America's Police State . . .

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC has mutated into something ugly and carnivorous, not just in its policies with the rest of the world, but in the way it has turned on its poor. It's become a ghastly distortion according to Charles Stross*, who commented on his blog that American police have abandoned Sir Robert Peel's Principles of Policing. As you may know, the London Metropolitan Police was the first professional police force, created in 1829.

These principles are in stark contrast to what we have seen from Ferguson:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
   
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
   
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
   
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
   
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

If this is not re-introduced to American police, Charles sees danger: "even if you’re not a member of one of the cultures on the receiving end of the jackboot today, the fact that the jackboot exists means that it may be used against you in future. Beware of complacency and apathy; even if you think you are protected by privilege, nobody is immune. See also Martin Niemoller."

Martin Niemoller's famous warning:

• First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
• Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
• Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
  
• Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

*Charlie is one of my favorite SF writers; I recommend his oeuvre "The Atrocity Archives", the first in his delightful "Laundry" series. Set in a parallel universe, an Earth identical to ours, with one difference: in the early 30's, Alan Turing discovers that certain mathematical processes produce "magic". Problem is, this "magic" is brain-eating dangerous.

Buster doesn't walk . . .

JUSTICE FOR THE PEOPLE, and Const. “Buster” Babak Andalib-Goortani has a whole new universe of problems. According Tu Thanh Ha's article, “Toronto police officer found guilty of assaulting G20 protester Adam Nobody” in the Globe, 

Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani was convicted in Ontario Court of Justice Thursday in the high-profile case of protester Adam Nobody, whose arrest was captured on video while he was kicked, punched and struck in the face with a knee.

• • •

She also said it was curious that Const. Andalib-Goortani wasn't wearing his name tag or a badge number on him the day of the protests.

The last paragraph is critical, in my opinion, which is that the failure to wear identification was a violation of the Police Services Act of Ontario. Now, “Buster” wasn't the only police officer without visible identification. Maybe, just maybe these bullies didn't all decide to do this all by themselves, they were “encouraged” (nudge, nudge) by somebody? Who was it? And who gave that person the order to beat up on hundreds of Canadian citizens?

Christopher Di Armani has an interesting site with an interesting article, “What Happened to Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani?” Apparently,  “Buster” wasn't always like this. In 2008, the constable rescued a flood victim. Two years later, and we have vicious violence, with “Buster” beating up on a retreating woman, and a battalion of out-of-control stormtroopers. How did this happen? Was it roid rage? Is there a problem with the institution's “psychology”?

Now, we come to Billy the Chief. Is Billy part of the solution, or part of the problem? 

A cavalcade of Kafka . . .

LAVABIT IS OFF-LINE FOR NOW. They are-were a pro-privacy email service long used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. The owner of Lavabit published a letter you should read, in a WIRED article by Kevin Poulson, “Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle”. From the standpoint of civil rights, this well and truly sucks. America, I mourn for your Republic. Justice for the people by the people has been replaced with a solid-state Star Chamber.

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

Another RCMP success story . . .

Eyewitnesses note this woman was punched in the mouth by RCMP.

PUNCHING A WOMAN seems to be RCMP best-practice, when they don't have a Taser handy. Halifax Media Co-op has a report by Miles Howe, "12 more opposed to shale gas arrested as RCMP turn violent on National Aboriginal Day". Apparently the locals don't like exploration for shale gas and are protesting to stop it. Grrrrrrrrr . . .

The Standing Man . . .

Erdem Gunduz (center) stands in Instanbul's Taksim Square early Tuesday. — Petr David Josek/AP

THAT PROTEST SHALL NOT PERISH, from the creativity of the human spirit embodied in a chap name of Erdem Gunduz, who went to Taksim Square, and just stood there, passively, staring at the Ministry of Culture.

According to NPR's "The 'Standing Man' Of Turkey: Act Of Quiet Protest Goes Viral", it's catching, big-time.  Ghandi would be so pleased with the creativity of the human spirit.

