While We Agree That Law And Order Must Prevail, We Are Very Concerned By Militarization Of The Police And The Refusal Of Rioters To Stop Rioting.

America Is Under Military Occupation, But Americans Are Pushing Back

August 18, 2014 by Bob Livingston

 477 27

 4 688

Heavily armed and armored, camouflage-clad storm troopers swarmed across the city, pointing rifles at citizens and journalists, firing tear gas and blasting with sound cannons the crowds that were standing in their own yards and business parking lots, or walking down the streets. An armored vehicle with a machine gun mounted on top rolled past in a show of force.

A scene from some Third World dictatorship or from Communist China? No. It’s right out of middle America.

The response by the St. Louis County Police Department to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was to demonstrate the overwhelming force of a military occupation in an effort to intimidate the populace into submission. It served to do the opposite.

Rather than disperse as ordered, residents stood in defiance, shouting “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and holding their hands in the air as a symbolic gesture to descriptions by multiple witnesses of Brown’s actions as he was shot multiple times. With crowds growing — and growing increasingly militant by throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at their oppressors — the local police were relieved of patrol duties by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and replaced by state police, led by a black former resident of Ferguson, Capt. Ron Johnson.

MCT/Capt. Ronald Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol smiled as demonstrators marched in Ferguson on Thursday.

Johnson came to Ferguson as a peace officer rather than an oppressor; and like a light switch had been turned, the tensions of the crowd subsided and protests became peaceful. Johnson walked the streets with protesters, listened to their concerns and showed he was on their side rather than on the side of their occupiers.

The crowd stood up to tyranny and won — at least temporarily. That changed Friday night. After some looting began, police again moved on the crowd but did little or nothing to help those being looted. On Saturday, Nixon declared a state of emergency and curfew. The curfew was largely ignored and the police brought the military equipment back. It erupted again on Sunday night when police moved in with teargas and smoke canisters and rubber bullets.

It’s the second time in recent months that American citizens have stood to defy a militarized assault. Back in April, armed goons from the Bureau of Land Management began rustling Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle in order to free up land he’s been grazing for years so that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, his family and his cronies could make what they considered better use of it. It was land to which Bundy claimed ancestral grazing rights, land he claimed belonged to Nevada rather than the U.S. government.

After a video went viral that showed armed BLM agents siccing dogs on and shooting Tasers at Bundy family members, members of Oath Keepers and other patriots — many of them armed — showed up at the Bundy ranch to stand up to the BLM, which was bringing in heavily armed and armored troops of its own.

A tense standoff ensued. Some of the highest-ranking members of the U.S. government called Bundy and his supporters domestic terrorists. President Barack Obama considereddeploying the military to drive Bundy and his supporters off the land. Some reports identified special forces members among the BLM agents on the scene.

In the end, the armed aggressors backed off and dispersed.

The militaristic style response by the St. Louis County PD is not surprising given the rising militarism of local police across the country. I began warning you of this several years ago in articles like “The Violent Militarization Of Local Police,” “Local Law Enforcement More Dangerous, Thanks To Trickle Down Of Military Equipment, Militarized Mindset,” and others that can be found in our Power of the State section. It is a natural and predicted outgrowth of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, which has created an us-versus-them mindset between the government and those it views as its subjects and has resulted in the U.S. having the largest prison population in the world.

The increasing interaction between local police and unconstitutional federal law enforcement agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the passing out of federal dollars to local agencies for training and equipment purchases and the proliferation of military hardware and weaponry have turned peace officers into oppression officers with military training, military equipment and the natural outgrowth of that: a military mindset.

Of course, blacks have for years been subject to special scrutiny and abuse by local police, but their complaints are usually dismissed by the majority that has been propagandized into believing that anyone falling on the wrong end of a police encounter must have been guilty of something and was, therefore, deserving of the abuse, no matter how egregious. Self-styled “law and order conservatives” are quick to dismiss the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 8^th and 14^th Amendment rights of blacks and those who they think look like thugs or criminals or drug dealers whenever they have an encounter with police that ends badly. If they got shot, those “law and order conservatives” say, then they deserved it.

It appears that Ferguson police may have a history of not only abusing innocent people, like many other LEO (legally entitled to oppress) agencies, but of officers’ committing perjury in order to cover their abuse.

With a history like that, and with the militaristic response that followed, it’s certainly not surprising that Ferguson residents would suspect that their chances of learning the truth about the Brown shooting and seeing any punishment meted out to the LEO if he did — as it appears — go too far in administering his form of justice to a suspected strong-armed robber would be nil.

Another newly leaked document from DHS predicts an increased “anti-government violence of the next year.” Of course, the regime has been peddling this for several years with DHS missives and reports warning that enemies of America include people who believe in small government, fly the Gadsden flag, store food and water, served in the military, photograph landmarks or oppose gun laws.

But if there is anti-government violence in the next year, it will be because an abusive and oppressive government kept pushing Americans until they wouldn’t be pushed anymore. And if the government fears that if it pushes too far there will be anti-government violence, that is a good thing.

Update 1 (7:32 a.m.): After protests turned violent with claims by police that shots were fired in their direction and amid reports of more looting, the Missouri governor deployed the National Guard overnight to help restore order. The human rights group Amnesty International also announced last night that it was sending a team to observe the events. It’s the first time a human rights team from the organization has ever been sent to the U.S. -BL

Israeli Technology Made A Big Difference In Operation Protective Edge. Could It Also Become A Impediment To Creative Warfare?

Iran Launched Cyber War on Israel During Gaza Op.

By Lea Speyer August 18, 2014 , 12:08 pm

594 31

8 1Email 683Share

“The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (Exodus 14:14)

(Photo: Wiki Commons)

Iranian cyber-hackers attempted to carry out a large scale cyber-attack on Israel’s civilian communications infrastructure during the recent war with Hamas, a senior security source revealed to the media on Sunday.

A senior commander in the IDF Computer Service Directorate told Walla! that as Israel faced terrorists in Gaza, it also faced “a significant Iranian effort” in cyberspace.

“This is not something we have seen before, both in terms of scope and the type of targets,” the source said.

While able to confirm that Iran was behind attacks that targeted the civilian sector, their main goal, which was to cause maximum disruption, was not achieved.

Cyber attackers mainly focused their efforts on bringing down IDF websites but online defenses were able to withstand their assaults, the source said.

The IDF’s Homefront Command website, which provides the public with security information, came under attack by Iranian hackers. The website of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit was also disrupted as well.

According to the source, the IDF has been implementing the latest defensive cyber-warfare capabilities as cyber-attacks become more frequent on the Jewish state.

The IDF has also been making great technological strides in helping relay information from their intelligence gathering services to troops on the ground. The source explained that just one year ago, information gathered by the IDF intelligence Corps had do go through various channels until it reached those who needed the information.

Today, thanks to a new network and system implemented by the Intelligence Corps and Computer Service Directorate, information during Operation Protective Edge was passed in real-time to soldiers on the ground, saving countless lives.

This has led a dramatically faster sensor-to-shooter cycle in which terror targets detected in Gaza were quickly destroyed.

“Our aim is to enable a military force to be far more effective than it was a year ago,” the source said. “We succeeded in seeing that during this operation.”

Ground forces, the air force and navy are now directly linked to Military Intelligence. In many instances, troops in Gaza were able to access encrypted servers that contained information on new targets as gathered by Military intelligence.

IDF soldiers storming a target in Gaza. (Photo: IDF)

Visual intelligence was available immediately, allowing ground forced to review aerial views of combat zones before entering them.

“Seventy-five percent of the military’s visual intelligence is on the network,” the source said. “We can see, online, aerial visual intelligence, and what the aircraft is seeing.”

In addition to visual intelligence, the network enabled “intelligence-based combat” in Gaza. Ground forces operating in the Strip were able to be directed to terror targets by Military Intelligence based on information obtained by questioning Hamas suspects who were taken into custody by Israel.

As an example, the source relayed a situation in which a navy vessel fired precision guided missiles some 9 kilometers inside Gaza after communicating with armored forces on the ground who supplied target locations.

“We reached a situation in which a navy vessel, armed with precision guided ammunition, received targets from the Southern Command’s target center, or from ground forces divisions,” the source said.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/20173/iran-launched-cyber-war-israel-gaza-op/#AzWkZiPi8jjWFXwq.99

Obama Is A Lying Fraud Who Wouldn't Know The Truth If It Slapped Him In the Face. Is He Devious Enough To Try To Run In 2016?

by Victor Davis Hanson

Our ‘Face in the Crowd’

August 17th, 2014 - 7:36 pm                                             By Victor Davis Hanson

inShare1

 

Elia Kazan’s classic A Face in the Crowd is a good primer on Barack Obama’s rise and fall. Lonesome Rhodes arises out of nowhere in the 1957 film, romancing the nation as a phony populist who serially spins yarns in the most folksy ways — confident that he should never be held to account. Kazan’s point (in the film Rhodes is a patsy for conservative business interests) is that the “folks” are fickle and prefer to be charmed rather than informed and told the truth. Rhodes’s new first name, Lonesome, resonates in the film in a way that Barack does now. Finally, an open mic captures Rhodes’s true disdain for the people he champions, and his career crashes.

So what is collapsing the presidency of the once mellifluous Obama? It is not the IRS, AP, VA, or NSA scandals. Nor did the nation especially fault him for Benghazi or the complete collapse of U.S. foreign policy, from failed reset to a Middle East afire. In each case, he either blamed Bush or denied there was a smidgeon of wrongdoing on his part.

Certainly, the stampede at the border, as disastrous as it was, did not ipso facto sink Obama’s ratings. Ditto the embarrassing Bergdahl deal, in which we traded a likely deserter for five Islamist kingpins. Was it the ISIS ascendance that is leading to genocide and a nascent caliphate? Not in and of itself.

We could go on, but you get the picture that it was all of the above that finally became too much, as Americans turned Obama off because they were all lied out. In all of these scandals a charismatic Barack wheeled out the teleprompter, smiled, dropped his g’s, soared with “make no mistake about it” and “let me perfectly clear,” and then, like Lonesome Rhodes, toldthe “folks” things that could not be true or at least were the exact opposite of what he himself had earlier asserted.

The result is that should Obama claim again that he is going to lower the seas, cool the planet, or that he is the man whom we are waiting for, Americans would laugh. They would chuckle about more promised recoveries, millions of new green jobs, an expanding economy, or a safer world abroad. Again, we are just too lied out to believe anything our slick version of Lonesome Rhodes says anymore. And that fact may best explain his 39-41% approval rating.

Barack Obama is once again lamenting the charge that he is responsible for pulling all U.S. peacekeepers out of Iraq, claiming that the prior administration is culpable. But Obama negotiated the withdrawal himself. We know that not because of right-wing talking points, but because of the proud serial claims of reelection candidate Obama in 2011 and 2012 that he deserved credit for leaving Iraq. That complete pullout prompted Joe Biden to claim the Iraq policy was the administration’s likely “greatest achievement” and buoyed Obama to brag that he was leaving a stable and secure Iraq. Think of the logic: pulling all soldiers out of Iraq was such a great thing that I now can brag that I am not responsible for it.

In regards to Syria, does Obama remember that he issued red lines should the Assad regime use chemical or biological weapons? Why then would he assert that the international community had done so, not Barack Obama? Think of the logic: I issued tough threats, and when my bluff was called, someone else issued them.

If Obama were to readdress Benghazi, would anyone believe him? What would he say? That he was in the Situation Room that evening? That he was correct in telling the UN that a (suddenly jailed) video maker prompted the violence? That the consulate and annex were secure and known to be so? That Susan Rice was merely parroting CIA talking points? Think of the logic: a video maker was so clearly responsible for the Benghazi killings that we will never have to mention his culpability again.

Does anyone believe the president that ISIS are “jayvees,” or that al Qaeda is on the run, or that there is no connection between the ascendance of ISIS and the loud but empty boasting of red lines in Syria and complete withdrawal from Iraq? (If we had taken all troops out of South Korea in 1953 — claiming that we had spent too much blood and treasure and that the Seoul government was too inept — would there be a Kia or Hyundai today, or a North Korea in control of the entire Korean peninsula?) Think of the logic: the ISIS threat is so minimal that we need not be alarmed and therefore Obama is sending planes and advisors back into Iraq to contain it. If Obama truly believes that pulling all troops out made Iraq more secure, what will putting some back in do?

Was there any Obama boast about his Affordable Care Act that proved true: Keep your doctor? Keep your health plan? Save $2,500 in annual premiums? Lower the deficit? Lower the annual costs of health care? Win the support of doctors? Simplify sign-ups with a one-stop website? Enjoy lower deductibles? Think of the logic: you will all benefit from a new take-over of health care by a government whose assertions of what it was going to accomplish were proved false in the first days of its implementation.

There are many possible explanations about why the president of the United States simply says things that are not true or contradicts his earlier assertions or both. Is Obama just inattentive, inured to simply saying things in sloppy fashion without much worry whether they conform to the truth? Or is he a classical sophist who believes how one speaks rather than what he actually says alone matters: if he soars with teleprompted rhetoric, what does it matter whether it is true? If Obama can sonorously assert that he got America completely out of Iraq, what does it matter whether that policy proved disastrous or that he now denies that he was responsible for such a mistake?

Is Obama so ill-informed that he embraces the first idea that he encounters, without much worry whether these notions are antithetical to his own prior views or will prove impossible to sustain?

On a deeper level, Obama habitually says untrue things because he has never been called on them before. He has been able throughout his career to appear iconic to his auditors. In the crudity of liberals like Harry Reid and Joe Biden, Obama ancestry and diction gave reassurance that he was not representative of the black lower classes and thus was the receptacle of all sorts of liberal dreams and investments. According to certain liberals, he was like a god, our smartest president, and of such exquisite sartorial taste that he must become a successful president. In other words, on the superficial basis of looks, dress, and patois, Obama was reassuring to a particular class of white guilt-ridden grandees and to such a degree that what he actually had done in the past or promised to do in the future was of no particular importance.

Then there is the media, the supposed public watchdog that keeps our politicians honest. In truth, Obama winks and nods to journalists, in the sense that as a good progressive Obama is about as liberal a president as we have ever had — or will have. Obama sees cross-examination as a sort of betrayal from journalists, who, for reasons of some abstract adherence to “journalistic integrity,” would by their own reporting subvert a rare chance of a progressive agenda. Obama’s anger is not just directed at Fox News and talk radio, but rather reflects a sense of betrayal that even slight fact checking by liberal journalists exists: why must Obama tell the truth when he never had to in any of his earlier incarnations?

In A Face in the Crowd, the charismatic Andy Griffith character could more or less get anything he wished by saying anything he wanted, largely because he said it mellifluously and in cracker-barrel fashion of an us-versus-them populism. His admirers knew that they were being lied to, but also knew that Lonesome knew that they did not mind. Lonesome had contempt for hoi polloi, largely because of his own easy ability to manipulate them for whatever particular careerist cause he embraced.

So Obama has disdain for those who passed out at his lectures, who put up the Greek columns at his speeches, who came up with his Latin mottoes, and who gushed at his teleprompted eloquence. He knows that we know he is not telling the truth, but likewise he knows that we don’t care all that much — at least until now. The secret to Lonesome’s success was to hide his contempt for those he lied to. When he is caught ridiculing his clueless listeners, he finally crashes and burns — sort of like Barack Obama serially vacationing with the 1% whom he so publicly scorns, or golfing in the aristocratic fashion of those who, he assures us, did not build their businesses.

Lonesome did not end up well, and neither will the presidency of Barack Obama.

Think This Administration Loves The Military? Think Again!

While a Military Daughter Buries Her 2-Star General Daddy, the Commander-in-Least is Nowhere to Be Found

248,894Shares By Michael Hausam 2 days ago

When two-star Major General Harold Greene, the highest-ranking officer killed in combat since Vietnam, was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday, neither the President nor the Vice President were present.

The nominal Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama was playing a round at the Vineyard Golf Club with Valerie Jarrett’s cousin, Cyrus Walker, the World Bank president and former President of Dartmouth College Jim Kim, and former lobbyist and ambassador Ron Kirk.

The clownish Joe Biden was in the middle of the third day of a week long vacation in the Hamptons, which followed a week in Wyoming, which was preceded by a week at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware.

Was this noticed? Yes, it was:

Colonel Morris Davis was the chief prosecutor at Guantanamo under George Bush, a 25-year Air Force veteran, and an Assistant Professor at Harvard. His tweet referenced the two most recent high-ranking military deaths, that of Major General John Dillard, Jr. who was shot down and killed in 1970 in Vietnam, and Lieutenant General Timothy Maude, who was killed in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

While America has lost a two-star General who has served in a war the president has waged questionably, the Commander-in-Chief could not show the common decency to honor him with his presence.

Instead, President Obama showed it was more important to play yet another round with well-connected elites, as the nation grieves and families suffer. The disconnect could not be more profound.

Police Disregard Laws, Throw Reporters In Jail On Erroneous Charges. The Law Enforcers MUST Follow The Law, Or Lawlessness Will Prevail.

Ferguson Events Offer A Reminder: You Can Photograph Police On The Job

August 18, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

 26 57

 

 1 124

THINKSTOCK

It is legal to photograph or video record police officers in public as they carry out their duties. And, as a recent court ruling reinforces, it’s absolutely legal to photograph police on your property, even (rather,especially) during the execution of a search warrant.

Just because something is legal doesn’t mean the police will honor it. That’s the crux of the argument for protest against police who kill in the absence of a threat, or those who, with much greater frequency, deny due process in hundreds of little ways to Americans every day.

The chaos in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police shooting of Michael Brown has drawn national media attention. Reporters from major networks and newspapers have converged on Ferguson to report on the shooting, the rioting and the inevitable, regrettable appearance of Al Sharpton.

But in doing so, the press has become a part of the story. At least two reporters for separate news organizations have been detained simply for documenting what they saw.

Here’s Martin D. Baron, executive editor forThe Washington Post, on the Ferguson Police Department’s treatment of reporter Wesley Lowery. Lowery and another reporter from The Huffington Post were detained inside a McDonald’s after several officers came inside the restaurant, told them to leave and ordered Lowery to stop filming once he’d whipped out his phone to document what was taking place:

Wesley has briefed us on what occurred, and there was absolutely no justification for his arrest.

He was illegally instructed to stop taking video of officers. Then he followed officers’ instructions to leave a McDonald’s — and after contradictory instructions on how to exit, he was slammed against a soda machine and then handcuffed. That behavior was wholly unwarranted and an assault on the freedom of the press to cover the news. The physical risk to Wesley himself is obvious and outrageous.

After being placed in a holding cell, he was released with no charges and no explanation. He was denied information about the names and badge numbers of those who arrested him.

We are relieved that Wesley is going to be OK. We are appalled by the conduct of police officers involved.

At one point after the police had placed Lowery and the other reporter, Ryan Reilly, in a cruiser, Lowery wrote about the following exchange:

A woman — with a collar identifying her as a member of the clergy — sat in the back. Ryan and I crammed in next to her, and we took the three-minute ride to the Ferguson Police Department. The woman sang hymns throughout the ride.

During this time, we asked the officers for badge numbers. We asked to speak to a supervising officer. We asked why we were being detained. We were told: trespassing in a McDonald’s.

“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” one officer told me. And I responded: “This story’s going to get out there. It’s going to be on the front page of The Washington Post tomorrow.”

And he said, “Yeah, well, you’re going to be in my jail cell tonight.”

Lowery’s one foil against the cops was his power as a member of the press. It ultimately worked — he and Reilly were let go after spending a short time in a cell, with no charges filed.

But it’s vital to emphasize that his rights are the same as any American’s: It’s not illegal for anyone to record what the police do in public.

“The arrest and intimidation of journalists for documenting the events in Ferguson is particularly disturbing because it interferes with the ability of the press to hold the government accountable,” wrote The Atlantic’s Olag Khazan last week. “But actually, anyone — journalist or otherwise — can take a photo of a police officer.

“Citizens have the right to take pictures of anything in plain view in a public space, including police officers and federal buildings. Police cannot confiscate, demand to view, or delete digital photos. Private property owners can set different rules for recording, but it did not appear from Lowery’s account that the McDonald’s manager was objecting to his video recording… Police officers frequently ignore these laws.”

And there’s the rub. Americans must routinely weigh their risks before participating in legal activities — if the police are nearby.