Wednesday, 31 December 2008

by Rady Ananda

The American Prison Gulag, already one-half Black, is becoming increasingly co-ed. "The US jailed one in 746 women in 2006, up from one in 100,000 back in 1925. Compared to other nations, the female portion of the prison population is highest in the US - at 9%." Melissa Mummert's film, Perversion of Justice, tells the "story of Hamedah Hasan and her three children" to "exemplify the need to repeal the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, and the mandatory minimum laws."

Perversion of Justice: Gulag America

by Rady Ananda

This article was originally posted at OpEdNews.

In 1925, the US jailed 1 in 100,000 women. In 2006, it jailed 1 in 746. The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act and mandatory minimum sentence laws need to be repealed for the protection of families, communities and society as a whole. The film, Perversion of Justice, highlights the experiences of one family victimized by these laws.

Perversion of Justice

A film by the Reverend Melissa Mummert

Border Walk Productions

Changemaker Award at the 2008 Media That Matters Festival

Run time: 30 minutes Website: www.PerversionOfJustice.com

In Perversion of Justice, filmmaker Melissa Mummert potently calls for prison sentencing reform. She highlights the victimization of one family caused by extreme penalties imposed for peripheral support of small time drug dealers. Examining the social costs, Mummert exposes the rank injustice and provides action links for battling outrageous terms meted for nonviolent crimes.

The story of Hamedah Hasan and her three children exemplify the need to repeal the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, and the mandatory minimum laws. Legal commentators bolster the argument, including the trial judge. The film asserts that the public cost for warehousing nonviolent prisoners is $30,000 a year. A review of legal documents reveals that over a four-year period, the drug selling operation earned $180,000. Divided among the three defendants, that's $15,000 a year in earnings. Society deserves a more judicially and fiscally sane policy in dealing with drug offenders.

Perversion of Justice is perfectly adapted for showing at faith-based and social justice meetings, allowing time for Q&A within a one-hour format. This 8-minute teaser should provoke interest in the 30-minute version that won the Changemaker Award at the 2008 Media That Matters Festival:

No stranger to the US penal system, Mummert watched her father's peace advocacy land him a six-month prison stay. In 1992, he organized a protest of the missile silo sites in Missouri. His crime: planting a white pansy on Air Force soil. With her father's activist background, it is not surprising that Mummert chose to intern at a prison while a student at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley.

While interning as a prison chaplain, Mummert learned of harsh sentences imposed on drug users and small time dealers, and began to research the topic. She pored through several case studies provided by Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Hamedah made the best case for public review: she had no prior run-ins with the law, her actions only peripherally supported small time drug deals, and she is a single parent who was pregnant at the time of sentencing. No better case for leniency could be made.

Mass Incarceration

But compassion is not a hallmark of the US justice system, where female incarceration rates jumped 64% from 1995 to 2006. For a longer view showing a cultural shift toward imprisonment, the US jailed one in 746 women in 2006, up from one in 100,000 back in 1925. Compared to other nations, the female portion of the prison population is highest in the US - at 9%. In 2006, two-thirds of incarcerated women in the US were mothers; and three-fourths had symptoms or a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, and/or received treatment from a mental health professional in 2005. (WAP)

Worse, Hamedah Hasan is black in a nation that universally convicts people of color at rates far above those for whites, and for longer terms. In 2006, the incarceration rate per 100,000 for whites was 409, and 2,468 for blacks. That's an imprisonment rate of nearly 3 in 100 for blacks, or six times higher than for whites. The film mentions Hasan's "Do Not Snitch" value; given these statistics, that value better serves human rights than cooperating with authorities.

Even the form of cocaine most readily available to poor blacks - crack cocaine - receives far harsher sentences than does the powdered form. Hamedah Hasan's case is featured in the most recent issue of Crack the Disparity, which also reports that the Obama-Biden Transition Team "has made elimination of the federal sentencing disparity for crack cocaine offense a key goal on its Agenda for Change" under its Civil Rights agenda.

"In 2006, two-thirds of incarcerated women in the US were mothers."

The Sentencing Project reports that "The rapid growth of women's incarceration - at nearly double the rate for men over the past two decades - is disproportionately due to the war on drugs." The federal Bureau of Prisons generally agrees: "As a result of Federal law enforcement and new legislation that dramatically altered sentencing in the Federal criminal justice system, the 1980s brought a significant increase in the number of Federal inmates. In fact, most of the Bureau's growth from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s was the result of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (which established determinate sentencing, abolished parole, and reduced good time) and mandatory minimum sentences enacted in 1986, 1988, and 1990." This chart graphically shows the marked increase for all inmates (prison and jails) for the past 100 years:

Sources: Justice Policy Institute and PEW Center on the States

Featured in Perversion of Justice, the trial judge in Hamedah's case is no stranger to balking at sentencing guidelines. Richard George Kopf was appointed to the federal bench by George the Elder in 1992. Early this year, he published his Top 10 List of sentencing debacles. Here's one:

"9. You don't need experience in actually sentencing people in order to totally screw up the law of sentencing. It is telling and painfully obvious that not a single Justice ever had to look a federal defendant in the eye while not knowing what law to apply."

Under the federal guidelines, Judge Kopf was required to sentence Hamedah to two life sentences, two 40-year sentences, two 20-year sentences and two more sentences at 5 and 4 years each. He felt awful. "This is the most unfair perversion of justice that I can think of." Pointing out the difference between small time and kingpin drug dealers, he clarifies, "The problem is that we begin to treat the Hamedah Hasans of the world like the Noriegas of the world."

Under new guidelines, he was able to reduce her sentence to 27 years. She appealed for further reduction and Kopf modified her sentence to 12 years. But, zealous prosecutors fought and won a reversal of the 12-year sentence. Now serving in a medium security prison at Victorville (California), Hasan is due to be released in 2016.

A Global Look at Prisons

At 5% of the world's population, the US imprisons a fourth of the 10 million reported prisoners globally. Of 218 nations surveyed by the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS), the US ranks No. 1, far and away jailing more of its citizens than China, which ranks 118; Burma-Myanmar, at 117; and Zimbabwe, at 104. The Pew Center on the States shocked the nation early this year with its widely disseminated and devastating report, 1 in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. Not only does the US have the highest incarceration rate in the world, but also the highest number of all prisoners worldwide.

Prison conditions vary widely across nations. The ICPS summarized data from 2003 through 2006 in a report released this year, International Profile of Women's Prisons. In this detailed study of twenty countries, Germany rises as an advocate of one of the most proactive prison systems in the world. It models what an enlightened view of incarceration means:

"The object of imprisonment is to enable prisoners to lead a life of social responsibility without committing criminal offences. This means that life in penal institutions shall be approximated as far as possible to general living conditions outside [and] that detrimental effects of imprisonment shall be counteracted."

"In separating children from their mothers, the US penal system harms families."

Germany's rehabilitation policy goal is backed up by conditions that support family life in their "open" prisons where children up to age six live with their mothers:

"Mothers live with their children in self contained flats which consist of a kitchen, bathroom, one bedroom and a living room. They do not have the appearance of cells but look more like well-equipped family houses. The building also does not look like a prison but more like a student flat from the outside.

"There are no bars at the windows and every flat has its own balcony. Also, mothers can go outside. According to a prison guard, the prison is very open and there are no fences. Staff do not wear uniforms because they do not want to create distance between themselves and the children."

