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Terrorized, Traumatized and Killed: The Police State’s Deadly Toll on America’s Children

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | October 15, 2019

Children learn what they live.

As family counselor Dorothy Law Nolte wisely observed, “If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.”

And if children live with terror, trauma and violence—forced to watch helplessly as their loved ones are executed by police officers who shoot first and ask questions later—will they in turn learn to terrorize, traumatize and inflict violence on the world around them?

I’m not willing to risk it. Are you?

It’s difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the toxic stress of the police state into the mix, it becomes near impossible to protect children from the growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.

Case in point: in Hugo, Oklahoma, plain clothes police officers opened fire on a pickup truck parked in front of a food bank, heedless of the damage such a hail of bullets—26 shots were fired—could have on those in the vicinity. Three of the four children inside the parked vehicle were shot: a 4-year-old girl was shot in the head and ended up with a bullet in the brain; a 5-year-old boy received a skull fracture; and a 1-year-old girl had deep cuts on her face from gunfire or shattered window glass. Only the 2-year-old was spared any physical harm, although the terror will likely linger for a long time. “They are terrified to go anywhere or hear anything,” the family attorney said. “The two-year-old keeps asking about ‘Am I going to get shot again.’”

The reason for the use of such excessive force?

Police were searching for a suspect in a weeks-old robbery of a pizza parlor that netted $400.

This may be the worst use of excessive force on innocent children to date. Unfortunately, it is one of many in a steady stream of cases that speak to the need for police to de-escalate their tactics and stop resorting to excessive force when less lethal means are available to them.

For instance, in Cleveland, police shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was seen playing on a playground with a pellet gun. Surveillance footage shows police shooting the boy two seconds after getting out of a moving patrol car.

In Detroit, 7-year-old Aiyana Jones was killed after a Detroit SWAT team launched a flash-bang grenade into her family’s apartment, broke through the door and opened fire, hitting the little girl who was asleep on the living room couch. The cops were in the wrong apartment.

In Georgia, Christopher Roupe, 17, was shot and killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer, mistaking the remote control in Roupe’s hand for a gun, shot him in the chest.

These children are more than grim statistics on a police blotter. They are the heartbreaking casualties of the government’s endless, deadly wars on terror, on drugs, and on the American people themselves.

Then you have the growing number of incidents involving children who are forced to watch helplessly as trigger-happy police open fire on loved ones and community members alike.

In Texas, an 8-year-old boy watched as police—dispatched to do a welfare check on a home with its windows open—shot and killed his aunt through her bedroom window while she was playing video games with him.

In Minnesota, a 4-year-old girl watched from the backseat of a car as cops shot and killed her mother’s boyfriend, Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor, during a routine traffic stop merely because Castile disclosed that he had a gun in his possession, for which he had a lawful conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times as he was reaching for his license and registration.

A child doesn’t even have to be directly exposed to a police shooting to learn the police state’s lessons in compliance and terror, which are being meted out with every SWAT team raid, roadside strip search, and school drill.

Indeed, there can be no avoiding the hands-on lessons being taught in the schools about the role of police in our lives, ranging from active shooter drills and school-wide lockdowns to incidents in which children engaging in typically childlike behavior are suspended (for shooting an imaginary “arrow” at a fellow classmate), handcuffed (for being disruptive at school), arrested (for throwing water balloons as part of a school prank), and even tasered (for not obeying instructions).

What is particularly chilling is how effective these lessons in compliance are in indoctrinating young people to accept their role in the police state, either as criminals or prison guards.

If these exercises are intended to instill fear, paranoia and compliance into young people, clearly, our children are getting the message, but it’s not the message that was intended by those who fomented a revolution and wrote our founding documents. Their philosophy was that the police work for us, and “we the people” are the masters, and they are to be our servants.

Now that philosophy has been turned on its head.

Certainly, it’s getting harder by the day to insist that we live in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of law.

Yet unless something changes and soon, there will soon be nothing left to teach young people about freedom as we have known it beyond remembered stories of the “good old days.”

For starters, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s time to take a hard look at the greatest perpetrators of violence in our culture—the U.S. government and its agents—and do something about it: de-militarize the police, prohibit the Pentagon from distributing military weapons to domestic police agencies, train the police in de-escalation techniques, stop insulating police officers from charges of misconduct and wrongdoing, and require police to take precautionary steps before engaging in violence in the presence of young people.

We must stop the carnage.


Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

October 15, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Forget privacy abuses, liberals call to DeleteFacebook after learning Zuckerberg met with conservatives

By Helen Buyniski | RT | October 15, 2019

Facebook’s history of abusing users’ trust by sharing their private data with corporate partners and government spooks pales in comparison to its CEO’s decision to sit down with prominent conservatives, for some.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been meeting with conservative commentators, journalists, and politicians in “small, off-the-record dinners” and “informal talks,” Politico revealed on Monday, sending shockwaves through the internet. He reportedly discussed “free expression, unfair treatment of conservatives, fact checking, partnerships, and privacy” with prominent right-wing critics of Facebook, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Washington Examiner correspondent Byron York, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

This, the mainstream media and many liberals on social media have declared, is an outrage. The hashtag #DeleteFacebook was trending for most of Monday as Woke Twitter finally realized the fourth-richest man in the US, who infamously called Facebook users “dumb f***s,” was an unworthy trustee of their digital lives. Just kidding – they were upset that the platform had become yet another tool of white supremacy.

“The fear is that Zuckerberg is trying to appease the Trump administration by not cracking down on right-wing propaganda,” an anonymous “cybersecurity researcher and former government official based in Silicon Valley” told Politico, giving voice to the fears of many in the Democratic Party. Last week, the platform refused 2020 presidential frontrunner Joe Biden’s campaign’s request to remove a Trump campaign ad accusing Biden of promising Ukraine $1 billion to fire a prosecutor investigating the gas company that had hired his son. While Facebook promised that any “viral hoax” shared by a politician would be “demoted” and displayed alongside a fact-check, it pointed to a recently-revised policy against fact-checking “political speech” as the reason its hands were tied, leaving the Biden campaign – and the #Resistance – fuming.

Wounded liberals took to Twitter to voice their displeasure with Zuckerberg’s secret meetings, accusing Facebook of “poisoning our democracy” even as they made excuses for why they couldn’t delete Instagram or WhatsApp, both of which are owned by Facebook.

Zuckerberg sitting down with conservatives is an odd straw to have break the camel’s back, to be sure. Facebook users sat quietly by when it emerged that the platform had shared their private data, including messages sent to other users, with over 150 corporate “partners” without their knowledge or consent. There was no user uprising when the platform was discovered to be collaborating with phone companies to rate customers’ “creditworthiness” based on their profiles. #DeleteFacebook didn’t trend when the platform quietly suspended tens of thousands of apps for violating users’ privacy and admitted it would be unable to catch all of the other perpetrators, or when a Facebook lawyer made the jaw-dropping claim that users have no expectation of privacy at all.

Facebook notoriously collaborates with the US government to remove accounts both domestically and abroad, and works with the Israeli government to stifle the free speech of Palestinians, many of whom get their news exclusively through Facebook. A recent EU court ruling paved the way for Facebook to be weaponized by European countries to remove so-called “hate speech” by users halfway around the world. And Facebook has even struggled to play down complaints that it exploits children by luring them into spending wads of their parents’ cash on online games.

None of these offenses rankled #Resistance Twitter as much as a friendly (off-the-record) dinner with Tucker Carlson. Users attacked the “hateful, dangerous platform” as “irresponsible” and slammed it for “undermining democracy.” But even liberals have admitted, when polled about other issues, that Facebook content favors the Democratic Party, and formeremployees have admitted to suppressing conservative posts. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the company that has abused its users in every way imaginable was finally kicked to the curb for listening to their complaints and trying to change?

October 15, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

UK under fire for compiling secret database on Britons

By Bianca Rahimi | Press TV | October 15, 2019

London – Human rights groups describe it as “utterly chilling” experts as a “trawling exercise”. The UK government is under fire for a secret database supposedly used to prevent radicalization and terrorism.

The personal details of thousands of people are recorded and can be accessed by any bobby on the beat. Rights groups say it’s purpose is not keeping Britain safe though.

If you live in the UK your most personal information, from what you do and who you associate with, to what you drew as a toddler in nursery, might be on a secret government database. One compiled by counter-terrorism police and fed into by the controversial anti-radicalization program called Prevent.

The police say recording referrals ensures accountability and allows forces to understand when vulnerabilities are increasing; but human rights campaigners say it is nothing more than a trawling exercise.

Schools now have a legal duty to act but experts warn that educators are poorly trained. Teachers are scrutinizing pupils as young as 4 for signs of radicalization but according to their unions, teachers feel burdened by this responsibility and may refer too often and arbitrarily to cover their backs.

October 15, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

How The US Quietly Lost The 1st Amendment

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/12/2019

While many would argue that Americans’ First Amendment rights have long since dwindled from the liberties initially granted in The Bill of Rights, a decision by the European Union’s highest court could well mark the final nail in the coffin of free speech.

As Politico reports, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that Facebook can be ordered to track down and remove content globally if it was found to be illegal in any EU country. In its ruling, CJEU said that EU law allowed local judges to order the world’s largest social network to remove illegal content, as well as delete material that conveyed a similar message under certain circumstances.

