How Militarized Police Are Turning American Communities Into War Zones, Death by Death

When it comes to people of color, the police make San Francisco “Baghdad by the Bay.”

By Rebecca Gordon
In the photo, five of Beyoncé’s leather-clad, black-bereted dancers raise their fists in a Black Power salute. The woman in the middle holds a hand-lettered sign up for the camera, bearing three words and a number: “Justice 4 Mario Woods.” Behind them, the crowd at Levi's Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, is getting ready for the second half of Super Bowl 50, but the game’s real fireworks are already over.

The women in the photo had just finished backing Beyoncé’s homage to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X during her incandescent halftime appearance, when two San Francisco Bay Area Black Lives Matter activists managed to grab a few words with them. Rheema Emy Calloway and Ronnisha Johnson asked if they’d make a quick video demanding justice for Mario Woods. “From the look on the faces of the dancers, they’d already heard about the case,” Calloway told the Guardian.

Eric Garner Protest 4th December 2014, Manhattan, NYC.
(Photo by The All-Nite Images)

Who was Mario Woods and why did Calloway and Johnson want the world to know that his life mattered? The answer: on December 2, 2015, Mario Woods was executed in broad daylight by officers of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and the event was filmed.

Woods was a 26-year-old African American, born and raised in San Francisco’s Bayview district, one of the city’s few remaining largely black neighborhoods. (In 1980, right before I moved to San Francisco, African Americans made up almost 13% of the city’s population. Today, the figure is around 6% and shrinking.) Woods died when police attempted to arrest him because they believed that, earlier in the day, he had stabbed another man in the arm. Like many victims of police violence, Woods had mental health problems. Indeed, his autopsy’s toxicology report showed that, when he died, his system contained a powerful mix of medications (both prescribed and self-administered) including anti-depressants, speed, and marijuana.

But it was the way he died that brought Mario Woods a brief bit of posthumous notoreity. His death was, like Beyoncé’s dancers, captured onvideo. A crowd of people watched as what CNN described as “a sea of police officers” surrounded Woods and shot him dead. At least two people recorded cell-phone videos of what looks eerily like an execution by firing squad.

Woods, his back to a wall, one leg injured from earlier rounds of non-lethal projectiles, attempts to limp past the half-circle of police. Arms at his sides, he sidles along, until an officer blocks his way and opens fire. Three seconds and at least 20 shots later, he lies in a heap on the sidewalk. Police said he was carrying a knife, although this is not at all clear from the video. One thing is clear, however: Woods was not threatening anyone when he was gunned down.

From Hippies to Hipsters -- Policing the City of Love

San Francisco is known around the world for its gentle vibe, its Left Coast politics, its live-and-let-live approach to other people’s lifestyles -- except when it comes to the police. For many of them, “live and let live” does not seem to apply to everyone, especially not to communities of color, and in the not-too-distant past to LGBT folk either. I remember, for instance, the infamous October 6, 1989, “Castro Sweep,” when police responded to a nonviolent Act Up demonstration for AIDS funding by occupying an entire gay neighborhood called “the Castro” (for its main commercial street). They ran into bars and restaurants, dragging patrons out to the sidewalks and beating them with truncheons.

I was working some blocks away at the headquarters of the “Yes on S” campaign, supporting what now seems like a quaint ballot measure (which failed) aimed at creating domestic partnerships in the City of Love. A bleeding man came stumbling into our office shouting that the police were rioting in the Castro. For once, the SFPD had gone too far and the city ended up paying out $250,000 (a pittance even then) to settle a class action suit by the victims. A couple of police captains were finally disciplined, but Chief of Police Frank Jordan was not penalized at all and went on to serve as mayor from 1992 to 1996. The Castro Sweep might hold a bigger place in the city’s memory and history, had the Loma Prieta earthquake not shaken San Francisco 11 days later.

Once a mostly white department -- at whom demonstrators used to chant, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, SFPD go away!” -- the city’s police force is now significantly more diverse. Today, women, people of color, and open LGBT folk all wear the blue, but a hard core of the old guard remains. With them remains a still-dominant culture of sexism, homophobia, racism, and impunity. In 2015, a series of text messages involving at least 10 different SFPD members came to light during a corruption case against one of them,Ian Fruminger. Sent between 2010 and 2012, these messages revealed just how ugly the attitudes of that hard core are -- and how entitled they seem to feel to end the lives of people they believe deserve it.

Here’s a sample: Fruminger texted a friend who was an SFPD officer, "I hate to tell you this but my wife [sic] friend is over with their kids and her husband is black! If [sic] is an Attorney but should I be worried?"

He wrote back: "Get ur pocket gun. Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. Its [sic] not against the law to put an animal down."

Furminger responded, "Well said!"

When the city moved to fire the officers involved, a judge ruled that the police department had missed a legal deadline for disciplinary action.

Not the First Time

Mario Woods was hardly the first man shot by the police in my adopted hometown. In fact, in the last couple of years two such killings happened in my neighborhood.

Alejandro “Alex” Nieto died on Bernal Heights. It’s a hilltop near my house where people go to run, often with their dogs, and take in glorious views of the city that San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen used to call “Baghdad by the Bay” to emphasize its exotic character, long before Iraq became part of theAxis of Evil. Alex Nieto, a community college student who made his living working as a security guard, came from the largely Latino and immigrant-populated Mission District.