In stark contrast, the US federal prison system does not allow mothers to keep their newborns. Hamedah gave birth to her third daughter while in federal prison. State prisons also generally do not allow mothers to keep their newborns, but some do for up to three months, and in some venues up to 18 months. In separating children from their mothers, the US penal system harms families, a point stressed in Perversion of Justice.

Like the Wall Street Bailout: Taxpayer Costs and Private Profits

The US penal system has grown into a massive prison industrial complex (PIC) in the past three decades. Over 350 prisons have been built since 1980. In addition to the big firms running private prisons (GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation, Cornell Companies, Inc., etc.), a host of industries feed off incarceration. One blogger posted over 100 companies that do business with prisons. In commenting last year on the growth of the U.S. prison industry, Neal Peirce wrote:

"[A]ny governor faces formidable political obstacles trying to pare back America's vast prison-industrial complex. In California, it's the Correctional Peace Officers Association, an astounding 31,000 members strong.... It has more than 2,000 members earning over $100,000 a year; its contract-guaranteed pension benefits are today superior to those of the state university system.... The three-strikes law is its full-employment act."

The PIC also relies on mass media to promote its growth and expansion. Violent crime has steadily declined over the past 20 years. Yet, cable and network television provide a steady stream of crime and punishment shows, from fiction to infomercials that celebrate the prison industrial complex and a gulag culture. Earlier this month, I received a viral email exemplifying PIC's propaganda, showing several pictures of a modern, shiny new prison and a slate of "facts" comparing prison life to work life. It ends with a wish for imprisonment.

The US prison system is privatized in more than half the states and at the federal level in 14 of its 194 facilities, using cheap prison labor to create products that are sold domestically and overseas. In this comprehensive 1998 article, Eric Schlosser shows how the PIC creates billions of dollars in profits for private corporations while underwriting the costs with public funds, hiring at non-union wages, and avoiding bureaucratic red tape.

Mummert's film only touches on the social impacts of harsh drug sentencing policies, but the PIC is wide open for reform, if not outright abolishment. Social scientists argue that prisons create far more problems for society than other methods of dealing with crime. Many advocate for full voting rights, ending felon disenfranchisement. Some advocate the abolition of prisons, given abuse of prisoners and political corruption that inevitably occur when humans cage humans.

About Media That Matters

If you feel inspired to take action in your community, Media That Matters sells DVD collections for showing films, as well as providing nuts and bolts advice on how to organize screenings. They'll even help publicize your event. Launched in 2001 by Arts Engine and one of the oldest and largest online film festivals, the MTM Film Festival is an annual global showcase of short films with "insight, humor and creativity that make audiences think, laugh and take action on today's most pressing social issues." Each short screened in the festival is accompanied by "Take Action Links," interactive tools that empower audiences to become activists at the click of a button.

"Media That Matters stands apart from other film festivals in that it really engages audiences and makes them feel part of something bigger, whether you're participating at home or at a screening," said Katy Chevigny, co-founder and executive director of Arts Engine. "These are films that not only entertain, but also inspire and motivate."

The eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival launched on May 28th and is currently touring the world. Shorts for a dozen films can be viewed online, covering topics ranging from post-Katrina New Orleans to Argentina workers, to African Hip-Hop, to the disappearance of honey bees, to e-waste, and more.

Buy and show Perversion of Justice to support Mummert's work, and visit her website to support Hamedah Hasan's clemency appeal.

Check out these annotated Prison Resources.

Rady Ananda can be contacted at drum4peace@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Ananda offers special thanks to Roy Walmsley of the International Centre for Prison Studies for his help in clarifying calculation methodology of incarcerated foreigners, and for his incredible work in this field.

New Year's Eve Militarized Security In NYC

The following report is based on information obtained by the 14,000-member National Association of Chiefs of Police:

As New Yorkers and tourists prepare for tonight’s New Year’s Eve celebrations — especially in Manhattan’s Times Square area — law enforcement will be assisted by the citizen soldiers and airmen of the New York National Guard, according to security officials.

Under orders from New York Governor David Paterson, members of the New York Army and Air National Guard will conduct additional security missions and stand ready to respond to city authorities if a man-made or natural emergency occurs.

Within New York City, National Guard soldiers and airmen will conduct increased security operations at Pennsylvania Station on West 34th Street, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson terminal near Times Square, and at LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in coordination with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police.

The National Guard’s 2nd Civil Support Team, a full-time, rapid-response element that detects chemical, biological or radiological hazards, also will provide a detachment in Manhattan to support the New York Police Department. The 22-man detachment, based at the Scotia Air National Guard Base near Schenectady, NY, has worked with New York City police for counterterrorism support operations since the unit’s formation in 2000, according to police officials.

At the New York National Guard headquarters in Latham, N.Y., staff representatives from New York state’s military forces will operate the National Guard’s joint operations center. This command and control installation provides links to the New York State Emergency Management Office and New York State Office of Homeland Security.

The New York National Guard also will provide liaison officers to New York’s emergency management office and the New York City Police Department.

_________________________________
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). In addition, he’s the editor for the House Conservatives Fund’s weblog. He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.

Military Backpeddles on Troops in America

The commander of NORTHCOM, Air Force General Victor E Renuart Jr., recently held a press conference regarding the deployment of troops in America. This new mission has made many in America not only concerned but worried and the General tried to dispel those fears.

Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) was nonplussed because Congress not only had not been briefed but was concerned that the new homeland missions would complicate their job as “steward of the defense budget.” No mention was made about being upset that we now have troops on our streets, only that his job would be made harder.

General Renuart explained that the new task force is “designed” to respond to chemical, biolocal or nuclear attacks and is “not meant to authorize the federal government to enforce martial law.” Such a statement may placate some but note the language - troops on the ground do not authorize martial law, the President does. And the President has not only Public Laws (Military Commissions Act and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act) on the books but Executive Orders under which he can declare an “emergency” and initiate martial law. [Full list of all Executive Orders here/a>.]

The General told the press, “It is not a force designed to go in and enforce laws. The national guard is empowered to do that through the states. This force is designed to go and render assistance and aid, as opposed to create security.” This is the not what was clearly stated in the Army Times article. See here and here for additional information on deployment of troops under NORTHCOM and how the National Guard is being assimilated into the federal military.

Despite his platitudes to the press and assurances to Congress that it would not require significant new funding from Congress, it is clear that the new task force’s deployment in the homeland most certainly is here to restore order in the event of civil unrest due to “unforseen economic collapse.” Unforseen? They are clearly here to prepare for widespread dissent and food riots due to the economic collapse.

So, as has been seen lately around the nation, the troops are engaging in a psychological operation to get the public used to seeing them on the streets. Troops have recently assisted California Highway Patrol at roadblocks supposedly to catch drunk drivers, they have assisted with Border Patrol and in other capacities such as collecting toys for underprivilged children for Christmas. The impression that citizens are supposed to have is “that military are here to help us!” Unfortunately as Alex Jones has said many times on air, this is part of a larger public relations effort before 20,000 troops are here under NORTHCOM.

That the military would feel the need to backpeddle, despite the fact that the reports in mainstream mediahave pushed the approved talking points, shows that they monitor the alternative media and what information is being provided to warn the populace on this issue. It also shows their concern about the increasing number of people who are not comfortable seeing military in full battle gear in their town, as well as the groundswell of people who are buying out the gun shops around the nation.

The military brass are clearly concerned about how the homeland missions are being perceived and that their public relations campaign is not going as well as planned. Look for major incidents in the near future to justify their presence.

