a race issue. This time – its is different. It is government against everyone.

Although the United States has experienced race-related civil disturbances throughout its history, the 1960s events were unprecedented in their frequency and scope. They coincided with the upturn in the War Cycle in 1964 but characterizing them as simply a race issue then was perhaps on point. Law enforcement authorities took extraordinary measures to end the riots, sometimes including the mobilization of National Guard units. The most deadly riots were in Detroit (1967 picture as the heading), Los Angeles (1965), and Newark (1967). Measuring riot severity by also including arrests, injuries, and arson adds Washington (1968) to that list. Particularly following the death of Martin Luther King in April 1968, the riots signaled the end of the carefully orchestrated, non-violent demonstrations of the early Civil Rights Movement.

Today with the upturn in the War Cycle there is a different issue. The militarization of the police is against everyone. The incident in Ferguson may not be simply a race incident. This may be related to the militarization of police and the hostile attitude they are displaying everywhere. I was stopped in a road-block on my way to work in the morning. It was an unconstitutional stop for every car was stopped to see if you had all your documents. If you did not, they sent you to a line for tickets. There was no smile or friendly police officer asking for your papers. It felt very much like the East German police when I went behind the Berlin Wall – “papers please”, and I am not even sure there was a “please”.

The Black Community would do well realizing that this militarization of the police was NOT designed simply for them. This is against ALL Americans and they should be wise to distinguish this militarization as being un-American. It looks like we may be on a turn in race riots once again. They began precisely in 1964 with the turn in the War Cycle and it appears we are on schedule here as well. If so, the peak will not arrive before 2017-2018.

From Boston to Ferguson: Have We Reached a Tipping Point in the Police State?

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“I thought I was losing my capacity to be shocked — but events in Missouri over just the last couple of hours have crossed a frightening line, one that makes me pray that this assault on fundamental American values is just the aberration of one rudderless Heartland community, and not the first symptoms of nation gone mad with high-tech weaponry to keep its own citizens in line.”—Journalist Will Bunch

The difference between what happened in Boston in the wake of the Boston Marathon explosion and what is happening now in Ferguson, Missouri, is not in the government’s response but in the community’s response.

This is what happens when you ignore the warning signs.

This is what happens when you fail to take alarm at the first experiment on your liberties.

This is what happens when you fail to challenge injustice and government overreach until the prison doors clang shut behind you.

Consider that it was just a little over a year ago that the city of Boston was locked down while police carried out a military-style manhunt for the suspects in the Boston Marathon explosion. At the time, Americans welcomed the city-wide lockdown, the routine invasion of their privacy, and the dismantling of every constitutional right intended to serve as a bulwark against government abuses.

Fast forward 14 months, and Americans are shocked at the tactics being employed to quell citizen unrest in Ferguson, Missouri—a massive SWAT team, an armored personnel carrier, men in camouflage pointing heavy artillery at the crowd, smoke bombs and tear gas—where residents are outraged and in the streets in response to a recent police shooting of one of their own: a young, unarmed college-bound black teenager who had the misfortune of being in the wrong time at the wrong place.

Here’s the problem, though, as I explain in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, in the American police state that now surrounds us, every time and every place is the wrong time and the wrong place, especially if you still believe you have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.

In the American police state, there is no longer such a thing as innocence. We are all potentially guilty, all potential criminals, all suspects waiting to be accused of a crime.

Why is this happening?

Why is it that not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by militarized police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve?

Who or what is responsible for the growing spate of police shootings, brutality and overreach?

As journalist Benjamin Carlson points out, “In today’s Mayberry, Andy Griffith and Barney Fife could be using grenade launchers and a tank to keep the peace.” This is largely owing to the increasing arsenal of weapons available to police units, the changing image of the police within communities, and the growing idea that the police can and should use any means necessary to maintain order.

Moreover, as an investigative report by Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz reveals, in communities large and small across America, local law enforcement are arming themselves to the teeth with weapons previously only seen on the battlefield. “Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

To our detriment, local police—clad in jackboots, helmets and shields and wielding batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, and assault rifles—have increasingly come to resemble occupying forces in our communities. “Today,” notes Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, “17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear and armored vehicles. Some have tanks. ”

It is particularly telling that whereas in the past, law enforcement strove to provide a sense of security, trust, and comfort, the impression conveyed today is one of power, dominance and inflexible authority. However, this transformation of local police into military units did not happen overnight. It cannot be traced back to a single individual or event. Rather, the evolution has been so subtle that most American citizens were hardly even aware of it taking place. Yet little by little, police authority expanded, one weapon after another was added to the police arsenal, and one exception after another was made to the standards that have historically restrained police authority.

