http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-03/eric-holder-announces-task-force-focus-domestic-terrorists
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/03/2014 22:22 -0400
Eric Holder Announces Task Force To Focus On "Domestic Terrorists"
Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
It’s been obvious for quite some time that the so-called “war on terror” is nothing more than a fear-mongering induced power grab; a convenient excuse to strip the citizenry of its civil liberties and humanity. Many commentators, including myself, have predicted for years that the entire counter-terror juggernaut that has been constructed post-9/11 would be ultimately redirected upon the domestic population.
Snowden’s heroic whistleblowing has already proven without a doubt that the government spy apparatus (along with tech company complicity) has been zeroed in on the domestic population for quite some time, but is the situation about to escalate? Are the feds so fearful of their own people, they are about to focus all their counter-terror energy on U.S. citizens? It appears so.
I warned about this development back in 2011 in my post: The War on Freedom. In it I stated:
This whole charade shouldn’t be called “The War on Terror.” It is actually all about keeping the citizenry terrified. The government loves keeping you in a state of fear so that then they can do anything they want to the little sheep. It should be called “The War on Freedom.” Your freedom.
Before I get to the main topic of this article, I think it’s important to read excerpts from yesterday’s powerful and timely op-ed by Noam Chomsky titled: Edward Snowden, the World’s “Most Wanted Criminal. Discussing the Snowden revelations, he writes:
These exposures lead us to inquire into state policy more generally and the factors that drive it. The received standard version is that the primary goal of policy is security and defense against enemies.The doctrine at once suggests a few questions: security for whom, and defense against which enemies? The answers are highlighted dramatically by the Snowden revelations.To defend state power and private economic power from the domestic enemy,those two entities must be concealed – while in sharp contrast, the enemy must be fully exposed to state authority.The principle was lucidly explained by the policy intellectual Samuel P. Huntington, who instructed us that “Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.”Huntington added a crucial illustration. In his words, “you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine” at the outset of the Cold War.Policy must assure the security of state authority and concentrations of domestic power, defending them from a frightening enemy: the domestic population, which can become a great danger if not controlled.From that day forward, in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home,state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting, though there are other options: drug lords, mad mullahs seeking nuclear weapons, and other ogres said to be seeking to attack and destroy us.Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim.In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy.
The concept of the U.S. government viewing the population as the true enemy has been a theme on this site for many years. For some background, I suggest reading the following:
The reason I chose to highlight these two articles, is that in one case it is the “tea party” being demonized, and in the other it is Occupy Wall Street. It doesn’t matter if the dissent is seen as emanating from the “right” or the “left,” it is dissent in general which is increasingly being demonized as “domestic terrorism.”
With all of that in mind, here is what Eric Holder’s “Justice” Department is up to. From the LA Times:
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder, Jr. on Monday announced the creation of a task force within the Justice Department to combat an “escalating danger” from “homegrown” terrorists within the United States.The task force will chiefly comprise leaders from the FBI, the Justice Department’s National Security Division and U.S. Attorneys. Called the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, it is a recreation of a task force formed by former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The task force fell into disuse after 9/11.Though the original task force, which was little known, focused mainly on right-wing zealots, Holder’s version is aimed at U.S. citizens or visitors radicalized via the Internet.Holder said the government will continue to fight terrorists abroad.
Oh the internet! That dangerous place where the citizenry engages in thoughtcrime and can actually perform real journalism without the censorship of mainstream propaganda media.
“But we also must concern ourselves with a different type of threat. We face an escalating danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” he said.“Now — as the nature of the threat we face evolves to include the possibility of individual radicalization via the Internet — it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home,” Holder said.
NPR adds that:
“The threat from al-Qaida is much more diffuse after Sept. 11, and the threats posed by a single horribly misguided citizen or permanent legal resident in the U.S. is in a sense as great as what core al-Qaida posed before Sept. 11,” says Neil MacBride, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
There you have it. It’s no longer al-Qaeda, it’s now supposedly your friends and neighbors. This is the prevailing meme of every tyrannical fascist regime in history.
The state’s war on the citizenry is becoming overt. Don’t be fooled, this is real and it is very dangerous.
Image at the top of this post is brought to you by the always excellentWilliamBanzai7.
Info wars......
SECRET SERVICE TO TRACK TWITTER USERS IN REAL TIME
Federal agency will use tool to "send notifications to users"
The United States Secret Service is set to purchase software that can track Twitter users in real time, prompting concerns that individuals could face greater harassment over tweets deemed to be threatening or anti-government.
According to a solicitation posted this week, the federal agency announced its intention to use the tool to undertake “sentiment analysis,” “influencer identification,” “access to historical Twitter data,” “ability to detect sarcasm,” and “heat maps” that will show user trends.
The software will also have the capability to “send notifications to users,” suggesting that the Secret Service intends to directly address Twitter users who are deemed to have tweeted something unsavory.
There have been numerous instances where Twitter users have been harassed by the Secret Service after making anti-Obama or anti-government statements that could not be construed at threatening. The Secret Service’s acquisition of more sophisticated tracking software will only serve to make these incidents more common.
Last year, Tom Francois, an outspoken critic of President Obama, was startled by a loud thump on his door and the presence of Secret Service agents who wanted to “take a look around” his house. The agents also interrogated Francois on his mental health and if he had any plans to travel to Washington DC, while also threatening to seize his firearms.
The Secret Service admitted that they couldn’t identify a single post by Francois that could be deemed threatening to the President.
In January, a Florida Republican running for the state assembly also received a Secret Service visit after he tweeted that Barack Obama should be arrested, impeached and hanged.
“A couple of years ago, the Homeland Security Department, the agency’s parent, got in trouble with lawmakers and civil liberties groups for a social media program that would work, in part, by having employees create fake usernames and profiles to spy on other users,” reports NextGov.“A House Homeland Security Committee panel called DHS officials into a hearing after reports the department tasked analysts with collecting data that reflected negatively on the government, such as content about the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to a Michigan jail. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued DHS for more information on the program.”
The Department of Homeland Security has recently intensified its efforts to keep track of what users are tweeting in order to monitor public sentiment and media narratives.
A document obtained in March revealed that the function of the DHS’ Media Monitoring Capability (MMC) desk is to track news websites and social media in order to gather critical information, “during normal operations, crises and extraordinary events.”
“It is essential to monitor the media’s storylines and integrate their focus into the Department’s situational awareness and operations analytical process,” states the document, adding that such work is necessary in shaping “public statements” made by the DHS.
The MMC desk also keeps tabs on numerous news outlets including the Drudge Report, which has carried hundreds of stories critical of the DHS and the TSA in recent years.
A SURVEILLANCE STATE BEYOND IMAGINATION IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S FREEST COUNTRIES
Defense of the fundamental right to privacy helped to spark the American Revolution
In the past several months, we have been provided with instructive lessons on the nature of state power and the forces that drive state policy. And on a closely related matter: the subtle, differentiated concept of transparency.
The source of the instruction, of course, is the trove of documents about the National Security Agency surveillance system released by the courageous fighter for freedom Edward J. Snowden, expertly summarized and analyzed by his collaborator Glenn Greenwald in his new book, ” No Place to Hide.”
The documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp of the colossus – in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic society.
A COUNTRY WHERE POLICE BURN INFANTS IN THEIR CRIBS
This is at least the third episode in which a SWAT team has burned a child during a night-time raid
“I stand behind what our team did,” insists Habersham County, Georgia Sheriff Joey Terrell, referring to a 3:00 a.m. no-knock SWAT raid in which a 19-month-old child was severely burned by a flash-bang grenade. “There’s nothing to investigate, there’s nothing to look at,” continued the sheriff, relaying the conclusions of the County DA’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “Bad things can happen. That’s just the world we live in.”
If anyone is to blame, Terrell maintains, it was the alleged drug dealers who had supposedly sold drugs to a “cooperating informant.” His pious outrage overcoming his syntax, the sheriff characterized the suspects as people “who want to do the domestic terrorism and sell dope and make the money.” While emitting all of the expected sympathetic noises regarding the child – whose face and chest were ripped apart by the grenade that was tossed into his crib – the sheriff clearly regards the Stormtroopers who raided the house as the primary victims.
The officer who threw the grenade “is basically upside down,” relates the sheriff. “He’s gone and talked to his pastor, trying to get some counseling and some debriefing just to help him get through what has happened.” If the pastor is a man of God, rather than an agent of Leviathan, he will call that officer to repentance.
Special Response Team leader Matt Wurtz was also devastated by the incident, Terrell observed, but in a “trembling” voice expressed his determination to continue kicking in doors at 3:00 a.m. “because children are getting involved in situations they don’t need to be.”
That’s right: The on-site commander who nearly burned a child to death in a raid the likes of which the Gestapo might have regarded excessive did it For The Children.
Sheriff Terrell likewise remains committed to pursuing the path of righteousness:
“We’re called for a purpose. The members of this team want to be here… We’re getting more and more information about children, 14-15 years of age, getting into methamphetamine. Who is going to stand up for them? Who is going to do the right thing? We are! We are! And we are not going to stop what we do.”
