The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The documents, released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination, indicate that the department frequently collects information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even for events expected to be peaceful. The reports confirm social media surveillance of the protest movement and ostensibly related events in the cities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and New York.
They also show the department watching over gatherings that seem benign and even mundane. For example, DHS circulated information on a nationwide series of silent vigils and a DHS-funded agency planned to monitor a funk music parade and a walk to end breast cancer in the nation’s capital.
The tracking of domestic protest groups and peaceful gatherings raises questions over whether DHS is chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights, and over whether the department, created in large part to combat terrorism, has allowed its mission to creep beyond the bounds of useful security activities as its annual budget has grown beyond $60 billion.
The surveillance cataloged in the DHS documents goes back to August of last year, when protests and riots broke out in Ferguson the day after the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. According to two August 11th, 2014 reports, a DHS FEMA “WatchOps officer” used information from Twitter and Vine to monitor the riots and reproduced a map, originally created by a Reddit user, of conflict zones.
This sort of information gathering was not confined to Ferguson. A few days after rioting and protests there, a DHS email forwarded another message reporting on the “National Moment of Silence,” nationwide silent vigils planned in response to the shooting. The original email listed the cities with planned vigils and noted that they were being spread on social media with the hashtag #NMOS14. It also mentioned that NYPD’s counterterrorism intelligence organization would be “monitoring the situation.” The DHS email forwarding that information said the data was provided “for your situational awareness.”
An April 2015 FEMA memo also shows that the DHS appears to have gathered information on anti-police-brutality protests in Philadelphia “organized by members of the Philly Coalition for Real Justice” and in New York on May Day at “Foley Square, start time 1700… Independent factions are being solicited to join in on a full day of demonstration through various open source social media sites, fliers, posters.”
In an email to The Intercept, DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee wrote: “The Department of Homeland Security fully supports the right of individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights and does not provide resources to monitor any specific planned or spontaneous protest, rally or public gathering. The DHS National Operations Center statutory authority (Section 515 of the Homeland Security Act (6 U.S.C. § 321d(b))) is limited to providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture for the federal government, and for state, local, tribal governments as appropriate, in the event of a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster, and ensures that critical terrorism and disaster-related information reaches government decision-makers.”
Baher Azmy, a legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, however, argues that this “providing situational awareness” is just another word for surveillance and that creating this body of knowledge about perfectly legal events is a problem in and of itself. “What they call situational awareness is Orwellian speak for watching and intimidation,” said Azmy. “Over time there’s a serious harm to the associational rights of the protesters and it’s an effective way to chill protest movements. The average person would be less likely to go to a Black Lives Matter protest if the government is monitoring social media, Facebook, and their movements.”
Although Lee says in his email that the department “does not provide resources to monitor any specific planned or spontaneous protest, rally or public gathering,” some of the documents show that the DHS has produced minute-by-minute reports on protesters’ movements in demonstrations.
In response to The Intercept’s FOIA request, for example, last month the DHS’s Office of Operations Coordination released over 40 pages of documents (archive 1, archive 2) detailing live updates and Google Maps images of Black Lives Matter protestors’ movements during an April 29th protest in Washington, DC.
The “Watch Desk” of the DHS’s National Capital Region, FEMA branch compiled this real-time information despite the fact that an FBI joint intelligence bulletin shared among several DHS officials the day before noted that there was “no information suggesting violent behavior is planned for Washington, DC” and that previous anti-police brutality protests in the wake of Ferguson “have been peaceful in nature.” The bulletin also said that for unspecified reasons “we remain concerned that unaffiliated individuals could potentially use this event to commit acts of violence in the Chinatown area.”
This surveillance of the April 29th protest, which the bulletin explicitly refers to as a “First Amendment-protected event,” raises questions about the potentially compromised state of protesters’ civil liberties — a worry that also surfaced after it was revealed in 2012 that the DHS was monitoring Occupy Wall Street.
“It is concerning that the government would be diverting resources towards surveilling citizens who are assembling and expressing their First Amendment rights,” says Maurice Mitchell, an organizer with Blackbird, a group that helps support activism against police violence in communities across the country. “The fact that our government is doing this — I can only assume to disrupt us — is pretty alarming… Directly after 9/11, people said, ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.’ Well, now we’re fighting back against police brutality and extrajudicial killings, yet they are using this supposedly anti-terrorist infrastructure against us.”
Participants, some dressed as robots, march down T street during the annual DC Funk Parade, on May, 02, 2015 in Washington, DC.
An April 29th email from the DHS National Operations Center also mentions planned surveillance of three seemingly innocuous events, two of which were associated with historically black neighborhoods. According to the email, the DHS-funded DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency decided to conduct “a limited stand-up… to monitor a larger than expected Funk Parade and two other mass gathering events” in case “any Baltimore-related civil unrest occurs.” It appears that the only Funk Parade in DC occurs in the historically black neighborhood of U Street. The other two events, according to another report, produced by the DHS National Capital Region‘s Information Collection and Coordination Center, were a community parade in Congress Heights, a predominantly black neighborhood, and the Avon 39-Walk to End Breast Cancer.
The documents also elaborate on DHS’s response to riots and militant protests in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man who in April died from injuries sustained while in police custody. DHS deployed officers on the ground and at intelligence centers. As VICE reported last month, the DHS’ Federal Protective Service placed more than 400 officers on duty in Baltimore after Gray’s death. In response to the anti-police backlash in Baltimore, DHS agencies also “integrated” representatives into two local intelligence centers, the Governor of Maryland’s Operations Center and the Mayor’s Emergency Operations Center. The documents state the DHS’s Federal Protective Service and Office of Infrastructure Protection worked in “close coordination with State and Local partners to monitor the situation” in Baltimore and helped “prepare for a large demonstration” that Saturday.
Brendan McQuade, a visiting assistant professor at DePaul University who researches the DHS’s intelligence-gathering fusion centers, believes that the DHS and its affiliated counterterror organizations monitor Black Lives Matter to such a exacting degree because the terrorist threats they were created to stop are exceedingly remote. “Fusion centers were set up for counterterrorism, but it became ‘all crimes, all threats, all hazards’ because terrorism isn’t a real threat. You are four times more likely to be struck by lighting than killed by a terrorist,” says McQuade. “Even at their moment of emergence it was clear that counterterrorism wasn’t going to be enough.”
Raven Rakia, a journalist who investigates state surveillance and policing, said that the DHS’ decision to monitor Black Lives Matter is hardly surprising, given the federal government’s well documented history of spying on and suppressing black social movements and groups like the Black Panthers. “There’s a long history of the federal agencies, especially the FBI, seeing black resistance organizations as a threat to national security,” says Rakia.
Indeed, the documents provided to The Intercept by DHS may well represent a small fraction of state surveillance against Black Lives Matter. Over the last few years, small bits of evidence have trickled out indicating that other counterterror intelligence organizations like the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and state police intelligence groups have been involved in monitoring and apprehending Black Lives Matter activists.
Mitchell, the Blackbird activist, says that this continuing surveillance serves not only to keep tabs on black activists, but also to deter them from pushing forward. “Surveillance is a tool of fear. When the police are videotaping you at a protest or pulling you over because you’re a well known activist — all of these techniques are designed to create a chilling effect on people’s organizing. This is no different. The level of surveillance, however, isn’t going to stop us. After all, we organize because our lives depend on it.”
Correction: This article originally misattributed a map of Ferguson activity to DHS. The department monitored social media activity during the protests and rioting there but the map was originally created by a Reddit user. July 24 4:10 pm ET
Longterm solution: It is time for the ACLU to help correct the “Supremacy Clause” of the U.S. Constitution with a U.S. Supreme Court challenge – this is one symptom of the problem.
Federal, state and local officials (and their contractors exercising police powers) have one thing in common – as a condition of holding authority they take a supreme loyalty oath, oath of office, to follow and uphold the U.S. Constitution – they do NOT take an oath to protect & serve which is superior to the U.S. Constitution.
In other words during the Civil Rights era when local sheriffs refused to protect the constitutional rights of some of their minority citizens (betraying that oath of office), it was perfectly constitutional for a state or federal agency to “check” that disloyal sheriff.
The problem today is there are some (not all) federal agencies and officials violating Americans’ constitutional rights and actually “deputizing” state and local agencies – while clearly violating federal “color of law” criminal statutes. These statutes are merely not enforced (by the feds) when the feds violate your Bill of Rights.
The problem is the Supremacy Clause has been interpreted and accepted by many judges to exclude federal officials. If you actually read the letter & spirit of the Supremacy Clause [Article VI] – it says the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. If that interpretation were corrected it would be easier for state attorneys general and local prosecutors to check federal officials that cross the line.
http://reason.com/archives/2015/07/24/is-the-criminal-justice-system-tilted-in
One of California’s Most Prominent Federal Judges
Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
“Police investigators have vast discretion about what leads to pursue, which witnesses to interview, what forensic tests to conduct and countless other aspects of the investigation,” Kozinski wrote. “Police also have a unique opportunity to manufacture or destroy evidence, influence witnesses, extract confessions and otherwise direct the investigation so as to stack the deck against people they believe should be convicted.” Wow.
Cointelpro part 2
who is funding black lives matter?
I appreciate TI’s efforts to expose this. “Black Lives Matter” is a peaceful movement with an important message. It’s disgusting that peaceful activists who demand equality are being monitored – but the fact that this movement and other peaceful movements were targeted for surveillance shows just what kind of people are perceived as “threats” by the government.
History shows it’s unlikely that surveillance is the only questionable thing going on here, though. Leftist organizations that advocated things like racial equality or peace were effectively dismantled during the original COINTELPRO – and it wasn’t just because activists were surveilled. Groups were infiltrated and disrupted, reputations were ruined, activists were blacklisted, and innocent people’s lives were destroyed.
The idea that innocent people are currently being targeted for these sorts of illegal counterintelligence tactics should not be far-fetched. In fact, the ubiquitous surveillance that we all find ourselves under, combined with the intelligence community’s limitless budget, should suggest that blacklisting, government harassment, false rumors, and other tactics are far more extensive and common today than they were in the past. An internet search for “Fight Gang Stalking” will show that the reality is likely much darker than most people realize.
This deep into the game (15 years) I expect most of the remaining jihad sites, child porn sites, fight gang stalking sites, and race war advocacy sites are run by public or private sector law enforcement and intelligence organizations.
This, in DKos, about the Sandra Bland autopsy.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/24/1405282/-From-Yesterday-s-NYT-Sandra-Bland-Prosecutor-Inadvertenly-Shows-His-Cards
On point here for two reasons. One is the obvious tie to this story, and #2 is something Glenn repeatedly points out: that the NYT uncritically reports what it’s told by officialdom, even when presented with an obvious lie. Does the NYT staff even read what they write/copy-edit?
Anyway, it’s brazen mendacity by the local officials. Maybe they think they’ll get away with it; certainly The Paper of Record isn’t calling them on it.
How many decades has it been common knowledge that marijuana remains in the system long (a month or more) after ingestion? Yet, here we have a fucking prosecutor saying this about the Sandra Bland autopsy, and repeated by the New York Times: “He noted that because traces of marijuana leave the body quickly…”
That alone should be grounds for disbarment and for having that prosecutor removed from the case and investigation, because he is either lying or incredibly incompetent. As for the New York Times repeating that false-hood uncritically, well, it has all been said here, and so that just drives it all home once again.
Quite agreed. I do wonder what method they used to get their positive marijuana screen. http://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/drugtestguide/drugtestdetection.html is layman-accessible, if anybody is curious about validity via various testing methods.
See this graph from the Sentencing Project: http://www.sentencingproject.org/images/photo/12_lifetime_likelihood_race.png
Anyone who thinks it can be explained without any recourse to white privilege and/or racism, has some explaining to do.
Better they should monitoring the police & politics etc. – most terror comes from their side, …or? (US Politics: seven foreign countries attacked with war in the last 13 years)
Homeland Security, Police, FBI monitor stuff and people cry privacy rights have been stepped on. If something bad ( murder, riots, data theft etc happens then people cry that the FBI, Homeland Security, Police are not doing enough.
Any suggestions on what to do then?
JTRIG can rig polls to “cry”on an as needed basis…
It’s important to remember, that at any public demonstration (not just Black Lives Matter) in the United States, your cell phone (and your associated Name / ID) will be cataloged and stored for future use by the government – the East German Stasi would be proud. The police use StingRay’s (the technical details of which are kept out of the news) to do this (however the lists of all the people swept up are invariably handed over to the FBI / NSA):
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/how-i-tracked-fbi-aerial-surveillance/
So, when you go a protest (a constitutional right), turn off your phone (better yet leave it behind), leave your credit cards behind (every swipe pinpoints you with a date / time) , use cash (don’t give a store rewards ID till your back home in your real life) – and take a non cell network connected camera if you want visual footage. An iPod touch with the wifi and bluetooth turned off would appear to be a good stand-in as well having a good camera for those that don’t just want a camera. JMHO…
But that would imply some sense of personal responsibility that most Americans refuse to do, because they enjoy the convenience of their stuff.
What a great piece, this needs to be told because if they were watching their every move they would know about the time and places of their meetings – the “police” staged this to incite the people and then physically assault them in Cleveland. #Corruption
The latest incident.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/27/white-officer-pepper-sprays-crowd-at-black-lives-matter-summit-in-cleveland
Thanks for that link, Coram. What a mess!
What do you all make of that?
They’re getting desperate, maybe. Tamir Rice was Cleveland. It could go badly.
OK. Do we all put on our, “I am shocked” faces now? For government to monitor any activist group is called “the norm.” This has always been true. I think that it is primarily intended to intimidate. At this point, I think there is also concern about provocations of violence. Either way, it is pretty routine.
News is a portmanteau for ‘new things’. This article is full of new things. Verifiable things. Things we didn’t know before. “Shock” has squat to do with novelty. If you’re so hip, you’d move the fuck on. But no, you have an announcement to make.
Double that, triple that. It’s the ol’ “Why are you surprised?” routine. Is the “hip” and bored “DHFabian” suggesting that there is no point in filing FOIA’s? No point in publishing results of those requests when answered? No point in anything that Greenwald has written about what was revealed from the Snowden documents from the Surveillance State? Should we the citizens just allow governments to do whatever they’re going to do; be it mass murder, mass surveillance, mass lying and then just yawn, like the “hip” DHFabian does when some actual truths are revealed?
You certainly are jumping to conclusions, aren’t you? I was not referring to the FOIA request. I was referring to the fact that the DHS (and formerly, the FBI) routinely monitors protests. The only shock I have is that it appears that some people were unaware of this. So — what is your issue? That I dare to point out that this is, and has been, normal procedure against dissent, intended to intimidate — that there is, in fact, nothing new about it?
Kitt more than most, and certainly I, are entirely aware of that. Why do you assume that the author and/or commenters think federal surveillance of activists started yesterday?
You do realise they don’t just “monitor” protests, like, from behind barricades, with a cheerful eye, right? They actively manipulate and infiltrate even the most PEACEFUL groups and manipulate them into ugly things using all sorts of vicious tricks. Often the informants even come to be the loudest advocates for that sort of ‘setup’ (and the leaders of the ‘protesters’); look at what happened with Brandon Darby as one example. I won’t expect you to go through the several dozen I could point you to. Even SeaWorld ‘implants’ protesters now.
But that’s all fine, right?
My point: There is nothing new about this. Monitoring political activist groups is the norm, and has been for as long as I’ve been around. “If you’re so hip” (people still use that term?), you would know this. Everything from wire-tapping to taping protests has been the norm at least since the mid-1960s. That said, what in my previous comment ruffled your feathers?
So, because something is ‘the norm’ it’s okay. I see my ‘routine’ comment wasn’t really sufficient, so let me know if you want me to go down ‘the norm’ next. I can. It wouldn’t take long.
Killing people was pretty routine for a while there in Cambodia. In separate incidents, it was also common in Poland, Germany, etc. Torture and inhumane treatment is common at black sites and places like GitMo. Rape is pretty common during wartime. Female genital mutilation is pretty routine in certain parts of the world. Serial killers commit murder, having specific routine MOs. Abusive parents routinely abuse their kids. The Catholic church routinely moved sexually abusive clergymen to new locations so they could routinely molest new children (and routinely went out of their way to cover their knowledge of it up). Surveillance states routinely turn neighbours against one another and destroy the concepts of community and trust. Kids routinely work umpteen-hour days in terrible conditions in foreign countries for almost no pay so Western corporations can make tens of dollars on the cent, labour-wise. In oncology departments, treating cancer is ‘routine’. In police forces, lying in order to protect fellow policemen, both on and off the stand, is routine.
Clearly if it’s routine, it’s fine.
Try actually reading what I wrote. What I wrote is that there is nothing new about government monitoring political activity — protests, specifically. This does not mean I think it is right. It merely means that this has actually been the norm. I don’t understand why merely pointing out this fact caused you to conflate the issue into everything from Cambodia to the Nazi death camps!
Note to all: America is not the country we all learned about in school, a shining land of freedom and opportunity where the rights of all citizens are sacred. When there is dissent, it gets crushed out, either by force or intimidation. This is not new. We must understand this, expect it, and be prepared.
That’s the main reason why your old as dirt refrain about “surprise” or “not new” was jumped on as the old as dirt refrain that it was. Part of being “prepared” is exposing the exact and documented acts and language that can be exposed by citizens. According to your thinking, there is no need for a Chelsea Manning or a Glenn Greenwald or an Edward Snowden or a Julian Assange or Sarah Harrison and others, because it’s all old news; exposing the details is irrelevant and useless.
“When there is dissent, it gets crushed out, either by force or intimidation. This is not new. We must understand this, expect it, and be prepared.”
I highly advise you to do a web search on ‘learned helplessness’.
Understanding, expecting, and being prepared for the long-standing history of the environment one is working in seems exactly the opposite of learned helplessness. You would have us filling our heads with faith-based pablum and pretending that Stingrays aren’t realm, perhaps?
Funny, two people saying pablum in a day here.
Preparing isn’t what people are doing. The majority are slowly adapting to feeling like they can’t do much of anything at all, and the minority will wind up being called extremists, monitored relentlessly, and destroyed until they join the majority or a civil war occurs (hard to win those unless TPTB push people so far past the tipping point they’re willing to sacrifice their and other peoples’ lives to get there though — which sounds suspiciously like something else the US doesn’t like).
So I don’t really know what you’re talking about.
People are learning their government and corporations dictate what they can and cannot do, and people are learning what happens if they don’t comply, by watching examples. Those examples will multiply, stuff like stingrays will continue to be deployed, and tracking will intensify.
So what’s your point?
There is an agency in this administration that has actually made a good decision? Historic indeed.
If The Department of Homeland Security is REALLY concerned about keeping the country safe maybe it should be monitoring police departments……
Actually, the single most significant effort to make our country safer would be monitoring street gangs.
aeneuman just stated that fact…”monitoring police departments…”
HAHAHAHA
Isn’t that what police departments are?
I’ll really start to believe black lives matter when I see the black stop killing each other 24/7/365. Otherwise it is just another race baiting march for Al Sharptongue. I just hope they don’t decided they need more free stuff and start a riot, burn down businesses, set cars on fire, etc. So blacks, when will all black lives matter? Or is it only when a non-black kills them. Got it.
That in the U.S. armed agents of the state — aka cops — kill citizens 78 times more than any other nation, a disproportionate number having black or brown skin, doesn’t concern you? I see. Got it. #racism
I’m so sorry your VHS copy of “Hotel Rwanda” (or was it “Boyz n the Hood”?) appears to have been replaced with a repeating, 24/7/365 clip of the same person getting murdered over and over again. Did you consider simply returning the videotape to your closest Blockbuster and looking out the window? You might even want to risk taking a walk around the block. Unless you’re black — then of course, there might be other black people there who are being paid to kill you so that someone else can be forced to watch someone else getting killed 24/7/365 and we can make a movie about it. We can even release it on BluRay.
You folks need to stop with the “black-on-black” crap. Humans, unfortunately, kill people, who look like them, everyday. How come when white people kill each other every day. – & they’ve been doing it in gangs, in wars, in movie theaters, in schools, in malls, mass killings galore – and no one ever calls them white-on-white murders. How many people of color have white people killed? Why, they’ve ruthlessly wiped out whole cultures.Up until the 1960s, in the U.S., it was not uncommon for thousands of white people to chase down and lynch one black person. Most of them got away with it. There’s nothing comparable to that anywhere in the world. White people tend to be the most psychotic killers. Look at all of these mass killings. White people have specialized in the most efficient, high-tech ways of killing people. On top of that they are the most armed people in the country, and are probably the ones who kill the most “for sport”. None of this is to excuse the killings that black people commit, but that has nothing to do with and could never even come close to the murderous legacy of white folks.
“Is this your car?”: Like Sandra Bland, I confronted an officer who pulled me over for driving while black
Unfortunately for the cop, she turned out to be a CBS news reporter: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/is_this_your_car_like_sandra_bland_i_confronted_an_officer_who_pulled_me_over_for_driving_while_black/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Track the police and make sure there not doing homicides … But they won’t do that #worldcomoingtoaend #slaverydaysareback #iinfulleffect #geteducated
This is simply a replay of the stuff that was going on throughout the 1960’s. KIng was being so heavily watched it’s amazing he was able to function. This has always been a way to keep black civil rights from ever getting too far ahead–it’ s not some crazy leftist ideation, it just is. I’m white and am really glad to see the existence of Black Lives Matter, the title says it all. Under Reagan the big part began in earnest of cutting ALL minorities off from power, black people likely got hit the hardest. Black Lives Matter represents a turning point, as does Occupy, and about 40% of the U.S. just cannot stand it. And money will continue to go down the drain to monitor and infiltrate these movements. money that could be spent feeding kids.
Exactly, and this — that there is nothing new about govt. surveillance of dissent — was a point I was trying to make. At the risk of upsetting people, I don’t think Occupy or Black Lives Matter can change anything, for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that both are so divisive. Occupy began as a people’s movement that could have changed the course we’re on, but before we knew it, it was successfully redefined as a “movement of middle class workers,” the better off alone. “Black Lives Matter” is understood to mean that white ones don’t. Black bigotry is as toxic as white bigotry.
Looking at the broader picture, the US has a poverty crisis, but this, too, is not currently politically-correct to talk about. Not everyone can work (health, etc.) and there simply aren’t jobs for all. The last I saw, there are 7 jobs available for every 10 people who urgently need one. We shipped out a huge number of jobs since the 1980s, ended actual welfare in the 1990s. +Look at this on a broader scale. When Reagan was first elected, launching the long campaign against the poor, the overall quality of life in the US was rated at #1. By the time Obama was elected, this had already plunged to #43, and we can no longer adeq
I won’t bother to address any of the remainder of your comment, since that one snippet alone shows that you have paid no attention at all to what Black LIves Matter is about, and why it has become such a strong and sustained movement.
I very rarely will post the entire text from a link, but this time I’m making an exception:
All #BlackLivesMatter. This is Not a Moment, but a Movement
#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17-year old Trayvon was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder. Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our de-humanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.
It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.
When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. How Black poverty and genocide is state violence. How 2.8 million Black people are locked in cages in this country is state violence. How Black women bearing the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families is state violence. How Black queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence. How 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows. How Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war. How Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by white supremacy, and that is state violence.
#BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. We affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. We have put our sweat equity and love for Black people into creating a political project–taking the hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.
I’m honestly quite bothered by the #BlackLivesMatter thing. By focusing on #BlackLives instead of #AllLivesMatter they’re not addressing the problem at all. -Isms can’t be addressed by implying a different kind of -ism. Feminism and anti-sexist, for example, suggest two entirely different things. Encouraging equality instead of pointing out a difference and encouraging people to think of it as a difference would’ve been a better call, IMHO.
You need to visit the Black Lives Matter website and perhaps #Blacklivesmatter on twitter. You’re not understanding the easily explained meaning and reason for the phrase. As a white person I feel out of place explaining it myself, and most assuredly wouldn’t do it justice if I tried. The “all lives matter” retort to Black Lives Matter is truly insulting in it’s lack of knowledge and understanding about the history that preceded the inception of BlackLivesMatter.
Even though I wasn’t around to experience it (hi, profile me more, TPTB, j/k), I find the Civil Rights movement to be a far better approach — for one thing, it encouraged more ‘non-black’ membership, and it tended to encourage more adhesion and cohesion. I do understand the meaning and reason for the phrase — quite well — but I’m saying that if they (and I find myself saying they, despite being for equal treatment — because I can’t say ‘our’, can I?) are using the race card to band together the same way that those who are opposing ‘them’ (in theory — yes, we both know it’s a society thing; part of the problem is nobody’s really going around saying #BlackLivesDon’tMatter being my point). All lives matter, encourages people to think of all people as fundamentally deserving of the same rights. By pointing out people are black you’re not reclaiming power — you’re reinforcing the differences that lead to the problems in the first place, even if you don’t realise it.
I’d argue that by saying #BlackLivesMatter people are basically doing the same exact thing people, especially black people, were doing back in 2008 pushing for Obama to be president: focusing on race and slogans, instead of digging deeper. Only with #BlackLivesMatter they’re also alienating those who they’re upset with even further — and it’s only by engendering mutual trust instead of encouraging divisiveness that this can ever, ever end. They’re reinforcing ‘us’ vs ‘them’ instead of saying “hey, we’re just like you; we’re human beings who deserve to be treated with respect and dignity”. And I think that’s the whole idea, isn’t it?
This cop shit is out of control. White people get killed and harassed too. A lot of this is socioeconomic. A lot of what isn’t is related to peoples’ socioeconomic *expectations* based on where and how they live.
And this, despite us living in a world in which there has never been MORE bi/multi-racial people in history, percentage-wise. Who was it that was fond of saying when everybody is bi/multiracial then race won’t matter at all (or at least will matter a whole lot less)?
So much of this has to do with trust and respect. I agree that just being nice and expecting the conquering/power-wielding/abusive side to just do whatever the hell it wants is despicable. But it’s important to not make it about race — even if some of it is.
I’m going to have to give you what you might see as short shrift because I don’t have the patience to run through all of what you wrote, and I completely disagree with most all of what you wrote, but don’t feel either of us need for me to voice all of my reasons for why that is.
To just the one bit that I quoted: That’s an example of how you’re missing the point. If Sandra Bland were white, she’d be alive. If Michael Brown were white, he’d be alive. If so many of the men and women who have been murdered by police were white, they would be alive. They’re not alive because BlackLivesDon’tMatter. If so many of the POC who are currently incarcerated or on probation were white, they would be either free or would be facing much shorter incarceration sentences. The criminal justice system is a cruel and hideous sham and a farce, but way more so, and in much greater numbers for Blacks and other people of color, because … ‘they don’t matter’.
Also, until recently, when a black man or woman was killed by police, or maybe kidnapped or faced some other awful fate, that wasn’t news. Nobody took note. A white woman is kidnapped, killed by police or some other ‘newsworthy’ happening, that makes news; gets talked about.
And thus, the need for the literal reminder phrase: “Black Lives Matter.” I, as a white person, not only do not feel left out of the conversation, but I feel honored and fortunate to be included in the conversation. I relate in whatever ways that I can. I listen whenever I can and whenever I believe that my listening is what will best suit the moment. I watch and I learn. I read and I study. I draw on my own personal experiences, and I draw on what I’ve learned throughout my life about the plight of black people and people of color in general. Now, I have this opportunity to learn much more and to contribute to the important conversation and to the movement that we are currently a part of.
Noted, and returned in kind. It’s cool. We can agree to disagree. I don’t know how things will change til people can stop seeing an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. If the shortcut being used is race, then it seems to me that the only way to obliterate those categories is to stop emphasising it. That’s a societal problem, and I don’t know how it can be changed without changing how we operate society — it’s deeper than race, to me. Even you (and I) have to resort to ‘them’ — that creates a separate class of individuals, mentally or otherwise. To me all lives should be valued equally. That is a statement *inclusive* of black lives mattering — but it removes the self-defeating argument that ‘they’ do and I think that’ll wind up dooming its chances of success.
I’ll let this go, and we’ll see how things pan out. At least we made an effort to communicate our stances to one another. Thanks for that. :)
You realise, of course, that the US government was basically heavily attempting, on a constant basis, to not only discredit and blackmail King, but actually were trying to convince him to commit suicide? Maybe you don’t know history as well as you think since it’s all the same.
You realise that a lot of “Occupy began as a people’s movement that could have changed the course we’re on, but before we knew it, it was successfully redefined as a “movement of middle class workers,” was at least partially due to embedded informants and undercover ‘agents’ from various companies, organisations and police departments? Just want to make sure. Obviously people jumped in on the bandwagon (because people do that) but all sorts of pressure points exist to ‘grow’ a ‘movement’ at the expense of keeping a ‘movement’ on-point — just as they exist to exploit a movement, disperse a movement, turn it against each other, and in general wreak havoc (often violent) from within. Would you advocate that since Occupy was attempting to challenge the ‘norm’ corporations were right to try to break it up? Not that it ever had a chance to succeed (we’ll never know) but do you believe that that should be right? fair? legal?
If we only talk about ‘politically correct’ things to talk about then how, in the world, do you expect people to change anything for the better? And isn’t talking politically correctly the norm?
What happens if massive taxes are placed on corporations which then get paid out to all citisens without jobs as recompense for not being able to work whenever jobs get shipped out of the country to ‘save money’? I’m curious what your take on that would be? Would that be welfare? Social justice? Unfair to corporations?
What is fair to people, as far as employment is concerned? Does anybody ‘deserve’ a job? Equally, does any company deserve to be located in the US but thrive off of tax cuts and benefits while not employing people in the US and saving a ton of money in the process while creating blight where they’re incorporated?
Who sets corporate ethics? Are corporate norms correct? Do corporations have ethics? If so are people compelled to treat corporations with the same respect as those same people may be compelled to treat other people, or do they treat them with the same contempt and usury that the corporations treat them with? Should people be punished for treating corps with contempt? Should corps be punished for treating people with contempt? Should that punishment be equal despite the vast economic and social disparity between the two things (after all, corporations are people)?
Not politically correct at all, but speaks directly to ‘change’. Change only happens if people step out of their comfort zone. They don’t do that if they’re forced to be politically correct and bow to ‘norms’ that are NOT “created” for their benefit but rather the benefit of (not even society!) those that profit off of them while offering them nothing in return.
Well, an emotional and cultural moron comments among us. One Malinois says this about the Ferguson protesters:
Because they closed a highway for a few hours. In the meantime, in the United States our cops kill 78 times more people than any other nation in the world. These are disproportionately black and brown people.
Black and brown people are far, far more likely to be issued expensive civil tickets or to be charged with drug crimes. Cops tackling and manhandling their 14-year-old daughters is acceptable, something white parents would have seizures over.
Slavery, Jim Crow, the racist penal state — if I were black I’m not sure how I’d stop myself from burning the muthafucka down. But fuckwit Malinois lives in a bubble in which closing a highway for a few hours is breathlessly awful.
You forgot about the part of the person dying because they couldn’t receive prompt medical care. Mona, you sure do spent WAY TO MUCH time on these forums, usually insulting others who don’t agree with you. I stop in from time to time to hopefully read some thoughtfull comments, but you always seem to be here with your hatred towards white people. May I suggest you go outside more often and interact with the real world with real people? Seeing you on these forums makes me feel like I’m in a CNN or Huffington Post commentary section. Don’t worry, you wont be seeing me on any race-related commentaries on this great journalistic website…Ive learned my lesson.
Is that fun? Is it more gratifying that addressing the substantive arguments I offered about, e.g., slavery, Jim Crow, the racist penal state, the astronomical killing rate of U.S. cops?
(P.S. I have a lovely deck and often am outside!)
#BLM logic: “Hey, maybe if we disrupt businesses and burn them down they will give us jobs!” … “Hey, maybe if we annoy the heck out of people and act like fools people will listen as if we have something not stupid to say!”
Logic that escapes #BLM … “Hey, maybe if we actually believed black lives matter we would try to stop the blacks that murder 93% of murdered blacks in our own communities!”
#BLM is just another leftist idiot farm – where they grow their braindead weeds.
The different between whites killing blacks vs blacks killing blacks is that whites kill blacks out of racism and terrorism. BLM is asking not to be terrorizied by people who hate us because of our skin. Secondly ALL races kill each other. All of them do. You have to realize that they never talk about white on white violence or asian on asian violence when they are actually the ones who created mass genocide against each other. Ask yourself: Why do they only talk about black on black violence and no one else? I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself. But know this too: Throughout history african americans have been the most peaceful and non violent race. We still are despite what they try to feed you.
The same old “we are black and everything wrong is the white man’s fault. Bull****. They are not man enough to realize that while there are racists on both sides, not all white on black crime is racist. This guy is obviously a racist and there is never going to be a way to satisfy him. I would really like to know what will satisfy them?
That’s almost accurate. Slavery — on which this “land of the free” was founded — followed by rigid Jim Crow, lynchings and KKK terror, and then institutionalized racism, especially in the American penal gulag. And the occasional resurrection of KKK-type terror, e.g. Dylann Roof.
Yeah, whatever are these black folk on about?
You realize you are a fuckwit, right?
Eventually the pigs will be doing more than just surveilling protesters. They’ll start mowing them down, Tiananmen Square style. But first the Regime will try to get Americans to give up their guns (or at least the most effective ones) so they won’t have to fear return fire or retaliatory attacks.
The entire US military, assisted by NATO forces, was unable to decisively defeat badly outgunned and outnumbered guerrilla fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. These conflicts cost ay least a trillion dollars (and counting). Yet the subjugation of these countries really would have been a “cakewalk” if their inhabitants had lacked effective firearms.
Want to be a slave to the oligarchy and a plaything of its enforcers? Then be sure you never arm yourself. Never learn how to use and maintain weapons. Leave that to the pigs so they can have unchecked power over you. Or you can resolve to die on your feet rather than live on your knees (and eventually die anyway, as we all do).
Welcome to the socialist government you voted for, where no lives matter except as they serve the state.
Let me try to penetrate that bubble you abide in: Police brutality and harassment of African-Americans is as old as the nation, but became especially severe in the era of civil rights movement and is ongoing.
Black lives didn’t matter at the foundation of the U.S. except as they served the economic interests of their owners. The law enforced the status of chattel slave. Federal lunching laws were passed in the last century because in so many states black lives didn’t matter and law enforcement made that explicitly clear.
So, unless you are going to argue the United Stated was founded as a “socialist” country,” your notion of that system has no relationship to black lives not mattering.
Come on now, kevin! This present Administration in Washington (i. e. the Obama Administration) is not even the next thing to a Socialist government.
kevin: You’re an ignoramus who doesn’t know what Socialism is.
Well at least they were not individually audited by the IRS. I expect those expressing outrage felt those citizens exercising their first amendment rights got what was coming to them.
where can i access these DHS documents?
Many of the documents are linked within the article.
The only times black lives matter to the hypocrites of #BlackLivesMatter is when some violent thug like Michael Brown gets capped by a cop. When hundreds of black folks from Baltimore, Chicago, etc get murdered every year by other blacks they have nothing to say. That’s because they are nothing more than race-baiting, cop-hating firestarters.
Maybe unnecessary killings by police cause more outrage because, unlike common street hoods, cops are paid with our tax dollars to keep the peace and use the minimum force necessary to protect the public?
When a cop is assassinated , what precautions should other cops take ?
Approach a criminal with open hands and no weapons? What is minimum force? I agree that some actions by LEC are wrong and criminal and should be punished by the laws of the land,. But if I walk down the street and am menaced by blacks because I am white what should I do? I have been attacked strictly because of my race. How should I feel?
