Study Shows U.S. Police Far More Concerned About “Anti-Government” Domestic Extremists than Al-Qaeda

By Michael Krieger
July 3, 2015
Liberty Blitzkrieg

 

U.S. law enforcement agencies rank the threat of violence from anti-government  extremists higher than the threat from radicalized Muslims, according to a report released Thursday by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security (TCTHS).

The report, “Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremism Threat,” was based on survey research by Charles Kurzman, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and David Schanzer, director of TCTHS and associate professor of the practice at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

The survey — conducted by the center with the Police Executive Research Forum — found that 74 percent of 382 law enforcement agencies rated anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction. By comparison, 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations as a Top 3 terrorist threat.

– From Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy

Since September 11, 2001, the frightened and emotionally pliable American public has gullibly relinquished its civil liberties and free heritage in order to allow the U.S. government to wage unaccountable and unconstitutional war again Al-Qaeda and radical Islamic terrorism across the world.

Many of us have warned for years, that preemptively giving up freedoms to protect freedom could only make sense to a propagandized, ignorant public completely clueless of human history. We warned that any totalitarian apparatus implemented to fight an outside enemy, would ultimately be turned around and used upon the public domestically. We already know this is happening with the NSA’s bulk spying and data collection, and we are starting to see a proliferation of the meme that “domestic extremists are more dangerous than Al-Qaeda,” spreading from the mouths of a corrupt and paranoid political class. I’ve covered this topic on several occasions, for example:

The “War on Terror” Turns Inward – DHS Report Warns of Right Wing Terror Threat

Eric Holder Announces Task Force to Focus on “Domestic Terrorists”

Rep. Steve Cohen Calls Tea Party Republicans “Domestic Enemies” on MSNBC

New Hampshire City Requests a Tank to Deal with “Domestic Terrorist” Groups Like Occupy Wall Street and Libertarians

It’s Official: The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists”

If all that’s not enough to convince you we’ve got a problem, I bring to you conclusions from the recently released study, “Law Enforcement Assessment of the Violent Extremism Threat.” This study was based on a survey conducted by Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, who recently penned an op-ed in the New York Times. Here are some excerpts from their article:

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State’s efforts to radicalize American Muslims, which began just after the survey ended, may have increased threat perceptions somewhat, but not by much, as we found in follow-up interviews over the past year with counterterrorism specialists at 19 law enforcement agencies. These officers, selected from urban and rural areas around the country, said that radicalization from the Middle East was a concern, but not as dangerous as radicalization among right-wing extremists.

Law enforcement agencies around the country are training their officers to recognize signs of anti-government extremism and to exercise caution during routine traffic stops, criminal investigations and other interactions with potential extremists. “The threat is real,” says the handout from one training program sponsored by the Department of Justice. Since 2000, the handout notes, 25 law enforcement officers have been killed by right-wing extremists, who share a “fear that government will confiscate firearms” and a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

Meanwhile, terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America. There have been more than 215,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.

Perhaps if the police didn’t harbor such negative thoughts about the general public, there wouldn’t be as many citizens killed by police. The recent tally is up to 463 killed so far in 2015, or an average of 2.5 Americans killed by police every day.

Finally, I came across the following excerpt from a recently published National Journal article:

Senate Democrats are calling for Congress to shift its focus from solely jihadist-fueled terrorism and hold hearings on the threats from domestic groups in upcoming weeks. And the Department of Justice has already opened up a domestic-terrorism investigation into the Charleston church shooting.

The real enemy of the corrupt corporate state is none other than, “we the people.”

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

US Justice Department finds that police provoked unrest in Ferguson

By Kevin Martinez
July 3, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

On Monday, the US Justice Department released a report detailing the official police response to the protests last year in Ferguson, Missouri following the police killing of Michael Brown. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the report documents how inappropriate military and police tactics alienated and provoked the crowd of peaceful protesters into violent confrontation. The limited rioting and looting, universally denounced and vilified in the corporate media, was in effect, incited by the police.

The summary of the report states, “Had law enforcement released information on the officer-involved shooting in a timely manner and continued the information flow as it became available, community distrust and media skepticism would most likely have been lessened.” The report documents the 16 days following the August 9, 2014 shooting of Brown by police officer Darren Wilson and the “highly elevated tactical response” on the part of 50 different police departments. The findings hardly justify the disproportionate use of paramilitary tactics against unarmed civilians exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.

The report stated that the use of police dogs “exacerbated tensions by unnecessarily inciting fear and anger among amassing crowds.” Tear gas was used inappropriately, “without proper warning, without sufficient attention paid to egress, and without consideration given to environmental conditions.”

Throughout the ensuing protests, citizens were told to “keep moving” by police. According to the report, these “vague and arbitrary” orders “violated citizens’ rights to assembly and free speech, as determined by a U.S. federal court injunction.”

From the standpoint of the Obama administration, which was coordinating the crackdown in Ferguson from the beginning, the report serves as a guidebook to preparing for unrest in the future. That is why, despite the brazen, unconstitutional tactics deployed by Ferguson police, there will be no accountability for the actions taken. Nevertheless, the report is a damning indictment of the authorities.

The report states that the various police agencies who responded to the protests were trained “on operational and tactical skills without appropriate balance of de-escalation and problem-solving training.” Snipers who fixed their scopes on unarmed civilians “exacerbate(d) tensions between protesters and police.” Moreover the military show of force was “not justified and served to escalate rather than de-escalate the overall situation.”

The lack of citizen complaints during the time period assessed by the report was “misleading” because, “a lack of confidence in the complaint process likely deterred citizens from filing complaints about police behavior.”

The report was addressed to the 50 police departments that were involved in repressing protesters in Ferguson. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson declined to comment as did the Missouri Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Highway Patrol. Dotson told the Post-Dispatch that he had asked officials from the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) what was the best way to handle such protests. “I was told, ‘There are none, you are forging new ground.’”

The report is addressed to inappropriate actions and not individuals and stresses the need for law enforcement to better coordinate in the future as well as provide recommendations that better suppress social opposition while utilizing military gear in a more effective way. Thus it faults the “ineffective” training given to police and the failure in traffic control which supposedly presented “tactical advantages to the protesters and activists and safety hazards to the deployed officers.”

Further, the police “underestimated” social media and hacks of police computers which led to threats and the theft of some officers’ identities. This, in turn, led to some officers removing their name tags at the protests, which, the report says, “defeated an essential level of on-scene accountability that is fundamental to the perception of procedural justice and legitimacy.”

Many of the recommendations included in the report are significant in that they change nothing aside from placing the paramilitary SWAT teams in a somewhat lower profile. These include: possible color-coding of non-lethal weapons for officer and civilian clarification, “officers wearing defensive and tactical equipment should be staged out of sight during peaceful demonstrations,” and “armored vehicles should not be visible to protesters except in narrowly defined circumstances, for example when shots are fired and in some active shooter situations.”

Despite the Obama administration’s feigned appearance of sympathy, or at least neutrality, when it came to the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore, it has been complicit in the whole affair. Much of the military equipment used by Ferguson police was paid for by federal counterterrorism grants, which have been freely given to police nationwide since the start of the so-called war on terror.

Moreover, this is the third Justice Department report which, despite documenting rampant criminal behavior on the part of police, metes out absolutely zero punishments. The first report was the decision not to bring federal civil rights charges against Darren Wilson for murdering Michael Brown, and the second was a review of the Ferguson Police Department, which was found to have systematically violated its citizens constitutional and human rights on a daily basis.

The Emergence of Orwellian Newspeak and the Death of Free Speech

By John W. Whitehead
July 02, 2015
The Rutherford Institute, June 29, 2015

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it…. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.

In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.

Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.

It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.

As a society, we’ve become fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful, closed-minded or any of the other toxic labels that carry a badge of shame today. The result is a nation where no one says what they really think anymore, at least if it runs counter to the prevailing views. Intolerance is the new scarlet letter of our day, a badge to be worn in shame and humiliation, deserving of society’s fear, loathing and utter banishment from society.

For those “haters” who dare to voice a different opinion, retribution is swift: they will be shamed, shouted down, silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are guilty of various “word crimes.”

We have entered a new age where, as commentator Mark Steyn notes, “we have to tiptoe around on ever thinner eggshells” and “the forces of ‘tolerance’ are intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.”

In such a climate of intolerance, there can be no freedom speech, expression or thought.

Yet what the forces of political correctness fail to realize is that they owe a debt to the so-called “haters” who have kept the First Amendment robust. From swastika-wearing Neo-Nazis marching through Skokie, Illinois, and underaged cross burners to “God hates fags” protesters assembled near military funerals, those who have inadvertently done the most to preserve the right to freedom of speech for all have espoused views that were downright unpopular, if not hateful.

Until recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has reiterated that the First Amendment prevents the government from proscribing speech, or even expressive conduct, because it disapproves of the ideas expressed. However, that long-vaunted, Court-enforced tolerance for “intolerant” speech has now given way to a paradigm in which the government can discriminate freely against First Amendment activity that takes place within a government forum. Justifying such discrimination as “government speech,” the Court ruled that the Texas Dept. of Motor Vehicles could refuse to issue specialty license plate designs featuring a Confederate battle flag. Why? Because it was deemed offensive.

The Court’s ruling came on the heels of a shooting in which a 21-year-old white gunman killed nine African-Americans during a Wednesday night Bible study at a church in Charleston, N.C. The two events, coupled with the fact that gunman Dylann Roof was reportedly pictured on several social media sites with a Confederate flag, have resulted in an emotionally charged stampede to sanitize the nation’s public places of anything that smacks of racism, starting with the Confederate flag and ballooning into a list that includes the removal of various Civil War monuments.

These tactics are nothing new. This nation, birthed from puritanical roots, has always struggled to balance its love of liberty with its moralistic need to censor books, music, art, language, symbols etc. As author Ray Bradbury notes, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

Indeed, thanks to the rise of political correctness, the population of book burners, censors, and judges has greatly expanded over the years so that they run the gamut from left-leaning to right-leaning and everything in between. By eliminating words, phrases and symbols from public discourse, the powers-that-be are sowing hate, distrust and paranoia. In this way, by bottling up dissent, they are creating a pressure cooker of stifled misery that will eventually blow.

For instance, the word “Christmas” is now taboo in the public schools, as is the word “gun.” Even childish drawings of soldiers result in detention or suspension under rigid zero tolerance policies. On college campuses, trigger warnings are being used to alert students to any material they might read, see or hear that might upset them, while free speech zones restrict anyone wishing to communicate a particular viewpoint to a specially designated area on campus. Things have gotten so bad that comedians such as Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld refuse to perform stand-up routines to college crowds anymore.

Clearly, the country is undergoing a nervous breakdown, and the news media is helping to push us to the brink of insanity by bombarding us with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days.

In this way, it’s difficult to think or debate, let alone stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this.

As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles and tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms. These sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions are how you control a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, advancing a political agenda agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.

Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.

Already, the outrage over the Charleston shooting and racism are fading from the news headlines, yet the determination to censor the Confederate symbol remains. Before long, we will censor it from our thoughts, sanitize it from our history books, and eradicate it from our monuments without even recalling why. The question, of course, is what’s next on the list to be banned?

It was for the sake of preserving individuality and independence that James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely.

This freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society. Conversely, when we fail to abide by Madison’s dictates about greater tolerance for all viewpoints, no matter how distasteful, the end result is always the same: an indoctrinated, infantilized citizenry that marches in lockstep with the governmental regime.

Some of this past century’s greatest dystopian literature shows what happens when the populace is transformed into mindless automatons. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, reading is banned and books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, serious literature, scientific thinking and experimentation are banned as subversive, while critical thinking is discouraged through the use of conditioning, social taboos and inferior education. Likewise, expressions of individuality, independence and morality are viewed as vulgar and abnormal.

And in George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.” In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

All three—Bradbury, Huxley and Orwell—had an uncanny knack for realizing the future, yet it is Orwell who best understood the power of language to manipulate the masses. Orwell’s Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary. To give a single example, as psychologist Erich Fromm illustrates in his afterword to 1984:

The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as “This dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds.” It could not be used in its old sense of “politically free” or “intellectually free,” since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed as concepts….

Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

This is the final link in the police state chain.

Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go. Our backs are to the walls. From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and our selves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.

– See more at: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_emergence_of_orwellian_newspeak_and_the_death_of_free_speech#sthash.TzikVABy.dpuf

The United States Celebrates Independence Day — a Time for Re-evaluation

Janet Phelan
July 21, 2015
New Eastern Outlook

The fourth of July. This is the day for Americans to go down to the beach with a picnic basket loaded up with ham sandwiches and to drink more beer than can possibly be recommended during the work week. This is the day to gather with friends and family and to ooh and aah at pyrotechnics dazzling the sky. It is a day, if we stop to think, to be grateful that we are not living in a country which produces lock- step conformity and fear in its citizenry. It is a day, traditionally, to be thankful for our freedoms.

This July 4th, it would be useful to take a look at what we have lost, in terms of freedoms, and what we still stand to lose. Like some other institutions in America, the July 4th celebration of freedom has become something of an obligatory exercise of patriotic fervor. And given the developments of the last few years, it may now be relatively empty of meaning.

For the first time in US history, we  have a President who has created—and invoked — the executive privilege ofordering the murders of US citizens without due process. While this has only been exercised a few times (to our knowledge), most notably with the 2011 assassination by drone strike of US born Muslim cleric Anwar al -Awlaki and subsequently of his son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the precedent now exists. This is not a privilege generally granted to a President in a free society. In fact, it is an action that is more redolent of a dictator, a Hitler or a Pol Pot whose purges of not only “enemies of the state,” but also of whomever pissed off the dictator, became part of our collective awareness that we, as Americans, were very fortunate not to live under these sorts of rulers.

The media seems to have forgotten the lessons of history, as far as tracking the slide into tyranny. Certainly, we are not seeing any general forum of public discussion as to how to respond to this level of legalized attack.

In 2014, the Department of Justice reluctantly declassified and released the DOJ memo which provided the legal analysis to support murder by Presidential dictum. This memo was released when its author, David Barron, was up for Congressional approval as a federal judge (He was subsequently approved for the position). Alarmingly, the memo was not released in its entirety. Critical sections dealing with how to resolve the inherent contradictions between the right of a President to decide whom to kill and the Fifth Amendment were redacted, so that we were not able to see how the right to not be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” could be reconciled with murder by Presidential order.

The potential repercussions of this prerogative seized by President Obama await realization. In the meantime, certain other blips on the political radar point to possible future outcomes. One of these potential outcomes is the possibility of the deployment of drones against US citizens within the borders of the US.

In a widely circulated letter, written by former US Attorney General Eric Holder in response to an inquiry by US Senator Rand Paul, Holder admitted that such drone deployment could be lawful. Wrote Holder:

“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.

There is more evidence that  “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” have gone out the window. When The Guardian broke the story this past February that the Chicago police were using a “black site” to detain people in Illinois without processing them legally and without allowing the detainees the right to contact anyone on the outside world, those on the “human rights watch” felt a collective shiver. Subsequent revelations that a mini-“black site” was extant in Los Angeles County simply confirmed the perception that the erosion of rights has become a landslide.

It is not only illegal police detentions that should alarm us about the boys in blue. Police in the US are now murdering US citizens — largely black, Latino or allegedly mentally ill—at an alarming rate and with virtually no culpability.

What we are seeing is in part the disparity between “paper rights” and real rights.

In other words, what is considered to be lawful versus what really happens may be two entirely different critters. Recent US Supreme Court decisions affirmed that the detainees in Guantanamo have rights under US law. Even with the highest court in the land affirming these rights, the detainees have remained in custody for years without a single habeas corpus being granted and, in many cases, without being charged.

One bright spot, according to the Second Amendment’ers, is that our gun rights are still intact. Those who believe that guns are a protection against intrusive government agents are still pounding on their virtual pulpits, insisting that these rights to bear arms will prove to be our salvation, should push come to .well, shoot.

Let’s get real, here. The US government has stockpiles of both chemical and biological weapons, and as far as “paper rights” go, the government has great latitude to use these against US citizens. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which the US is a party to, allows the discretion of the party nations to allow domestic law enforcement agencies to use these weapons against their own citizens.

According to the Biological Weapons Convention, the use of biological weapons is not so permitted. However, when the United States Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, that permission was indeed self-dealt. In the now infamous Section 817, the Expansion of the Biological Weapons Statute, the US government gave itself immunity from violating its own biological weapons laws.

And as far as this being a domestic violation of the BWC, one can imagine the satisfaction of the legal team whocooked up Section 817, given their awareness that there is nothing that the treaty organization can do about this. The BWC, unlike other arms treaties, has no verification protocol and no mechanisms to enforce its own regulations.

In addition, there has been a landslide of reports that directed energy weapons,which are classified as non-lethal, are being tested on US citizens, without consent.

In the face of the reality that the US has drones, chemical and biological weapons and a whole mish mosh of other assault capabilities, and can use these against its citizens without legal culpability — at least given how the laws are currently configured — how does the gun lobby actually imagine that a 22 rifle is going to protect anyone? Did anyone at the shooting range ever try to shoot a germ?

Snowden’s revelations of the extent of US spying clarified and confirmed for us the uneasy perception that we had utterly lost our privacy rights. As it turns out, we have lost a whole lot more.

It might be time to reassess the fourth of July celebrations. Rather than munching on hot dogs and downing a few Budweisers and cooing at the gorgeous pyrotechnics, it might be time instead to hold a wake. And after we have buried Lady Liberty, maybe we can get down to the serious work of figuring out what to do now.

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

US Supreme Court upholds “excruciating” executions

By Joseph Kishore
June 30, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

The United States Supreme Court on Monday ruled that executions using the sedative midazolam can go forward, despite substantial evidence that use of the drug can cause excruciating and prolonged pain. The decision reaffirmed a position close to the heart of the American ruling class: that it should have the right to kill its citizens and do so by the method of its choosing.

The 5-4 decision in the case of Glossip v. Gross paves the way for the execution of the three prisoners in the state of Oklahoma who brought the case. Executions in other states that have begun using the drug will also go forward.

The prisoners’ argument that the use of midazolam violated the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” was substantiated by a series of horrific executions. Experts in pharmacology who supported their case noted that the drug is untested as a sedative and cannot be used to maintain adequate anesthesia. As a result, prisoners who are administered midazolam as part of a two- or three-drug cocktail can end up writhing in pain as subsequent drugs paralyze them and shut down their life functions.

This torture has been meted out repeatedly over the past 20 months. The first person to be killed using midazolam was William Happ, in October of 2013. Happ reportedly remained conscious for a prolonged period and made repeated movements before succumbing in the Florida death chamber.

Dennis McGuire (January 2014 in Ohio), Clayton Lockett (April 2014 in Oklahoma) and Joseph Wood (July 2014 in Arizona) were all killed using midazolam. Each of them choked, gasped and writhed in pain for between 25 and 90 minutes prior to death.

Most notorious was the case of Lockett, who gained consciousness as he was being executed and sought to rise from the execution table before eventually dying of a heart attack 43 minutes after initial sedation. Another prisoner who had been part of the suit decided Monday by the Supreme Court was killed in January of this year after the high court denied a stay of execution. His last words were reportedly, “My body is on fire.”

To justify the continued use of midazolam, the Supreme Court majority employed cruel and twisted logic. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority that included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, argued that the prisoners had failed to make the case that the use of the drug entailed a substantial risk of serious pain. Moreover, Alito asserted, the prisoners had not presented a viable alternative for their own execution.

Oklahoma and a number of other states began using midazolam after manufacturers stopped selling the drug pentobarbital for use in executions. This was, in part, a response to public protests over the complicity of the company in state-sanctioned killings, itself a reflection of mounting popular opposition to the death penalty in the US.

The prisoners, Alito wrote, may not like that they will be killed using midazolam, but “they have not identified any available drug or drugs that could be used in place of those that Oklahoma is now unable to obtain.”

This standard, for all practical purposes, renders the Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” null and void. In a sophistic argument that drew its conclusion from its premise, Alito acknowledged that the method employed by Oklahoma might cause extreme pain. However, since the Supreme Court had repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty, some method for killing people had to be allowed, he asserted. And since the condemned had proposed no viable alternate method, the current method had to be deemed constitutional.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor, in a dissent, noted that the majority had established “a wholly unprecedented obligation on the condemned inmate to identify an available means for his or her own execution.” She added that by the logic of the majority decision, “it would not matter whether the state intended to use midazolam, or instead to have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death or actually burned at the stake.”

Seeking to outperform Alito in cynicism in the service of reaction, Justice Antonin Scalia filed an angry concurring opinion attacking Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in their dissent suggested that the court again take up the question of the constitutionality of the death penalty as a whole.

Denouncing Breyer for taking on “the role of the abolitionists in this long-running drama,” Scalia turned to crude historical falsification. “The Framers of our Constitution disagreed bitterly on the matter [of the death penalty]. For that reason, they handled it the same way they handled many other controversial issues: They left it to the People to decide.”

In attempting to overturn that decision, Scalia wrote, Breyer “does not just reject the death penalty, he rejects the Enlightenment.”

The use of the term “abolitionists” has definite political implications, intended or otherwise. The same arguments for “popular sovereignty” were used to uphold the institution of slavery prior to the Civil War.

As for the slander against the Enlightenment and the founders of the American Republic who were inspired by it, Scalia might do well to read Cesare Beccaria, the great Enlightenment figure who, in his 1764 treatise On Crimes and Punishments, asked the question, “Is it not absurd, that the laws which detest and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publicly commit murder themselves?”

Perhaps with the likes of Scalia in mind, Beccaria added:

What must men think, when they see wise magistrates and grave ministers of justice, with indifference and tranquility, dragging a criminal to death, and whilst a wretch trembles in agony, expecting the fatal stroke, the judge, who has condemned him, with the coldest insensibility, and perhaps with no small gratification from the exertion of his authority, quits his tribunal, to enjoy the comforts of life?

Monday’s decision on the death penalty is worth bearing in mind when considering the Supreme Court’s supposed “turn leftward,” as proclaimed by the New York Times following last week’s gay marriage ruling. As the WSWS noted, while the court is willing to make concessions on certain democratic questions that are of particular concern to better-off sections of the middle class, when it comes to issues that touch on basic elements of class rule—such as the ability of the state to kill—that is a different matter altogether.

The right-wing bloc on the Supreme Court, including Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas, would have had no problem functioning in the courts of Nazi Germany. Similar arguments to those employed by Alito and Scalia in the death penalty ruling can and will be used to justify torture, concentration camps and all manner of police state measures. The justices who make them deserve to be locked away in either prison or an insane asylum.

Yet in their sadistic arguments, these semi-fascists are only expressing in the crudest form the antidemocratic and reactionary conceptions of the American ruling class, upheld by the entire political system, including the Obama administration and both big-business parties.

 

The Fifteen Most Outrageous Responses by Police After Killing Unarmed People

Killing With Impunity

By Bill Quigley
June 26, 2015
Counter Punch

 

Police kill a lot of unarmed people. So far in 2015, as many as 100 unarmed people have been killed by police. Here are fifteen of the most outrageous reasons given by police to justify killing unarmed people in the last twelve months.

First, a bit of background. So far in 2015, there have been around 400 fatal police shootings already; one in six of those killings, 16 percent, were of unarmed people, 49 had no weapon at all and 13 had toys, according to the Washington Post. Of the police killings this year less than 1 percent have resulted in the officer being charged with a crime. The Guardian did a study which included killings by Tasers and found 102 people killed by police so far in 2015 were unarmed and that unarmed Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police as whites.

One. He was Dancing in the Street and Walking with a Purpose. On June 9, 2015 an unarmed man, Ryan Bollinger, was shot by police in Des Moines after “walking with a purpose” towards the police car after he exited his vehicle after a low speed chase started when he was observed dancing in the street and behaving erratically. The deceased was shot by the police through the rolled up cruiser window. The murder is under investigation.

Two. Thought It Was My Taser. An unarmed man, Eric Harris, ran from the police in Tulsa Oklahoma on April 2, 2015. After he was shot in the back by a Taser by one officer and was on the ground, another 73 year old volunteer reserve officer shot and killed him, all captured by video. While dying he was yelling that he was losing his breath, to which one of the officers responded “F*ck your breath.”   The police said the officer thought he was shooting his Taser and “inadvertently discharged his service weapon.” The officer has been charged with second degree manslaughter. Running away from the police so often provokes police overreaction that the aggressive police response has several names including the “foot tax” and the “running tax.”

Three. Naked Man Refused to Stop. A naked unarmed mentally ill Air Force Afghanistan veteran, Anthony Hill, was shot and killed March 9, 2015 by DeKalb County Georgia police after police said he refused an order to stop. The killing is under investigation.

Four. Not Going to Say. On March 6, 2015 Aurora Colorado police shot and killed unarmed Naeschylus Vinzant while taking him into custody. For the last three months, while the investigation into the killing continues, the police have refused to say what compelled the officer to shoot Vinzant.

Five. Five Police Felt Threatened by One Unarmed Homeless Man. March 1, 2015 Los Angeles police shot and killed an unarmed homeless man Charly Leundeu Keunang after five officers went to his tent and struggled with him. One unarmed homeless man threatened five armed LAPD officers? Los Angeles police have killed about one person a week since 2000. An investigation is ongoing.

Six. My Taser Didn’t Work. On February 23, 2015, an unarmed man, Daniel Elrod, was shot twice in the back and once in the shoulder and killed by Omaha Nebraska police after he tried to climb a tree and jump a fence to escape police who suspected him of robbery. Police said their Taser did not work, he ignored their demands to get down on the ground, he did not show his hands, and they felt threatened. Video was not made available and the officer later resigned. This was the second person this officer killed. No criminal charges were filed.

Seven. Armed with a Broom. Lavall Hall’s mother called the police in Miami Gardens February 15, 2015 and asked for help for her son who was mentally ill. Lavall Hall, five foot four inches tall, walked outside with a broom and was later shot and killed by police who said he failed to comply with instructions and engaged them with an object. The killing is still under investigation.

Eight. Throwing Rocks. On February 10, 2015 an unarmed man, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, was fired at 17 times and killed by police in Kennewick, Washington. A video of his killing has been viewed more than 2 million times.   Officers said he had been throwing rocks at cars, ran away and then turned around.

Nine. Taser Worked but He Didn’t Stop Moving. On February 2, 2015, a Hummelstown Pennsylvania police officer shot unarmed David Kassick in the back with a Taser and when Kassick went to the ground on his stomach, then shot him twice with her gun in the back, killing him. The officer said Kassick, who was running away from a traffic stop, was told to show his hands and not move but continued to try to remove the Taser prongs from his back and the officer thought he was reaching for a gun. The officer has been charged with homicide.

Ten. Car going 11 Miles an Hour was going to Kill Me. Denver police fired 8 times at unarmed Jessica Hernandez, 17, who was killed January 16 after being hit by four bullets. The police said she drove too close to them when she was trying to get away and may have tried to run them down as she tried to drive away so they shot into the windshield and driver’s windows. The police said the car may have reached 11 miles per hour in the 16 feet it traveled before hitting a fence.   The police were not charged.

Eleven. Armed with a Spoon. Dennis Grigsby, an unarmed mentally ill man holding a soup spoon, was shot in the chest and killed in a neighbor’s garage by Texarkana Police December 15, 2015. The killing is under investigation.

Twelve. Armed with Prescription Bottle. Rumain Brisbon, a 34 year old unarmed man, was shot twice and killed by police in Phoenix on December 2, 2014, after he ran away, was caught and was in a struggle with the officer who mistook a prescription pill bottle in Brisbon’s pocket for a gun. The police officer was not charged.

Thirteen. It Was an Accident. On November 20, 2014, a New York City police officer fired into a stairwell and killed unarmed Akai Gurley.   The officer, who was charged with manslaughter, is expected to say he accidently fired his gun.

Fourteen. Don’t Mention It. On November 12, 2014, an unarmed handcuffed inmate was shot multiple times in the head, neck, chest and arms by officers while fighting with another handcuffed inmate in the High Desert State Prison in Carson City Nevada. His family was not told and did not know he had been shot until three days later when they claimed his body at a mortuary.

Fifteen. Armed with Toy Gun. John Crawford was unarmed in a Walmart store in Beavercreek Ohio on August 4, 2014, when he picked up an unloaded BB gun. When officers arrived they say they ordered him to put down the gun and started shooting, hitting him at least twice and killing Mr. Crawford. In a widely viewed video Mr. Crawford can be seeing dropping the BB gun, running away and being shot while unarmed. Likewise, Cleveland police shot and killed an unarmed 12 year old boy, Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy pellet gun on November 22, 2014. Police said they shouted verbal commands from inside their vehicle in the two seconds before they shot him twice. In both these cases, the police story of shouting warnings and orders looks quite iffy at best.

These are the responses of police authorities who face less than one chance in a hundred of being charged when they kill people, even unarmed people.   These outrages demand massive change in the way lethal force is used, reported, justified and prosecuted.

Bill Quigley teaches law at Loyola University New Orleans and can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com.

 

Canada: Alleged ISIS supporter released on bail after lengthy, illegal detention without charge

By Roger Jordan
June 20, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

Twenty-three-year-old  was quietly released on bail late last week by a Manitoba court, after being detained since his arrest by police on June 4.

Despite holding Driver for eight days, police are yet to charge him with any crime. Police allege he supports the Islamic State (ISIS) and defended last October’s fatal attacks on Canadian Armed Forces personnel in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, pointing to postings he made on a Twitter account under the alias Harun Abdurahman. However, the court has imposed a ban on reporting evidence in the case, so it is not yet known if prosecutors have any evidence linking Driver to an actual crime under Canadian law.

The length of Driver’s detention without charge has been described by legal observers as unprecedented and a clear violation of his constitutional rights. For days, the authorities offered no public justification for their detention of Driver without charge past the 48 hours currently legally permitted. Now they are attempting to do so by citing Section 810 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which provides for the imposition of a peace bond or recognizance on an individual where there exists “reasonable grounds” to believe he or she will commit an act causing injury to someone or damage to property.

Under Section 810, someone who has not been charged, let alone convicted of a crime, can be jailed for up to a year if they refuse to sign a peace bond or fail to comply with its terms after it has been signed.

Originally introduced into the Criminal Code in 1985 as a means of dealing with cases of family breakdown and abuse of children, the government is increasingly using section 810 to restrict the movements and place onerous conditions on the activities of alleged terrorist suspects against whom the state has insufficient evidence to lay criminal charges.

Evidence suggests that Canada’s national security apparatus is now routinely intimidating people with threats of criminal charges and incarceration without bail so as to get them to “voluntarily” agree to sign a peace bond.

Driver’s case, however, appears to have set a chilling new precedent in that police continued to detain him beyond the legal limit of 48 hours, because he refused to agree to the peace bond process.

The police are now asking the courts to impose a peace bond on Driver, with a hearing scheduled for July 9.

Pending that hearing, Driver has been released from bail but under harsh and illegal conditions. Among other things, Driver must wear a GPS tracker at all times, engage in “religious counselling” and forward the counsellor’s name to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), follow a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, give up his passport, give up any computer of any kind, submit his telephone number to the police, give police the password to access his phone, avoid social media websites, and refrain from communicating with any ISIS or Al Qaida member. This latter condition appears deliberately aimed at presenting Driver to the public as a hardened terrorist, given that not a shred of evidence has thus far been presented to suggest that he has had any contact with these or any other terrorist group.

Driver’s restrictive bail terms were sharply criticized by the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties (MARL), the group that first drew attention to the Driver case. “This is a person, a Canadian citizen, who has not been charged with a crime and yet he’s going to be subject to 24/7 GPS monitoring,” said MARL President Corey Shefman. He added, “He could go to jail for failing to undertake religious activity. That doesn’t sound like Canada to me. That sounds like a theocracy.”

Driver’s treatment marks a further step in the direction of police state measures. While he was behind bars, Canada’s Senate gave final approval to the Conservative government’s new Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-51). It vastly expands the powers of the national security apparatus, including giving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) the power to break the law in disrupting reputed threats to Canada’s economic and national security. (See: “Canada’s police-state bill passes final parliamentary hurdle”)

The new law will also enable the authorities to obtain peace bonds much more easily. The wording in the criminal code is to be replaced, so that it reads “may” commit an offence rather than “will,” thereby significantly lowering the threshold of proof required to impose a peace bond. In addition, the maximum period of detention without charge will be extended to seven days for terrorist suspects.

As the Winnipeg Free Press wrote in an editorial criticizing the treatment of Driver, “If we’re upset with how he’s being treated now, be aware that Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act is going to make this type of treatment easier.”

In another recent case, a Prince Edward Island student who police claim was planning to make bombs was forced to sign a 12-month peace bond which restricts his movements and requires him to report to a probation officer once a week. He has been neither charged nor convicted of any offence. A Montreal man who signed a peace bond earlier this year is currently being criminally prosecuted for breaching its terms and could face a prison term.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this little-known provision is being transformed into an instrument to be used to target anyone the government likes, even if there is no evidence of criminal activity having been committed. The catch-all definitions of terrorism and national security threats now written into law provide the basis for peace bonds to be used in the future against working-class and left-wing opponents of the government.

Unsurprisingly, there have been no statements from any of the mainstream political parties raising concerns about the Driver case. In a statement released shortly after Driver’s detention, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Stephen Blainey merely noted that the government had to keep fighting terrorism.

With its draconian assault on basic democratic rights and legal principles, Canada’s Conservative government is pursuing the twin aims of establishing mechanisms to suppress all public opposition to its reactionary policies, as well as seeking to whip up a climate of fear and hysteria to justify its military aggression abroad.

To this latter end, government representatives portray the entire Muslim population as a menace to society. In a recent interview, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander effectively accused any Muslim woman wearing the burka or niqab of being a terrorist suspect. Commenting on the federal Conservative government’s plans to outlaw Muslim women wearing these face-covering garments from taking an oath of citizenship and the Quebec Liberal government’s bill preventing them from receiving health care and other public services, Alexander said, “We’ve done a lot in the past year to strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship. People take pride in that. They don’t want their co-citizens to be terrorists. They don’t want people to become citizens who haven’t respected the rules.”

Such fear-mongering aims to legitimize the vast authoritarian state apparatus which will be turned against the working class at the first sign of the emergence of opposition to the ruling elite.

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
June 15, 2015
Global Research

 

Monday, June 15, 2015, is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.  In his book, Magna Carta, J.C. Holt, professor of medieval history, University of Cambridge, notes that three of the chapters of this ancient document still stand on the English Stature Book and that so much of what survives of the Great Charter is “concerned with individual liberty,” which “is a reflexion of the quality of the original act of 1215.”

In the 17th century Sir Edward Coke used the Great Charter of the Liberties to establish the supremacy of Parliament, the representative of the people, as the origin of law.

A number of legal scholars have made the irrelevant point that the Magna Carter protected rights of the Church, nobles, and free men who were not enserfed, a small percentage of the population in the early 13th century.  We hear the same about the US Constitution–it was something the rich did for themselves. I have no sympathy for debunking human achievements that, in the end, gave ordinary people liberty.

At Runnymede in 1215 no one but the armed barons had the power and audacity to make King John submit to law.  The rule of law, not the rule of the sovereign or of the executive branch in Washington acceded to by a cowardly and corrupt Congress and Supreme Court, is a human achievement that grew out of the Magna Carta over the centuries, with ups and downs of course.

Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1759 fed into the American Revolution and gave us the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The Geneva Conventions extended the rule of law to the international arena.

Beginning with the Clinton Administration and rapidly accelerating with the

George W. Bush and Obama regimes and Tony Blair in England, the US and UK governments have run roughshod over their accountability to law.

Both the US and UK in the 21st century have gone to numerous wars illegally under the Nuremberg Standard established by the US and UK following Germany’s defeat in WWII and used to execute Germans for war crimes.  The US and UK claim that unlike Germany they are immune to the very international law that they themselves established in order to punish the defeated Germans. Washington and London can bomb and murder at will, but not Germany.

Both governments illegally and unconstitutionally (the UK Constitution is unwritten) spy on their citizens, and the Bush and Obama executive branches, have eviscerated, with the complicity of Congress and the federal courts, the entirely of the US Constitution except for the Second Amendment, which is protected by the strong lobby of the National Rifle Association. If the gun control “progressives” have their way, nothing will be left of the US Constitution.

Washington and its European satellites have subordinated law to a political and economic hegemonic agenda.  Just as under the heyday of colonialism when the West looted the non-white world, today the West loots its own.  Greece is being looted as was Ireland, and Italy and Spain will not escape looting unless they renege on their debts and leave the EU.

Western capitalism is a looting mechanism.  It loots labor.  It loots the environment, and with the transpacific and transatlantic “partnerships” it will loot the sovereign law of countries.  For example, France’s laws against

GMOs become “restraints on trade” and subjects France to punitive law suits by Monsanto. If France doesn’t pay Monsanto the damages Monsanto claims, France is subject to punitive sanctions like Washington applies to Russia when Russia doesn’t do what Washington wants.

A new slave existence is being created in front of our eyes as law ceases to be a shield of peoples and becomes a weapon in the hands of government.  Eight hundred years of reform is being overturned as Washington and its vassals invade, bomb, and overthrow governments that are out of step with Washington’s agenda.  Formerly self-sufficient agricultural communities are becoming wage slaves for international agribusiness corporations.  Everywhere privilege is rising above law and justice is being lost.

The concentration of wealth and power is reminiscent of the aristocratic era and of Rome under the Caesars.  The demise of the rule of law has stripped ordinary people of security and dignity.  Peoples of the world must protect themselves by acting in defense of the Great Charter’s principle that governments are accountable to law.  Governments unaccountable to law are tyrannies whatever they might call themselves, no matter how exceptional and indispensable they declare themselves to be.

Monday in Westminster in London, the International Tribunal for Natural Justice is forming. If my understanding of this work of Humanitad is correct, we have a cause for hope.  Perhaps the Tribunal will try the criminals of our time, almost all of which are “leaders” of Western governments, on the Internet with juries and prosecutors so that populations everywhere can witness  the evil that every Western government represents.

Once the West is perceived as the evil force that it is, it will have to reform and again embrace Edward Coke’s vision of the Great Charter or become an unimportant backwater while the rest of the world goes on to better things.  The world is saved once the world ceases to bow down to the American Caesar.

 

 

Los Angeles Police Commission cites minor protocol breaches in killing of Ezell Ford

By Dan Conway and John Andrews
June 14, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

After stalling for ten months, the Los Angeles Police Commission issued a report Tuesday in the police killing of 25-year-old Ezell Ford.

In the presence of dozens of protesters, the Commission announced that one of the officers involved in the shooting, 13-year LAPD veteran Sharlton Wampler, used inappropriate tactics when approaching Ford. The other officer, Antonio Villegas, was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing despite the fact that he shot Ford as well. Neither officer yet faces criminal charges.

The Commission report for the first time lays out the officers’ version of the shooting. Shortly after 8:00 p.m. on August 11, 2014, Wampler and Villegas saw Ford walking alone on the sidewalk. They notified the dispatcher that they were getting out of their car. The officers claim they intended to initiate a “consensual encounter,” but when Ford did not stop to talk with them, Wampler reached out and grabbed the 24-year-old, mentally challenged man, who was engaged in no criminal conduct whatsoever.

According to the officers, a brief scuffle ensued, during which both officers shot Ford. They then notified dispatch—only 13 seconds after the first broadcast.

The officers justified the killing with the tired excuse that after grabbing Ford they thought he was reaching for Wampler’s pistol, which was secured in a special retention holster. The Commission report does not challenge the glaring illogic of the officers’ story—why would Ford try to grab an officer’s gun when he was not doing anything illegal—nor the officers’ decision to kill Ford instead of simply standing up and moving the gun out of his reach, where it never should have been in the first place.

As a result of the ruling, Wampler is to face unspecified disciplinary action by Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck. Wampler was the subject of a 2011 Civil Rights Complaint alleging that he held a man’s head underwater in a front yard “kiddy pool,” nearly drowning him in front of his parents and children.

The disciplinary actions will likely result in a slap on the wrist at best, as Beck has vigorously defended the Newton Division officers’ actions since the incident and has also promised that the decision will do nothing to change overall department policy.

Shortly after the Police Commission’s decision was revealed, Beck filmed a 76-second video that was distributed to the entire police force. In the video, Beck directly addresses his officers from a balcony at the LAPD downtown headquarters, declaring that the Police Commission decision “was a tough decision for them to make, and I know it’s a difficult thing for you to think about as you go out and risk your lives every day protecting the city of Los Angeles.”

Beck added, “you have my support, you have the support of the mayor, you have the support of the vast majority of the people of Los Angeles.”

The ruling takes the claim that Ford reached for the LAPD officer’s gun as an indisputable fact. The LAPD had previously cited DNA evidence on the officer’s weapon holster as well as associated abrasions on the hands of both Ford and the officer. This evidence proves nothing, as the officers admit starting the fight by grabbing Ford as he was exercising his constitutional right to walk away from them. Given that he was hit by three bullets at extremely close quarters, one would not be surprised to find DNA on the holster. Regardless, none of this evidence has been publicly released and multiple witnesses testify that Ford was prone during the shooting and that there was no struggle for an officer’s weapon.

Leroy Hill, a neighbor of Ford who witnessed the struggle, claims that the young man’s shooting was preceded by a vicious beating by the officers. “I was sitting across the street when it happened. So as he was walking down the street, the police approached him, whatever was said I couldn’t hear it, but the cops jumped out of the car and rushed him over here into this corner. They had him in the corner and were beating him, busted him up, for what reason I don’t know, he didn’t do nothing. The next I know I hear a ‘pow!’ while he’s on the ground. They got the knee on him. And then I hear another ‘pow!’ No hesitation. And then I hear another ‘pow!’ Three times.”

While the LAPD confiscated the sole video footage of the encounter, the witness accounts taken together corroborate that the shooting was a murder of an unarmed, mentally ill young man.

For this reason, the services of the five member Los Angeles Police Commission, touted as an example of civilian oversight over the third largest police department in the country, is being used as a mechanism to disregard any evidence supporting the guilt of the officers and whitewash the investigation.

Canada: Alleged ISIS supporter detained without charge for over a week

By Roger Jordan and Felix Gauthier
June 13, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

Aaron Driver, a 24-year-old Winnipeg resident, has been held in police custody since June 4 without charge. He was arrested by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers, who also searched his home, on allegations that he is an Islamic State (ISIS) supporter.

Authorities have not charged Driver with any crime. Under Canadian law, a terrorism suspect can be detained for a maximum of 48 hours without charge. This is to be extended to seven days under the recently adopted anti-democratic Bill C-51, but its provisions have yet to come into force.

“It should shock every Canadian citizen that this is possible or” that it “is being done,” Corey Shefman, head of the Manitoba Association of Rights and Liberties, told CBC. He continued, “I cannot comment on what he might or might not do, or what he has or hasn’t done. But I do know he hasn’t been charged with a crime and yet he finds himself behind bars without his freedom and no reason he has officially been presented with.”

Driver is said to have posted messages on Twitter defending ISIS and promoting extremist and reactionary views. In one post, he allegedly accused the Jews of plotting a war against Islam, and in another he defended ISIS’s use of terrorist methods.

However, authorities have presented no evidence, let alone charged Driver, with having or having had ties to a terrorist group. The only item the media report police having found during a raid of his Winnipeg home was an “Arabic for Dummies” book. They also seized his computer.

Reports indicate that Driver was an isolated individual who was trying to complete his high school diploma by attending adult education classes. He converted to Islam some time during the past two years, but according to teachers interviewed by the CBC, did not try to convert others. He allegedly used the alias Harun Abdurahman on Twitter to post pro-ISIS material.

No legal justification has thus far been given for Driver’s continued detention without charge.

Jeff Gindin, a defence lawyer with over 40 years of experience, drew attention to the unprecedented character of the Driver case. “So far there’s no real law that I’m aware of that when you think someone might commit an offence that you would then have the right to arrest them prior to that,” he told CBC.

Police plan to apply for a peace bond (or restriction order) at Driver’s next court hearing, scheduled for June 24. By then, he will have been held for almost three weeks without charge.

Peace bonds enable a judge to impose conditions on an individual whom the authorities suspect will commit a terrorist offence, but it is not necessary for the individual in question to have been charged, let alone convicted, of any crime.

The detention of Driver without charge and in apparent violation of Canadian law is merely the latest indication of the Canadian elite’s turn towards openly authoritarian forms of rule. Earlier this week, the Senate, Canada’s upper house of parliament, gave its approval to the draconian Bill C-51. It grants the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) the power to “disrupt” the activities of groups and individuals deemed to threaten national security, establishes an all-embracing speech-crime offence of “promoting” terrorism, virtually abolishes privacy rights, and provides for the confiscation or deletion of “terrorist propaganda.”

The fact that the ruling elite plans to use such measures against working class and left-wing opposition is confirmed by the vague definitions of potential threats in the legislation, which allow the security services to target any group deemed to be a threat to the economic or national security of Canada, and its diplomatic interests or constitutional order.

Bill C-51 will also make it easier for police to obtain peace bonds from a judge. Authorities will only be required to prove that an individual “may” facilitate a terrorist attack. This is a significant reduction of the evidentiary standard, meaning that the use of peace bonds will become much more routine.

Even without these powers, police forces across Canada have dramatically stepped up the use of peace bonds against alleged terrorist suspects in recent months.

A 20-year-old Stratford, Prince Edward Island resident signed a one-year peace bond on May 22 after the RCMP alleged that he possessed 50-60 castor beans, with which it is possible to produce the ricin toxin.

Amir Raisolsadat, a chemistry student at the University of Prince Edward Island, had been arrested in March after the RCMP told a judge it feared “on reasonable grounds” that he would commit a terrorist act. As his lawyer Brandon Forbes pointed out, Raisolsadat essentially faced the choice to “take on the combined efforts of the state in a prolonged hearing at great expense” or sign a peace bond.

Associates of Raisolsadat, including neighbours and professors, described him as a good student who likes chemistry. Raisolsadat himself denies intending harm to anyone.

In addition to restricting his movements to the island, the peace bond requires Raisolsadat to report to a probation officer and the police once a week. The peace bond also forbids him from owning castor beans, ricin, or any weapons, ammunition or explosives.

Before allegedly finding the castor beans in an iPhone case at his home in April last year, the RCMP claim to have uncovered instructions to make calcium phosphide and a diagram of a rocket with a section labelled “warhead” in Raisolsadat’s garbage. The RCMP also allegedly seized castor bean plants, computer equipment, and journals with drawings of bombs, explosions and chemical formulae.

While the RCMP won’t release further details, on the grounds of an ongoing criminal investigation, none of the published allegations indicate that Raisolsadat was a threat to anyone at the time of his arrest. According to Forbes, the rocket depicted in the diagram is “a foot-high piece of cardboard with glue and balsa wood. It’s meant to put a little GI Joe up in the air and it parachutes down” and can be bought in a toyshop. The RCMP claim Raisolsadat bought it with a fake name, whereas Forbes indicates it was bought by somebody else.

Raisolsadat wasn’t charged with any crime, nor have any of the allegations used to compel him to sign the peace bond been proven in court. However, if he violates the conditions he agreed to, he could face criminal charges leading to up to three years of probation and a two-year prison sentence. A Montreal man who recently signed a peace bond currently faces just such charges.

A series of terrorism suspects have been targeted by the RCMP through novel legal concepts, such as preventive arrest and peace bonds. Since the Ottawa shooting last October, the use of such techniques has increased markedly. Meanwhile, the Harper government has stepped up its campaign to portray Canada as a country under siege from terrorists, so as to both justify the adoption of Bill C-51 and Canada’s expanded role in the US-led war in the Middle East.

Ten young people accused of being on their way to join Jihadist groups abroad were arrested in May. In April, the 18-year-olds El Mahdi Jamali and Sabrine Djermane pled not guilty to charges related to terrorism. Two men from Montreal were arrested in March and April and compelled to sign peace bonds.

While the current targets of the state’s expanding authoritarian powers are reputed supporters of Islamic extremism, no one should be in any doubt as to the ultimate purpose of these measures. As the Canadian ruling elite intensifies its policies of aggressive militarism abroad and attacks on social and democratic rights at home, it is preparing for mass repression of a wave of working class opposition.

The authors also recommend:

Canada’s police-state bill passes final parliamentary hurdle
[10 June 2015]