I don't suppose I would have made the effort to post these photographs, had I not posted a few others in the meme of "Officer Friendly."
I most certainly wouldn't have posted them, had I had not dropped on The 45 Most Powerful Photos Of 2013 For the most part, quite an emotional and visual experience and thoroughly recommended.
The images below were not all gleaned from the 2013 gallery, but from the equally viewable previous two years as well.
Apart from the obvious, posted randomly. And they are quite large, right click and open in tag, if you wish.
H/T John @goodinohio (Twitter)
Iconic photo of what must be the most famous pepper-spray incident in the world.
See: "Photoshop Justice" Cop Art: The Rise of the Citizen Satirist Link
I don't know how this snook in, but I shall leave it.
This just in today, obviously from a different source. Maybe the rose wasn't a futile gesture after all.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The photo above though, was from the same source, and I post it here, because it was my own choice of picture for iconic photo 2011.
Not only that, it gives me opportunity to post another personal choice, for iconic photo. Frankie Hughes American Icon
Because it might seem quite familiar, in spite of it being penned nigh two hundred years ago.
It was back in 2010, when I posted, and then proceeded to wax lyrical, about Aldous Huxley's near oracle-like predictions that he proffered in a 1958 interview with Mike Wallace.
What a shame, unlike the Huxley interview, we don't have the luxury of listening to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. I'll wager he sounded quite wonderful in this, dare I call it, rant?
But more's the point, even though Proudhon was raging against the contemporary machine of pre-revolutionary France, his words wouldn't be amiss in describing the present day situation, particularly in the US. So much so in fact, that I'm still undecided as whether I stay with the Snowden-Assange header, or go for: Just another Day in Ameriki.
Anarchy is Order Without Power
Original, though with line breaks added.
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century ― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon pp. 293-294.”
Graphic Glynn Thomas where I have chosen an entirely different photo for the link.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (French 1809 – 1865) was a French politician, the founder of Mutualist philosophy, an economist and a libertarian socialist. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, and is among its most influential theorists. He is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He became a member of the French Parliament after the revolution of 1848 whereupon he referred to himself as a federalist.
Proudhon, who was born in Besançon, was a printer who taught himself Latin in order to better print books in the language. His best-known assertion is that Property is Theft!, contained in his first major work, What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government (Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement), published in 1840. The book's publication attracted the attention of the French authorities. It also attracted the scrutiny of Karl Marx, who started a correspondence with its author. The two influenced each other: they met in Paris while Marx was exiled there. Their friendship finally ended when Marx responded to Proudhon's The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty with the provocatively titled The Poverty of Philosophy. The dispute became one of the sources of the split between the anarchist and Marxian wings of the International Working Men's Association. Some, such as Edmund Wilson, have contended that Marx's attack on Proudhon had its origin in the latter's defense of Karl Grün, whom Marx bitterly disliked, but who had been preparing translations of Proudhon's work.
Proudhon favored workers' associations or co-operatives, as well as individual worker/peasant possession, over private ownership or the nationalization of land and workplaces. He considered social revolution to be achievable in a peaceful manner. In The Confessions of a Revolutionary Proudhon asserted that, Anarchy is Order Without Power, the phrase which much later inspired, in the view of some, the anarchist circled-A symbol, today "one of the most common graffiti on the urban landscape." He unsuccessfully tried to create a national bank, to be funded by what became an abortive attempt at an income tax on capitalists and shareholders. Similar in some respects to a credit union, it would have given interest-free loans.
It's not often I'm stuck for words, but I'm stuck for words. But I shall try to string a few together.
This is not your typical, abusive, violent cop video by any means, it's far worse than anything of that ilk.
For what this short clip exposes, is the ever increasing mindset of the cops, a mindset, that they themselves are the law. Not upholders of law, other than of course, the law according to cops; the ones they just make up as they go along.
As you watch or read what this poor shmuck endured, never loose sight of that mindset, and accompanying attitude, that must be present in these cops and many more like them.. A mind set that says, yeah fuck! we can do this, we can do whatever we choose to do. And why can we do it? Because we're the cops, it's that simple.
But then, just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. It gets much much worse, not two times, but ten times worse. And why does the situation get ten times worse? With the compliance and the collusion of the facility that carried out medical procedures, that wouldn't seem out of place in some of histories most unmentionable regimes.
As I tweeted some minutes ago, this is the must watch video, to end all previous much watch videos.
4 On Your Side investigates traffic stop nightmare
05/11/2013
This 4 On Your Side investigation looks into the actions of police officers and doctors in Southern New Mexico.
A review of medical records, police reports and a federal lawsuit show deputies with the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office, police officers with the City of Deming and medical professionals at the Gila Regional Medical Center made some questionable decisions.
The incident began January 2, 2013 after David Eckert finished shopping at the Wal-Mart in Deming. According to a federal lawsuit, Eckert didn't make a complete stop at a stop sign coming out of the parking lot and was immediately stopped by law enforcement.