Many in law enforcement and the military are deeply patriotic and are not aware of why they are being federalized, much less that it is universal and that they are becoming part of the control grid. One thing that patriots can do to educate the military that you know or happen to see is to give this incredibly powerful document: Operation Vampire Killer (.pdf). It is written by police for police and military and educates them not only about the New World Order, but exhorts them to think deeply about whether or not they will obey the command if and when they are told to disarm or fire upon fellow Americans.

If the police and military refuse to disarm Americans and refuse to fire upon us, the New World Order plan for America is greatly hampered. We must be bold and fearless and get this into the hands of those who have the decision to make.

Police Fatalities for ‘08 Prove CCW Laws No Threat to Cops, Says CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Another bogus argument of gun control extremists - that sensible concealed carry laws create an increased threat to police officers - has been refuted by statistics from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and published by USA Today.

The number of officer fatalities due to gunfire is the lowest in 50 years, noted Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. A report out Monday said that this year, 41 officers have died from gunshot wounds, down 40 percent from the 68 who died by gunfire in 2007. Yet the number of concealed carry permits issued by the states has risen, dramatically in some areas, in the past 12 months.

"Better training and equipment have contributed to this decline," Gottlieb stated, "but it must be noted for the record that growing numbers of legally-armed citizens have not resulted in more police slayings. That has been one of the many lame arguments offered by gun control fanatics over the past few years when they fought against expanded concealed carry rights.

"The death of one police officer is a tragedy," he continued, "but common sense right-to-carry statutes have no relation to the criminal slayings of police officers, and anti-gun rights extremists know it."

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reports that more officers have died in traffic-related incidents than in shootings, same as last year, Gottlieb noted.

"There are, today, more legally-armed citizens than ever before," he commented, "and more privately-owned firearms than ten or even five years ago. More Americans own semiautomatic sport-utility rifles, growing numbers of women own guns for personal protection and more citizens are involved in shooting sports.

"None of these law-abiding citizens pose any threat to public safety, and especially to the safety of our local police," Gottlieb concluded. "We expect the new Congress, and state legislatures around the country, to keep this in perspective as the gun ban lobby mounts new attacks on firearm civil rights in 2009."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

SOURCE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Would They Be Planning to Use Troops Against Americans If They WEREN'T Stealing Our Money?

Political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso Charles Boehmer points out that "The military was not called out during the Great Depression...."

So why is the military planning on how to crush civil protest in regards to the current economic crisis (see this, this, this, this, this and this)?

Is it because the theft - via "bailouts" and other hanky-panky by Treasury, the Fed and others - of hard-earned taxpayer wealth is so obvious that the military expects Americans to revolt?

The other potential explanation is that the military has been told that this financial crisis could be much, much worse than the Great Depression.

So which is it? The obviousness of the theft or the severity of the crisis?

My guess . . . both.

Undercover Narcs Case Wrong House, Shoot Family Dog for Barking, and Arrest Owner for Assault with Deadly Weapon (The Dog)

Plainclothes San Diego cops, without search warrant, surround and surveil home as suspected meth lab, which it turned out not to be. When the family dog goes out to inspect them they shoot it, then arrest home owner for assaulting officers,( who at the time of the shooting still hadn't identified themselves) with a deadly weapon, the dog.

SanDiego CityBeat reports

Mali, a 3-year-old American Staffordshire Terrier, balances her front paws on Demarkus Peeples' thighs, gives him a long look then returns to all fours and takes a walk around the front porch of the North Park house where she lives with her owner, Ross Meyer. She walks back over to Peeples and does it again. She's got sparkly purple polish on her nails.

Two days earlier, Peeples' dog Egypt, also an American Staffordshire Terrier, was shot by San Diego police officers who say the dog came at them in a threatening manner. Egypt was hit three times--in the paw, lower leg and shoulder--and less than an hour later, she was euthanized by San Diego County Animal Control officers, who say Peeples gave them permission to put Egypt down. Peeples said he did no such thing.

"I told them over and over, 'Do not euthanize my dog,'" he said.

"I'm pretty sure she knows" about Egypt's death, Meyer said, commenting on Mali's behavior toward Peeples.

Usually lumped in with Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, or AmStaffs, have a reputation not as fighters but as loyal family pets. Peeples said he never had any problems with Egypt, except a complaint from a neighbor that she barked too loud. Egypt loved to play with Peeples' 7-year-old son and 6-year-old nephew and would sit at the edge of Peeples' front yard, waiting for neighbors to come over to give her treats. Like her dog pal Mali, she often had polish on her nails--Meyer's mom's idea--and a matching collar. She didn't so much like the manicures, but after they were over, "she'd run around with a little pep in her step," Peeples said.

"She was the delightful nuisance of the neighborhood," said Chris Victor, who lives across the street from Peeples. "She'd see you and she'd wag from head to toe."

But for all their friendliness, AmStaffs are inclined to protect their owners and property, which could be the reason Egypt went running toward the cops.

Around noon on Tuesday, Dec. 2, Peeples was watching TV at home when he heard a knock at the front door. When he looked out the door's top window, he saw a group of men standing on his porch wearing jeans and T-shirts, a couple of them looking a little ratty. To get a better look, he went to a side window and peeked through the drawn blinds. "Honestly, they looked like they were transients," he said.

The men, it ends up, were undercover narcotics officers who were there on a complaint about drug activity at that address--Peeples was later told that it had to do with a "chemical smell." Peeples said the men--he estimates there were six--never announced who they were.

He decided not to open the door and watched as two broke off from the group and walked up the driveway that runs alongside the one-story bungalow he shares with his mom. The men opened a gate leading to the backyard and walked up to the back door. They started knocking and yelling "Hello?" through the locked security door, Peeples recalled.

Peeples was standing in the doorway of a front bedroom where he could see the men but they couldn't see him. "It looked like they were trying to case my house," Peeples said. Egypt ran to the security door and started to bark at the strangers.

Eventually the two men left the back door and returned to the front of the house. Peeples opened the back door to take a look around; when he did, Egypt ran out. Normally, she'd stop at the backyard gate, he said, but the men had left the gate's door open. With nothing to stop her, Egypt went running down the driveway and Peeples went after her. He heard gunshots and saw two men with guns drawn.

Wounded, Egypt ran to the backyard. The men pulled out their badges, told Peeples they were undercover narcotics agents, handcuffed him and told him he was being charged with assault with a deadly weapon. A police cruiser pulled up, and Peeples was stuffed in the back. "Charge him with everything you can charge him with," he remembers one of the officers saying.

San Diego Police Department spokesperson Monica Muñoz confirmed that Egypt didn't attack the officers, but she said they were within policy to shoot her.

"The animal was charging the officers," she said. "They weren't going to wait to see if [she] was actually going to bite them."

Muñoz disputed Peeples' claim that there were six officers, saying that narcotics officers work in teams of four. As to their attire--Peeples said he would have opened the door immediately and kept Egypt at bay if he saw a uniformed officer at his door--Muñoz said that's not the way narcotics officers operate.

"Narcotics teams work undercover, work in plainclothes," she said. She referred to what they were doing as a "knock-and-talk" and confirmed that officers didn't have a search warrant. "They didn't do any surveillance.... They went out to check out the complaint."

Mike Marrinan, a San Diego attorney who specializes in police use-of-force cases, questioned the officers' decisions, starting with having two undercover cops enter an enclosed backyard.