The decision is not just a slap in the face of worldwide citizens’ freedom of expression, but a big defeat for Facebook as it will force them to be more responsible for what is appearing on the internet (and thus what is seen by those who make the rules as not appropriate for the genpop).

“This judgement raises critical questions around freedom of expression and the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting and removing speech,” Toby Partlett, a Facebook spokesman, said in a statement.

“We hope the courts take a proportionate and measured approach to avoid having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.”

Of course, it won’t as EU bureaucrats have hardly shown the ability to undertake measured responses when it comes to cracking down on non-sanctioned thoughts, words, and memes. Facebook officials went to exclaim that:

… the ruling “undermines the longstanding principle that one country does not have the right to impose its laws on speech on another country.”

As Politico details, the ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2016 by Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, an Austrian lawmaker, who had requested that Facebook delete defamatory posts made about her by an anonymous user.

When an Austrian court sided with her, the company initially only removed the content from being viewed in Austria, but subsequent appeals had focused on whether such takedowns should apply globally, and if Facebook should be required to remove similar content once it has been made aware of the defamatory material.

Following the ruling by Europe’s highest court, her case will now be referred back to Austrian judges, who will make the final ruling about how to apply Thursday’s decision.

As one would expect, digital rights campaigners were incensed by the breadth of the decision:

“The court’s decision opens the door for serious restrictions on freedom of expression due to the takedown of legitimate speech. Extending removal to the vague concept of “equivalent” content is harmful because the context as well as motivation of users re-sharing content may significantly differ with each re-upload,” said Eliška Pírková, Europe policy analyst at Access Now, a campaigning group.

Those who believe tyranny cannot come to the United States should take a look around because it’s already here and as the EU court’s decision shows, it is not just Washington that Americans should fear.

October 12, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Sanctioning Away Free Speech: Americans Meet With Iranians at Their Peril

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 10, 2019

The issue of the United States waging what seems to be a global war by way of sanctions rarely surfaces in the western media. The argument being made by the White House is that sanctions are capable of putting maximum pressure on a rogue regime without the necessity of having to go to war and actually kill people, but while economic warfare may seem to be more benign than bombing and shooting the reality is that thousands of people die anyway, whether through starvation or inability to obtain medicines. It is often noted that 500,000 Iraqi children died in the 1990s due to sanctions imposed by the Bill Clinton White House and current estimates of deaths in Syria, Iran and Venezuela number in the tens of thousands.

Meanwhile the regimes that are under siege through sanctions do not, in fact, capitulate to American demands even when they are feeling considerable pain. Cuba has been sanctioned by Washington since 1960 and nothing has been accomplished, apart from providing an excuse for the regime to tighten its control over the people. Indeed, one might argue that free trade and travel would have likely succeeded in democratizing Cuba much more quickly than threats coupled with a policy of economic and political isolation.

Apart from their ineffectiveness, the dark side of sanctions is what they do to third parties who get caught up in the conflict. America’s recently imposed total ban on Iranian petroleum exports comes with secondary sanctions that can be initiated on any country that buys the oil, alienating Washington’s few remaining friends and creating universal concern regarding the United States’ long-term intentions. Indeed, the United States was a country that prior to the “Global war on terror” was generally liked and respected, but today it is widely regarded as the most dangerous threat to peace in the world. This shift in perception is due to the actual wars that the US has started as well as the sanctions regime which has as its objective regime change of governments that it disapproves of.

Another aspect to sanctions that is somewhat invisible is the impact that government action has had on what are regarded as the constitutional rights of American citizens. Max Blumenthal has written an interesting article on a recent application of sanctions that has affected a group of citizens who were seeking to attend a conference in Beirut Lebanon.

Blumenthal describes how the attempt to criminalize any participation in a conference sponsored by the Iranian NGO New Horizon as a “significant escalation in the Trump administration’s strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ to bring about regime change in Iran.” A number of Americans who had intended to speak or otherwise participate in the conference were approached in advance by FBI agents, evidently acting under orders from Sigal Mandelker, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. The Agents warned that any participants in the conference might be subject to arrest upon return to the US because New Horizon is under sanctions. One of those who was approached by the Bureau explained that “They’re interpreting the regulations to say that even if you associate with someone who has been sanctioned, you are subject to fines and imprisonment. I haven’t seen anything in the regulations that allows that, but they’ve set the bar so low that anyone can be designated.”

The New Horizon Conference is an annual event organized by Iranian TV host and filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh and his wife, Zeina Mehanna. New Horizon was placed under financial sanctions earlier this year by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). [Full disclosure: the author attended and spoke at the conference in Mashhad last year]

US government interest in New Horizon conferences appeared to begin in 2014, after the Jewish Anti-Defamation league (ADL) called that year’s meeting an “anti-Semitic gathering” that “included US and international anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and anti-war activists.”