Eckert's attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said in an interview with KOB that after law enforcement asked him to step out of the vehicle, he appeared to be clenching his buttocks. Law enforcement thought that was probable cause to suspect that Eckert was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity. While officers detained Eckert, they secured a search warrant from a judge that allowed for an anal cavity search.
The lawsuit claims that Deming Police tried taking Eckert to an emergency room in Deming, but a doctor there refused to perform the anal cavity search citing it was "unethical."
But physicians at the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City agreed to perform the procedure and a few hours later, Eckert was admitted. What Happened
While there, Eckert was subjected to repeated and humiliating forced medical procedures. A review of Eckert's medical records, which he released to KOB, and details in the lawsuit show the following happened:
1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.
Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures.
"If the officers in Hidalgo County and the City of Deming are seeking warrants for anal cavity searches based on how they're standing and the warrant allows doctors at the Gila Hospital of Horrors to go in and do enemas and colonoscopies without consent, then anyone can be seized and that's why the public needs to know about this," Kennedy said.
I had thought to write a few words on this latest perversion, for it can be called nothing other, this latest perversion to come out of America, specifically Texas. But it would appear that I said all that needed saying back in January last year.
What begins immediately below is just as applicable to the latest report as it was to the original, published under the same header.
Texas: How Many Kids Lives Can We Destroy Today?
I have in the past ran a similar story: Texas: Ticket The Children Not but that article didn't come anywhere near this one below, inasmuch that this story delves into the implications of the consequences of receiving a ''ticket'' or being arrested within the Texas school system.
Simply put, if the child holds his hand up in court and pleads guilty to behaving like a child, then his academic career is as good as over. To say nothing of the rest of his life being marred by a criminal conviction.
Or in the case of the very young, primary school kids, who refuse to answer charges, (because they are not legally binding) will find themselves arrested when they turn seventeen, effectively resulting in, the end of a productive life and career.
But it is the same American psyche running through this over-reaction to childhood behaviour, that runs through every walk of American society, punish, punish, punish, destroy all the lives we can. That they do so for trifles, (destroy lives) matters not one iota.
The whole society is perverted and sick, it's on par with the backward theocratic states of the middle east. In fact it's worse, it's a western industrialised nation, it should know better.
When you read on, just take note of the pettiness of some of the ridiculous things that constitute misdemeanours/felonies that are applied to these kids. Stroll on! Just what kind of society is it that does this to its children? link
The crux of both this and the previous article.
The complaint also adds that the problems often don’t end there. If students fail to appear in court, or if their parents can’t afford to pay fines, then the state issues an arrest warrant for them when they turn 17. Thus, these tickets “can follow students past high school into their adult lives with many of the same consequences as a criminal conviction for a more serious offense, including having to report their convictions on applications for college, the military or employment.”
In Texas, Police in Schools Criminalize 300,000 Students Each Year The "good guy with a gun" seems to do a lot more policing than protecting.
By Steven Hsieh
April 12, 2013
In Texas, hundreds of thousands of students are winding up in court for committing very serious offenses such as cursing or farting in class. Some of these so-called dangerous criminals (also known as teenagers) will face arrest and even incarceration, like the honors student who spent a night in jail for skipping class, or the 12-year-old who was arrested for spraying perfume on her neck. These cases have at least one thing in common in that they were carried out by special police officers walking a controversial beat: the hallways and classrooms of public schools.
As political pressure from both sides of the aisle mounts to increase police presence in American schools, evidence suggests adding armed guards will only thrust more disadvantaged youth into the criminal justice system. Civil rights groups say policing our schools will further the institutionalization of what's known as the "school-to-prison pipeline."
To understand the potential consequences of putting police inside public schools, we can take a look at Texas, where students face one of the most robust school-to-prison pipelines in the country. According to the youth advocacy group Texas Appleseed, school officers issued 300,000 criminal citations to students in 2010, some handed to children as young as six years old.
As the New York Times notes, Texas Appleseed and a local NAACP chapter filed a complaint in February against a school district with a particular knack for criminalizing children, especially minorities. The complaint says Bryan Independent School District of Texas’ Brazos County, disproportionately ticketed black students for misdemeanors, potentially violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Black students accounted for 46 percent of tickets issued in 2011 to 2012, despite only making up 21 percent of the student body.
Most of the criminal citations levied against students were for “Class C” misdemeanors, compelling them to miss classes in order to attend court, and often face addition disciplinary action from the district. As the complaint notes, “These students can then face sentences including fines, court costs, community service, probation and mandatory participation in ‘First Offender’ programs.”
The complaint also adds that the problems often don’t end there. If students fail to appear in court, or if their parents can’t afford to pay fines, then the state issues an arrest warrant for them when they turn 17. Thus, these tickets “can follow students past high school into their adult lives with many of the same consequences as a criminal conviction for a more serious offense, including having to report their convictions on applications for college, the military or employment.”