One wonders if the “information” to which Sheriff Terrell refers is as reliable as that provided by the “confidential informant” who told police that there were no children at the home prior to the SWAT raid.
Alecia Phonesavanh, the mother of the infant who was severely burned and nearly murdered by Terrell’s ministering angels of divine justice, was visiting her sister-in-law when the raid took place.
“Everyone’s sleeping,” Phonesavanh told WSB news. “There’s a loud bang and a bright light. The cops threw that grenade in the door without looking first, and it landed right in the playpen and exploded on his pillow right in his face.”
While emphasizing the emotional wounds suffered by his gallant minions, Terrell pointedly sought to minimize the injury inflicted on the infant, who was placed in an induced coma: “I don’t think [the burns] cover a significant amount of the face or the chest,” the sheriff insisted. The journalists who saw photos of the baby offered a very different assessment: WSB “decided not to share most of the photos because of the graphic nature of the child’s injuries.”
Like many, if not most, of the people who follow his morally irredeemable profession, Sheriff Terrell has mastered the art of inverted self-pity, as taught to German Stormtroopers by Heinrich Himmler.
“What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique (“a great task that occurs once in two thousand years”), which must therefore be difficult to bear,” observed Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. “Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”
An isolated incident is an anomaly; two of its kind may be construed as a coincidence; when three or more occur, we’re confronted with a pattern. This is at least the third episode in which a SWAT team has burned a child during a night-time raid.
The most tragic episode of the kind was the murder, by SWAT team, of 7-year-old Detroit resident Aiyana Jones. Aiyana was burned by a flash-bang grenade and then shot in the head by SWAT operative – and “reality” TV star – Joseph Weekley on May 17, 2010. The midnight raid, which was carried out to arrest a homicide suspect who could easily have been arrested by conventional means the following morning, was staged for the benefit of a camera crew from the A&E cable network. The telegenic assault was carried out despite warnings from neighbors that children were present in the home — something that should have been obvious on account of the toys scattered in the front yard.
A pre-dawn raid in Billings, Montana on October 9, 2012 resulted in severe burns to a 12-year-old child after one of the raiders hurled a flash-bang grenade through the windows of her upstairs bedroom. Her father, who went to answer the door, dodged another that “blew the nails out of the drywall” and left a “large bowl-shaped dent in the wall,” reported the Missoulian newspaper.
This assault was staged by a SWAT team attached to the City-County Special Investigations Unit (CCIU) in Billings, Montana. Like Sheriff Terrell. Billings Police Chief Rich St. John insists that the assault on the home was carried out because of “hard evidence” that a meth lab existed on the premises. Praise be to all that is holy, that “evidence” was just as defective as the “intelligence” offered to Sheriff Terrell by his cooperating informant in Georgia – but one wonders why anyone possessed of a particle of tactical intelligence would hurl incendiary devices into a building that supposedly contains a lab filled with volatile chemicals.
Just like the officials responsible for the burning of the child in Habersham County and the murder of Aiyana Jones, Chief St. John claims that the CCIU had “hard evidence” insisted that his investigators simply didn’t know there were two children living on the targeted premises – not that this fact would necessarily have dictated restraint on the part of the home invasion squad.
“We generally do not introduce these disorienting devices when [children] are present,” St. John said regarding the flash-bang grenades used in the raid. This would mean, of course, that there are situations in which his agency uses incendiary rounds in the presence of children.
No arrests were made, and no charges were filed. Jackie Fasching, mother of the injured child, correctly points out that criminal charges should have been filed against the state-employed Berserkers who attacked her sleeping daughter. But accountability for criminal acts committed in the name of the State simply doesn’t exist in the American Soyuz, a country in which police kick in doors at 3:00 a.m. and burn infants in their cribs.
THREE COPS IN NEW MEXICO’S INFAMOUS ANAL CAVITY SEARCH CASE STILL ON JOB
Man falsely suspected of carrying drugs forced to undergo multiple anal cavity searches
It’s one of the most shocking and infamous cases to ever come out of New Mexico: A man, falsely suspected of carrying drugs, forced to undergo multiple anal cavity searches.
Now, a year and half after the incident and six months after a settlement of $1.6 million in local taxpayer money was announced, New Mexico Watchdog has learned at least three police officers involved in the case are still on the job, while the status of three others remains a secret.
Deming Police Chief Brandon Gigante told New Mexico Watchdog all three officers in his department who were listed as defendants in a subsequent lawsuit are on active duty. Gigante wouldn’t say why or reveal if the officers were disciplined.
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