"People have an expectation of privacy in their backyard that they might not have in their front," Marrinan said. And, obviously, leaving the gate open was a mistake, Marrinan noted. Peeples told CityBeat that if the officers had closed the gate, Egypt would never have run out.

Even more troubling, Marrinan said, is the fact that officers were so quick to draw their weapons in a residential area. Meyer, Peeples' neighbor, said he heard five shots. According to a police dispatch log, a 911 call reported four or five shots.

"Bullets can ricochet," Marrinan said. "You've got one relatively small dog, and we're shooting our guns five times?"
Handcuffed and in the back of the police cruiser, Peeples watched as an animal-control officer led Egypt, covered in blood, out from the backyard. From the trail of blood she left behind, Peeples later determined that Egypt had run up to the back door and then took refuge under some shrubs. Peeple's was approached by an animal-control officer who asked for permission to put Egypt to sleep, telling him it was the humane thing to do.

Animal Control spokesperson Dan DeSousa said Peeples' verbal authorization to euthanize Egypt was witnessed by a second officer, but Peeples insists he never gave permission. "Do not kill my dog; do everything you can to save my dog," he remembers yelling. When he saw Chris Victor, his neighbor, he asked him to make sure Egypt was kept alive. Victor said he called animal control to let them know he'd cover any cost for Egypt's care, but by the time his call got through, Egypt had been euthanized. DeSousa said the dog was put down immediately after arriving.

Though the assault charge against Peeples was dropped, Muñoz said police have filed misdemeanor charges against him with the San Diego City Attorney's office, including not having a dog license, endangering the public's safety and possession of marijuana. A search of Peeples' garage, OK'd by his mom, turned up a scale and a tiny amount of marijuana so old that it disintegrated upon contact.

Peeples went to pick up Egypt from animal control last Thursday. Victor and Meyer went with him. She was handed over in a clear plastic bag.

"They didn't know she was a sweetheart," Victor said. "Had they said 'sit,' she would have sat."

Thanks to the Agitator

Role of law enforcement rating developing

By Amy McCullough - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 29, 2008 11:38:55 EST

As the Coast Guard’s four new master chief maritime enforcement specialists transition into their new roles, many questions remain about the direction of the new rating and its role in the Coast Guard. But few question the necessity of a law enforcement-focused specialty in the post-Sept. 11 world.

Commandant Adm. Thad Allen announced the three active-duty billets and one reserve master chief billet — the first-ever MEs — during a ceremony Dec. 16 at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington. The decision came six months after the new rating was announced in a servicewide message.

The maritime enforcement specialists rating, slated for full implementation in January 2010, is expected to absorb nearly all of the 1,200 reserve-only port security specialists. Officials estimate the rating will include 600 to 1,000 active-duty members and 600 to 1,200 reservists, Lt. Clayton Beal, ME implementation project manager, has said. Besides the port security specialists, the rest of the ME rating will be made up of lateral movers from other job fields.

The first members of the new rating are MECM Gordon Muse, rating force manager; MECM Steven Lowry, non-resident course writer; MECM Randy Krahn, ME A-School chief; and MECM Sam Allred, who is the port security rating force manager.

“We manage the bulk of our people through ratings, and our existing personnel system could not effectively support this capability without one. I believe the creation of this rating is the single most important action the Coast Guard needed to maintain expertise and operate these units’ [high-end tactical capabilities] safely,” Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Charles “Skip” Bowen wrote in a guest post on the commandant’s blog.

As the Coast Guard’s maritime security responsibilities evolved, Coast Guardsmen throughout the service saw an increase in collateral duty, including boardings and other law enforcement activities. For some, the collateral duty occupied close to 100 percent of their workload. It is likely they will be the ones to make the lateral move to the new rating.

That’s not to say the collateral duty will no longer exist, Bowen wrote.

“One question is frequently asked, ‘Will MEs take over most of the Coast Guard boarding activities?’ The answer is absolutely not,” Bowen wrote in the blog post.

While various ratings will continue to conduct boardings, canine handlers eventually will be fully integrated into the ME rating. As of now, any rating can train to become a canine handler.

But the biggest effect may be on the reserve force. The reserve-only port security specialist previously was the service’s only law enforcement rating, so anyone interested in joining the Coast Guard with a law enforcement focus had to consider another career or go into the reserve, Allred said.

Those reservists who did go into the port security rating often had problems integrating into the active-duty workforce during weekends.

“When we went into drill weekends, there was never anyone there that understood totally our rating. We were dealing with gunner’s mates, boatswain’s mates, who also were dealing with law enforcement,” Allred said. “Now when we go in, we’re on equal terms as far as the terminology, the skill sets. We’re one family.”

The ME billet locations are still under consideration, but Bowen said it is unlikely many of the “law enforcement focused stations will have more than one.”

Coast Guardsmen interested in making the transition should look for a solicitation message expected to be released in July. Selections are expected to be announced in November, Beal said.

Beal said there also are discussions underway to create a parallel career path for officers or establish a corresponding chief warrant officer specialty for the law enforcement rating.

“On the officer side, we are still in the preliminary discussions. We need to find out what is the impact of the new rating. We expect this to be a period of growth for the Coast Guard,” Beal said. “It’s going to take us a few years to get all of our ME billets populated, then we can start to get a better feel for the overarching impacts for the service as a whole.”

Northcom Combat Team Conducts “Humanitarian Support” Exercise in Maryland

Infowars
December 28, 2008

The Armed Forces Press Service has initiated a propaganda campaign designed to convince the American people that deploying the 3rd Infantry Division in the United States in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is a good thing. The propaganda piece appeared on the Hinesville, Georgia, Coastal Courier’s website on December 26.

“The first active-duty unit dedicated to supporting U.S. civilian authorities in the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack recently wrapped up three days of intensive training its members hope they never have to apply in real life,” Donna Miles reports for the Armed Forces Press Service. “Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team got hands-on training in skills they would depend on to provide humanitarian support during a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive incident, known here as a CBRNE.”

In order to portray the military as humanitarian saviors, the Armed Forces Press Service included a photo of a soldier wielding the “jaws of life” during an exercise that included “buddie teams” recently returned from Iraq’s Anbar province removing mannequins from the rubble of a collapsed building.

Earlier this month, Branson Hunter, writing for the Big Bear Observation Post blog, reported on the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center and the California Highway Patrol working together “in a joint effort to reduce accidents and drinking and driving” in San Bernardino County, California, a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 16, 1878. Infowars covered the story in-depth.

On October 1, 2008, the U.S. Army announced its 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team will be under the day-to-day control of the Northern Command, ostensibly “on call” to respond to emergencies and disasters. The recent exercise staged out of the Naval Support facility located at Indian Head, Maryland, is likely only the first of many such exercises that will receive media coverage in order to acclimate the American people to the high profile presence of soldiers on the streets under the control of Northcom.

Prior to this, in May, 2007, Northcom announced its Ardent Sentry-Northern Edge ‘07 (ASNE) exercise. “ASNE ‘07 is a significant event and includes several firsts, including the actual deployment of and cooperation between more than 3,000 state, local and federal responders with more than 2,000 active-duty troops in Indiana,” the Northcom website explained. “The exercise also features the first deployment of the CCMRF, and DSCA cooperation between USNORTHCOM, deployed units, local, state and federal responders and reflects the successful evolution of interagency support and response which has been developing since the formation of the command in 2002.”