On the night of March 21, 2014, Nieto sat on a bench on Bernal Heights to eat a burrito before going to work. On his hip was the taser he carried on the job. An anonymous call to 911 reported a man sitting in the park with a gun on his hip and the SFPD responded.

In January 2016, his parents, Refugio and Elvira Nieto, would finally file awrongful death suit against Chief of Police Greg Suhr, up to 25 as-yet-unidentified police officers, and the city and county of San Francisco. The suit alleges that as their son, having finished his burrito, was “casually” walking down a jogging path towards the park entrance, the police arrived. Two officers took cover behind a patrol car, while several others, carrying what witnesses said looked like rifles, took up positions behind Nieto. One of the officers behind the police car, yelled, “Stop.” Here, in the words of the suit, is what happened next:

“Within seconds a quick volley of bullets were fired at Mr. Nieto. No additional orders or any other verbal communication was heard between the first Officer yelling 'stop' and the initial volley of gunfire that rang out. Mr. Nieto fell to the ground. After a brief pause of just a second or two, a second barrage of shots were fired. The Officers’ bullets struck Mr. Nieto in his forehead and at least nine other places leaving his body grossly disfigured and mortally wounded.”The police claimed that Nieto pointed his taser at them and they had to kill him. But eyewitnesses say that he never threatened anyone.

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IBM And The Holocaust: IBM Provided the Know-How That Helped Make the Holocaust Possible (Documentation)

Without the technology and hands-on assistance of IBM and its consultants the Nazi persecution of Jews could never have reached such extreme "efficiency"

Left: Holocaust survivor Rose Schindler shows the prisoner number tattoo on her arm. We can thank IBM for that ID system. Right: Prisoners in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, December 19, 1938. (Left and Right
Photos from Wikimedia Commons)

_________

IBM And The Holocaust:
The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

IBM Wants Complete Surveillance of Your Life: 24/7 — From Cradle to the Grave (Video)

Evolution of Total Control: It all starts with slowly getting the population to accept the "safety and convenience" of a tracking chip that will hold all of your information: First Step: Putting all that tracking, personal and buy-on-credit power into your phone and having you carry it around with you all the time. Second Step: Getting you to inject all of that "convenience" so you won't even need a smart phone or credit card. Third Step: Start with the pets and the children (for
their own safety).

_________

One Mainframe To Rule Them All

One Mainframe To Rule Them All is a breathtaking rundown of the human microchipping agenda. Concise and effective, it breaks down the coming global information control grid in all its horrifying detail. Scarier than any horror movie could be because it is real and documented.

Nazi Roots of Ukraine’s Conflict

Few Americans understand the ugly history behind the Nazi-affiliated movements that have gained substantial power in today’s U.S.-backed Ukrainian regime. Western propaganda has made these right-wing extremists the “good guys” versus the Russian “bad guys,” as Jonathan Marshall explains.

By Jonathan Marshall
The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, one of the leading journals in its field, offers a two-page photo essay on “what to see, do, and buy” in Lviv, a picturesque city in the Western Ukraine. “Amid the turmoil that has rocked Ukraine over the past two years,” the article gushes, “Lviv has stood firmly as a stronghold of national culture, language, and identity.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another, less charitable way would be to note that Lviv has for nearly a century been a breeding ground of extreme Ukrainian nationalism, spawning terrorist movements, rabid anti-Semitism, and outright pro-Nazi political organizations that continue to pollute the country’s politics.

On the lovely cobblestone streets admired today by tourists flowed the blood of some 4,000 Jews who were massacred by locals in 1941, during the German occupation. They were egged on by the radical Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose founder and wartime leader is today a national hero to many of his countrymen.

On April 28, 2011, the 68th anniversary of the formation of a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division, hundreds of people marched through Lviv, with support from city council members, chanting slogans like “One race, one nation, one Fatherland!”

Two months later, residents celebrated the 70th anniversary of the German invasion “as a popular festival, where parents with small children waived flags to re-enactors in SS uniforms,” according to the noted Swedish-American historian Per Anders Rudling.

Later that year, extreme right-wing deputies at a nearby town in the Lviv district “renamed a street from the Soviet-era name Peace Street to instead carry the name of the Nachtigall [Nightingale] Battalion, a Ukrainian nationalist formation involved in the mass murder of Jews in 1941, arguing that ‘Peace’ is a holdover from Soviet stereotypes.’”

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The War on Cash: A Country by Country Guide

If society becomes cashless, dissenters can’t hide cash.  All of their financial holdings would be vulnerable to an attack by the government. This would be the ultimate form of control. Because – without access to money – people couldn’t resist, couldn’t hide and couldn’t escape. And remember, we can’t rein in the banks if we can’t pull our money out of them.

(Photo from Therealasset.)

By James Corbett
Just this week Norway has jumped aboard the cashless society agenda with DNB, the country’s largest bank, calling for a total end to cash. The story only sounds shocking because people haven’t heard the similar stories from Sweden or Denmark or India or Israel or any of the dozens of other countries whose banksters and (bankster-controlled) governments have openly lusted after a world of completely trackable, completely bank-controlled transactions.

But all of these stories, reported piecemeal here and there over the years, doesn’t give the full story about how this “war on cash” is being waged on every continent and in every country by the same banksters that stand to benefit from a cashless world. Let’s fix that by compiling a list of examples from around the world of how cash payments are being regulated, restricted and phased out. The list below will be updated as new stories come in.

RELATED STORY: The Privacy Dangers of a Cashless Society Were Clear Over 40 Years Ago

If you have a link to relevant news from your own country or know of such news from another country, please let us know. Corbett Report members are invited to contribute to the list by logging in and leaving links to the relevant info in the comments below.