Potential participants in the Beirut conference made strenuous efforts to find out just what the consequences might be if they were to attend the event, but the Treasury Department refused to be drawn into a debate over restrictions that were arguably unconstitutional. Lawyers who were consulted warned that any notice from the FBI that someone might be arrested should be interpreted as meaning that someone will be arrested. Other sources in the government suggested privately that the Trump Administration would be delighted if it could make an example of some Americans who were soft on Iran.

Now that the conference has been concluded without any significant American presence, there has been some clarification of how the sanctions might be applied. Responding to a query by a potential participant, an OFAC employee explained that “transaction” and “dealing in transactions,” as those terms are used by OFAC, are broadly construed to include not only monetary dealings or exchanges, but also “providing any sort of service” and “non-monetary service,” including giving a presentation at a conference. Any person engaging in that activity could be subject to legal consequences because the Treasury Department and OFAC have broad latitude to take action against persons who violate its rules or guidelines, and that a range of factors are taken into consideration when deciding to take action against any specific person or for any specific violation.

When asked whether dealing with non-sanctioned Iranian organizations might also be construed negatively, the OFAC employee observed that there could or might be consequences. That’s because Iran (along with North Korea and a few other countries) is a “comprehensively sanctioned” country, meaning that anything having to do with “supporting it” is sanctionable.

Exactly how speaking at any Iranian sponsored event is damaging to American interests remains unclear, in spite of the “clarification” provided by OFAC, but the real damage is to those US citizens who choose to travel to countries that are at odds with Washington to offer a different perspective on what Americans actually think. And there is also considerable value in those travelers returning to the United States to share with fellow citizens perceptions of how foreigners regard US foreign policy, insofar as anything describable as a policy actually exists. In truth, the sanctions regime with its steady diet of punishment has now entered a new phase, as Blumenthal observed, where White House aggression overseas is now blowing back, eroding the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights in an act of self-destruction that is both unnecessary and incomprehensible.

October 10, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Israel to build camps as preparation for displacing Arab citizens

MEMO | October 8, 2019

Israel’s District Planning and Building Committee considered a plan on Sunday submitted by the Bedouin Settlement Authority in the Negev which aims to build camps as preparation for the displacement of 36,000 Arab citizens, Arab48.com has reported. The plan targets Palestinian-Arab residents within Israel who live in Bedouin villages “unrecognised” by the Israeli occupation government.

Such villages have often been in place for hundreds of years before the creation of the Israeli occupation state. Nevertheless, it is insisting on displacing their residents and replacing the villages with housing projects for Jewish Israeli settlers.

A letter has been sent to the head of the District Planning and Building Committee asking them not to accept the plan. It was sent on behalf of Adalah Centre, an Israeli rights group seeking justice for Arab residents, along with the Regional Council for the Unrecognised Villages in the Negev, the Peaceful Coexistence Club and Shatil Association.

Submitted by lawyer Suha Bsharah from Adalah, the letter stressed the importance of rejecting the plan, which is simply a tool to displace Arabs from their homes and villages within Israel. It also reiterated that such an action amounts to a “flagrant violation of the basic rights of the Arab citizens on top of which is the right to respect, dignity and equality.”

The letter noted that this plan reinforces the suffering inflicted on the Arab residents of the unrecognised villages as Israel is planning to displace them under the pretext of carrying out government projects. “It is unreasonable that the authorities displace tens of thousands of residents from their homes and lands,” wrote the signatories. “[The plan] will destroy a complete generation of Arab children, women and youths.”

According to Bsharah, “The Israeli authorities are seriously looking for a legal cover for the displacement of Arabs by getting the approval of the District Planning and Building Committee. They are not looking for a just and appropriate solution that would maintain the right to live with respect, dignity and safety for the Arabs who have been living here for decades, if not hundreds of years.”

The head of the Council of the Unrecognised Villages, Atiyyeh Al-Asam said: “The Council rejects this plan because its implicit and explicit goal is to forcibly displace the residents of the unrecognised villages. We believe that this plan is materialising the spirit of the [withdrawn] Prawer Plan which was based on displacing tens of thousands of Arabs.”

October 8, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Former CIA Chief Brennan Unblinkingly Rewrites Entire Basis Of US Judicial System In One Short Sentence

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/06/2019

The presumption of innocence, as a foundation of the US judicial system, has seemingly been under attack since November 8th 2016. An allegation is made, media runs with the narrative, the seed of possibility of guilt is implanted in the minds of zombie Americans, and the accused is maligned forever – no court required. Simple.

And now, none other than former CIA Director John Brennan clarifies exactly how the deep state sees “due process”…

In an interview on MSNBC, Brennan, unblinkingly states that “people are innocent, you know, until alleged to be involved in some kind of criminal activity.”

And not even a skip of a beat from the MSNBC anchors.

