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SERIES: POLITICS WITHOUT BITTERNESS
Since July 13, 2020 when the 11th espousal on the current Nigerian tragedy, particularly the grave threat to national security, the looming famine beyond Biblical proportion, population explosion, intractable flooding, plight of the IDPs, the tragedy that is the children of Allah (the Almajirai), rape, youth violence, the danger of having kingdoms in kingdoms, two countries in one – Sharia North and Non-Sharia South, terrorism, etc, JOHN ODEY ADUMA has been hibernating and incubating for ideas at his incubation/philosophical laboratory, and the result of that withdrawal from the crowd in search of the deeper things and meanings of life is what will be cascading from his intellectual Niagara Falls, and you would do well to enmesh/soak/saturate yourself in the falls.
And worried by the current state of reportage in the nations of the world, particularly in Nigeria, totally lacking in depth and investigation coupled with the usual resort and retreat to kinship or clannish journalism, the non-existent anonymous “authoritative source/s”, Aduma, whilst at the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc as its Editorial Board Chairman, had had to intervene to refocus the dumbing down of professionalism by propounding Theory of Critical Journalism he had then called Pyramidal or Tripodal or Triangular Criticism or Analysis, and in this series, you are going to read his latest media theories – The John Aduma Newsroom Boxes, the Dodecagonium; including political theories such as OMU, Nigerianistic Equality for the self-same reason, aimed at journalistic excellence and international best practice and in the furtherance of his vision of Nigerianism, Nigeriatopia and Nigerian exceptionalism.
You are, therefore, welcome to read, drink, soak yourself therein, debate, dissect and analyse, chew it, swallow it up, and become wiser and reflective, but you are not to plagiarise, copy and paste to claim its ownership, nor regurgitate it, but give credit to the author if you must make reference, quote from it or you are fascinated by any word, phrase/s or idea.
A very strong warning must here go forth to all Media Assistants/Press Secretaries and speech writers to/for former Heads of State, Presidents, Governors and such other top level execs, both in the public and private sectors, that they are not permitted to lift ideas here or template or rehash or actually plagiarise the works/articles/essays by this writer and give to their Principals to make public statements with as if these ideas were original and authentic to their Principals, thus, making the press in Nigeria commit the grave error of attributing the author’s works to their Principals. It hoped that a word will be enough for the wise.
As a teenager at Aladura Comprehensive High School, Anthony Village, the age that the GIBB have chosen to join cultism and youth gang, it was Aduma’s dream to propound theories, be the most quoted intellectual on the planet earth and the greatest theorist and philosopher ever. And regarding that boyish dream, he is today widely quoted in academic journals and scholarly theses across the globe.
No doubt, you are already salivating and don’t want any further ‘traffic’ from the author on your way to his fountain of wisdom and knowledge, but before you are set loose, Mr Aduma ‘d like to ask you these questions: what is your dream?
Just what are your life’s dreams and goals? Happy reading!
BY SAM JACOBS
The claim often heard from those attempting to pass more gun control legislation is that all they’re trying to do is get the “weapons of war off our streets,” but it’s simply untrue that “weapons of war” are available to the general public. You’d last about three minutes in a conventional war with an AR-15, even with one of the most aggressive builds you can get your hands on (that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for guerilla uprisings to defeat powerful enemies). The truth is that the only people with “weapons of war” on America’s streets are, increasingly, the police.
Thanks primarily to the Pentagon's 1033 program which allows law enforcement agencies to get their hands on Department of Defense technology and the Bush-era War on Terror, American police have received a startling amount of heavy-duty, military-grade hardware. Between 1998 and 2014, the dollar value of military hardware sent to police departments skyrocketed from $9.4 million to $796.8 million.
And just as when "all you've got is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail," militarized police have become more willing to use their new weapons when carrying out law enforcement tasks. For example, the number of SWAT raids in the United States grew dramatically from about 3,000 in 1980, to a whopping 50,000 SWAT raids in 2014, according to The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
None of this is an argument for disbanding or even “defunding” the police, the latter of which is merely a slogan to mask the former. However, being in favor of there being a well-equipped police department isn’t an argument for ensuring that police are armed to the teeth with military-grade hardware. Indeed, normal police (as opposed to, for example, small, specialized riot control units) might have their jobs become more difficult through an escalated arms race and eroded community trust.
To say that the militarization of the police is nothing new is to ignore America’s recent history as well as the long-standing model of a peace officer. As the police have militarized and the Pentagon backs major players in Hollywood, the focus has shifted from one who keeps the peace to one who enforces the law - and that's an important difference.
The model for police, and the constables and sheriffs before them prior to the late 20th Century, was that of a peace officer. In many states, it’s not even true that police are law enforcement officers – even though it’s a term frequently used by the police and their fans in the “Blue Lives Matter,” “Thin Blue Line,” and “Back the Blue” movements.
It’s a subtle, but important, distinction: Is the role of the police to enforce the law or to keep the peace? Consider the difference between the police force of a typical American city and the fictional Andy Taylor of The Andy Griffith Show. The former is concerned primarily with enforcing the law for its own sake and catching as many “lawbreakers” as possible. The latter, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with keeping the peace. Sometimes that means looking the other way when laws get broken.