For more than six hours Monday night, Erdem Gunduz stood motionless in Taksim Square, passively ignoring any prodding or harassment from police and people passing by.

His unusual form of protest has inspired activists in Turkey and around the world to assume the same pose. He's even become his own meme, as "standing man" (duran adam, in Turkish) supporters upload their own protest photos to Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

For the next G20 protest . . .

HARD TIMES IN TURKEY. People are fed up with encroaching fundamentalism of the current government, as civil rights are being whittled away. So, a protest against the demolition of a park has become much, much more.

Tarihinde Yayımlandı has a blog post you should read, "What is Happenning (sic) in Istanbul?", which outlines the situation. Do check it out. Oppression can bring out true creativity, as you see by this brilliant home-made gas mask, used this weekend.

Four days ago a group of people most of whom did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines. No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out. But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray. They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening the number of protesters multiplied.

Copy copy copy . . .

MICHAEL GEIST has been trying to keep Canada as free as possible, as a place where we can enjoy our digital entertainment. According to him, as of today, we have new copyright laws in effect. Check out his post, "Canadian Copyright Reform In Force: Expanded User Rights Now the Law".

This morning, the majority of Bill C-11, the copyright reform bill, took effect, marking the most significant changes to Canadian copyright law in decades. While there are still some further changes to come (the Internet provider notice-and-notice rules await a consultation and their own regulations, various provisions related to the WIPO Internet treaties await formal ratification of those treaties), all the consumer oriented provisions are now active.

IMHO, one positive aspect is the limitation on penalties for "piracy": if it's non-commercial "piracy", the max penalty is $5,000, unlike those horrific American judgments where some teenager gets a gigantic penalty, often over hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Choices . . .

PRISON POLITICS: on Nov. 2, 1920, Eugene V. Debs received one million votes in the U.S. presidential election while in prison. He was serving a 10 year sentence for his speech in Canton, Ohio against the war. Listen to an excerpt from the speech from Voices of a People's History of the United States. Besides the Wiki, the Debs Foundation has a great site about the man.

The struggle continues . . .

98 YEARS AGO, on April 20, 1914, it was not a good day to be in Ludlow, Colorado, when the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards started shooting a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families, killing between 19 and 25 people. According to Wiki,

Ludlow after the shooting stopped
and the fires were extinguished.

sources vary but all sources include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent. The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, lasting from September 1913 through December 1914.

And this incident, known as the Ludlow Massacre, was merely one of the highlights in the struggle against the fascist plutocrats that were running the American economy. Kind, sensitive people, like Jay Gould, who was seen as the archtype of the Robber Baron. 

During the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886, he hired strikebreakers. According to labor unionists, he said at the time, "I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half."

All over the US, working people were getting a raw deal. In the industrial East, working conditions were lethal, as Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 so graphically showed.

It was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. It was also the second deadliest disaster in New York City – after the burning of the General Slocum on June 15, 1904 – until the destruction of the World Trade Center 90 years later. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling to their deaths.

Out of these challenges and outrages came the relatively benign polity of consensus that we have today. But the Jay Goulds of this world are eternal, only today, they are way, way more dangerous, with computerized money. Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, and Anonymous and WikiLeaks, the dream of an equitable society has not perished. The challenge, for those who care, is to reach the couch potatoes and get the lumpen proletariat involved. With the obesity epidemic we have, there's a lotta lumpen out there.

Even paranoids have enemies . . .

ONE AND A HALF BILLION ROUNDS OF AMMO — and more — have been acquired by various domestic US Government agencies.

That's enough ammo to shoot every American 5 times. Really. According to The Daily Caller's article by Major General Jerry Curry, USA (Ret.), "Who Does The Government Intend To Shoot?", US government agencies of all kinds are in on it:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S.
• • •
If this were only a one time order of ammunition, it could easily be dismissed. But there is a pattern here. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has ordered 46,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition.
 • • •
In the war in Iraq, our military forces expended approximately 70 million rounds per year. In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls. This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen. Is this something we and the Congress should be concerned about?

