Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Conspiracy theory or genuine matter for concern?


The vague language of the amendment [to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012] allows the military to be used against protesters.  In subsection A of Section 1032 it states that the military can be used against people (including U.S. citizens) that “are substantially supporting, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or (B) have engaged in hostilities or have directly supported hostilities in aid of a nation, organization, or person described in subparagraph (A).  The key, vague words are “substantially supporting” “associated forces” “engaged in hostilities” “in aid of a . . . organization or person.”  There is a lot of flexibility in those words and when they apply – no need for probable cause, a trial, jury verdict or sentencing – just on suspicion you get indefinite military detention.
The military’s role in the United States has been growing. In 2002 President Bush established NorthCom, a military command inside the United States based in Colorado with additional bases in Alaska, Florida, Texas, Virginia and the DC area. On October 1, 2008, the 3rd Infantry Division (United States)’s 1st Brigade Combat Team was assigned to U.S. Northern Command, marking the first time an active unit had been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command.

 In 2008, the Pentagon announced plans to deploy 20,000 troops inside the United States, set to be trained by 2011. The change in law in the new Defense Authorization comes at a time of rapidly creeping domestic military expansion.
Could the elites actually see protesters seeking a participatory democracy who challenge concentrated wealth as terrorists?  Well, in a December 2, 2011 a document issued by City of London police entitled a “Terrorism/extremism Update” given to London businesses, the police defined Occupy London as a terrorist group.  In the section on domestic terrorism the Occupy Movement and other critics of capitalism were singled out as terrorists.  As the Guardian reported the document said: “As the worldwide Occupy movement shows no sign of abating, it is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism.” The document went on to say that police had “received a number of hostile reconnaissance reports concerning individuals who would fit the anti-capitalist profile,” and asked businesses to be “vigilant for further sign of occupation activity.”
When the Guardian asked the police about the document rather than apologizing, they defended it saying the “City of London police works with the community to deter and detect terrorist activity and crime in the City in a way that has been identified nationally as good practice . . . We’ve seen crime linked to protests in recent weeks, notably around groups entering office buildings, and with that in mind we continue to brief key trusted partners on activity linked to protests.” While the terrorist label has not been applied to U.S. occupiers, the counterterrorism unitof the NYPD has been used at Zucotti Park.
Read the whole disturbing post at Occupy Washington, DC
Is the Use of the Military Designed for the Occupy Movement?
By Kevin Zeese

Sounds like conspiracy theory, right?

Maybe not. I have been following OccupyMarines (name changed to OccupyOMC af the Marine Corps complained about trademark infringement) for some time, and they have been documenting what has been happening around the country and world that gives one pause.

The conclusion is that the reaction is disproportionate with the threat. Is this merely overreacting or is there something more sinister afoot? There are a lot of questions making the rounds now, and many people on both sides of the political spectrum are concerned for freedom and democracy.


10 comments:

Matt Franko said...

I wouldn't mind seeing the deficit terrorists indefinitely detained.

Peterson could get some good workouts in everyday down at the GITMO gym... Walker could spot him. One can dream.

Tom,

One of the things I was thinking about was the source of funds for these police activities. If the locals were receiving federal dollars under some sort of anti-terror Federal supplemental funding, then they probably HAVE TO use these "military style" cops to deal with the Occupy activities as they are the local units assigned and funded and trained by the Federal dollars.

An acquaintence of mine was a Baltimore city police officer who got assigned to the Federal anti-drug taskforce there and they gave him an actual federal ID/badge and all of his paycheck came from the federal program even though he was still a Baltimore city cop. As such, all he was allowed to do was anti-drug and Baltimore city could not reassign him on a day to day basis.

maybe Bloomberg wants to use all of the federal dollars that he can and since this occupy activity is sort of out of the ordinary for police there, Bloomberg taps the Federal funds (instead of his local tax sources) and sends the para-military style cops in to police these events as they are paid for by the federal funds... then it gets out of hand as that is all the cops have been trained for.... to this extent personnel selection and assignment for these events may be being influenced by the legal sources and uses of federal funds by the local govt recipients.....

Resp,

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, it is pretty clear that cities and municipalities are not paying for all this expensive equipment with local revenue. It is also documented that they have been receiving $, equipement, and training related to the war on drugs, which saw the proliferation of SWAT ops, some of which have gone badly awry when mistakes were made about things as simple as the correct address.

Subsequent to 9/11 and the formation of the DHS, federal participation has not only increased, but operations have been coordinated nationally.

Is there adequate oversight by some ombudsman watching over the public interest and democratic principles, and is there any process for assuring accountability? It seems like what is happening is an end run around judicial process.

Seem to me like a process of out of control. Are we seeing the laying of the foundations for a police state and total surveillance? You'd have to prove to me that we are not, based on the evidence I am seeing.

Politics overlaps with economics in that this equipment and the requisite training are expensive, and lucrative for providers. It looks like the military-industrial complex is expanding its reach domestically in quest of a larger market for its products and services.

I am also gravely concerned with paramilitary groups and mercenary entities like whatever Blackwater calls itself now. Militarizing a domestic security forces is one thing, but introducing military and paramilitary elements into it, or over it, is deadly for democracy.

We can envision the day coming, if it has not come already, when anyone with "anti-capitalist tendencies" will be profiled as a "terrorist" and be treated as such.

beowulf said...

Ex Parte Milligan

a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that the application of military tribunals to citizens when civilian courts are still operating is unconstitutional. It was also controversial because it was one of the first cases after the end of the American Civil War.

The govt's (losing) case was argued by the guy from that era who was usually on the side of the angels, Benjamin Butler (late of the US Army).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Milligan

Matt Franko said...

Beo,

Here is another interesting one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_v._Rumsfeld

"Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, went the furthest in restricting the Executive power of detention. Scalia asserted that based on historical precedent, the government had only two options to detain Hamdi: either Congress must suspend the right to habeas corpus, or Hamdi must be tried under normal criminal law. Scalia wrote that the plurality, though well-meaning, had no basis in law for trying to establish new procedures that would be applicable in a challenge to Hamdi's detention—it was only the job of the Court to declare it unconstitutional and order his release or proper arrest, rather than to invent an acceptable process for detention."

And many on the Left hate Scalia?

Resp,

Matt Franko said...

Bill Black seems to like the GITMO option too:

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/12/dantes-divine-comedy-banksters-edition.html#more


Might agree with the hell options also if I believed in hell ;)

Resp,

Tom Hickey said...

Might agree with the hell options also if I believed in hell ;)

Anyone who thinks that the religious stories of heaven and hell are merely imaginative is correct. But, according to the masters of perennial wisdom, these stories are symbolic of a deep truth about the consequences of intention, choice and action.

Meher Baba summarizes this teaching clearly and straightforwardly in Discourses, Reincarnation and Karma Part II, Heaven and Hell.

While there is accountability, it is not so much about reward and punishment as spiritual progress.

Meher Baba explains: (continued)

Tom Hickey said...

"The fret and fury of immediate responses to the changing situations of earthly life is replaced in life after death by a more leisurely mood, freed from the urgency of immediately needed actions. All the experiences of the earthly career are now available for reflection in a form more vivid than is possible through memory in earthly life. The shots of earthly life have all been taken on the cinematic film of the mind, and it is now time to study the original earthly life through the magnified projections of the filmed record on the screen of subjectivized consciousness.

"Thus the hell state and the heaven state become instrumental in the assimilation of experiences acquired in the earthly phase; and the individualized soul can start its next incarnation in a physical body with all the advantages of digested experience. The lessons learned by the soul through such stocktaking and reflection are confirmed in the mental body by the power of their magnified suffering or happiness. They become, for the next incarnation, an integral part of the intuitive makeup of active consciousness, without in any way involving detailed revival of the individual events of the previous incarnation. The truths absorbed by the mind in the life after death become in the next incarnation a part of inborn wisdom. Developed intuition is consolidated and compressed understanding, distilled through a multitude of diverse experiences gathered in previous lives.

"Different souls start with different degrees of intuitive wisdom as their initial capital for the experiments and adventures of their earthly careers. This intuition may seem to have been the product of past experiences, thus adding to the equipment of the psyche; but it is more truly an unfoldment of what was already latent in the individualized soul. From this deeper point of view, the experiences of earthly life — as well as the reflective and consolidating processes they are subjected to in life after death — are merely instrumental in gradually releasing to the surface the intuitive wisdom already latent in the soul from the very beginning of creation. As is true of the earthly career and its experiences, the states of hell and heaven in the life after death are also integral parts of and incidents in that journey of the individualized soul, which is ultimately meant to reach the Source of all things."

Discourses, pp. 311-312

Matt Franko said...

"All the experiences of the earthly career are now available for reflection in a form more vivid than is possible through memory in earthly life."

Although I think this is not exactly scriptural Tom (I could be wrong and would stand corrected), I often think that what we are going thru here has to be some form of experience that has been put in place to strengthen us at "the next level" so to speak.

I have to say, given an understanding of MMT, or you could say a state currency system, it actually (for me at least) makes it HARDER to watch what is going on around us during these times. The waste. The unnecessary human toll. Human pain and violence in reaction to economic injustice, it makes it harder to experience this as part of humanity, knowing there are reasonable, relatively easy alternative policies we could be putting in place to all but eliminate many of these issues.

These outcomes always bothered me before but I more or less looked at them as inevitable and beyond policy options.

Now it really pisses me off often.

But that said I think we have to be thankful at some level that we have been given this understanding, an understanding that does not come easy for almost everyone else imo.

I've said before that I believe at this point, the total earthly population of people who really understand this stuff (that's us!) is under 1,000 out of a total earth population of now 7B.

This is a gift, (it HAS to be with those numbers) to what end it is not clear to me yet. We really have no power or authority here on earth to see done what we all probably would like to see done. Maybe at "the next level".

Seems like all we can do is to keep pressing forward with the truth for anyone else out there who has also been given ears to hear it, see where it goes.

"and you will know the truth, and the truth will be making you free." John 8:32

reslez said...

One commenter equated police behavior toward protesters with prison guards at a jail riot. That pretty much explains everything you need to know.

Tom Hickey said...

This is a gift, (it HAS to be with those numbers) to what end it is not clear to me yet.

I agree, Matt, and this is one way I read Jesus' parables on stewardship. They are not about money, but "gifts." There are various kinds of gifts that each individual receives that makes every individual unique.

Stewardship is about what we do with these gifts, especially whether we employ them for good or bad. "For good" means selflessly and altruistically, for the larger good. "For bad" means selfishly and a way that advantages ourselves while disadvantaging others, or "hoarding" them by not using them at all, which is a waste.

In this sense no gift is "free," in the sense that it carries responsibilities in addition to bestowing opportunities.