Tuesday Reads: Wisconsin Recall, Willard on the Defensive, SCOTUS, Another School Shooting, and Trayvon Martin Updates

Posted: April 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Crime, Labor unions, Mitt Romney, morning reads, religion, Republican presidential politics, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 38 Comments

Tea and Scones, by Kristine Diehl

Good Morning!!

Today is the Wisconsin primary, but there isn’t much suspense. It looks like Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee, even though no one really likes him. I guess Romney wants the job so bad, he doesn’t care that that he’s basically a laughing stock. [UPDATE: Maryland and the District of Columbia also hold their primaries today.]

Yesterday, Romney was asked some uncomfortable questions at a Town Hall meeting in Howard, Wisconsin. One man, a Ron Paul supporter, asked Romney whether he agreed with Mormon Church scriptures that say interracial marriage is sinful. Romney became visibly upset.

The questioner, Bret Hatch, 28, a local supporter of Rep. Ron Paul’s, read from typed notes as he asked Romney whether he agreed with a verse from Moses 7:8 from the “Pearl of Great Price.” As he began citing the verse, Romney interrupted: “I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view. But if you have a question, I’ll be happy to answer your question.”

Hatch asked his question. “If you become president,” he asked, “do you believe it’s a sin for a white man to marry and procreate with a black?”

“No,” Romney said. “Next question.”

Then another person asked Romney “about his ability to connect to average Americans.” Romney then cited his experience as a church leader in the Boston area.

“That gave me the occasion to work with people on a very personal basis that were dealing with unemployment, with marital difficulties, with health difficulties of their own and with their kids,”

He then claimed that he is running for President because he wants to help people like that.

The big excitement in Wisconsin isn’t about the primary, but about the recall of Governor Scott Walker.

For Wisconsinites, the most important political news of the season came Friday, when the state’s Government Accountability Board announced that the effort to recall Republican Governor Scott Walker had amassed enough valid signatures to force an election June 5. It will be the first such election in state history, and if Wisconsin votes out Walker, he will be only the third sitting governor in U.S. history to be recalled, joining North Dakota’s Lynn Frazier in 1921 and California’s Gray Davis in 2003.

The precipitating event was Walker’s quick move, upon taking office, to reward the 1 percent with a tax cut while asking the 99 percent to sacrifice. He didn’t campaign on his antipathy for public unions. Yet within his first few weeks as governor, Walker declared war on public-sector workers (except for police and firefighters, many of whom supported his candidacy), cutting benefits, limiting pay increases and sharply curtailing collective bargaining rights, even after the unions agreed to many of his demands.

Minx wrote about the horrible SCOTUS decision that came out yesterday, but I wanted to give you a little background on the case they heard. This decision is shocking, IMO.

Albert Florence, his wife and little boy were on their way to his parents’ home in 2005, when they were pulled over by a state trooper. Mrs. Florence was at the wheel, but the trooper’s roadside state records check showed a seven-year-old outstanding arrest warrant for Albert Florence for failing to pay a fine. Florence said he had paid the fine, and pulled out a receipt, which he kept in the car. But the trooper said there was nothing he could do. Florence was handcuffed and taken to the local county jail.

The state would later admit it had failed to properly purge the arrest warrant, but at the time of the arrest, the error turned into a “nightmare,” Florence said. He was held in jail for seven days and strip-searched twice.

Florence said the experience “petrified” and “humiliated” him. Upon entering the jail, he was ordered to take a delousing shower, then inspected by a guard who was about “an arm’s distance” away and instructed Florence to squat, cough and lift up his genitals.

If that isn’t an unreasonable search, I don’t know what would be. But five “conservative” justices think it’s just fine for law enforcement officials to strip search people even for minor offenses. This will surely have the effect of frightening people away from being involved in peaceful political protests.

Occupy and political protesters beware. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday held that local police can strip-search anyone who is arrested for minor offenses if they are to be held within the jail’s general population before being released.

The 5-4 decision, with the Court’s conservative majority overruling its four moderates, is a further erosion of the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unlawful search and seizure. It overturns laws in 10 states that place limits on suspicionless strip-searches and upholds a technique used by some local police forces against Occupy protesters last fall, prompting protesters to sue.