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates added yet another dimension to this incremental domestic militarization when he ordered the Pentagon “to conduct a broad review to determine whether the military, National Guard and Reserve can adequately deal with domestic disasters and whether they have the training and equipment to defend the homeland,” according to the Associated Press. According to a report issued by the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, the Pentagon “must use the nation’s citizen soldiers to create an operational force that would be fully trained, equipped and ready to defend the nation, respond to crises and supplement the active duty troops in combat.”

Gates’ review and the deployment of the battle-hardened 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team under Northcom control for “domestic operations” follows the passage of the Defense Authorization Act of 2006 and the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. Section 1076 of the Warner bill changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from “Insurrection Act” to “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act.” The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition,” the latter not defined or limited.

As Jeff Stein, CQ National Security editor, wrote at the time, the Warner bill “virtually invites the White House to declare federal martial law, a fact noted by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt. “The changes to the Insurrection Act will allow the President to use the military, including the National Guard, to carry out law enforcement activities without the consent of a governor,” Leahy said.

The “exercise” in Maryland is not only designed to acclimate the American people to the prospect of martial law and the presence of troops on the streets, but is also designed to condition the troops to believe their mission includes domestic “humanitarian” operations. “I can’t think of a more noble mission than saving American lives at home,” Col. Roger Cloutier, who commands the 1st Brigade “Raiders,” told the Armed Forces Press Service. “Every single soldier and Marine here takes this very personally. You can see it on the faces of my soldiers.”

Unfortunately, it would appear the soldiers under the command of Col. Cloutier are ignorant of the fact that the founders were steadfastly opposed to standing armies under the command of an expanded executive. “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” wrote James Madison. “The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”

America’s Immigration ‘Concentration Camps’ — A Growing ‘Prison-Industrial Complex’

The prison-industrial complex refers to interest groups that represent organizations that do business in correctional facilities, such as prison guard unions, construction companies, and surveillance technology vendors, and to the belief that these actors may be more concerned with making profits than actually rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates….[Read More]

City of Immigrants Fills Jail Cells With Its Own

Writes: NINA BERNSTEIN — | CLICK FOR PICTURES | THE “IMMIGRANT GOLD RUSH” - THE PROFIT MOTIVE BEHIND IMMIGRANT DETENTION [PDF Document] |

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Few in this threadbare little mill town gave much thought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jail beside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded and added barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, its name stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored.

Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the public charter school; a woman who mopped floors in a Providence courthouse.

After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt — only blocks from home, but in a separate world.

In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime — people caught in the nation’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal into an expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propelling detainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.

If anything, the people of Central Falls saw Wyatt as the economic engine that city fathers had promised, a steady source of jobs and federal money to pay for services like police and fire protection. Even that, it turns out, was an illusion.

Wyatt offers a rare look into the fastest-growing, least-examined type of incarceration in America, an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work.

Last spring, The New York Times set out to examine this small city of 19,000 and its big detention center as a microcosm of the nation’s new relationship with immigration detention, which is now sweeping up not just recent border-jumpers and convicted felons but foreign-born residents with strong ties to places like Central Falls. Wyatt, nationally accredited, clean and modern, seemed like one of the better jails in the system, a patchwork of county lockups, private prisons and federal detention centers where government investigations and the news media have recently documented substandard, sometimes lethal, conditions.

But last summer, a detainee died in Wyatt’s custody. Immigration authorities investigating the death removed all immigration detainees this month — along with the $101.76 a day the federal government paid the jail for each one. In Central Falls, where many families have members without papers, a state campaign against illegal immigrants spread fear that also took a toll: People went into hiding and businesses lost Latino customers in droves. Slowly, the city awoke to its role in the detention system, and to the pitfalls of the bargain it had struck.

In a sinking economy, immigration detention is a rare growth industry. Congress has doubled annual spending on it in the last four years, to $2.4 billion approved in October as part of $5.9 billion allotted for immigration enforcement through next September — even more than the Bush administration had requested.

Seeking a slice of that bounty, communities like Farmville, Va., and Pahrump, Nev., are signing up with developers of new detention centers. Jails from New England to New Mexico have already made the crackdown pay off — for the private companies that dominate the industry, for some investors and, at least in theory, for places like Central Falls, a city so strapped that the state pays for its schools.

Here, a specially created municipal corporation built the jail in the early 1990s to hold federal inmates, and last year more than doubled its size. As the City Council president, William Benson Jr., put it, “The more inmates they have, the more money we get.”

Yet in a community whose 1.3 square miles are said to be too small for secrets — “If you sneeze on Washington Street, someone on Pine Street says, ‘Gesundheit,’ ” Mr. Benson said — city officials, overwhelmingly non-Latino, seemed uninformed about who those inmates were. “Nobody knows exactly who’s down there,” he said. “I hear some are Arab terrorists.”

The mystery is in some ways understandable. Though immigration detainees made up one-third of the daily population and a majority of the 4,200 men and women who moved through Wyatt’s 722 beds in a year, most were from other states, and those from Rhode Island did not remain long: Immigration and Customs Enforcement typically transferred them within a week.

Some were legal immigrants who had served time for serious crimes. But increasingly they were the kind of people who in the past would not have been arrested — people without papers, similar to some of the people who play, cheer and live in Wyatt’s shadow. Sometimes the same people.

Anthony Ventetuolo Jr., one of Wyatt’s developers and now the jail’s chief executive, said that who the inmates were made no difference to the jail, which was run like a business, under strict standards. “I’m not interested in getting involved in the politics of immigration,” he said. “All we do is detain people that our clients tell us to detain.”

Swallowed by the System

Over 10 years, Maynor Cante, 26, hardly glanced at the jail he passed as he hurried between home, two jobs and St. Matthew’s Church, where he led a prayer group. ……CONTINUED HERE

| READ FULL ARTICLE HERE |

Homeland Security: Respect civil rights

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Americans have a right to move about without fear of being groundlessly stopped by law enforcement. As far as we know, that constitutional right applies to all Americans, not just the minority who live far removed from the nation's borders.

In what is proving to be a sweeping Bush administration security initiative, the Department of Homeland Security has expanded use of its authority to operate within 100 miles of the border. That has come to include increasingly frequent use of roadblocks in Western Washington.

Much of the activity has occurred around Bellingham and Port Angeles. As the Seattle P-I's Paul Shukovsky reported, it has become routine to check an intercity bus on the Olympic Peninsula at least weekly, subjecting each passenger to questioning about his or her citizenship papers. The Border Patrol maintains it could exercise its authority in Seattle, as well.

Indeed, by American Civil Liberties Union calculations based on U.S. Census Bureau data, nearly two-thirds of Americans live within 100 miles of either a land border or the coast. That alone ought to show why it's important that the ACLU plans to test the continuing expansion of border-related powers in court.

There's also the matter of priorities and effectiveness. Just last month, U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan had to tell the Border Patrol his office didn't want to see any more small marijuana possession cases from the roadblocks.

A disabled veteran said that despite Sullivan's decision to drop charges related to his use of medical marijuana, he remained shaken. As with so many Bush administration security policies, this seems to be neither effective nor respectful of fundamental rights. If the Obama administration doesn't make changes, the courts must sort out the matter.