Advocacy groups add that many behavioral problems warranting tickets in Texas schools seem to be rather trivial for something that can lead to a criminal conviction. For example, some “Class C” misdemeanors under the state’s penal code include using profanity, making offensive gestures, creating “by chemical means” an “unreasonable odor” and “making unreasonable noise in a public place” In other words, yelling, farting, wearing Axe body spray and generally being a teenager is officially illegal in Texas.
Many commentators and several Democratic lawmakers scoffed when NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre suggested in the wake of the Newtown shooting that armed guards in schools is “the one thing that would keep people safe,” notoriously adding that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Yet, not long after LaPierre’s press conference, the White House released a plan calling for an additional 1,000 “specially trained police officers that work in schools.” And just last week, an NRA task force released a report fleshing out its proposal to put armed guards in every school. The head of that task force, former GOP Congressman Asa Hutchinson, announced his intentions to run for Arkansas Governor days after the report was released. Go to page two
Needless to say, there is much in a similar vein throughout this blog and can be found under the relative tags.
I do like stories like this, it gives me something to point to when I get fuckwit visitors, leaving their fuckwit comments, extolling the Home of The Brave, Land of the Free, Greatest Nation on Earth nonsense.
Not to mention, One Nation Under Jackboots God.
Arkansas town enacts martial law
Officers with AR-15s will patrol Paragould, stopping everyone out walking for their IDs
By Natasha Lennard
Jan 29, 2013
Following a rise in violent crime in Paragould, an Arkansas town of around 26,000 residents, the mayor and police chief announced that starting this month police in SWAT gear carrying AR-15s would patrol the streets.
“If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, and check for your ID,” police chief Todd Stovall told a December town hall meeting. As if to render the implementation of a visible police state more palatable, Stovall assured residents that police stops would not be based on any profiling: “We’re going to do it to everybody,” he said.
Stovall also told residents he had not consulted an attorney before instituting the plan. HuffPo’s Radley Balko noted that Paragould is not the first town to bring in such measures:
Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn’t uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. “It’s a war,” one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Naiton (not available online). Another said, “If you’re 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you’re not in our computer, then there’s something definitely wrong.”
Balko picked up on interesting detail in Stovall’s comments. The police chief said, “This fear is what’s given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they’re scared, we can do this.” As Balko pointed out, although there was an uptick in violent crime in Paragould, “fear” of crime was used as the pretext to implement martial law — based on such troubling reasoning, there is never not fear in U.S. towns today and so there is never not a pretext to introduce patrolling SWAT teams. Salon
Just in. (and I must go and look for another pearl)
Police state gone wild: Couple facing 60 days in jail for rescuing injured baby deer
by Mike Adams
January 29, 2013
(NaturalNews) An Indiana couple saved a wounded baby deer and nursed it back to life, saving its life and giving it a home. They named it "Little Orphan Dani." When Indiana state officials got word of this courageous act of compassion, they ordered the deer euthanized. (Because government wants to kill everything you love.)
When the deer "escaped" right before it was schedule to be killed -- and yes, I think the couple probably set it free rather than have it killed -- the man and woman were charged with unlawful possession of a deer.
They now face $2,000 in fines and 60 days in jail.
This is yet another example of the government police state gone wild, and it's on top of seemingly countless other stories of similar police state insanity such as armed government raids on raw milk distributors.
US is the Worst Police State in the World – By the Numbers by Glen Ford August 31, 2012
There’s no getting around the fact that the United States is the Mother of All Police States. China can’t compete in the incarceration business. With four times the U.S. population, it imprisons only 70 percent as many people – about the same number as the non-white prison population of the U.S. Even worse, 80,000 U.S. inmates undergo the torture of solitary confinement on any given day.
When U.S. corporate media operatives use the term “police state,” they invariably mean some other country. Even the so-called “liberal” media, from Democracy Now! to the MSNBC menagerie, cannot bring themselves to say “police state” and the “United States” without putting the qualifying words “like” or “becoming” in the middle. The U.S. is behaving “like” a police state, they say, or the U.S. is in danger of “becoming” a police state. But it is never a police state. Since these privileged speakers and writers are not themselves in prison – because what they write and say represents no actual danger to the state – they conclude that a U.S. police state does not, at this time, exist.
Considering the sheer size and social penetration of its police and imprisonment apparatus, the United States is not only a police state, but the biggest police state in the world, by far: the police state against whose dimensions all other police systems on Earth must be measured.
By now, even the most insulated, xenophobic resident of the Nebraska farm belt knows that the U.S. incarcerates more people than any country in the world. He might not know that 25 percent of prison inmates in the world are locked up in the U.S., or that African Americans comprise one out of every eight of the planet’s prisoners. But, that Nebraska farmer is probably aware that America is number one in the prisons business. He probably approves. God bless the police state.