Some have suggested, in Brennan’s defense, that he was being sarcastic, or even joking, but nothing in his delivery suggests that and furthermore, it’s not the smartest thing to say given the goings on at the margin of the legal system and the death–by-allegation media narratives that are swarming around the enemies of his deep-state attack.

Of course, we should by now know full well how to treat anything that comes out of Brennan’s mouth…

Utterly without value.

October 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

EU can order Facebook to remove ‘hate speech’ even if it’s outside Europe, top court says in landmark ruling

RT | October 3, 2019

Facebook must comply with demands from EU nations to remove content deemed illegal, even if the material falls outside of their jurisdiction, a top court has ruled. The decision could undermine freedom of speech on the internet.

The European Court of Justice, the bloc’s top court, said on Thursday that an individual country can order Facebook to remove posts, photographs, and videos, and even restrict access to these materials to people all over the world.

According to the Luxembourg-based court, a national court of any EU country has the right to instruct the social media giant to take down posts considered defamatory in regions beyond its jurisdiction.

The ruling upholds a non-binding opinion from an ECJ adviser in June, which Facebook argued “undermines the longstanding principle that one country should not have the right to limit free expression in other countries.”

The initial opinion came after an Austrian Green party politician sued Facebook, demanding that the platform delete defamatory content about her posted by a user, as well as duplicates of the same material. The complaint was referred to the ECJ by Austria’s High Court. The politician, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, insisted that Facebook prevent the content from being viewed worldwide.

This is the second major ECJ ruling in as many months concerning freedom of expression on the internet. In September, the court said that Google does not have to apply the EU’s “right to be forgotten” law globally. The directive requires the tech giant to remove search result listings to pages containing damaging or false information about a person. As a result, Google implemented a feature that prevents European users from being able to see delisted links.

October 3, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

No Freedom for India’s Kashmir Valley Politicians, Jammu Counterparts Released

Sputnik – October 2, 2019

The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday released all politicians that had been held under house arrest in Jammu since India scrapped the region’s special constitutional status at the start of August.

Jammu region politicians have been released from detention ahead of local block development council elections scheduled for 24 October. Eight politicians were released from house arrest, including Devender Singh Rana, Raman Bhalla, Harshdev Singh, Chaudhary Lal Singh, Vikar Rasool, Javed Rana, Surjit Singh Slathia and Sajjad Ahmed Kitchloo.

However, the state administration did not free politicians under house arrest in the Kashmir Valley as the situation there is still sensitive from a security point of view. Former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah remain under house arrest.

Administration officials said the Jammu region is peaceful, and therefore, a decision was taken to release politicians detained before or on 5 August after India’s Parliament passed a law to revoke the quasi-autonomous status of the state.

The state is to be divided into two federally-administered territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh from 31 October.

On 30 September, Jammu and Kashmir’s chief electoral officer announced that block development council elections would be held in October.

Meanwhile, several pleas were filed before the Supreme Court of India challenging the Central government’s 5 August decision to bifurcate the state into the federal government administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. On Tuesday, the top court gave the Central government a month to file its response to the pleas.

The court made it clear that if needed it would direct the government to produce all relevant documents pertaining to its decision to scrap Article 370.

It also said it will not entertain fresh petitions on the issue.

The bench said that it would allow a week for petitioners to file their replies to the Central and state governments’ counter-affidavits.

October 2, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

What If the President Is a Threat to National Security?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 2, 2019

Last January, the Washington Post carried an interesting article by a person named Asha Rangappa, who is a former FBI agent. The article explored what would happen if a U.S. president became a threat to national security. She wrote her article in the context of suspicions that President Trump might be acting as a covert agent for Russia. She began her article as follows:

In the opening sentence of her article, she pointed out, “When President Trump fired then-FBI Director James B. Comey in 2017, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was secretly working on behalf of Russia. As a former FBI agent who conducted investigations against foreign intelligence services, I know that the bureau would have had to possess strong evidence that Trump posed a national security threat to meet the threshold for opening such an investigation.”

Rangappa pointed out that the FBI has methods that address a suspected threat to national security within the federal bureaucracy, such as cutting off a person’s access to secret information. But she observed, “Unfortunately, none of these are feasible options if the national security threat is the president of the United States.”

She concludes that the only feasible option for a president who becomes a threat to national security is “exposure,” followed by impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.

While Rangappa raises an important issue, unfortunately she fails to understand that under our system of government, there is another way to deal with a president who becomes a threat to national security. It isn’t a method that is outlined in the Constitution. Nonetheless, owing to the governmental structure under which we live, it is a de facto means of dealing with any president, both foreign and domestic, who becomes a threat to national security.

Our country was founded on a type of governmental structure called a limited-government republic. While there was a relatively small army, there was no vast military establishment, CIA, NSA, and FBI. Governmental operations were for the most part transparent. For more than 150 years, there was no concept of “national security.”