Thus, for those like myself who have studied emerging police states, the sight of a city placed under martial law—its citizens under house arrest (officials used the Orwellian phrase “shelter in place” to describe the mandatory lockdown), military-style helicopters equipped with thermal imaging devices buzzing the skies, tanks and armored vehicles on the streets, and snipers perched on rooftops, while thousands of black-garbed police swarm the streets and SWAT teams carry out house-to-house searches—leaves us in a growing state of unease.

Mind you, these are no longer warning signs of a steadily encroaching police state.

The police state has arrived.

While some critics are keen to paint the officers involved in these shootings and lockdowns as bad cops hyped up on the power of their badge, the problem is far more pervasive.

First, there’s America’s obsession with war and all things war-related, reflected in the fact that we spend more than 20% of the nation’s budget on the military, not including what we spend on our endless wars abroad. The U.S. also makes up nearly 80% of the global arms exports market, rendering us both the world’s largest manufacturer and consumer of war.

Second, there’s the nation’s commitment to recycling America’s instruments of war and putting them to work here at home, thanks largely to a U.S. Department of Defense program that provides billions of dollars worth of free weapons, armored vehicles, protective clothing and other military items to law enforcement agencies large and small across the country.

Third, once acquired, this military equipment (which is beyond the budget and scope of most communities) finds itself put to all manner of uses by local law enforcement agencies under the rationale that “if we have it, we might as well use it”—the same rationale, by the way, used with deadly results to justify assigning SWAT teams to carry out routine law enforcement work such as delivering a warrant.

Fourth, in much the same way that community police departments have been finding homes for retired military equipment, they’re also providing jobs for returning military personnel. As PoliceLink reports: “As the competition for coveted law enforcement positions increases throughout the country, police and federal recruiters have the luxury of picking and choosing the absolute best and brightest individuals. More often than not, police chiefs, sheriffs, and recruiters are turning to military veterans to fill these positions as they staff the next wave of warriors in the war on crime.”

Fifth, in addition to staffing police departments with ex-military personnel and equipping them with military gear, the government is also going to great lengths to train local police in military tactics. For example, civilian police train alongside military forces at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, making full use of their weapons and equipment. The collaborated training exercises help police incorporate military techniques into their skillset, including exercises in how to clear and move up a stairway, position themselves as snipers and take aim at opposing snipers, and clear a room. With such military training a.k.a. indoctrination in the works, it’s little wonder that police officers increasingly look upon American citizens as enemy combatants.

Sixth, even those police officers who are not formally trained in military tactics are at a minimum being given greater access to more powerful firepower and trained in how to use semiautomatic rifles. “It’s almost like we’re moving away from being community policing officers to being Navy SEALs,” stated Jack Kervin, president of the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation.

Seventh, there’s the overall glorification of war and violence that permeates every aspect of American society, from our foreign policy and news programs to our various modes of entertainment, including blockbuster Hollywood action movies and video games. Indeed, thanks to a collaboration between the Department of Defense and the entertainment industry, the American taxpayer is paying for what amounts to a propaganda campaign aimed at entrenching the power of the military in American society. As Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, points out, “Today, almost everywhere you look, whether at the latest blockbuster on the big screen or what’s on much smaller screens in your own home – likely made by a defense contractor like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic or Toshiba – you’ll find the Pentagon or its corporate partners.”

And finally, there’s the American people. Whatever the threat to so-called security—whether it’s rumored weapons of mass destruction, school shootings, or alleged acts of terrorism—it doesn’t take much for the American people to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, even if it means submitting to martial law, having their homes searched, and being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice. Americans will unfortunately march in lockstep with the police state, that is, until suddenly they are the ones being held at gunpoint, terrorized and stripped of their rights. At that point, as Ferguson makes clear, it’s almost too late to dial back the police state.

Clearly, the American homeland is now ruled by a military empire. Everything our founding fathers warned against—a standing army that would see American citizens as combatants—is now the new norm. The government—local law enforcement now being extensions of the federal government—has trained its sights on the American people. We have become the enemy. And if it is true, as the military asserts, that the key to defeating an enemy is having the technological advantage, then “we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.

So what’s to be done?

As with all things, change must start locally, in your hometown.

For instance, take a close look at your local police officers, the ones who patrol your neighborhoods and ensure the safety of your roadways. Chances are they look less and less like the benevolent keepers of the peace who patrolled Andy Griffith’s Mayberry and more like inflexible extensions of the military.

Who calls the shots for your local police? Who do they answer to? Who provides oversight for their interactions with local police? What drives the decision-making process for your local police—revenue or the rule of law? How transparent are your local police about their activities, their equipment and their processes? In other words, who polices your local police? If it’s more police or politicians benefiting from revenue-generating programs by the police, that’s no answer.

These are just a few of the questions we should all be asking of our local police and governing bodies. And when the answers don’t satisfy, we should ask them louder and insist that changes be implemented immediately to ensure that it is “we the people” calling the shots in our hometowns and not armed extensions of the police state.

Remember, a police state does not come about overnight. It starts small, perhaps with a revenue-generating red light camera at an intersection. When that is implemented without opposition, perhaps next will be surveillance cameras on public streets. License plate readers on police cruisers. More police officers on the beat. Free military equipment from the federal government. Free speech zones and zero tolerance policies and curfews. SWAT team raids. Drones flying overhead.

No matter how it starts, however, it always ends the same. Remember, it’s a slippery slope from a questionable infringement justified in the name of safety to all-out tyranny.

Reprinted with permission from the Rutherford Institute.

Burn, Ferguson, Burn

Guest Post by Fred Reed

Random Thoughts on a Confluence of Putrescenses

August 15, 2014

Methinks there cometh three horsemen of a sorry apocalypse: First, blacks are again rioting, looting, and burning. Second, the media are as usual lying, interpreting, concealing. Third, swatted-out heavies of a bush-league police force knock reporters around, arresting them for nothing, and refusing to reveal their identities. We are seeing the birth of a nation.

What actually happened in Ferguson? God only knows. Of course we are hearing from talking heads with bargain-basement IQs that a policeman, from racial motives, shot an unarmed black kid because he refused to stop walking in the street. Did it happen? Possibly. I wasn’t there. But the story smells.

Reflect: Every white cop short of the orbit of Neptune knows that if he shoots a black, he faces dismemberment in the media, loss of job and pension, probable criminal charges locally by a publicity-seeking prosecutor, a well-funded civil suit that he can’t afford filed by surviving family members, and trumped-up federal civil-rights charges from an attorney general who doesn’t like whites.

All this because he wants to shoot a black kid for jaywalking?

But let us ignore mere totalitarian fascism on the march. To this we are inured. Let us focus instead on the disastrous failure of racial policy. For over half a century we have had many Fergusons, mini-Fergusons, mega-Fergusons (Los Angles, among many others), and the Knockout Game ( micro-Fergusons). We will have more, and worse. Racial hostility is not subsiding. The races are not assimilating. If they were going to, they would have. The danger is that one of the serial Fergusons could go parallel.

The country could blow.

The media, Democrats, and race industry stoke the fires by telling blacks that they are victims, and some seem actually to be looking for a fight. Jesse Jackson is quoted as threatening, “There is a Ferguson near you.” True. Wherever blacks and whites come into contact, there is trouble.

With the encouragement of the various Jesses, blacks could make a bad miscalculation. Angry, poorly educated, and living in concentrations that make them seem more numerous than they are, they may miss some important points. They are only thirteen percent of America. Food does not come from Safeway, but from remote farms owned by whites in truck driven by whites. If Jesse and Al and the Black Panthers got their race war, blacks would lose it hugely. The country would not recover.

I doubt that our televised commentators have any idea what they are dealing with. Nor do academics. Whites with university educations, who read five books at once, who have never been in a police car, cannot know who the rioters are, cannot imagine how the world seems to them. Black physicists do not loot shoe stores. Those who do tend strongly to be functionally illiterate. The rest have probably never read a book in their lives. They live in a mental world unknown to most whites. They will never live amicably with white cops.

The feds have turned police into low-brow SS, but racial conflict would exist even if this weren’t true. As long as white policemen work in black neighborhoods, Fergusons will continue.

White cops tend to be from the lower middle class, often former military, with the accompanying values. Theirs is a conventional morality of obedience to the law, birth within wedlock, mowing the lawn, neat clothes, making sure the kids do their homework, orderliness, and avoidance of obscenity in mixed company. They are quietly but intensely contemptuous of the blacks of the deep city, whom they see as slovenly, criminal, shiftless, parasitic, and violent.