For the American media, including lots of media that claim to be of the Left, it is axiomatic that China is a police state. And maybe, by some standards, it is. But, according to United Nations figures, China is 87th in the world in the proportion of its people who are imprisoned. China is a billion people bigger than the United States – more than four times the population – yet U.S. prisons house in excess of 600,000 more people than China does. The Chinese prison population is just 70 percent of the American Gulag. That’s quite interesting because, non-whites make up about 70 percent of U.S. prisons. That means, the Black, brown, yellow and red populations of U.S. prisons number roughly the same as all of China’s incarcerated persons. Let me emphasize that: The American People of Color Gulag is as large as the entire prison population of China, a country of nearly 1.4 billion people.
However, police states must be measured by conditions behind the bars, as well as raw numbers of inmates. And, by that standard, the American Gulag is even more monstrous.
Civilized people now recognize that solitary confinement is a form of torture. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, reports that solitary confinement beyond 15 days at a stretch crosses the line of torture, yet, as Al Jazeera recently reported, it is typical for hundred of thousands of U.S. prisoners to spend 30 or 60 days in solitary at a stretch. Twenty thousand are held in perpetual isolation in so-called supermax prisons – that is, they exist in a perpetual state of torture. Studies now show that, all told, 80,000 U.S. prisoners are locked up in solitary on any given day. That’s as many tortured people as the entire prison system of Germany, or of England, Scotland and Wales, combined.
If that is not a police state, then no such thing exists on planet Earth. Common Dreams
And if you think my use of the term fascist is a bit strong; read on.
How a mere "procedural" decision blatantly shortchanges justice Herman Schwartz August 20, 2012
This past April, the five conservative Supreme Court Justices gave jail officials the right to strip and search every person arrested and jailed, even if the alleged offense is trivial and there is no reason to suspect danger of any kind. The ruling, in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, compounds the assault on human dignity committed by the Court in another 5-4 decision eleven years ago, in Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, when it authorized a full custodial arrest for even trivial “fine-only” offenses like a temporarily unbuckled seat belt. Our right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures has once again been undermined by a narrow conservative majority concerned more with protecting public officials than with the rights of ordinary Americans.
Florence grew out of a mistake. On March 3, 2005, Albert Florence, an African-American businessman, his pregnant wife and their 4-year-old son, were in the family BMW, when a New Jersey state trooper pulled them over. Florence’s wife was driving; no reason for the stop appears in the record and no citation was ever issued. The trooper ordered Florence, the owner, out of the car. A computer check disclosed that an arrest warrant for civil contempt had once been issued against him for nonpayment of a fine but failed to note that the fine had been paid and the warrant withdrawn.
Florence had been stopped several times before, which he attributed to his being an African-American driving an expensive car. He therefore carried a certificate attesting to the cancellation of the warrant, which he showed to the trooper. Nevertheless, he was handcuffed, arrested and taken to the Burlington County jail. The jail authorities conceded that they had no suspicion of any wrongdoing by Florence apart from the fine. Yet he was still forced to strip, shower with a delousing agent, open his mouth for inspection, hold out his arms and lift his genitals, and turn around so the officer could examine his buttocks.
After six days without appearing before a magistrate as required by law, Florence was transferred to the Essex County jail. There he was again strip-searched, again without any indication that he had done anything wrong, only this time he was required to squat and cough, and to undergo close examination of his ears, nose, mouth, scalp, armpits, inner thighs and other parts of his body. The next day Florence was brought before a judge who, “appalled” at his treatment, ordered his immediate release. Florence sued the two counties and was joined in a class-action by others subjected to the same treatment.
What happened to him could happen to anyone. Had the mother of three at the center of Atwater—who was handcuffed and jailed after she and her children were found to have unbuckled their seatbelts temporarily—been arrested today, she could have also been subjected to a strip search. This is because state penal and traffic codes are stuffed with a vast array of such minor and often trivial offenses for which an arrest can be made wholly at the discretion of police. Among those who joined the class-action lawsuit filed by Florence were people who had been charged with having a noisy muffler, an inoperable headlight, a bald tire, high beams on and a faulty windshield wiper. Others were charged with ignoring a stop sign, improperly backing up, crossing a double line, and parking in a no-parking zone, and two were charged with improperly riding a bicycle and riding without an audible bell. All were stripped and searched.
In DC, the lawsuit notes, a 12-year-old girl was arrested for eating a French fry in Metro station and a driver was arrested for “false pretenses” after backing out of a parking garage. In Kentucky, a woman was charged for failing to appear in traffic court when the judge provided her with the wrong appearance date.
People of color, like Florence, are especially vulnerable to such police tactics, for in many cases, the arrests and subsequent searches are really for the “offenses” of Driving While Black, being in the wrong neighborhood, or talking back to the police. Political protesters like the civil rights workers who marched in the South and the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, especially protesters and demonstrators in hostile settings, are also vulnerable to the abuses made possible by the Florence and Atwater decisions.
The Supreme Court justified both the Atwater and Florence decisions with the argument that police and jail officials need a “bright-line” rule so as not to be subject to personal liability for making an unnecessary arrest or search and not to be discouraged from taking such action when they should. But a bright-line rule for both such situations is readily available: Police should not be authorized to arrest or search someone for a minor fine-only violation except in extraordinary circumstances. The police are in no danger of personal liability if they make a good-faith mistake, because they are entitled to immunity for such mistakes.