All that changed after World War II. The U.S. government was converted into a governmental structure known a “national-security state.” It consists of a gigantic, permanent, powerful, and ever-growing military-intelligence establishment. America’s national-security state is composed of the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex, the CIA, the NSA and, to a certain extent, the FBI.

A national-security state is a type of totalitarian governmental structure. North Korea is a national-security state. So is China. Egypt. Russia. And post-WW2 United States.

Why did U.S. officials convert the federal government to a national-security state? After World War II, they said that America now faced an enemy that was an even bigger threat than Nazi Germany. That enemy was the Soviet Union, which, ironically, had been America’s wartime partner and ally.

U.S. officials maintained that there was an international communist conspiracy based in Moscow, Russia. The aim of the conspiracy, they said, was to take over the world, including the United States.

America’s limited-government structure, they believed, was insufficient to prevent the communists from taking over America. To prevail in this new Cold War, it would be necessary, they believed, to have a governmental structure similar to that of communist regimes, one that could wield the same totalitarian-like powers wielded by communist regimes, including assassination.

The overriding principle of a national-security state is, needless to say, “national security.” The idea is that anything can and should be done to eradicate threats to national security.

But who decides what “national security” means? More important, who decides what constitutes a threat to national security? The Constitution doesn’t speak to those issues because the Constitution never called a national-security state type of governmental structure into existence.

By default and sheer force of power, the national-security branch of the federal government became the final arbiter for determining threats to national security and taking the necessary measures to eradicate them.

The assumption of such power was acceded to early on by both Congress and the Supreme Court, both of which decided that they would defer to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA on matters relating to “national security.” These other two branches had the perfect justification for making that decision: it is the national-security branch that naturally possesses the particular expertise for ascertaining threats to national security.

Ordinarily, the president, who represents the executive branch, and the national-security branch work together to protect national security and to eradicate threats to national security. If we consider, for example, the regime-change operations in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, and Chile in the 1960s and ’70s, we see both the executive branch and the national security branch working together to oust foreign leaders, including democratically elected presidents, from office through coup, invasion, or assassination because they were considered to be threats to U.S. national security. We also find a steadfast policy in the federal judiciary to not interfere with those operations.

But the question naturally arises, the one that Rangappa raises in her Washington Post article: What happens if the national-security branch concludes that the president himself is a threat to national security?

There is no question about the answer: Even though the Constitution doesn’t provide for it, the fact is that, as a practical matter, the national-security branch is the final arbiter of the issue. That is not only because of its particular expertise on matters relating to national security, it’s also because, as a practical matter, the other branches of the government lack the power to interfere with operations to protect national security carried out by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

Rangappa raises the prospect of a president who becomes a conscious agent of a foreign power. Unfortunately, she fails to recognize another possibility: a president whose philosophy and policies take America in a direction that the national-security branch considers a threat to national security.

Suppose, for example, that a U.S. president at the height of the Cold War decided that the Cold War was a bunch of baloney. What if he decided that the national-security state type of governmental structure was itself a bigger threat to America than international communism? What if he entered into secret negotiations with the leaders of the Soviet Union and Cuba to bring an end to hostilities and to establish friendly and peaceful relations, just as the ousted leaders of Guatemala, Cuba, and Chile did?

What if the national-security branch concluded that this different direction would spell the end of the United States as an independent, sovereign, and free country? What if the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were absolutely certain that such policies would bring about a communist takeover of the United States?

What then? Rangappa’s solution of exposure, followed by impeachment and conviction obviously wouldn’t work because the president wouldn’t be doing anything illegal that would justify impeachment and removal from office. Moreover, waiting for the next election would be too late to prevent the catastrophe. Following the Constitution by simply letting the president lead the nation into disaster would be national suicide.

What would the national-security branch do? There is no question about it. It would do what it is charged with doing. It would do what was necessary to protect national security. And the nation would be exhorted to move on.

October 2, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

School Districts Use “Gaggle” To Monitor Students Free Speech And Social Media Posts

MassPrivateI | October 1, 2019

Today, I give you a frightening story about free speech censorship and watchlists just in time for the countdown to Halloween.

A recent article in The Tennessean reveals how the Williamson County School District (WCS) is monitoring students free speech and social media posts.

The WCS recently implemented a “threat surveillance program” called Gaggle, that is so invasive and frightening one would be hard pressed not to call it a “gag” program that limits students free speech.

When the WCS was asked to reveal specific details about what Gaggle and authorities are monitoring students speech for, they claimed they could not reveal any details “due to federal family protection laws.”

Public & private schools are joining the ranks of alphabet soup surveillance agencies like DHS, the FBI and the NSA claiming they cannot reveal surveillance details.

