Forensic Architecture working with Al-Haq's new Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit, analysed available CCTV footage from Al-Haq premises to determine the circumstances of the raid on 18 August 2022, and expose Israeli settler-colonial and apartheid practices against Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations.

The incursion, raid, and closure, are the latest in a pattern of repressive attacks by Israel, targeting Palestinian civil society organisations who advocate for human rights and international rule of law, and call for an end to Israel’s aggressive 74-year colonial and apartheid regime, that denies the collective right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and the right of refugees to return.

#StandWithThe6

Far from being a war against “white supremacy,” the Biden administration’s new “domestic terror” strategy clearly targets primarily those who oppose US government overreach and those who oppose capitalism and/or globalization.

In the latest sign that the US government’s War on Domestic Terror is growing in scope and scale, the White House on Tuesday revealed the nation’s first ever government-wide strategy for confronting domestic terrorism. While cloaked in language about stemming racially motivated violence, the strategy places those deemed “anti-government” or “anti-authority” on a par with racist extremists and charts out policies that could easily be abused to silence or even criminalize online criticism of the government.

Even more disturbing is the call to essentially fuse intelligence agencies, law enforcement, Silicon Valley, and “community” and “faith-based” organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, as well as unspecified foreign governments, as partners in this “war,” which the strategy makes clear will rely heavily on a pre-crime orientation focused largely on what is said on social media and encrypted platforms. Though the strategy claims that the government will “shield free speech and civil liberties” in implementing this policy, its contents reveal that it is poised to gut both.

Indeed, while framed publicly as chiefly targeting “right-wing white supremacists,” the strategy itself makes it clear that the government does not plan to focus on the Right but instead will pursue “domestic terrorists” in “an ideologically neutral, threat-driven manner,” as the law “makes no distinction based on political view—left, right or center.” It also states that a key goal of this strategic framework is to ensure “that there is simply no governmental tolerance . . . of violence as an acceptable mode of seeking political or social change,” regardless of a perpetrator’s political affiliation.

Considering that the main cheerleaders for the War on Domestic Terror exist mainly in establishment left circles, such individuals should rethink their support for this new policy given that the above statements could easily come to encompass Black Lives Matter–related protests, such as those that transpired last summer, depending on which political party is in power.

Once the new infrastructure is in place, it will remain there and will be open to the same abuses perpetrated by both political parties in the US during the lengthy War on Terror following September 11, 2001. The history of this new “domestic terror” policy, including its origins in the Trump administration, makes this clear.

It’s Never Been Easier to Be a “Terrorist”

In introducing the strategy, the Biden administration cites “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” as a key reason for the new policy and a main justification for the War on Domestic Terror in general. This was most recently demonstrated Tuesday in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statement announcing this new strategy. However, the document itself puts “anti-government” or “anti-authority” “extremists” in the same category as violent white supremacists in terms of being a threat to the homeland. The strategy’s characterization of such individuals is unsettling.

AG Merrick Garland: “In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethically motivated violent extremists specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”
pic.twitter.com/4JtruuMSv2

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 15, 2021

For instance, those who “violently oppose” “all forms of capitalism” or “corporate globalization” are listed under this less-discussed category of “domestic terrorist.” This highlights how people on the left, many of whom have called for capitalism to be dismantled or replaced in the US in recent years, could easily be targeted in this new “war” that many self-proclaimed leftists are currently supporting. Similarly, “environmentally-motivated extremists,” a category in which groups such as Extinction Rebellion could easily fall, are also included.

In addition, the phrasing indicates that it could easily include as “terrorists” those who oppose the World Economic Forum’s vision for global “stakeholder capitalism,” as that form of “capitalism” involves corporations and their main “stakeholders” creating a new global economic and governance system. The WEF’s stakeholder capitalism thus involves both “capitalism” and “corporate globalization.”

The strategy also includes those who “take steps to violently resist government authority . . . based on perceived overreach.” This, of course, creates a dangerous situation in which the government could, purposely or otherwise, implement a policy that is an obvious overreach and/or blatantly unconstitutional and then label those who resist it “domestic terrorists” and deal with them as such—well before the overreach can be challenged in court.

Another telling addition to this group of potential “terrorists” is “any other individual or group who engages in violence—or incites imminent violence—in opposition to legislative, regulatory or other actions taken by the government.” Thus, if the government implements a policy that a large swath of the population finds abhorrent, such as launching a new, unpopular war abroad, those deemed to be “inciting” resistance to the action online could be considered domestic terrorists.

Such scenarios are not unrealistic, given the loose way in which the government and the media have defined things like “incitement” and even “violence” (e. g., “hate speech” is a form of violence) in the recent past. The situation is ripe for manipulation and abuse. To think the federal government (including the Biden administration and subsequent administrations) would not abuse such power reflects an ignorance of US political history, particularly when the main forces behind most terrorist incidents in the nation are actually US government institutions like the FBI (more FBI examples here, here, here, and here).

Furthermore, the original plans for the detention of American dissidents in the event of a national emergency, drawn up during the Reagan era as part of its “continuity of government” contingency, cited popular nonviolent opposition to US intervention in Latin America as a potential “emergency” that could trigger the activation of those plans. Many of those “continuity of government” protocols remain on the books today and can be triggered, depending on the whims of those in power. It is unlikely that this new domestic terror framework will be any different regarding nonviolent protest and demonstrations.

Yet another passage in this section of the strategy states that “domestic terrorists” can, “in some instances, connect and intersect with conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and misinformation.” It adds that the proliferation of such “dangerous” information “on Internet-based communications platforms such as social media, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, all of these elements can combine and amplify threats to public safety.”

Thus, the presence of “conspiracy theories” and information deemed by the government to be “misinformation” online is itself framed as threatening public safety, a claim made more than once in this policy document. Given that a major “pillar” of the strategy involves eliminating online material that promotes “domestic terrorist” ideologies, it seems inevitable that such efforts will also “connect and intersect” with the censorship of “conspiracy theories” and narratives that the establishment finds inconvenient or threatening for any reason.

Pillars of Tyranny

The strategy notes in several places that this new domestic-terror policy will involve a variety of public-private partnerships in order to “build a community to address domestic terrorism that extends not only across the Federal Government but also to critical partners.” It adds, “That includes state, local, tribal and territorial governments, as well as foreign allies and partners, civil society, the technology sector, academic, and more.”

The mention of foreign allies and partners is important as it suggests a multinational approach to what is supposedly a US “domestic” issue and is yet another step toward a transnational security-state apparatus. A similar multinational approach was used to devastating effect during the CIA-developed Operation Condor, which was used to target and “disappear” domestic dissidents in South America in the 1970s and 1980s. The foreign allies mentioned in the Biden administration’s strategy are left unspecified, but it seems likely that such allies would include the rest of the Five Eyes alliance (the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) and Israel, all of which already have well-established information-sharing agreements with the US for signals intelligence.

The new domestic-terror strategy has four main “pillars,” which can be summarized as (1) understanding and sharing domestic terrorism-related information, including with foreign governments and private tech companies; (2) preventing domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence; (3) disrupting and deterring domestic terrorism activity; and (4) confronting long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.

The first pillar involves the mass accumulation of data through new information-sharing partnerships and the deepening of existing ones. Much of this information sharing will involve increased data mining and analysis of statements made openly on the internet, particularly on social media, something already done by US intelligence contractors such as Palantir. While the gathering of such information has been ongoing for years, this policy allows even more to be shared and legally used to make cases against individuals deemed to have made threats or expressed “dangerous” opinions online.

Included in the first pillar is the need to increase engagement with financial institutions concerning the financing of “domestic terrorists.” US banks, such as Bank of America, have already gone quite far in this regard, leading to accusations that it has begun acting like an intelligence agency. Such claims were made after it was revealed that the BofA had passed to the government the private banking information of over two hundred people that the bank deemed as pointing to involvement in the events of January 6, 2021. It seems likely, given this passage in the strategy, that such behavior by banks will soon become the norm, rather than an outlier, in the United States.

The second pillar is ostensibly focused on preventing the online recruitment of domestic terrorists and online content that leads to the “mobilization of violence.” The strategy notes that this pillar “means reducing both supply and demand of recruitment materials by limiting widespread availability online and bolstering resilience to it by those who nonetheless encounter it.“ The strategy states that such government efforts in the past have a “mixed record,” but it goes on to claim that trampling on civil liberties will be avoided because the government is “consulting extensively” with unspecified “stakeholders” nationwide.

Regarding recruitment, the strategy states that “these activities are increasingly happening on Internet-based communications platforms, including social media, online gaming platforms, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, even as those products and services frequently offer other important benefits.” It adds that “the widespread availability of domestic terrorist recruitment material online is a national security threat whose front lines are overwhelmingly private-sector online platforms.”

The US government plans to provide “information to assist online platforms with their own initiatives to enforce their own terms of service that prohibits the use of their platforms for domestic terrorist activities” as well as to “facilitate more robust efforts outside the government to counter terrorists’ abuse of Internet-based communications platforms.”

Given the wider definition of “domestic terrorist” that now includes those who oppose capitalism and corporate globalization as well as those who resist government overreach, online content discussing these and other “anti-government” and “anti-authority” ideas could soon be treated in the same way as online Al Qaeda or ISIS propaganda. Efforts, however, are unlikely to remain focused on these topics. As Unlimited Hangout reported last November, both UK intelligence and the US national-security state were developing plans to treat critical reporting on the COVID-19 vaccines as “extremist” propaganda.

Another key part of this pillar is the need to “increase digital literacy” among the American public, while censoring “harmful content” disseminated by “terrorists” as well as by “hostile foreign powers seeking to undermine American democracy.” The latter is a clear reference to the claim that critical reporting of US government policy, particularly its military and intelligence activities abroad, was the product of “Russian disinformation,” a now discredited claim that was used to heavily censor independent media. This new government strategy appears to promise more of this sort of thing.

It also notes that “digital literacy” education for a domestic audience is being developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Such a policy would have previously violated US law until the Obama administration worked with Congress to repeal the Smith-Mundt Act, thus lifting the ban on the government directing propaganda at domestic audiences.

The third pillar of the strategy seeks to increase the number of federal prosecutors investigating and trying domestic-terror cases. Their numbers are likely to jump as the definition of “domestic terrorist” is expanded. It also seeks to explore whether “legislative reforms could meaningfully and materially increase our ability to protect Americans from acts of domestic terrorism while simultaneously guarding against potential abuse of overreach.” In contrast to past public statements on police reform by those in the Biden administration, the strategy calls to “empower” state and local law enforcement to tackle domestic terrorism, including with increased access to “intelligence” on citizens deemed dangerous or subversive for any number of reasons.

To that effect, the strategy states the following (p. 24):

“The Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, with support from the National Counterterrorism Center [part of the intelligence community], are incorporating an increased focus on domestic terrorism into current intelligence products and leveraging current mechanisms of information and intelligence sharing to improve the sharing of domestic terrorism-related content and indicators with non-Federal partners. These agencies are also improving the usability of their existing information-sharing platforms, including through the development of mobile applications designed to provide a broader reach to non-Federal law enforcement partners, while simultaneously refining that support based on partner feedback.”

Such an intelligence tool could easily be, for example, Palantir, which is already used by the intelligence agencies, the DHS, and several US police departments for “predictive policing,” that is, pre-crime actions. Notably, Palantir has long included a “subversive” label for individuals included on government and law enforcement databases, a parallel with the controversial and highly secretive Main Core database of US dissidents.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the “pre-crime” element of the new domestic terror strategy explicit on Tuesday when he said in a statement that DHS would continue “developing key partnerships with local stakeholders through the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to identify potential threats and prevent terrorism.” CP3, which replaced DHS’ Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention this past May, officially “supports communities across the United States to prevent individuals from radicalizing to violence and intervene when individuals have already radicalized to violence.”

The fourth pillar of the strategy is by far the most opaque and cryptic, while also the most far-reaching. It aims to address the sources that cause “terrorists” to mobilize “towards violence.” This requires “tackling racism in America,” a lofty goal for an administration headed by the man who controversially eulogized Congress’ most ardent segregationist and who was a key architect of the 1994 crime bill. As well, it provides for “early intervention and appropriate care for those who pose a danger to themselves or others.”

In regard to the latter proposal, the Trump administration, in a bid to “stop mass shootings before they occur,” considered a proposal to create a “health DARPA” or “HARPA” that would monitor the online communications of everyday Americans for “neuropsychiatric” warning signs that someone might be “mobilizing towards violence.” While the Trump administration did not create HARPA or adopt this policy, the Biden administration has recently announced plans to do so.

Finally, the strategy indicates that this fourth pillar is part of a “broader priority”: “enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence.” In other words, fostering trust in government while simultaneously censoring “polarizing” voices who distrust or criticize the government is a key policy goal behind the Biden administration’s new domestic-terror strategy.

Calling Their Shots?

While this is a new strategy, its origins lie in the Trump administration. In October 2019, Trump’s attorney general William Barr formally announced in a memorandum that a new “national disruption and early engagement program” aimed at detecting those “mobilizing towards violence” before they commit any crime would launch in the coming months. That program, known as DEEP (Disruption and Early Engagement Program), is now active and has involved the Department of Justice, the FBI, and “private sector partners” since its creation.

Barr’s announcement of DEEP followed his unsettling “prediction” in July 2019 that “a major incident may occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.” Not long after that speech, a spate of mass shootings occurred, including the El Paso Walmart shooting, which killed twenty-three and about which many questions remain unanswered regarding the FBI’s apparent foreknowledge of the event. After these events took place in 2019, Trump called for the creation of a government backdoor into encryption and the very pre-crime system that Barr announced shortly thereafter in October 2019. The Biden administration, in publishing this strategy, is merely finishing what Barr started.

Indeed, a “prediction” like Barr’s in 2019 was offered by the DHS’ Elizabeth Neumann during a Congressional hearing in late February 2020. That hearing was largely ignored by the media as it coincided with an international rise of concern regarding COVID-19. At the hearing, Neumann, who previously coordinated the development of the government’s post-9/11 terrorism information sharing strategies and policies and worked closely with the intelligence community, gave the following warning about an imminent “domestic terror” event in the United States:

“And every counterterrorism professional I speak to in the federal government and overseas feels like we are at the doorstep of another 9/11, maybe not something that catastrophic in terms of the visual or the numbers, but that we can see it building and we don’t quite know how to stop it.”

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/DHSs-Elizabeth-Neumann-new-911.mp4

This “another 9/11” emerged on January 6, 2021, as the events of that day in the Capitol were quickly labeled as such by both the media and prominent politicians, while also inspiring calls from the White House and the Democrats for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the incident. This event, of course, figures prominently in the justification for the new domestic-terror strategy, despite the considerable video and other evidence that shows that Capitol law enforcement, and potentially the FBI, were directly involved in facilitating the breach of the Capitol. In addition, when one considers that the QAnon movement, which had a clear role in the events of January 6, was itself likely a government-orchestrated psyop, the government hand in creating this situation seems clear.

It goes without saying that the official reasons offered for these militaristic “domestic terror” policies, which the US has already implemented abroad—causing much more terror than it has prevented—does not justify the creation of a massive new national-security infrastructure that aims to criminalize and censor online speech. Yet the admission that this new strategy, as part of a broader effort to “enhance faith in government,” combines domestic propaganda campaigns with the censorship and pursuit of those who distrust government heralds the end of even the illusion of democracy in the United States.

“Americans deserve the freedom to choose a life without surveillance and the government regulation that would make that possible. While we continue to believe the sentiment, we fear it may soon be obsolete or irrelevant. We deserve that freedom, but the window to achieve it narrows a little more each day. If we don’t act now, with great urgency, it may very well close for good.”—Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson, New York Times

Databit by databit, we are building our own electronic concentration camps.

With every new smart piece of smart technology we acquire, every new app we download, every new photo or post we share online, we are making it that much easier for the government and its corporate partners to identify, track and eventually round us up.

Saint or sinner, it doesn’t matter because we’re all being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

This is what it means to live in a suspect society.

The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Capitol riots shows exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives.

Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents are compiling a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The amount of digital information is staggering: 15,000 hours of surveillance and body-worn camera footage; 1,600 electronic devices; 270,000 digital media tips; at least 140,000 photos and videos; and about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones.

And that’s just what we know.

More than 300 individuals from 40 states have already been charged and another 280 arrested in connection with the events of January 6. As many as 500 others are still being hunted by government agents.

Also included in this data roundup are individuals who may have had nothing to do with the riots but whose cell phone location data identified them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Forget about being innocent until proven guilty.

In a suspect society such as ours, the burden of proof has been flipped: now, you start off guilty and have to prove your innocence.

For instance, you didn’t even have to be involved in the Capitol riots to qualify for a visit from the FBI: investigators have reportedly been tracking—and questioning—anyone whose cell phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the Capitol. One man, who had gone out for a walk with his daughters only to end up stranded near the Capitol crowds, actually had FBI agents show up at his door days later. Using Google Maps, agents were able to pinpoint exactly where they were standing and for how long.

All of the many creepy, calculating, invasive investigative and surveillance tools the government has acquired over the years are on full display right now in the FBI’s ongoing efforts to bring the rioters to “justice.”

FBI agents are matching photos with drivers’ license pictures; tracking movements by way of license plate toll readers; and zooming in on physical identifying marks such as moles, scars and tattoos, as well as brands, logos and symbols on clothing and backpacks. They’re poring over hours of security and body camera footage; scouring social media posts; triangulating data from cellphone towers and WiFi signals; layering facial recognition software on top of that; and then cross-referencing footage with public social media posts.

It’s not just the FBI on the hunt, however.

They’ve enlisted the help of volunteer posses of private citizens, such as Deep State Dogs, to collaborate on the grunt work. As Dinah Voyles Pulver reports, once Deep State Dogs locates a person and confirms their identity, they put a package together with the person’s name, address, phone number and several images and send it to the FBI.

According to USA Today, the FBI is relying on the American public and volunteer cybersleuths to help bolster its cases.

This takes See Something, Say Something snitching programs to a whole new level.

The lesson to be learned: Big Brother, Big Sister and all of their friends are watching you.

They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

Simply liking or sharing this article on Facebook, retweeting it on Twitter, or merely reading it or any other articles related to government wrongdoing, surveillance, police misconduct or civil liberties might be enough to get you categorized as a particular kind of person with particular kinds of interests that reflect a particular kind of mindset that might just lead you to engage in a particular kinds of activities and, therefore, puts you in the crosshairs of a government investigation as a potential troublemaker a.k.a. domestic extremist.

Chances are, as the Washington Post reports, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

In other words, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.

The government has the know-how.

It took days, if not hours or minutes, for the FBI to begin the process of identifying, tracking and rounding up those suspected of being part of the Capitol riots.

Imagine how quickly government agents could target and round up any segment of society they wanted to based on the digital trails and digital footprints we leave behind.

Of course, the government has been hard at work for years acquiring these totalitarian powers.

Long before the January 6 riots, the FBI was busily amassing the surveillance tools necessary to monitor social media posts, track and identify individuals using cell phone signals and facial recognition technology, and round up “suspects” who may be of interest to the government for one reason or another.

As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

All it needs is the data, which more than 90% of young adults and 65% of American adults are happy to provide.

When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

As for the Fourth Amendment and its prohibitions on warrantless searches and invasions of privacy without probable cause, those safeguards have been rendered all but useless by legislative end-runs, judicial justifications, and corporate collusions.

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, social media posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

For example, police have been using Stingray devices mounted on their cruisers to intercept cell phone calls and text messages without court-issued search warrants. Doppler radar devices, which can detect human breathing and movement within a home, are already being employed by the police to deliver arrest warrants.

License plate readers, yet another law enforcement spying device made possible through funding by the Department of Homeland Security, can record up to 1800 license plates per minute. Moreover, these surveillance cameras can also photograph those inside a moving car. Reports indicate that the Drug Enforcement Administration has been using the cameras in conjunction with facial recognition software to build a “vehicle surveillance database” of the nation’s cars, drivers and passengers.

Sidewalk and “public space” cameras, sold to gullible communities as a sure-fire means of fighting crime, is yet another DHS program that is blanketing small and large towns alike with government-funded and monitored surveillance cameras. It’s all part of a public-private partnership that gives government officials access to all manner of surveillance cameras, on sidewalks, on buildings, on buses, even those installed on private property.

Couple these surveillance cameras with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology and you have the makings of “pre-crime” cameras, which scan your mannerisms, compare you to pre-set parameters for “normal” behavior, and alert the police if you trigger any computerized alarms as being “suspicious.”

State and federal law enforcement agencies are pushing to expand their biometric and DNA databases by requiring that anyone accused of a misdemeanor have their DNA collected and catalogued. However, technology is already available that allows the government to collect biometrics such as fingerprints from a distance, without a person’s cooperation or knowledge. One system can actually scan and identify a fingerprint from nearly 20 feet away.

Developers are hard at work on a radar gun that can actually show if you or someone in your car is texting. Another technology being developed, dubbed a “textalyzer” device, would allow police to determine whether someone was driving while distracted. Refusing to submit one’s phone to testing could result in a suspended or revoked driver’s license.

It’s a sure bet that anything the government welcomes (and funds) too enthusiastically is bound to be a Trojan horse full of nasty, invasive surprises.

Case in point: police body cameras. Hailed as the easy fix solution to police abuses, these body cameras—made possible by funding from the Department of Justice—turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras. Of course, if you try to request access to that footage, you’ll find yourself being led a merry and costly chase through miles of red tape, bureaucratic footmen and unhelpful courts.

The “internet of things” refers to the growing number of “smart” appliances and electronic devices now connected to the internet and capable of interacting with each other and being controlled remotely. These range from thermostats and coffee makers to cars and TVs. Of course, there’s a price to pay for such easy control and access. That price amounts to relinquishing ultimate control of and access to your home to the government and its corporate partners. For example, while Samsung’s Smart TVs are capable of “listening” to what you say, thereby allowing users to control the TV using voice commands, it also records everything you say and relays it to a third party, e.g., the government.

Then again, the government doesn’t really need to spy on you using your smart TV when the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your cellphone and record your conversations. The FBI can also do the same thing to laptop computers without the owner knowing any better.

Drones, which are taking to the skies en masse, are the converging point for all of the weapons and technology already available to law enforcement agencies. In fact, drones can listen in on your phone calls, see through the walls of your home, scan your biometrics, photograph you and track your movements, and even corral you with sophisticated weaponry.

All of these technologies add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence, especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.

These digital trails are everywhere.

As investigative journalists Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson explain, “This data—collected by smartphone apps and then fed into a dizzyingly complex digital advertising ecosystem … provided an intimate record of people whether they were visiting drug treatment centers, strip clubs, casinos, abortion clinics or places of worship.”

In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted.

As Warzel and Thompson warn:

“To think that the information will be used against individuals only if they’ve broken the law is naïve; such data is collected and remains vulnerable to use and abuse whether people gather in support of an insurrection or they justly protest police violence… This collection will only grow more sophisticated… It gets easier by the day… it does not discriminate. It harvests from the phones of MAGA rioters, police officers, lawmakers and passers-by. There is no evidence, from the past or current day, that the power this data collection offers will be used only to good ends. There is no evidence that if we allow it to continue to happen, the country will be safer or fairer.”

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, probation officer, Big Brother and Father Knows Best all rolled into one.

There is no gray area any longer.

“The Fight for the Soul of Seattle” examines the role of Seattle’s City Council in allowing the situation to reach what many experts consider epidemic levels under the guise of a compassionate approach to people who suffer from substance addiction and who commit crimes to feed their habit.

It documents the heartbreaking condition of people on the streets, and the crushing decisions Seattle entrepreneurs are forced to contemplate as their life savings and dreams are destroyed by theft, vandalism and a dwindling customer base. This documentary also explores potential bold solutions to treat those living on the streets and pair them with agencies and assistance that can provide a clear path away from the endless circle of addiction and crime.

00:03:20​ - Seattle eBike store, Brian Nordwell
00:07:20​ - Mark Sidran, Former Seattle City Attorney
00:12:16​ - Scott Lindsey, Former Public Safety for Mayor Ed Murray
00:14:35​ - Ginny Burton
00:17:30​ - Tom Wolf
00:20:50​ - Seattle PD difficult job
00:29:00​ - CHOP, Lorenzo Anderson
00:32:00​ - East precinct taken back
00:33:21​ - Court house protection
00:37:00​ - Former Judge Ed Mckenna
00:49:07​ - Seattle City Council, defund police
00:52:20​ - Business fighting for survival
00:58:00​ - Mental health issues, support
01:06:28​ - Drug and homeless epidemic reform
01:13:30​ - Travis Berge, repeat offenders
01:20:00​ - Kevan Carter Jr.'s mental illness
01:26:40​ - What can be done? What's the plan?

A few years ago, when I did ride-alongs with Toronto-area police officers, I saw how much of their job involves dealing with mental-health and addiction issues. Most of the incidents these officers responded to were rooted in troubled households, and the protagonists typically were well-known to the arriving officers: an autistic adult son whose outbursts overwhelmed aging parents, a wife fearful of an alcoholic husband, an agitated elderly man who’d become convinced his neighbours were spying on him through his devices. Most of these incidents required therapists as much as (or more than) police officers. But since the threat of violence hovered over all of them, at least in theory, it was the police who got the call. As I wrote at the time, the officers mostly played the role of social workers with a badge.

The stereotype of police as violent, poorly trained hotheads is sometimes borne out on YouTube, which now functions as a highlight reel for every bad apple wearing a uniform. But the reality—at least in Canada, where I live—is that new officers are typically post-secondary graduates who spend a lot of their time in training sessions. In 2016, I sat in on one such session at a police headquarters facility west of Toronto, where officers attend seminars conducted by experts from within the community, and then go through elaborate small-group role-playing scenarios led by a trained corps of actors who specialize in mimicking various crisis states. As I reported in a magazine article, the facility features a mock-up house with different rooms, so officers can perform their exercises in realistic domestic environments. When each role-playing scenario was completed, the officers were critiqued and interviewed in front of the entire group. Then the actor herself would give her impressions about how the officers’ behaviour made her feel.

I thought about all this following the real-life case of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, the 29-year-old black woman who fell to her death from a Toronto apartment balcony in May while seeking to evade police officers. During one role-playing session I observed four years ago, an actor seeking to evade officers under similar circumstances ran into a bathroom and locked the door. For five minutes, the officers awkwardly tried to coax her out, meeting with eventual success. In the analysis segment that followed, the supervising officer explained that it once was common practice for officers in such situations to simply bash open the door. But this kind of technique fell out of fashion years ago, since it led to unnecessary trauma and risk (for the officers as much as the bathroom occupant).

Some of the other acted exercises I observed included a paranoid schizophrenic crouching under a kitchen table, babbling fearfully as officers tried to soothe him, and a homeless woman who threatened to hurt herself with a knife if officers approached. While holding them at bay from her perch on a living-room sofa, the actress recited a backstory: She had nothing to live for because child services had taken away her kid, her only reason for hope. When she finally put away the knife, the officers walked forward to escort her away—at which point the supervisor ended the exercise and admonished them: “Yes, she put away that knife,” he said. “But how do you know that’s the only weapon she’s got? When you focus on the object, you forget about the person.”

There was also a memorable exercise involving a male actor who was threatening to jump from a window—which presents another grim point of analogy to the Korchinski-Paquet case. It is a mark of this man’s acting skill that, years after I watched his morbid star turn, I still remember the details of his narrative: He was a musician, suffering from depression, who was stuck pursuing a dead-end part-time position with a local orchestra.

Critically, he wasn’t the only actor who was part of this particular exercise. An older woman played the role of his mother, who was screaming non-stop as the officers arrived. Two pairs of officers did the exercise in succession, and their approaches were very different. The first pair—two men who’d recently joined the force—both approached the man and took turns imploring him to step down from the window. But they could barely make themselves heard over the screaming of the actor playing the mother role. Then came the second pair of officers, middle-aged women who’d apparently worked together on the beat. One of the women spoke to the man, while the other officer gently guided the mother off into another room. This was correct practice, the instructor said: You can’t make any progress if you’re just going to become bystanders to an ongoing drama. In many cases, you need to separate the family members before you can help them.

It’s the same principle I saw (and wrote about) when I observed two veteran officers show up at the (very real) home of a young couple who’d been fighting. The man, plainly troubled in all sorts of ways, had punched a hole in the wall, and the woman was frightened. One of the first things that happened upon our arrival was that the female officer—Constable Jaime Peach, who still serves on the Peel Police—took the man downstairs and interviewed him in the lobby. The other officer, Winston Fullinfaw (who was promoted to staff sergeant around the time I rode with him), interviewed the woman and learned about her complicated family situation. Had there been more adults in the household, it’s possible that more officers would have been dispatched: When it comes to complicated domestic disputes, sometimes there is no substitute for manpower. A beleaguered lone officer sometimes may become more prone to violence, since he is more likely to lose control of a situation and feel threatened.

This is something we should think about amid claims that society would be more peaceful if we simply got rid of the police, or starved it of funding. We should also think about how such police forces would respond to funding cuts. Training programs would be one of the first things to face the chopping block. Would that make anyone safer?

On May 27th, the last day of Korchinski-Paquet’s life, a half-dozen Toronto Police Service officers and an EMS worker responded to a call from her family members, who’d told a 911 operator that there was a fight in their 24th-storey apartment. Because Ontario’s independent Special Investigations Unit (SIU) now has released its report on Korchinski-Paquet’s death, based on camera footage and numerous interviews, we know what happened next. As the Toronto Sun accurately reported back in early June, Korchinski-Paquet asked to take a bathroom break before accompanying the officers downtown for mental-health treatment. She then barricaded a door, went onto her balcony, and slipped while trying to step onto another balcony, falling 24 floors to her death. Initial reports from family—which suggested that officers had murdered the woman by deliberately pushing her off the balcony—were completely false.

To state the obvious, the death of Korchinski-Paquet is a tragedy. And it would have compounded the tragedy to learn that her death was a racist act of homicide. One might therefore imagine that it would provide Torontonians with at least some meager solace to learn that their police force had acquitted itself without fault, and in a way that reflected the progressive, non-violent methods that are taught in training programs. But in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and the riots that followed, it has become a common claim among progressive media and politicians that Canada is every bit as racist as the United States. And in the absence of actual recent Canadian scenes of horror on par with the killing of Floyd, the case of Korchinski-Paquet has been cited as a substitute.

The Toronto Star, which never misses a chance to hustle racism claims to its readers, has run features with titles such as “Regis Korchinski-Paquet’s death and anti-Black violence in policing,” informing us “how systemic racism and anti-Black violence continues to play a huge role in Canada.” In a Star op-ed published in early June, opinion writer Noa Mendelsohn Aviv explicitly rejected the proposition that “in order to comment on Regis’s death, we must wait for the result of the Special Investigation Unit’s investigation because we do not yet have the facts and need to ascertain the truth.” (Even when this week’s report came out, the Star could not bear to abandon its anti-police posture, and so now is impugning the credibility of the SIU.) A Maclean’s writer described Korchinski-Paquet’s death as evidence that “Black lives” are “expendable.” The SIU investigation shows nothing of the kind, even if I doubt we will see any retractions.

Regis Korchinski-Paquet died because of police intervention.

She needed help and her life was taken instead.

The SIU’s decision brings no justice to the family and it won’t prevent this from happening again.https://t.co/qvJ7uuJWUK

— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) August 27, 2020

Perhaps the most appalling response—because it comes from someone who purports to be seeking the job of Canadian prime minister—was from Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s progressive New Democratic Party (NDP). On August 26th, after the SIU released its report, Singh blithely claimed that Regis Korchinski-Paquet “died because of police intervention. She needed help and her life was taken instead. The SIU’s decision brings no justice to the family and it won’t prevent this from happening again.” Singh offered no theory as to why the SIU report was wrong, but simply delivered a flat-out blood libel against the officers who’d tried to help Korchinski-Paquet on May 27th (and who are likely traumatized by what happened, as any normal person would be). To repeat: This isn’t some college activist or aggrieved family member. It is the leader of a national Canadian political party who holds the balance of power in Canada’s minority Parliament.

Singh is in some ways a special case, because his NDP, having strayed so far from the unionized blue-collar base on which it was founded, now has been reduced to little more than a social-media outpost catering to college hashtaggers. For weeks, in 2017, he spouted conspiracist nonsense about the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. More recently, he casually denounced the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a gang of bigots, and then was ejected from Parliament when he accused a fellow Parliamentarian of being racist because he didn’t go along with Singh’s slur. But though comprising an extreme example, Singh is hardly alone. Indeed, the presumption that all police are, by their nature, contaminated by racist malignancy, has become a casually recited starting point in debates about crime and policing.

In regard to the actual goal of reforming police methods—which is the thing that Singh and everyone else pretends to care about—it’s worth taking stock of the damage wrought by this irresponsible approach. About three Torontonians die every year during encounters with police, this in a city of three million people. That’s less than one-third the average annual tally for Minneapolis, a city that is one-seventh the size of Toronto. One might think that a 20-plus-fold difference in per-capita police-involved deaths might be seen as statistically significant, and be reasonably attributed to the massive investments in training and professionalism that I have personally witnessed in Canadian constabularies. If best practices in Toronto spread to American cities, lives truly could be saved. But instead, progressives such as Singh are far more interested in polluting Twitter with lazy lies and protest applause lines that erase any distinction between policing methods.

Information about the death of Korchinski-Paquet may be found on the website of Ontario’s SIU. And if there are lessons to be gleaned about how to better respond to potentially violent family crises, our leaders should implement them. But so far, police critics seem far more interested in exploiting this poor woman’s death to advance their own ideological bona fides and defame innocent police officers than with preventing future tragedies.

Jonathan Kay is Canadian Editor of Quillette. He tweets at @jonkay.

Correction: The original version of this article erroneously indicated that the average number of Torontonians who die annually in police-involved actions is about one. In fact, it is closer to three. The text has been corrected accordingly.

We bounced along a pitted dirt road on an Indigenous reserve in Northern Ontario. As I leaned on my horn to convince a bored looking, semi-feral stray dog to move out of our path, I chatted with my passenger. She was a young Indigenous woman who worked at our police detachment as an administration assistant. It was midnight, and I was driving her home at the end of her shift because dangers—both canine and human—rendered it unsafe for our civilian staff members to walk home alone after dark. This woman, who I’ll call Grace, was 23 years old. She had recently returned to the reserve after spending a year in southern Ontario attending university. Raised in a home with two alcoholic parents, by the age of 14 she was pregnant. Another child with another father would follow before her 18th birthday. Neither of these men remained in her life.

Despite these challenges, Grace was a voracious reader who loved school. With the help of a supportive teacher and various government programs, she was able to complete school and get accepted to university. An arrangement was made whereby she would attend university down south while her parents, by now recovering alcoholics, looked after her children. Unfortunately, this potential success story would end in failure. Within a year, Grace’s parents had returned to drinking and she was forced to choose between withdrawing from school and returning to care for her children or losing them to foster care. She chose the former and the intergenerational cycle of defeat continued.

Activists invariably claim “racism” or a “lack of funding” are behind stories like these. But these are simplistic characterizations of complex problems. No fair-minded person wants to see a person like Grace fail. Indeed, recent years have seen a groundswell of public support demanding better outcomes for people like her. And Grace’s situation can hardly be attributed to a “lack of funding.” The financial and social supports were in place to help her achieve her goals. What undermined her were deep-rooted social pathologies that simply cannot be solved through corporate diversity programs, increased government funding, or vituperative Twitter campaigns that seek to defenestrate those who fail to stay current with the malleable tenets of the zeitgeist.

As a now senior Canadian police officer in my third decade of service, I have reflected on this experience quite a bit recently. Current orthodoxy would ascribe Grace’s situation to “systemic” racism. As I watch media, activists, academics, and opportunistic politicians push each other aside to denounce the men and women who patrol our communities as pawns of a systemically racist institution, I have been struck by the passionate intensity of their accusations. As I write this, the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Brenda Lucki, is fighting for her professional survival after admitting publicly that she “struggled” with the definition of systemic racism. For me and many other officers these attacks are bewildering because Commissioner Lucki echoes sentiments many of us hold. Some will argue that this is because we suffer from blind spots due to our privilege. Perhaps. But to that I would respond that our experience as police officers entitles us to a unique perspective on these issues not readily apparent to anyone who has never worn the uniform.

As calls to “defund police” continue, academics, activists, politicians, and other public figures are re-evaluating the role law enforcement plays in liberal democratic societies. In and of itself, this isn’t a bad thing. Societies are fluid, and society’s institutions must be fluid too. For years, a debate has raged within police and criminological circles about what exactly police should be doing. Mental health provides one example. Since the 1970s, virtually every jurisdiction in the Western world began the process of deinstitutionalization, which saw those suffering from psychiatric disorders treated within the community rather than warehoused in asylums. While this was a humane evolution, it also resulted in police officers becoming the default option when a person with a psychiatric disorder suffers emotional distress. Recent events have shown that this model needs re-evaluation. A greater emphasis on community-based mental health supports would be welcomed by mental health professionals, patient advocates, and police alike.

Another area in which activists and police leaders would no doubt find common ground relates to police accountability. Since the 1960s, the job protections afforded to police officers have grown exponentially stronger. There are legitimate reasons for this. Policing is an adversarial profession, and police officers need protections beyond those offered to other professions so that they can do their job effectively without being subject to improper influence. Think of a police officer who pulls over a powerful public figure for drunk driving. It benefits society that the officer can do his duty, confident that he will not be penalized for it. But the current police accountability system has grown dysfunctional. Disciplinary processes routinely take years rather than months and now rival criminal prosecutions in their complexity. The result is that it has become nearly impossible for police services to terminate the employment of incompetent, corrupt, or abusive officers. Any reforms that made this process more manageable would be warmly embraced by both civil libertarians and police leadership.

But while the need for some police reforms is apparent, the current debate has reached a fevered pitch. Otherwise responsible politicians and public figures have determined that policing as an institution is broken and systematically racist. This is a mischaracterization and it does a disservice to the thousands of dedicated police officers who serve their communities diligently every day. More ominously, it corrodes one of the key institutions that anchor the liberal democratic state. Systemic racism is a malleable concept. As praxis for the social justice movement, its obscurity is its strength because its existence does not have to be supported by specific evidence. In the current environment, systemic racism has become a pseudo-religious concept, an invisible yet malevolent force that torments the oppressed from within society’s institutions. As such, failure to declare sufficient fealty to efforts opposing it provide a ready cudgel with which the mob can denounce anyone who disputes the febrile excesses of social justice activism.

When anti-racism activists cite evidence of systemic racism, they invariably point to statistics that demonstrate marginalized people make up a disproportionate share of those involved adversely with the justice system. In Canada, this is reflected in the oft-cited statistic that Indigenous Canadians make up five percent of the population but now account for 30 percent of the federal inmate population, up significantly since the year 2000. Activists claim this proves that systemic racism not only exists, but is growing, and they identify “over-policing” as the root cause of this disparity. But are Indigenous communities really over-policed?

Over the last 20 years there has been a massive increase in awareness of Indigenous issues in Canada. Police forces throughout the country now train officers in bias management, Indigenous history and other methodologies designed to foster critical thinking and social awareness. The Canadian justice system for its part has made significant structural changes to address the high proportion of Indigenous inmates in the prison population, most notably through the Gladue principles which require judges to take an Indigenous accused’s background into account during sentencing, usually resulting in a reduced sentence. Amid this increased awareness is it logical to conclude that those who work within the justice system have become more racist?

A closer examination of the facts would suggest otherwise. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, for instance, found that on-reserve Indigenous people in Canada are charged with fewer property offences than non-Indigenous people but more violent ones.1 This suggests that, if anything, officers are more lenient when dealing with Indigenous offenders for minor property crimes and engage the criminal justice system only in the case of more serious offences in which a victim has been the subject of violence. That was certainly my experience when I worked in those communities. It’s also notable that over a third of Indigenous men in federal prisons are serving sentences for sexual offences.2 These charges are by nature complaint-generated rather than resulting from discretionary policing practices.

In reality, the underlying cause of high rates of Indigenous incarceration results from higher rates of criminality. That’s not a moral judgement. Toxic combinations of poverty, geographic isolation, family breakdown, and substance abuse underpin this pathology. Demographic differences do as well—46 percent of the Indigenous Canadian population is under the age of 25 compared to only 30 percent in the non-Indigenous population. As anyone who witnessed the surge in crime rates that occurred as the baby boomers reached adulthood in the 1960s and 1970s can attest, populations with a large cohort of young people experience much higher crime rates. None of these factors is subject to influence from law enforcement.

Beyond statistics, one only needs to follow current events to witness the differential treatment that police deliver to Indigenous communities. In February of this year, a group of Indigenous protestors barricaded the busiest rail line in Canada over a political dispute. For weeks, the country’s economy ground to a halt as police declined to enforce court injunctions and negotiated with the protestors. This was by no means an aberration. A decade ago, Indigenous protestors barricaded parts of a town in south-western Ontario for months, issuing Indigenous “passports” to local non-Indigenous residents that regulated access to and from their own homes. Media crews and members of the public were assaulted on numerous occasions while police officers stood by, rarely intervening.3 It is hard to envision any non-Indigenous group of protestors, regardless of the cause, being treated with such deference by Canadian law enforcement.

But these nuances are lost in the current reductionist environment. Journalists, traditionally skeptical gate keepers of knowledge who once prided themselves on swimming against the current of prevailing social trends, now lead the charge to storm the ramparts. Every negative interaction between a police officer and an Indigenous or other racialized person is now sensationalized as further proof that policing is brutal and racist, with some going so far as to suggest that policing should be completely abolished. Such radicalism was once the exclusive purview of rabid student unions or delusional freemen on the land. Today this madness has found its way into the opinion pages of formerly venerable liberal establishment newspapers like the New York Times.

While I’m troubled by these developments, it’s not the criticism that bothers me. After all, I’m now on the back nine of what has been a successful and satisfying career. What does scare me, more as a citizen than a police officer, is the attempt by opportunistic politicians, academics, and much of the media to completely delegitimize law enforcement as an institution. 2020 has brought a pandemic, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1919, an economic collapse that rivals that of 1929, and social unrest reminiscent of 1968. If anything, this year has shown us how fragile the fabric that binds society can be. The coming year promises more disruption as the government largesse that has alleviated much of the economic pain caused by lockdowns begins to run out just as the United States enters what promises to be its most contentious election since the Civil War. There is a real danger that millions of people now marching in support of Black Lives Matter and snapping up copies of White Fragility will find themselves facing economic catastrophe as mortgages come due and small business owners give up. Under such circumstances, it’s not hard to envision an environment where those now professing allyship to the contemporary social justice movement revert to the more traditional human quality of tribalism, something that has existed in our nature since the first group of humans met the second group of humans on the African savannah.

If that happens, the only hope civilization has is a shared respect for the institutions that have been built up over centuries. Rule of law, responsible government, a free press that adheres to journalistic principles, and yes, professional law enforcement that enjoys broad-based public support. Without that shared understanding, we as a society are entering uncharted territory. Those on the Left who currently march shouting that “all cops are bastards” and those on the Right who believe that society’s institutions are all part of the “Deep State swamp” should heed the warning offered by Stanford historian Ian Morris who challenges Ronald Reagan’s famous quip that “the 10 most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.’” They are not. In reality, Morris says, the 10 most terrifying words in the English language are “There is no government, and I’m here to kill you.”4

The author is a senior officer with a large police service in Ontario, Canada who has spent most of his career in major crime investigation. He is currently undertaking graduate studies in management. “Mike Wilson” is an alias.

References:

1 Robinson, Viola; Dussault, Rene; Erasmus, George; Chartrand, Paul; Meekison, Peter; Stillett, Mary; Wilson, Bertha: Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples: Bridging the Cultural Divide—A Report on Aboriginal People and the Criminal Justice System in Canada, February 1996 p. 35.
2 MacGillivary, Anne, Comaskey, Brenda: Black Eyes All the Time: Intimate Violence, Aboriginal Women and the Justice System, University of Toronto Press, 1999 p. 55.
3 Blatchford, Christie, Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy and How the Law Failed All of Us, Houndhead Press, 2011.
4 Morris, Ian, War! What Is It Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2014 p. 17.

Image: Brett Morrison (Flickr).

Murillo justified the new creation based on a “grand conspiracy against all of the Americas” he claimed to have uncovered, asserting that the Venezuelan government had colluded with ousted Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera to flood the continent with narco-terrorists and drug runners.

He went on to claim that Venezuelan politicians Nicolas Maduro and Diosdado Cabello “have financed all the terror we have seen in recent times” in Bolivia, referencing the massacres that claimed over thirty lives since the right-wing coup of November 10. Police Chief Rodolfo Montero claimed that the unit is designed to “dismantle the foreign groups who were trained and guided to sow terror among the citizenry.”

Deposed president Evo Morales hit back at the new Interior Minister, stating that, “the coup plotters who seized power in Bolivia are now inventing incredible stories in order to blame others for the state terror they are imposing on others,” noting that the only terrorism in the country is their “blood and fire” attack on the Bolivian people.

Murillo has filed a case at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, against Morales, attempting to convict him of crimes against humanity. Morales faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

While the new government has portrayed the battalion as a counter-terror unit, there are well-founded fears that the force will actually be targeted at foreign journalists and human rights activists that might present a different picture of the country to the outside world than the one the government wants. Murillo recently directly threatened a newly arrived human rights delegation from Argentina. “We recommend these foreigners who are arriving…to be careful,” he said, “We are looking at you. We are following you,” warning them that there will be “zero tolerance” for any “terrorism” or “sedition” they enact. He added that “At the first false move that they make, trying to commit terrorism and sedition, they will have to deal with the police.”

The human rights group responded, “While the de facto government accuses us of being terrorists, we have started what we came to do, take testimony of the different human rights violations that the Bolivian people are enduring.” Murillo was true to his word: the police subsequently detained 14 members of the delegation.

The irony is that it is precisely the new Bolivian coup government and the death squads Murillo controls that have been responsible for grave human rights violations across the country, including two massacres near the cities of Cochabamba and La Paz. Last month the military demanded newly elected president Evo Morales step down, handpicking Senator Jeanine Añez as president, in an action most mainstream media refused to label a “coup.” The move was hailed by the Trump administration but condemned by many of the Democratic Party’s left-wing, including Senator Bernie Sanders. Añez immediately exonerated all security forces of past and future crimes during what she called the “re-establishment of order”, widely understood as granting them a license to kill with impunity. Morales was forced into exile and Murillo began “hunting down” elected pro-Morales officials like the “animals” they were, in his own words.

The new government has also attacked the press, forcing critical international media, like TeleSUR and RT en Español off the air. Meanwhile, an Al-Jazeera anchor was tear-gassed in the face live on air by a member of the security forces. Other journalists have simply been detained and disappeared.

Throughout all this, the Organization of American States and the media have whitewashed events, claiming Morales’ election was fraudulent and supporting the new “interim transitional government.” More than 100 economists, statisticians and academics signed a letter Monday, confirming that, after careful analysis, the results of the October election Morales won were completely legitimate. They claim that the “OAS has to answer for its role” in supporting the coup, contributing to the human rights violations and state terror sweeping the country.

The new move creating an unaccountable armed security force directly aimed at foreign terror will do little to quash fears that Bolivia is heading down the road to a totalitarian dictatorship with no freedom of expression.

La Paz, Bolivia – A brutal military junta that seized power from Bolivia’s democratically elected President Evo Morales is violently repressing a working-class indigenous-led uprising, and the country is rapidly falling under its control.

Soldiers in military fatigues prowl the streets, enforcing a series of choke points around the seat of power. Anyone perceived as standing against the status quo is now subject to being arrested on charges of sedition or terrorism. Dissident journalists and Morales sympathizers have been forced into hiding, leaving the house only when necessary.

“It’s a fascist dictatorship, there’s no hiding it,” says Federico Koba, a left-wing journalist who asked that I not use his real name for fear of arrest. “There are paramilitary agents going around the city taking pictures and pinpointing who’s who. Who is a leader, who is recording the protests, who is recording the repression.”

I met with Koba, an activist and journalist with the leftist news site La Resistencia Bolivia, on the evening of November 24th. I had initially planned to meet with his co-worker, who asked that I refer to him by the pseudonym of Carlos Mujica because he too feared being jailed for his activism.

But on the day of our scheduled interview, Mujica never showed up. He was lying low, having had his house searched and ransacked by police the night before the coup.

Hours later, I received a brief message from him: “Bro, I can’t talk right now. I’m in jail.”

After clashes with the police, 148 students were arrested on Thursday, December 6, in front of a high school in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines). The students were forced to kneel for several hours with hands tied or held above their heads before being taken to the police station. The arrests took place in a car park in front of the school.

"There were individuals who were threwing stones at the police. There was a second patrol that came to arrest them," said a high school student.

200 high schools blocked throughout the country. The day before, vehicles had been set on fire on the fringes of the blockades. Nearly 4,000 high school students mobilized throughout France. In Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), cars were set on fire. Police responded with tear gas. In total, 200 high schools were blocked in France, out of 4,200 schools.

The U.S.-Mexico border at the Pacific Ocean is composed of two very tall fences, with a no man’s land of about 30 feet in between. Sensors and cameras alert U.S Border Patrol guards of any activity on or between the fences.

Thousands of people hoping for asylum in the U.S. are waiting for hearings in tents, shelters and detention facilities in cities on both sides of the border. Rev. John, a Methodist pastor, has been working for the past 25 years with immigrants and refugees both in Mexico and in the United States. He said that each U.S. administration has tried to use fences and walls to stem the flow of newcomers.

Despite the double fence, people keep coming. Most, Rev. John said, are turning themselves into U.S. Border Patrol rather than enter illegally. While still in Central America, many speak by phone with U.S. friends and relatives and develop leads on work and housing before they leave home. He noted that documenting the violence that many are trying to escape — the beatings, murders, burning of businesses and homes — is much easier now that cellphone cameras are prevalent. This can be used as evidence in asylum hearings.

Each Sunday, U.S. Border Patrol opens up an area called Friendship Circle in the binational International Friendship Park, which separates the U.S. side in San Diego from the Mexican side in Tijuana. The circle gives families an opportunity to communicate directly through the fence with relatives on the other side. Ten people at a time are allowed to pass through a gate into this area, which is about a hundred feet long and where the wall is at least 20 feet high. Slatted fencing is covered by several layers of tightly woven steel mesh. Only finger tips can reach through and touch. Small holes in the mesh create a pixilated view of the person on the other side.

The predicament of families and friends divided by U.S. immigration policies is particularly poignant at holidays. This past Easter, while President Donald Trump was in Florida, at his luxurious spread in Mar-a-Lago, people were making their way to both sides of the beach fence at International Friendship Park.

Some on the Mexican side sang for the crowd. Members of a support group for deported U.S. military veterans served food.

On the Mexican side it’s possible to park along the beach and quickly reach the fence by foot. Reaching the U.S. side, however, involves parking a mile and a half inland and walking the rest of the way. On Easter weekend yellow, red and blue spring flowers covered the marshlands and small hills along the rutted road. While the Mexican side of the beach was full of people, the U.S. side was empty except for Border Patrol vehicles and occasional family groups, many with baby strollers.

Two families on the U.S. side were talking with members of their extended family from Honduras who, like many others, were waiting in Mexico for their numbers to be called by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, so they could be interviewed. One family has been waiting for weeks for an interview in San Diego. In the meantime, they are living in shelters in Tijuana.

I had been on the other side of the border several days earlier after entering Mexico at the Tijuana-San Yisidro crossing. After emerging from Mexican immigration and the fenced border-crossing passageway I entered a large plaza.

Each morning this plaza fills with people waiting for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to arrive to give out numbers for asylum application hearings. After receiving their numbers, the people leave the plaza and a second group begins arriving — those who expect their numbers to be called that day by ICE. Days or weeks can pass between getting a number and getting called. During that time, individuals and families must find someplace to stay in Mexico.

When a number is called, the corresponding individual or group is transported into San Diego where a hearing officer makes a preliminary decision on the asylum claim. Then things can get confusing.

...

This little gentleman, I followed him from the Préfecture to the train station, a lone man, 74 years old, with a communist flag. Neither protective glasses nor a mask, just the convictions of a little good-natured man.

He was alone, without anyone, who shouts his first convictions at the front and was the last to leave, standing straight like a 74-year-old man exhausted by life. Alone to make demands and shout his anger not for himself – he knows: what can 74 years old people expect? – but for me, for you, for them, for his children, his grandchildren, but not for himself anymore…

What a funny man he is!! He shouted at me to let go of him! “It’s not because it wasn’t a Saturday that we have to go backwards!!! No, but what do you want!!!!”

Many should take him as an example. This guy is my idol of May 1st – well done grandpa, You’re the boss!! Clap clap clap!!! So even having receiving a mouthful, I said that we leave no one behind, whatever happens.

I will have an eye on you, Sir!

...



Maria, 19, filed a complaint on April 30th at the Marseilles public prosecutor’s office for attempted murder, aggravated voluntary violence, and the non-rendering of assistance to people in danger. On December 8th, on the sidelines of a “Yellow Vests“ demonstration, she was kicked and beaten by police officers. Her brain, in particular, was damaged.

On December 8th 2018, in Marseilles, Maria*, 19, was seriously injured by the police. First hit by a flash ball launcher shot at her thigh, the young woman, who collapsed on the ground, was then violently beaten and kicked in the head.

At the hospital, she was operated on in an emergency basis for a“right craniofacial trauma by a truncheon stroke and right frontal blemish with cerebral contusion”. In other words, Maria has a fractured skull and her brain has been hit. It was only in April, five months later, that she was able to resume her job as a saleswoman, which she did alternately with her studies. Still under medical supervision, she is also followed by a psychiatrist, given her “acute state of stress” associated with “frequent nightmares”, according to the medical report.

Her lawyer, Brice Grazzini, filed a complaint on Tuesday, April 30th, with the prosecutor of Marseille against “unnamed persons, however identified as exercising a police function”, for “attempted murder”, “aggravated voluntary violence”, “not rendering assistance to a person in danger”, and “non-prevention of the commission of an offence”.

What happened on Saturday, December 8th, 2018?

On that day, at around 6 pm, Maria left her shop in the city center where she works in order to join her friend and then return home. They took Saint-Ferréol road, a shopping street that earlier in the day was the scene of clashes as a part of Act 4 of “Yellow Vests” and the mobilisation against unhealthy housing in Marseille. Not far away, on the Canebière and the Vieux-Port, clashes continued between protesters and the law enforcement officers who crisscross the periphery of the adjacent streets.

“I was with my friend and the police officers told us that they were forming a security perimeter. We then took the direction of my home,” explained Maria to Mediapart.

Six persons present gave their testimonies as part of the complaint. Among them, Olivia said that “the demonstrations of the afternoon had just ended and groups of CRS and police continued to occupy the main streets by blocking access or passage. There were a few people, of different ages, walking along Saint-Ferréol road. Nobody had threatening attitudes. Everyone was calm.”

In the images that Mediapart could see, the street seemed to be relatively quiet. Police were present, some young people too, and firefighters were extinguishing garbage fires.

“When suddenly a group of men, dressed in black and armed with clubs, rushed forward and shouted in my direction,” said Olivia in her statement, specifying that: “I immediately identified them as members of law enforcement. I had the quick reflex to pull myself away by putting myself against the wall of the building wall next door to avoid being hit in the process.”

These facts are confirmed by Camille, also present during the sudden and unexplained police charge. She testified: “While we were a few people walking calmly down Saint-Ferréol road, without clashes around us, a line of CRS and agents of the Anti-Crime Brigade fired projectiles (I do not know of what nature) and started to quickly come closer to us. Many of us ran to the first side street (rue de la Glace) to take shelter. I heard a cry of pain and I saw someone fall, a girl.”

The “girl” was Maria. “When the police charged, I did not understand the situation. I never protested and I was very scared. I ran to the first side street, rue de la Glace, but was shot in the leg. I screamed because I had a lot of pain in my leg. I fell to the ground.”

Seeing Maria wounded by the flash ball shot,

“people started shouting ‘someone is on the ground!’,” reported Laurence. “At the same time, this person on the ground was surrounded by police officers and was clubbed violently whilst being on the ground. […] At that moment, I was shocked. The scene was loaded with violence. I realised that truncheons violently hit the person continuously for a while.”

Camille saw

“more than ten police officers in jeans, helmets, truncheons in their hands and an armband on their arm, running and taking turns to beat and kick the person on the ground.”

Another witness contacted by “Mediapart”, Denise, is still moved at the mention of this evening.
“Just in front of me, there was this girl, small, who fell. And there, a swarm of policemen, mostly in plainclothes, helmeted, rush into the small street and give, by the way, truncheon blows and kicked the girl while she was on the ground.” Denise is categorical: “There were at least three truncheon blows, and three different police officers, and a kick in the face. Afterwards, I was moved away by a policeman.”

She wasn’t the only one to be pushed back.

“Despite the fact that the police forbade me to join her, I insisted and managed to pass,” says Lucie. “Arriving at her, I found other people who came to her rescue and I noticed that her head was caved in and bleeding. There were traces of blood on the floor, even on the walls. […] The plainclothes police left without even checking her condition.”

Another witness made the same observation:

“As we approached, all the police around the person on the ground dispersed. We found her condition very disturbing since she had an open wound on her head.”

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Geographer Christophe Guilluy had prophesied the potential of this uprising in 2014. Guilluy demonstrated the demographics of most major French cities comprising the wealthy, banking, industrial-capitalist centers surrounded by the ghettoized and marginalized suburbs that are home to an estimated 60 percent of the urban population. For those scraping a living together in the suburbs, driving to and parking in the city center for work could cost as much as 250 Euros ($284) per month. The impact of an increase in the cost of fuel would hit these people the hardest.

Historian and author Diana Johnstone, based in France, best explained the origin of the Yellow Vest as the symbol of this organic, grassroots movement. The yellow vest is something that every French citizen must have in their car in case of a road accident — the vest must be worn to prevent being unseen and run over by other vehicles. Wearing the yellow vest during protests signifies that French citizens do not accept being invisible to and railroaded by their government.

Acte XII came one week after the shocking targeting of prominent Gilet Jaune spokesman Jerome Rodrigues in Paris on January 26, 2019. Rodrigues had been filming live during the march when the arrival of the Black Bloc contingent caused him to call for the GJs to withdraw and avoid the inevitable violence. The Black Bloc element will be examined in a later section of this article.

On film, we can see the police factions advance, ignore the Black Bloc (or “Casseurs” in French), and begin targeting the retreating and peaceful GJs. Rodrigues is first targeted by a GLIF4 grenade that detonates close to him and is then hit in the eye by an LBD40 “flashball” bullet. After his hospitalization, Rodrigues informed his thousands of followers that there is little chance of saving his eye. As he is a plumber by trade, this senseless injury will have a potentially catastrophic effect on Rodrigues’ ability to provide for his family.

Rodrigues is only one of 19 GJs who have lost an eye to the “sub-lethal” LBD40 bullet launcher that is being liberally used by security forces during GJ protests across France. The LBD40 is the evolution of the notorious “flashball bullet,” 10 times the velocity of a paintball. The modern LBD40 launcher is a very accurate instrument with a “red-dot” laser pointer sight that ensures pinpoint targeting of civilians.

Recently, French human-rights organizations, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, and members of the French medical fraternity have unequivocally cautioned against the use of the LBD40 in crowd-control situations. While it is classified as a “sub-lethal” weapon, when used in violation of police regulations, at close range and in unstable crowd environments, it is lethal and capable of terrible damage to a human body — particularly the face, which appears to be a favorite target of the national police in France.

A member of the Toulouse Observatory of Police Practices (OPP) was shot in the face during the Acte XII protests in Toulouse on Saturday February 2, 2019. The following statement is taken from a translation of the OPP press release:

One of the OPP members, Jerome, also a member of the Human Rights League, was injured in the forehead by a projectile shot by the police forces […] his helmet, which was badly damaged, probably prevented a more serious injury.”

The press release goes on to condemn the disproportionate “panic” use of tear gas against peaceful protestors. The OPP also observed the heavy-handed tactics of the police, “including police officers, members of the Brigade Anti-Criminalite — Anti-Crime Brigade (BAC) — and members of “security and intervention companies.” The statement ends with this chilling indictment:

The injury of our comrade and OPP observer [..] recalls that police services, in the context of law enforcement operations, are disproportionately and indiscriminately using weapons of war in their possession. They cause serious injuries, regardless of the victim’s behaviour, including when the victim is not responsible for any incident.”

OPP calls for a ban on LBDs and GLIF4s. It also demands that the BAC police officers are no longer involved in demonstrations and asks for a moratorium on the presence of private security and intervention companies at the GJ marches. The photo below has been circulating on social media; it shows what appear to be civilians carrying French national police weapons and working alongside official police factions during a GJ march.

Writing from another country I remember the Americans I'm supposed to forget, those forced into the lives that made them prisoners or simply targets of law enforcement programs. Some are religious people, Christians and Muslims. Many were Black Panthers. Some were and are radicals. Most are Americans. All cared for their communities and people. They were condemned by society at large. Under the FBI's COINTELPRO activists in the Sixties and Seventies political and community movements but particularly the Black Panthers were targeted and hunted and engaged in fire-fights by law enforcement. Any police casualty brought charges of murder in court. How many community leaders were convicted for killing a police person? And yet through many years have maintained their innocence despite the mechanism which increases the chance for parole if a crime is confessed and regretted. One reason I don't forget them is because I don't really believe they're guilty. Here are updates for some political prisoners in the U.S.. (1)

• Among U.S. political prisoners with the roots of imprisonment in the last century, is Rap Brown (Hubert Gerold Brown), known today as Imam Jamil Al-Amin. As a young leader he was pissed, acerbic and unafraid. His late speeches are devout, eloquent, historically wise, American, concerned with the survival of his people, and religiously humble. His rhetoric frightened U.S. law enforcement since the 1960's. Convicted of murdering a police person (a crime confessed to by someone else with accuracy, three times - then recanted), maintaining his own innocence Al-Amin was sentenced in 2002 to life imprisonment without parole. Placed in a maximum security prison and principally in solitary confinement far from friends, supporters, family for years, he was transferred to Eastern U.S. prisons for medical treatment with several medical conditions which the prison system was slow to diagnose and treat. He was found to have a rare form of blood cancer. His writings are suppressed. He's not permitted interviews.(2) With 16 years in prison, currently an appeal of his conviction slowly makes its way through appeals court. I think he's silenced because he's a wise man. Wasted by his country yet of deep human value he continues to frighten the establishment because he provides a bridge of peace between Islam and Christianity. When the struggle becomes conscious then we understand that we don't have an option. Struggle is the price you pay for your soul. We all doing life without parole. - Imam Jamil Al-Amin

• Abu Hamza al-Masri, born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa in Egypt, is a British Imam with a reputation for hating people he considers enemies of Islam. He was extradited to the U.S. to face trial in a Manhattan court not too far from the former World Trade Center(s), for alleged war related crimes in Yemen, Afghanistan and Oregon. At his trial the jury wasn't allowed to hear substantial evidence of his work for M-15 British Intelligence. Allegations against him were not based on any violence he committed but on his alleged responsibility for crimes; most of the evidence presented was his words, sermons, statements, opinions, feelings, his freedom of expression.(3) He wasn't found guilty of hate speech but of 11 counts of terrorism, and he is serving a life-without-parole sentence in the U.S. supermax prison, ADX Florence Colorado, essentially in solitary confinement, in "a cage like cell." Since apparently the conditions of his incarceration violate human rights law prohibitions against torture and degrading treatment,(4) contravening the conditions of his extradition from Europe to the U.S., the Imam has appealed for removal to prison in Great Britain. He is blind and missing both hands which were lost in an explosion when he was younger (British media have continually referred to him as "the Hook"). With diabetes and psoriasis as well, under U.S. prison conditions at ADX Florence the stumps of his arms become continually infected.

• An American, a Robert F. Wagner High School and Brooklyn College graduate who earned his M.A. in international relations in London, Fahad Hashmi, as a Muslim was targeted for association with radical friends and was extradited from England to New York, held in solitary for three years before trial, was threatened with a 70 year sentence for storing a friend's luggage which held clothing for Al-Quaeda, and was sentenced on a plea bargain to 15 years which he is serving at ADX Florence, the supermax facility. Relying on technicalities and the prisoner's innocence, the prosecution and imprisonment of Fahad Hashmi affirmed American law but betrayed American justice.

• In 2018 Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom) was denied parole for the 9th time. According to Jericho New York he "was convicted of the 1971 murders of two New York City police officers, a crime for which he accepted responsibility and demonstrated remorse. During his 47 years in prison, Jalil earned two college degrees and served as a counselor, teacher and role model for other incarcerated people. Jalil is a rehabilitated individual who poses no risk to the community. He will be appealing this very disappointing decision."(5)

• Held for 22 years in solitary confinement in 2016 former Black Panther Russell "Maroon" Shoatz won through a legal action against Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections his reprieve from continual solitary confinement, as well as $99,000; his case commenced in 1973 protested the prison's cruel and unusual punishment. The United Nations Special rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez noted the conditions of Shoatz's imprisonment as outside a civilized norm.

• Dr. Mutulu Shakur (Jeral Wayne Williams) once of the Black Liberation Army (Black Panthers) was sentenced in 1988 to sixty years on RICO conspiracy charges and for bank robberies which involved deaths of guards and police. Led to believe he would be released Feb. 10, 2016 due to laws in force at the time, he wasn't released and was given a parole hearing for Dec.16, 2016, his 8th. Parole was denied. The government is suspected of psychologically tormenting the well-respected Dr. Shakur so that he might confess to masterminding the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur. In March 2018 Mutulu Shakur filed suit against the federal government for his release alleging violation of his First Amendment Rights (principally his free speech) by the Parole Board as the reason for denying his release. (6)

• Arrested in April 1985, according to Wikipedia Thomas William Manning is expected to complete his current prison term in 2020, at which point he is to begin his next prison term of 80 years for another set of charges including the murder of a New Jersey police officer. Manning was convicted of shooting back after the officer emptied his gun at Manning and his group of families. The inhumanity of the sentencing was always intended to render the prisoner without hope. Attempts to trash and humiliate Tom Manning, American, a Vietnam veteran, and each of the Ohio Seven ("United Freedom Front", "Sam Melville Brigade") suggests the bitter hostility of the system to white working class people if they assert both socialism and a brotherhood of black and white. In prison Manning has held to uncompromised anti-racist, American truths strongly, constantly, with hope, paintings and words. In 2006 a show of his artwork was canceled by a timorous University of Maine. (7)

• Jaan Laaman, also of the "Ohio Seven" ("United Freedom Front", "Sam Melville Brigade"), is serving a 53 year prison term, following a 45 year prison term. Both by court action and example he has become known as an advocate for rights of freedom of expression for prisoners, in 1977 winning his State Supreme Court case against the New Hampshire State Prison to receive his reading materials which is said to have opened prisoner education programs through New Hampshire. He is a founder of the website 4strugglemag.org, an outlet for prison writing. On March 21, 2017, he was placed in solitary confinement for violating communications protocols (issuing of statements which apparently the prison system did not favour). He's also threatened with transfer to a CMU (Communications Management Unit) to completely segregate his communications from the outside world.(8)

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The current wave of protests in France, which started two weeks ago, is growing in impact and applied violence. On Saturday some 120,000 people took part in demonstrations around the country. The movement was initiated from the political right but many other parties also support it. Most of the participants seem to take part spontaneously. The movement is supposedly leaderless. But it is too early to exclude that there is some larger organizing power behind it. In short: the Arab spring arrived in Europe.

Like the 1968 May protests that started in Paris this new movement will have echos in other countries. While mostly peaceful protest were held in all parts of France the situation in Paris caught the most attention. On Saturday the protesters stormed the Arc de Triomphe.

They rearranged the interior, damaged a statue of Marianne, and redecorated the outside. When the riot police tried to intervene it came under a hail of cobble stones and had to retreat. Graffiti left behind by the protesters read: 'We’ve chopped off heads for less than this'

The immediate reason for the protests are an increase of the fuel tax that President Macron defends as a step to fight climate change. But the fuel tax is only the last drop of a steady stream of price increases for the poor and middle class while their income stagnates. Meanwhile the rich are receiving one tax cut after the other. The fuel price is important for anyone who needs to drive to work. Public transport may work well within the Paris ring-road but most people live beyond the view of the Elysées and do need a car.

On Saturday the peaceful protesters in Paris were accompanied by 'moderate rebels'. They left behind the usual trail but are still waiting for foreign powers to arm them. Trump does not get along with Macron. How long will it take for him to suggests a no-fly zone?

The use of yellow warning vests, gilets jaunes in french, give the protester a smell of an arranged 'color revolution'. Then again - it is always helpful in demonstrations to distinguish one's side. These warning vests are mandatory emergency equipment in each car, they are readily available and sell for as little as €0.65.

After seeing the same neoliberal policies executed under the presidencies of Sarkozy and Hollande, the French people despised both the conservative party as well as the 'socialists'. But they well still not ready to move to a more radical parties on the right or left side.

The powers that be put up a former Rothschild banker as an alternative to the established parties and the media pushed him over the finish line. But Macron is even more neoliberal that Sarkozy or Hollande ever were and he is way more aloof and arrogant than both of them. He resembles a modern Marie Antoinette: 'If they don't like my fuel taxes let them buy electric cars.'

Macron's next projects are a pension reform and changes in the unemployment insurance. Both will cause more protests. Polls show that the French public overwhelmingly supports the yellow vests protests and their demands while Macron's popularity has fallen from 55% in May 2017 to some 27% now.

Some commentators blame the EU for Macron's policies. But that excuse is false. The EU did not demand the elimination of the wealth tax in France. Moreover - the EU implements the policy guidelines the large EU countries set out. Macron could surely change those if he wanted to.

On Saturday both sides were violent. But Macron and his police are far from innocent in the escalation. On May 1 Macron's top security aide Alexandre Benalla was filmed beating up protesters. In July a scandal ensued when Macron attempted to cover up the case. He sees violence as an appropriate way to handle resistance against his polices. On Saturday the police even deployed sniper teams on roofs.

This is a long read by one of the inhabitants of the Zad, about the the fortnight rollercoaster of rural riots that has just taken place to evict the liberated territory of the zad. It’s been incredibly intense and hard to find a moment to write, but we did our best. This is simply one viewpoint, there are over 1000 people on the zone at the moment and every one of them could tell a different story. Thank you for all the friends and comrades who helped by sharing their stories, rebel spirits and lemon juice against the tear gas.

The Revenge against the Commons of the zad or Why France’s biggest police operation since May 68 is prepared to kill for Macron’s Neoliberal Nightmare.
“We must bring into being the world we want to defend. These cracks where people find each other to build a beautiful future are important. This is how the zad is a model.” Naomi Klein

“What is happening at  Notre-Dame-des-Landes illustrates a conflict that concerns the whole world”   Raoul Vaneigem

The police helicopter hovers above, its bone rattling clattering never seems to stop. At night its long godlike finger of light penetrates our cabins and farm houses. It has been so hard to sleep this last week. Even dreaming, it seems, is a crime on the zad. And that’s the point: these 4000 acres of autonomous territory, this zone to defend (zad), has existed despite the state and capitalism for nearly a decade and no government can allow such a place to flourish. All territories that are inhabited by people who bridge the gap between dream and action have to be crushed before their hope begins to spread. This is why France’s biggest police operation since May 1968, at a cost of 400,000 euros a day, has been trying to evict us with its 2500 gendarmes, armoured vehicles (APCs), bulldozers, rubber bullets, drones, 200 cameras and 11,000 tear gas and stun grenades fired since the operation began at 3.20am on the morning of the 9th of April.

The state said that these would be “targeted evictions”, claiming that there were up to 80 ‘radical’ zadists that would be hunted down, and that the rest, the ‘good’ zadists, would have to legalise or face the same fate. The good zadist was a caricature of the gentle ‘neo rural farmer’ returning to the land, the bad, an ultra violent revolutionary, just there to make trouble. Of course this was a fantasy vision to feed the state’s primary strategy, to divide this diverse popular movement that has managed to defeat 3 different French governments and win France’s biggest political victory of a generation: The abandonment of the building of the international airport of Notre-Dames-des-Landes.

1. Section 26 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (the Act) places a duty on certain bodies (“specified authorities” listed in Schedule 6 to the Act), in the exercise of their functions, to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. This guidance is issued under section 29 of the Act. The Act states that the authorities subject to the provisions must have regard to this guidance when carrying out the duty.
2. The list of specified authorities subject to the provisions can be found in Schedule 6 tothe Act. Further details can be found in the sector-specific sections of this guidance.
3. The duty applies to specified authorities in England and Wales, and Scotland. Counter terrorism is the responsibility of the UK Government. However, many of the local delivery mechanisms in Wales and Scotland, such as health, education and local government, are devolved. We will ensure close cooperation with the Scottish and Welsh Governments in implementing the Prevent duty where there re interdependencies between devolved and non-devolved elements. There is separate guidance for specified authorities in Scotland.
4. The duty does not confer new functions on any specified authority. The term “due regard” as used in the Act means that the authorities should place an appropriate amount of weight on the need to prevent people being drawn into terrorism when they consider all the other factors relevant to how they carry out their usual functions. This purpose of this guidance is
   to assist authorities to decide what this means in practice.

IN TEXAS, STATE troopers have become frontline enforcers of federal immigration laws. In recent years, and especially since Donald Trump was elected president, the Texas Highway Patrol, part of the state’s Department of Public Safety, or DPS, has developed a well-oiled deportation machine that scoops up drivers who’ve committed minor traffic infractions, then funnels them to the Border Patrol and sometimes Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Passengers and pedestrians who weren’t even driving are also taken into custody. Caught in the Texas deportation pipeline, immigrants’ lives are damaged or ruined, along with those of their children, many of whom were born and raised in the U.S.

It’s difficult to know exactly how often this is happening. DPS records are costly, hard to obtain, and difficult to interpret. Data on handovers was not collected until December 2015, and since then the reporting of these incidents has been haphazard. In 2017, troopers still were not consistently reporting all stops that resulted in handovers to the Border Patrol. Through public records requests, the ACLU of Texas determined that the agency’s internal documentation did not record the handovers of several individuals who the organization’s field organizers knew had been detained by the highway patrol, imprisoned, and, in some cases, removed from the country.

Subsequently, The Intercept, working with the ACLU of Texas, obtained several DPS dashcam videos that show immigrants being detained on the road for trivial violations and then carted away by the Border Patrol.

For two years, the FBI has followed and harassed Refaie as part of an apparent effort to recruit him to become an informant or cooperate in some way with counterterrorism investigations. The FBI has more than 15,000 informants today, many working because they have been coerced or threatened by criminal prosecution or immigration enforcement. Classified FBI policy documents published by The Intercept in January revealed the often heavy-handed methods used by the government to recruit informants, including so-called threat assessments as “a means to induce him/her into becoming a recruited [informant] mainly through identifying that person’s motivations and vulnerabilities.” What’s unique about Refaie’s interactions with the FBI is that he recorded and documented the conversations and events that led to his indictment. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment or a list of questions about Refaie’s case.

In essence, because of the differences in the speed of sound vs. the speed of the bullets from a known cartridge (.223 Remington, in this case), the time lag between the last bullet hitting the pavement and the last audible report of the rifle muzzle can be used to very accurately calculate the range of the shooter.

More importantly, when the audio from the Las Vegas shooting is analyzed, it reveals TWO shooters operating at the same time, not just one shooter. Shooter #1 is operating at 425 – 475 yards, which is consistent with the Mandalay Bay hotel, but shooter #2 is operating at approximately 250 – 270 yards.