No one can dispute a federal appellate court’s characterization of a strip search as “demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, unpleasant, embarrassing, [and] repulsive, signifying degradation and submission.” Even the Supreme Court has said that a search that intrusive “demand[s] its own specific suspicions.” The shock and humiliation suffered by persons subjected to such arrests and searches is aggravated by the fact that they are almost always ordinary citizens who have never been in jail before. In one case a Chicago woman doctor who had been strip-searched afterward suffered paranoia, suicidal feelings and depression and would not undress anywhere but in a closet
The conservative majority in Florence stressed that jails are dangerous places, and therefore the actions of jail officials are entitled to judicial deference. Jails are dangerous—and drug smuggling is indeed a problem. But people like Florence don’t pose a threat, which is why the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs all forbid strip searches of minor offenders except upon reasonable suspicion. Similarly, standards defined by the American Correctional Association—the accrediting body for adult correctional facilities—require a reasonable belief or suspicion of contraband for a strip search.
The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled. The Nation
Anarchists Detained by Counter-Terrorist Police on Return from Swiss Conference [plus French, Spanish translations] 16 August 2012
For the past week, thousands of anarchists from across Europe have been converging in St.Imier, Switzerland to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the founding of the Anarchist international. The gathering took the form of a festival and educational, with music, films and entertainment as well as workshops and discussions.
On returning from the St Imier gathering, two anarchists, one a member of the UK Anarchist Federation, were detained for nearly two hours at Heathrow by SO15 (counter-terrorist) police. During the detention, the anarchists were told that their normal rights did not apply, and had their names, addresses, email addresses, DNA and fingerprints taken. The detained anarchists were also forced to sign forms – which may or may not be legal – waiving their rights to silence and a solicitor. Police also conducted a thorough search of personal possessions, photocopied literature and passports and took information from phones and cameras.
During the detention, the police constantly accused the anarchists of lying about involvement in criminal activity and alleged that they would be conducting follow-up police action against one of the detained anarchists. In addition to this, SO15 officers asked a number of inflammatory, irrelevant and offensive questions, including ‘what would you do if someone raped your mother?’ evidently in an attempt to cause emotional upset and illicit angry or violent responses. One member (28) who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals from the police, said "We were treated like criminals. I told them I went to the congress as I am an amateur journalist and I write articles about activism. They saw my note book, camera and Dictaphone but they said I was lying. One officer said 'You said you are an anarchist, I've seen anarchists on the news, they are violent, throw molotov cocktails and disrupt people’s lives not write articles'".
The counter terrorist officers either didn't know or chose to ignore that, during the first day of the gathering, the International of Anarchist Federations (Of which the UK Anarchist Federation is a member) had issued a statement rejecting all terrorist tactics as a means of achieving an anarchist society.
In contrast to the actions of the UK security forces, the local press and residents in St. Imier reported very positively on the anarchist gathering.
With this incident, we are seeing a further slide towards political policing and the criminalisation of political ideologies. The two detained anarchists have not had any involvement in any illegal or violent activity, or any activity that would concern the counter-terrorist police. As in the past, when Metropolitan police called on people to give information about local anarchists ( Anarchists should be reported, advises Westminster anti-terror police | UK news | The Guardian ), anarchists suffered harassment for their political viewpoint.
As class-struggle anarchists, we believe that the state does little except serve the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary people. This is seen clearly when people who hold views critical of the state are treated as criminals and terrorists. We seek to create a classless society, based on freedom, equality and co-operation. We believe in the capacity of ordinary people to run society themselves, without the interference of bosses or politicians. This incident was not in response to any crime and constitutes repression and criminalisation of a political ideology. afed.org.uk and translations
In the main, and for reasons that matter not, I stopped doing 'police brutality' videos quite sometime ago. That doesn't mean however that there aren't sufficient examples under the sidebar tags of Police and Fascist.
This story of the cops in Anaheim California, is a day or two old. I was in two minds whether to run it or not, because I have to say, I did find it particularly disturbing. Bad enough that the cops feel they have the right to shoot, often in the back, just who they please, but it was the brutality with which the police set about the citizens of the community of Anaheim that was particularly concerning.
The community, involving women and babies and kids, was just that, the community, not the enemy; but watching the cops go into action, you would think that the Berserkers had put in an appearance. Well I suppose they had in a way, they were the ones in uniform, and boy oh boy, did they live up to the name or what?
But watching the footage surrounding the latest shooting* I couldn't help but be reminded of something that I had previously found equally disturbing, the summary execution of a young man on the streets of Rio de Janeiro by the local cops. If the details are to be believed, then this shooting itself is little different than the execution witnessed on the streets of Rio by Ross Kemp in his television series, Gangs.
