Tyranny is an important phenomenon that operates by principles by which it can be recognized in its early emerging stages, and, if the people are vigilant, prepared, and committed to liberty, countered before it becomes entrenched. The methods used to overthrow a constitutional order and establish a tyranny are well-known. However, despite this awareness, it is surprising how those who have no intention of perpetrating a tyranny can slip into these methods and bring about a tyranny despite their best intentions. Tyranny does not have to be deliberate. Tyrants can fool themselves as thoroughly as they fool everyone else. Here are the top 16 signs that you are living in a tyranny or heading that way. Many thanks to Jon Roland for submitting this list (the original of which is here).
Signs 1-5
1. Control of public information and opinion: It begins with withholding information, and leads to putting out false or misleading information. A government can develop ministries of propaganda under many guises. They typically call it “public information” or “marketing”.
2. Vote fraud used to prevent the election of reformers: It doesn’t matter which of the two major party candidates are elected if no real reformer can get nominated, and when news services start knowing the outcomes of elections before it is possible for them to know, then the votes are not being honestly counted.
3. Undue official influence on trials and juries: Nonrandom selection of jury panels, exclusion of those opposed to the law, exclusion of the jury from hearing argument on the law, exclusion of private prosecutors from access to the grand jury, and prevention of parties and their counsels from making effective arguments or challenging the government.
4. Usurpation of undelegated powers: This is usually done with popular support for solving some problem, or to redistribute wealth to the advantage of the supporters of the dominant faction, but it soon leads to the deprivation of rights of minorities and individuals.
5. Seeking a government monopoly on the capability and use of armed force: The first signs are efforts to register or restrict the possession and use of firearms, initially under the guise of “protecting” the public, which, when it actually results in increased crime, provides a basis for further disarmament efforts affecting more people and more weapons.
Signs 6 - 10
6. Militarization of law enforcement: Declaring a “war on crime” that becomes a war on civil liberties. Preparation of military forces for internal policing duties.
7. Infiltration and subversion of citizen groups that could be forces for reform: Internal spying and surveillance is the beginning. A sign is false prosecutions of their leaders.
8. Suppression of investigators and whistleblowers: When people who try to uncover high level wrongdoing are threatened, that is a sign the system is not only riddled with corruption, but that the corruption has passed the threshold into active tyranny.
9. Use of the law for competition suppression: It begins with the dominant faction winning support by paying off their supporters and suppressing their supporters’ competitors, but leads to public officials themselves engaging in illegal activities and using the law to suppress independent competitors. A good example of this is narcotics trafficking.
10. Subversion of internal checks and balances: This involves the appointment to key positions of persons who can be controlled by their sponsors, and who are then induced to do illegal things. The worst way in which this occurs is in the appointment of judges that will go along with unconstitutional acts by the other branches.
Signs 11 - 16
11. Creation of a class of officials who are above the law: This is indicated by dismissal of charges for wrongdoing against persons who are “following orders”.
12. Increasing dependency of the people on government: The classic approach to domination of the people is to first take everything they have away from them, then make them compliant with the demands of the rulers to get anything back again.
13. Increasing public ignorance of their civic duties and reluctance to perform them: When the people avoid doing things like voting and serving in militias and juries, tyranny is not far behind.
14. Use of staged events to produce popular support: Acts of terrorism, blamed on political opponents, followed immediately with well-prepared proposals for increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies. Sometimes called a Reichstag plot.
15. Conversion of rights into privileges: Requiring licenses and permits for doing things that the government does not have the delegated power to restrict, except by due process in which the burden of proof is on the petitioner.
16. Political correctness: Many if not most people are susceptible to being recruited to engage in repressive actions against disfavored views or behaviors, and led to pave the way for the dominance of tyrannical government.
“Political Correctness is tyranny with a happy face.” ~ Charleton Heston
We Are Change New York members have described the “inhumane, insane and surreal” experience of being arrested by police for asking Mayor Bloomberg a question and promise that “the full story of this incident is yet to be heard.”
Luke Rudkowski, along with fellow We Are Change members Manny and Anthony, were all arrested on Saturday night for asking Bloomberg a question about 9/11 first responders outside the Hilton Hotel on Sixth Avenue.