Among the jurisdictions seeking expanded authority to strip-search anyone arrested were the City of Chicago, where the NATO summit will be held this May and where protests have been planned, as well as the state of North Carolina, where the Democratic National Convention will be held in early September in Charlotte.

There was a school shooting at a Christian college in Oakland, California yesterday. Seven people were killed and three injured.

Police captured the suspected gunman inside an Alameda grocery store five miles away from the shooting site at Oikos University after he allegedly walked to the customer service counter and told employees, “I just shot some people.”

A law-enforcement source close to the investigation confirmed to The Chronicle that the suspect is 43-year-old One Goh of Oakland.

The suspect used a .45-caliber handgun, spraying a classroom with gunfire and firing additional shots as he ran out, said the source, who did not wish to be identified because the investigation is ongoing.

Goh had been a nursing student at Oikos University, located at 7850 Edgewater Road in East Oakland, and there was some kind of dispute that may have resulted in him getting kicked out of at least one class, the source said.

I have a number of Trayvon Martin links. I won’t quote extensively from them, but I’m still very interested in the case and want to pass on things that I’ve learned.

Some new recordings have come out that show that either George Zimmerman or police decided he didn’t need to go to the hospital after the shooting. If Zimmerman had actually had his head pounded on concrete multiple times, he would have had to be evaluated for a serious head injury, because sometimes you can have internal injuries or hemorrhaging that doesn’t show on the outside.

Trayvon Martin’s parents have formally requested that the Feds investigate whether Norman Wolfinger, the states attorney actually interfered with a police detective who wanted to arrest Zimmerman on the night of the shooting. But Wolfinger is denying that it ever happened. He didn’t deny it in a very nice way either.

Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the Martin family, asked the Justice Department in a letter on Monday to investigate those reports. Though the letter reported the events without attribution, Crump told Reuters his information came from the media reports and he did not have independent verification….

“I am outraged by the outright lies contained in the letter by Benjamin Crump,” Wolfinger said. “I encourage the Justice Department to investigate and document that no such meeting or communication occurred.” [….]

Lynne Bumpus-Hooper, a spokesman for Wolfinger, said the state attorney never spoke with Lee on the night of the shooting. Instead Sanford police consulted that night with Kelly Jo Hines, the prosecutor on call, Bumpus-Hooper said. She declined to say what was discussed.

“Police officers can make an arrest at virtually any dadgum point they feel they have enough probable cause to make an arrest,” Bumpus-Hooper said. “They do not need our permission and they do not seek our permission.”

So who made that decision? The plot thickens.

Today FBI agents appeared in Sanford and began examining the area in which the shooting occurred, and reviewing evidence in a “parallel investigation” with the one being carried out by special prosecutor

The New York Times had an excellent review of Zimmerman’s evolving story about what happened on the night of February 26. If you’re at all interested in this case, be sure to read it. It’s very helpful.

Richard E.J. Escrow had an interesting think piece on the Trayvon Martin case. His conclusion comes from Bob Dylan’s song about the murder of Medgar Evers: Zimmerman is “only a pawn in their game.”

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school …
That the laws are with him, to protect his white skin
To keep up his hate, so he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in, but it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.

Escrow writes:

Whose game? As it turns out, the ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws used to protect shooters like Zimmerman were written and promoted by ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council. As the Center for Media and Democracy notes, the corporate-funded right wing group behind Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on worker rights is the same group that has promoted ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws all around the country.

You could put a thousand people on Neighborhood Watch and they’d never see the real threats to Zimmerman’s community. Those threats can’t be seen with the eye. The real threats are things like joblessness, financial insecurity, hunger, lack of medical care. They’re threats you can’t protect yourself from with a gun.

Shooters like George Zimmerman are the product of an economic system that benefits from misdirected fear and anger – emotions that are too often channeled into violence instead of peaceful change.

Here’s Dylan performing his song at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1963.

Have a great day everyone! Now what’s on your reading list today?

Let’s Hear It For The Girls, All Month Long

Posted: March 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, birth control, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Economy, Feminists, income inequality, War on Women, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: | 10 Comments

Though GOP madness is in full swing, March is the month to celebrate women—their lives, strengths and accomplishments.  True to its nature, the month has roared in but with a twist, acting as a party crasher, snapping at all female guests of honor.

We’ve seen reproductive rights assaulted, the 100-year contraception battle reignited and shock-jock Rush Limbaugh bully and slander a female student from Georgetown University.  Rick Santorum has turned the Republican effort into a Comstock-era discussion of acceptable moral/sexual behavior and a county in the Great State of South Carolina is suggesting a purity pledge for Republican membership.  Even the workplace is under assault with candidates suggesting the elimination of minimum wage and repealing Child Labor laws.

What’s next?  The village pillory?

Who invited the Crazies?

My suggestion?   Show them the door, kick their arses to the street.  We didn’t invite reactionary fools to the party.   This woman would not have tolerated their company for a single nanosecond:

Margaret Sanger

Nor these women

Women's Suffrage Parade

Nor these:

Bread and Roses Protest

The last photo, the Bread and Roses protest, was a workers’ strike protesting deplorable work conditions, non-living wages and inconceivably long days in New England’s textile mills.  One of these strikes occurred in Lawrence, Massachusetts, fueled by earlier actions in NYC’s garment district.  Thursday, March 8th is the official recognition date of a 100-year old struggle, under the aegis of the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] but primarily led by immigrant women, young and old, who successfully striked for humane working conditions, decent wages and openly opposed child labor and workplace exploitation.

It did not come easy.  But come it did.

One of the descriptions I read of these early battles was nothing short of shake-your-head inspiring:

According to [Consiglia] Teutonica, this time a 22-year-old Syrian immigrant named Annie Kiami stepped in front of the crowd. Calling the soldiers “Cossacks,” Kiami wrapped an American flag around her body and dared them to shoot holes in Old Glory.

Once thought of as docile and subservient, the Bread and Roses women quickly gained the notorious title among mill owners of radicals of the worst sort.

“One policeman can handle 10 men,” Lawrence’s district attorney lamented, “while it takes 10 policemen to handle one woman.”

In the words of one horrified boss, the women activists were full of “lots of cunning and also lots of bad temper. They’re everywhere, and it’s getting worse all the time.”

Lots of cunning and bad temper!  I like that.

Flip forward some 50+ years and the Bread and Roses contingent in Boston fought for reproductive rights and abortion, child care, equal employment laws against discrimination in the workplace and recognition of and legal remedies to fight and reduce violence against women.  In 1971, the Bread and Roses group occupied a building owned by Harvard University for 10 days, during which they offered free classes and childcare.  After they were removed from their encampment, several sympathetic donors offered $5000 with which the group opened The Women’s Center in Cambridge.

The Women’s Center is in operation today, offering a multitude of services to battered women, victims of rape and child abuse and providing counsel, support and health information to moderate to low-income women.  Their mission statement reads as follows:

To provide women with the resources and support they need to emerge from

conditions of domestic violence, sexual abuse, poverty, discrimination, social isolation and degradation.

To challenge and change the attitudes, actions, and institutions that subjugate women.

They’re still going strong.

A myriad of Bread and Roses communities have grown and spread across the country, many charitable outreaches to low income families, providing meals and support to the unemployed, the sick and disadvantaged.  In each case, the Bread and Roses emblematic power rests in the idea of social justice, community outreach and support.  With each and every group, each program, the legacy returns to those women and children of 1912, the day they said–Enough is enough—and then put their bodies, their very lives on the line, demanding to be treated with dignity, to be seen and counted as human beings.

As for the name, Bread and Roses?   The phrase reportedly came from a banner—Give Us Bread But Give Us Roses–carried during the early days of the textile strikes. James Oppenheim, a poet, novelist and editor, attended one of those protests and was so moved by the imagery that he wrote the following poem to honor the women.

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,

For the people hear us singing: “Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,

For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead

Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.

Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.

Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.

The rising of the women means the rising of the race.

No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,

But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

Oppenheim was inspired by the women and their courage.  The women were inspired by the words.

It’s a fine legacy, one among many in which women had a leading role in changing the course of American history.  The citizens of Lawrence will be commemorating the women and their efforts with a Centennial festival.  The major programs are slated to kickoff tomorrow Thursday, March 8 and run through May 1.

There’s no better time to give these women their due because income inequality, rising poverty and homelessness has returned to the Nation, a vicious cycle tearing at families and communities alike. The Lawrence strike has an uncanny parallel to the Occupy protests.  At the turn of the 20th century, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few was unrivaled.  Until today.  What Bread and Roses reminds us is the power of solidarity, fighting the good fight.  With cunning and bad temper if necessary.  Or as James Oppenheim wrote a century ago:

The rising of women means the rising of the race.

Bread and roses!  Bread and roses!

Happy 100th!

It’s about rights, not helplessness

Posted: January 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, GLBT Rights | Tags: , | 23 Comments

There’s a bit of a flap going on because a famous person named Cynthia Nixon said she’s gay by choice. (Full disclosure: I’ve never heard of her. I only visit this planet now and again)

Saying it’s a choice is supposed to be very bad because it falls into a “right wing trap.” Everybody must say gays are born that way, that they can’t help themselves, that it’s-not-their-fault-they-found-it-that-way. Otherwise wingnuts can insist that re-education could work.

Bullshit.

Any kind of sex between any kind of people who can freely and knowledgeably consent is nobody’s business but their own.

The point isn’t whether you have a choice or not. That has nothing to do with it. The only point that matters is that nobody gets to tell you what kind of sex to have. Or not to have.

The only real “right wing trap” is granting the crazy premise that it’s okay to meddle in somebody else’s sex life if you can. Because that’s what the Aravosises of the world are doing. They’re saying it’s genetic, so they can’t help it, so give up already. Which means that if they could help it, then meddle away.

Again: bullshit.

People who freely and knowledgeably consent and are doing nothing to hurt others have a right to do anything they damn well please. Genetics and choice have nothing to do with the basic right to mind your own business.

Just because some gay people have made their stand on illogical ground is not Nixon’s fault. All she’s done is shine a light on it.

(I’d tell you to go read my chapter on Rights, but you know that already, don’t you?)
Crossposted to Acid Test

Police State Awareness Day

Posted: January 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights | Tags: , , , | 9 Comments

I’ve found 2011’s list of Top MuckReads at ProPublica and wanted to highlight the investigative articles involving homeland security.  I have to admit that the patterns are ominous.  It seems that domestic surveillance is the new reality.

First up is an article that shows how NYPD sends spies to Mosques.

Highlights of AP’s probe into NYPD intelligence operations, Associated Press
“Mosque crawlers” who monitor sermons and “rakers” who embed themselves into minority neighborhoods are among the tactics the New York Police Department has used since 9/11. It was done with the assistance of the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans.

Next is one that shows that the FBI isn’t beyond setting folks up for fun and arrest numbers.

Terrorists for the FBI, Mother Jones
Almost all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings. The story details “how informants are recruited and used and how and why agents are pursuing these aggressive sting operations.”

Here’s an interesting one on the use of force by the Las Vegas Police.  This would make me rethink vacations plans.

Deadly Force: When Las Vegas police shoot, and kill, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Analyzing each police shooting in the region since 1990, the Review-Journal found “an insular department that is slow to weed out problem cops and is slower still to adopt policies and procedures that protect both its own officers and the citizens they serve.”

Here’s an interesting set of stories from the Center for Investigative Reporting  published as a project called “Under Suspicion”.  Basically, investigative reporters have looked at the reports of suspicious activity at The Mall of America and how the Homeland Security programs have worked. Ever visited the Mall of America?  You could wind up in counterterrorism reports!

On the week of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, the Center for Investigative Reporting and NPR published “Under Suspicion,” a joint yearlong investigation that looked at suspicious activity reports at the Mall of America and how the U.S. government has gathered intelligence since Sept. 11.

For CIR’s first live Behind the Story event, we teamed up with the San Francisco Film Society to give people a full look at how we put together an investigation in this digital age. “Under Suspicion” was published in print, broadcast, radio, as an animation and with multimedia components. Watch CIR reporters, producers and editors discuss their methodology and how they put together this innovative package.

There’s a lot of videos and interviews in the link.  You can check out NPR’s role in the investigation here.

Since Sept. 11, the nation’s leaders have warned that government agencies like the CIA and the FBI can’t protect the country on their own — private businesses and ordinary citizens have to look out for terrorists, too. So the Obama administration has been promoting programs like “See Something, Say Something” and the “Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative.”

Under programs like these, public attractions such as sports stadiums, amusement parks and shopping malls report suspicious activities to law enforcement agencies. But an investigation by NPR and the Center for Investigative Reporting suggests that at one of the nation’s largest shopping malls, these kinds of programs are disrupting innocent people’s lives.

One afternoon three years ago, Francis Van Asten drove to the Mall of America, near Minneapolis, and started recording. First he filmed driving to the mall. Then he filmed a plane landing at the nearby airport, and then he strolled inside the mall and kept recording as he walked. He says he was taking a video to send to his fiancee in Vietnam.

As he started filming, he didn’t realize that he was about to get caught up in America’s war on terrorism — the mall had formed its own private counterterrorism unit in 2005. And now, a security guard had been tailing Van Asten since before he entered the mall. Van Asten was first approached by a guard outside a clothing store.

“And he asked me what I was doing. And I said, ‘Oh, I’m making a video.’ And I said, ‘Are we allowed to make videos in Mall of America, and take pictures and stuff?’ He says, ‘Oh sure, nothing wrong with that,’ ” explains Van Asten. “So I turn to start walking away, and then he started asking me questions. Why am I making a video, what am I making a video of, what I did for a living, and he asked me, what’s my hobbies?”

The guard called another member of the mall’s security unit, and they questioned Van Asten for almost an hour before summoning two police officers from the Bloomington Police Department.

“I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, according to them even. I asked the policeman why I was being detained,” says Van Asten. “He said, ‘Listen, mister, we can do this any way you want: the easy way or the hard way.’ ”

And then, the police took Van Asten down to a police substation in the mall’s basement.

Oh, and let’s not forget this.

He waited until New Year’s Eve to do it…but he did it. While expressing “serious reservations” about the bill, President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve signed legislation that cements into law two highly controversial tenets of the war on terror: indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without charge, and the jailing of American citizens without trial. It also takes terrorism-related cases out of the hands of the FBI and the civilian court system and hands them over to the military.
Obama approved the bill (known as the National Defense Authorization Act), but at the same time, in a signing statement, claimed his administration would not allow the military to detain Americans indefinitely.
Civil libertarians were nonetheless outraged by Obama’s approval of the legislation. They claim that Obama is taking a “Trust me; I won’t do it” position. However, even if he does refrain from abusing the law, there is no guarantee that future presidents won’t imprison Americans and others indefinitely without trial or even without charge.
Next time, they just might disappear you!

 

The War on Terror as continued assault on Civil Liberties

Posted: December 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights | Tags: , , | 16 Comments

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 – 1790)

The vote last week on a civil liberty robbing provision tucked deep into a Pentagon Spending Bill reveals how little today’s politicians truly understand the constitution they are sworn to protect.  Many of our greatest public leaders have reminded us throughout history that sacrificing our civil rights and liberties for public safety is not prudent or wise. We need that lesson more than ever.

This article at Alternet spells out 20 Ways the Obama Administration has continued Bush Policies that directly infringe on domestic civil liberties.  It is amazing to me that there remains few differences between political parties in most major policies issues other than exactly how far to push distinct religious sanctions. There is a long list that begins with violations that continue with the passage of the Patriot Act.  There are examples of suppression and criminalization of decent and wrongful use of police powers.  We are seeing the militarization of police in their suppression of Occupy and other protest movements as well as weaponizing border and homeland security functions at the state and local level.  There is expansion of wiretapping and domestic spying.  There is singling out of religious communities–Muslims–for unconstitutional spying, control, and assassinations.

The last two administrations have clearly used the threat of terrorism to expand the power of the executive branch, limit the rights of law abiding citizens, and enact laws and policies that clearly violate constitutional rights.  This is truly a frightening list of abuses. Here are specific examples of the militarization of domestic state and local law enforcement activities.  I remember clearly how the Bush administration bullied then Louisiana Governor Blanco to attempt to get her turn the Louisiana National Guard over to the executive branch.  The late and poor response to Katrina was one example I saw was partial punishment for our Governor’s refusal to do so.

Anyone who has gone to a peace or justice protest in recent years has seen it – local police have been turned into SWAT teams, and SWAT teams into heavily armored military. Officer Friendly or even Officer Unfriendly has given way to police uniformed like soldiers with SWAT shields, shin guards, heavy vests, military helmets, visors, and vastly increased firepower. Protest police sport ninja turtle-like outfits and are accompanied by helicopters, special tanks, and even sound blasting vehicles first used in Iraq. Wireless fingerprint scanners first used by troops in Iraq are now being utilized by local police departments to check motorists. Facial recognition software introduced in war zones is now being used in Arizona and other jurisdictions. Drones just like the ones used in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan are being used along the Mexican and Canadian borders. These activities continue to expand under the Obama administration.

The Muslim Community has been particularly vulnerable.  The majority of our domestic terrorist attacks have come from white supremacists and militarists that are not Muslim, yet many resources have been used to infringe on the rights of Muslim Americans.

Muslims in the US have been targeted by the Obama Department of Justice for inflammatory things they said or published on the internet. First Amendment protection of freedom of speech, most recently stated in a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenberg v Ohio, says the government cannot punish inflammatory speech, even if it advocates violence unless it is likely to incite or produce such action. A Pakistani resident legally living in the US was indicted by the DOJ in September 2011 for uploading a video on YouTube. The DOJ said the video was supportive of terrorists even though nothing on the video called for violence. In July 2011, the DOJ indicted a former Penn State student for going onto websites and suggesting targets and for providing a link to an explosives course already posted on the internet.

There are additional activities.

The CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans, works with the police on “human mapping”, commonly known as racial and religious profiling to spy on the Muslim community. Under the Obama administration, the Associated Press reported in August 2011, informants known as “mosque crawlers,” monitor sermons, bookstores and cafes.

The Alernet piece is full of examples where the CIA, the FBI, local and state law enforcement and Homeland security have overstepped constitutional boundaries in the

Up-armored Humvees with armed soldiers guard my street. I took this picture during the first week of October, 2005.

name of “security” and “safety”.  There are so many examples that it is difficult not to reach the conclusion that we are living in a police state.  After Katrina, I spent months watching armored vehicles and armed soldiers patrol our city. We heard many stories of both police and homeland security abuse after learning that many of the stories of people firing at helicopters or firing on police were sheer fantasy.

Additionally, we experienced a homeland security practice run that was labelled as an exercise for handling food riots that included having  many, many black helicopters buzz our neighborhoods over a series of evenings.  Many folks took days worth of of video footage and photos of the exercises.  This happened in 2009.

The New Orleans Police Department, along with 150 active duty U.S. troops, are currently engaging in what they describe as “military training” as black helicopters whizz around the city dropping bombs in the latest example of Americans being incrementally conditioned to accept a state of de facto martial law.

The training has been ongoing since January 27 and involves “the use of military helicopters flying after dark throughout the city,” according to an Associated Press report.

Residents were warned “not to panic” if they witnessed the training and were assured that the activities had “been carefully planned and are safe”.

However, initial reports before the exercises began claimed that the training would only involve police, when in fact 150 U.S. troops from the U.S. Special Operations Command are also involved as part of urban warfare training.

I have no idea if you have ever experienced things like this but believe me, it makes you very uneasy.  I was one of the first folks home in my neighborhood.  The first set of soldiers to see me where obviously startled.  I later learned that one of my friends had been chased by black berets while trying to drop dog and cat food to neighbors trapped animals directly after Katrina.  We were all basically chased out of the city and unless you were securely locked in your house, you were basically subject to arrest.  These are not the kinds of things that we are used to seeing here in the U.S. but the more I read the incredible long list of cited examples in the Alternet article and compare them to my post Katrina experience, the more I think that we are just beginning to experience it. Just think of having most days in our neighborhood being like your experience getting on a US flight these days and  I think you can imagine what it will feel like.

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