Now I'm not that naive that I don't think this kind of thing goes on all the time, a dark alley, two in the head, and a throw away gun (do read) in place by the time an investigation appears at the scene. And thanks to Democracy Now, the details of a previous shooting were elucidated, and if that doesn't sound like summary execution, I don't know what does.
The forty two second clip of the Rio shooting, I had originally intended to embed at the end of the post, but perhaps it might be better to lead with the thing, it certainly helps put things in perspective.
*There was a second, unrelated fatal shooting by the Anaheim cops, before the first vic had cooled off. Details in the main clip.
Police Brutality in Anaheim Sparks Outrage After 2 Latinos Shot Dead and Demonstrators Attacked
Democracy Now: Police in the California city of Anaheim are facing allegations of murder and brutality after fatally shooting two Latino men over the weekend and firing rubber bullets at crowds of protesters. On Saturday, Anaheim police shot and killed 24-year-old Manuel Diaz after he reportedly ran away from a group of officers who confronted him in the street. Diaz was unarmed.
Hours after his death, a chaotic scene broke out when police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at a crowd of local residents protesting the shooting. Another Latino resident, Joel Acevedo, was shot dead by police the following day. Police say Acevedo was suspected in a car robbery, but the circumstances around his death remain unconfirmed.
We discuss the situation in Anaheim with Gustavo Arellano, editor of the alternative newspaper, OC Weekly, and Theresa Smith, who has worked with families to call for police accountability in Anaheim since 2009, when officers shot and killed her son, Cesar Cruz, a 35-year-old father of five. "Given the fact that this is the eighttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhth officer-involved shooting within one year in the city of Anaheim ... the community is going to be very upset," Arellano says. "There’s a lot of angry residents, and rightfully so." transcript
Previous related articles, all featuring, and not by accident I suppose, Paul Craig Roberts
I paid a visit to the blog of Alexander Higgins, looking for a Fukushima update, but came away with these three stories.
It all rather makes the $8 Billion (total) expenditure of the present US presidential elections somewhat of an oxymoron don't you think? Because that what is writ below, don't sound much like democracy to me.
And the pay-back from the successful candidate to big business that has fronted that kind of money, even less so.
Mind you, this democracy thing, all it has ever been is an illusion.
Congress Now Trying To Outlaw Reporting On Government Corruption Lawmakers are pushing legislation through Congress that will criminalize reporting on illegal activities and corruption in the US government. July 13, 2012
Just when you thought the United States government couldn’t sink any lower our beloved politicians in Washington have introduced legislation that will criminalize reporting on US government secrets.
What makes this new legislation shocking is that we have seen the US government repeatedly use the “State Secrets” and the “National InSecurity card to suspend the Constitution at will to commit a wide variety of heinous activities from torture and indefinite detention without trial to outright forced drugging of prisoners and even repeated assassination by the government, of people including US citizens, which is now being done on the direction of the United States’ first even assassination czar.
Keeping that in mind the fact that lawmakers are now trying to go after reporters that “publish government secrets” more
~ ~ ~
Obama Gives DHS Authority To Seize ALL US Communications July 16, 2012
President Obama admits last weeks executive order gave the DHS authority to seize all public, private and commercial communication systems.
President Obama has taken the unprecedented step of handing the Department of Homeland Security the power to seize all communication systems in the United States — be they private, public or commercial — under any terms the government deems fit in another mind boggling executive order.
RT originally published a story last week reporting that EPIC and other organizations were crying foul because never in the history of the United States has the government ever been granted to seize private communication systems.
Feds Charge Man As Enemy Combatant Supporting Terrorism For Uploading Youtube Video
Feds Charge Man As Enemy Combatant Supporting Terrorism For Uploading YouTube Video, Subjecting Him To Permanent Imprisonment, Torture, And Lethal Beatings Without A Trial September 2, 2011
Take freedom of speech and other personal liberties — including protections against cruel and unusual punishment, right to face your accuser, and right to trial by jury — and throw them right out the window. All for the crime of uploading a YouTube.
That is what a 24 year old Virginia man, Jubair Ahmad, faces as the feds charge him with providing support for terrorism for allegedly uploading a propaganda video. The crime comes with the dubious distinction that the accused are treated as if they are actually terrorists or as the U.S. government labels them “enemies combatants”. With the declaration of being an enemy combatant the rights and protections engraved into the Constitution with the full force of our founding father’s very own flesh and blood are instantly nullified.
That’s right. The Department of Justice of the great United States of America has charged a Jubair Ahmad, a 24 year old Woodbridge, Virginia man, of providing support for terrorism because he allegedly uploaded a propaganda video to YouTube. The accusation alone instantly classifies the man as an ‘enemy combatant’ and ‘clear and present danger’. Such persons who are a ‘threat to national security’ have absolutely no rights. To make matters worse, businesses and nations aren’t allowed to do business with such so-called ‘terrorists’ or they will be declared a terrorist themselves. That means a lawyer who takes up his case can be charge with providing support for terrorism. That is if the United States government even decides to honor habeas corpus and give the man a trial in the first place. Our beloved supreme court has ruled that ‘enemy combatants’ can be abducted, tortured, assassinated, and even detained for ever without a trial because the constitution does not apply to them. Even worse, the lucky few who are released after being declared innocent have no right to legal recourse because revealing the details of their detention and torture is also a threat to national security.