The Cashless Society List
CANADA – In 2007 the Canadian government stopped allowing payment of taxes in cash at government service centers. In 2010 Passport Canada followed suit. In 2011 56% of Canadians polled said they were happy to live in a bankster-controlled cashless society so the country killed the penny in 2012 and the Royal Canadian Mint started pimping the “MintChip” as a new form of electronic payment that will be “better than cash.” The Mint ended the program in 2014 but the Great White North is still on track to be a cashless society in the coming years.

DENMARK – In the 1990s about 80% of Danish retail purchases were made with cash, but these days it’s more like 25%. But if the Danish government has its way, that number will be 0% by 2030. That’s the year the Danish government has set for the complete elimination of paper money in Denmark.

FRANCE – In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks last year, the French government stepped up its war on cash. In March of last year, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin declared it necessary to “fight against the use of cash and anonymity in the French economy” in order to combat “low-cost terrorism.” As of September 2015 it is illegal for French citizens to make purchases exceeding 1000 euros in cash.

INDIA – India is one of the most cash-dependent economies in the world with a cash-to-GDP ratio of 12% almost four times that of fellow BRICS nations Brazil and South Africa). But it won’t be for long if the Indian government has its way. Last June the Indian Ministry of Finance posted a draft proposal to its website for facilitating the rise of cashless payments in the country. In his 2015 budget speech the Finance Minister declared: “One way to curb the flow of black money is to discourage transactions in cash. Now that a majority of Indians has or can have, a RUPAY debit card. I therefore, proposes to introduce soon several measure that will incentivize credit or debit card transactions and disincentivize cash transaction.”

ISRAEL – In 2014 a special committee headed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff Harel Locker released a report examining how to reduce the use of cash in the country. The report advocates reforms (including restrictions and limits on cash transactions) as part of a strategy whose aim is “reduced use of cash, reduced use of endorsed checks, and increased use of electronic means of payment.”

NORWAY – Late last week Trond Bentestuen, a senior executive at Norway’s largest bank, complained to the VG Newspaper that the Norwegian central bank “can only account for 40 percent” of the Norwegian kroner in circulation, meaning “that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control.” There’s only one conclusion, according to Bentestuen: “There are so many dangers and disadvantages associated with cash, we have concluded that it should be phased out.” Don’t worry, though, the nation’s Finance Ministry says it has “no plans to change the law in this area”…for now.

SWEDEN – Last year Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology released a report stating that the country is on track to completely eliminating cash transactions in the foreseeable future. Noting that there are now only 80 billion Swedish crowns in circulation in the economy (down from 106 just six years ago), the report highlights how digital person-to-person payment technology “Swish” (developed in collaboration with Danish banks) is already transforming the country’s banking sector, where there are now entire banks that do not accept cash.

Reprinted with permission from The Corbett Report.

Neo-Nazis and the Bundy Militia in Oregon

Photo by Jason Hollinger.

Will the History Books Record How Neo-Nazis Made Eyes at the Bundy Militia?

By Spencer Sunshine

[...]

The occupiers had been demanding the abolition of the federal government as we know it, using a set of rationales that were originally derived from racist movements. Some of the occupiers were known to spout anti-Semitic or Islamophobic conspiracy theories, while another denied that slavery existed. And so it should not have surprised anyone that neo-Nazis and other organized racists have applauded the occupation.


Until their arrest, Ammon and Ryan Bundy (sons of deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy) were leaders of the occupation of the refuge's headquarters outside of Burns, Oregon, which had gone on since January 2. They had two demands: to remove control of the bird sanctuary (previously Indigenous-held land) from the federal government's hands so that ranchers could use it for private gain without current environmental and other restrictions; and release two members of the Hammond family, local ranchers serving sentences for arson on public land.

Many of the ideas and political forms that Ammon Bundy and his friends used were derived from the 1970s white supremacist group Posse Comitatus. It promoted the formation of militias, developed a fictitious parallel legal world based on an idiosyncratic reading of the US Constitution, and rejected the authority of federal and state governments - claiming that the county sheriff was the highest legitimate elected official. But while Ammon Bundy and the others directly around him had many of the same ideas, they were careful not to use Posse Comitatus' bigoted language.

This was not true of many of the Bundys' followers at the refuge. Jon Ritzheimer, who was also arrested Tuesday night, is a famous Islamophobic organizer, known for his vicious rhetoric. Blaine Cooper once wrapped a Koran in bacon and set it on fire. Brand Thornton and David Fry are reported to hold anti-Semitic ideas. Ryan Payne (also arrested on Tuesday) believes that slavery didn't exist. Rance Harris is said to have neo-Nazi tattoos like "88" - the alphanumeric code for "Heil Hitler." And together they collectively offended the Burns Paiute Tribe (whose land used to include the refuge), by - among other things - breaking into an area where the tribe's artifacts are stored.

So flirtatious overtures from neo-Nazis to the Bundy gang should not have surprised anyone.

At the beginning of the occupation, Andrew Anglin, publisher of the popular neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, wrote that, despite his relative disinterest in cattle-grazing laws, "when I see working class White men in a confrontation with the federal government, I simply assume that the federal government is wrong and the working men are right. Clearly, that is the case in this situation." The next day he added, "I'm warming up to their issues a bit more. They do seem like good guys" - even though he wished they were "protesting these new Obama gun control measures."