Warfare and the Terms of Engagement

(Excerpt from an essay in “Abolition Now: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex,” co-published by Critical Resistance and AK Press)
—by Dylan Rodríguez

We are collectively witnessing, surviving, and working in a time of unprecedented state-organized human capture and state-produced physical/social/psychic alienation, from the 2.5 million imprisoned by the domestic and global US prison industrial complex to the profound forms of informal apartheid and proto-apartheid that are being instantiated in cities, suburbs, and rural areas all over the country. This condition presents a profound crisis—and political possibility—for people struggling against the white supremacist state, which continues to institutionalize the social liquidation and physical evisceration of Black, brown, and aboriginal peoples nearby and far away. If we are to approach racism, neoliberalism, militarism/militarization, and US state hegemony and domination in a legitimately “global” way, it is nothing short of unconscionable to expend significant political energy protesting American wars elsewhere (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) when there are overlapping, and no less profoundly oppressive, declarations of and mobilizations for war in our very own, most intimate and nearby geographies of “home.”

This time of crisis and emergency necessitates a critical examination of the political and institutional logics that structure so much of the US progressive left, and particularly the “establishment” left that is tethered (for better and worse) to the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC). I have defined the NPIC elsewhere as the set of symbiotic relationships that link political and financial technologies of state and owning class social control with surveillance over public political discourse, including and especially emergent progressive and leftist social movements. This definition is most focused on the industrialized incorporation, accelerated since the 1970s, of pro-state liberal and progressive campaigns and movements into a spectrum of government-proctored non-profit organizations.

It is in the context of the formation of the NPIC as a political power structure that I wish to address, with a less-than-subtle sense of alarm, a peculiar and disturbing politics of assumption that often structures, disciplines, and actively shapes the work of even the most progressive movements and organizations within the US establishment left (of which I too am a part, for better and worse): that is, the left’s willingness to fundamentally tolerate — and accompanying unwillingness to abolish — the institutionalized dehumanization of the contemporary policing and imprisonment apparatus in its most localized, unremarkable, and hence “normal” manifestations within the domestic “homeland” of the Homeland Security state.

Behind the din of progressive and liberal reformist struggles over public policy, civil liberties, and law, and beneath the infrequent mobilizations of activity to defend against the next onslaught of racist, classist, ageist, and misogynist criminalization, there is an unspoken politics of assumption that takes for granted the mystified permanence of domestic warfare as a constant production of targeted and massive suffering, guided by the logic of Black, brown, and indigenous subjection to the expediencies and essential violence of the American (global) nation-building project. To put it differently: despite the unprecedented forms of imprisonment, social and political repression, and violent policing that compose the mosaic of our historical time, the establishment left (within and perhaps beyond the US) does not care to envision, much less politically prioritize, the abolition of US domestic warfare and its structuring white supremacist social logic as its most urgent task of the present and future. Our non-profit left, in particular, seems content to engage in desperate (and usually well-intentioned) attempts to manage the casualties of domestic warfare, foregoing the urgency of an abolitionist praxis that openly, critically, and radically addresses the moral, cultural, and political premises of these wars.

Not long from now, generations will emerge from the organic accumulation of rage, suffering, social alienation, and (we hope) politically principled rebellion against this living apocalypse and pose to us some rudimentary questions of radical accountability: How were we able to accommodate, and even culturally and politically normalize the strategic, explicit, and openly racist technologies of state violence that effectively socially neutralized and frequently liquidated entire nearby populations of our people, given that ours are the very same populations that have historically struggled to survive and overthrow such “classical” structures of dominance as colonialism, frontier conquest, racial slavery, and other genocides? In a somewhat more intimate sense, how could we live with ourselves in this domestic state of emergency, and why did we seem to generally forfeit the creative possibilities of radically challenging, dislodging, and transforming the ideological and institutional premises of this condition of domestic warfare in favor of short-term, “winnable” policy reforms? (For example, why did we choose to formulate and tolerate a “progressive” political language that reinforced dominant racist notions of “criminality” in the process of trying to discredit the legal basis of “Three Strikes” laws?) What were the fundamental concerns of our progressive organizations and movements during this time, and were they willing to comprehend and galvanize an effective, or even viable opposition to the white supremacist state’s terms of engagement (that is, warfare)? This radical accountability reflects a variation on anticolonial liberation theorist Frantz Fanon’s memorable statement to his own peers, comrades, and nemeses:

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity. In the underdeveloped countries preceding generations have simultaneously resisted the insidious agenda of colonialism and paved the way for the emergence of the current struggles. Now that we are in the heat of combat, we must shed the habit of decrying the efforts of our forefathers or feigning incomprehension at their silence or passiveness.”

Lest we fall victim to a certain political nostalgia that is often induced by such illuminating Fanonist exhortations, we ought to clarify the premises of the social “mission” that our generation of US based progressive organizing has undertaken.

In the vicinity of the constantly retrenching social welfare apparatuses of the US state, much of the most urgent and immediate work of community-based organizing has revolved around service provision. Importantly, this pragmatic focus also builds a certain progressive ethic of voluntarism that constructs the model activist as a variation on older liberal notions of the “good citizen.” Following Fanon, the question is whether and how this mission ought to be fulfilled or betrayed. I believe that to respond to this political problem requires an analysis and conceptualization of “the state” that is far more complex and laborious than we usually allow in our ordinary rush of obligations to build campaigns, organize communities, and write grant proposals. In fact, I think one pragmatic step toward an abolitionist politics involves the development of grassroots pedagogies (such as reading groups, in-home workshops, inter-organization and inter-movement critical dialogues) that will compel us to teach ourselves about the different ways that the state works in the context of domestic warfare, so that we no longer treat it simplistically. We require, in other words, a scholarly activist framework to understand that the state can and must be radically confronted on multiple fronts by an abolitionist politics.

revolutionbythebook.akpress.org

Court sides with ACLU, strikes down Patriot Act gag provision

ACLU victorious as federal court declares Patriot Act provision a violation of the First Amendment

A federal appeals court ruling late Monday is the cause célèbre of the American Civil Liberties Union, as another provision of the Bush administration’s Patriot Act falls to the judicial system.

Until the ruling, recipients of so-called “national security letters” were legally forbidden from speaking out. The letters, usually a demand for documents, or a notice that private records had been searched by government authorities, were criticized as a cover-all for FBI abuses.

“The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients,” said the ACLU in a release. “The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders – provisions that required the courts to treat the government’s claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch.”

Because of the ruling, the government will now be forced to justify individual gag orders before a court, instead of casually wielding the power of a blanket gag as the Bush administration has done since the blindingly fast passage of the Patriot Act in Oct. 2001.

In Sept. 2007, a federal judge ruled unconstitutional provisions within the Patriot Act which allowed the government to obtain search warrants without probable cause.

The ACLU’s complete press release follows.

####

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 15, 2008

NEW YORK – A federal appeals court today upheld, in part, a decision striking down provisions of the Patriot Act that prevent national security letter (NSL) recipients from speaking out about the secret records demands. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the FBI’s authority to use NSLs to demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers and then forbid them from discussing the requests. Siding with the ACLU, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the statute’s gag provisions violate the First Amendment.

“We are gratified that the appeals court found that the FBI cannot silence people with complete disregard for the First Amendment simply by saying the words ‘national security,’” said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “This is a major victory for the rule of law. The court recognized the need for judicial oversight of the government’s dangerous gag power and rejected the Bush administration’s position that the courts should just rubber-stamp these gag orders. By upholding the critical check of judicial review, the FBI can no longer use this incredible power to hide abuse of its intrusive Patriot Act surveillance powers and silence critics.”

The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients. The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders – provisions that required the courts to treat the government’s claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch.

“The appellate panel correctly observed that the imposition of such a conclusive presumption ignored well-settled First Amendment standards and deprived the judiciary of its important function as a protector of fundamental rights,” said Arthur Eisenberg, Legal Director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

In this regard, the opinion stated: “The fiat of a governmental official, though senior in rank and doubtless honorable in the execution of official duties, cannot displace the judicial obligation to enforce constitutional requirements.”

The court, therefore, also ruled that the government must now justify the gag on the John Doe NSL recipient in the case, a gag that has been in place for more than four years.

The ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed this lawsuit in April 2004 on behalf of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that received an NSL. Because the FBI imposed a gag order on the ISP, the lawsuit was filed under seal, and even today the ACLU is prohibited from disclosing its client’s identity. The FBI continues to maintain the gag order even though the underlying investigation is more than four years old (and may well have ended), and even though the FBI abandoned its demand for records from the ISP over a year and a half ago.

In September 2004, Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York struck down the NSL statute, ruling that the FBI could not constitutionally demand sensitive records without judicial review and that permanent gag orders violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The government appealed the ruling, but Congress amended the NSL provision before the court issued a decision.

The ACLU brought a new challenge to the amended provision, and in September 2007, Judge Marrero again found the statute unconstitutional.

Bills aimed at bringing the NSL authority back in line with the Constitution were introduced last year in both the House and Senate after reports had confirmed and detailed the widespread abuse of the authority by federal law enforcement. Since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, relaxing restrictions on the FBI’s use of the power, the number of NSLs issued has seen an astronomical increase, to nearly 200,000 between 2003 and 2006. A March 2008 Office of Inspector General (OIG) report revealed that, among other abuses, the FBI misused NSLs to sidestep the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). In one instance, the FBI issued NSLs to obtain information after the FISC twice refused its requests on First Amendment grounds. The OIG also found that the FBI continues to impose gag orders on about 97 percent of NSL recipients and that, in some cases, the FBI failed to sufficiently justify why the gag orders were imposed in the first place.

In addition to this case, the ACLU has challenged this Patriot Act statute multiple times. One case was brought on behalf of a group of Connecticut librarians and another case, called Internet Archive v. Mukasey, involved an NSL served on a digital library in California. In the latter case, the FBI withdrew the NSL and the gag as part of the settlement of a legal challenge brought by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Attorneys in Doe v. Mukasey are Jameel Jaffer, Goodman and L. Danielle Tully of the ACLU National Security Project and Eisenberg of the NYCLU.

Today’s decision can be found online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/38110lgl20081215.html

More information on Doe v. Mukasey and NSLs is available online at: www.aclu.org/nsl

Update: Marine “Military Presence” Confirmed in San Bernardino County

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
December 15, 2008

Audio of the KCDZ-FM news report

As we reported yesterday, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center has dispatched uniformed and presumably armed (we have no confirmation of the latter) soldiers to assist the California Highway Patrol (CHP) in the operation of unconstitutional sobriety checkpoints in San Bernardino County, California, the largest county in California and the country (San Bernardino County is directly east of Los Angeles).

On the Alex Jones Show today, Gary Daigneault, News Director at KCDZ-FM based in Joshua Tree, California, said the California Highway Patrol was less than forthcoming with their plan to team up with the military police, a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing the military from performing civilian law enforcement duties.

	Press releases faxed to KCDZ-FM. Click to see a larger image.

After running an editorial last week reminding the Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center of the illegality of such an operation, the California Highway Patrol sent the radio station a fax indicating that the action would not include military police (see faxes at right).

As a KCDZ-FM news report broadcast today points out, by law — to avoid entrapment — the California Highway Patrol is required to provide the location of its checkpoints to the media at least two hours prior. Although the CHP did provide the radio station with a telephone number to get this information, when the number was called there was no answer.

Moreover, “to add insult to injury,” Marine Corps military police, in uniform and in marked military police cars, were indeed teamed up with CHP outside of a Home Depot in the town of Yucca Valley.

After examining the documents faxed to KCDZ-FM, it becomes obvious that the CHP in Joshua Tree deliberately released disinformation to the media designed to cover its participation with the Marines, as noted a direct violation of Posse Comitatus.

The first CHP News release dated December 10 indicated the police planned to work with the Marines, while a second press release dated December 12, after KCDZ-FM aired a critical news editorial, had this reference removed. Both documents include a note indicating the media would be able to contact the Barstow Dispatch Center on December 12 to receive location information required by law. As noted above, calls to the number provided went unanswered.

As Alex mentioned on his show today, the Marines are well aware of Infowars coverage of the story and made reference not only Alex by name but Infowars staff members Aaron Dykes and Kurt Nimmo as well.

It should be obvious the Marines and the California Highway Patrol are engaged in a disinformation campaign against the media in order to cover up their illegal and unconstitutional behavior. Not only do they want to entrap the residents of San Bernardino County in their “sobriety/driver license checkpoint” in violation of the Fourth Amendment protecting the people against unreasonable searches and seizures, they also want to send a message that the military will henceforth be involved in domestic law enforcement in direct violation of Posse Comitatus.

Death by SWAT

In January 2007, a SWAT team in Lima, Ohio, shot and killed Tarika Wilson, a 26-year-old mother, during a drug raid at the home of her boyfriend, Anthony Terry. When the unarmed Wilson was shot, she was kneeling on the ground, complying with police orders. She was holding her 1-year-old son, Sincere, who was also shot, losing his left hand. A subsequent investigation revealed that Officer Joseph Chavalia heard another officer shooting Terry’s two dogs, mistook the noise for hostile gunfire, panicked, and fired blindly into the room where Wilson was kneeling. Chavalia was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but acquitted.

As reckless and violent as the raid was, the police did at least find a substantial supply of illegal drugs inside the house, and Anthony Terry later pleaded guilty to felony drug distribution. A subsequent investigation by the Lima News showed that despite the inherent danger and small margin for error, SWAT raids conducted by the Lima Police Department frequently turned up no drugs or weapons at all. The paper found that in one-third of the 198 raids the SWAT team conducted from 2001 to 2008, no contraband was found.

Similar reviews in other cities have produced similar results: A surprisingly high percentage of raids produce neither drugs nor weapons. And the weapons that are found tend to be small, concealable handguns, with few raids resulting in felony convictions.

A Denver Post investigation found that in 80 percent of no-knock raids conducted in Denver in 1999, police assertions that there would be weapons in the targeted home turned out to be wrong. A separate investigation by the Rocky Mountain News found that of the 146 no-knock warrants served in Denver in 1999, just 49 resulted in criminal charges, and only two resulted in prison time. Media investigations produced similar results after high-profile mistaken raids in New York City in 2003, in Atlanta in 2007, and in Orlando and Palm Beach, Florida, in 1998. When the results of the Denver investigation were revealed, former prosecutor Craig Silverman said, “When you have that violent intrusion on people’s homes with so little results, you have to ask why.”

Lima police apparently aren’t as concerned. When told of the Lima News investigation, police spokesman Kevin Martin said, “That means 68 percent of the time, we’re getting guns or drugs off the street. We’re not looking at it as a win-loss record like a football team does.”

Military at ToysRus Austin

Saturday, Dec 13, 2008

Another propaganda recruiting effort under the Toys for Tots program.

Two Humvees with possible m242 guns mounted on top, were removed, incidentally right as Alex Jones is speaking about it on his radio program which also airs locally here in Austin.

By the time the camera man was filming he witnessed the last gun being removed from the Humvee.

One Marine on film said that the guns were computer simulation guns and they were not real.

If they were not real why were they removing them?

 

Lou Dobbs Show on Martial Law, Posse Comitatus

Local CHP Office Perpetrating Unconstitutional Acts and Felonies Under the Posse Comitatus Act

The Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) Provost Marshal (head of a unit of military police) and the local California Highway Patrol office will begin working together 12/12 — and through the holiday season — in a joint effort to reduce accidents and drinking and driving. The combined mutual cooperation between the Marine Corps Military Police and State enforcement officers will begin somewhere along Highway 62. The CHP will set up DUI roadblocks with the presence of Military Police. A violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Gary Daigneault discussed the ramifications of this joint effort today on his 107.7 F.M. Talk Back show. Mr. Daigneault and his callers seemed to be very concerned. On its face, one may think this is a good idea. But it’s not. I agree with Mr. Daigneault and his callers. Most of which seemed to think this is a very bad idea. Mr. Daigneault contacted a Constitutional Law expert, and the attorney informed him this is absolutely unconstitutional. It’s NOT permitted under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, 8 U.S.C. § 1385. It’s my understanding that the Constitutional Law expert said CHP officers could be arrested out there working with the Military Police because it’s a “felony.”

Democracy depends upon abiding by the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, I challenge anyone to go out there and put a citizens arrest of the CHP officers, then call 9-1-1 and have a sheriff come out and take charge of your prisoner. Just kidding, of course, but a very brazen citizen legally could attempt to such a thing. But don’t even think about it.

Many of his callers vocalized that this joint effort or mutual cooperation between the military and the CHP is going to be very intimidating. They (as I) are very concerned the CHP is going through with this action. It’s not really clear what the specific role of the Military Police will be… To assist; to observe; to train; to make a strong military presence; to take charge of military offenders detained by the CHP? Nonetheless, whatever, it’s unconstitutional; it’s a felony. I contacted the Morongo CHP office.* The dispatcher said the program will be in effect tonight. When I asked here were it was going to be, she said call back tonight after 7:00 P.M. But I politely protested, these DUI check stops are public. She said I have to speak with CHP Public Affairs officer after seven.* A call to the CHP Public Affairs Officer’s number* after seven got a recorded message to call from 9-5 during business hours. Query: why wasn’t I told that?

By the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, 20 Stat. 152, 18 U.S.C. § 1385, it was provided that “it shall NOT (emphasis added) be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress… .” The effect of this prohibition, however, was largely nullified by a ruling of the Attorney General “that by Revised Statutes 5298 and 5300 [10 U.S.C. §§ 332, 334] the military forces, under the direction of the President, could be used to assist a marshal. 16 Ops. Atty. Gen. 162.” B. RICH, THE PRESIDENTS AND CIVIL DISORDER 196 n.21 (1941).

Okay, as far as I know the President has not given direction to the local CHP to deploy the USMC on public roads in order to setup a military presence during routine DUI check stops in the Basin. It’s not allowed. Whoever came up with plan in the CHP in my opinion is abusing their powers. Where is the public necessity or authority to do this? There is none — unless the Commander in Chief made the call. It’s also my opinion, the CHP has made a very bad choice in their joint venture with the Marine Corps. Though I have intrinsic belief that the CHP has the very best of intentions, however, good intentions does not override the U.S. Constitution.

I know the Marine Corps has the best of intentions too. But the best of intentions is not cause to trump the Constitution.

Late this afternoon, I spoke with the Provost Marshal office, Corporal Knuesn. He indicated this may happen. I then spoke with the MCAGCC Public Affairs Chief, Gunny Sgt. Chris Cox.** He was very cooperative and informative about the mutual efforts of the Military Police and the CHP: “They will be working closely over the month to cut down of traffic accidents,” he said, “the Military Police will observe DUI check points and watch for their own guys. The intent is to have Military Presence out there.”

Gunny Cox explains that Hwy. 62 is one of the most dangerous highways out here. No doubt it is.

The Public Affairs Chief also explained, “they will not participate [assist the CHP] because they are not concerned [lack of jurisdiction] with California law.” I must say, Gunny Sgt. Cox is one extremely nice guy. And his good intentions — to save his guys from injuries or worse — was certainly manifested. May good fortune be with this Marine.

It’s little encroachments like this that undermine the Constitution. Then one day you wake up, and it gone. [See Franklin quote, infra-]. I can see numerous scenarios during those DUI check stops. To name a few: The Military Police go to the aid of the CHP to take down a civilian bad guy. A drunken teen. Unruly tweakers. Will the Military Police be armed? Do they have any sort orders of engagements?

* ** The bottom line: I urge anyone and everyone who believes in the Constitution, United States Codes, and Posse Comitatus — to do something! What can you do? To begin with, I suggest you contact the local Joshua Tree CHP Public Affairs Officer, Officer McLoud, at: 760. 366.3707 and voice your concern. Further, you can contact the MCAGCC Public Affairs Chief on the base at: 760.830.5476 or 760. 830.6213. Moreover, contact the Provost Marshal office at: 760.830.4215.

Voice your concerns. That’s just a start. Contact state officials and legislatures. Write letters to the editor.

Thank you, Branson Hunter

“What type of government,” a woman asks, “have you given us?” To which Benjamin Franklin replies: ” A democratic Republic, madam, if you can keep it.” — “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Walter Isaacson (2003)

Army Eyes Man-Hunting Mini-Blimps

We'll get to the real substance in a second. But first, let's focus on the man-hunting mini-blimps.

Stephen Trimble flags this odd, odd paragraph in an otherwise straight L.A. Times story about the spending choices facing Defense Secretary Bob Gates in a new administration.

Some Army officials are pushing development of a small blimp equipped with an automated high-powered sniper rifle that could provide a form of inexpensive but effective air support for platoons in Afghanistan.

"Surely, the army is really asking for a small aerostat linked to an actual soldier on the ground with a sniper rifle, no?" Trimble asks.

Maybe a sniper detection system, mounted on an airship? A "Sniper" targeting pod, put on a blimp? The mythical "AirSniper" mini-drone, come to life? Or perhaps some folks in the Army really do want to have a small blimp, floating in the sky, taking out enemies, one by one.

Of course, all of those ideas are pretty wimpy, when you compare 'em to 1957's "Operation Plumbob." As part of a series of above-ground nuclear weapons tests, the government hung a-bombs "as large as 74 kilotons beneath blimps," Popular Mechanics says. And then the unmanned airships dropped the weapons, to see what would happen. Needless to say, the blimps didn't fare particularly well, after the blasts.

Three years later, notes Airminded, the Navy ran a pair of trials, to see if airships could drop nuclear depth charges on Soviet submarines. The results:

The first airship exposed to overpressure experienced a structural failure of the nose cone when it was rammed into the mooring mast, together with a tear of the forward ballonet which necessitated deflation of the envelope. The second airship broke in half and crashed following a circumferential failure of the envelope originating at the bottom of the envelope, forward of the car.

Video: Hovering 'Multiple Kill Vehicle," Straight Outta Star Wars

The Pentagon is investing big in an interceptor that can knock down several missiles at once, and get past any countermeasures. But for this "Multiple Kill Vehicle" to work right, it has to be able to radically maneuver and reposition itself in mid-air. Earlier this months, a prototype payload was tested at Edwards Air Force Base in California. And the result, as Ares notes, was something that looked like the target droid that "zapped a blindfolded Luke Skywalker during lightsaber training."

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