This is what the ‘war on terror’ has escalated to, more
We Japanese Americans must not forget our wartime internment
The degrading treatment of Japanese American families like mine is the theme of my new musical, Allegiance George Takei 27 April 2012
Seventy years ago, US soldiers bearing bayoneted rifles came marching up to the front door of our family's home in Los Angeles, ordering us out. Our crime was looking like the people who had bombed Pearl Harbor a few months before. I'll never forget that day, nor the tears streaming down my mother's face as we were forcibly removed, herded off like animals, to a nearby race track. There, for weeks, we would live in a filthy horse stable while our "permanent" relocation camp was being constructed thousands of miles away in Arkansas, in a place called Rohwer.
I recently revisited Rohwer. Gone were the sentry towers, armed guards, barbed wire and crudely constructed barracks that defined our lives for many years. The swamp had been drained, the trees chopped down. Only miles and miles of cotton fields. The only thing remaining was the cemetery with two tall monuments.
Because I was a child, I didn't understand the depth of the degradation and deprivation my parents suffered, or how courageous and foresighted my mother had been to smuggle a sewing machine into camp, which permitted her to make modest curtains for our bare quarters. I didn't grasp what a blow the ordeal was to my father's role as provider, as he struggled to keep our family together. The family ate, bathed and did chores along with a whole community, pressed together in the confines of a makeshift camp, in the oppressive heat and mosquito-infested swamps of Arkansas.
Later my family would be shipped to a high-security camp in Tule Lake, California, constructed in a desolate, dry lake bed in the north of the state. Three layers of barbed-wire fences now confined us. Out of principle, my parents had refused to answer yes to a "loyalty" questionnaire the government had promulgated. It had asked whether they would serve in the US army and go wherever ordered, and whether they would swear allegiance to the US government and "forswear" loyalty to the Japanese emperor – as if any had ever sworn such loyalty in the first instance.
Because the government had already taken so much from us, and broken its promise of "liberty and justice for all", how could my parents give them the satisfaction of a forced oath? I still remember the irony of holding my hand to my heart and pledging allegiance to the US flag in the tar-paper barrack schoolroom, even as armed guards watched over us and barbed wire kept us locked inside that prison, without charge, trial or due process.
My father once said: "America is a democracy as great as the people can be, but also as fallible." When I was a teenager, I began to understand better what had been done to us, and to question my own father about it. In one heated exchange, I said to him angrily: "Why didn't you do anything, Daddy? You led us like sheep to slaughter!" And for the first time, I saw the great sadness in his eyes as he said simply,: "Maybe you're right" – and turned and walked from the table, shutting his bedroom door behind him.
I will always regret those words. The tragedy of the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans was not only that it was the greatest violation of our constitutional guarantees, but that it broke apart families and whole communities, and left scars that today remain unhealed, even after the government later apologised and issued reparations. It was almost a half-century too late. President Ronald Reagan only reluctantly signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. It expressed regret for the injustice and paid a token redress of $20,000 to those survivors still alive. My father had already passed away in 1979, never to know of the apology or receive the redress money. I donated the sum to the most fitting institution, the Japanese American National Museum, which tells the story of the experience of Americans of Japanese ancestry.
When I returned to Rohwer this year, it was not in anger or sadness, but with a deep resolve to help ensure such a thing never happens again within our shores. I will soon be appearing in Allegiance, the first piece of American musical theatre to ever address the subject of the internment, which remains one of the darkest and most little-known chapters of our history. We also plan to bring the show to the great stage of Broadway next year, so that the world can hear the story and our profound message: "Never forget, never again." Gruniad
Those that were as little as 1/16 Japanese could be placed in internment camps. There is evidence supporting the argument that the measures were racially motivated, rather than a military necessity. For example, orphaned infants with "one drop of Japanese blood" (as explained in a letter by one official) were included in the program.
(A farmer speaking) "We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men. They came into this valley to work, and they stayed to take over... If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we'd never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we do not want them back when the war ends, either."
Surveillance and data gathering. But we don't have to worry about such things being misused do we? Not in these enlightened times I'm sure.
As early as 1939, when war broke out in Europe and while armed conflict began to rage in East Asia, the FBI and branches of the Department of Justice and the armed forces began to collect information and surveillance on influential members of the Japanese community in the United States.....
.......After the Pearl Harbor attacks, Roosevelt authorized his attorney general to put into motion a plan for the arrest of individuals on the potential enemy alien lists. Armed with a blanket arrest warrant, the FBI seized these men on the eve of December 8, 1941.
One good man.