The Tennessean was able to shed some light on what Gaggle monitors by saying it, “operates using a mathematical algorithm to identify high risk words and phrases when students are logged into the district’s server.”

Gaggle’s video was a little more revealing, claiming that they monitor students social media posts 24/7 for things like:

  • profanity
  • insulting language
  • hate speech
  • provocative images
  • pornography 
  • drug use
  • alcohol use and much more

When school districts and private corporations start monitoring students for things like profanity and insulting language, we should all be worried because it will not end there.

Soon social media providers will monitor everyone.

Parents think school districts have crossed the line with Gaggle.

“I’m concerned about the mining of all the other student-written text, regarding bullying, profanity, or anything offensive. Aren’t kids going to be too nervous to write anything that’s potentially controversial? What kind of education will they get if they’re walking on eggshells not to offend the computer algorithm?” WCS parent Thomas Morgan said.

Gaggle’s monitoring of students is a lot more invasive than what parents are being told.

Gaggle’s “Safety Management Dashboard” allows school staff and law enforcement to identify and track individual students who have the highest number of incidents.

The Gaggle Safety Management Dashboard allows superintendents, principals and other educators who are responsible for student safety to investigate and answer the following questions:
  • Which of my schools has the highest amount of incidents?
  • What educational tools are my students using most frequently?
  • How severe are the incidents Gaggle Safety Representatives discover?
  • Has the number of inappropriate incidents increased or decreased over time?
  • How does my school or district’s incident rate compare with national averages?

Mr. Morgan was right, students will be walking on eggshells because they will be afraid of getting put on a watchlist.

Gaggle is like Alexa on steroids.

A Gaggle video called “do you know what your students are doing online?” is a damning account of exactly how invasive their threat to free speech is.

Gaggle’s Bloomington, Illinois staff, listens to and watches students social media content in real-time 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The video also revealed that at least seven school districts are using Gaggle: Oklahoma Public Schools, Cincinnati public schools, Duval public schools, Fort Wayne Community schools, Johnston County schools, Denver Public schools and last but not least the Williamson County School District.

The Tennessean revealed a horrific vision of how school board members view monitoring students free speech.

“I don’t think it interferes with free speech. I think it is just like any other employer’s authority to monitor their network,” School board member Eliot Mitchell, 3rd District, an IT executive at a computer systems company said.

When faculty and law enforcement start viewing themselves as employers and students as employees, is it any wonder their free speech is in jeopardy?

What makes Gaggle’s incident tracking system even more disconcerting is that it builds a database of each student’s infraction[s] that will follow them throughout their lives.

Allowing corporations to create databases of our kids lives in school is horrendous. Soon no one will be able to escape being put on some type of government/corporate watchlist. That terrifies me.

October 1, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

The Rule of the Mob: Labour Conference Banner Banned, Slashed

By Peter Gregson | OffGuardian | September 27, 2019

On Sunday 22nd Sept, I, a Labour Party member since 1986, had my banner taken down from outside Conference. Why? The police agreed it was not anti-Semitic. When Zionists first started complaining about it, the police photographed it and referred it to their superiors. Not a problem, they said. The banner could stay.

But the Zionists, from the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and the Sussex Friends of Israel (FoI) were incandescent with rage. Repeatedly they complained and when the police refused to act, they took the law into their own hands.

Cllr Joshua Garfield from Newham Council rushed past me at the banner and slashed it in two. The police apprehended him and removed the large sharp scissors he had used and took his details. (Later Garfield boasted about it on twitter.)

The Secretary from Labour Against the Witch-hunt and I repaired it. Yet again it was attacked, ripped in half again by another Zionist. We repaired it again.

At this point local hoodlum Simon Cobbs (Founder of Sussex Friends of Israel and ex-resident of HMP Exeter) stood spread-eagled before it and refused to move. After an hour of this he moved away, whereupon another extremist rushed the banner and this time ripped it in several places.

On each occasion we repaired the banner, and on each occasion the police caught the assailant and took their details.

The police asked me if I would consider taking down the banner; I said I would not do this- I explained this was a matter of freedom of speech; I was in a public space, the banner was not anti-Semitic.

Eventually, a group of Zionists stood before the banner and created a scene, arguing and shouting with a group of us who defended the banner, supporters of free speech. At a certain point the police made the decision that a possible public order offence had been committed. They removed the banner and took it away.

The police explained that it was now evidence in a potential public order charge…. AGAINST me!

It would appear the police had been bullied into making a decision into taking my banner on the grounds that I had committed a public order offence, rather than those who had been harassing and attacking me, calling me an anti-Semite. Readers can see the slashed banner here.

Later that day, Jeremy Corbyn waded in. He tweeted:

I’m disgusted that this banner was displayed near our #Lab19 conference centre. We asked the police to remove it and I’m glad they did. This kind of antisemitic poison has no place whatsoever in our society.”