They followed orders by police to stay in one designated area and yet were arrested for trespassing and were later hit with the charge of “impersonating a journalist,” despite having Infowars press credentials.
As The George Washington Blog points out today, “The media organization which sponsors Rudkowski is Infowars.com, a website which has many times the readership of small town “establishment” or “professional” newspapers. Indeed, given the popularity of Infowars and its sister sites, Prisonplanet.com and Jonesreport.com, the Infowars news network probably has more readers than all but the largest traditional newspapers. So the issue cannot be one of size or audience.”
Our recent exclusive report about the MIAC controversy became a national story, being covered by Fox News and the Associated Press, amongst hundreds of other mainstream news outlets. To claim that Infowars is not a genuine media outfit is manifestly absurd.
“Rudkowski’s arrest - like Amy Goodman’s arrest at the RNC convention for documenting violence against protestors - is an attempt to crack down on real attempts to question the powers-that-be and to document their actions,” concludes the George Washington Blog.
The We Are Change members have all now finally been released from Manhattan central bookings. They plan to air a live web broadcast at 10pm Eastern tonight to tell the full story and broadcast footage that led up to the incident. However, since the prosecution has seized all three of the group’s cameras and footage of the incident as criminal evidence, new cameras will have to be purchased.
We Are Change are asking all concerned activists to help them buy more cameras and create a legal defense fund by making a donation. They are also asking anyone who can offer legal services to contact bri.wearechange@gmail.com.
The court case will be in two months and the group is planning a countersuit on the basis of false arrest, official oppression and violation of the 1st amendment.
“You can try to stop me, but you cant stop the idea of CHANGE! This is not over by any means,” promises Luke Rudkowski.
Missouri Militia member expresses outrage that organization which helps police find missing children, sponsors soup kitchens and blood donation campaigns is linked with OKC bombing, domestic terrorism
A member of the Missouri Militia has contacted us to express his outrage that the organization, which routinely works with local law enforcement to help find missing children, sponsors blood donation campaigns and soup kitchens, is being smeared as a terrorist outfit by the federal government.
As we reported last week, a secret report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center lists militias, Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag and equates them with radical race hate groups and terrorists.
The document features a photograph of members of the Missouri militia next to a list of terrorist plots, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the Atlanta Olympic Park attack.
A member of the Missouri Militia who is featured in the photograph has written to us expressing his outrage that such a highly regarded organization, which devotes most of its time to projects which better the local community, has been villified in such a slapdash and erroneous way by the feds.
“In regard to the boys pictured in the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) entitled “The Modern Militia Movement”. I know most of the guys pictured in the article,” he writes.
All are hard working men whose wife’s support everything they do. Not one is a radical or a white supremacist. There are no anti-Semites. In fact some of the members have been Jewish and African-American. The leaders of this organization are in contact with the local sheriffs office every-time there is a get together that involves discharging weapons. The local sheriff knows who they are and where they live.
There is no talk of revolution or using any force against law enforcement. Indeed, just the opposite. They have volunteered for food kitchens and search and rescue. They are a transparent organization that only seeks to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
I know these guys, because I have trained with them….Most of these guys have wives and children and there only crime is preparing for the worst, yet hoping for the best. Most of these boys don’t even believe 911 was an inside job. They are patriots and good fathers in every sense of the word. They come from all walks of life and there is not an ounce of racism among all of them combined. Some are college educated white collars and some are blue collars, but all are as normal and patriotic as they come.
Indeed, a cursory examination of the Missouri Militia’s website reveals that the group is routinely involved in projects such as helping local authorities search for missing children, blood donation campaigns, and feeding the homeless in soup kitchens. The organization has supported campaigns such as Harvesters, Habitat for Humanity, and Project Warmth.
The website even features a 9/11 tribute and expresses the organization’s vehement opposition to the perpurtrators of the terrorist attack. Part of the role of the group is also outlined as “defense of the state from terrorism or invasion”.
For the feds to demonize such a group and smear them as potential terrorists is beyond belief. It’s almost akin to labeling a group like the Salvation Army an Al-Qaeda offshoot.
This is not only a damning indictment in terms of how the federal government views U.S. citizens, but also a staggering insult to the very notion that there is a “war on terror” at all. If there really were Al-Qaeda suicide bomber cells plotting to attack America, as we are constantly told, then the feds are telling your local police departments to ignore them and instead target stand-up Americans who like to do charity work, feed the homeless and give blood.
Even if one dismisses the notion that these documents are being released as part of a deliberate attempt to smear informed Americans as dangerous political enemies of the state, what we are left with is almost equally as disturbing, which is the fact that the people supposedly leading the “war on terror” on the home front have the same level of detective and criminology skills as Barney the Purple Dinosaur.
In releasing this training document, the Missouri Information Analysis Center is putting the U.S. in greater danger of a terrorist attack and ensuring that any real terrorists would evade detection, while law enforcement are being trained that the most patriotic Americans imaginable are their mortal enemies.
Law enforcement across the country are being educated that informed Americans who know their rights are dangerous and that cops are their enemy
Paul Joseph Watson, Kurt Nimmo & Alex Jones Prison Planet.com Friday, March 13, 2009
A secret report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center lists Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag and equates them with radical race hate groups and terrorists. This is merely the latest example in an alarming trend which confirms that law enforcement across the country is being trained that American citizens are a dangerous enemy.
A copy of the MIAC report was sent to us by an anonymous Missouri police officer who was concerned by its content.
Perhaps due to the outlandish and shocking nature of the document, some people are still having difficulty believing it is real. Unfortunately, we have confirmed that it’s 100 per cent genuine. We spoke with Capt Hull at the Missouri State Highway Patrol who told us that the MIAC Strategic Report is a part “normal operation for officers” to receive these periodic reports for “safety purposes and to track trends or changes”. Hull added that the report was for the purposes of training their officers.
We also spoke to Lt. John Hotz who, along with Capt Hull, declined to appear on The Alex Jones Show to talk about the document, but had no qualms about admitting that it was genuine and had been handed out to Missouri police officers.
View the document below.
According to the MIAC website, “MIAC is the mechanism to collect incident reports of suspicious activities to be evaluated and analyzed in an effort to identify potential trends or patterns of terrorist or criminal operations within the state of Missouri.”
The MIAC report specifically describes supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties.
The MIAC report does not concentrate on Muslim terrorists, but rather on the so-called “militia movement” and conflates it with supporters of Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr, the so-called patriot movement and other political activist organizations opposed to the North American Union and the New World Order.
Police are educated in the document that people are are anti-abortion, own gold, display an assortment of U.S. flags, or even those that talk about the film Zeitgeist, view the police as their “enemy” and conflates them with domestic terrorists like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph and other domestic militia groups who have been charged with plotting terrorist attacks.
The demonization of militia groups is something that we have come to expect, despite the fact that the very same constitution police officers swear an oath to defend outlines the need for “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”. George Washington himself was a member of a militia.
However, the conflation of banal sectors of society such as people who own gold, fly flags, display bumper stickers or who support mainstream political candidates such as Bob Barr, and the guilt-by-association smear that they are likely to be dangerous and potential terrorists, is a staggering alarm bell which indicates police are being trained that ordinary Americans, not radicalized Mexican race hate groups or Al-Qaeda suicide bomber cells, are the number one domestic threat in the war on terror.
The MIAC report is similar to one created by the Phoenix Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Joint Terrorism Task Force during the Clinton administration (see page one and page two of the document). The FBI document explicitly designates “defenders” of the Constitution as “right-wing extremists.” The MIAC report expands significantly on the earlier document.
Indeed, the MIAC report is just the latest in a series of similar threat assessment documents that list average American citizens as dangerous extremists and potential terrorists.
President Bush himself gave speeches about a White House “strategy paper” that formed “an unclassified version of the strategy we’ve been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001,” that takes into account, “the changing nature of this enemy.”
The document says that terrorism springs from “subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation,” and that “terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda.”
We have highlighted previous training manuals issued by state and federal government bodies which identify whole swathes of the population as potential terrorists. A Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Law Enforcement pamphlet gives the public characteristics to identify terrorists that include buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license and traveling with women or children.
A Virginia training manual used to help state employees recognize terrorists lists anti-government and property rights activists as terrorists and includes binoculars, video cameras, paper pads and notebooks in a compendium of terrorist tools.
Such training documents are manifesting real-life situations where people are being harassed, assaulted and arrested by law enforcement simply for owning material or discussing topics related to the Constitution and the bill of rights.
In July 2007, the Kuhns, a North Carolina couple (pictured above) were terrorized by sheriff’s deputy Brian Scarborough, who broke into their house, assaulted them and then arrested the couple for the crime of flying an upside down U.S. flag.
Buncombe County Sheriff’s deputy Brian Scarborough had just returned from Iraq and according to the Deborah Kuhn, was sent by his staff Sergeant from the local National Guard to “deal with” the Kuhns after a local resident complained about the flag, a fact that was later admitted on TV news. A National Guard soldier in military fatigues had also previously visited the Kuhn’s to harass them about the flag.
Even though Kuhn took the flag down, the officer immediately demanded that the couple show their ID’s and when they refused told them to put their hands behind their back and was about to arrest them before the couple shut and locked the door.
Scarborough then proceeded to kick the door in, “And the next thing we know, the glass is flying, he unlocks the deadbolt and he comes into our house after us,” Kuhn told The Alex Jones Show.
The officer then pursued Mark Kuhn through the house before intercepting him in the kitchen and putting him in a choke hold.
The officer then pulled out pepper spray to which Mark Kuhn responded, “Are you going to spray me in my house?” before Scarborough whipped out his billy club and the Kuhn’s ran out of the house into the street, pleading for help from their neighbors.
The couple were handcuffed, arrested and bundled into a squad car, to the protests of numerous neighbors who demanded to know why the Kuhns were being incarcerated, but were told to leave by police.
As is supported by the United States Flag Code as well as a similar incident in 2001, flying the flag upside down is not a mark of disrespect, and in fact is considered by many to be the highest form of patriotism. Despite this fact, the upside down flag is equated in the MIAC report with terrorist paraphernalia.
Alex Jones’ 2001 documentary film 9/11: The Road to Tyranny featured footage from a FEMA symposium given to firefighters and other emergency personnel in Kansas City in which it was stated that the founding fathers, Christians and homeschoolers were terrorists and should be treated with the utmost suspicion and brutality in times of national emergency.
The lecturer identifies George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers as “terrorists”.
In 2004, Kelly Rushing was charged with making “terroristic threats” after he handed out Alex Jones videos and recordings of a Congressman Ron Paul speech on C-Span to Lyon County, Kentucky officials and Kentucky State Trooper Lewis Dobbs.
A jury later ruled in favor of Rushing but he continues to be harassed by authorities and local law enforcement.
In October 2007, a Michigan man was harassed, handcuffed, assaulted, branded “unpatriotic” and subjected to an unconstitutional search of his vehicle during which drugs were allegedly planted, before being ticketed by a police officer for the apparent crime of freely distributing DVD’s about 9/11 truth.
In 2001, housewife Abbey Newman was assaulted and arrested by police at a checkpoint for exercising her 4th amendment right. Cops looked through literature which included a copy of a pocket constitution and debated whether or not the material was illegal.
To have secret police, regular troopers and federal authorities target people who discuss the very document that they swore an oath to uphold and protect is a chilling prospect and rivals anything that was a pre-cursor to Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.
The precedent of treating a knowledge of the U.S. constitution and the bill of rights as suspicious and possibly a sign of terrorism can only be linked to careful preparations for martial law which are now public.
A shocking KSLA news report last summer confirmed the story we first broke in 2006, that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to “quell dissent” and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.
A whistleblower who was secretly enrolled into the program told us that the feds were clandestinely recruiting religious leaders to help implement Homeland Security directives in anticipation of a potential bio-terrorist attack, any natural disaster or a nationally declared emergency.
The first directive was for Pastors to preach to their congregations Romans 13, the often taken out of context bible passage that was used by Hitler to hoodwink Christians into supporting him, in order to teach them to “obey the government” when martial law is declared.
It was related to the Pastors that quarantines, martial law and forced relocation were a problem for state authorities when enforcing federal mandates due to the “cowboy mentality” of citizens standing up for their property and second amendment rights as well as farmers defending their crops and livestock from seizure.
It was stressed that the Pastors needed to preach subservience to the authorities ahead of time in preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear to the congregation that “this is for their own good.”
Pastors were told that they would be backed up by law enforcement in controlling uncooperative individuals and that they would even lead SWAT teams in attempting to quell resistance.
The chilling preparations for martial law and the targeting of Americans who merely talk about the U.S. constitution, own gold, hold pro-life political viewpoints, watch and discuss internet documentaries like Zeitgeist or support mainstream political candidates such as Ron Paul or Bob Barr should act as a wake-up call and prompt more people in different levels of authority throughout religious and educational establishments to go public and expose similar examples of this unfolding tyranny.
The government is criminalising legitimate dissent under the guise of fighting 'extremism', a word for which it has no definition
By Seumas Milne
February 21, 2009 "The Guardian" -- For most of the past century, Britain's secret state bugged, blacklisted and spied on leftists, trade unionists and peace campaigners, as well as Irish republicans and anyone else regarded as a "subversive" threat to the established order.
That was all supposed to have been brought to a halt in the wake of the end of the cold war in the early 1990s. MI5 now boasts it has ended its counter-subversion work altogether, having other jihadist fish to fry (it will have soon doubled its staffing and budget on the back of the 9/11 backlash).
Whether those claims should be taken at face value must be open to question. But it now turns out that other arms of the secret state have in any case been stepping up to the plate to fill the gap in the market.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) insists that its confidential intelligence unit – reported last week to be now coordinating surveillance and infiltration of "domestic extremists", including anti-war protesters and strikers – is not in fact a new organisation, but has been part of its public order intelligence operations since 1999, liaising with MI5 and its 44 forces' special branch outfits across the country.
But yes, Acpo's spokesman tells me, it is in the business of targeting groups such as those involved in the recent Gaza war protests, trade unionists taking part in secondary industrial action and animal rights organisations – though only if they break the law or "seek to break the law".
Now, that qualification could be used to cover a very wide group of political and industrial activists indeed: including all those students who have been occupying university buildings since the new year in protest at Israel's carnage in the Palestinian territories; all those engineering construction workers who staged mass walkouts at refineries and power stations over the past couple of weeks; and all those who blocked streets – or threw their shoes at police – around the Israeli embassy in London at the height of the Gaza bombardment in January.
Add to that the fact that Acpo, and the government as a whole for that matter, bandies around the term "extremism" without being able to make even a face-saving stab at what it actually means – "there doesn't seem to be a single, commonly agreed definition", Acpo's spokesman concedes – and you have a recipe for a new lease of life for the harassment and criminalisation of legitimate dissent, protest and industrial action.
In case there were any doubt about the kind of thing this intelligence outfit is up to, a recent advertisement for its new boss specified that the unit would be specifically working with government departments, university authorities and private corporations to "remove the threat" of "public disorder that arises from domestic extremism" using "secret data" and "sensitive source material".
But since Acpo operates as a private company outside the Freedom of Information Act – and the budget and staffing of its confidential intelligence unit are, well, confidential – who's going to hold them to genuine account?
It is this kind of blurring of the distinction between political violence and non-violent protest that has seen catch-all anti-terrorist legislation routinely abused in recent years. That's exactly what seems to have happened over the weekend, when police arrested nine people on the M65 motorway near Preston allegedly on their way to join George Galloway's Viva Palestina aid convoy to Gaza.
Security sources said the arrests were in connection with a "potential threat of terrorism in the Middle East" — and it seems they didn't mean a renewed Israeli use of white phosphorus and heavy artillery shells against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip.
Six have already been released, but the operation instantly delivered a "Galloway aid convoy link to terror suspects" headline in yesterday's Mail on Sunday, casting a shadow over the 150-vehicle convoy, including 12 ambulances and a fire engine, which is intended to transport £1m worth of aid and highlight the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The crudely politicised timing of these arrests — "security sources" have been quoted as saying the three still being held had been under surveillance for two months – underlines how easy it is to play anti-democratic political games once the mantras of terrorism and national security have been invoked. But the net can be thrown far wider under the even more meaningless badge of "extremism".
There's no way to know how badly things would have gone at the Berwyn Heights, Maryland home of Cheye and Trinity Calvo if Amir Johnson hadn't shown up when he did.
Johnson, a private on the local police force, was making his accustomed rounds in the neighborhood when he saw a swarm of heavily armed men laying siege to the Calvo home. Inside, Cheye and his mother-in-law, Georgia Porter, were being held face-down at gunpoint with their hands tied behind their backs. The Calvo family's two black Labradors, Chase and Payton, were dead from gunshot wounds. The assailants who killed the dogs were leaving bloody bootprints throughout the home.
This home invasion was, of course, a law enforcement operation, typical of "no-knock" drug raids conducted practically every day across the country. The most significant difference wasn't that Cheye Calvo was completely innocent of involvement with narcotics; innocent people are terrorized and killed by drug raiders all the time. The key distinction here is that Mr. Calvo is Mayor of Berywn Heights. That's one reason why Officer Johnson intervened to help.
"That guy in there is crazy," one of the stormtroopers complained to Johnson as he emerged from the crime scene (that is, the scene of a crime committed under color of state "authority"). "He says he's the Mayor of Berwyn Heights."
"That is the Mayor of Berwyn Heights," Johnson told the assailant, a member of the Prince George's County police department (which has overlapping jurisdiction with the town police). Johnson quickly contacted Berwyn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy to tell him that a SWAT team had just laid waste to the Mayor's home and killed the family's dogs. Glancing around, he couldn't see any evidence of a search warrant. Inquiries about this omission were greeted with the assurance that the document was "en route."
Then, rather than continuing on his daily rounds, Officer Johnson stayed put, in order to make sure that Mayor Calvo and his mother-in-law weren't mysteriously hurt or killed.
"Not that I don't trust the police," Johnson later commented to the Washington Post. "But I wanted to personally witness what [was] going to happen to my mayor, so if they [the SWAT team] say this guy went for a gun – and he didn't – it's not going to happen on my watch."
Roll that comment around in your mind for just a second.
Officer Johnson stayed behind to make sure his mayor wasn't murdered by his fellow police officers. A few days later, long after the raiders failed to find so much as a molecule of evidence to justify their criminal assault on the Calvo home, Chief Murphy publicly expressed exactly the same sentiments. Addressing a rally on behalf of the victims, Murphy pointed out that the SWAT team declined to notify him about the impending raid, which would have permitted the Chief to help them arrange a peaceful, orderly search of the property.
"I never imagined, when I set out to protect people from the crooks and criminals, that I would have to protect them from fellow police officers," Murphy regretfully declared. Granted, it's entirely unfair to consolidate cops and crooks into one undifferentiated group. Police are far more dangerous to innocent people.
Prior to the assault on the Calvo family last July 29, narcotics investigators had discovered that local drug dealers had been shipping drug-laden packages to the addresses of innocent people and then intercepting the packages before the residents picked them up. In mimicry of that tactic, drug investigators deposited a package on the Calvo family's front step, and then sent in a SWAT team to collect it.
Prince George's County Police officials later maintained that the forcible entry – the use of a battering ram to break down the door, followed by the cuffing of Calvo and his mother-in-law, Georgia – was "justified" because Georgia let out a scream when she saw masked, heavily armed men scurrying across the front lawn.
Apparently, being terrified when confronted by state thugs employing terrorist tactics justifies the use of those tactics. In a variation on that rationale, police officials insisted that killing the dogs was the proper course of action because the labs "engaged" the SWAT team by barking at them.
There's no evidence that either dog bit or otherwise harmed or threatened the police; in fact, one of them was shot from behind, which would make it terribly unlikely that the dog had "engaged" the SWAT team. A thorough inspection of the home turned up only one item worth confiscating: The same box of marijuana the narcotics officers had planted on the Calvo family's doorstep. Nobody involved in ordering or executing the raid has been fired, sanctioned, or punished in any way. Georgia continues to show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The Calvo family lost their dogs, and had to spend countless hours scrubbing the bloodstains from their home.
After having their lives thrown into violent disarray by the raid, Cheye and Trinity – with the help of a very astute attorney – had to take pre-emptive measures to protect their reputations following the raid. They got no help at all from the Prince George's County Police. Displaying the familiar mixture of arrogance and contempt that suppurates from police bureaucrats in such circumstances, Chief Melvin C. High and Sheriff Michael Jackson (no, really) refused to apologize to the Calvo family or publicly exonerate them after the police had apprehended the people responsible for the drug package scheme.
As Calvo points out, "police can do what they did to us with impunity. There are no consequences, not for them." But once again, it could have been immeasurably worse. Imagine how the same incident might have turned out had Cheye Calvo not been the mayor, and had Officer Johnson not been willing to keep the SWAT team under surveillance. Johnson himself points out that Calvo could conceivably have been murdered by the uniformed marauders as a way of justifying the raid after the fact. Another possibility is that "evidence" could have easily been "discovered" to justify the seizure of the Calvo family's home for the purpose of forfeiture – which is the entire purpose of such raids in the first place.
This year, Prince George's County expects to spend $2.5 million collected last year through drug-related forfeiture. Drug enforcement raids of the kind that terrorized the Calvo family have no documentable impact on the availability of drugs. They do, however, help generate revenue for local governments. Here's how the racket functions:
Special enforcement units round up small-caliber drug users or dealers for use as informants and provocateurs; these "reliable informants" then provide tips that are used to justify no-knock raids on people identified as drug dealers. This leads to the seizure of cash or valuable assets that can be stolen in the name of "civil asset forfeiture," thereby slopping tax-feeder troughs that may start running low as the current depression unfolds.
Maryland, one of the most government-afflicted states in the Union, has likewise been plagued with this variety of corrupt, predatory "drug enforcement." Just recently, the wire services carried news of a lawsuit filed by Daryl A. Martin, a 35-year-old football coach who was accosted on the streets of Baltimore by an "elite" Special Enforcement Team (SET) of the notorious Baltimore Police Department.
Martin recalls that he was on the way to a tailor shop when he was pulled over and swarmed by several police officers, who – without probable cause or even bothering to supply a reason – searched his car and then subjected him to what amounted to a public strip search.
After frisking Martin's buttocks and genitals through his clothing – while making lewd and disgusting comments – Officer Shakil Moss reportedly forced Martin to strip below the waist, then, after putting on a clear plastic glove, performed a body cavity search in front of a stunned crown of onlookers. Martin, understandably, describes the experience as akin to being raped.
"I think this group of officers randomly pulled over and searched dozens of people a day," comments Martin's attorney, Steven D. Silverman. "If they found something, they altered the statement of charges to make [the search] appear constitutional. If they found nothing, they would send you on your way." Martin's suit against the Baltimore PD is the second to be filed in the wake of the now-disbanded SET's rampage.
Even before the suits were filed and the team was closed down, dozens of cases built on evidence and testimony provided by the SET were thrown out. But so far, none of the officers has been cashiered from the force; instead, they were simply handed new assignments. While relatively uncommon, incidents of this kind are not aberrations; they are the logical, predictable result of the incentive schedule produced by the Regime's "War on Drugs."
Conducting drug raids is immensely lucrative and (official propaganda notwithstanding) exceptionally low-risk. And there are no significant negative career repercussions for most police officers who make mistakes – even when they involve well-respected civic officials like Cheye Calvo. If the Anointed One's "stimulus package" passes intact, we're likely to see a huge escalation in officially sanctioned criminal violence of the kind suffered by Daryl Martin and the Calvo family.
Obama's $900 billion wad of socialist boodle includes $3 billion for the federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program, as well as another $1 billion to revive the Clinton administration's Community Oriented Policing (COPS) program. Both of those initiatives will expand federal subsidies of – and, thereby, federal control over – "local" law enforcement, thereby further diminishing whatever remains of local accountability. The Byrne Grant program is the deadlier of those two subsidies, not merely because it's significantly larger but also because its raison d'être is to fund counter-narcotics programs.
This means more money for criminal gangs in uniform like Baltimore's Special Enforcement Team, or the Campbell County, Tennessee outfit that beat and tortured a small-time drug dealer for several hours to force him to sign a "consent" warrant for the search of his home. It means more money for tax-funded snitches, and for no-knock SWAT raids that will leave innocent people terrified or dead. It appears that we're being introduced to a new variety of Keynesian socialism. First, there was Welfare State Keynesianism, then Military Keynesianism, followed by Reconstruction Keynesianism – you know, the pleasant business of propping up foreign dictators, bombing their countries into rubble, and then ladling out "cost-plus" contracts to politically connected contractors to "reconstruct" those countries. Now we see the advent of Police State Keynesianism.
Byrne funds are disbursed as block grants to the states, which means that they are distributed at the discretion of state governments. Every effort is made to keep this process opaque by burying the specific funding mechanisms as deeply as possible.
The United States Conference of Mayors "Main Street Economic Recovery" Plan offers some useful clues: This wish list of "infrastructure" and "job-building" expenditures contains Byrne Grant requests from cities such as Sunnyvale, California; Hialeah, Florida; Athens, Georgia; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Albany, New York; and Akron, Ohio. Residents of those cities should make preparations for a spike in drug-related police violence.
Although the rest of us may not have the benefit of advance warning, it will be easy to deduce where the Byrne Grant funds are flowing. We'll just follow the trail of blood.
Posted by Michael S. Rozeff at February 7, 2009 05:37 PM
From the Wall Street Journal, first quoting President Obama who addressed a House Democratic retreat: "So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That's the whole point. No seriously. (Laughter.) That's the point. (Applause.)"
The editorial then comments: "So there it is: Mr. Obama is now endorsing a sort of reductionist Keynesianism that argues that any government spending is an economic stimulus. This is so manifestly false that we doubt Mr. Obama really believes it."
But Obama does believe it. He told us so, and it is consistent with other statements of his that display economic illiteracy. Unless he takes a crash course or starts to parrot the economists around him, expect more such statements.
The Army Reserve recruited the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department in its new initiative to partner with public and private sector employers to jointly recruit, train and employ individuals.
Either side can recruit an individual for the program, to let employees get Army training and enhance Army operations.
"If you look at the makeup of the Army Reserve, there's 11,000 military police and correction specialists," said Russell Rice, chief warrant officer of the Army Reserve. "For our employment outreach, we thought we should concentrate on law enforcement because of the number of soldiers we have in this field."
There are slightly more than a million available soldiers the Army could place or find employment for, he said. They are presently working with 50 nationwide and regional companies to do just that.
A series of informational meetings with the D.C. police department's staff led to the agreement, which will be signed July 14.
The Army's initiative came to fruition in April when Inova Healthcare and the American Trucking Association joined the voluntary program.
"Inova jumped on the bandwagon," said Rice. "Just as they have difficulty in hiring and retaining medical health care professionals, so do our civilian health care agencies. So it was a natural fit for both of us."
Recruits enter combat training and individual training to learn medical skills, or whatever skills relate to the particular company, before they work for the partnered employer. The program is also open to military members who want to change their specialty.
It's not a job guarantee, but rather an agreement where the certified soldier would get first notice at job openings among Inova's eight hospitals.
That means D.C.'s police department, which hires 300 police officers per year, could be handed a solider who's graduated from military police school with security clearances.
Since the program is just taking off, the goal of the Inova partnership is 10 recruits this year.
They are picking companies based on the location and career fields possessed by a majority of soldiers. In July, the Army Reserve will also enter into a partnership with Con-way, a trucking firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"So if there's a significant amount of soldiers in heavy construction, for example, we go to look for where those units are in heavy construction and match those with corporations in that area."
By this fall, they hope to have 400 to 500 companies signed up. They are zeroing in on companies in the engineering/construction, personnel administration, information technology, mechanic, supply, chemical, civil affairs fields, medicine, transportation, law and enforcement/corrections fields.
Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.