During World War II, Colorado governor Ralph Lawrence Carr was the only elected official to publicly apologize for the internment of American citizens. The act cost him reelection, but gained him the gratitude of the Japanese American community, such that a statue of him was erected in Sakura Square in Denver's Japantown. japanese americans 1942 wiki.
It's not unknown on occasion that one dismisses a headline out of hand; the type that fall into the 'don't be silly' category, the 'Freddie Star ate my hamster' kind of thing. Equally it was all too easy to dismiss the alleged motto of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as just another silly headline.
Can one really be expected to believe that a security organisation, an official agency of a western industrial nation, actually boasts above its portal, the words, "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." Expect or believe what you wish, unfortunately however it appears to be true, a quick search of the web verifying just that.
"Dominate. Intimidate. Control." It's the kind of business model one might borrow from Heir Himmler's organisation, not quite the Gestapo as yet, I suppose that is to come shortly, but for now let us settle for the Ordnungspolizei, the Order Police. A description that fits the TSA rather well I think.
Heinrich Himmler's ultimate aim was to replace the regular police forces of Germany with a combined racial/state protection corps (Staatsschutzkorps) of pure SS units. Local law enforcement would be undertaken by the Allgemeine-SS with the Waffen-SS providing homeland-security and political-police functions.
Homeland Security, now there's a thing, fancy that popping up.
I have read much this morning, after all, there is much written about the TSA; but for ease I shall keep it to a minimum and keep it to three general topics. The first being the original Guardian article, with just two links featured out of the many in the full piece.
The first link deals in the main, with just how intrusive these searches are on the person. For example:
The ACLU maintains an ever-growing database of these indignities, many so graphic they're illegal to broadcast over public airwaves. Actions that violate FCC standards are embraced by the TSA. "Mary in Texas" reported:
The TSA agent used her hands to feel under and between my breasts. She then rammed her hand up into my crotch until it jammed into my pubic bone ... I was touched in the pubic region in between my labia ... She then moved her hand across my pubic region and down the inner part of my upper thigh to the floor. She repeated this procedure on the other side. I was shocked and broke into tears.
A woman named Chris said:
"In the four times she explored the area where my inner thigh met my crotch, she touched my labia each time, and one pass made contact with my clitoris, through two layers of clothing. I told her I felt humiliated, assaulted and abused ... In my work as a nurse, if I did what the TSA did against a patient's will it would be considered assault and battery, and I did not see how the TSA should have different rules."
The second link takes us to what we would like to dismiss as silly, but unfortunately, truth disallows us that privilege. "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." The sorry record of the Transportation Security Administration is just that, a monumental record of a monumental clusterfuck, the TSA.
Of the last, and independent link, I will say a few words below.
The TSA's Mission Creep is Making the US a Police State
The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports – now it's checkpoints and roadblocks By Jennifer Abel April 21, 2012
Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration started requiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that "If we can't feel your nipples, they must be a bomb", the agency's craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or human rights objections with the mantra "If you don't like it, don't fly!"
This callous disregard for travelers' rights merely paraphrases the words of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano, who shares, with the president, ultimate responsibility for all TSA travesties since 2009. In November 2010, with the groping policy only a few weeks old, Napolitano dismissed complaints by saying "people [who] want to travel by some other means" have that right. (In other words: if you don't like it, don't fly.)
But now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed her desire to expand TSA jurisdiction over all forms of mass transit. In the past year, TSA's snakelike VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have been slithering into more and more bus and train stations – and even running checkpoints on highways – never in response to actual threats, but apparently more in an attempt to live up to the inspirational motto displayed at the TSA's air marshal training center since the agency's inception: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." More the Guardian
And lastly, what it is really all about, conditioning and control: .....The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d’etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time,
VIPR Searches and the American Citizen: 'Dominate. Intimidate. Control.' By John W. Whitehead July 05, 2011
“They’re trying to scare the pants off the American people that we need these things... Fear is a commodity and they’re selling it. The more they can sell it, the more we buy into it. When American people are afraid, they will accept anything.”—Kate Hanni, passengers’ rights advocate
“Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government…Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart.”— Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
.....The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d’etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time, until suddenly you find yourself being subjected to random patdowns and security sweeps during your morning commute to work or quick trip to the shopping mall.....
.....TSA and VIPR searches also indoctrinate children to accept pat-downs, full-body scans, and the like, as a regular component of the relationship between government and its citizens. In this way, police state tactics will gradually grow in acceptance as simply “the way things are.” A child who has been molested by government officials since before he could read is unlikely to question such activities as an unjustified exercise of authority when an adult.... The Rutherford Institute
“See Something Say Something” Campaign Could Allow People to Label ANY AMERICAN a Suspected “Terrorist” … Just Like in Nazi Germany or Stasi East Germany WashingtonsBlog February 12, 2012
List of Actions or Beliefs Which May Get You Labeled a Terrorist Grows Daily
Every American could – literally – be labeled a suspected terrorist under current governmental criteria.
Specifically, the following actions may get a U.S. citizen labeled as a suspected terrorist today:
