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Of course the title got you here. That's what a good journalist does. But this article is not about giving in to an officer who is trying to bully you into submission, infringing on your rights to record freely. It is about fooling them into thinking you are complying while recording them with an alternative method.
If a Ccop tells you to stop recording them, use your camera pen, 4/22/13

Ten former high-ranking officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration recently signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee criticizing the Obama administration for its supposed lack of zeal in enforcing marijuana prohibition. According to the letter, the administration chief delinquency is its reluctance to crack down on Washington and Colorado, and this is impermissible in light of supposedly sacred international obligations, such as “the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs… and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances.”
Prison and Prohibition Profiteers, 3/19/13

Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do. Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a congressionally mandated audit.
'Homeland Security': Trillion-Dollar Concept That No One Can Define, 2/28/13

Americans will rarely witness the kind of full-scale manhunt now going on throughout Southern California and the San Bernardino mountains as hundreds of heavily armed police and federal agents hunt down Christopher Dorner, a 33-year-old former Los Angeles cop and former Naval officer suspected of three murders.
Police ‘Heroes’ View Us as Little More Than Collateral Damage, 2/9/13

In November, I wrote about Joseph June, a Florida man sentenced to five years in prison for cocaine possession. The cocaine was found in a search that stemmed from a “consensual encounter,” one into which both parties entered voluntarily; the officer had no reason to suspect that June was engaged in illegal activity, and just stopped him in order to chat. In the initial piece, I suggested that consensual police encounters are often anything but. Cops have guns, and handcuffs, and cars with back doors that don’t open from the inside. Even if a police officer is polite as pie, he or she will have the upper hand in most conversational situations. As a consequence, most ordinary citizens will feel compelled to talk with a police officer even when, legally, they don’t have to.
Some Tips on How to Avoid "Consensual" Police Encounters, 1/3/13

When it comes to US austerity, a very sensitive topic as framed best by the "spending cuts" portion in the Fiscal Cliff debate, the ideas range from the surreal to the outright idiotic: as an example in the most recent Obama proposal spending would be "reduced" in the form of $290 billion in interest savings - not an actual spending reduction, but a hope and a prayer that because rates are lower, the government will "save" money with rates continuing to be lower (something which immediately causes a #Ref! explosion for anyone not using government math), $130 billion in savings that would come from once again rejiggering the definition of 'inflation', as well as "savings" from not funding extra defense spending because the US is not engaged in a pro forma war.
Obama Grants Pay Increase For Members Of Congress, Federal Workers In Executive Order, 12/29/12

A video that was apparently shot ten years ago in Chicago provides an excellent educational tool in how to deal with cops who try to intimidate you from recording them. The ironic part of the video is that police did have the legal right to arrest the man at the time, only they probably didn’t realize it.
Video of Activist Standing up for his Right to Record Makes Good Educational Tool, 11/13/12

While it may be months before the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy can be fully resolved, Americans cannot afford to lose sight of the very real and pressing issues that threaten to derail the nation.
Police State: Issues That Threaten To Derail the Nation, 11/2/12

The child was asleep in her upstairs bedroom when a stranger lobbed an incendiary grenade into her home at about 6:00 a.m. October 9. Within seconds the 12-year-old girl had suffered first- and second-degree burns. Her father, who had been awakened by an insistent pounding on the front door, arrived in the living room just in time to see a wolf pack of armed intruders break it down. He dodged another grenade that “blew the nails out of the drywall” and left a “large bowl-shaped dent in the wall,” the father later recalled.
Good Morning, Sweetheart: Now You're on Fire, Courtesy of the Local Police, 10/12/12

A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.
Too Smart To Taser?, 10/1/12

"It’s just about being safe."
Sacred Cause of 'Officer Safety', 9/28/12

For most Americans, the detention center at Guantanamo Bay – once the topic of heated political debate by presidential hopeful Barack Obama but rarely talked about by the incumbent President Obama – has become a footnote in the government’s ongoing war on terror.
Model for an American Police State?, 9/25/12

At a time when states are struggling to reduce bloated prison populations and tight budgets, a private prison management company is offering to buy prisons in exchange for various considerations, including a controversial guarantee that the governments maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years.
Gov't Guarantees 90% Occupancy Rate In Private Prisons, 9/12/12

What happened to 26-year-old decorated Marine Brandon Raub – who was targeted because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys – has happened many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes.
Welcome to the American Gulag: Using Involuntary Commitment Laws To Silence Dissenters, 9/12/12

In another shocking example of how the federal government is repositioning itself as a secret police force to target political dissidents, a 16-year-old boy was questioned by FBI agents over a You Tube video he created for a school project which highlighted how America was slipping into a police state.
Living in Amerika, 9/6/12; 16 Year Old Boy Questioned By FBI Over This Ron Paul YouTube Video, 9/11/12 - More on Ron Paul

When he gazes into the mirror, Lubbock County Judge Tom Head apparently sees the Lone Star State’s equivalent of the Roman military hero Horatius, or perhaps Wang Weilin, the "Tank Man" of Tiananmen Square.
Living in Amerika, 9/6/12

A family has been harassed by social services and police for the egregious crime of allowing their children to play outside in another example of how the nanny state is running wild in America.
Cops Interrogate Family For Allowing Kids To Play Outside, 8/21/12

Police in St. Paul, Minnesota bust in on a family, kill the dog, ransack the house, handcuff three children at gunpoint, and force them to sit next to the corpse of their former pet. They had the wrong house. They still found a gun in the basement, which was apparently illegal under Minnesota law. The head of the family was arrested, and is still in jail...
SWAT Raid Roundup, 8/12/12

If some random guy ordered you to submit to his will – or else – most of us would at least consider it assault. Many of us would try to escape – or defend ourselves. Very few would quietly submit. And almost no one would submit willingly.
But when exactly the same thing is done to us by a person wearing a uniform, most of us not only submit and obey – we do so without even questioning the rightness of the thing.
The uniform – and other totems of officialized authority – confer legitimacy upon the illegitimate. It is a startling thing. It reveals that most people are incapable of grasping the concept of a moral principle – that something which is wrong when committed by an unsanctioned individual is just as wrong when committed by a sanctioned individual – or a group of them.
If it is wrong to kill, then it is always wrong to kill. If it is wrong to steal, then it is always wrong to steal. Neither killing no theft nor any other intrinsically wrong act becomes not-wrong because it’s sanctioned, approved or euphemized by the state, or by a politician, or by a bureaucracy. Stalin reportedly once said that a single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths a statistic. Nothing could be further from the truth. A million single deaths is an atrocity – as much as a single individual death is a tragedy. And you are no less the victim of theft if the theft is done by a collective or its purported agent – under color of law, or via the ballot box.
Why Do We Obey?, 8/11/12

Police have no enforceable duty to protect an individual threatened by criminal violence. A lawsuit recently filed in New Hampshire demonstrates that police are taught to assume that citizens have a moral and legal duty to protect them.
Your 'Duty' To Protect and Serve the Police, 8/10/12

There was a time in our nation’s history when such an accounting of facts would have sparked immediate outrage. However, having bought into the idea that anything the government says and does is right, even when it is so clearly wrong, many Americans through their own compliance have become unwitting accomplices in the government’s efforts to prosecute otherwise law-abiding citizens for unknowingly violating some statute in its vast trove of laws written by bureaucrats who operate above the law. Yet as Nathan Burney so adeptly points out in his “Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law,” “when crimes are too numerous to count… when you’re punished, not because what you did was wrong, but simply because the law says so… when laws are too vague or overbroad… that’s not justice.”
Overcriminalization of America: Are We All Criminals Now?, 8/7/12

The bad news for Rafael Lopez was that the 27-year-old Iraq war veteran had been robbed and severely beaten by a gang of at least 10 men on the street outside the Aqua nightclub in Minneapolis. The good news – or Lopez initially thought – was that the assault took place less than ten yards away from the 1st Police Precinct station...
Police: Useless, but not Harmless, 8/1/12

It’s not just the Department of Homeland Security that is gearing up for the prospect of civil unrest in America. The U.S. Army also recently purchased a stock of riot gear including batons, face masks and body shields.
U.S. Army Purchases Riot Gear As Fears Over Civil Unrest Grow, 7/30/12

...The Portland police officer who fled the scene rather than tangle with an (apparently) armed robber would most likely have been as bold as Hector if he had been dealing with an unarmed 12-year-old girl, or a skinny, unarmed, mentally handicapped street person. Officer Chris Humphreys shot the former at point-blank range with a beanbag round, and — with the help of three associates — chased down and beat to death the latter, a 145-pound schizophrenic named James Chasse. On another occasion, Humphreys beat a helpless man 30 times with a baton before discovering that the victim wasn’t the suspect he was pursuing.
Keep the Guns; Abolish the Police, 7/30/12

What's wrong with the police? Are officers so unskilled and scared that they must tase a skinny 12 year old girl? And this all began because of her mom not paying traffic tickets? Non violent offenses committed by a parent result in their child being tased.
12-Year-Old Girl Tased Inside Victoria's Secret - Mom Had Outstanding Traffic Tickets, 7/29/12

The London Olympics are fast taking on the appearance and tone of a full-scale land, sea and air military operation rather than an international sporting event.
With surface-to-air missiles stationed on top of residential apartment blocks, Royal Navy battleships on alert and Royal Air Force fighter jets and helicopters patrolling the skies over Britain’s capital there is a foreboding sense of a nation at war instead of an occasion of internationalist fraternity that the ancient Games are supposed to embody.
London’s Militarised Olympic Games Conjures Up Orwell’s 1984, 7/24/12

Anaheim police killed two men, shot multiple rounds of rubber bullets and unleashed a dog on a mother and child as tensions surpassed a boiling point over the weekend.
Naturally, they are doing their best to prevent footage of their actions from making the internet, including offering to buy footage from citizens who recorded them terrorizing a crowd of protesters Saturday to shining their flashlights into the cameras of citizens moments after they shot and killed a handcuffed man Sunday.
Anaheim Cops Kill 2nd Man in 2 Days; Prevent Citizens from Recording Investigation, 7/23/12

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is speading its tendrils across America like a cancerous tumor invading surrounding cells.
Responding to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the federal government launched a misguided attempt to consolidate terrorist information among different intelligence and law-enforcement agencies by creating a super-agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The gargantuan agency swallowed up the FBI, CIA, and Coast Guard while creating a new bastard child: the Transporatation Security Agency.
What began as an attempt to increase protection has become America's modern version of the old Nazi Gestapo.
Nazi Gestapo Checkpoints Spread Across America, 7/22/12

The London Olympics are fast taking on the appearance and tone of a full-scale land, sea and air military operation rather than an international sporting event.
With surface-to-air missiles stationed on top of residential apartment blocks, Royal Navy battleships on alert and Royal Air Force fighter jets and helicopters patrolling the skies over Britain’s capital there is a foreboding sense of a nation at war instead of an occasion of internationalist fraternity that the ancient Games are supposed to embody.
London’s Militarised Olympic Games Conjures Up Orwell’s 1984, 7/15/12

This week while working, I was driving my regular routing schedule around the Las Vegas area in Nevada. I moved to Las Vegas three months ago to pursue a job in the healthcare industry. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be going on this day, other than the hundred and ten degree summer heat throughout the Las Vegas area.
Police State is in Full Force, 7/14/12

A newly leaked US Army Military Police training manual for “Civil Disturbance Operations” outlines how military assets are to be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.
Army Manual Outlines Plan To Kill Rioters, Demonstrators In America, 7/6/12

In a 2010 study, the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law examined the fee structure in the 15 states — including California, Florida and Texas — with the largest prison populations. It asserted: “Many states are imposing new and often onerous ‘user fees’ on individuals with criminal convictions. Yet far from being easy money, these fees impose severe — and often hidden — costs on communities, taxpayers and indigent people convicted of crimes. They create new paths to prison for those unable to pay their debts and make it harder to find employment and housing as well as to meet child support obligations.”
Poor Land in Jail as Companies Add Huge Fees for Probation, 7/2/12

BO and the Supremes lunge to finalize the totalitarian central planning of the vast health care pseudo-system in the U.S. was so full of verbiage, rationalizations, shilly shalling, one step back and two steps forward into totalitarian central planning that it was ludicrous in a very grim way. The details are absurdly complex and obfuscating, but basically BO imposed a "universal insurance dodge" similar to Social Security to pay for the vast trillions more in costs needed to pay for 60,000,000 new patients who cannot pay for themselves, the Supremes by 5 to 4 said that's illegal, but you can do the same scam by changing the name to a "tax" and get away with it. The Media at first thought the Supremes had rejected the obviously unconstitutional forced purchase, then got muddled up by the wording and shilly shalling in the actual decision, then reversed themselves, then...
BO and the Supremes Take Another Step Forward Into Totalitarianism, 6/29/12

By now, we all know the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate portion of Obamacare by declaring it a "tax." This is, in essence, a declaration that the federal government now has unlimited power to force consumers to spend some (or even all) of their take-home pay on various products, services or even intellectual property that they have no interest in buying in the first place. It is a concentration of economic power in the hands of the federal government, and it suddenly ends economic liberty in America.
Obamacare to unleash crushing new taxes, trillions in debt, huge job losses, and it doesn't even cover natural medicine, 6/29/12

You can almost always count on the Supreme Court to do the wrong thing. In fact, just about every major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court over the last 40 years has been bad for America. Many were hoping that the Supreme Court would strike down Obamacare, but the truth is that we all should have known better than to expect them to get something right. So now America is headed for a complete and total disaster as Obamacare is fully implemented over the next several years. Obamacare is going to absolutely shred the infrastructure of our medical system, it is going to send health insurance premiums soaring, it is going to dramatically expand the size and the scope of government, it is going to fundamentally alter the relationships between doctors and their patients and it is one of the largest tax increases in U.S. history. Not only that, it is also going to add about a trillion dollars to our national debt over the next decade. So no, the Obamacare decision is not good news. Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history, and now we are stuck with it.
15 Reasons Why The Obamacare Decision Is A Mind Blowing Disaster For America, 6/28/12

What is the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Simply put, it is the “secret government”. This agency has powers and authority that go well beyond any other agency in the nation. What can FEMA do? It can suspend laws. It can move entire populations. It can arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and can hold them without a trial. It can seize property, food supplies, and transportation systems. And it can even suspend the Constitution of the United States.
Comprehensive List of FEMA Camps, 6/23/12

The growth of the private detention industry has long been a subject of scrutiny. A recent eight-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune chronicled how more than half of Louisiana’s 40,000 inmates are housed in prisons run by sheriffs or private companies as part of a broader financial incentive scheme. The detention business goes beyond just criminal prisoners.
U.S.’s growing for-profit detention industry, 6/20/12

The case of an honors student in Texas shines light on a national problem: teens going to jail for absurd reasons.
Profiting From Prisons – American Teens Jailed for Having Sex or Being Late to School, 6/16/12

Most of us are supportive of our local police departments but because of a lousy state Supreme Court decision in Indiana last year, residents of the state now have the right to shoot at officers in defense of their property if they believe they are being improperly raided.
Police officers put on notice in Indiana: If they illegally raid the wrong home, private citizens can shoot back, 6/15/12

Those currently not in Europe should be watching with eyes wide open at how this plays out. Limited bank machine withdrawals or bank holidays, capital controls and even travel controls will soon be coming to the US and other western countries so take this opportunity to learn and prepare for this inevitability.
Statists always like to say that a world with no violent rulers would be one of chaos. As much of Europe burns to the ground in the coming years, remember that its cause all stems from the state.
Capital & Travel Controls and Preparing for Chaos in Europe, 6/15/12

One of the greatest indictments to the idea of putting a physical fence along the U.S. border was that not only could it keep trespassers out, but it could also keep citizens in. As the President has now approved the use of aerial drones on U.S. soil, citizens are becoming more like prisoners in their country. Reason further explains how America is quickly becoming a military state:
U.S. military preparing for a war at home, 6/13/12

European officials are working on range of contingency scenarios covering action that could be to control the movement of people and money in the event of Greece abandoning the euro currency, a European Union spokesman admitted Tuesday.
Olivier Bailly spokesman said Tuesday that, legally, limits could be imposed on movement of people and money across national borders within the EU if it's necessary to protect public order or public security.
EU: movement of money, people can be limited, 6/12/12

Reports suggest that cops trapped as many as 40 cars and handcuffed at least 19 innocent people at gunpoint as they searched for an unknown suspect in the robbery. Some of those detained say that they were detained for two hours without charge while cops carried out a search for the suspects. One man was arrested.
Everyone's a suspect: Colorado police handcuff every driver on the road, 6/6/12

If you doubt the possibility of a conspiracy to bring America to it's knees and perhaps install a totalitarian dictatorship through the conversion of our republic into a democracy you need only look to the changes in our laws. Gary Allen provided his readers with fourteen signposts on the road to totalitarianism. They were compiled by Dr. Warren Carroll, and Mike Djordjevich, a refugee from Yugoslavian communism. The list is in no particular order. However, nothing on the list existed in American law at the time the list was compiled.
14 Signposts to Slavery, 5/23/12

"It probably could have gone either way," Vaniska maintained. "I can't comment on the discretionary practices of an officer, but certainly, the fellow will have an opportunity to tell his story in court."
What a generous concession: Unlike Vaniska and the rest of his tax-fattened department, Roden actually works for a living, and will have to set aside productive time in order to deal with the extortion notes he was handed by one of Vaniska's underlings.
Roden's court date is May 30. Hopefully he will challenge the tickets in order to give public exposure to the uniformed, tax-gathering cretin who took advantage of his near-tragedy.
Police Always Make Things Worse, 5/22/12

A federal judge in New York has given the go ahead for a class action lawsuit to move forward against the city’s police department over allegations that its stop-and-frisk program has continuously allowed officers to discriminate against minorities.
In a ruling made Wednesday by US District Judge Shira Scheindlin, the pending suit against the NYPD, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others was granted class action status.
Judge rules that millions can sue NYPD over stop-and-frisk, 5/17/12

Police states are defined by lawlessness, injustice, and contempt for democratic values.
Merriam Webster calls them "political unit(s) characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures."
Power trumps rights. Crackdowns enforce social control. Arrests, imprisonment, torture, and abuse are commonplace. Murder is committed with impunity. State terror is policy.
Palestinians understand well. They've suffered horrifically for decades. Legitimate resistance is called terrorism.
Israel: Profile of a Police State, 5/11/12

Given that cops and firemen are both concerned to respond to events that cannot be predicted, it is extremely odd that they act so differently from one another. Firemen do not "patrol" neighborhoods in the hope of spotting the next house fire or car accident. They wait until someone calls them, and they respond accordingly. Cops, on the other hand, do "patrol" neighborhoods, hide under overpasses, dress up in "undercover" costumes and otherwise skulk about their communities looking for crimes that are being committed.
In a free society, cops would act like firemen, 5/10/12

For those hoping to better understand how and why we arrived at this dismal point in our nation’s history, where individual freedoms, privacy and human dignity have been sacrificed to the gods of security, expediency and corpocracy, look no farther than America’s public schools.
Arrested Development: Criminalization of America's Schoolchildren, 5/9/12

A shocking U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers contains numerous clear references to the fact that the policies do apply domestically to U.S. citizens.
PREPARING FOR MASSIVE CIVIL WAR, RE-EDUCATION CAMPS, 5/8/12

A shocking U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers contains numerous clear references to the fact that the policies do apply domestically to U.S. citizens.
Red Dawn Re-Education Camps, 5/7/12

It’s not enough that Calhan, Colorado resident David Goss was shot in the stomach by a trespasser last June after he had order the intruder to leave. Because that trespasser wore a government-issued costume, Goss will spend the next four years in a government cage — half the sentence that had been demanded by the vindictive prosecutor. Goss, who was tasered and shot three times in the abdomen at close range, was convicted of second-degree assault, menacing, disarming an officer, attempting to disarm an officer, and obstructing justice.
Colorado Farmer Gets Four-Year Prison Term for Being Shot by a Cop, 5/4/12

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, this month sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.
Buying Prisons Is Big Business For Corporate Slave Traders, 4/26/12

When a belligerent Baltimore, MD cop forced his way into the home of 90-year-old Venus Green – sans search warrant, sans legitimate probable cause – and proceeded to ransack the old lady’s home, as well as the old lady herself, the old lady took action. As the thug scrum made its way into her basement, Green bolted the door – locking the thug in her basement, much to his porcine discontent. She later secured a $95,000 settlement from the city of Baltimore.
How a 90-Year-Old Dealt With the Cops, 4/25/12

There has been no society in the history of the world that has ever been 100% safe. No matter how much money the federal government spends on “homeland security”, the truth is that bad things will still happen. Our world is a very dangerous place and it is becoming increasingly unstable. The federal government could turn the entire country into one giant prison camp, but that would still not keep us safe. It is inevitable that bad stuff will happen in life. But we have a choice. We can choose to live in fear or we can choose to live as free men and women. Our forefathers intended to establish a nation where liberty and freedom would be maximized. But today we are told that we have to give up our liberties and our freedoms and our privacy for increased security. But is such a trade really worth it? Just think of the various totalitarian societies that we have seen down throughout history. Have any of them ever really thrived? Have their people been happy? Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government has decided that the entire country needs to be put on lock down. Nearly everything that we do today is watched and tracked, and personal privacy is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Many of the things that George Orwell wrote about in 1984 are becoming a reality, and that is a very frightening thing. The United States is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sadly, we are rapidly becoming the exact opposite of that.
Why Is It Necessary For The Federal Government To Turn The United States Into A Prison Camp?, 4/21/12

When did we decide that it was okay to treat very young school children as if they were terror suspects? When I was growing up, I don't remember a single time that the police ever came to my school and arrested anyone. But now police are being called out to public schools at the drop of a hat. All over America, very young school children are being arrested and marched out of their schools in handcuffs in front of all their friends. For example, down in Georgia the other day police were called out because a 6-year-old girl was throwing a tantrum. The police subdued her, slapped handcuffs on her and hauled her off to the police station. Instead of apologizing for this outrageous incident, the police are defending the actions of the officer involved. But this is not an isolated incident. All over the country young kids are being handcuffed and mistreated by police.
10 Disgusting Examples of Very Young School Children Being Arrested, Handcuffed and Brutalized By Police, 4/19/12

No matter what the politicians or corporate heads might say, prison privatization is neither fiscally responsible nor in keeping with principles of justice. It simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. This perverse notion of how prisons should be run, that they should be full at all times, and full of minor criminals, is evil.
Jailing Americans for Profit: The Rise of the Prison Industrial Complex, 4/12/12

Drills such as Vigilant Guard 2010 have brought widespread attention to the fact that portions of our own military are training to take on crowds of American citizens demanding food and Constitutional rights in a time of crisis.
Now, a new release by the website Public Intelligence, once again confirms that as recently as February and March of 2012, US troops at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington were conducting training scenarios for a civil disturbance domestic quick reaction force.
US Army Preparing for Martial Law Scenario in US? Civil Disturbance and Mock Riot Drills In Washington, 4/9/12

"We told ya so" just doesn't quite cut it anymore. As the American sheeple slept, selfishly refusing to take a stand against tyranny, the Obama administration has been plotting what can only be called a total government takeover of America.
Obama seizes control over all food, farms, livestock, farm equipment, fertilizer and food production across America, 3/20/12

A police state occurs when the government takes over control of the country by restricting the freedom of the population. Residents of the police state are required to obey the occupying authorities and may be punished for not doing so. They may be required to perform non-military, government mandated duties serving at the pleasure of the chief executive, the military and the PTB. They may be detained indefinitely if considered a threat, rendering the protections of the constitution null and void. And finally, their goods and their lives become the property of the government.
Rising Tsunami of the Police State, 3/19/12

New York City has long been celebrated as the cultural capital of the world, renowned for its art, music and film. Presently, however, the “city that never sleeps” is serving as the staging ground for a futuristic police state operated, in large part, by Mayor Bloomberg and the New York Police Department (NYPD). Although the NYPD was recognized for its countless acts of bravery during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the department has gained notoriety in recent years for its overt racial profiling, a spying program which targets Muslim communities and political activists, and a stop-and-frisk program that has targeted more than 4 million New Yorkers – the majority of whom were black or Latino and had done nothing wrong – over the course of the past seven years.
New York City: Prototype of the American Police State?, 3/14/12

Police don’t get much more “local” than they are in hamlets and villages like Mount Sterling, Covington, and Tenaha (or, in another bizarre case, Sunriver, Oregon, a resort enclave with a permanent population of less than 1,000 people). In “towns” of that size, police — rather than protecting liberty and property — are usually the single greatest threat to both.
Take a Bite Out of Crime: Abolish the Local Police, 3/12/12

Do you think that you are free? Most Americans would still probably answer "yes" to that question, but is that really the case? In the film Edge of Darkness, Mel Gibson stated that "everything is illegal in Massachusetts". Well, the same could pretty much be said for the United States as a whole. Our lives are governed by millions of laws, rules and regulations and more are being piled on all the time. In fact, 40,000 new laws just went into effect in January. Every single new law restricts your freedom just a little bit more. The truth is that America has become a crazy control freak nation where virtually everything that we do is highly regulated. You have probably broken multiple laws today that you don't even know exist. We have all become criminals and lawbreakers because almost everything is illegal at this point. Our politicians are convinced that they are "making life better" by piling gigantic mountains of laws on to our backs, and law enforcement authorities are convinced that they are helping society by "cracking down on crime", but the reality is that our liberties and our freedoms are being strangled by all of this government oppression. This is not the way that America is supposed to work.
19 Signs That America Has Become a Crazy Control Freak Nation Where Almost Everything Is Illegal, 3/2/12

Prevailing dogma dictates that all citizens -- including isolated, vulnerable women-- have an unqualified duty to submit to anyone carrying a gun and state-issued credentials -- including sexual predators like Adam Skweres and Ladmarald Cates. The duty to submit includes allowing ourselves to be shackled and incarcerated without just cause, on the assumption that the same State that stole our liberty will agree not to take any more of it when the matter is examined in court. And submission to unlawful police violence too frequently results in injury, sexual assault, and death.
Uniformed Sexual Predator Deterrence Act, 3/1/12

Just when you thought the government couldn’t ruin the First Amendment any further: The House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday that outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it.
Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal, 2/29/12

$4 billion liens against police officers. Bankruptcy proceedings against the United States government. Claims of grammar-based conspiracies or “backwards-correct-syntaxing-modification fraud.”
Sovereign citizens have found bizarre and creative ways to use court filings and liens to harass public officials throughout the country — and legislators in Georgia have had enough.
States Get Serious In Confronting Sovereign Citizen Movement, 2/28/12

Interpol has arrested 25 suspected members of the Anonymous hackers group in a swoop covering more than a dozen cities in Europe and Latin America, the global police body said Tuesday.
Interpol Arrests 25 Suspected Anonymous Hackers, 2/28/12

With around 2.4 million incarcerated, America has by far the world's largest prison system. Two-thirds in it are Black or Latino.
Most held are non-violent. Over half are for drug related charges. Around 75% are Blacks or Latinos. On all charges, many are persecuted political prisoners.
In her book titled, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," Michelle Alexander called today's Jim Crow a modern-day elitist-designed racial caste system. Believing poor Blacks (and Latinos) are dangerous and economically superfluous, America's gulag became an instrument of social control.
Political Prisoners in America's Gulag, 2/21/12

I contend that the unnecessary overuse of Tasers against unarmed and unthreatening individuals can only be called lazy and cowardly at best.
500 U.S. Deaths From Police Tasers, 2/19/12

The United States of America is becoming more like Nazi Germany every single day. In fact, the Nazification of America is almost complete. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the United States of today are going to absolutely shock many of you. Most Americans simply have never learned what life was really like back in Nazi Germany. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany was a Big Brother totalitarian police state that ruthlessly repressed freedom and individual liberty. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany adopted socialism, dramatically increased government spending and raised taxes to astronomical levels. Under Adolf Hitler, abortion became legal in Germany, the government took over health care and Christianity was pushed out of the public schools and out of public life. To prove all of these points, I am going to use extensive quotes from two sources. Kitty Werthmann was a child living a peaceful life in Austria when Hitler took over her nation. Her eyewitness accounts about what life was like under Nazi Germany are invaluable. In addition, I will also be quoting extensively from author Bruce Walker. He is the author of a book entitled "The Swastika Against The Cross: The Nazi War On Christianity", and during his years of research he has uncovered some absolutely jaw dropping stuff. After reading the information in the rest of this article, there should be no doubt that the United States is becoming just like Nazi Germany.
25 Signs Tthat the Nazification of America is almost Complete, 2/17/12

The US is fast becoming one massive open air prison camp. Few realize that one by one their natural rights are being stripped by the fascist "criminal" law system. As we've noted in the past, more than 30% of those under 23 have been arrested as the fascist US Government works to ensnare as many as possible into permanent indentured servitude through a criminal record.
Panopticon Coming to a Neighborhood Near You, 2/2/12

The emergence and rise of the Praetorian Class is a common observation in societies that have transitioned from market-based meritocracies to societies governed by coercive syndicates formed by the Political Class. The Praetorian Class is formed and grown to defend the Political Class and in time becomes the dragon that rules its master. It represents a highly disturbing trend because it foretells the decline, not the advance, of a society. In some instances, the decline is peaceful, clearing the path for an improved future. Unfortunately, in many instances that is not the case. The Political Class leverages the full force of the Praetorian Class representing significant loss in wealth, personal freedom and, in many cases, human life. For this reason, it is critical that productive members of society take steps to protect themselves.
Rise of the Praetorian Class, 1/17/12

America's on a slippery slope toward full-blown tyranny. Freedom hangs by a thread. Anyone challenging state power is vulnerable. Constitutional protections don't apply.
Presidential diktat authority replaced them. Martial law looms if so ordered. Nonviolent protesters are threatened. Freedom's fast going, going, gone.
Criminalizing Dissent in America, 1/16/11

Despite years of secret pervasive surveillance, terror plots weren't uncovered. Bad guys weren't imprisoned. People were targeted for their race, ethnicity or religion, others for challenging government policy. As a result, America became less, not more, safe.
Its entire character changed. Freedom's now endangered. Dissent can be criminalized. Imperial lawlessness is policy. So is police state justice. After enacting indefinite detentions of US citizens, tyranny arrived in America.
Freedom: An Endangered Species in America, 1/10/12

Do you remember when Barack Obama, as a senator and onetime constitutional law professor, opposed legislation he felt incriminated on the rights of American citizens? If that seems like a political lifetime ago, that's because it was; it was back in a time (2007) when he also believed the U.S. should close Guantanamo Bay, restore Habeas Corpus to Muslims around the world and never hold U.S. citizens as enemy combatants.
Obama lawyers claim Americans who oppose U.S. government are 'legitimate' targets for government bombings, assassinations, 1/8/12

Bad laws attract bad people to enforce them – while pushing out the good (and semi-good) people. It’s a sort of Gresham’s Law as applied to human society. And more, a sort of authoritarian feedback loop that makes the situation progressively worse as time goes by.
Cop Types, 1/4/12

Corruption, betrayal, and lies -- these are the adjectives appropriate to describe the legacy that President Barack Obama is etching into the annals of his political career -- and they are ones that are now further solidified after signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Obama signs into law unconstitutional National Defense Authorization Act after promising to veto it, 1/2/12

In the aftermath of the signing of the NDAA by the traitorous President Obama, some citizens remain completely hoodwinked by the language of the bill, running around the internet screaming that the law "does not apply to American citizens."
This is, naturally, part of the side effect of having such a dumbed-down education system where people can't even parse the English language anymore. If you read the bill and understand what it says, it clearly offers absolutely no protections of U.S. citizens. In fact, it affirms that Americans are subjected to indefinite detainment under "existing authorities."
Let's parse it intelligently, shall we?
Yes, the NDAA does apply to Americans, 1/1/12

Fargo is North Dakota’s largest city, yet its placid lifestyle seldom sees the chaos common in other urban communities. This quiet city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there’s not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade.
But that hasn’t stopped BORG Agents in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying binge to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars.
BORG is ready for War with YOU!, 12/25/11

The real crimes in America are not being committed by or planned by private civilians who believe in personal and economic freedom, private property and the philosophy of Live and Let Live, and who want to speak out against intrusions and threats posed by those with armed, compulsory government legal authority and power.
No, the real crimes are those of our government officials who are extremely clueless about liberty and who are totally drunk with power grabs. Seizing and detaining innocent civilians? Suppressing speech and political dissent? "Emergency" camps? Government degenerates and outlaws have become the most dangerous amongst our increasingly vulnerable population under centralized rule.
Obama's FEMA Camps and the Deaths of Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-Il, 12/23/11

A decade of billions in spending in the name of homeland security has armed local police departments with military-style equipment and a new commando mentality. But has it gone too far? [dumb question]
Local Cops Ready for War With Homeland Security-Funded Military Weapons, 12/21/11

Unquestionably, Americans, who dare to speak out against the emerging military dictatorship within our country, will soon be taking up a new residence at your neighborhood FEMA camp.
Through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), CONgress, complete with their 9% public approval rating, has declared war upon the American people.
Freedom-Loving Americans Headed to FEMA Camps?, 12/17/11

Obama supports draconian FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act provisions. Justification given is national security and war on terror hokum.
Henceforth, anyone anywhere, including US citizens, may be indefinitely held without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, spurious allegations or none at all.
No reasonable proof is needed, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Henceforth, indefinite detentions can follow mere membership (past or present) or support for suspect organizations.
Presidents now have unchecked dictatorial powers to arrest, interrogate and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat.
Obama Approves Draconian Police State Law, 12/17/11
Detaining US citizens: How did we get here?, 12/15/11
Obama to fill Gitmo with Americans as NDAA law passes, 12/15/11
NDAA Gives Pentagon Green Light to Wage Internet War, 12/15/11

A Noble Lie details years of investigative research on the false flag that was the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Proof the OKC Bombing was an Inside Job, 12/17/11

Should we just get it over with and change the spelling of America to "Amerika"? Every single day, the United States of America is becoming more like North Korea. In North Korea, the citizens are told that everything that they do needs to be monitored, tracked, recorded and very tightly controlled so that everyone can be kept safe. No dissent is allowed at all. If government officials in North Korea even suspect that you are thinking the wrong thing, your entire extended family can be shipped off to a prison camp. And you know what? North Korea is a pretty safe place. There is not much terrorism in North Korea. But why in the world would anyone ever want to live like that? America is supposed to be a bastion of liberty and freedom, but now we are falling for the same totalitarian lies that so many other societies have fallen for throughout human history. We are witnessing the rise of the beast system - a system of control more pervasive than anything that the world has ever seen. We are constantly being told that the emerging "Big Brother" control grid is being put into place for "our safety", but someday we are going to wake up in a dystopian nightmare where government tyrants have absolutely unlimited control over our lives.
Rise of the Beast System: 11 Ways That Amerika Is Becoming More Like North Korea, 12/16/11

Obama won't prosecute CIA torturers, Wall Street crooks, other corporate criminals, lawless war profiteers, or other venal high-level civilian or government officials.
Instead, expect him to sign into law (or at least tacitly approve) indefinite military detentions of US citizens allegedly associated with terrorist groups, with or without corroborating evidence.
Post-9/11, US freedoms and other democratic values dramatically eroded. Enactment of police state provisions in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act comes closer to ending them entirely.
Legislating Tyranny in America, 12/15/11

Top tier presidential candidate Ron Paul has decried the ‘indefinite detention’ provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, warning that it represents an arrogant, bold and dangerous attempt to establish martial law in America.
Ron Paul: Defense Bill Establishes Martial Law In America, 12/13/11

For the better part of two decades FEMA detention camps were believed to be a figment of tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists. As more information over the years has been made available through alternative news researchers like Alex Jones in his full length documentary Police State 4 and former governor Jesse Venutra's FEMA camp exposé, it is becoming increasingly clear that the government has been taking steps for quite some time to ensure a rapid and effective response in the event of a national disaster or U.S. military deployment on American soil.
Detainment Camps Going Live: FEMA Seeking Subcontractors To Provide 'Temporary Camp Services' In All 50 States, 12/12/11

Internment/Resettlement (I/R) Specialists in the Army are primarily responsible for day-to-day operations in a military confinement/correctional facility or detention/internment facility. I/R Specialists provide rehabilitative, health, welfare, and security to U.S. military prisoners within a confinement or correctional facility; conduct inspections; prepare written reports; and coordinate activities of prisoners/internees and staff personnel.
Army Job Ad: Internment/ Resettlement Specialist (31E)

The revelation that Halliburton subsidiary KBR is seeking sub-contractors to staff and outfit “emergency environment” camps located in five regions of the United States follows preparations over the last three years to deal with riots inside the United States that have already spread throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Detention Camp Order Follows Preparations For Civil Unrest, 12/7/11

The military-grade pepper-spray that’s been all the rage with law enforcement agencies is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an advanced arsenal of weaponry made available to police departments across the country.
Pentagon arms police departments with free heavy weaponry, 12/7/11

In February of last year, video surfaced of a marijuana raid in Columbia, Mo. During the raid on Jonathan Whitworth and his family, police took down the door with a battering ram, then within seconds shot and killed one of Whitworth's dogs and wounded the other. They didn't find enough pot in the house to charge Whitworth with even a misdemeanor. (He was, however, charged with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia when police found a pipe.) The disturbing video went viral in May 2010, triggering outrage around the world. On Fox News, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer and Bill O'Reilly cautioned not to judge the entire drug war by the video, which they characterized as an isolated incident.
In fact, very little about the raid that was isolated or unusual. For the most part, it was carried out the same way drug warrants are served some 150 times per day in the United States. The battering ram, the execution of Whitworth's dog, the fact that police weren't aware Whitworth's 7-year-old child was in the home before they riddled the place with bullets, the fact that they found only a small amount of pot, likely for personal use -- all are common in drug raids. The only thing unusual was that the raid was recorded by police, then released to the public after an open records request by the Columbia Daily Tribune. It was as if much of the country was seeing for the first time the violence with which the drug war is actually fought. And they didn't like what they saw.
SWAT Raids, Stun Guns & Pepper Spray: Why the Government is Ramping Up the Use of Force, 12/5/11

In America today, the many are ruled by the few. The many allow this tyranny voluntarily, and with open arms. The only men who can be reduced to servitude are those who choose to do so. For men who cling to liberty with passion can never be ruled, and will never allow their freedom to be taken from them. These are men of truth and character, and sadly, they are the extreme minority. These men of integrity are now directly in the crosshairs of this oligarchy called America, and without them, the rest of society is doomed to a life of serfdom.
Blind Obedience to the State: The Sheep Are Now Ready for Slaughter!, 12/5/11

There is just too much going on to remain still now, isn't there? Things are getting way too interesting to ignore. I have a little time on the weekends so I thought I'd take the time to write a short commentary on a couple of recent developments. I don't need to tell you that something is wrong, we all know something is very wrong. The system has failed us. The problem is, those in charge of the system refuse to change the system. They keep failing. They have no new or effective ideas. They also refuse to listen to the grievances of the many. They refuse to be accountable.
Government Thugs, Terrorists and 93 Treasonous Senators, 12/4/11

There is no question that police officers in the United States have one of the toughest, most dangerous jobs around. But it's hard to imagine an instance - any instance - where a cop feels so threatened by a child barely past the toddler age that he or she needs to forcibly restrain them.
5-year-old cuffed, charged with battery on cop, 12/4/11

The Senate last night codified into law the power of the U.S. military to indefinitely detain an American citizen with no charge, no trial and no oversight whatsoever with the passage of S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act.
One amendment that would have specifically blocked the measures from being used against U.S. citizens was voted down and the final bill was passed 93-7.
Another amendment introduced by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein that attempted to bar the provision from being used on American soil, an effort to ensure “the military won’t be roaming our streets looking for suspected terrorists,” also failed, although Feinstein voted in favor of the bill anyway.
'Indefinite Detention' Bill Passes Senate 93-7 - Americans completely stripped of all rights under Section 1031, 12/2/11

Guest Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, joins Alex to discuss the implications of indefinite detention and torture for American citizens under the looming National Defense Authorization Act.
Stewart Rhodes: Senate Has Declared War on American People, 12/1/11

You should be HORRIFIED at S. 1867. The National Defense Authorization Act, now up for a vote, completely obliterates Posse Comitatus to use military force against American citizens here in these less united states, or anybody anywhere on Earth. Due process will not be involved. No warrants, no charges, no attorney, no trial, just armed men on your doorstep looking to make you disappear. Of course, “enhanced interrogation” is in order. This blatantly fascist bill totally does away with any pretense of federal respect for our Bill of (God-given) Rights, destroys any semblance of justice or a free society where dissent is part of the political process. This is TREASON! The FEMA camps are waiting.
"COME AND TAKE IT!" A reply to S. 1867, 11/30/11

If you live in the United States of America, you live in a giant prison where liberty and freedom are slowly being strangled to death. In this country, the control freaks that run things are obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that we do. Nothing is private anymore. Everything that you do on the Internet is being monitored. All of your phone calls are being monitored. In fact, if law enforcement authorities suspect that you have done something wrong, they will use your cell phone microphone to listen to you even when you think your cell phone is turned off. In many areas of the country, when you get into your car automated license plate readers track you wherever you go, and in many major cities when you are walking on the streets a vast network of security cameras and “smart street lights” are constantly watching you and listening to whatever you say. The TSA is setting up “internal checkpoints” all over the nation, Homeland Security is encouraging all of us to report any “suspicious activity” that our neighbors are involved in and the federal government is rapidly developing “pre-crime” technology that will flag us as “potential terrorists” if we display any signs of nervousness. If you are flagged as a “potential terrorist”, the U.S. military can arrest you and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything. Yes, the United States of America is rapidly being turned into a “Big Brother” prison grid, and most Americans are happily going along with it.
30 Signs that the United States of America is being turned into a Giant Prison, 11/29/11

Congress is now considering legislative language to mandate indefinite military detentions of US citizens suspected of present or past associations with alleged terrorist groups, with or without evidence to prove it.
Indefinite Domestic Military Detentions, 11/29/11

Civil libertarians are understandably concerned about sections 1031 and 1032 of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act, which would authorize the indefinite military detention of Americans – including those seized here in the United States – who are suspected of terrorism. That abhorrent measure represents an enhancement of current policies and procedures, rather than an abrupt departure from them. Whether or not the Senate approves the NDAA, the people in charge of Regime Security already consider this country to be one vast military prison, and are willing to act on that assumption whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Making of a Prison Society, 11/28/11
Treason From Within: The Road towards a Police State in America, 11/28/11

The Senate is set to vote on a bill next week that would define the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.
Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial, 11/26/11

The time has come for you to make a choice. You must choose where you stand. You must take a stand and decide what society you wish to live in. Do not tell us that you follow orders, we dealt with that one decades ago. We don’t want to hear that policies are set far above you, by those with more power than you. They have no power without you; you are their power. Without your willing participation, they are nothing more than miserable creatures, talking to the walls in overly decorated rooms. You convert their statements into physical actions. You decide which orders to follow, and from whom. It is your call.
Open Letter to the Police, 11/23/11

It’s a “12-ton armored personnel carrier.” It is supposedly for “rescue” operations, though why it needs to be armored to do that is not clear.
Tampa Police Roll Out A TANK To Deal With A Few Dozen Protesters, 11/20/11

What will we say when the government announces that “for security reasons” it will begin conducting random checks of our homes? That we will be required by law to open our doors and stand aside while government agents do a walk-through, just to “be sure” and (of course) “to keep us safe”?
What Will We Say?, 11/19/11

Jesse Ventura made a good point recently in response to the decision by a government lawyer dressed in a black version of a KKK robe (er, I mean, "distinguished federal judge") that his lawsuit against the unconstitutionality of the American police state should be ignored. His argument is this:
1. The neocons told us that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedom and prosperity.
2. Now that most of our freedom and prosperity has been destroyed by the state, there is no longer any reason for the terrorists to hate us.
3. Therefore, we can safely disband the fascist police state the neocons have gleefully erected and bring all the troops home from the Middle East immediately.
We're All Safe Now, Finally, so Go Ahead and Disband the Police State, 11/14/11

If you do the time in Riverside County, you better have the dime to pay for it. KNX 1070′s Mike Landa reports that’s the driving sentiment behind one Riverside County supervisor’s efforts to charge jail inmates for their time in custody.
Charge Inmates To Stay In Jail? Riverside County Eyes $5M Revenue Boost, 11/3/11

Early in the morning on Oct. 22, a Saturday, Ms. Zucker, 21, and her friend Alex Fischer, also 21, were stopped by the police in Riverside Park and given tickets for trespassing. Mr. Fischer was permitted to leave after he produced his driver’s license. But Ms. Zucker, on a visit to New York City with a group of Carnegie Mellon University seniors looking for jobs in design industries, had left her wallet in a hotel two blocks away.
She was handcuffed. For the next 36 hours, she was moved from a cell in the 26th Precinct station house on West 126th Street to central booking in Lower Manhattan and then — because one of the officers was ending his shift before Ms. Zucker could be photographed for her court appearance, and you didn’t think he was going to take the subway uptown while his partner stayed with her at booking, did you? — she was brought back to Harlem.
There she waited in a cell until a pair of fresh police officers were rustled up to bring her back downtown for booking, where she spent a second night in custody.
The judge proceeded to dismiss the ticket in less than a minute.
NYPD Holds College Student in Jail for Three Days Because She Wasn’t Carrying ID, 11/3/11

It is not unusual for a Police Officer to shoot and kill someone, it is also not rare for Police Officers to get away without being charged. However, I don't recall hearing or reading about someone that didn't pull the trigger to be convicted of a murder caused by a Police Officer.
Man Convicted for Murdering a Man Killed by Police Officer, 10/30/11

Woman gets hit with stray bullet, heads to hospital. NYPD officers decide she’s lying about what happened, arrest her, detain her for five days . . . then release her with no charges.
Serves Her Right for Accidentally Getting Hit by a Stray Bullet, 10/28/11

Louis Frobe is facing hard time. Fifteen years in prison – the sort of sentence typically handed out for crimes such as second-degree murder and rape. Frobe’s crime?
He recorded a traffic stop.
Stopped for speeding in Lindenhurst, Illinois, Frobe attempted to document the event, including the conversation between himself and the traffic cop. After all, the cop was recording him and the cop’s video/audio record of the traffic stop could and probably would be used as evidence against Frobe in court, if Frobe decided to contest the speeding ticket. Moreover, Frobe was out in public – where the courts have ruled there is no expectation of privacy, period – and the cop who pulled Frobe over is a public official, performing his official duties.
15 Years in Prison for Recording a Traffic Stop, 10/20/11

The NYPD’s comfy relationship with the CIA is back in the news again. In August it was reported that the spook agency was working with the cops in New York to spy on Muslims. The CIA and the NYPD began working together a few months after the 9/11 attacks.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said at the time that the chief of the NYPD’s intelligence division is led by David Cohen, a CIA veteran prior to coming to the NYPD in 2002. He said the department’s counter-intelligence program foiled 13 terror plots since September 11, 2001, through a collaboration with the FBI and other federal agencies.
The FBI routinely entraps witless patsies and then claims it prevented terrorist attacks.
CIA Advertises Its Takeover of Local Law Enforcement, 10/17/11

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.
The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.
Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.
We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies, 10/13/11

Do you love liberty and freedom? If so, you better watch your back. The control freaks that run our society are stripping away our liberties and freedoms a little bit more each day, and lately they seem to be particularly focused on coming after those that are not "integrating" into the system. Just like the rest of the western world, America is being transformed into a "Big Brother" police state control grid. Nearly everything that you do is being watched and monitored. A whole host of organizations know that you are on this website right now. If you want to go to an NFL game next weekend, there is a good chance that you will be on the receiving end of an "enhanced pat-down" and if you are producing raw milk on your farm there is a good chance that the feds will show up for a pre-dawn raid on your property. In many areas of the country, the government forces us to shoot our kids full of vaccines and implant dangerous microchips in our pets. Virtually wherever we go there is a camera that is watching us or there are other Americans that are evaluating whether or not we are engaged in "suspicious activity" that needs to be reported to the government. Once upon a time, America was all about liberty and freedom, but today our nation is undergoing a radical cultural shift. America is being "locked down", and those who love liberty and freedom should watch their backs.
12 Signs That Americans Who Love Liberty and Freedom Should Watch Their Backs, 10/4/11

Lawlessness, injustice, and contempt for democratic values define his administration. He delivered change all right - for the worst, and nothing ahead looks promising.
Obama-style "rules of engagement" include bullets, bombs, slit throats, knives in the back, or drone attacks justice.
Targeted victims are declared guilty by accusation. Due process and judicial fairness are discarded artifacts. US citizens are as vulnerable as global enemies.
No one is safe anywhere in a world ruled by rogue leaders, taking the law into their own hands with impunity.
As a result, freedom and security were jettisoned to memory hole oblivion. Let's count the ways.
Police State America, 10/4/11

Some people are predicting that there will be a major economic collapse, caused by unsustainable debts and other government intrusions into private economic matters, and by central banks’ excessive money-printing.
In America, the Federal Reserve’s continued irresponsible and reckless actions will result in further devaluing the currency and huge increases in price inflation, especially in food and energy prices. Some are predicting that there will be food shortages, looting, rioting, and civil unrest and violence in America.
There are some people who believe that such events will be followed by President Obama imposing a nationwide martial law. Recent terrorism drills, such as the major drill last week in Denver, are believed to be part of the U.S. government’s preparation for either terrorism or false flag events, or part of preparation for planned martial law. Obama was recently in Denver. One hopes that what former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has documented, a possible huge underground government or military facility at the Denver airport, and other similar places, are not true.
But the subject of martial law needs to be discussed, because it’s important that the people of the U.S. states have an understanding of this before Obama imposes martial law, which is essentially a presidential-military-rule dictatorship.
Do Not Allow President Obama To Impose Martial Law, 10/3/11

A massive terror drill – remarkably ignored by all but local media – is now underway in Denver, Colorado.
More than 100 government agencies are taking part in Operation Mountain Guardian, made possible due to a grant from the Department of Homeland Security through FEMA Region VIII and the State of Colorado Governor’s Office of Homeland Security, according to KDVR in Denver.
Mock terror drills will be staged at a mall, an elementary school, a community college, a hospital, and transportation hubs, including the Denver airport.
Martial Law Drill Commences as Economy Begins Descent, 9/23/11

I am deeply sickened and disgusted by the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia tonight. The US Supreme Court, which allows unconstitutional wars and tramplings of the First Amendment and makes a decent decision less than once a decade, failed to stay the execution.
A jury had indeed found Davis guilty of murdering a police officer, a heinous offense. But was the jury infallible? Is any human being?
There was no DNA evidence, no physical evidence at all. The verdict was based completely on eyewitness testimony. Some human activities are more fallible than others. How often have you seen someone you thought you knew, only to be shortly proven wrong.
Seven of the nine witnesses recanted their testimony since the verdict. Three jurors have said they would have voted otherwise had they known then what they know now. People from all walks of life, including conservative politicians, a former President, and Pope Benedict spoke out against the imminent execution.
Barbarity of Capital Punishment, 9/22/11

Health freedom, farming freedom, the rise of tyrannical governments, the destruction of personal responsibility, runaway consumerism, gun control, the legalization of hemp, staged terror attacks, fiat currency, the national debt, government surveillance and much more - a whirlwind tour of what went wrong with modern society and how we can help restore the freedoms and liberties necessary to create abundance in any society.
Freetopia also exposes numerous economic fallacies including the fallacy that war is good for the economy. (It isn't.) The video also reveals how western medicine conspires to keep people sick so that more profits can be generated from human suffering and disease.
How free societies become bankrupt police states, 9/21/11
video

During the past decade, the crime rate in the United States has declined, terrorism has been all but nonexistent – and the country has been transformed into a fair approximation of a high-security prison, complete with full-spectrum surveillance of the population and undisguised militarization of “local” police departments. At the same time, the political elite in charge of the former Soviet Union is addressing a legitimate crime crisis by drawing down the police force and recognizing (however tentatively) the right of citizens to armed self-defense.
For all of its problems, Russia clearly is no longer the land of Lenin. For all of our advantages, it’s just as clear that the United States of America is no longer the Land of the Free.
Abolish the Police, Arm the Citizens: The "Sagra Model" of Privatized Security, 9/18/11

So, is the US Government fascist or communist? You'd be right if you answered both.
And, to top it off, it is also a police state. Ask any child who has tried to open a lemonade stand in the land of the free. To see the latest egregious example of the police state, check out this story. These guys have been given 200 tickets and been arrested numerous times for trying to give pedestrians low speed rides in electric vehicles on a tip basis!
America was a great idea. That idea died decades ago. What has slithered in, in its place, is the worst parts of all the worst forms of government.
Some believe it can be fixed. We don't. It will get much worse before it gets better.
Fasco-Communist Police State of America, 9/16/11

Say nothing… nothing!
To cops, ever.
Anything you say can and will be held against you. Remember that?
You ought to.
Say Nothing to the Cops... Ever, 9/9/11

I left the United Soviet States of Amerika (USSA) five years ago and never looked back. Upon discovering that government forces executed what I learned was a “false flag operation” (thank you Loose Change), that the economy was one giant Ponzi scheme (thank you G. Edward Griffin) and that there truly did exist a movement for totalitarian world government mirroring Biblical depictions (thank you Alex Jones), I figured I had some soul-searching to do.
I have long been dismayed at the barrage of totalitarian news coming out of Fascistan. Sometimes, in the chaos of “third world” countries where I tend to reside, you actually have more freedom because the typical “first world” police state laws either don’t exist or nobody bothers to follow them. You can slip through the cracks. Heck, I’d driven a car for years without the correct papers.
Here, we are allowed to sell candy, puppies or hamburgers on the side of pretty much any street, authorities would likely agree with you that 9/11 was an inside job, and so forth. The free-market stimulates growth while collectivist government destroys pretty much anything it touches.
Sure, the USSA is not unique, but what was once the spearhead of freedom has become the spearhead of tyranny, and nobody got the memo.
Police State Roundup: 15 Reasons Why I Choose Not to Live in the USSA, 9/8/11

The Rochester Police Chief acknowledged that his officers acted in a retaliatory fashion by issuing petty tickets to citizens supporting Emily Good, the woman who was arrested in May for videotaping a traffic stop from her front yard.
Actually, he didn’t quite the use the word retaliatory.
He called it “targeted enforcement activity,” which is cop talk for retaliatory.
Rochester Police To Undergo Training After Retaliatory Incidents, 9/3/11

For the past few months, police departments have been using a new iris scanning device to identify people they encounter. Many more police departments will begin using this device soon. The scanner can be held up to the eye of any person and almost instantly identify them more accurately than a fingerprint. Police have imposed restrictions on themselves to prevent misuse of iris scanners. Like a chubby kid guarding a Happy Meal, indulgence is more likely than restraint.
Do not consent to the police, 9/1/11

What does the maker of Les Paul guitars have in common with a food club that sold raw milk & organic coconuts? Not much, except that both have recently been raided by overzealous agents of the state.
It seems that concept of “innocent until proven guilty” has been abandoned and a side-effect of this can be seen in the way agents have handled both Gibson Guitars and Rawesome.
Rawesome Foods & Gibson Guitars: Victims of the Police State, 8/28/11

Police forces – like practically everything else – were extravagantly over-built during the late economic bubble. Liquidation is a vital part of every economic correction, and dismantling local affiliates of the Homeland Security State is a splendid way to begin that process. This is why everyone blessed to live in a small town should share the story of Oak Hill’s successful police liquidation with the city council, coupled with this admonition: Go ye, therefore, and do likewise.
Abolish Your Local Police, 8/26/11

Not to be a complete downer on what is really a pretty great decision, but the other thing to keep in mind is that the current Supreme Court lineup is awfully fond of qualified immunity. It’s far from clear that they’d uphold this ruling. I do imagine that they will address the issue fairly soon. It will be interesting to see if that comes in the form of a challenge to an actual conviction, or in a civil rights claim for wrongful arrest.
First Circuit Panel Says There’s a Clear Constitutional Right To Openly Record Cops, 8/26/11

The ShadowHawk is a 50lb mini drone chopper that can be fitted with an XREP taser with the ability to fire four barbed electrodes that can be shot to a distance of 100 feet, delivering “neuromuscular incapacitation” to the victim. The drone can travel at a top speed of 70MPH and can operate for 3.5 hours over land and sea.
Big Sis Gives Green Light For Drone That Tazes Suspects From Above, 8/24/11

By the end of 2010, the United States was home to 25 percent of the world’s inmates, with roughly 2.4 million people behind bars and over seven million under "correctional supervision".
In any given year, 13 million people pass through the U.S. detention system, which includes federal and state facilities; Native American, juvenile, military and local jails; U.S. detention centres overseas and holding centres operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
'Profiteers of Misery': U.S. Private Prison Industrial Complex, 8/24/11

The above information is extremely important. Ron Paul was recently asked by an investigative blogger if he was concerned about legislation in Congress that would officially establish FEMA camps in America. Ron Paul responded in the affirmative.
Ron Paul Addresses Plans For 'Civil Unrest' Detention Camps, 8/20/11

This past year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down much of the "Honest Services Fraud" law that federal prosecutors were using as the catch-all for targeting whomever they wanted to have thrown into prison. As I wrote two years ago, this law was the ultimate prosecutorial weapon for people who already have an arsenal of injustice.
Well, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the courtroom, the Obama administration and the U.S. Senate want to tag team in order to give federal prosecutors the power to send anyone they choose to prison, no matter if the accused has committed a crime or not. For readers who think I am exaggerating, think again.
Congress and Obama: We Need More Innocent People in Prison, 8/17/11

A police officer from Springfield, Massachusetts has filed an application for a criminal complaint against a woman who recorded his fellow officer beating a black suspect while he stood by, according to The Republican.
In November 2009, Tyrisha Greene made a 20-minute recording of now-retired Springfield patrolman Jeffrey M. Asher repeatedly beating Melvin Jones III with a flashlight during a traffic stop. The recording shows a group of other officers standing around Jones without intervening.
Jones was partially blinded in one eye from the attack, and had bones all over his face broken. The officers claimed that Jones grabbed one of their guns as they tried to arrest him and that Asher struck Jones with his flashlight in order to "disorientate him."
But a grand jury rejected that claim, finding no evidence that Jones behaved aggressively towards them.
Michael Sedergren was one of the four officers disciplined for the incident. He was suspended for 45 days. Sedergren claims Greene violated the state's wiretapping laws by recording him without his consent.
Police officer seeks criminal charges against woman who videotaped police beating, 8/11/11

Video them America! Audio record them America! They don't care about our rights! They don't care about or understand their oaths! The District Attorney's won't prosecute—and the Jury's won't convict—unless we FORCE THEM TOO! Force them with a camera or we're going to have to force them with a gun!
You, The Police, and Your Camera, 8/7/11

A growing private gulag, prisons for profit with nearly a score of corporations running dozens of facilities with tens of thousands of prisoners. In fact, privatized prisons are expected to increase sharply over the next decade, given America's addiction to incarcerate and let corporate prisons do more.
Outlawed a century ago, they're back and booming, a solution to budget-strapped states. Today, nearly 10% of US prisons and jails are private, dominated by two major firms - Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut).
Filling Prison Beds for Profit, 8/6/11

A cop confronts a citizen and encounters brief, trivial, and often justified resistance. He summons "backup," and a thugscrum – which is a phenomenon similar to a criminal "flash mob," but generally more lethal – quickly coalesces and deals out hideous violence while terrified citizens look on in horror and apparent helplessness.
Any officer who doesn’t play a hands-on role in beating the "suspect" will devote his attention to "crowd control" – that is, preventing intervention on behalf of the victim, and often confiscating any recording devices that might be used to gather incriminating video of the episode.
Officially sanctioned gang violence depends on a chain reaction of conformity, and often a single rogue element would be sufficient to prevent it from reaching critical mass. A "rogue cop" – that is, a peace officer devoted to protecting life, liberty, and property, rather than a dutiful law enforcer determined to uphold "authority" – would interpose on behalf of the victim.
In Praise of 'Rogue' Cops, 8/3/11

We're fast approaching a time when law enforcement will no longer need to ask you for your identification - your physical self, and the biometric data therein, are all that will be required to identify you.
A gadget attached to a mobile phone can photograph and plot key points and features on your face (breaking the numbers down into biometric data), scan your iris and take your fingerprints on the spot.
This gizmo doesn't exist in a futuristic world - it's already been prototyped and tested. By autumn, the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System (MORIS), which will allow 40 law enforcement agencies across the US to carry out such biometric diagnostics, will be rolled out. So far, the 1,000 units on order - at $3,000 and 12.5 oz per device - will be going to sheriff and police departments.
Mobile Biometrics to Hit US Streets, 8/3/11

Obama can also use PDD51 or other Executive Orders provided to him under Pandemic Level 6 (which was extended by Obama until March of 2012) to raise the debt ceiling.
Pandemic Level 6 gives them all they need to do what ever they want, we are technically in a silent martial law.
Rule: 'Martial Law' – Obama To Use Dictatorial Powers To Raise Debt Ceiling If Need Be, 7/29/11

Residents of the Arizona town that has become a YouTube sensation after police forcibly removed a woman speaking at a recent public meeting are now experiencing firearms confiscation by the government.
Escalation in Arizona: Firearms confiscated, 7/27/11

First the town Mayor is forced out of office, then a state of emergency is declared in secret and if matters couldn’t get any worse for the unfortunate townspeople of Quartzsite, the majority of the police force is now being forced to stay in their own homes during working hours.
Nine out of a total of fourteen Quartzsite, Arizona police officers have been suspended, all of which just happened to be whistle blowers who exposed their corrupt police chief.
The Mayor, Ed Foster, was elected on the platform of investigating the corrupt goings-on in the Quartzsite city council. Therefore, it is not quite surprising that they would force out the man who intends to prove them to be criminals.
Blueprint For A Police State Takeover, 7/27/11

Law enforcement continues to adopt new technologies in an effort to make their jobs easier and keep us safer. The latest gizmo attaches to officers’ iPhones and turns them into biometric face scanners. The scanners have already been street tested in Massachusetts. Pretty soon cops all across the US will be using them to ID suspects.
Police Across The US To Use Face Scanners To ID Suspects, 7/25/11

Marco Sauceda of Lufkin, Texas, did nothing wrong to any living soul. Yet the mentally handicapped 30-year-old was pepper-sprayed, shot with a pepper-ball gun, and severely beaten by nine police officers in his own home after they mistook him for a robber. Now he’s going to jail for 30 days and will have to pay a $500 fine for the supposed crime of resisting arrest.
Sauceda, who speaks little English, hid in the bathroom when the police laid siege to his home on March 15, 2009. A neighbor had called in a report that a "black male" was kicking in the front door. Once the terrified man — described as having "the mind of a child" — had been extracted from the bathroom it was clear that he wasn't the suspect described in the report.
Any human being in which so much as a fugitive flicker of decency exists would have dismissed the charge, given the opportunity. Angelina County Attorney Ed Jones, however, is a prosecutor — a caste in which such decency is, for all practical purposes, extinct. Thus he insisted that the case had to be taken to court because “the statute says that you do not have the right to resist the arrest. We were going to try the case no matter what.”
Angelina County jury finds man guilty of evading arrest after being mistaken for burglar in his own home, 7/21/11

In Casey Anthony’s case we see an example of a grave injustice in the modern system. I’m not talking about her acquittal. When the prosecutor fails to prove someone’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the only responsible thing for the jury to do is refuse to damn the suspect to time in a cage. An innocent person imprisoned is so much worse than a guilty person let go, as in the former instance the state seduces all of society to cheer on and legitimize an injustice. Also, whereas justice for the guilty is at least a metaphysical possibility outside of prison, it is downright precluded institutionally for the innocent on the inside.
The actual travesty here is the offense of which Casey Anthony has been convicted: four counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer. This should not be an offense in a free society, and I am struck by how little this horror has gained attention in the last week.
The Right To Lie to the Cops, 7/13/11

Authorities say a Utah man was arrested after his two children called police to report that he had marijuana in the house. The Salt Lake Tribune reports the man was charged Tuesday with two third-degree felony charges of child endangerment and one class B misdemeanor accusing him of possession of a controlled substance. The man's name wasn't reported. The newspaper says the man was found to have 23.9 grams, or almost an ounce, of marijuana in his Salt Lake City home. Authorities say his children, ages 13 and 12, found the drug and called police.
12 & 13-Year-Old Kids Turn In Dad For Marijuana Possession Say Police, 7/6/11

Einsatzgruppen (German) -- "Special task forces" composed of police, military, and intelligence personnel deployed to target and eliminate people identified as "anti-German elements" by the National Socialist regime.
Drug War's Einsatzgruppen, 6/27/11

By a former police officer! What follows is a very honest, insightful and terrifying message as he touches on the police perspective and the militarization of the police (which was largely excused as necessary by the War on Drugs).
"When I was a "police officer" back in the early '70s the transformation was just starting to take place from a mentality of a public servant working for the citizens to "law enforcement". The first I noticed of it was when the police departments started preferential hiring of ex-military people returning from Viet Nam. They started introducing military tactics into the department, including the first S.W.A.T. team. They quit referring to people on the street as citizens and started calling them "civilians", or more commonly "assholes".
Largest Street Gang in America!, 6/25/11

Trying to end the war on drugs and stopping the incarceration of undocumented workers should move up the priority list. Once it becomes profitable to put people into steel cages, then it becomes profitable for judges to sell children in some creepy bizarro 21st century version of Oliver Twist. And if you think the housing bubble was bad because it misallocated resources, or foreclosure fraud is bad because it allows powerful actors to seize property based on raw power, then imagine what could happen if the logic of the for-profit prison system met the same type of leveraged financial hurricane.
Who Wants Keep the War on Drugs Going AND Put You in Debtor’s Prison?, 6/24/11

The Oscar Grant story was one of the first stories to put Photography is Not a Crime on the national radar. There were a couple of big stories before that, including the Scott Conover story and the Duane Kerzic story, which ended up being covered on The Colbert Report. And before those there was the one of me getting convicted for resisting arrest, which was the first time PINAC went viral (I ended up reversing it on appeal acting as my own lawyer). But none of those stories had the impact of the Oscar Grant story, especially since PINAC was one of the first sites to show the second, much clearer -and still shocking - video to the nation.
Oscar Grant Snapped A Final Photo Of Cop Who Killed Him, 6/24/11

The purpose of "active shooter drills" is not to refine protocols intended to protect inmates of government schools; instead, it is to habituate children to the presence of paramilitary operators in their midst. Parents should ponder that reality as millions of young Americans begin their welcome Summer parole from the government's hybrid school/prison system – and they should likewise consider the wisdom of making that parole an unconditional pardon.
Our Armored, Militarized Occupiers, 6/16/11

The militarization of American police – no doubt a blowback effect of the military empire – has become an unfortunate part of American life. In fact, it says something about our reliance on the military that federal agencies having nothing whatsoever to do with national defense now see the need for their own paramilitary units. Among those federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions are the State Department, Department of Education, Department of Energy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service, to name just a few. These agencies have secured the services of fully armed agents – often in SWAT team attire – through a typical bureaucratic sleight-of-hand provision allowing for the creation of Offices of Inspectors General (OIG). Each OIG office is supposedly charged with not only auditing their particular agency’s actions but also uncovering possible misconduct, waste, fraud, theft, or certain types of criminal activity by individuals or groups related to the agency’s operation. At present, there are 73 such OIG offices in the federal government that, at times, perpetuate a police state aura about them.
War Against the American Citizen, 6/14/11

With well over 2 million people in jail – the U.S. has the world’s biggest prison population. The US has 5% of the worlds population and 25% of the worlds prison population. Now Children are the latest victims of the Prison Industrial complex who are having their lives destroyed because of CRIMINALS acting as judges. RT’s Gayane Chichakyan reports on those dishing out justice for a fee.
Judges, Mark A. Ciavarella & Michael T. Conahan Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit, 6/9/11

"Why, why did you kill him?" a traumatized Vanessa Guerena begged to know as she was interrogated in a makeshift "command center" by detectives from the same Sheriff's Office that had just slaughtered her husband Jose. Her questioners, eager to exploit her trauma to extract information, initially refused to give her a straightforward answer.
Jose, who had finished a graveyard shift at the Asarco copper mine, was sleeping when a SWAT team from the Pima County Sheriff's Office laid siege to his home on the morning of May 5. Vanessa was doing laundry, and the couple's four-year-old son Joel was watching Transformers, when the SWAT raiders pulled up in a Bear Cat armored vehicle.
The siren sounded for less than ten seconds; just a few seconds later, the order to "breach" the door was given because, as on-scene commander Deputy Bob Krygier later explained, nobody inside the house had "submitted to our authority."
Vanessa Guerena asks: "Why did you kill my husband?", 5/30/11

Terrorists struck the Jefferson Memorial on May 28th in an apparently coordinated effort. Early reports revealed this coordinated attack carries the signature of past Al Qaeda attacks using multiple targets and unrelated agents. However, it is unclear if dance attacks affected other national monuments but authorities have been placed on high alert.
Law Enforcement officers on duty at the time acted swiftly to diffuse the dance threat before damage could be done to the memorial and the tourists at the site. The terrorists are now in the custody of Washington DC officials and are being interrogated.
Police Brutality at the Jefferson Memorial, 5/28/11

In recent decades, the United States prison system has evolved into an enormous repressive infrastructure that reflects the needs of American capitalism, not the realities of crime. At last US industry has figured out how to compete with Third World wages right here at home.
Caging People is Big Business, 5/28/11

Congress on Thursday passed a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists. Votes taken in rapid succession in the Senate and House came after lawmakers rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties are not abused.
Obama signs 4-year Patriot Act extension, 5/27/11

End of the American Dream writes: Do you want your children and grandchildren to live in a futuristic "big brother" control grid where everything they do is watched, recorded, tracked and tightly controlled? Well, that is exactly where things are headed. We witnessed some really bad totalitarian regimes during the 20th century, but what is coming is going to be far more restrictive than any of the despots of the past ever dreamed was possible. Today, nearly every government on earth is tightening their grip on their citizens. Paranoia has become standard operating procedure all over the planet and nobody is to be trusted. Global politicians will give speeches about liberty and freedom even as they undermine them at every turn.
Transformation of the Entire World Into A Big Brother Prison Grid, 5/27/11

Can we really survive without government police? When we consider how much they do to disrupt civil society, it would seem obvious that we can. The police, on balance, are a force for decivilization and disorder. They commit massive violations of person and property. They enforce gun and drug laws that basically create organized crime and breed gang activity. Most of what they do encourages, rather than diminishes, violence. Despite all this, America remains a fairly civilized place. If we survived this long with the police, just imagine how much better off we’d be without them.
Abolish the Police, 5/26/11

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pledged during his run for office to be a veritable stick in the mud on issues of philosophical concern even if it meant agitating his fellow Congressional Republicans. Now, as the Senate rushes against the clock to pass an extension of the USA Patriot Act, he's living up to his word.
The Kentucky Republican has objected to an attempt by Senate leadership to consider the national security measure on an expedited basis. His objections are not necessarily driven by ideological opposition to the bill, though he remains an outspoken critic. Instead Paul has dug in his heels because Senate Democrats have refused to consider several amendments that he wants offered, chief among them language that would restrict national security officials from examining gun dealer records in an effort to track potential terrorists.
Rand Paul And Guns Stall Extension Of The Patriot Act, 5/25/11

Since taking office in January 2009, Obama exceeded George Bush's harshness, lawlessness, belligerency, and public trust betrayal, violating every major promise made.
Instead, he deferred solely to wealth and power interests at the expense of vital popular needs and rights, trashing democratic freedoms.
Extending Patriot Act provisions solidifies domestic repression at the same time America's imperial agenda denies democratic freedoms abroad - exposing a rogue president's hypocritical promise of change.
Extending Key Patriot Act Provisions, 5/24/11

The increasing militarization of the police did not occur suddenly, in a single precinct. Nor can it be traced back to a single leader or event. Rather, the pattern is so subtle that most American citizens have hardly been aware of it. Little by little, police authority has expanded, one weapon after another has been added to the police arsenal, and one exception after another has been made to the standards that have historically restrained police authority. Yet when analyzed as a whole, this trend toward militarization is undeniable, and when left unchecked, it amounts to nothing less than the end of American liberty.
Changing Face of the Police and the Death of the Fourth Amendment, 5/24/11

Ultimately, when Mere Ordinaries come to view cops with contempt, as potentially dangerous thugs to fear and avoid rather than peace officers – they’ve lost moral legitimacy and once that’s gone, the only thing keeping the populace from literally tearing them to pieces at the first opportunity is just exactly that: The first opportunity.
Someday, perhaps soon, that opportunity will come – just as it did in Egypt and before that, in places like Vichy Paris, after the Nazis fled and the Vichy goons found themselves no longer large and in charge.
When Decent People Start to Fear – and Loathe Cops, 5/20/11

With the recent Indiana Supreme court ruling giving police unfettered access to people’s homes, Newton county Sheriff Donald Hartman Sr. believes the ruling makes house to house searches possible.
In one reported interview regarding the Barnes vs. State of Indiana case, Sheriff Hartman showed such an indifference toward the rights of the people that he was asked three times to explain his views. The sheriff made it clear that he would use random house to house searches if he believed it was necessary.
Indiana Sheriff: House to House Random Searches Now Possible, 5/19/11

Totalitarian state powers grow by great leaps and bounds in the midst of obvious threats to the safety of the people, such as major wars and great financial crises. This has happened repeatedly in the U.S. from Lincoln's Civil War to Bush and Obama's Global "War On Terrorism" and their "Saving" the American people and the world from the Great Financial Crisis the government created through the wild pump-priming of the Federal Reserve and Big Banks. When the crisis is over some of those powers are reduced, but not eliminated, so the totalitarian powers ratchet up one big step at each major crisis and over a century and a half the U.S. government would by those big steps alone have created most of the totalitarian police powers it now possesses.
How Totalitarian Police States Are Built, 5/18/11

Two recent Supreme Court cases have served to virtually abolish the Fourth Amendment in the United States of America, with citizens no longer being “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
While You Were Sleeping, They Abolished the 4th Amendment, 5/17/11

Something huge--huge and not good--just happened in Indiana, which will be little more than a blip in the propaganda that passes for national news. The Supreme Court of Indiana just ruled that in Indiana, if a police officer decides to illegally come into your house, you're not allowed to do anything to stop him. According to "Justice" Steven David, resisting an admittedly "unlawful police entry into a home" is against "public policy." Got that? If you live in Indiana, and a cop decides to invade your home without a shred of legal justification, it is considered a crime for you to do anything to stop him.
Full Frontal Fascism, 5/13/11

The only thing separating those two acts of criminal homicide is "authority" – that quantity, at once elusive and illusive, that supposedly elevates the State's hired enforcers above the hoi polloi, permitting them to inflict summary punishment on any Mundane who displays so much as a flicker of defiance. It is this ineffable gift that allows Ian Birk and his ilk to gun down, without serious consequence, any Mundane who dares give them a dirty look.
Lethal Illusion Called 'Authority', 5/6/11

Focusing on the war on drugs, Alexander characterizes the New Jim Crow as a modern-day racial caste system designed by elitists who embrace colorblindness. Believing poor Blacks are dangerous and economically superfluous, America's gulag became an instrument of control. According to Alexander:
US gulag prison system injustice, 4/27/11

The things that you are about to read should make you mad. In fact, if none of these things make you mad there is a problem. Sadly, millions of Americans have actually embraced tyranny, and if you are not outraged by any of the items listed below than you are likely one of them. The following are 10 examples that show that we no longer live in the land of the free and the home of the brave….
10 Examples That Should Convince Anyone That We No Longer Live In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave, 4/21/11

Americans continue to watch their Second Amendment rights diminish, this time as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives ( still known as ATF) launches a campaign to change the definition of “shotgun.” According to the blog Beregond’s Bar, a recently released study by the Bureau will ultimately make shotguns illegal, and may also have negative implications for all guns.
Second Amendment Rights Once Again at Risk, 4/19/11

ACLU seeks information on Michigan program that allows cops to download information from smart phones belonging to stopped motorists. The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program.
Michigan: Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops, 4/19/11

The New York Police Department may fire up to 400 cops at the conclusion of a widespread corruption investigation. Anonymous sources inside the department told the New York Post that cops who were found to have "fixed" tickets would be let go. The NYPD denied that 400 cops were involved, but declined to give a specific number.
Hundreds of NYPD cops may be punished for fixing parking tickets, 4/18/11

The medical police state is alive and well in Detroit today, where Child Protective Services (CPS) called in the police to aid in their kidnapping of a 13-year-old daughter from an African American mother who refused to medicate her with dangerous psychiatric drugs. As this case is clearly showing, refusing to medicate your children with Big Pharma's mind-altering drugs is now being treated as a felony crime.
Detroit SWAT team assaults African American mom who refused to medicate her daughter with antipsychotic drugs, 4/15/11

Few people in the world seem to appreciate just how awful it is to be a government police officer. It’s not that the job involves particularly physically demanding work, or that the job is particularly dangerous. In fact, the work is not nearly physically demanding enough (as the cop fatness problem demonstrates), and neither is it particularly dangerous (being a cop doesn’t even make the top ten most dangerous jobs). Nor is the job terrible because of the unstated obligation to wear a tawdry mustache in public. Instead, what makes the job so horrific is the fact that it requires living a completely contradictory moral life
Horrific Life of the Police Officer, 3/24/11

The Obama administration has created a new policy that allows investigators to waive Miranda warnings for domestic-terror suspects, even when there is not an "immediate threat," a report said Thursday. The rule was revealed by an FBI memorandum obtained by The Wall Street Journal. It says that in "exceptional cases," investigators can hold suspects without informing them of their rights.
Obama curtails Miranda rights for American terrorism suspects, 3/24/11

A Houma woman is suing the Louisiana State Police and Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office, claiming a trooper's use of a Taser caused her to miscarry.
La. Woman Files Lawsuit, Claims Taser Caused Miscarriage, 3/23/11

Right now, federal prison inmates in correctional institutions across America are making parts for Patriot missiles. They are paid $0.23 an hour to start, and can work their way up to a maximum of $1.15 to manufacture electronics that go into the propulsion, guidance, and targeting systems of Lockheed Martin’s (LMT) PAC-3 guided missile, originally made famous in the first Persian Gulf conflict.
Why are Prisoners Building Patriot Missiles?, 3/7/11

I would wager that the vast majority of people reading this essay have already come to their own conclusion regarding the answer to the title’s query. Certainly you may have several qualifiers and stipulations with which you framed your answer and maybe even a few facts and proofs ready for quick rebuttal if challenged. But my own experience with explosive questions such as this is that there are few who have not already formed an opinion on the matter. If you have not you would be the exception to the rule.
And at this point in the meltdown it would be fair to say there are no correct or incorrect answers to be found, only supposition, assumption and what I expect will be full throated argument to follow in the comment section. May I suggest that whatever answer you’ve come up with wasn’t necessarily arrived at through careful deliberation or contemplation, but rather as an integral part of your overall belief system? And while you may consider all that you believe to be valid and fact based, for all people other than possibly the sociopaths walking among us this is far from the case.
Would US Police/Troops Fire Upon US Citizens?, 3/1/11

An Indiana deputy attorney general "is no longer employed" by the state after Mother Jones magazine reported he tweeted that police should to use live ammunition against Wisconsin labor protesters, the attorney general's office said Wednesday.
The magazine reported Wednesday that Jeffrey Cox responded "Use live ammunition" to a Saturday night posting on its Twitter account that said riot police could sweep protesters out of the Wisconsin capitol, where thousands have been protesting a bill that would strip public employees of collective bargaining rights.
Ind. deputy AG urged cops shoot protesters, 2/23/11

Amid the largest protests Madison, Wisconsin has seen in decades, newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker last week issued a stark message to public labor unions occupying the capitol building: we have options, and using the National Guard against protesters is among them.
Since then, a myrad of rumors have circulated through crowds gathered at the state capitol, united in protest of a bill that would strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights. One rumor, which had not yet come to pass, even suggested that like Egypt's former dictator did in Tahrir Square, Gov. Walker may call in police to forcibly clear out the capitol.
And according to a Wisconsin police union president, whether the police agree or disagree with their governor's politics, they would "absolutely" carry out any order given to them ... even if that order included using force against their fellow Americans gathered in peaceful protest.
Police union president: Troopers would ‘absolutely’ use force on Wisc. protesters if ordered, 2/21/11

According to the 3rd Quarter Report of The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project, police officers were accused of sexual assault at a rate of 79 per 100,000 law enforcement personal. That is over two times the rate in the general public (28.7 per 100,000). The fact that rapists seem to be concentrated among a group of armed individuals who have the purported authority to detain and arrest other individuals should be more than a little alarming for even the most prolific police bootlicker. In just the last month, several stories of officers committing disgusting crimes have been in the news.
Rapists with a Badge, 2/17/11

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday, condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.
Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern remarked, as he was hauled out the door, “So this is America?”
Ray McGovern Brutalized & Left Bleeding by Hillary Clinton Police, 2/16/11

Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists, as the greatest threat to the American public. Rogelio Serrato is the latest case to be in the news of an innocent person murdered by the police. Serrato was the wrong man, but the Monterey County, California, SWAT team killed the 31-year old father of four and left the family home a charred ruin.
Police Brutality in the USA: Americans, Too Are Oppressed - Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists, as the greatest threat to the American public, 2/4/11

The badge and a steroid-filled syringe – it's not the typical image most have for the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs. But as more within law enforcement get nabbed in steroid investigations nationwide, observers say that usage levels among police officers could rival the seediest patches of the pro sports landscape.
"It's a big problem, and from the number of cases, it's something we shouldn't ignore," Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Lawrence Payne told AOL News. "It's not that we set out to target cops, but when we're in the middle of an active investigation into steroids, there have been quite a few cases that have led back to police officers."...
Victor Conte, founder of the now-defunct lab known as Bay Area Lab Co-Operative that supplied numerous athletes with steroids and other banned substances, said it wouldn't surprise him if as many as a quarter of police officers were using some kind of performance-enhancing drug.
Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come for You (and They Are on Steroids)?, 1/21/11

Professional athletes are not the only prominent members of society with major drug problems. According to a recent report by AOL News, as many as 25 percent or more of police officers are regularly take steroid drugs, which has led to a rise in the number of assaults and other cases of "roid rage" occurring against citizens by those in law enforcement.
Steroid use among police officers a widespread problem, 12/30/10

Doesn’t it seem like almost everything is becoming a crime in America now? Americans are being arrested and charged with crimes for doing things like leaving dog poop on the ground, opening up Christmas presents early, not recycling properly, farting in class and having brown lawns. But is it healthy for our society for the police to be involved in such silly things? Every single day the United States inches closer to becoming a totalitarian society.
While there are some that would welcome this shift, the truth is that throughout history the societies that have experienced the greatest economic prosperity have all had at least a certain level of freedom. Business thrives when people feel free to live and work. When a government tightens the grip too much many people just start shutting down. Just look at places like North Korea. Even though the rest of the world is sending them huge amounts of food starvation is still quite common in that totalitarian regime.
That is why it is so disturbing that it seems like almost everything has become a crime in America now. As we continue to criminalize relatively normal behavior our slide toward becoming a totalitarian state will only accelerate.
Almost Everything Is A Crime In America Now, 12/28/10

These things are purchased with Obama Stimulus funds. Stimulate the economy by turning it into a prison yard?
Mobile Prison Guard Towers Coming to a Walmart near You!, 12/23/10

Police agencies from at least nine different counties, along with Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA and DOJ descended upon Oakland. The police were intent on creating a situation that would then allow them to demonize the people and remove the focus from the unjust, unfair and outright farce of a sentence received by Johannes Mehserle.
‘We come out to protest police brutality and what happens? We get a police state!’, 11/7/10

What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. One that believes pacifism is sissy and unpatriotic. One that feels militarism is a higher form of civilization. One that threatens planetary life.
One corrupted by malfeasance. One with the world's largest prison population, a domestic gulag besides others abroad. One placing no value on human rights and life. One exploiting the many for the few. One empowering money over people, championing concentrated wealth. One calling fake elections real.
One practicing torture as official policy. One dripping with racism and hatemongering. One with the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for guns. One where violent films, sports, and video games are most popular. One where authorities participate in illicit drugs trafficking, letting major banks launder revenues.
One where state-sponsored terrorism subverts democratic freedoms, targeting the weak and disadvantaged relentlessly. One recklessly out of control, harsh and inhumane on a fast track toward despotism. One where the rule of law is rhetoric, not policy, where dominance supersedes rights, where dissent is now criminal.
One also where authorities persecute residents for their race, faith, ethnicity, or immigration status. One where thousands targeted are arrested, charged, convicted, wrongfully imprisoned, and at times deported after weeks, months or even years of harsh incarceration.
Targeting the vulnerable and innocent, a US specialty, 11/5/10

The simple truth about America's marijuana prohibition: any law that allows the easy incarceration of any citizen any time those in power want to do it is the ultimate enemy of democracy. With 800,000 annual arrests over an herb used by tens of millions of Americans, it is the cornerstone of a police state.
Pot Prohibition Is the Cornerstone of a Police State, 11/4/10

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.
Paul Craig Roberts: U.S. is a Police State, 2/10/10