Or listen on your favorite app:
This isn’t simply a matter of how pleasant or unpleasant it is to deal with the police. Law enforcement officers might be writing parking tickets in the middle of a burglary epidemic due to their need to enforce all the laws all the time. Conversely, a peace officer is going to ignore a lot of low-level, habitual crime – even when there are clear victims (for example, vandalism or loitering) – because he emphasizes going out and catching violent and dangerous criminals. There’s no impulse to arrest a guy who habitually smokes weed on a street corner if he’s providing the police with valuable information leading to the arrest of violent criminals.
Peace officers might have the need for a sidearm and a shotgun, but they have little or no need for, say, a tank, to say nothing of the variety of nasty DARPA weapons police departments are increasingly wanting and getting.
None of this is to suggest that the world is better off with nothing at all than with “law enforcement” type officers. Nor is it to suggest that we replace existing police departments with something along the lines of what anti-police protesters have requested – an army of highly educated social workers and psychologists who will mostly look the other way when violence occurs. The law enforcement model is deeply flawed, but is potentially appropriate, particularly in large cities with high rates of violent crime.
Further, while “broken window” policing is largely derided by general detractors of police, it’s worth noting that this type of policing was instrumental in transforming New York City from "Fear City" into a nice place to live and maybe even raise a family. There is no single model of policing that is appropriate for every city and every situation.
Before we begin talking about the militarized American police, it’s worth mentioning that United States law specifically prohibits the military from enforcing the laws in the U.S. That’s why we don’t have the Army enforcing the law, and also why we don’t have a military-style gendarmerie as is common in Europe. This law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, was passed after the removal of federal troops from the Southern states following the end of Reconstruction. With rare exception, the federal government is not allowed to use the Army or the Air Force to enforce the law and the Navy has strict regulations for both the Navy and Marine Corps regarding the use of either for domestic law enforcement.
However, this law has been somewhat undermined due to police forces becoming so much like the military, which began during Prohibition in the 1920s. Organized crime got its first foothold in American life thanks to the lucrative black market in liquor. This was also the golden age of bank robbery with figures like Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger becoming folk heroes. The Thompson submachine gun and the Browning Automatic Rifle were increasingly used by organized crime and the “stars” of bank robbery.
The Prohibition Era saw domestic police departments wielding automatic weapons for the first time. There was nothing nefarious about this from the perspective of local police departments. In fact, it was the police departments most regularly in contact with vicious organized crime, such as Chicago and Kansas City, who led the way in arming their officers with automatic weapons and armored vehicles. At least two rounds of ammunition, the .38 Super and the .357 Magnum, were developed with the express purpose of being able to penetrate the early bulletproof vests worn by gangsters in the Prohibition Era.
Overall crime increased by 24 percent during the first two years of Prohibition. This included a nine-percent increase in theft and burglary, a 13-percent increase in homicides, and a 13-percent increase in assault and battery. Overall, police department costs increased by 11.4 percent. However, because the police were busy fighting the scourge of demon alcohol, it was difficult for them to target crimes unrelated to this. In fact, a study of South Carolina counties that enforced Prohibition versus those who didn’t found a whopping 30- to 60-percent increase in homicides in the counties who enforced the law. All of this is according to Charles Hanson Towne in The Rise and Fall of Prohibition: The Human Side of What the Eighteenth Amendment Has Done to the United States.
The militarization of the police during Prohibition is a nuanced topic. On the one hand, city police certainly should have been equipped with the materiel needed to combat organized crime. No reasonable person thinks that law enforcement should simply be outgunned by criminals for the sake of “not militarizing the police.” However, it is worth noting that the police were confronted with this kind of a threat due to the black market created by alcohol prohibition. The end of Prohibition not only saw a steep decline in crime and organized crime, but also a falling back on the militarization of the police.
This era of militarization drew to a close with the end of Prohibition itself. However, the militarization of police would resume again a few decades down the line.
The second wave of police militarization begins with the race riots in the 1950s and 1960s, with the Watts Riots in 1965 gaining a sort of gravitas. The LAPD used military-style weapons and tactics to end the riots. What’s more, an increasingly militant civil rights movement was seen by the CIA as an arm of international Communism. While there is some merit to this view, it’s certainly true that it led to a philosophy of increasingly militarized police.
The militarization of police is not by any means based on manufactured and artificial paranoia. Even in the case of Prohibition, it’s a simple fact that organized crime used weapons with firepower far in excess of what the police had access to. Similarly, the second wave of militarized police was partly in response to an increasingly militarized organized crime thanks in part to the beginnings of the War on Drugs.
On one hand, the police were encountering more and more dangerous organized crime syndicates, such as the Medellin Cartel and street gangs like the Gangster Disciples. Urban unrest included not just race riots like the aforementioned Watts Riots and the 1967 riots in Detroit, but also the riot outside of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention. Domestic terrorist organizations like the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Earth Liberation Front likewise offered increased challenges to law enforcement.
Unrelated to the War on Drugs, the 1986 FBI Miami shootout was a game-changer for law enforcement budgets. Police outnumbered suspects by a factor of four. Despite this, they were pinned down by suppressive gunfire. The incident lasted five minutes and 145 rounds were fired. The suspects were hit multiple times, but continued to fight in part because the officers’ and agents’ service revolvers did not have sufficient stopping power. In response, there was a movement to increase the firepower of service revolvers. This is when semi-automatic pistols began to replace the revolver and larger magazines became the rule. Rifles, shotguns, and heavier body armor also saw increased adoption after this shootout.
Another incident accelerating the militarization of police is the North Hollywood shootout of 1997. This bank robbery left two dead (the perps) and 20 wounded – 12 police officers and eight civilians. It lasted 44 minutes, an eternity in terms of police shootouts, with approximately 2,000 rounds fired. The perps got off approximately twice as many rounds as the police officers on the scene, but the game-changer was the arrival of the SWAT team, who had much more appropriate weaponry. This led to everyday police officers getting equipment that was customary for SWAT teams in the 1990s.
We again arrive at a place to examine this topic with some nuance: Current organized crime presents a threat to public safety, as well as police officers – who should be equipped with the necessary tools to combat this threat and maintain public order. However, it’s not clear that small towns are in need of SWAT units, nor that any city needs a tank. What’s more, there has been a massive expansion of SWAT team use that seems inappropriate.
One can certainly be critical of the desire of every police department to have every tool under the sun – and to use them with gusto – without having to demand stripping the police of very necessary tools required to combat what are effectively small paramilitary organizations. A lack of perfection in urban policing is not an argument for no policing whatsoever, it is an argument for greater oversight and civilian diligence.
The 1033 Program was enacted in the wake of the 1997 North Hollywood shootout. Created by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997, it allowed law enforcement agencies to get their hands on military hardware. Unsurprisingly, the preference was given to law enforcement engaged in anti-drug and counter-terror activity, underscoring the vital role of wars on abstract concepts in increasing the militarization of the police force. Bill Clinton – he of the massacres at Waco and Ruby Ridge – signed the bill into law.
$5.1 billion in material was transferred from the Department of Defense to local law enforcement between 1997 and 2014, with ammunition being the most common requisition. 8,000 law enforcement offices participate as of 2014.
Also included in this total are 20 different school law enforcement agencies. The Los Angeles School Police Department has requisitioned 61 assault rifles and three grenade launchers. Ten school police departments in the State of Texas and have requisitioned 25 automatic pistols, 64 M16s, 18 M14s, and tactical vests.
The program has come under bipartisan criticism lead by Rand Paul. Senator Paul stated that the program has “incentivized the militarization of local police precincts and helped municipal governments build what are essentially small armies.” Senator Claire McCaskill led the first investigation of the program starting in September 2014. At least one study found a correlation between the 1033 program and increased fatalities at the hands of law enforcement.
One of the big game-changers for militarization of police was the 9/11 attacks. This greatly eroded the Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure. Now police – local, state and federal – need to suspect “terrorism.” This provides the same convenient cover for police overreach that was previously offered by the War on Drugs.
President Obama gave new directives for the 1033 program that forbade police from acquiring certain weapons from the military. These include weaponized vehicles, grenade launchers and bayonets. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended these restrictions upon assuming office in 2017.
The weapons that come to local police departments through the 1033 pipeline are direct from the military and, by extension, the War on Terror.
Training with military units is also increasingly common according to a report from the Cato Institute. The training generally takes place not with regular infantry units, but with specialized and elite groupingswithin the United States military who are more familiar with guerilla uprisings – such as the Navy SEALs and the Army Rangers.
Civil asset forfeiture (CAF) is a major driver in the militarization of the police force. Put simply, CAF is a legal principle that allows police to seize money and property from “suspected” criminals, which they can do without a warrant because the suspect’s property doesn’t have the presumption of innocence. Note that police do not have to convict or even indict. Indeed, indictments are not even filed in over 80 percent of all cases. Police can simply seize property, more or less at will, with some property harder to seize than others. Seizure of anything under $20,000 will almost certainly stand because that’s about what it’s going to cost you to fight CAF in court.
Most of the money raised through civil asset forfeiture is filed under “other.” This can be anything from a $600 coffee maker to a tank. Because the burden of proof is so low and the benefits are so high, CAF is effectively a legally allowed form of theft by police officers, allowing them to purchase military-grade hardware with stolen property. Here is a short list of military hardware purchased with civil asset forfeiture funds:
While not the sole, nor even the primary, means by which the police are becoming militarized, this is a significant method for police departments to bankroll their own militarization.
It’s one thing to discuss police militarization simply in terms of weapons acquisition. It’s another to discuss police militarization in terms of actual incidents. Some high-profile incidents involving heavily militarized police are worth examining.
These are the big three, but there are many smaller events also worth mentioning. During the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, private Blackwater contractors patrolled the streets with automatic weapons. They were accused of summary execution of looters. In a low point for militarized police in 2014, a SWAT team in Cornelia, Georgia severely mutilated the face of an 18-month-old baby boy with a flash bang grenade in a fruitless search for drugs.
SWAT teams are effectively the military of the police force. Begun in 1965 in Philadelphia, SWAT teams were conceived as a way to restrain urban unrest, deal with hostage situations or handle barricaded marksmen like Charles Whitman.
Indeed, early uses of SWAT seemed to be well within the range of appropriateness. In December 1969, the LAPD’s SWAT team squared off with the Black Panthers, with Daryl Gates requesting and receiving permission to use a grenade launcher. In May 1974, the same SWAT team had a several-hours-long gun battle with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
However, SWAT teams gradually began to tackle missions that were not, strictly speaking, appropriate for the tools in their toolbox. What’s more, once LAPD’s SWAT team became famous, every city seemed to want one. The number of SWAT teams in cities of 50,000 or more doubled between the mid-80s and late-90s, at which point 89 percent of all cities of this size had a SWAT team.
Some startling facts when it comes to SWAT teams:
Even smaller cities have SWAT teams now, which raises the question of why. Mission creep is the short answer, with SWAT teams now being used for operations far beyond the original scope of their work. Put simply, the SWAT team was not created to serve every search warrant that comes across the desk of a small-town police force.
SWAT teams ostensibly exist to respond to “high risk” scenarios. But there are seemingly no guidelines for what makes a situation high risk. Sometimes local SWAT teams use a threat matrix. However, these matrices are highly subjective and vulnerable to abuse. Partial responses are discouraged. Either the SWAT team is not deployed at all or there is a full-throttle response.
To use one example of why these matrices don’t work, let us consider the presence or absence of weapons. There is no way of knowing whether or not weapons will be present. So officers must subjectively guess whether or not they believe weapons will be present. Unfortunately, officers are pretty bad at this guessing game. According to an ACLU report, SWAT officers believed weapons were present in 35 percent of cases, but only actually found them in a scant 13 percent. In 36 percent of cases where SWAT was deployed to find drugs, no drugs were found.
One of the most concretely damaging aspects of a militarized police force is the no-knock raid or no-knock warrant. This is precisely what it sounds like: Rather than announce their presence to serve a warrant, police come in, oftentimes literally with guns blazing. The presence of police might be announced in a perfunctory and formal way – i.e., announcing “police department” before using a battering ram to fell a door or throwing a flash bang grenade.
It’s difficult to know just how many of these there are every year, simply because the definition is somewhat elastic. However, an estimate presented in an Associated Press article claims that the number of no-knock warrants has exploded from around 1,500 annually in the early 1980s to over 45,000 by 2015.
Indeed, knocking and announcing is one of the oldest standards in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, going back to Semayne's case in 1604. It was more recently affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. United States, which states that police are required to provide notice before entry. Federal law 18 U.S.C § 3109 codifies this practice, however, the courts have carved out some exceptions: Wilson v. Arkansas provides for an exception to prevent the destruction of evidence. Hudson v. Michigan allows the admissibility of evidence obtained through illegal entry.
The theory behind no-knock warrants is that police can seize evidence before it is destroyed or else leverage the element of surprise to maintain the safety of officers. The reality is very different.
No-knock warrants are illegal in two states: Oregon, where they are banned by statute, and Florida, where they have been ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court. 20 states routinely allow no-knock warrants without a statute explicitly authorizing them, while another 13 have such statutes on the books.
Between 2010 and 2016, 31 civilians and eight officers were killed during executions of no-knock warrants.
Burglars have used no-knock warrant fraud to rob law-abiding homeowners. Conversely, home owners have shot at officers believing they were being victimized by a home invasion. Officers routinely lie under oath to obtain such warrants and injure innocent people, including children and even infants in the process. And, of course, dogs are routinely shot.
No-knock raids are a demonstrably dangerous, highly corrupt system of law enforcement with little benefit for public safety.
As the military’s tools for surveillance become more powerful, this too will trickle down to the local police.
In at least one case, it already has. Fusion Centers are hubs for local, state and federal police to share information. They’re effectively intelligence-gathering done by various police agencies who pool their resources. While this isn’t an uncommon practice, the Fusion Centers have virtually no oversight and are filled with zeal for the War on Terror. While its primary existence was to surveil in the fight against terrorism, Fusion Centers have quickly ballooned to gather intelligence on just about anything – and it’s not just the police. The military participates in Fusion Centers, as does the private sector, which means they’re a privacy nightmare.
The federal government has pushed Fusion Centers and largely bankrolled them. Hundreds of FBI agents work with Fusion Centers, with the federal government providing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid. In the case of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, the federal government created a Fusion Center at the state level, only eventually turning control of an ostensibly state agency to the state. 30 percent of these “state” agencies are physically located in federal office space.
Private sector companies collect, store and analyze data for Fusion Centers. This would be dangerous on its own, but the lack of any oversight makes it particularly troublesome. Even if a private sector has the best of intentions, malicious third-party actors could access some of your most sensitive data if it’s been datamined by a Fusion Center. A company without the best intentions can do all kinds of “government-approved” snooping into your personal affairs.
Another nasty surveillance tool currently being deployed by the police is the Stingray phone tracker. This is effectively a phony cell phone tower that snoops on cell phone calls, which can extract significant information about you from your cell phone. Originally to be used only in terrorism investigations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that the LAPD “has been using it for just about any investigation imaginable." They can also be used to jam or otherwise interfere with your phone signal. Stingrays are highly mobile and can be mounted to just about any vehicle.
All of this is part of an overall drive for increased police surveillance starting at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security and trickling down. “Total Information Awareness” was one of the more Orwellian euphemisms of the early Bush and Department of Homeland Security years. It was quickly renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, then codenamed “Basketball.” Its goal is to know everything, or at least as much as it can. In 2012, the New York Times reported that this program was “quietly thriving” at the National Security Agency.
The Information Awareness Office, established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA – who we will discuss more later), oversaw Total Information Awareness. They collect emails, social network identities, records for phone calls and credit card purchases, medical records and a host of other information with no need for a warrant. Congress defunded this program, but it exists under the auspices of a number of different agencies according to Edward Snowden.
Technologies developed by the Information Awareness Office (and in the wake of Snowden’s revelations, it’s worth noting that these are just the technologies that have been made public) includes:
How much of this has trickled down to your local police department is largely unknown.
There are a number of negative consequences arising from the existence of a militarized police force.
All of this is perhaps why, under the Obama Justice Department, there was a push toward demilitarization of the police force. In 2015, the Task Force for 21st Century Policing recommended restriction of military hardware such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles. President Donald Trump has since reversed this, reinstating the entire 1033 program and remilitarizing police.
Since there is a clearly established pipeline running from the Pentagon’s latest and greatest toys, it’s not much of a stretch to say that the weapons being developed by the Pentagon today are going to be used on the streets of America in the very near future.
In fact, there’s an entire department of the Pentagon dedicated to developing futuristic weapons to help the United States win the new arms. It’s called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known as DARPA. This agency has not only developed weapons, but also a number of contemporary technologies most people take for granted – such as GPS, graphic user interface, the mouse, and even the internet itself. Recent research includes more intuitive prosthetic limbs as well as brain implants that will help those with memory loss regain their memory.
But DARPA isn’t just working on projects like these with the promise to revolutionize medicine and increase the quality of human life. They also work on some rather nasty little projects that will almost certainly trickle down to your local police department through the 1033 program. Some of the futuristic weapons currently in development by DARPA include:
These are just a few of the weapons that we know about. It's likely that there are far more frightening classified weapons coming down the pike over the next decade.
The tendency is strongly in the direction of increasingly militarized police. This renders the notion of “weapons of war on our streets” as a gun grabber argument exceptionally weak. They have weapons far in excess to that of the average citizen or even the average criminal. This means resisting them can easily be deadly, even when you’re within your legal rights.
We once again believe that the solution to overly militarized police is not the total elimination of the police, nor the radical disarming of the police. Rather, what is required is greater civilian attention to what police are doing. Police ought to be held accountable, through established civilian channels of oversight, not the court of public opinion. What’s more, care must be taken to ensure that the police are not afraid to ruthlessly enforce the law when the situation calls for it for fear of being taken to task by civilian oversight committees that have never walked a beat. Part of what makes the problem so difficult to solve is that there are no easy solutions.
There are, however, some quick wins. There is absolutely no reason for civil asset forfeiture to continue, nor should local smokies have access to equipment designed for federal law enforcement to snoop on organized crime and terrorist organizations. DARPA toys shouldn’t be in the hands of local police, either. Local police already have a number of riot dispersal tools at the ready. Where rioting is allowed to fester, it does so because of weak-willed civilian governments unwilling to allow the police to maintain public order.
Some have argued that an end to qualified immunity would do the trick. However, anytime a position is supported by the far left, it is worth examining the position further, no matter how reasonable it may seem.
First, let’s talk about qualified immunity. Qualified immunity sounds like some arcane and esoteric application of the law that protects police and other government officials from all scrutiny and consequences.
What it means, however, in very simple terms, is that government officials cannot be held civilly liable in court unless their actions “violated a clearly established right” – i.e., where their conduct is “obviously unlawful.” It applies to all local, state, and federal executive branch officers, but it does not protect these officials from criminal prosecution (aside from prosecutors, who have absolute immunity). Police are protected, as are mayors, governors, medical board inspectors, prison guards, school administrators, and everyone else who is in the business of enforcing laws and regulations, including private individuals who act jointly with government officials.
Proponents of qualified immunity argue that it simply protects officials from having their lives and finances ruined in civil court, where standards of evidence and the bar for conviction are much lower. And again, it does not totally and wholly protect them from civil lawsuits, just in most cases where officials are reasonably acting in good faith. In the case of police, this allows them to work without having to balance their actions against losing their house and their children’s college fund. This is important because police often have to make heat-of-the-moment decisions in fractions of a second. And proponents argue this doctrine simply protects police from being “test cases” for what are and are not constitutional protections.
Opponents of qualified immunity argue that it’s an act of judicial policymaking because it’s not the result of a law passed by Congress, nor is it written in the Constitution. Thus the current doctrine as applied today in courts leads to hair-splitting and it is often impossible for plaintiffs to meet the burden. It’s also applied inconsistently and can greatly depend on the judge or judges involved in the case. And perhaps most importantly, this liability shield extends to everyone who is in the business of enforcing laws and regulations – not just the police.
All of this raises a point worthy of consideration: The usual suspects will cry and rage at your ability to legally own an AR-15, a right codified by the United States Constitution. Rare is the gun grabber who makes any kind of stink when police use directed energy weapons. Remember that gun grabbers aren’t against guns – they’re just against yours.
When one discusses the real reason for the Second Amendment – the right of citizens to defend themselves against a potentially tyrannical government – inevitably someone points out the stark difference in firepower between a guerilla uprising in the United States and the United States government itself.
Following the attacks of September 11th, Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), creating the Transportation Security Agency (TSA). The TSA replaced private security screening companies with one government agency. Since then, air travelers have bowed to pat downs, bans on water bottles and other inconvenient, intrusive procedures as the “new normal” at our nation’s airports. But does any of this make us safer?
The short answer is no, it doesn’t. What’s more, laid out below is the quantifiable evidence that the TSA is a massive boondoggle that has done little to keep Americans safe while they travel. Indeed, it might make us less safe by providing a false sense of security, as American politicians shy away from ever questioning the efficacy of the TSA (or other elements deemed necessary for “homeland security”).
The Great Reset is upon us…or at least the powers that be are trying to bring it out. What was once a fringe “conspiracy theory” is now on display plain as day for everyone to see. The economic, political, academic, and media elites around the world are leveraging the chaos, confusion, and restrictions on liberty from the COVID-19 lockdowns and using them to radically alter society around the world.
What will this change look like? The global elites want to create a society of renters who own nothing, while also pushing a social agenda that would be unpopular with the unwashed masses and difficult to implement in a society with a broad, ownership-based middle class. What this means is that you would rent not just your home, but also your phone, computer, car (though you probably will “carshare,” the term for renting a car when you need one for an extended period and summoning one when you need it for a ride), and even the pots and pans you cook with.
Two individuals come to mind at the mention of the Confederate States of America, General Robert E. Lee and Former-President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis. Both General Lee and Davis were men of principle and conviction as they stood up for what they believed; however, for a variety of historically complicated reasons, General Lee became a far bigger symbol of the Confederacy after its demise than Davis. Although Davis remains a sort of avatar for the end of states’ rights, some have come to view him as a Southern patriot.
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OF THE FOOLS OF THE SOUTH AND NOKBEKWARA…THERE WILL BE WAR AGAIN, BUT A DIFFERENT WAR (PART 21)
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
Continued from Part 20:
Link to Part 11 OF THE FOOLS OF THE SOUTH AND THE MIDDLE BELT…THERE WILL BE WAR AGAIN, BUT A DIFFERENT WAR (vigilance-securitymagazine.com), published NIGERIA WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POSTED ON MONDAY, 13 JULY 2020 01:44
SERIES: SOCIAL WELL BEING, HEALTH, SAFETY AND SECURITY OF THE POOR IN THE CORE NORTH OF THE WEST AFRICAN STATE OF NIGERIA
(PART 21): Porous borders and national security in times of national emergency and unparalleled adversity
Since July 13, 2020 when the 11th espousal on the current Nigerian tragedy, particularly the grave threat to national security, the looming famine beyond Biblical proportion, population explosion, intractable flooding, plight of the IDPs, the tragedy that is the children of Allah (the Almajirai), rape, youth violence, the danger of having kingdoms in kingdoms, terrorism, etc, JOHN ODEY ADUMA has been hibernating and incubating for ideas at his incubation/philosophical laboratory, and the result of that withdrawal from the crowd in search of the deeper things and meanings of life is what will be cascading from his intellectual Niagara Falls, and you would do well to enmesh/soak/saturate yourself in the falls.
And worried by the current state of reportage in the nations of the world, particularly in Nigeria, totally lacking in depth and investigation coupled with the usual resort and retreat to kinship or clannish journalism, the non-existent anonymous “authoritative source/s”, Aduma, whilst at the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc as its Editorial Board Chairman, had had to intervene to refocus the dumbing down of professionalism by propounding a theory he had then called Pyramidal or Tripodal or Triangular Criticism or Analysis, and in this series, you are going to read his latest media theories – The John Aduma Newsroom Boxes, the Dodecagonium; including political theories such as OMU, Nigerianistic Equality for the self-same reason, aimed at journalistic excellence and international best practice and in the furtherance of his vision of Nigerianism, Nigeriatopia and Nigerian exceptionalism.
Please visit also: VIGILANCE (www.vigilance-securitymagazine.com).
SERIES: E GO BETTER - O!
“In fact, like their political creator, IBB, they are the bane of our society and the root causes of all that are presently wrong with and in Nigeria. In fact, the current insecurity that is ravaging the country is first and foremost, a non-issue, now made an issue – a non-problem made a problem. As a matter of fact, insincerity and complicity have combined to problematize the problem – a simple matter made complex and intricate!”
“To thy tent O Nigeria!"
Ruminating on the state of things in Nigeria recently whilst I was lall alone in my world philosophizing, especially regarding how the hitherto POLITICAL GARDEN OF EDEN, destined not just to lead all persons of African ancestry, but the world, has now been reduced to a state of nature in perpetual flux, a rogue and failed state, axis of violence and evil, and yet still, a nation at war with itself, I had arrived at the inevitable, but painful conclusion that seven things defined the Nigerian polity and system – and these are:
And the Nigerian tragedy is made worse by the gross lack of continuity in all things Nigerian, but under the context – the lack of continuity in governance, national dream, vision, goal, mission statement , national action plan (NAP), national plan of action (NPA) and national philosophy, compounded by the yawning lacuna and dislocation in leadership – especially the lack of uninterrupted generational leadership progression, after the abrupt termination of the first Republic on January 15th, 1966 by Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and his gang, and afterwards, forcing a 30-month civil war on Nigeria – and ever since it had been one coup after another until the so-called return to democracy on May 29, 1999.
OF THE FOOLS OF THE SOUTH AND NOKBEKWARA (THE MIDDLE BELT)…THERE WILL BE WAR AGAIN, BUT A DIFFERENT WAR (PART 15)
Continued from Part 14:
Link to Part 11 OF THE FOOLS OF THE SOUTH AND THE MIDDLE BELT…THERE WILL BE WAR AGAIN, BUT A DIFFERENT WAR (vigilance-securitymagazine.com), published NIGERIA WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POSTED ON MONDAY, 13 JULY 2020 01:44
SERIES: SOCIAL WELL BEING, HEALTH, SAFETY AND SECURITY OF THE POOR IN THE CORE NORTH OF THE WEST AFRICAN STATE OF NIGERIA
(PART 12): Porous borders and national security in times of national emergency and unparalleled adversity
Since July 13, 2020 when the 11th espousal on the current Nigerian tragedy, particularly the grave threat to national security, the looming famine beyond Biblical proportion, population explosion, intractable flooding, plight of the IDPs, the tragedy that is the children of Allah (the Almajirai), rape, youth violence, the danger of having kingdoms in kingdoms, terrorism, etc, JOHN ODEY ADUMA has been hibernating and incubating for ideas at his incubation/philosophical laboratory, and the result of that withdrawal from the crowd in search of the deeper things and meanings of life is what will be cascading from his intellectual Niagara Falls, and you would do well to enmesh/soak/saturate yourself in the falls.
And worried by the current state of reportage in the nations of the world, particularly in Nigeria, totally lacking in depth and investigation coupled with the usual resort and retreat to kinship or clannish journalism, the non-existent anonymous “authoritative source/s”, Aduma, whilst at the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc as its Editorial Board Chairman, had had to intervene to refocus the dumbing down of professionalism by propounding a theory he had then called Pyramidal or Tripodal or Triangular Criticism or Analysis, and in this series, you are going to read his latest media theories – The John Aduma Newsroom Boxes, the Dodecagonium; including political theories such as OMU, Nigerianistic Equality for the self-same reason, aimed at journalistic excellence and international best practice and in the furtherance of his vision of Nigerianism, Nigeriatopia and Nigerian exceptionalism.
You are, therefore, welcome to read, drink, soak yourself therein, debate, dissect and analyse, chew it, swallow it up, and become wiser and reflective, but you are not to plagiarise, copy and paste to claim its ownership, nor regurgitate it, but give credit to the author if you must make reference, quote from it or you are fascinated by any word, phrase/s or idea.
As a teenager at Aladura Comprehensive High School, Anthony Village, the age that the GIBB have chosen to join cultism and youth gang, it was Aduma’s dream to propound theories, be the most quoted intellectual on the planet earth and the greatest theorist and philosopher ever. And regarding that boyish dream, he is today widely quoted in academic journals and scholarly theses across the globe.
No doubt, you are already salivating and don’t want any further ‘traffic’ from the author on your way to his fountain of wisdom and knowledge, but before you are set loose, Mr Aduma ‘d like to ask you these questions: what is your dream?
Just what are your life’s dreams and goals? Happy reading!
“Son of man, tell that cursed and barren fig tree not to proceed any further.”
Series: Pray, pray and pray for the peace of Nigeria.
Sovereign Lord: And the Lord said to me: son of man, why sit ye under a cursed and barren fig tree that has not offered you shelter and brought you any solace and succour for over five seasons?
Son of man: Sovereign Lord, though the fig tree be cursed, dry and barren, sit I under it for the redemption of the House of Nigeria, hoping it might sprout leaves anew this coming spring, for the shelter and peace of these thy great people, even the Nigerian people.
Sovereign Lord: Son of man, until the rocks bring forth leaves and honey then.
Son of man: Sovereign Lord, never in all Nigeria was it ever told or heard that ever the rocks do bring forth leaves and honey.
Sovereign Lord: Then look up to the hills and write down what thou seeth and declare it to the accursed and barren fig tree.
Son of man: By the Lord Jehovah, I do hereby to the accursed and barren fig tree decree and declare: *MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
Sovereign Lord: Let with immediate effect the judgement come on the accursed fig tree as thou hath decreed against it and in its stead, let a good tree be planted.
Son of man: And as soon as I became human again, I dipped my pen into the ink well and began to write as the Spirit uttereth:
SERIES: THE ABDUCTIONS NEXT TIME…
PART 2
“But if I could tell my fellow Nigerians the utmost word of truth, that would be that this nation cannot exist for long as one country, especially with one half, democracy and the other half, sharia. Therefore, let the word go forth to my fellow Nigerians, and also, let it be told to the children of the future generations of Nigeria that whilst John Odey Aduma coursed through this great land of limitless opportunities, he never failed to let it be known to the North (the Hausas, Fulanis and the Kanuris) that either the North must destroy sharia or sharia will destroy the North. A word should be enough for every shariocrat.”
THE DAY OF THE LORD, BUHARI’S SCATTERED HOUSEHOLD AND THAT DEMON-POSSESSED, GOD FORSAKEN AND STINKING HOUSE OF BAAL FULL OF DETESTABLE THINGS - THE PRESIDENCY
20. So that the fishes of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the ground, and all men that are upon the face of the earth, shall be moved at my presence: and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the hedges shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. 21. And I will call in the sword against him in all my mountains, saith the Lord God: every man's sword shall be pointed against his brother.22And I will judge him with pestilence, and with blood, and with violent rain, and vast hailstones: I will rain fire and brimstone upon him, and upon his army, and upon the many nations that are with him.
- Ezekiel 38:21
GOD’S MESSAGE THROUGH ME TO THE BUHARIS WHEN THEY CAME TO POWER ANEW IN 2015 AND WHEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF BACCHIC ENTHUSIASM THEY BEGAN FIGHTING THE CHRISTIANS IN NIGERIA AND GOD PUBLISHED ON Tuesday, 29 September 2015 12:44. Please click on the link below:
Written by JOHN ODEY ADUMA
Accessed: 23/12/2019.
SERIES: NO MORE SLEEP TO LOSE
THE STATE OF THE FEDERATION: PERSECUTION OF NIGERIANS IN NIGERIA – TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!
It is appalling as well as shocking to note that after over 60 years of living together, politically speaking, as a nation, and 105 years after the amalgamation of the two halves of the Niger by the British colonialist, Lord Frederick Lugard, Nigerians residing in States and regions outside of their natural abode – ethnic nationalities/regions are to this day seen and regarded as non-indigenes, settlers, aliens, guests/strangers even as migrants, parasites, leeches, dodders and mistle toes, etc – and so treated very shabbily, more so as outcasts, refugees, ‘assylum seekers’, IDPs, pariahs, harijans, almajiris, pests, nuisances, etc – better still, as political and social endoparasites and ectoparasites – by the so-called indigenes/’hosts’ or aluole, alaje (Yala, for owners of the home, owners of the land, and in Yoruba, simply as (awon) omonile, hence at will, these politico-socio-cultural wolves/predators hound, steal, kill, maim and destroy these ‘rodents’, cockroaches, pests and leeches just for the pleasure of it!
In the Part 2 of: Danger Ahead! Returning to Road ’66 is risking becoming a conflict zone perpetually…be warned, fellow Nigerian; now given a new title as above, JOHN ODEY ADUMA excavates and dissects the past, especially the volatile events of 15 January 1966 and the so-called revenge killings of July 29, 1966, and taking a hard look at the current state of anarchy arising from amongst other things, the abandonment of governance and abdication of responsibility by the captain of the ship of the Nigerian State, Sunni jihadist, Khalifa MUHAMMADU BUHARI (BABA DO NOTHING) - a notorious land robber, and peeping into his oracular glass, confirms that the current state of things coupled with the now pervasive persecution of Nigerian citizens by fellow citizens in their own country bears the semblance of the ‘60s, whereupon he sees Nigerians consciously on a lamentable journey back into that zone of the nation’s political pacific ring of fire – the zone of political volatility, ever known for its hyper-sensitivity, high flammability, supra volatility and supra-eruptibility.
Also, Aduma thinks in terms of national security and other things of national concern, which the jihadists and rugaites have resolved to ignore in order to pursue their missions of Islamism and expansionism, the Nigerian state is now not only in a state of nature, utter messiness and occupation by foreign Islamists/terrorists/jihadists, working alongside the local ones, and dancing to the orgiastic rhythms of the drums being beaten by the Presidency, palaces and the Fulani elites in high places, including the business community, but in a state of deadly and dangerous unknowable unknown unknowable.
He thus, hastens to warn Nigerians to change course immediately, seek the path of national brotherhood, nationhood, peace, justice and universal altruism. Happy reading!
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