Don’t write me email about stereotypes etc. I’m telling you what a great many white policemen (I believe I could safely say nearly all) think. What they think and what they see governs their behavior, not whether you or I agree with it.

Meanwhile the blacks see white policemen as hostile occupiers, much as Parisians in 1943 saw their Wehrmacht occupiers. White cops seem agents of an alien and hostile race, always pushing them around. Speaking as one who has spent many, many nights patrolling with cops in black regions, I know well why the blacks feel this way:

“Hey, you! Yeah, you, with the beer in your hand. Pour it out. You can’t drink in public. I said pour…it…out.”

The obvious, inexpensive, simple, practical solution would be to have only black police in black neighborhoods, and white in white. This wouldn’t end shootings because it wouldn’t end crime, but it would end the consequent racial riots, looting, and burned cities. I suggested this when I was police writer for the Washington Times, but was told that it ran against the policy of compulsory integration. Black cops didn’t like the idea because it would leave them in the most dangerous jurisdictions.

We need to realize, but will not, that blacks are a separate people, self-aware and cohesive. They have their own dialect, music, and modes of dress, which they value. They name their kids LaToya and Keeshawn instead of Robert and Carol because they want to maintain a distance from whites.

The races spring from utterly different cultures. Compulsory integration is thus a form of social imperialism in which whites try to force blacks to conform to European norms. Blacks have no historical connection at all to Greece, Rome, the Old Testament Hebrews, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, to Newton, LaGrange, or Galois, to the philosophic tradition of Thales, Aquinas, Schopenhauer, or Hegel. Nor do Eurowhites have roots in Africa. No commonality exists.

We talk multiculturism, but try to impose a monoculture—ours—on blacks. Why? Why in school should we insist that blacks study things of no interest to them? It is reminiscent of policies aimed at stripping American Indians of their languages and traditions.

On the other hand, I as a white man have little enthusiasm for studying Shaka Zulu, the Great Zimbabwe, or African religions. Would not all be happier with their own schools in which they could maintain their own culture?

“Separate but equal” is in bad odor as a governing philosophy. It seems to be the only thing that works. If voluntary, wherein lies the evil? Less contact means less conflict.

Is there any evidence that blacks want to associate with whites? Or vice versa? In the universities, do blacks not clamor for black-only dormitories, black-only fraternities, and Black Studies? And what is wrong with this? Why should blacks not associate with whom they choose? And why should not whites?

Almost always, when the races do not have to mingle, they don’t. In Washington, blacks fleeing the crime of the city go to the heavily-black Prince George’s County, whites to Arlington, Fairfax, and Bethesda. Within Arlington, blacks cluster together in mini-barrios. So what? It’s their business.

Note that the togetherheid pushed endlessly on us is almost entirely rhetorical, preached by people who mean that others should practice it. I lived for years in the city with many liberal, racially correct friends. They spent all their time with other whites, and the restaurants and bars they patronized seldom had more than a token black, if that.

Ethnic mixing doesn’t work, gang. Not Moslems and Parisians, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Shias and Sunnis, Indonesians and Chinese, nor even New Yorkers and Alabamans. We think it should work, insist that it will, punish those who observe that it doesn’t. Yet still it doesn’t work. The greater the difference between groups, the less well it works. If we realized this, and let people do as they choose, the country would be much better off.

Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police

Hat tip Stuck

Via Time Magazine

Police Shooting Missouri — Police in riot gear watch protesters in Ferguson, Mo. on Aug. 13, 2014. Jeff Roberson—AP

Anyone who thinks race does not skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention, Sen. Rand Paul writes for TIME, amid violence in Ferguson, Mo. over the police shooting death of Michael Brown

The shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown is an awful tragedy that continues to send shockwaves through the community of Ferguson, Missouri and across the nation.

If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.

The outrage in Ferguson is understandable—though there is never an excuse for rioting or looting. There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response.

The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action.

Glenn Reynolds, in Popular Mechanics, recognized the increasing militarization of the police five years ago. In 2009 he wrote:

Soldiers and police are supposed to be different. … Police look inward. They’re supposed to protect their fellow citizens from criminals, and to maintain order with a minimum of force.

It’s the difference between Audie Murphy and Andy Griffith. But nowadays, police are looking, and acting, more like soldiers than cops, with bad consequences. And those who suffer the consequences are usually innocent civilians.

The Cato Institute’s Walter Olson observed this week how the rising militarization of law enforcement is currently playing out in Ferguson:

Why armored vehicles in a Midwestern inner suburb? Why would cops wear camouflage gear against a terrain patterned by convenience stores and beauty parlors? Why are the authorities in Ferguson, Mo. so given to quasi-martial crowd control methods (such as bans on walking on the street) and, per the reporting of Riverfront Times, the firing of tear gas at people in their own yards? (“‘This my property!’ he shouted, prompting police to fire a tear gas canister directly at his face.”) Why would someone identifying himself as an 82nd Airborne Army veteran, observing the Ferguson police scene, comment that “We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone”?

Olson added, “the dominant visual aspect of the story, however, has been the sight of overpowering police forces confronting unarmed protesters who are seen waving signs or just their hands.”

How did this happen?

Most police officers are good cops and good people. It is an unquestionably difficult job, especially in the current circumstances.

There is a systemic problem with today’s law enforcement.

Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.

This is usually done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism. The Heritage Foundation’s Evan Bernick wrote in 2013 that, “the Department of Homeland Security has handed out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns across the country, enabling them to buy armored vehicles, guns, armor, aircraft, and other equipment.”

Bernick continued, “federal agencies of all stripes, as well as local police departments in towns with populations less than 14,000, come equipped with SWAT teams and heavy artillery.”

Bernick noted the cartoonish imbalance between the equipment some police departments possess and the constituents they serve, “today, Bossier Parish, Louisiana, has a .50 caliber gun mounted on an armored vehicle. The Pentagon gives away millions of pieces of military equipment to police departments across the country—tanks included.”

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.

Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.

Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm. It is one thing for federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize it.

Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous, or false, security. This has been a cause I have championed for years, and one that is at a near-crisis point in our country.

Let us continue to pray for Michael Brown’s family, the people of Ferguson, police, and citizens alike.

Paul is the junior U.S. Senator for Kentucky.

Ferguson, Bundy Ranch, & ‘Dancing The Night Away’ With The Obamas

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

“My administration has been closely monitoring the situation in Egypt, and I know that we will be learning more tomorrow when day breaks. As the situation continues to unfold, our first concern is preventing injury or loss of life. So I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protestors.

The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.”

– U.S. President Barack Obama, January 28, 2011 (official statement here).

The events in Ferguson, Missouri went from what could have been just another all too common and tragic incident in which an unarmed black man is killed by an overly aggressive and unprofessional police force, to what may be a historically significant event in American history. So how did this transformation occur and what does it mean going forward? Those are the two questions I intend to address in this post.

There are two primary factors that have collided to create the current out of control situation in a suburb roughly 15 miles northwest of St. Louis, which before this past weekend, almost no one had ever heard of. The first factor is the underlying tension in American society that I have been writing about for several years now. Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in the minority majority inner cities or their outskirts. Being a privileged person, I have thankfully never experienced the dehumanization and oppression felt by so many in these disenfranchised communities, but I can still understand the fact that these neighborhoods are ground zero in the civil unrest that is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

The second factor is the entirely inappropriate and dangerous militarization of police forces throughout these United States. While extreme tension between impoverished communities and the police has been well documented for decades and expressed through music and movies (I grew up with NWA’s Fuck Tha Police and Colors), the cops were generally speaking merely men and women driving around in patrol cars with guns and batons. Not to dismiss the violence that can and has been inflicted through those means, but the police in recent years have taken things to a whole new frightening level: Total Militarization.

I consider this trend to be such an existential threat to freedom and civil liberties that I have expended a considerable deal of time and energy over the past several years highlighting it. I have covered the topic too many times to list here (I will provide a compilation at the end of this post), but there is one in particular I want to mention. The post was published two months ago and was titled: The Militarization of Police Continues…Machine Guns, Grenade Launchers, Silencers and More. In it I quoted the following from a New York Times article:

During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.

The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”

I then concluded the post with the following observation:

Of all the bad ideas currently being implemented in these United States, turning the police into soldiers is certainly near the top of the list.

Indeed, and we are now reaping some of the rewards from this absurd and fascist policy. One that must be reversed immediately. If you think I or others may be exaggerating the threat here, think again. Social media and the internet generally is filled with veterans reacting in horror at what they are seeing unfold domestically. Here are two of the most powerful tweets I came across:

The gentleman on the left has more personal body armor and weaponry than I did while invading Iraq.

I leveled my weapon twice overseas. Leveled. Not fired. I had legit threats and went through proper EOF. Stop fucking up, Ferguson PD.

At this point I’d like to remind everyone that crime in the U.S. has been dropping since the 1990′s. So why has domestic police force militarization been growing exponentially since then? Ostensibly, it is for the “war on terror” and to keep us safe. In reality, we know this is bullshit. Just like the NSA’s constitutional spying hasn’t stopped a single terrorist attack, turning local cops into a domestic army hasn’t done a single thing to make us safe.To the contrary, it is creating an environment where the general public harbors increased resentment and skepticism toward police, and the police view the citizenry as the “enemy.” This takes the societal tinderbox that already exists and makes it downright explosive. Ferguson is just the latest example of the tension bubbling to the surface, but there will likely be many more in the future.

While the above exposes the excuse for militarization for the lie it is, it doesn’t answer the question. As I have maintained for years now, I believe all police state activities, from NSA surveillance to the militarization of the police, is a entirely deliberate program being implemented by the status quo (oligarchs, Wall Street, politicians, intelligence agencies, etc) to put in place a police state ahead of the civil unrest and dissent they know is coming. How do they know it’s coming? Simple. They know better than anyone else the extent of their collective theft and lawlessness and they know full well domestic blowback is coming. They are just getting geared up ahead of time.

So where do we go from here? What does all this mean and can we expect more of this in the future? One of the more disturbing aspects of this entire affair, particularly to the black community, must be President Barack Obama’s complete indifference to the entire incident. He had been pretty much silent on the entire thing, yet Principal Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz found the time to release the following statement last night updating the world on…Obama’s vacation. Here’s the official press briefing:

Tonight, the President and First Lady attended the birthday celebration for Mrs. Ann Jordan at an event at the Farm Neck Golf Club. There were approximately 150 guests in attendance.

Among the attendees seated with the Jordans and the President and First Lady were former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett and her mother Mrs. Barbara Bowman, Ursula Burns, Kenneth Chenault and his wife Kathy, along with other friends and family of Mrs. Jordan. President Obama honored Mrs. Jordan with a toast before dinner, as did Mr. Jordan and Secretary Clinton and others. The President and First Lady have known the Jordans for over twenty years, and were grateful to have been able to share this special evening with them.

The President and First Lady also were happy to have the chance to spend time with Secretary Clinton and former President Clinton.

A little color: in his toast for Mrs. Jordan, President quipped that he met Vernon and first, but liked Ann more. The menu consisted of surf and turf and pasta. The Obamas danced nearly every song. A good time was had by all.

Glad you had such a fun time as the death of American civil society was being broadcast to the world. I’m dying to know. How was the lobster? More importantly, compare Obama’s apathy toward what is happening in Ferguson to his impassioned expression of support he officially voiced toward the protesters in Egypt. It’s quite telling to see how much more interested he is in the freedom of people halfway across the world than within his own nation. That’s all you really need to know.

*Note: Since writing this piece, Obama has made his first public statement on Ferguson (see here). Apparently he is doing damage control after his dance party press release last night. What I find so interesting is how he first calls for calm on behalf of the protesters and then afterward addresses the police. Compare that to his statements on Egypt at the top.

At this point I want to make a comparison that relatively few people have zeroed in on. The similarities between the Bundy Ranch confrontation earlier this year and the unrest in Ferguson. While the superficial differences are stark (one group being white, rural and likely relatively well off, with the other being black, urban and poor), I believe the root cause of the unrest is more similar than you might think. There is seething anger at what is correctly perceived to be oppression and authoritarianism on behalf of the “status quo.” The key distinction here is that poor, black, urban communities have been dealing with this for generations, while it has only more recently targeted its sights on formerly middle-class white communities. This makes for an absolutely explosive situation going forward as the looting and pillaging of the power structure continues without repercussions for the offenders. So why am I bringing up the comparison to the Bundy Ranch in the first place? Because I don’t want Americans to be divided and conquered further based on false superficial differences. All of us as citizens are involved in a monumental struggle not against each other, but against the status quo. The quicker we recognize this, the quicker we can deal with the real problem. Very early on, I attempted to focus on the similarities between the the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street so that those two movements could join forces. I highlighted the following graphic whenever possible:

Although we are now starting to see libertarians and progressives unite in Congress on some very important issues such as domestic surveillance, the demonization of each others’ movements by both sides as somehow less pure or enlightened than the other prevented a much wider and united action for social and economic justice. It was a huge missed opportunity and I don’t want this to happen again. The Bundy Ranch affair and the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri should be seen as two sides of the same coin. The American public finally getting fed up with the authoritarianism of the corrupt status quo. One of my most popular posts of 2014 was the piece on the Bundy Ranch titled: Why the Standoff at the Bundy Ranch is a Very Big Deal. I concluded that piece with the following:

However, my long-term fear is that unless the government and its puppet masters on Wall Street and elsewhere in big business change course, social upheaval will prove inevitable, whether the Bundy Ranch sparks it, or some other incident down the road. These are troubled times and they are likely going to get worse before they get better.

We are seeing some of what I feared back then play out in Missouri right now. I found the following tweet to be extremely powerful and poignant:

Dear liberals comparing protests to Bundy Ranch: are you saying protesters should have more guns, or are you regretting lack of Bundy blood?

The last point I want to address is the historical significance I think Ferguson will ultimately command. This could’ve simply been an incident such as the one recently in New York City in which a cop killed an unarmed black man with an illegal chokehold. A huge part of the reason it has escalated to the current level is because the local police force decided to come out dressed like soldiers wanting to play war with American citizens. However, even that in itself wouldn’t translate into the historical significance I believe this event will ultimately hold.

I believe Ferguson will be seen as a major turning point. The point in which many well-intentioned, but incredibly naive folks in white mainstream America woke up to what we have become. Many people, particularly those in the media, have been willfully ignorant about the destruction of freedom and civil liberties in America. The events in Fergus have taken a gigantic mirror and successfully pointed it squarely at our civil society and the image it has reflected back is one of a horrific, militarized, authoritarian monster.

If it takes two reporters (one from the Washing Post and one from the Huffington Post) being unlawfully arrested to shake some sense into the privileged class in America, then so be it.

The only question now is, having been awakened from our blissful slumber to the sober nightmare that is reality, what are we going to do about it?

As promised, here are some of my many articles warning of police militarization over the years:

19-Month-Old Toddler in Critical Condition After Cops Throw Flash Bang Grenade into Playpen

An Iowa City with a Population of 7,000 Will Receive Armored Military Vehicle

There are Over 50,000 SWAT Team Raids Annually in America

New Hampshire City Requests a Tank to Deal with “Domestic Terrorist” Groups Like Occupy Wall Street and Libertarians

Retired Marine Colonel to New Hampshire City Council: “We’re Building a Domestic Army”

Video of the Day – Thuggish Militarized Police Terrorize and SWAT Team Iowa Family

BAGHDAD or FERGUSON?

Via Zero Hedge

As Michael Snyder asks – How is it possible that our once very peaceful nation has fallen apart so dramatically?

Let’s be honest – Ferguson, Missouri is under military occupation right now, and the entire world is watching in horror as militarized police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at unarmed protesters. Yes, the rioting and looting in Ferguson needed to be stopped. If order had not been restored, more stores and businesses would have been destroyed. However, there is no excuse for the brutal tactics now being employed. At one point, police snipers were even using laser scopes to target protesters that were obviously unarmed. Sadly, this is just a preview of what is coming to America in the years ahead. As the economy falls apart and people become even more angry and even more frustrated, there will be a lot more incidents of civil unrest like we have just witnessed in Ferguson. And in response, the federal government and our overly militarized police will seek to crush those uprisings with overwhelming force. …

when police get all of this equipment, it is inevitable that they are going to use it. One result of this has been the astounding increase in the number of SWAT team raids in America. The following numbers come from my previous article entitled “10 Facts About The SWATification Of America That Everyone Should Know“…

#1 In 1980, there were approximately 3,000 SWAT raids in the United States. Now, there are more than 80,000 SWAT raids per year in this country.

#2 79 percent of the time, SWAT teams are deployed to private homes.

#3 50 percent of the victims of SWAT raids are either black or Latino.

#4 In 65 percent of SWAT deployments, “a battering ram, boot, or some sort of explosive device” is used to gain forced entry to a home.

#5 62 percent of all SWAT raids involve a search for drugs.

#6 In at least 36 percent of all SWAT raids, “no contraband of any kind” is found by the police.

#7 In cases where it is suspected that there is a weapon in the home, police only find a weapon 35 percent of the time.

#8 More than 100 American families have their homes raided by SWAT teams every single day.

#9 Only 7 percent of all SWAT deployments are for “hostage, barricade or active-shooter scenarios”.

#10 Even small towns are getting SWAT teams now. 30 years ago, only 25.6 percent of communities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team. Now, that number has increased to 80 percent.

And of course African-American communities receive a greatly disproportionate amount of attention from our militarized police. Just imagine how you would feel if every time you saw a police officer you cringed in fear because you might be about to get searched again. The following is how author Michelle Alexander put it in her book “The New Jim Crow“…

Ultimately, these stop-and-frisk operations amount to much more than humiliating, demeaning rituals for young men of color, who must raise their arms and spread their legs, always careful not to make a sudden move or gesture that could provide an excuse for brutal – even lethal – force.

Like the days when black men were expected to step off the sidewalk and cast their eyes downward when a white woman passed, young black men know the drill when they see the police crossing the street toward them; it is a ritual of dominance and submission played out hundreds of thousands of times each year.

So what can we do about this?

How can we change the system?

How can we reverse this alarming militarization of our police?

Unfortunately, our system has become so corrupt that there is very little that we can do. In fact, one newly released study discovered that average Americans have a “near-zero” statistical impact on public policy…

A startling new political science study concludes that corporate interests and mega wealthy individuals control U.S. policy to such a degree that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

The startling study, titled “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Politics and was authored by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page. An early draft can be found here.

Noted American University Historian Allan J. Lichtman, who highlighted the piece in a Tuesday article published in The Hill, calls Gilens and Page’s research “shattering” and says their scholarship “should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who are bypassed by their government.”

* * *

This is America…

ST. LOUIS ERUPTS

Now you know why DHS has been militarizing local police forces. Coming to your town soon.

These decent folks really seem broken up by the shooting as they loot and pillage. 🙂

Via RT

Ferguson riots: Clashes, looting in Missouri following vigil for teen shot dead by police

A day of protests and vigils Sunday over the death of Michael Brown, a black teenager who was killed following an altercation with a Ferguson police officer, turned violent overnight with reports of riots and looting.

#FergusonShooting: Outrage as Missouri police shoot and kill ‘unarmed’ black teen

A gathering of mourners at the shooting site Sunday night for Brown, 18, who was to begin his first day in college today, quickly turned violent as people struggled to understand how police could shoot an unarmed teenager in broad daylight.

“We are currently experiencing a riot,” a Ferguson police dispatcher said.

The sound of gunfire was reported in the neighborhood late Sunday.

About 150 officers in riot gear from throughout St. Louis County, along with canine units and a SWAT team, were sent to the area, a dispatcher for the St. Louis County Police Department said.

Hundreds of demonstrators – as many as 1,000 at the peak of the protests, according to police – gathered at the site of the shooting on Saturday, some of them shouting “Kill the police” and “Don’t Shoot,” a county police spokesman said, as quoted by the Chicago Tribune.

There was no immediate word on injuries.

Although authorities are still investigating the incident, St. Louis Police Chief Jon Belmar said a struggle between Brown and a police officer somehow ensued inside of a police cruiser.

“It is our understanding at this point in the investigation, that within the police car, there was a struggle over the officer’s weapon,” Belmar told a news conference on Sunday.

Police cruisers in Ferguson, a town of some 23,000 people, are not equipped with dash cameras, which would have proven valuable to investigators, nor are there surveillance cameras at the apartment complex where the incident occurred.

Police officials will be hard pressed to explain why the victim was reportedly shot eight times in the course of the altercation.

Brown’s mother told local TV channel KSDK that her son was ready to go to college and was visiting his grandmother when the incident took place.

“He didn’t bother nobody,” she said. “They told me how many times my son was shot – eight,” she added.

The officer involved in the incident, who has not been identified, has been described as a six-year veteran and has been put on administrative leave, Belmar told reporters.

The shooting has brought to the surface lingering tensions between “black residents of North County and a predominantly white Ferguson police force,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Meanwhile, officials have not disclosed the race of the police officer who killed Michael Brown.

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay tweeted Sunday saying he stands with County Executive Charlie Dooley in his call “for a full and open inquiry into yesterday’s shooting in Ferguson.”

Meanwhile, Americans continue to debate exactly what is it about their society that makes such incidences increasingly commonplace. Sahar Aziz, Associate Professor of Law, told RT that part of the problem stems from US police approaching problems from an “egotistical” perspective.

“I think much of the brutality comes from a cultural problem where police officers have an egotistical approach and a power structure where they can get away with almost anything because they are ‘the police,'” she said.

The St. Louis County office of the civil rights group NAACP has said it wants the FBI to examine the case, with many in the community telling media that police in too many incidences use racial profiling when confronting individuals on the street.