-Justice is Dead in Amerika – Cecily McMillan and the Police State
-U.S. Special Forces, Foreign Troops Practice Invading Tampa
-Sen Rand Paul describing Due Process
May 20, 2014
Harvard Book Store welcomed political commentators Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky for a discussion of Greenwald’s latest book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.
For the first time, Greenwald fits all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity eleven-day trip to Hong Kong, examining the broader implications of the surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA’s unprecedented abuse of power with never-before-seen documents entrusted to him by Snowden himself.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38557.htm
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Justice is Dead in Amerika – Cecily McMillan and the Police State
May 21, 2014 by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Cecily McMillan is an Occupy protester who was seized from behind by a goon thug cop–a goon thug with a long record of abuse of authority–by her boobs. One was badly bruised. Cecily McMillan’s elbow reflexively and instinctively came up, and Cecily was arrested for assaulting a goon thug. The goon thug was not arrested for sexually assaulting a young woman.
False arrests of this sort are common in the US. Indeed, they are more common than justified arrests. The police and the courts are completely corrupted institutions that reek of injustice and evil.
Cecily was locked up in Rikers Island without bail by the judge who sees his role as protecting the abuse of police and prosecutorial power. The judge would not allow evidence in behalf of Cecily to be presented to the jury.
Nevertheless, the jurors, or 75% of them, understood that something was wrong and although they were coerced into convicting the young woman they sent a letter to the judge requesting that no prison time be imposed on Cecily. Nevertheless, the judge for whom all must stand in respect in the courtroom, gave the goon thug’s victim 90 days in prison and 5 years probation. This was Amerika’s sendoff of an idealistic young woman who was about to receive a master’s degree from an important educational education.
I have been concerned as a main focus of my work since the 1990s with American injustice. America’s injustice is a unique kind. American injustice has actually managed to completely destroy the achievements dating from Magna Carta that made law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of the state. Today America is pre-Magna Carta England.
My concern with the destruction of Justice in America was shared by my colleague, Lawrence Stratton. Together in 2000 we produced a book documenting the destruction of the achievement of liberty and the accountability of government to law under the publisher’s title of “The Tyranny of Good Intentions” (our title was, “How The Law Was Lost”). In 2008 a new edition was published.
The book was cited a few times by federal district court judges but had no influence on law schools’ worship of unaccountable executive power or on the appointment of Justice (sic) Department flunkies such as John Yoo and David Barron to prominent University law schools and federal courts. Yoo and Barron are the tyrants who justified in US Justice Department memos torture, despite US and international laws against it, and the murder of US citizens on suspicion alone without due process of law, an obvious violation of the US Constitution.
Judging from the legal arena’s response to our work, justice is no longer the purpose of US law and it is no longer thought necessary for the US government to be accountable to law. To insouciant Americans these might seem like extreme statements, but the conclusion is unavoidable.
In the United States there is no longer law. There is only retribution. Cecily McMillan by her non-violent protest against the looting of America and the world by Wall Street became “an enemy of the people.” The “people,” of course, are the one percent. The 99 percent do not count.
The jury in Cecily’s trial did not count. At least 75% of the jurors understood that they were being coerced into a conviction, which they sought to lighten by requesting the judge not to impose a prison sentence. But the judge represents the repressive state, not justice. The jurors were out to lunch. They had no idea of the corrupt nature of the criminal political system or else they lacked the courage to stand up to it.
This insouciance is true of the bulk of the American population. They are sheeple, unaware that they have been stripped of constitutional protections and that they are propagandized into supporting the evil actions of an unaccountable government. For example, as Gerald Celente demonstrates in the current issue of the Trends Journal, the onslaught of Washington’s propaganda against the Sochi Olympic Games, alleging terror attacks, a filthy city and hotel rooms, unsafe water, and so forth, resulted in a drop in TV ratings for the Olympics and in majorities of Americans acquiring negative attitudes toward Russia and Putin. Thus, when Washington set off the Ukraine crisis, “American minds had already been pre-programmed by propaganda. Facts would not get in the way. The stage for war and hate had been masterfully set.”
As John Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute says,
“If you have been paying attention to the news lately, you may have noticed that the building blocks for a police state are now in place: the surveillance networks, fusion centers and government contractors monitoring what is being said by whom; government databases tracking who poses a potential threat to the government’s power; militarized police, working in conjunction with federal agencies, coordinating with the federal government to round up troublemakers; and the courts which sanction the government’s methods, no matter how unlawful.
“Indeed, the government has been maintaining a growing list of ‘dangerous’ opinions and activities that might classify someone as an enemy of the state — a.k.a. an extremist — a.k.a. terrorist or sympathetic to terrorist activities — and thus qualify you for detention.
“Included in that list of ‘dangerous’ viewpoints are advocating for states’ rights, believing the government to be unnecessary or undesirable, ‘conspiracy theorizing’ (this applies to those who believe 9/11 might have been an inside job), concern about the government’s efforts to build domestic internment camps, opposition to war, organizing for ‘economic justice,’ frustration with ‘mainstream ideologies,’ opposition to abortion, opposition to globalization, and ammunition stockpiling.
“As you can see, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—is a target.”
When a sexually assaulted American citizen can be falsely arrested for assaulting a police officer, brought to trial by a corrupt prosecutor whose false case is endorsed by a corrupt judge and convicted by an insouciant jury, you know that justice is dead in America.
The death of Justice is a huge problem. The US not only has the largest percentage of its population in prison of every country in the world, the US also has the largest absolute number of prison inmates, larger even than “authoritarian” China which has a population four times larger than the US. In China, despite Washington’s endless lies about “human rights abuses,” a citizen has a far lower chance of imprisonment than does a “freedom and democracy” American.
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/21/cecily-mcmillan-and-the-police-state/
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U.S. Special Forces, Foreign Troops Practice Invading Tampa
News groups promise invasion is not “Russians” or “New World Order.”
May 22, 2014 by Mikael Thalen
U.S. Special Forces and commandos from 16 foreign nations practiced “invading” Tampa, Fl. this week during an unprecedented international training exercise.
Conducted outside the Tampa Convention Center Wednesday, residents looked on as service members from every branch of the U.S. military ran drills alongside commandos from Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Jordan, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland and Thailand.
Local newspapers worked to relieve worried residents prior to the exercise, assuring them that the sound of gunshots and low-flying military helicopters was only part of a drill.
“If you see military helicopters flying over downtown Tampa next Tuesday, it’s not a sign that we are under attack by the Russians, the North Koreans or the New World Order,” said The Tampa Tribune.
According to the training scenario, commandos were tasked with rescuing Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn from an “insurgent village” held by “violent extremists.” Helicopters, boats, ground mobility vehicles, and commandos unloaded blank rounds as a 14-man team worked to locate the mayor.
“This was different,” one participant said. “This was a first for me. Usually no one sees what we do.”
Loud pyrotechnics were used as four snipers on the roof of Tampa General Hospital surveyed the mayor’s rescue.
“It was fun,” Buckhorn told reporters. “I love doing this. I love supporting Socom and the men and women that serve there.”
The demonstration was held in conjunction with the fourth International Special Operations Forces conference, where delegates from 84 nations met to strengthen “the Global SOF Network.”
High-ranking members including Army Lt. Gen. Joe Votel discussed several topics including the “nightmare scenario” of “Sunni extremists or extremist organizations” obtaining biological, chemical, radiologic or nuclear weapons.
“I think we have to be concerned about them falling into the hands of people who would have less difficulty employing those and for me that’s why I think this is hugely important,” Votel said while also mentioning the situation in Syria. “I do think we have to be very, very concerned.”
A noticeable increase in domestic urban warfare exercises, like the unannounced 2012 military helicopter drill over Miami that used simulated gunfire, has made many uncomfortable given recent revelations about military training aimed at mainline Americans.
Army troops at Mississippi’s Camp Shelby blew the whistle last October after being told that the American Family Association, a mainline Christian ministry, was a domestic hate group similar to the Ku Klux Klan.
Soldiers at Fort Hood were recently warned that anyone supporting anti-abortion, Christians or Tea Party groups could face disciplinary action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Soldiers were told that such groups presented a major domestic terror threat to the country.
In August 2013, a Department of Defense training manual uncovered by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch labeled supporters of “individual liberties” and “states’ rights” as “extremist.” The manual also warned military personnel against “active participation” with such organizations.
The U.S. Army’s new 300-acre “fake city” in Virginia, where troops allegedly train for foreign combat scenarios, more closely resembles an American city than a foreign one. Complete with a replica Washington D.C. subway and a Baptist church, the training center seems to mirror the shift in training material.
Leaked Marine Corps’ documents provided to Infowars this month showed how a seperate military urban training center in North Carolina was updated to include a Baptist church and farmhouses, transforming it from its original foreign appearance.
Given the fact that a large portion of U.S. troops align themselves with conservative values, the federal government’s actions towards the military is unsurprising. In 2009, former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stood by a report that labeled returning military veterans as the main terror threat.
Also troublesome is the erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the federal government from using the military as domestic law enforcement. In 2008, the Army Times reported on how U.S. troops returning from Iraq were tasked with carrying out “homeland patrols” for “civil unrest and crowd control” support. The article hinted that “Brigade Homeland” may become a permanent fixture on American streets.
That same year, citizens in California were shocked to find troops from the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center in California working at a sobriety checkpoint with the California Highway Patrol.
Attendees of a Kentucky Derby race in 2009 were also stunned when military police working at the event were witnessed detaining a man who ran on the track.
In 2011 it was reported that military police in Florida were detaining criminal suspects off of military bases, in one specific case a man at a Circle K convenience store.
Troops from the Texas State Guard were dispatched for crowd control at the 2012 and 2013 Zilker Kite Festival and were used to usher children onto school buses at the end of the event.
The most troublesome aspect lies in President Obama’s passage of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which granted the military the ability to indefinitely detain any American without charge or trial for the first time in U.S. history. Under the law, any American purportedly connected to terrorism can be held until the “end of the war on terror.”
http://www.infowars.com/u-s-special-forces-foreign-troops-practice-invading-tampa/
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Sen Rand Paul describing Due Process
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