NOAA? Go figure. Scary stuff, indeed. And it causes one to ponder why. According to George Washington, at ZEROHEDGE, there are covert players at work: a secret government.

This may sound like a conspiracy theory … But remember that Senator Daniel Inouye said in 1987:
There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.



For the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of a secret, unaccountable U.S. military force … Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is an unwieldy private army at the command of the President, and him only. And they conduct military and spy missions all over the world, never receiving formal congressional approval ….

More about JSOC later.

H/T — Helmut, thank-you, sir.

American Spring . . .

AMERICAN SPRING is a blog created by Paul Ellison, a concerned American, which itemizes most of the nefarious activity that Uncle Sugar is up to.

Whether you are a donkey or an elephant, when the music stops and we look around, all of us see the same truth.

They are not working for us. They are working against us.

Fact: Together, they have passed the NDAA, allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans. It has legalized the use of propaganda against us, in order to hide what they have done and what they are doing.

Fact: Together, they have passed HR 347, which makes gathering together in protest a felony offense. It enables an ever more aggressive paramilitary police force to arrest those who dissent openly.

Fact: Together, they cash checks from Wall Street criminals, and allow them to go unpunished for crimes that have brought our nation to the brink of financial ruin.

Fact: Together, they continue to fund a never-ending war machine that has brought both drones and a totalitarian surveillance state to our shores.

Fact: Together, they have sold our country out to their corporate benefactors, while laughing all the way to the bank.

Fact: Together, they have enabled the most invasive surveillance state this side of Orwell.

Fact: Together, they have made sure there will be no dissent.

Fact: Together, they have turned our Congress, our judiciary, our Presidency, into a joke.

Fact: Together, they are profiting from this.

We do not have a political problem, we have a systemic one.

We do not have a political problem, we have a systemic one.  And the system is getting more complex, as covert activities center on "social media" as the way to win hearts and influence minds. That's the view of Project PM, a wiki on the major players. 

The purpose of Project PM's wiki is to provide a centralized, actionable data set regarding the intelligence contracting industry, the PR industry's interface with totalitarian regimes, the mushrooming infosec/"cybersecurity" industry, and other issues constituting threats to human rights, civic transparency, individual privacy, and the health of democratic institutions.

Their areas of interest give an idea of how pervasive the fascist effort is: Romas/COIN,  Endgame Systems, Cubic Corporation, Booz Allen Hamilton, Archimedes Global, In-Q-Tel, TASC, Northrop Grumman, Mantech, SAIC, C5i, Raytheon

It's hard to decide what's the most dangerous to our democracy, when there's items like Operation Earnest Voice. Operation Earnest Voice (OEV) is an ironically-titled program run by CENTCOM which is known to make use of Persona Management software. Persona management entails the use of software by which to facilitate the use of multiple fake online personas, or "sockpuppets," generally for the use of propaganda, disinformation, or as a surveillance method by which to discover details of a human target via social interactions. 

H/T — Daniel, merci.

Surviving society's psychopaths . . .

WHEN THE POLICE CAN'T PROTECT YOU, WHAT DO YOU DO? If you're a politically-correct, 'progressive', you probably die, because guns are nasty. Everybody should know guns are nasty — but so are some people.

When you live in a would-be, could-be, should-be world spun for you by those you follow, it can be hard to realize that ultimately, you are responsible for your own survival. 

THE DAILY BEAST, a progressive blog, has an interesting article by Abigail Pesta, "Do American Women Need Guns? Self-Defense Pro Paxton Quigley Says Yes", contending that as the debate over gun control rages in the wake of the Colorado shootings, that handguns play an important role in society: they stop rape.

