Police state

Peaceful Tactics For Taking Down The Police State

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon

nullification John W. Whitehead – Saddled with a corporate media that marches in lockstep with the government, elected officials who dance to the tune of their corporate benefactors, and a court system that serves to maintain order rather than mete out justice, Americans often feel as if they have no voice, no authority and no recourse when it comes to holding government officials accountable and combating rampant corruption and injustice.

We’re impotent in the face of SWAT teams that break down doors and leave toddlers scarred for life. We’re helpless to prevent police shootings that leave unarmed citizens dead for no other reason than the police officer involved felt “threatened.” We shrug dismissively over the plight of fellow citizens who have their heads cracked, their bodies broken and their rights violated for failing to jump to attention when a police officer issues an order. And we fail to care about the thousands of individuals who have been punished with extreme sentences for nonviolent offenses and are forced to spend their lives as modern-day slaves in bondage to private prisons and the profit-driven corporations they serve.

Make no mistake about it: virtually anything and everything is a crime nowadays (feeding the birds, growing vegetables in your front yard, etc.) to such an extent that if a prosecutor, police officer and judge were so inclined, you could be locked up for any inane reason.

This is tyranny dressed up in the official garb of the police state. It is the self-righteous, heavy-handed arm of the law being used as a decoy to divert your attention to the so-called criminals in your midst (the fisherman who threw back small fish into the ocean, the mother who let her child walk to the playground alone, the pastor holding Bible studies in his backyard) so that you don’t focus on the criminal behavior being perpetrated by the government (bribery, cronyism, electoral fraud, slush funds, graft, pork, theft, and on and on). Continue reading →

Battlefield America: The War On The American People

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.”—John Salte

John Whitehead – We have entered into a particularly dismal chapter in the American narrative, one that shifts us from a swashbuckling tale of adventure into a bone-chilling horror story.

policeAs I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, “we the people” have now come full circle, from being held captive by the British police state to being held captive by the American police state. In between, we have charted a course from revolutionaries fighting for our independence and a free people establishing a new nation to pioneers and explorers, braving the wilderness and expanding into new territories.

Where we went wrong, however, was in allowing ourselves to become enthralled with and then held hostage by a military empire in bondage to a corporate state (the very definition of fascism). No longer would America hold the moral high ground as a champion of freedom and human rights. Instead, in the pursuit of profit, our overlords succumbed to greed, took pleasure in inflicting pain, exported torture, and imported the machinery of war, transforming the American landscape into a battlefield, complete with military personnel, tactics and weaponry.

To our dismay, we now find ourselves scrambling for a foothold as our once rock-solid constitutional foundation crumbles beneath us. And no longer can we rely on the president, Congress, the courts, or the police to protect us from wrongdoing.

Indeed, they have come to embody all that is wrong with America. Continue reading →

Can Evil Be Defeated?

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

Paul Craig Roberts – John W. Whitehead is a constitutional attorney. As head of the Rutherford Institute he is actively involved in defending our civil liberties. Being actively involved in legal cases, he experiences first hand the transformation of law from a shield of the American people into a weapon in the hands of the government.

American civil liberty was seriously eroded prior to 9/11 police a story I tell in How America Was Lost. Lawrence Stratton and I documented the loss of law as a shield of the American people in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000, 2008). Whitehead in his book, A Government of Wolves (2013) and in his just released Battlefield America (2015) shows how quickly and thoroughly the police state has taken root.

We live in an electronic concentration camp. We are addicted to images on screens that disinform and propagandize us to accept and even welcome the police state activities that have destroyed our autonomy, privacy, and independence.

I write many columns on this subject. The advantage of a book is that it all comes together under one cover, and that is what Whitehead has done in Battlefield America.

“The outlook for civil liberties grows bleaker by the day, from the government’s embrace of indefinite detention for US citizens and armed surveillance drones flying overhead to warrantless surveillance of phone, email and Internet communications, and prosecutions of government whistle-blowers. The homeland is ruled by a police-industrial complex, an extension of the American military empire. Everything that our founding fathers warned against is now the new norm. The government has trained its sights on the American people. We have become the enemy. All the while, the American people remain largely oblivious.”

Whitehead gives it to us straight. We are continually abused in the name of protecting us. Ordinary Americans are subject to far worst abuse from government than they ever could be from criminals and terrorists, both of which are bogymen used to justify the government’s terrorism of the citizenry. Continue reading →

American Police Are Out of Control

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

“You get pulled over. The cop says he thinks you possess drugs or are otherwise involved in other illegal activity. He searches you and the car. You have $1,000. The cop intimidates you, saying that money came from illegal activities. Out of fear, and in lieu of being charged with a crime, you sign a piece of paper forfeiting your ownership of that $1,000. The cop and his department get to keep it and do with it what they wish. You’re never charged with a crime. You don’t fight because that would cost more than the cop stole from you to begin with.” – N Hodges

American police certainly have MilitarizedPolice4a bad name lately.

It isn’t all police, of course. The majority of them are great people.

But there are more than a few bad apples.

And the real problem is that the bad apples are routinely and unquestionably shielded by the good.

Things would be a lot different if cops who broke the law, or were even perceived to break the law, were dealt with like common criminals.

But instead they’re protected. Given the benefit of the doubt. Given administrative leave, not fired. Investigated by one of their peers with no real follow-up.

Often an incident boils down to “he said / she said,” with judges and juries historically siding with the one with a badge.

And it’s led to a litany of problems with police.

Absolute Power

Make no mistake. Police in this country have absolute power. They are able to kill someone in broad daylight largely without consequence. Continue reading →

$5.1B In Real Military Hardware Transferred To Local Law Enforcement In Past 17-Years

~ admin ~ Leave a comment

“The bottom line is — the police are funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars, plain and simple. They work for us and should not be abusing their authorities or powers in ways not beneficial to humanity’s betterment. It’s that simple.” – S Ambellas

They are arming the police for war

MilitarizedPolice4Around 8,000 agencies participate in what is now known as the “1033 Reutilization Program“, which allows them to garner free military hardware any chance they can get.

In fact from the years 1997 to 2014 $5.1 billion of valued military hardware was transferred to local city and state law enforcement agencies and approved for use on the streets of America.

To make matters worse, after the rioting started in Ferguson, over the death of Michael Brown, the Pentagon delivered “3,879 rifles” to local agencies, arming them to the hilt, in the months following, as our fierce leaders in Washington appear to be preparing for war.

But the question is: War with who?

Did it [the answer] hit you yet?

Need I say more?

Just look at Michigan for example.

Continue reading →