COPS ASSASSINATED!!!!
Not killed. ASSASSINATED.
Whatever is this world COMING to!
This is false.
But in any event, being targeted for unlawful actions by armed agents/thugs of the state is, to understate, deeply unpleasant. It is to be made not a citizen. It is to be told one is still thought of as a slave. It destroys respect for law in the community, and does so for good reason.
When the fellow citizens we empower to be armed and to use force on us, behave like thugs and treat citizens unequally, this will always lead to political instability.
The difference is that citizens who commit murders are individuals with individual motives and problems.
Law Enforcement, on the other hand, is an institution which can be shaped by policy. At this moment, autonomous use of force guidelines allow police to shoot to kill in anticipation of a threat and that is the source of controversy, as it should be.
There is no direct policy measure that can be taken to stop individual murderers. Murder is already illegal, though I imagine that an economic environment which is less hostile to the black community would go a long way to reduce crime.
There is a direct policy solution to stop police murders and it is a very easy solution. Draft use of force guidelines that require police to accept the danger of their chosen profession by waiting until a deadly threat has been presented before deadly force is authorized.
Pretty simple right?
Sandra Bland died because of exactly this fusion between the local police and the federal governments most heinous groups. Sandra’s death was a message to all #BlickLivesMatter folks that the pigs are out to kill us if we do not obey the whim of every rich man or women in the nation. Now it is GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT’ by a hung jury of ‘all the oligarch’s puppets’! America has become nothing more than a fucking farce! Those in the power are using a slightly modernized, less noxious, in not quite so bloodletting a manner as was done to the Jews and the Gypsy’s during Hitler’s reign…but it does have its similarities!! Our neighborhoods are being turned into concentration camps enclosed with police brutality and police force violence. The fences and concertina, the guard towers, all that is being put into motion now, you will see quite soon. The better to protect us from ourselves..you know? Big Brother is here!
Abdul, don’t you have anything better to do with your summer vacation than troll adults on the Internet?
You’re getting warmer, TI. Social movements are targeted and INDIVIDUALS are targeted.
And it’s not just “well known activists”; it’s anyone who, for whatever reason, gets on the wrong side of someone with connections to the police/intelligence community. You’re monitored, followed, wire-tapped, and BOLA-ed. Your friends, neighbors, coworkers are questioned about you, told to report on you. And you may not even know why. This is not “security”. It’s harassment.
Yep. Been outspoken and gotten the activist “target” treatment. Recognize it is there and proceed with life.
Yes, it’s easy to say, just get on with it. But when your reputation has been destroyed to the point that no one will hire you and everyone shuns you, it’s not so easy.
Then again, that’s the point, right? Neutralize the enemy. “Disrupt. Discredit. Destroy.” (FBI’s playbook.)
This is why the really important ones in the movement or any one in general need use privacy minded apps like Gliph, Firechat, open whisper system, any program that uses Textsecure to make all monitor difficult to next to impossible. Look what Edward Snowden did to leak the information he did and he went about it. Get off Twitter ! Be Like Snowden ! Just realize how easy it can be if you put the time to secure your communications and how piss off the Govt will be when you do.
Here is a link to the some Secure Apps Information you can and should use
https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard
Here Some Basic Information On How to Stay Private on The Internet
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/180485-the-ultimate-guide-to-staying-anonymous-and-protecting-your-privacy-online
Here Is Some Information on VPN
https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/3/
I’m not sure you realise that while encrypting conversations between weak to medium connectors on a chain is indeed a good thing, none of those will do anything against the use of cell tower tracking and manipulation to track people — and then later use messaging apps and phone numbers to create stronger, more reliable databases. Leave the devices at home.
As for your suggestions of specific apps… why did you suggest the majority of those? Because you trust them? Why do you trust them? Why would you trust anything centralised, not to mention things that are out of your control and closed source?
Using Edward Snowden as an example and then listing those kinda just makes it worse.
Yes, cell phone tracking can be prevented by simply leaving one’s phone at home. We all got by just fine prior to the proliferation of cell phones.
Another option is to turn it off and place it in a Faraday cage when you’re not using it (special bags are available at Amazon and elsewhere online). You won’t be able to receive calls, but you’ll have the phone available in case of emergency.
On a related note, privacy-minded people should never buy a car that has any built-in capability to connect to the Internet. It shouldn’t have a built-in GPS system, either. These should be confined to phones, which at least give you the option of leaving them behind. I suspect that the push for “connected cars” and the “Internet of Things” is being sponsored by the US government in order to tighten their surveillance grid.
Exactly.
I’d generally say it’s better to have a non-data/non-gps/non-sensor-containing phone (cheaper too) with a removeable battery, and keep the phone just a phone… Better yet, get rid of mobile phones altogether except for people who really need them (sort of like how beepers used to be for people in certain professions a couple of decades ago, until they became more common; at least POCSAG didn’t geolocate the user). But of course, the world turns. I’m not an idealist.
Activists walking around carrying cellphones (and taking pictures of all their friends, because what’s better than associating data sets than associating data sets and providing photographs of who’s phone is who’s, and who’s friend with whom, and so on)… It’s sort of like pack animals running around in the woods voluntarily wearing tracking chips so they can be identified and hunted with ease — and handily helping to identify who belongs to the pack.
A watched populace cannot effect change. It’ll always, always, be infiltrated.
IoT is horrible. Going public with car exploits so that media organisations can freak out instead of just keeping mouths shut and getting things recalled under a blanket safety warning… blah. It doesn’t need to be sponsored by a government. It just needs to provide lock-in and promote the idea of items owning people instead of the other way around. The fact that governments will benefit is something ‘useful’ — just like the 3rd party data provisions in Freedom Act are ‘useful’.
IoT, strangely, seems to be something those who are shortsighted tend to congregate around; they always seem surprised when it doesn’t go the way they think it would or should. I don’t think they’re deliberately aiming for dystopia; that takes farsightedness, and the shortsighted are easier to just take advantage of instead.
So many of my generation and the generations since have spent too much time repeating “Information Wants To Be Free”, not realising that information doesn’t want anything; it’s inanimate. We’re technical, and many of us just want excuses to tinker more (and for some, the bump in class and status and money doesn’t hurt). I love tinkering so I get that desire to mess around with ‘cool stuff’ — but thinking about how things can be used by those who beat you in the power differential needs to happen before they’re brought into existence, not after. Unfortunately, as the saying goes — “But if I don’t do it, someone else will.” The consumer has to want it though, when it comes to some things (see IoT) — or companies put them in a position where they have no chance to do anything but acquiesce (Windows 10: you WILL take our updates!).
Either way, the surveillance grid is only going to get tighter. In some places, it’s already happened, and leaving your phone at home won’t matter at all — even if everyone else you know also leaves their phones at home.
I still don’t believe we should give up, though. I hate my replies most of the time because it’s such bad form to always complain and offer no solutions, but I never seem to have any… It feels like a numbers game, and the human animal tends towards unwitting narcissism: it’ll always be nudged in the way that best rubs the ego most satisfactorily.
I don’t know any way around that. Contagion is contagion, and there’s no way to avoid having contact made, even when you avoid making contact (well, maybe really large canopies of trees to avoid satellites… but then you get into smaller drones and so forth — there’s always going to be a defeat to attempting to gain privacy as long as there are people to think them up, materials to make them, money to buy them, and people who use them, so it’s not like just putting it out of one’s head will matter… eventually people will put it out of their heads so they can pretend it doesn’t matter.
But then they’ll never be able to change it, either.
Logorrhea? :)
I’m glad this group is being closely monitored by the FEDS. After the Michael Brown incident these idiots decided they were going to show my city that they meant business by walking onto the freeway and shutting down traffic for 2 hours. Please explain to me how this is suppose to rally people to your cause. The morons that make up this movement need to stop telling other people how to behave and learn how to behave themselves. Just look how stupid that lady in the picture looks with her hands up.
From your comment, I highly doubt that anything they did would rally you to their cause. By the way, hit and run and homicides against pedestrians and cyclists are at epidemic levels now. Maybe their rally on the highway saved some lives.
>Please explain to me how this is suppose to rally people to your cause.
It isn’t, its supposed to show how far they’re willing to go in order to make their voices heard. Its amusing because you seem incapable of using critical reasoning to figure out what they’re doing, yet you call THEM the idiots. If this was 1960 and they were going into diners for sit-down protests, disrupting business, I bet your dumb ass would be saying the exact same thing.
Actually Deuk, as a critical care nurse, I use more critical thinking in the first 30 minutes of my job than these fools do in an entire day…and you as well most likely since you want to get personal. While these selfish people were making their voices heard, 2 ambulances couldnt navigate through traffic and one of the patients died as a result because they couldn’t get timely medical care. As far as Im concerned, they have someone elses blood on their hand. But then again, thinking about how their actions affect others, probably isn’t a strong point of theirs.
There is a lot of information in this article, including several links which provide troves of evidence of what the article is informing us about. It seems clear to me though that you stopped using your “critical thinking” skills after reading the title to the article–which, judging by your comments, was the only part of the article that you did read.
Kitt…the article is actually very thoughtful…however…my point is that the methods used by this group are pretty counterproductive and drive people away who would be sympathetic to their cause.
she looks like that bc she was pepper sprayed… fool
“The Department of Homeland Security fully supports the right of individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights and does not provide resources to monitor any specific planned or spontaneous protest, rally or public gathering.” The official lie.
The Occupy Wall Street! movement was shut down in a coordinated effort led by DHS. The USG and Obama was really scared by that popular peaceful (except for the cops) uprising. We have a mixed race Democrat as president who doesn’t care about minorities or the Constitution. It’s all about control. So, nothing new or shocking here, just USG standard operational procedure.
It sounds to me that you have never read anything President Obama has said about minorities, the american people as a whole, or even paid attention to the reform that has been put in place for Wall Street. I understand your frustrations, but I urge you to actually read what President Obama supports (example: representation of taxation for D.C. residents) because he does care about the citizens of America & the Constitution. You can’t expect one person to fix everything & have the change happen the next day. Thats why our government is separated into the Executive, the Legislative, & the Judicial branches.
Clue for you: “I understand your frustrations” is about one of the most paternalistic, nausea inducing talking points Obama — and other political yackers — have ever come up with. I suggest you don’t use it if you want to sell your ‘Obama cheer leading’ to others.
Do you expect that Obama’s ‘Wall Street Reforms’ will be as dynamic as his prison reforms?
Obama’s prison reform congame
“President Obama last week took his criminal justice con game into the U.S. prison system, home to one out of eight incarcerated persons in the world. On any given day, about 80,000 inmates are held in solitary confinement, some of them for decades. Obama proclaimed that’s not a “smart” thing to do, and ordered his Justice Department to conduct a study of how to cut down on solitary confinement. If that means Obama’s going to pursue a “smart” criminal justice policy, in the same way that he wages “smart” wars, then not much will change in U.S. prisons.
“The president waited until the second half of his second term in office – and the rise of an incipient mass protest movement – before experiencing his epiphany on mass incarceration. So-called prison reform is now a thoroughly bipartisan affair. Republicans have harbored a strain of prison reformism ever since many of Richard Nixon’s men found themselves behind bars in the aftermath of Watergate, and even the rabidly reactionary Koch brothers are funding prison reform. The legislatures of at least 15 states have either passed, or are debating, ways to limit solitary confinement. And Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a crucial swing vote on the high court, has all but invited prison reform groups to challenge solitary confinement on Constitutional grounds. So, although Obama is the first serving president to actually set foot in a prison, he is moving in politically safe territory.
“However, don’t expect anything other than cynical theatricality and double-dealing from this president.” –Glen Ford
Change can’t happen without communication, and communication can’t happen when you’re up on your high horse, criticizing others. That said, I would like to hear you say what you think the most critical issue in the US is today, and what we should do about it.
Communication is not what Obama does. Unless you think, for example, his 2008 platform and campaign for president, which he began reneging before he was even inaugurated, and continued to do so almost in its entirety to this day, is a form of communication.
There is no “most critical issue.” You can’t revamp a systemically corrupted and sold out system by addressing or even significantly altering the current state of any single issue. It’s thinking such as that which pushes ever forward the never ending stench of the “lesser of two evils” fright tactic and sustains this godawful two party, one oligarchy, system.
I don’t “listen to what politicians say”, I watch what they do, and Obama, who I regret that I voted for, once, has been a glad handing, back slapping, capitulating to the right but kicking down on progressives, empty suited servant of Wall Street. He has, from the very beginning, allowed the banksters and other financial criminals to walk free (as well as the Bush rendition, torture and war criminals) as has been more concerned about the elite than we ordinary unwashed. He’s been mostly a really terrible president. He has pursued ethical journalists and whistle blowers who has exposed the criminality of the government, military, CIA, NSA and covered for them in their crimes. I deeply regret that the Republicans, who I never vote for, did not impeach him. You true believers really are deluded.
You really need to unplug from the Matrix if you think Obama cares about the Constitution any more than Bush did. If you want to see someone who cares about the Constitution, look no further than Ed Snowden and others whom Obama relentlessly pursued.
Still, it’s kind of pointless to debate the constitutional credentials of individual politicians in modern America. The entire system is thoroughly corrupt, and the Constitution is simply no longer in force. At best, government at all levels treats the Bill of Rights as a list of suggestions rather than the highest laws of the land — laws which were meant to ensure that government never gained too much power over the population. That’s why we have protesters being denied their First Amendment rights or corraled into “free speech zones”; gun control to protect brutal police against retaliation; mass surveillance in spite of the Fourth Amendment; civil asset forfeiture in spite of the Fifth Amendment; and so on.
Some people buy, and keep, blatant propaganda and suggestion more, and better, than other people, unfortunately. Without an ability to engage in critical thinking, on a massive scale, I’m not sure things can change — unless it’s also changed in a dictatorial, propagandistic manner. I’m still debating if that’s more or less ethical than what’s in practice now. I’d love to hear your thoughts?
Obviously they have too much time, taxpayer money on their hands and not enough real work to do. Cut budgets, deny funding and watch this monstrosity shrink to a more…manageable size. There’s nothing in govt that’s too big to fail though as we see here there’s plenty of govt to cut. Like the Libertarians are fond of saying, it’s too bad we’ve waited this long, there’s so much cutting to do…
Not to add another paranoia log to the fire, but I had forgotten all about this.
(2012) DHS practices mowing down civilian “zombies” during anti-terror training exercise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwKSJQI3tco&feature=youtu.be&t=29
Relevantly absurd of course. And thus, absurdly relevant.
Michael Jackson is pop king of sick fucking country.
They watch too much TV, and therefore think they will be fighting zombies some day. For many years I did not know what “assume the position” means, because I didn’t watch TV. When I finally found out, I was shocked; I could have been shot for not knowing what a cop TV phrase meant. On so many levels, this country needs to return to reality.
How far is the average civilian now from being a zombie? :(
Whoa.
Luckily DHS is expending it resources keeping track of (black) protest groups other wise they might have expend resources looking for those (mostly white) mass killers before they strike.
As a percent of their population, blacks commit more ‘mass murder’ of each other every single day, than any other racial group in the U.S. of A.
Hey, but that’s okay, cuz at least it’s only us doin it to ourselves…
As a percent of their population, blacks commit more ‘mass murder’ of each other every single day,
Why do you think that is?
Hmmm…..let me guess…..Whitey?
Why, yes. A Caucasian who would like to see how Lou Marin explains the black-on-black homicide rate.
I’d like to see DHS spend the money on surveilling killer cops. That would keep them busy all over the country. The few recent Justice Dept investigations of racist police departments showed amazingly deep and pervasive problems. Multiply that by hundreds and thousands of potentially such departments across the country, and DHS could earn their keep. For once.
May 15, 2014 Spying Is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, Not Catch Terrorists
The Big Secret Behind the Spying Program. While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about what’s really going on.
500 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is ALWAYS Aimed at Crushing Dissent
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/spying-meant-crush-dissent-terrorism.html
Excellent link “76” ( see above).
Accurate assessment of FBI’s cowardly underside.
FBI creating terrorists.
We need less paranoid people running this country.. more psych. Evals. and DNA testing of those that claim to have the American people’s best interests in mind..
I wouldn’t be so sure it’s the paranoid people who are running the country, j.d. scott; it’s those running the country knowing how to make, and keep, their countrymen paranoid.
Assuming all, or even the majority of them believe what they say, instead of assuming, with quite some good justification, that they’re using scare tactics and paranoia-making to reinforce peoples’ worst fears, is almost certainly a mistake. They’ve spent decades and billions perfecting these techniques — they won’t go away, likely, no matter who you manage to vote in, unless you manage to vote a gross majority of largely socially-conscious individuals willing to basically martyr their personal and professional lives for a cause. And most of them will never ever be able to get the money or resources to get to that place in the first place.
There’s a status quo. That some of them buy that status quo is another story (and one worth exploring). Evals won’t do much, though, and DNA testing is utterly totalitarian. ‘Evals’ are done all the time, in fact — to vet candidates. Who’s worthy of doing those evals is a question that might be worth asking, too, because it’s not those who have a vested interest in the structures that exist. But oversight doesn’t really work either. The truth is everything and everyone is fallible and there are no easy solutions. And that has been built into the system for a reason.
Control, ego and power (and money, but moreso control, power and ego), not paranoia, are the main forces, as is the need/desire to have, and keep, status.
Of course they are being monitored – as they should be. The movement is a farce based on lies and misrepresentations, and has committed violent and destructive acts against police and property.
If this is not enough to merit federal law enforcement monitoring, I don’t know what is…
Then maybe we should be spying on the college (oh no, mostly white) students who flip and burn at the riot party’s after some of the big playoff games. What do you think Lou? Can we raise your taxes to do more spying on our own citizens? Maybe your not to concerned because their good white kids that just got caught up in the moment. That’s the ticket, isn’t it Lou?
And because of clueless racists such as yourself this is only going to get worse.
If Sandra Bland really did commit suicide in her cell — to me a big if — there is no justification for the way the cop who stopped her for a fucking minor traffic violation treated her. He’s been put on desk duty for violating departmental procedures.
“I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.” -Martin Luther King
Best to ignore Mr. Marin. He’s only responding to incite; best ignored.
A surveilance State is a Police State, It is also the truest indicator that the Peoples State is a failed state.
At this late date there is no chance of the people of US to resist a most fearsome totalitarian future the likes of which did not and could not of ever existed, and the best part is they wanted it.
Well at the very least they wwanted al the luxurious trappings that systems of slective favoritism and granting of priveleges and aided special interest legislation that eventually ga e all powers to those outside of elected offices whe allowing the elected to become wealthy at the expense of the masses and under foreign and domestic bribery.
Well it makes little difference in US for the ill accumulated. Wealth will soon be spent surviving in a very polluted land.
While allsea and birdlife is becoming extinct Long US and Canafian Pacific Ocean borders some estimates place future illness and deaths from radiation induced cancers means every resident upon that coastline since fall of 2011 shall get cancer. EVERY RESIDENT.
The US has become ungovernable by any means other than a BRUTAL suppression of free will into a designed society.
That our middle class is pushing such an agenda is because they think they will benefit and are afraid of losig as somany others now have lost all hopes of a good economic future.
The forth coming chaos due to large extent by mans own stupidity and laziness of mind never letting thought above their crotch be their concerns deserve the Falluja births that hey so thoughtlessly gave in their zeal for blood slayings
US is a mentally sick society but what will increasingly become apparent with in next 5 year is how physicly ill they are as well.
The “Extinction Level Event of Pacific combine with the ongoing 4 years of three times the radioactive releaes of Fukushima will cause drastic shortening of lives; but “The Educated Elite ” have told powers that be even if the critical 1/3 of population can controll and support the top powers they only need at most a 40 year lifespan
We in US live on grounds and waters and air so poisonous that our cancer cures can no longer keep up to our needs.
The next generations children. Already showing up in cases of birth deaths deformitys and defects of immune systems, will mKe being human very very rare.
Racist FBI ‘Cointel’ Coloring Book For Kids Advocates Killing ‘Pig Cops’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO4gL-PoXiM&feature=player_embedded#t=48
F.Y.I. – March 2015 at TED2015 Trevor Aaronson: How this FBI strategy is actually creating US-based terrorists
There’s an organization responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and ISIS combined: The FBI. How? Why? In an eye-opening talk, investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson reveals a disturbing FBI practice that breeds terrorist plots by exploiting Muslim-Americans with mental health problems.
http://www.ted.com/talks/trevor_aaronson_how_this_fbi_strategy_is_actually_creating_us_based_terrorists
( FBI creating terrorism ) holds for job security and extra funding.
COINTELPRO caca-roaches
Thanks for the link. Great TED talk. Aaronson never says “Manchurian candidates” but…?
The photo is kind of funny. Everyone has their hands up exposing their arm pits and one guy has a shirt over his nose.
Aren’t you glad you use dial? Don’t you wish everybody did?
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Transcript-of-Morning-Hearing-11-May-2012.pdf
Page 5, line 17
By George…
What do you make of the UK Terror Unit’s removing the content from David Cameron’s email that he left in Rebekah Brooks’ BlackBerry while the wheels were flying off News of the World? This too is one of those details the People may not have addressed as it is suppressed by secret resort. Her BB was in their Klinker because Brooks had just been charged with corruption and hacking. She carried a “Hillary.”
Brooks tells the Inquiry that the Terror Unit held that devise in custody for weeks on end…long enough for Cameron’s email file to go metadata in Tempora? Then they must have made the switch after cracking the the Blackie’s compression technology. We’ve now read by way of Snowden that they revealed to NSA this hat trick in their very next quarterly – thus leaving the people wanting for a man with more characters.
Obviously the Brits can’t handle the truth, so they make it unavailable by making it unassailable as you have so painfully exposed this leather bound Empire. When asked if his public record was now suppressed, Leveson gave it some thought and replied with “No comment.” Loud and clear. Their press may not address this mess. Why, too, our gurus of dead beat tattoos?
Metadata, it’s not just for terror units, it’s for perverting justice. Rose Mary Wood never had it so good.
Truly, George, I see you came up against the wall of confound I too can’t make my way around, but someone squeezed the shite out of Cameron’s message, and I bet it was about the Sky Buy going Bye Bye. This is Nixon’s Missing Minutes in a Bundled Package to avoid the Hammer of the FCPA.
Fuck you, GCHQ. I know what you did that summer.
Shouldn’t an 80% mission creep non-related to terrorism equate to an 80% budget cut for that agency? If the agency was created for terrorism shouldn’t it grow or shrink based on that original mission?
The DHS is not really set up as an intelligence agency, and it knows it. A while back it requested the RAND corporation to study how to set up such an agency, as there are a few minor constitutional hurdles which must be cleared if the agency is to be really effective. From the RAND website:
Until that happens, the US government is obliged to use an embarrassing mixture of domestic intelligence collecting techniques. These include paying Britain’s GCHQ to spy on Americans, using a mishmash of workarounds to allow the NSA to collect domestic intelligence in contravention of its own charter, and amateur intelligence conducted by the DHS itself.
The DHS should stick to constructing FEMA camps, which is all it is good for.
Fun fact: the plans for DHS preceded 9/11 by 8 months. A US commission on national security, warning of a “catastrophic attack in the next 25 years”, recommended creating an independent “National Homeland Security Agency” to plan, coordinate and integrate domestic security activities”.
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/517135340076032001
h/t @AdamJohnson, he went back and forth with .gov stooges on the DHS wiki, correcting the record of its origination. Looking at the page now, it’s been scrubbed again, of course.
Not surprised at all! After 9/11 Maryland State Police and the Feds were monitoring peaceful anti-Iraq war groups. The Feds also coordinated with the banks against occupy Wall Street protestors, arresting them and building a list of participants for their files. Anyone who protests anything is considered a subversive; guilty of expressing their first amendment rights…:)
The Logic behind Mass Spying: Empire and Cyber Imperialism
petras.lahaine.org/?p=1961
The Deeper Meaning of Mass Spying in America
petras.lahaine.org/?p=1943
Imperialism and the Politics of Torture
petras.lahaine.org/?p=2018
Who owns the property in the areas and streets affected by the “riots” and “vandalism”? And who has been identified as being responsible for the destruction of property? How likely is it that state agents have provoked and instigated some if not much of this?
Undercover CHP officer pulls gun at Oakland protest after outing
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Undercover-cops-outed-attacked-at-Oakland-5951011.php
read if you haven’t already:
The lessons of COINTELPRO
http://www.isreview.org/issues/49/cointelpro.shtm
by the brilliant Sherry Wolf
This is only the tip of the DeepState iceberg floating towards the USS Amerika.
http://www.belowgotham.com/Deep-State-Wins.pdf
They expect at some point, mass insurrection is inevitable. I submit, all it would take is refuting the 16th Amendment…using the rights enumerated under the 2nd Amendment of course. Which, is exactly what TPTB are afraid of, given weapon sales in the last two years….
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-gun-manufacturing-atf-report-2015-7
Hats off to the The Intercept for filing all the FOIAs that led to these revelations and thanks to George for sharing this! Goes to show that being persistent with FOIAs can pay off.
But the surveillance of BLM is just the tip of the iceberg.
If DHS’s budget has swelled to more than 60 billion dollars, and private intelligence contractors are also getting nearly 60 billion dollars, then I’m guessing a huge chunk of this money is going toward “monitoring” and ultimately quelling peaceful dissent of all types (and this approximately 120 billion doesn’t include the budget for the FBI, other participating ABCs, the FBI’s JTTF, state and local police and their counterterroism and intelligence units, etc).
Because there is money to burn and so few actual terrorists in the U.S. — as Brendan McQuade points out in this article — and more than three thousand government organizations and private companies working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the U. S. (WaPost 2010), you no longer need to be a Dr. Martin Luther King, an Ernest Hemingway or a Jean Seberg to end up in the cross-hairs: Average, everyday folks are having the living bejesus stalked out of them.
And I could be wrong, but I think, at least at this point, while a handful of well-known people, like Laura Poitras, have been harassed mercilessly at the borders (airports), the daily CoIntelPro 2.0 ‘full court press’ (intense, almost 24/7/365, ‘boots-on-the-ground,’ conspicuous surveillance/stalking and harassment) appears to be honing in more on ‘outliers,’ ‘disenfranchised,’ and ‘vulnerable’ disidents, while generally steering clear of well-known people (and relying on more covert, infiltration or ‘gorillas by night,’ to ‘monitor’ people with the resources and connections to expose what essentially is CoIntelPro 2.0.).
After all, another Church Committee would be “terribly inconvenient” and could threaten such a lucrative gig for so many.
Monitoring the Funk Parade is on par with trying to find informants to infiltrate vegan pot lucks: it could make hilarious material for a book or screenplay, but it’s real life, which makes it pretty darn scary.
And walks for cancer?
Well, it’s great you jumped on this as fast as you did, T//I.
Keep it coming…
No danger but watch out for danger.
“The “Watch Desk” of the DHS’s National Capital Region, FEMA branch compiled this real-time information despite the fact that an FBI joint intelligence bulletin shared among several DHS officials the day before noted that there was “no information suggesting violent behavior is planned for Washington, DC” and that previous anti-police brutality protests in the wake of Ferguson “have been peaceful in nature.” The bulletin also said that for unspecified reasons “we remain concerned that unaffiliated individuals could potentially use this event to commit acts of violence in the Chinatown area.””
.
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cWnubJ9CEw
“Iconic summary of the futility of obtaining justice against those who have the system in their pocket.”
Sadly, this is NOT surprising, although I still went “WHAT?” when I read the headline. Remember that Mall of America surveillance of protesters? Let’s not forget that TPTB have also heavily surveilled environmental protesters. Marty (way downthread) has it right. And Coram and RCL, other revelations regarding data sharing among these alphabet soup agencies suggest yes, this stuff is going to many lists. Scary for sure. And that may indeed, UI, have a lot to do with the ‘random’ stop of Sandra Bland and the tragic aftermath. That is indeed a tragedy, and the so-called “official explanation” just doesn’t pass the smell test.
feline16, that was NOT me. Someone is on here posting as Useless Yidiot and somewhat blatantly making a bald attempt at copying my style. I suspect I know who it is, but I don’t care enough to pursue it, because that’d be the purpose. I just ask you to pay more attention to who says what instead of feeding it. Thanks. :)
Dear feline16 & Useful Idiots, I (UY) am indeed the author of the speculation below as to whether or not Sandy Bland might have been knowingly tailed/trailed by a (presumptively) white supremacist cop, and regret that feline16 misattributed this (to UI) in her comment above. As for the claim of stylistic imitation, UI, you might wanna flatter yourself but I can assure you: I had never really taken in & read any of your postings here until your most recent ones in connection with postings of my own. Moreover, my cognomen was not meant in any way to allude to you — I have been using it for a few years in correspondence with an old psychiatrist friend and, acting on a whim just the other day, decided to adopt it here. Frankly, now I rather regret that I did not spell it: YIDiot, as in DIY (which, at least in the UK, is the common acronym for #DoItYourself).
Thanks. Understand, this forum is full of people who enjoy games and consider it a sport.
While I am aware I have no ‘right’ to ask this, and you have no duty to acquiesce, I was wondering if you might be willing to switch to the other moniker, at least on here? I don’t use this name elsewhere and I’ve been here a while. It would make things a lot easier, and be more logical, I think, for both of us. Quite aware of DIY, BTW, as I’m a fan myself. KCCO.
Hello and welcome.
Sorry for the mixup; maybe you should consider a different moniker here to avoid future confusion (unless it’s just me…)
As for your theory Sandra Bland may have been deliberately targeted, I certainly wouldn’t put it past the spooks to do so. That might even explain why she was pulled over in the first place. If the cop wasn’t tracking HER, why would he abandon his ‘real mission’ to pull her over? Certainly something to think about.
And from what ever way it’s approached, her death is a real tragedy.
FWIW, my (strong) theory is it was a power and male/female thing — maybe a white male, black female thing, but mostly a powerful male, female-do-my-bidding thing. I’ve little doubt in my mind it was at least PARTIALLY due to the gender issue, anyway. People who want to be cops nowadays generally either are alphas or wish they are.
Dear Useful Idots:
I am sorry if I somehow offended you; but the names were sooo similar it was very easy to get confused. As far as “feeding it” – I do believe that there might be some merit to the theory that Sandra Bland might have been somehow targeted. I’m sure you know about DEA and parallel construction. Her name might have been passed on as having possibly something to do with drugs; we don’t know. but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility she was somehow targeted.
You didn’t offend me; it’s more that when I go on a site, even if names get switched (and more than one at any given time is avoided), especially sites that have a fairly concentrated commenter set, I tend to look at a few articles and verify I’m not stepping on any toes by coming close to anybody’s username here. Honestly, I’m not even all that attached to my username here — I chose it as a joke — I just realise that other people would eventually roll it in their minds into a unitary idea whether they realised it or not. Mostly I just want to avoid that for if and when I finally do leave. It can be too easy to attribute a set of past comments, thoughts, and beliefs to two different people when one comes on later and appears to have a name and style similar to the former. I’ve seen it used as a tactic on other sites, and so I’m cautious when and if I see it happen (if it weren’t me, I’d have probably also commented). So when I said ‘feeding it’ I meant feeding into a connection between two individuals. Nothing deeper.
I actually don’t disagree, and may even to some extent agree, with what my more singular Jewish(?) almost-doppelganger said, for the most part. Those are two different issues; at least one of them is a mistake (on your part) and I’m willing to give YI/DYI/etc the benefit of the doubt until/unless it turns into some weird elaborate trick; his reply above earned that.
It’s just also strange — but I do believe in coincidences too; that’s one reason I check to see if really active people are using names (more likely I just go so random that odds of overlap are minute in the first place, too; this wasn’t one of those times). Sort of like if someone came on here as feline15 or something.
We both know there have been some rather unhappy people here from time to time who aren’t happy at being, in their minds, unjustly unable to post here. Then around when I’d said I’d said I was leaving, a couple other people began trying to stir stuff up with me (me: uninterested in biting). I figured it was just a escalation; we’ve both seen that here too. I don’t believe that’s paranoia, so much as caution.
Hi UI
One reason I got confused is that I think there have been some cases of people switching names – sometimes to something similar – or maybe they just somehow misspelled it and it still went through.
Anyway, I’m glad you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt.
And yes, I also think that the male/female power thing probably did play a part here and was probably more exacerbated by race. Unfortunately, there are probably many issues that turned into a perfect storm which took Ms. Bland’s life. Such a tragedy. May she rest in peace.
I hope I didn’t offend him too much/scare him off. I feel kind of bad.
So the Department of Utter Incompetence was monitoring Black Lives Matter.
Which means they were monitoring Sandra Bland.
Did someone order the Texas Bandit to falsely arrest her?
Meanwhile a seriously subversive organization continues to bribe legislators and undermine democracy with voter ID laws.
Corporate Lives Matter with ALEC.
Any other State monitoring grassroots dissidents would be called totalitarian.
The US Gov. has continually affirmed a commitment to undermine civil liberties/ rights and human rights of US and world citizens.
So, why is anyone still paying taxes?
F these pigs! – Be done funding domestic and international terrorism and save your soul while you still can.
24 hour surveillance
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/05/the-culture-of-negrophobia-in-america-circa-21st-century/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/05/the-culture-of-negrophobia-in-america-circa-21st-century/
How is this surprising? Remember occupy? We were spied on too. Same thing. Different day.
This here equipment below is for Louise Cypher to deposit her comments ;-)
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This is what I meant ….
|***********|
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Where is the story in this story? We spy on everybody; at least, that’s what Snowden said we do. We spy on Ku Klux Klan, we spy on Merkel, we spy on Petrobras, and we spy on all the US Senators and the judges of the Scotus, and we definitely spy on David Cameron, though the last one may be a willing poodle allowing his master some indulgence. So why should it be any news that we spy on Black Lives Matter? Probably the next article would be – we spy on NASA. Of course we do! If someone in NASA discovers something then we need to let Lockheed Martin and Boeing know before the Chinese hack into NASA systems and get to know. This is called Spying for Notional Security. Savvy? Very little about security, and whatever it’s said to be is purely notional.
Michael Parenti says, “[W]e should stop saying ”we” do this and ”we” do that, since we really mean policymakers within the national security establishment who represent a particular set of class interests. Too many otherwise capable analysts have this habit of referring to ”we.” It is a shorthand way of saying ”U.S. national security state leaders” but it is a misleading use of a pronoun. The point is of more than semantic significance. Those who keep saying ”we” are more likely to treat nations as the basic unit of analysis in international affairs and to ignore class interests. They are more likely to presume that a community of interest exists between leaders and populace when usually it does not. The impression left is that we are all responsible for ”our” policy, a position that takes the heat off the actual policymakers and evokes a lot of misplaced soul-searching by well-meaning persons who conclude that we all should be shamed and saddened by what ”we” are doing in the world.”
Funny many think DHS has something to do with terrorism. I had a chance to speak with them one time and they made it clear they are not the lead on that inside the US and that ,that is not their primary job. That is just the cover they were created under. I think we see quit clearly why they were created
Next step is to find out if (1) DHS lists of BLM names are circulating among local police forces as well as those from JTF et al and (2) whether those names are getting increased traffic stops. DHS is “limited to providing situational awareness”? We should see.
Congrats to the author and TI for catching this.
Yeap! I can assure you they do! and as police say those traffic stops are “random”. Police, of course, have no brains to understand what “randomness” is or means anyway. If you participated in a protest, your name will appear in a number of databases and “random” things will start “happening” to you. Those police tactics are called “noising”, creating “cognitive dissonance”, …
But that “situational awareness” + their need to justify salaries and “show results” got me blacklisted in the FBI’s criminal index and that honor and the many consequences which it carries will be for life, for example, no federal agency will ever hire me “by the rule of law” even though they seemed to be very willing to do so (The Census Bureau needed a Mathematician, who was into data analysis, was fully (and truly bilingual), had teaching experience, was willing to travel, not to work for the whole year, …).
Sandra Bland posts after her “Official Welcome Back” was among many other factors not helping the “normality” of her profile, so just not signaling prior to changing lanes may, and in her case, did get you “suicided”
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/16/death-woman-texas-jail-raises-questions/
Here in NYC they have a city (state?)-wide network called “nexus”, comprised of regular folks of all kinds of walk (even illegal immigrants!). In every businesses or social venue they have snitching cells collaborating with police. They have even included items such as “are you or have you been a member of the Armed Forces?” in the checklists of regular apartment inspections.
You don’t have to fit what most people would consider to be a criminal pattern of behavior to any extent (people who know me well laugh in disbelief when I show them that official document telling me I have been blacklisted). I am convinced they just pick people as guinea pigs for repression research and in order to justify salaries. Of course, if you say things like “black lives matter” or are curious about the kinds of news published at TI, they would “kill more than one bird with one shot”
In addition to “watching us” by means of the profiles we ourselves timely and orderly keep of ourselves (e.g., I myself by posting this very message) and having psychology graduates mind those of us “in need of ‘norming'”
Their main tactics are:
1) chain of command
1.1) all cameras are connected and the whereabouts of all security officers (not directly working for police) is known
1.2) Überboss tells boss or boss tells employee who wants to secure job, such as janitors, porters and superintendents “to watch out for you”
2) social and business policing groups such as those working in shoplifting prevention and neighborhood watch are told “to watch out for you”
3) social gang-stalkers:
3,1) “bad” ones: who like §2 don’t actually know you, nor do they have a way or reason to (I know they are being paid, but don’t know how much/how/the details and I wonder what do they tell them)
3,2) “good” ones: who (like “good” police) portray themselves as nice people “trying to ‘talk’ to, befriend you” …
Satyagraha,
RCL
They have talked a lot about the militarization; IMO not enough about the socialization of police.
A lá 1984, East Germany … we live surrounded 24×7 by snitches and our every moves are minded by thought police
RCL
Thanks, Ricardo, for saying this about the snitches and the thought police. So true. And the average American hasn’t got a clue. The conservatives think this is about law and order. The liberals are ready to give up all sorts of rights for the sake of political correctness. May the Stasi target THEM someday!
Ricardo your soo right (see below).
FBI COINTELPRO scum continues.
Sandra Bland’s murder was a lynching by police.
DOJ Loretta Lynch.
$60.000.000.000 / yr. budget to justify.
Explains the extent the STASI will go.
Good article. The “anti-terrorism” system we have put in place is being abused. They are going after the Black Lives Matter folks?!? Does President Obama actually pay attention to what the federal government is doing? If he was still a community organizer, he would probably be attending those rallies.
They’re just making sure they’re “on the ready” for the next time they get bussed in to riot
Check out this paper from Cass “Cognitive Infiltration” Sunstein.
A Theory of Civil Disobedience
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2625273
Here’s the gooey nuget.
Sunstein here provides a window into the ideology of the deep state and how it views protest (“disobedience”) in modern society. In sum, it’s the “end of history”, and resistance is futile.
The neoliberal model of the human being considers “intrinsic motivation” to be irrational. It sees us as atomized individuals, motivated externally. The ‘over optimism’ Sunstein refers to here, is optimism that society can be different than their models suggest. Standing in for the technocracy as a whole, Sunstein sees this as delusional. “Since they don’t make a difference, they just like doing it for its own sake”.
I hope yall see what I’m getting at here. Eventually people may not “like it” anymore. The intrinsic motivations, in aggregate, will reach a surface tension. Then what? DHS anticipates violence. They’re preparing for massive violence.
Hi BenjaminAP –
Quite an interesting post. Sunstein is —- well I’d best be kind and say nothing.
However, you do bring up some points. I think that “intrinsic motivation” IS based on optimism of being able to effect change. Sadly, TPTB seem to be thwarting any real reforms, over and over again. It’s hard for most, I think, not to just get discouraged and give up. And that’s only counting those who are really aware and dare to even attend a peaceful protest. Try talking about things like civil liberties with folks and they probably want to either change the subject fast or fall back on the old fearmongering lines.
Will there be violence? Well, I hope and pray not. I really keep praying and praying that some peaceful amelioration of the status quo will come about. That, I think, will require that folks UNIFY to confront some of the most pressing issues. We may not agree on everything, nor even on the reasons for unifying (for example, the author of a recent book on the Underground Railroad said that abolitionists didn’t all agree on WHY they wanted slavery to end), but like the camp kids in the classic psych experiment, we must start to realize there’s a threat to the whole camp that needs the attention of all of us.
“Divided = Conquered, But United = Empowered!”
Hiya feline!
Oh I agree completely. I was being a bit coy in making the point. But ‘intrinsically’, we’re social beings. It stands to reason our motivations to effect change have a social basis. An intrinsic basis. “For it’s own sake/For our sake”. But the modern economic model of human behavior (rationality=selfish utility) is quite insane in this regard. As Indigo said, “you keep using that word (rational). I don’t think it means what you think it means”.
So it strikes me as oddly poetic that a rational choice theorist like Sunstein would frame the failure of protest in economic terms. Not surprising, but it kinda puts a bow on things, you know? If you scroll down the PDF, the mathematical proofs are something else. Forget the maths themselves. The conceit behind them is what I find insightful. It’s a mathematical model of democratic death. And it’s believed to be true. That’s what matters.
That’s why I say ‘they’ anticipate violence. The technocratic world view, that is. Not that violence is inevitable. I think the human imagination is necessarily uncertain. Quite unlike an algorithm.
Indeed. Recently listened to aninteresting interview with a historian of that period (unfortunately can’t find the bkmark at the moment). Apparently an initial plank of abolition included the end of wage slavery. To end the whole spectrum of slavery, black and white. As you might imagine, this was a large source of anxiety both within and without the movement. Focusing on slavery ‘proper’ ended up being the moderate approach.
I was going to respond to your original post but I held off because I wasn’t sure that I really had anything to add but after reading your response to ‘feline16′ I again feel the need to jump into this exchange, if I may.
That paper you linked to is somewhat similar to a paper written by James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu (R and A) titled “Democratization or Repression” [http://economics.mit.edu/files/5684]. I think that R and A were primarily considering less developed nations with their model, but both papers provide a game theory framework to explain interactions between a landed elite and a disenfranchised faction.
R and A call on Machiavelli to contend that a ruling elite should avoid making concessions as doing so may demonstrate weakness and could lead to more radical demands by the disenfranchised, perhaps even outright revolution. “The ruler should therefore either resist all concessions or make the most generous concession possible.” Glaeser and Sunstein also warn of the dangers of concessions, or rather inaction, to the elites, “The authority must find sweet spots of its own [in response to disobedience] …on the ground that passivity would allow dangerous growth.”
If it is papers such as these that illustrate the mindset and strategy of our ruling elite, then we, as citizens, should be able to put them to use just as easily. Here are a few observations about our current political situation which could be useful for formulating activist strategy.
First, the ruling class in the US must masquerade as if (1) it is committed to preserving our democratic institutions and (2) they do, in practice, operate in accordance with US standards of democracy, transparency and justice. However, many US citizens (and probably most world citizens) recognize, or are beginning to recognize, that no such commitment exists among US elites. If we continue along our current trajectory mass unrest may be inevitable but the elite is restrained in their response to such unrest by the need to maintain the illusion that they are champions of freedom. If they expose themselves and make no efforts to conceal their subjugation, the elite would be freeing the citizenry of any moral or legal obligation to refrain from outright revolution and they may also risk losing the support of some security forces (I am unsure about that last one though, I think the only thing holding some US pigs back from genocide is that they have yet to receive the order).
Second, it appears that the elites are quite frightened by the growing rumble of dissenting US and world citizens. Same sex marriage, state actions on pot and The ACA could be considered concessions by a threatened ruling class but, as R and A suggested, those concessions may only serve to strengthen the resolve of the disenfranchised. It is simply too little too late, the people are still wanting the “Change” they were promised in ’08, which is something entirely different than the change they got: trial-less execution of US and world citizens by flying robots, an empowered domestic police state and revelations of mass surveillance. It is becoming understood, across all demographics I suspect, that a deep-state, or shadow government or whatever, exists in the US and that it resides far beyond the reach of any exogenous democratic pressure. I generally consider this growing rumble to be a positive pre-cursor to the right kind of change but the possibility exists that the elite may become overt in their commitment to repression if they forecast an unrecoverable loss of power.
Finally, we live in a very exciting time. We can access and disseminate information like never before and we have yet to see the full impact that the internet will have on our institutions. With our current level of technology, the growing level of dissatisfaction with the status quo, the necessity for change to avoid environmental disaster, and the right organize and speak freely, we have an incredible opportunity to produce meaningful change in the near future.
We don’t need some Clive Bundy/Alex Jones style of violent uprising to secure the future (not that you argued for that), we simply need to undermine the deep-state’s ability to exercise its power and all the tools necessary to do that are conveniently written into the constitution. The prospect of violence is still real but I think there are things that we can do to avoid or minimize it. The greatest threat of violence, I think, is from the pigs who have already killed something like ~650 people this so far this year. We need a media campaign aimed at the pigs that invites them to defect from the dark-side and rejoin their communities as citizens and not occupiers. When enough pigs defect that it creates disharmony within the ranks, or when their institution is morphed back into something respects and protects the rights and dignity of common citizens as the result of some serious policy changes, the deep-state will lose a significant lever of control.
Great points mj, and thanks for the link. Parallels with the R & A paper are striking. Banana Republic in northern climes.
What you say about the masquerade really resonates with me. That’s where much of my thinking goes these days. Without democracy, the necessary pretense of democracy is where we have room to operate. Sunstein predictably references “heightening the contradictions”, but operationally, that’s the dance in a nutshell. I suspect it’s always been thus. And what I think we’re dancing with now is the convergence of superstitious theories of human behavior, technologies of control and the comfort of power. What Steve Fraser calls the ‘Age of Acquiescence’. This has to be reconciled with. Imagined upon.
http://billmoyers.com/content/steve-fraser-age-acquiescence/
re: deep state
I love this piece by Matt Stoller on the 1st amendment.
https://medium.com/@matthewstoller/the-solution-to-isis-is-the-first-amendment-95fc2c94f52e
It puts classification in its proper context: rank state censorship. Matt’s prescription focuses on the intersection of blowback and the war on terror, but it applies to the shadow structure as a whole. His prescription would bring the beast closer to the democratic surface. A campaign that would cause much anxiety. Heightening the contradictions.
Wow – really great post. Like BenjaminAP, I found the idea that the deep state needs to masquerade as increasingly telling.
You seem relatively optimistic. I am optimistic by nature, but so many of these revelations have made me grow more and more cynical. And as I often mention, I don’t think enough folks are aware yet; maybe they’re in denial, maybe just so stressed trying to make a living, who knows. But I think to get some real change, a larger percentage need to really wake up start agitating for it.
This was good: “We need a media campaign aimed at the pigs that invites them to defect from the dark-side and rejoin their communities as citizens and not occupiers. When enough pigs defect that it creates disharmony within the ranks, or when their institution is morphed back into something respects and protects the rights and dignity of common citizens…”
I absolutely agree that the thin blue line has to stop predation and start protecting and serving. Not to be too much of a downer, but it as been suggested that the function of the police was never to protect and serve — well, not the non-elites anyway. So, if we can get them to the point you describe, that would INDEED be progress.
Oh, and a video referencing the last point…
http://www.mintpressnews.com/video-function-police-modern-society-peace-control/201333/
And I’m hoping that your optimistic view WILL happen :-)
Thanks and I am optimistic.
Yeah, we have learned alot about ourselves since 2001 and much of that is extremely troubling.
I think that police need to be aware that (1) they have a choice to leave the force and (2) choosing to stay on the force, in a time when policing is essentially an assembly line position in the prison industry, carries certain implications with it.
Howard Zinn said, “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Zinn’s point is what I would like to see the public communicate to the police officers currently operating in a system of mass incarceration, militarization, autonomous use of force guidelines, statistically significant racial bias in policing and sentencing procedures, and just a general disregard for human and civil rights. Choosing to remain subordinate to an institution that is demonstrating such characteristics is to truly earn the title “pig.” But, as much as I feel that “pig” is an appropriate term for US LEO’s, I really have no desire to alienate police by name calling. Rather, I see such a campaign as a way to communicate to police that they are alienating themselves by allowing themselves to be taken advantage of by policy makers that act on behalf of monied interests.
I assume that LEO’s join the force with altruistic intentions. They deserve to serve in a policy environment which does not pit them against the citizens they are meant to protect and serve.
“Zinn’s point is what I would like to see the public communicate to the police officers currently operating in a system of mass incarceration, militarization, autonomous use of force guidelines, statistically significant racial bias in policing and sentencing procedures, and just a general disregard for human and civil rights.”
I think you really said a lot there. There are many of us who genuinely feel the same way. Still, there are many who support the police no matter what — look at comments at The Guardian after any of these incidents and there will be those who come out of the woodwork saying basically you need to comply with the cops or else. Thankfully there are those who will challenge that view. And we also need to get across that you can be compliant and sill bad stuff can happen to you.
I think you hit on a real problem about the militarization of policing. A friend many years ago told me that it would be very problematic to hire vets as police. How true this has become. Listen to the rhetoric some of them put out and it is very militaristic. We need to start addressing that — by better hiring and training at least.
But I also think we need to address deeper problems. For example: why so we put up with the 1% controlling so much of the decision making and societal access? And why indeed, do we need anything approaching mass surveillance (and I certainly don’t by the counterterrorism line!), and why are we so willing to give up so much of our privacy to corporations and the government. I could go on, I think that’s enough ranting for now.
” We need a media campaign aimed at the pigs that invites them to defect from the dark-side and rejoin their communities as citizens and not occupiers.”
This is partially a problem, and that problem has to do with programming. Yes, I believe a rational approach would probably involve bringing media that is persuasive into the equation and doing a form of deprogramming, but you can only deprogram so much via media. That sort of campaign does more to STOP people from joining in/joining up if they were on the fence. It may also cause some people who just joined to back away from the staircase.
But it leaves the problem that, fundamentally, once you are a part of anything for long enough it changes you from the inside out — be it via disillusion, anger, hate, indifference, or mere accustomisation. Some people come to CRAVE, very much, what they have/had, to the point where it becomes its own addictive cycle. There’s no real way to deprogram that, and trying just gets into ‘Clockwork Orange’ territory. The brain wires according to how it fires.
There’s also the issue that some people just require the power over other people to deal with the ego blow. And a lot of people cannot let go of that. The problem just winds up blooming in other ways if it cannot be stopped before it gets a chance to truly take hold in a society in the first place.
Even Sunstein knows the limits of nudges: They’re great for starting things towards desired solutions when conscious thought isn’t a part of the equation. The ability to ‘nudge’, on principle, becomes much more difficult to perform when one is aware of the illusion — but it also requires people to be 100% conscious of everything that acts on their thought processes, and that’s downright impossible, even for the most rational or logical person. We’re all affected by our surroundings every day.
There was a neat study done about coffee break rooms and promoting honesty in paying for milk/coffee/tea/etc. There’ve been interesting strides in making people, say, clean up after themselves. Most successful nudges involve totally subliminal clues, and they fade without repetition. Other nudges need to be built up over time in such ways that people have no idea what’s being nudged or how. Such is society, now.
The level of nudging you’re talking about would need to be done in the early stages of training, and built into the training process: how to see people, how to treat people, etc — and how NOT to.
It needs to be the norm to be ethical, and that ethic must be continually reinforced. Even still, trust would take time, and beyond that, I’m not sure what you’d do with people who were already formed into what they are: Enforce retirement? That doesn’t work either; the problem would spread out into other areas. People who are accustomed to power and control over people seek a mean; anything less is an ego disparity that’ll be fought against with all their might.
I think I’m with you for sure! I did glance at the paper; glance is all, it’s something to wade through. Yeah, from what I saw it does sound like democratic death. And as far as economic terms, well, it seems the only thing that seems to work is hitting elites or corporations in the WALLETS, unfortunately. Remember how the Gov of SC said the confederate flag was not a problem because: ‘NO CEO HAS COMPLAINED ABOUT IT.’
Sort of related, on BookTV there were two authors discussing their books about problems with the NFL. In response to one question about the name of the Washington team (the questioner had come to have mixed feelings about supporting the team), the author said (paraphrasing) – ‘you can’t dialogue with a corporation.’ Meaning, I think, the only thing such an entity responds to is the bottom line. However, if we really open our eyes and look around, the deep state or TPTB or whatever, is increasingly seamless between corporate and government interests. That to me is what is making this all so problematic.
No doubt DHS has too much money. If it has time to extend its “situational awareness” to matters that are none of its business, then Congress has to cut its budget down to where it engages only in its essential mission.
Surely the republicans who are so concerned with the deficit will take advantage of this opportunity save something on the order of $30 billion per year. Surely they will do that. And if you do want to spend the money, you could fix a lot of bridges and roads for that amount.
No! No! Fixing roads and bridges is contributing to a government-owned infrastructure. It is socialism! On top of that, it would put lots of lower middle class people to work, and that is socialism! On the other hand, the DHS performs an important national security mission, making life safe for congressmen and -women, and channeling money into anti-socialistic contractors. If you don’t believe this, forward this text to any republican congressman or senator. They will tell you.
If you don’t have clue about the Republican party and its policies, don’t post stupid comments like. What the idiot talking heads in the media tell you doesn’t count as understanding.
yes including the talking heads at FOX
The website FergusonAction is hosted by Cloudflare.
http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/post/117874632894
“When one uses a dedicated domain name server whose owner is also caching your whole site for dDos prevention there is NOTHING to stop the DNS owner from logging every… single… bit of information about YOUR communications with the site they’re ‘protecting’, and you can be absof******lutely sure Cloudflare IS doing that. Be forewarned.
I contacted them via twitter regarding this and they never responded
Cloudflare is hosting much of the net and sites moving there are more and more by the day because they are the cheapest host company, You must have missed much of the reporting here, They are spying on everyone everywhere without any reason. They have already been shown to hand over data without question in a few cases.
More Like This…
“Fusion centers were set up for counterterrorism, but it became ‘all crimes, all threats, all hazards’ because terrorism isn’t a real threat. You are four times more likely to be struck by lighting than killed by a terrorist.
pretty alarming… Directly after 9/11, people said, ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.’ Well, now we’re fighting back against police brutality and extrajudicial killings, yet they are using this supposedly anti-terrorist infrastructure against US PERSONS.
To fuse = to combine & to condense = to concentrate. Hence:-
Fusion Center = Konzentrationslager = Concentration Camp
It was known long ago all of this was going to happen including where it ends up, all you need to do is read history, but telling people years ago got you called a nut job and still does even though you can clearly see it all happening
I’m really starting to think I’d enjoy working for the American Department of Reality and Language Distortion. You know the department that comes up with clever linguistic euphemisms for really shitty realities. You know the department that George Orwell was describing that supplies the obfuscatory politically motivated language that “makes lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
Things like:
“national interests”
“our way of life”
“spreading freedom and democracy”
“America’s commitment to human rights”
“Patriot Act”
“signature strikes”
“smart bombs”
“situational awareness”
“collateral damage”
“use of force”
“enhanced interrogation”
“coalition of the willing”
“extraordinary rendition”
“protective custody”
“waterboarding”
The possibilities and material are nearly endless limited only by one’s creativity with language and the horrible shit that politicians and bureaucrats believe serve their institutional interests and those of their benefactors.
I mean if you can get on with them at a decent federal salary with benefits what could be more fun than sitting around all day with your fellow cubicle flunkies yucking it up while figuring out how to turn your nation’s most despicable conduct into language approximating kittens playing with bunnies while riding a unicorn in a pastoral setting. And doing it all in the belief that it keeps everyone safe from psychotic kitten and bunny murderers who walk among us once awakened from their sleeper cells and engaged in a non-stop murderous rampage snuffing out everything decent in the world (“decent” being only things that happen in America because it and its citizens are so “exceptional” by comparison to all the human beings on the globe of which we are a fairly small drop in the bucket).
In any event good work if you can get it I’d think.
“I’m really starting to think I’d enjoy working for the American Department of Reality and Language Distortion. ”
American officials sound like this guy:
“‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'”
would be a more USG-like rendition ;-)
In fact. I am expecting comedies any time about how The Catholic Church would have talked if they had been the USG. I even fancy some sort of Shakespearean play with that plot by the Yes men
RCL
I can’t help but wonder:- Was the cop who trailed and tailed #BlackLivesMatter activist Sandra Bland aware, from having fed her license plate registration into his cop car computer, that the driver was likely one Sandra Bland; moreover that, via some or other surveillance alert, she had been designated a #BLM activist? In other words, was she being targeted by a white supremacist cop precisely on account of her activism?
P.S. Do see today’s (Friday’s) excellent http://www.democracynow.org — for all of the hour — re: the Sandy Bland case and #BlackLivesMatter.
Is that you, my little Mysterion?
Oi veh. Ich hoffe fuergottsakes dass Du kein Stalker bist.
I’d post as you, but then people would just ignore it. :)
Lmao! Take off the tin foil hat and calm down.
Bingo…your assumption is correct…be careful, your to smart for your own good…Cointelpro/Gangstalking is operational…Fusion Centers, Stingray, Cessna program…. all part of a MASSIVE spy grid which is actively following everyone, at all times and setting up crimes and murdering citizens….the puzzle and evidence is everywhere…yet the worst is yet to come… It’s NOT a few rogue apples and agencies, it’s intentional as the goal is clear…WORST case scenerio happened has been happening for years…it’s slowly coming out years later…Your neighborhood and home is a glass bowl from above… FAKE commercial jetliners…helicopters…Cessna’s…Contrail/Chemtrail planes (spy planes)…America’s Stasi setting up crimes and you will never know how they do it as the Fusion Centers and local police are all part of the crimes and hiding from public as none of it is documented…. this is how these agencies, including FBI have such a clean record…always talking about the “bad guys”….this is their favorite answer to why they don’t want to disclose Stingray’s use… because citizens were being oppressed and murdered with this device…Stingray is a weapon of oppression… RICO ACT in progress….
OBVIOUSLY, neighborhood folks pitching smoke out of their own laws are threats and protesting military hardware to the continuity of the United States government!!
… what is wrong with us?
Give up hopes for reform and good government and hop aboard the freedom train of Anarcho-Capitalism so well espoused by Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. Hate the State!
Yea ok maybe they did but at least we’re not some evil communist country where agents of the state monitor political dissent and intimidate… oh wait….nevermind.
Hard to believe Obama changed America so much in just 7 years. Hopefully he doesn’t drag us down even further in his last year.
He didnt this has been on going for many years, most of this shit was created under Bush, Obama is just moving down the same path , you just now woke up to it, thats all that has really changed
In scahill’s drone wars article, didn’t it reference the cia researching drone spots for future use?
Everyone loves to pin this all on bush but, Clinton was not an innocent either
Exclusive: “a dog found peeing on a corner” …
RCL
“…raises questions over whether DHS is chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights, and over whether the department, created in large part to combat terrorism, has allowed its mission to creep beyond the bounds of useful security activities”
Questions that by now the answers are overwhelmingly, obviously YES – for every one of our federal, state, and even local police and security agencies.
To even pretend that we are free as citizens any longer is a sick joke.