“Every 2 minutes, a woman is sexually assaulted in the U.S. There are 207,754 victims of sexual assault each year. Eighty percent are under the age of 30,” she says, citing statistics from the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, or RAINN. “That’s a lot of women walking around who are targets. They’re talking on their cellphones or texting, totally unaware of what’s going on. It’s part of the reason why people get themselves into trouble.”

Then again, when you have people who sincerely believe that the Long Gun Registry actually made Canada safer, it's a difficult topic to discuss.  Years ago, I had a student who had been stabbed over 70 times, and survived. Her perspective is entirely different from the fatuous, who emit brain-farts like "ban bullets", and other brain-dead ideas.

The Vickie Problem . . .

VICKIE'S AT IT AGAIN. Thanks to DAWG'S BLOG, this is brought to your attention: CSIS wants to sit on your PC, Bill Blair's G-20 police are "carding" over a million brown people in Toronto, and Ontario's security forces are swapping data about people their orcs encounter. You should know more: go visit DAWG'S and find out more.  

Thanks for the heads-up.

Blair FAIL . . .

— Billy ponders a river in Egypt —

BILLY, YA DONE GONE AND SCREWED THE POOCH. According to the Toronto Star, "G20 aftermath: Civilian police board barely asked any questions in leadup to summit", Captain Billy was less than efficient:

The report blames the federal government — which gave Toronto police four months to plan an event that typically requires up to two years of preparation — for contributing to the Toronto police’s shortcomings during the summit.

But it also found the police board was largely in the dark about policing plans and G20 operations.

While some board members felt Chief Bill Blair was being “secretive” or withholding operational information from them, Morden concluded the onus was still on the board to seek out the information it needed to ensure proper civilian oversight.

Just wait for Billy and Dalton to start squealing how innocent they are . . . Memo to Billy: time to go, dude, time to go, before you cause more embarrassment to the force that others, brave men like Const. Leslie Maitland gave their lives in service to their citizens. Billy: compared to them, you are a disgusting piece of political flotsam.

More than students . . .

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE, and like Bob Dylan observed, a lot of folks just don't understand, but sometimes, most of the patriots are found in the gang out of uniform. Like Junius wrote, "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures."

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that while Canadians are slow to rile, Canadians don't do "submit" very well. The next election is scheduled for October 19, 2015 — 1,232 days from today, according to DaysUntil. Coincidentally, that's Mother Teresa Day, just so's ya know. With God on our side . . .

Where misogyny rules . . .

FOREIGN POLICY has a fascinating display, worthy of your attention, of just what a raw deal women are given in various parts of the world, in an article by Valerie Hudson, "The Worst Places to Be a Woman: Mapping the places where the war on women is still being fought".

Mapped out for your edification: 1) Discrepancy in Education; 2) Inequity in Family Law/Practice; 3) Governmental Participation by Women; 4) Child Marriage for Girls: Practice and Law; 5) Maternal Mortality; 6) Women's Physical Security; 7) Polygyny; 8) Son Preference and Sex Ratios; and 9) Trafficking in Females. 

In another FP article, Mona Eltahawy asks, "Why Do They Hate Us? The real war on women is in the Middle East." Obviously, God wants it that way.

Evasion under pressure . . .

A monumental idea . . .

A positive step . . .

ACCORDING TO GLENN GREENWALD, at SALON, in an article, "Federal court enjoins NDAA", Judge Katherine Forrest struck a blow for American civil rights. This is a strong first step to fight the legal weasels that brought us Gitmo.

Judge Katherine Forrest

A federal district judge today, the newly-appointed Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York, issued an amazing ruling: one which preliminarily enjoins enforcement of the highly controversial indefinite provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last December. This afternoon’s ruling came as part of a lawsuit brought by seven dissident plaintiffs — including Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Birgitta Jonsdottir — alleging that the NDAA violates ”both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Now, maybe we can do something about those Star Chamber Security Certificates we use in Canada to put people away without trial?

Jon's perspective . . .