Yo! Jagaban of Borgu is coming…. run, run…Commot for road, Jagaban dey come!
Source: Bullion Van: EFCC Asked To Probe Tinubu - The Premier News
A Tinubu, not an Awo: BAT aggressively promoting freebienomics, godfatherism, gerontocracy and pedestrianism
BATnomics is all about Tinubunomics, and Tinubunomics is all about Owambeism, and Owambeism is all about Bullion-vanomics and Bullion-vanomics is all about Freebienomics, and Freebienomics is all about stupid benevolence.
Making everything free within the Nigerian system is uncreative, unimaginative, uninnovative, uninventive dependence on Bullion-vanomics, generating nothing and expecting no revenues – no revenue (generation) into the economy, (yet) giving out everything to the (Nigerian) people free of charge, including supplying oil, the mainstay of the nation’s economy away free to all who (may) need/want and demand them. And parodying the immortal expression of Bill Clinton, this economy indeed, is very “stupid”!
This flag shall be a symbol of their their hope, doggedness, resilience and determination to conquer the present evil with love, for perfect love casteth out all fears, even in these perilous times. And Ukrainians shall prevail as all will soon be over. Glory to Ukraine!
Junior Lucifer, Patriarch Kirill, the leader of Russia’s Political Church…in every respect, complicit in the ongoing barbarity and genocide in Ukraine, being carried out by vampiric Vladimir Putin and his very ferocious beasts/savage wolves. But what would Jesus do at a time like this?
Putin, the Anti-Christ. To hell with your oil, Vlad! Watch all the world turns to the P4:19 oil which never goes dry nor is subject to diminishing returns. It is common knowledge that hunters who have lost their C sense, do often shoot themselves in the foot!
The return of ‘Might is Right”, but is the world not yet tired of this Putintainment to respond in the language he understands? Asks JOHN ODEY ADUMA.
COMMENT BY MR CHRIS HOBBS, AN EX- BRITISH POLICE OFFICER ABOUT “BE A BEACON OF HOPE IN THE WORLD: A MESSAGE TO YOUNG BRITAIN:
“I think your book is excellent. In an ideal world, that book should be given to every head-teacher in the country. If I were a head I'd pick three messages every week and display them prominently, say in the entrance and /or assembly hall so every pupil could see them.
Congratulations.
Chris”
My fellow Nigerians, I tell you the utmost word of truth, unless your unity surpasses that of the Niger and Benue, ye shall lose the political kingdom of Nigeria, realizable only by giving every Nigerian their due.
Ezekiel 3:18. "When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand."
Ezekiel 3:20. "(When) a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand."
Ezekiel 33:6. "(If) the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand."
Ezekiel 33:8. "When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand."
“United we stand, divided we fall”, and “Unity in Diversity”, JOHN ODEY ADUMA here echoes two very popular and age-long dicta to again warn the Nigerian people of the danger in casting out from the top echelon of the Nigerian polity and regarding Ndigbo perpetually as Osus not to be companied and associated with within the Nigerian Federation. In this his continuation of his Ndigbo Presidential Project 2023, now in its 4th series, Mr Aduma is reiterating that national unity includes being conscious, acknowledging and recognising the fact that our diversity must go hand in hand with the nation practising and applying justice, fairness and universal altruism to all its citizenry, especially in all that it thinks, says and does.
Also, under this campaign and project of his, he is reminding his fellow Nigerians to to cultivate and embrace national large-heartedness of give and take, live and let live and what is good for the Fulanis, the Hausas, the Kanuris, the Shuwa Arabs, the Arabs, the Yorubas and the Ijaws is equally good for other Nigerians, North and South, including Nidgbo. He therefore, prays and wishes the Nigerian state to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do and right every wrong of the past against Ndigbo and all of her citizens, whilst he is at the same time calling on God, all of humanity, friends of Nigeria worldwide and the children of the coming generations of Nigeria to bear witness to the fact that Nigeria today stands at a crossroads and equally at a threshold between correcting the errors of the past and keeping their country intact or foolishly continues with the status quo and cause things to fall apart:
Above everything else, Mr Aduma wonders if he would be able record for posterity the Nigerian people know what is right and know how to do the right thing when the right time comes for them to do the right thing because it is right to know what is right and know how to do the right thing when the right time comes for them to do what is right to right every wrong of the past?
And those who genuinely know the right thing and how to do the right thing and when to do the right thing will not necessarily wait for others/some people to teach them to do the right thing and subsequently encourage them to do the right thing, how to do the right thing and when to do the right thing because they want them to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do the right thing and in doing the right thing, do the right thing rightly well and at the right time/season and at the right place and for the right reason/purpose.
In story, very aggressive, shameless, and paranoid elephant.
In the story, the innocent cricket attacked unprovoked by the elephant.
Putinism vs. Humanism: The ‘entertainer’ lone wolf and paranoid cowardly loner who has been ‘entertaining’ all of humanity in his theatre of violence unchallenged by the world. But I must here again warn all the leaders of the world, most especially, the Bishop of Rome that a very desperate, humiliated lunatic such as this demon is capable of anything, including forcing the 4th World war on mankind, not 3rd World because we already have the 3rd World war ongoing in the internet/cyber/digital war, which again, Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China are the notorious warriors.
7 And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
His Holiness, Pope Francis: Uneasy lies the head that wears a zucchetto…He who feels it knows it!
Your Holiness,
Greetings.
Having waited with bated breath for Your Holiness’s fatherly intervention in the ongoing hostility between Russia and Ukraine and not hearing your voice in the matter, including where Your Holiness stands on the issue under referenced, which has plunged the whole world into a state of unparalleled trepidation, worry and anxiety, leading to sleepless nights for some of us, and all those still having their consciences and human feelings intact, in addition to respecting human brotherhood and the sovereignty of the nation states, particularly that of the people of Ukraine, I am thus with tears in my eyes and a great sorrow in my heart sending you this SOS of mine on behalf of all the peoples of the world for your Papal intervention in the matter at hand, to prevent the imminent war between Russia and Ukraine, which potentially could engulf the whole human race.
Okokoloko-o! Okokoloko-o! Okokoloko-o! What time is it, fellow Nigerians?
DEDICATED TO LEAH SHARIBU, HANIFA ABUBAKAR AND ALL THOSE THE NIGERIAN STATE UNDER MUJAHID MUHAMMADU BUHARI COULD NOT DEFEND AND PROTECT AS REQUIERED BY THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA.
In continuation of his treatise on national unity, integration, cohesion, despite our diversity, and the peace of the nation, titled: UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL, JOHN ODEY ADUMA enjoins his Ndigbo compatriots to choose between having Nigeria and Biafra as the two he reckons cannot go pari passu, hence not a sort of composite demand, just as water and petrol are not a perfect or a good mix or as one cannot have God and Mammon together or at the same time, Ndigbo must here, he says, choose their preference: NIGERIA or BIAFRA now or never, and remain eternally on not only the fringe of, or on the opposite side of the nation and continue in vain to dream of Biafratopia.
SERIES: LET US LOOK OUT FOR ONE ANOTHER
BY
JOHN ODEY ADUMA
BRITISH CHEVENING SCHOLAR AND PUBLISHER OF VIGILANCE - THE WORLD’S LEADING SECURITY MAGAZINE, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Please keep hope alive.
Nigeria, great country, destined to rule the world
There’s no nation in the world as great as our Nigeria
With God, this Nigeria, God’s own beloved nation will rule the world
Yes, Nigeria, God’s own beloved nation, shall someday rule the world
God, Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
Help us to live together as one, brothers and sisters
Accepting one another in spite of our differences
Understanding and forgetting such differences
And working together side by side with our children
To build a strong and virile nation where in our diversity
Every citizen is treated equally and fairly.
The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse is considered by many historians the end of the Civil War and the start of post-Civil War America. The events of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General and future President Ulysses S. Grant at a small town courthouse in Central Virginia put into effect much of what was to follow.
Pleas visit also: www.vigilance-securitymagazine.com
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.
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