This brought forward 1,800 responses, many from people who couldn’t see anything anti-Semitic about the banner at all. Even the artist, Latuff, said so.

On the Monday, I attended a voluntary interview at the John Street police station where I was interviewed under caution with the duty solicitor present. I explained what the banner was about and why I had brought it to Brighton, to promote political discussion on the weaponization of anti-Semitism.

I explained about the Al-Jazeera documentary on which the banner was based, The Lobby , which portrayed how Israel funds the take-down of politicians sympathetic to Palestine, using groups such as the JLM and the FoI.

I noted the banner had particular relevance at this time. An election was coming and that once the date was announced, newspapers would be full of accusations of anti-Semitism aimed at Labour politicians who have dared to criticise Israel, in an effort to undermine their vote. I thought it important to point out the role a foreign country was having in British electoral affairs.

I concluded by telling the police that I was disappointed in them for undermining my freedom of speech.

The police must now decide if they will ask the CPS to prosecute me; it is likely to be months before a decision is made.

In the meantime, I will pursue claims of criminal damage against those who attacked my banner and against the police for taking it down, for the Human Rights Act of 1998 – Article 10 protects my right to hold my own opinions and to express them freely without government interference, including through works of art.

The next day, Rabbi Ahron Cohen of the Neturei Karta spoke to me and gave his view that he could not fathom any way that the banner was anti-Semitic.

Many are dumbfounded at Corbyn’s tweet describing it as such. When the Lobby film was shown in 2017, its fairness and accuracy was supported by OFCOM and Corbyn called for an investigation, so he knew that Israel pumps millions of pounds into Zionist defamation activities in the UK with the sole aim of shutting down any debate on Israel’s racist treatment of Arabs and Christians.

However, according to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism adopted by most political parties, to say that Israel is a racist endeavour is now seen as prejudice against Jews.

The banner says: “IHRA: tell the NEC how you feel”, because I wanted Labour members to tell the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to abandon the IHRA definition they adopted a year ago, an action Corbyn himself objected to.

Party members are now beholden to a definition whereby any activist criticising Israel as racist becomes an anti-Semite, a plainly ludicrous claim. This enables Zionists to make endless charges of anti-Semitism against anti-apartheid activists.

Most of these accusations come from the JLM, registered as a socialist society affiliated to Labour.

I am chair of Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism (LAZIR), a group of Labour Party activists which sees Zionism as racism and who want to end its influence, seeking to get the JLM disaffiliated. At the Conference, we distributed 1,500 flyers to Party members calling for this, highlighting the JLM’s role in undermining any politician who supports Palestine and criticises Israel.

Corbyn’s pro-Palestine stance has drawn JLM’s ire and they have declared Corbyn “unfit to be prime minister”. They score Labour candidates seeking election according to their level of support for Israel, working with the media to undermine whose whom they don’t like or who support Corbyn.

A tweet from a man at LP Conference showing plans to attack Corbyn and Labour with “big stories” come election time

One doesn’t have to be either Jewish or in the Labour Party to be in the JLM.

Labour’s founding planks are fairness, equality and social justice. LAZIR point out that JLM’s sole focus is on protecting Israel, sharing none of Labour’s values in their disregard for Palestinian rights.

I emailed Corbyn in response to the tweet, pointing out the Rabbi’s views and that he himself had called for an investigation into Israel’s work undermining UK politicians; he had also not supported Labour adopting the full IHRA definition.

I copied in all NEC members and drew this response from Jon Lansman:

I do not wish to receive any more of your messages. Your obsessive hatred of those you call “Zionists” marks you out as an anti-Semite. To be clear, you do not have my permission to retain my contact details so please delete them and never contact me again.”

Lansman is Momentum leader and the man responsible for getting the IHRA definition adopted by Labour in 2018. He is a strong supporter of Israel and spent years on a kibbutz. He is also one of the nine CLP reps on the NEC and as such was elected to represent the views of CLP members, including me. I consider that as my rep, Lansman must accept that part of his role is to receive communications on Labour Party matters from members.

Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson couldn’t resist wading in as well, saying in the Jewish Chronicle he was furious about this “deliberate intimidation of Jewish Labour members at the conference”.

He said “Regardless of where and why it is outrageous to come to a conference of a democratic party and to intimidate people who are just trying to make the world a better place.” I do not consider Watson’s unbridled support for Israel is in any way making the world a better place.

I am now in discussion with my solicitors; I will seek redress through the courts.

NOTES:

Latuff’s cartoon was first published in September 2018, when it was used to illustrate Gregson’s article Why let Netanyahu write the Labour rulebook?

See the footage of the police removing the banner at LBC here. More on this, including the links to the many publications who carried the story, can be found at lazir.org

September 27, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment