Real money for an imaginary war

Here's a pretty good read on the current police state.

So much money has gone into armoring and arming local law-enforcement since 9/11 that the federal government could have rebuilt post-Katrina New Orleans five times over and had enough money left in the kitty to provide job training and housing for every one of the record 41,000-plus homeless people in New York City. It could have added in the growing population of 15,000 homeless in Philadelphia, my hometown, and still have had money to spare. Add disintegrating Detroit, Newark, and Camden to the list. Throw in some crumbling bridges and roads, too.
-Truth Out

Oakland and Alameda County cops trained by Middle Eastern occupation forces to violently repress Occupy Oakland

A month before riot police violently raided the Occupy Oakland camp using chemical weapons, rubber bullets and flash grenades – a raid which led to a protest where riot police critically injured Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen when they shot him in the face with a tear gas grenade launcher gun – the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department trained alongside a military unit from Bahrain and an Israeli Border Police unit.

The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual training competition which gathers heavily militarized police from the United States and across the globe to explore the latest in tactical responses and to promote collaboration. It’s a training that northern California police departments credited for their “effective teamwork” in dealing repressively with Occupy Oakland.
-AlterNet

The Iraeli goon squad, the Yamam, specializes in extra-judicial assassinations, while the Bahraini soldiers were from a unit that recently shot live rounds at unarmed, peaceful protestors in that country.
You can bet that this isn't just cops in Oakland, and police forces across the United States will only increasingly become more militarized and more brutal...they are learning from the most experienced assassins and thugs in the world.

Cops are banksta lapdogs...duh.

Democracy is dead

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (S. 1867, Levin), which passed the Senate late Thursday night by a vote of 93-7, declares the entire United States of America a battleground. The bill, or a companion one similar to it, is now being debated in the House.
If passed out of the House and signed into law, the U.S. Military would be allowed to operate with impunity, having been granted the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate, and even assassinate United States citizens (or anyone else in the world) with impunity.
In a nutshell, almost every right under the Bill of Rights would be stripped away from American citizens.
Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) said that the act "denigrates the very foundations of this country."
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) added, "it puts every single American citizen at risk."
Although authored by Senator Carl Levin, Sentors John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Joe Liebermann have been major supporters.

Obama orders 20,000 troops to patrol US

The police are already out of control.
Will the police sit back and take orders from the military, or will they feel any loyalty to their communities?
Unfortunately, in the ghetto, the cops aren't from the community.
This news is quite unnerving, although not exactly unexpected.

Arroyo Declares Martial Law in Maguindanao

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo has placed Maguindanao under a state of martial rule and authorities quickly arrested the patriarch of a powerful political clan linked to the brutal slayings of 57 people in the southern province.

In a press conference in Manila on Saturday, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the martial rule in Maguindanao will allow authorities to arrest without warrants all those implicated in the killings and bring order in the province.
-Mindanao Examiner

“Proclamation No. 1959 is totally uncalled for,” Anakpawis secretary-general Cherry Clemente said, adding that it may be the start of Arroyo’s attempt to cling to power as her term approaches its end in June 2010.
-Bulatlat