John Friend, a Holocaust denier, made a special trip to the Malheur refuge, where he interviewed several of the occupiers. He also wrote a glowing report about the armed occupation for the American Free Press, an anti-Semitic, white nationalist newspaper, which is one of the remaining parts of the Willis Carto empire. (Among his other achievements, Carto helped popularize Holocaust denial in the United States.)

The Traditionalist Youth Network, the reigning US youth group for nerdy 20-somethings who are into racism, took to Twitter to support the Bundy militia. They declared the Bundy action to be "civil disobedience" (the whole armed part apparently being neither here nor there), and claimed that leftists, who normally "romanticize" civil disobedience, "totally lose their shit (TERRORISM! ANARCHY!) when some white people do it."

Taki's Magazine is a home for folks whose views are largely in line with those of the Republican Party, except the party just isn't bigoted enough for them. It ran a full propaganda push for the Bundy rebellion by Gavin McInnes, a cofounder of Vice magazine (though now gone), and contributor to the xenophobic, white nationalist website VDARE. Falsely claiming that the wildlife refuge was stolen from ranchers, McInnes called the Hammonds' mandatory minimum arson sentences "an incredibly cut-and-dried example of the government oppressing the people because they want our stuff." McInnes claims the liberal media hates the Bundy gang because they are white men who do "exactly what the Constitution says we should do." (Somehow in my civics class I missed the amendment that specifies citizens' obligation to get guns and occupy publicly owned bird sanctuaries. I'll have to read it again.)

Hunter Wallace, writing for the popular white nationalist Occidental Dissent website, supported the Bundys' attack on public lands. Complaining of "environmentalism run amok" - we can only assume their fantasy all-white world will have no need for polar ice caps - they attack the "truly insane levels" of Western federal land ownership, and "the extremes to which radical Greens in the Obama administration have discredited environmentalism," by wanting to "block the Keystone Pipeline" and "halt drilling in the Arctic." I certainly hope they are investing all of their movement's funds in low-lying Pacific Island real estate.

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The NYPD Is As Bad As The NSA: Uses License Plate Reader Database to Monitor Movements of Residents

The "Vigilant" contains over 2.2 billion location data points, and it is growing by almost a million data points per day. The database also isn’t limited to New York City, which means the NYPD can now monitor your car whether you live in New York or Miami or Chicago or Los Angeles. It also has a corrupting influence on its users: A police officer in Washington D.C. pleaded guilty to extortion after looking up the plates of cars near a gay bar and blackmailing the car’s owners.

(click to see full-size image)

Documents Uncover NYPD’s Vast License Plate Reader Database

Surveillance is about power. Vigilant gives the NYPD power to monitor our whereabouts.

By Mariko Hirose
Supporters of license plate readers are fond of saying that unless you’re a criminal, you needn’t fear the invasive technology. But those who adhere to that argument should consider just a few examples from around the country:

• A police officer in Washington D.C. pleaded guilty to extortion after looking up the plates of cars near a gay bar and blackmailing the car’s owners.


• The DEA contemplated using license plate readers to monitor people who were at a gun show. Since the devices can’t distinguish between those who are selling illegal guns and those who aren’t, a person’s presence at the gun show would have landed them in a DEA database.


• A SWAT team in Kansas raided a man’s house where his wife, 7-year-old daughter, and 13-year-old son lived based in part on the mass monitoring of cars parked at a gardening store. The man was held at gunpoint for two hours while cops combed through his home. The police were looking for a marijuana growing operation. They did not find that or any other evidence of criminal activity in the man’s house. With these stories firmly in mind, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s latest license plate reader discovery is all the more chilling.

Last year, we learned that the NYPD was hoping to enter into a multi-year contract that would give it access to the nationwide database of license plate reader data owned by the company Vigilant Solutions. Now, through a Freedom of Information Law request, the NYCLU has obtained the final version of the $442,500 contract and the scope-of-work proposal that gives a peek into the ever-widening world of surveillance made possible by Vigilant.

RELATED STORIES:
U.S. Government Buys Surveillance Technology To Track Drivers in Real Time

Cops Must Swear Silence to Access Vehicle Tracking System: Corporations Insist License Plate Tracking Stay Hidden Media and Public

License Plates Are Being Massed Photographed by Private Companies For Sale To Law Enforcers That Track You — Now They Fight For the 'Right' To Do It

Surveillance is about power. Vigilant gives the NYPD power to monitor our whereabouts and, by extension, our affiliations, interests, activities and beliefs.

The scope-of-work proposal explains how Vigilant vastly expands the NYPD’s surveillance capability beyond what was possible with its own license plate database. Known as the Domain Awareness System, it collects the license plate data scanned by the approximately 500 license plate readers operated by the NYPD and combines it with footage from cameras and other surveillance devices around the city. The NYPD holds on to the license plate data for at least five years regardless of whether a car triggers any suspicion.

The Vigilant database raises similar privacy concerns as the Domain Awareness System, but those concerns are greatly magnified because the Vigilant database is massive: It contains over 2.2 billion location data points, and it is growing by almost a million data points per day. The database also isn’t limited to New York City, which means the NYPD can now monitor your car whether you live in New York or Miami or Chicago or Los Angeles.

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Massive Marches in Poland Against Growing Authoritarian Threat of Far-Right

"We want to preserve our democracy and our freedom," said one demonstration organizer.

People demonstrate during an anti-government rally in Krakow, Poland January 23, 2016. Thousands of Poles marched through Warsaw on Saturday to protest against their new conservative government's plan to increase its surveillance powers, which critics say will undermine privacy rights. Banner shows Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and reads "Little brother is watching you!" (Photo: Lukasz Krajewski/Agencja Gazeta/Reuters)

By Jon Queally
Thousands of citizens marched through city streets across Poland on Saturday to protest the right-wing government's encroaching authoritarianism, including a new plan to enact sweeping surveillance measures.

"Our privacy, intimacy is under threat, we can be followed, watched over both in our homes, and online," Mateusz Kijowski, founder of the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD) party and one of the protest organizers, told a large crowd in Warsaw as people held signs and stood in frigid temperatures to voice their opposition to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party that took control in November following parliamentary elections.

"We are not revolutionaries," Kijowski said. "Revolutionaries are those who destroy order, who want to impose their own rule. We want to preserve our democracy and our freedom."

According to Reuters:

Waving Polish and European Union flags, the protesters demanded that the Law and Justice party withdraw its planned changes to the surveillance law.

"You're supposed to listen, not listen in," read one of the banners. The proposed changes would expand the government's access to digital data and loosen the legal framework of using surveillance in law enforcement.

The news agency reports how dissent has been growing in the country since PiS gained power. A series of moves by the new government, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski and enabled by President Andrzej Duda, to seize "more control of the judiciary and the media have divided Poland and raised alarm bells in the Europe Union, which has started investigating charges that Warsaw is undermining democratic principles."

In a national poll taken in December, more than half of Poland's people (56%) said that Kaczynski and the PiS were a direct threat to the nation's democracy. Remi Adekoya, a Phd student and Poland-based journalist, argued in a recent column that Kaczynski—like Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and other far-right party leaders across Europe—"seems hungry for total control" of the state. Like Orbán in Hungary, the PiS has been perfecting an increasingly hostile position regarding the plight of refugees seeking asylum in Europe.

Pointing to the shadow that Hungary's Orbán is now casting over Polish politics, Saturday's demonstration in Warsaw was attended by many opposition activists from Hungary, including Balazs Gulyas who issued a warning to his Polish neighbors about what has happened in his country.

"Jaroslaw Kaczynski wants to follow Viktor Orban," Gulyas reportedly said, as he addressed the crowd in English. "So we Hungarians should warn you: whatever Kaczynski promises, this road is going towards autocracy, economic backwardness, a shrinking middle class and increasing poverty."

One protester held up a sign that said "Happy New Year 1984" and explained to the Associated Press her fears that life in Poland could begin to resemble the authoritarian state depicted in George Orwell's famous novel.

Amid the growing concerns of the Polish government's behavior, the EU's investigation seeks to determine if any of the newly-enact reforms violate the bloc's democratic standards. As Agence France Presse reports:

Brussels introduced the "rule of law" mechanism in 2014, giving the 28-nation bloc the right to investigate and if necessary punish any member state which violates key EU democratic and rights norms.

If found at fault, a country can be stripped of its EU voting rights—the so-called "nuclear option"—but the procedure has not been used before and officials say they hope it does not come to that.

Said demonstrator Anna Straszewska, a 42-year-old art historian marching in Warsaw, "We are afraid that things could get that bad if we don't protest now. I remember communism. When democracy came I thought we would be part of the West forever. Now I am even afraid this could end up in us leaving the EU."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Donald Trump is 'Too Moderate' Claim 'Top' Republicans — Apparently They Want Him to Go Full Nazi

By Max Ehrenfreund
It's like something out of a Marvel movie. Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, assembles a squadron of writers from all over the world of conservatism -- religious figures, radio personalities, President Reagan's former aides. True, they might have had their differences in the past, but this time, they have all come together in one final effort to stop a powerful villain from destroying liberty and freedom before the Iowa caucuses in just over a week.

That villain, of course, is Donald Trump, the favorite to win the GOP presidential primary.

A good comic-book villain has a weakness. For Trump, many people think it's that he is far too extreme to run as the nominee of a major political party -- his opponents have called him a fascist, for example. And many think he is certainly too extreme to win a general election. They compare him to a stalwart conservative such as Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee whom President Johnson trounced in 1964.

Our heroes in the National Review don't attack Trump by trying to exploit his extremism. On the contrary, in their view, Trump's flaw is that he doesn't go far enough. The refrain of the special issue that Lowry published this week is that Trump is not ideological, that he is willing to compromise, that he is not a true conservative.

"Is Trump a liberal? Who knows?" asks Mona Charen, one of Lowry's contributors.

In other words, this special issue emphasizes an important but underappreciated fact about Trump. He might be brash. He might be eccentric. Substantively, though, he is a moderate by the standards of the Republican Party.

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Police State: Only Person Jailed for Cops' Chokehold Murder of Eric Garner Is Guy Who Recorded It (Video)

The NYPD wanted to send the message, "Record the police and we will come after you."  Within a week of recording the police choke hold murder of Eric Garner, Ramsey Orta, his girlfriend and even his mother were subject to police harassment and arrest. — The NYPD can teach the North Korean government a thing or two about terror and repression.

Ramsey Orta video taped the murder of Eric Garner
by NYC cop Daniel Pantaleo. He said the grand jury
had To interest in what he had to say. (Photo screen
captured from Daily News video)

As Sgt. Kizzy Adonis Adonis becomes the first officer to face reprimand for Eric Garner's death, the only person present that day to be criminally charged is the young man who filmed it. Ramsey Orta, who recorded the fatal chokehold on his cellphone, has been arrested multiple times since. Orta says police have deliberately targeted him for capturing Garner's death on video and exposing it to the world. Supporters rallied for Orta on Monday at a court appearance on Staten Island. Orta joins us along with Eric Garner's daughter, Erica Garner, and Reggie Harris, a member of the Black Organizing Project.



TRANSCRIPT:

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to that day in August of 2014, to the police - it was July of 2014. Ramsey Orta, I - we have seen your video countless times, the world has seen this video, but we have rarely heard your voice. Talk about what you saw happen that day and what inspired you to flip open your cellphone and start filming.

________________

RELATED STORIES:

Eric Garner Murdered by NYPD Chokehold and the Man Who Recorded the Killing Gets Arrested for Unloaded Gun and Pot — Coincidence?

Wife of Man Who Recorded Eric Garner's Murder by NYC Police Arrested for Assault — Are Cops Flexing Their Police State Muscles?

Eric Garner Grand Jury Was Rigged Says Man Who Video Taped Killing: Talked and Used Phones During His Testimony — "Their Minds Were Already Made Up"

________________

RAMSEY ORTA: What I saw that day was NYPD murder my friend. And what inspired me to take the video, because I have past videos of NYPD abusing their power with people I associate with.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you started filming.

RAMSEY ORTA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You didn't stop.

RAMSEY ORTA: No.

AMY GOODMAN: Your hand is remarkably steady as we show this video.

RAMSEY ORTA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What were you thinking?

RAMSEY ORTA: It's about to go down. And I just had to make sure I stood there, and make sure I had got every detail and I didn't miss nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: And what were you feeling as you are filming? You were a friend of Eric Garner's.

RAMSEY ORTA: I was upset. I mean, you can clearly hear it in the video. I was running my mouth in the video, but yeah, I was highly upset.

AMY GOODMAN: What were you saying?

RAMSEY ORTA: I was cursing, calling them names and telling them to leave him alone, and that I have witnessed that he wasn't selling any loose cigarettes, that he just had broke up a fight.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that. He was known for selling loosies, loose cigarettes, but actually, on this day, there had been a fight in the street, and he had gone to mediate the fight, like to try to break it up?

RAMSEY ORTA: Yeah, the fight had broken out maybe two feet away from us. He jumped up and separated them. As soon as he separated them, the cops came out of the car and targeted Eric.

AMY GOODMAN: What has happened to you since July 17, 2014? First, what did you do with that video?

RAMSEY ORTA: First, the Daily News got in contact with me and asked me if I had any pictures, and I told them, "I got a video," and we took it from there. And from then on, I've been targeted by NYPD. I got five pending cases right now - two in Supreme Court, three in criminal. Since then, I've just been harassed. I've been almost killed in Rikers Island.

AMY GOODMAN: How long were you held at Rikers Island? We interviewed your aunt at the time that you were in Rikers.

RAMSEY ORTA: I was in Rikers two separate times, one for 60 days and one for 30 days, I believe. And the 60-day stay was the time that I went on the hunger strike.

AMY GOODMAN: For how long?

RAMSEY ORTA: A month and a half.

AMY GOODMAN: What were you striking about?

RAMSEY ORTA: The rat poison, and I didn't want to eat nothing that Rikers provided me to eat.

AMY GOODMAN: Why? What do you mean, rat poison?

RAMSEY ORTA: There was rat poison in the food.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you think you were being targeted?

RAMSEY ORTA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you were arrested. Your wife was also arrested?

RAMSEY ORTA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What was - why was she arrested?

RAMSEY ORTA: She got arrested for assault charges that was allegedly caught on camera. And now we come here today, and the charges brought up against her are dropped.

AMY GOODMAN: You have been arrested on - for drug offenses. In one of those arrests, you said that the police officer said to you, "You videoed us, now we're videoing you."

RAMSEY ORTA: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain when that was and what they said?

RAMSEY ORTA: Clearly, when they jumped out on me, that was the first thing that came out his mouth: "You filmed us, so now we're filming you," because I asked, "Why do you have your cameras out?" When they jumped out on me, they had their phones in their hand, instead of a gun or anything, from my knowledge, was supposed to be in their hand. So I asked him: Why is he filming me? And he said, "Because you filmed us."

AMY GOODMAN: Are you sorry you filmed the death of your friend, Eric Garner?

RAMSEY ORTA: No.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you sorry you put it out for the world to see?

RAMSEY ORTA: No. I am sorry for not having a legal defense before I actually put the video out there. Other than that, I don't regret nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, a legal defense?

RAMSEY ORTA: As far as lawyers and people that I know that can protect me for any retaliation from happening.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you sued the New York Police Department?

RAMSEY ORTA: No.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you plan to?

RAMSEY ORTA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

RAMSEY ORTA: Took my life away from me, took my friend's life away from me. There's nothing more I could say.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you say to Ramsey Orta, Erica? Soon after your dad died, there was a big service in Staten Island at a church, and when Ramsey Orta's name was mentioned, the entire - all of the people there - and this church was packed to the rafters - applauded. What has Ramsey Orta meant to you and your family?

ERICA GARNER: Like a hero. I just want to say that, you know, hearing him, being in the same room with him, hearing the words come out his mouth instead of just reading it in a newspaper, it really hits home. There was a lot of craziness in the beginning, but my family always respected the fact that he recorded this video. But, you know, in a way, I feel like I could have been there for him a little bit more. But I just - I just don't know how. Like, we was put in this position. Both our lives was destroyed. The police, with the constant - I get harassed on Twitter. You know, he get harassed in person. And, you know, I'm just here for him, you know, whatever he needs. I want to use, you know, whatever I'm doing, the work that I'm doing now, to really capture his voice. He hasn't been really recognized in the media. And I just want to, you know, be able to project that to the world, you know, about the way things happened, knowing firsthand what's going on with his cases and then keeping people updated on what he's being charged with and his cases and stuff. I just want to offer support. You know, my family, we talk about him a lot, you know, and we say how it's disgusting how they keep wanting - targeting him. Like, when he was in jail and being rat poisoned, with the rat poison in his food, like, I was hurt. Like, he's already like there and not supposed to be there, and now you're all trying to kill him. And he -

AMY GOODMAN: What proof did you have that there was rat poison in your food, Ramsey?

RAMSEY ORTA: I was serving the food, for one. And two, a couple of my friends had saved some of the food, and when the time came, we gave it to Department of Health, and they brung back the labs saying that it was rat poison.

AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined by Reggie Harris, adviser to Erica Garner, director of organizing at the Black Organizing Project, speaking to us from San Francisco. Can you talk about the significance of what's taking place right now? Eric Garner's family - the latest news, the grand jury refusing to indict the prosecutor in the case, now the congressmember from Staten Island, but one officer has been internally charged, not criminally indicted, Kizzy Adonis. Your thoughts?

REGGIE HARRIS: First of all, thank you for having me. Ramsey, I'm sorry I couldn't be there in the room with you, but you are a hero. And, you know, I'm here for you in any way I can be.

Just a little bit of background about Staten Island: It's populated largely on the south side of the island from people - or by people from South Brooklyn that went there as a result of white flight. And so you have a tension there between the people on the south side of the island and the people on the north side of the island. Eric Garner was killed on the north side of the island. Most of the minorities are located on the north side of the island. However, three out of every five New York City police officers reside in Staten Island. And so, when you look at situations where Daniel Donovan - where Daniel Donovan, the DA at the time, getting promoted now to Congress, and he runs this entire race without mentioning Eric Garner hardly at all. We're looking at situations where, on that island now, because politically you want to appease the police officers that reside there, you know, Debi Rose is endorsing Mike McMahon, who is the new DA, at the same time while you have Pat Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, of the police union, endorsing the same man. It's an incestuous cesspool of kind of cover-ups and double dealing there. You know, the Democrats on Staten Island are no better than the Republicans.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we -

REGGIE HARRIS: And so, when you take a look at -

AMY GOODMAN: Reggie, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask Erica, as you speak about Congress, are you thinking of running for Congress, Erica Garner?

ERICA GARNER: What I want to do is I want to organize black and brown - the black and brown folk on Staten Island. I want to knock on doors. I want to ask the people of Staten Island about their issues firsthand, because no one is talking about, you know, what's going on in Staten Island. So, if I do decide to run for Congress, I want to, you know, be one of those elected officials that get into office and don't turn their backs on people. I want to be one who wants to hold people accountable and get the corrupted out. I want to be able to treat - the same way how they treat whistleblowers, I want to be able to point out the corrupted elected officials and get them out.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are your plans, Ramsey?

RAMSEY ORTA: Plan is just to keep spreading the word of Copwatch and make sure everybody has knowledge and -

AMY GOODMAN: You're going to keep filming?

RAMSEY ORTA: Yeah, I'm going to keep filming.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us - we'll continue this conversation afterwards and put it online at democracynow.org - Ramsey Orta, Erica Garner, Reggie Harris.

Native Tribe Blasts Oregon Takeover: Armed White Terrorists Demand Land Stolen From Native Americans (Video)

The armed militia members occupying a federally owned wildlife outpost in eastern Oregon have demanded that the land be "returned" to them. But who really has claim to this forest? We speak with Jacqueline Keeler, a writer and activist of Dineh and Yankton Dakota heritage who wrote about the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff for The Nation and is now working on a new piece which in part examines the history of the Paiute tribe’s treaty rights to the forest currently occupied by the nearly all-white militia.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. The Obama—we’re going to talk for a moment about the land dispute that’s going on in Oregon. Jacqueline Keeler is with us. We are going to turn to the issue now of land rights. The armed militia members have demanded that the land be, quote, "returned" to them. But who really has a claim to this area?

We’re joined in Portland, Oregon, by Jacqueline Keeler. She’s a writer and activist of Dineh and Yankton Dakota heritage who wrote about the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff for The Nation magazine and is now working on a new piece, which in part examines the history of the Paiute tribe’s treaty rights to this very forest currently occupied by the nearly all-white militia.

Jacqueline, it’s great to have you on with us from Portland. Can you talk about what you found so far? Tell us the history of this area in eastern Oregon.

JACQUELINE KEELER: Yes. Well, I’d like to start off saying that today, in January, this is the 137th anniversary of when 500 Paiutes were loaded onto wagons and walked, under heavy armed guard, from their—from the lands where the Bundys are right now holding it and to the Yakama Reservation in Washington state, some 300 miles, knee-deep in snow. And they were forced to march, shackled two by two. And so, that’s some of the background there.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, continue. Take us through to today. What happened to this land? How did it change hands?

JACQUELINE KEELER: Well, the area called the—now called the Malheur, it was called the Malheur Reservation, and it actually constituted nearly 1.7 million acres of land. But with incursions from white settlers, they basically pressured the federal government to open it up to settlement. And so, in 1876, President Grant did that. And then, after there was an uprising with the Bannock Indian War in 1878, due to issues of starvation and deprivation in the middle of winter again, the Bannock and the Paiute rose up, and then that’s when they were force-marched out of the area and lost most of the land. I mean, they actually were allowed to return five years later, but they didn’t really have a land base. So they were working for local ranchers and—until 1928, when the Egan Land Company gave the Burns Paiute 10 acres of land just outside the city. And the land was an old city dump, which the Indians cleaned and drilled a well to make ready for houses.

AMY GOODMAN: When you were writing about the Cliven Bundy standoff in 2014, you wrote, "If the Nevada rancher is forced to pay taxes or grazing fees, he should pay them to the Shoshone." Explain.

JACQUELINE KEELER: Yes. The Shoshone—most of Nevada is actually covered under the Treaty of Ruby Valley, and that was signed 1863. And it did allow for passage, you know, of military and also settlers crossing the land. But it did not give up any land. So, the Shoshone have never officially signed a treaty to give up land.

AMY GOODMAN: Jacqueline Keeler, I want to thank you for being with us—just a little bit of history is always helpful—writer and activist of Dineh and Yankton Dakota heritage. Her forthcoming book is titled Not Your Disappearing Indian. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to our next segment.

This NAFTA Lawsuit over Keystone XL Proves 'Free Trade' Deals Kill Democracy

If "the people" are able to influence public policy against them, corporations can simply go over their heads and attack their government until it bends, based on the rules of free trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP

Photo by tarsandsaction.

'The idea that some trade agreement should force us to overheat the planet’s atmosphere is, quite simply, insane.'


By Sarah Lazare
Canadian pipeline company TransCanada announced Wednesday afternoon it is suing the Obama administration under NAFTA provisions for the U.S. decision last November to reject the unpopular Keystone XL pipeline.

The climate justice movement that successfully pressured the president to reject the mammoth pipeline project responded on Thursday by characterizing the move as "pathetic" and saying the legal argument being deployed by the company underscores the undemocratic nature of so-called "free trade" deals.

"This isn’t going to get the pipeline built, and it is going to remind Americans how many of our rights these agreements give away," Bill McKibben, 350.org co-founder, said in a statement. "The idea that some trade agreement should force us to overheat the planet’s atmosphere is, quite simply, insane. But the oil industry is so used to always winning that I fear this kind of tantrum is predictable. Corporate power is truly out of control."

The corporation said it has filed a "filed a Notice of Intent to initiate a claim" under the Investment Chapter of NAFTA—on the grounds that "the denial was arbitrary and unjustified." Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, which are in thousands of free trade deals, allow corporations to circumvent national legal systems to levy lawsuits in parallel tribunals if state actions threaten their profits.

"TransCanada has been unjustly deprived of the value of its multibillion-dollar investment by the U.S. administration's action," said the firm, announcing it is seeking a stunning $15 billion in damages.

"With a single press release, TransCanada has proven what concerned citizens have argued for decades—that the primary purpose of ISDS is to subvert democratic processes and the public interest, in the name of private profit," Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law, said on Thursday. "It has demonstrated to the citizens of the United States, and the world, why these provisions have no place in new trade agreements."

"We encourage the Obama administration to share a copy of TransCanada’s notification with every member of Congress and every US state legislator as evidence of just what the TransPacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have to offer them," Muffett continued. "Millions of people were galvanized into action to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and to say, clearly and loudly, that it is not in the national interest. TransCanada demonstrates why ISDS demands the same response."

Transcanada's NAFTA suit - Canada is facing billions in similar challenges. Time to ban ISDS and remove the power of these giants!— Maude Barlow (@MaudeBarlow) January 6, 2016

What's more, TransCanada also announced on Wednesday that it has filed a separate lawsuit in the U.S. Federal Court in Houston, Texas, "asserting that the President's decision to deny construction of Keystone XL exceeded his power under the U.S. Constitution."

Climate campaigners say the movement will only be galvanized by TransCanada's latest stunt.

"The fight against Keystone XL fired up the climate movement like never before," said Jason Kowalski, policy director for 350.org. "We’re more than happy to keep thrashing it out with the likes of TransCanada–it will only bring more people into the struggle to keep fossil fuels in the ground."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Cops Use Police Dogs as a Torture and Terror Device: Three Horrifying Stories (Videos)

Man Bitten To Death By Police Dogs After Cops Beat Him — The Police Department Offers No Explanation      

 The Murdered Man's Name Was Phillip White

As usual, the police have no viable explanations for White's death:
The police are hoping you'll ignore it and he dies in vain

The police were called because White was in emotional distress"
“They punched him, stomped him, kicked him and then they let the dog out of the car," said Ricardo Garcia. "The dog bit him on his face and around his body. There's no call for that.”

The police chief said the officers "acted in accordance with the law."

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Sadistic Cops Make K-9 Maul Unarmed Suicidal Teen – Caught Planning and Celebrating It in Texts

Florida police department has a pattern of commanding K-9 dogs to attack people without provocation.

By Justin Gardner
Months after the Herald-Tribune exposed the North Port Police Department for routinely commanding their K-9 dogs to attack people without provocation, the department has done nothing to address the problem. In fact, it defends its officers even in the most egregious cases, including the mutilation of unarmed juveniles.

There is clearly a culture within the North Port PD that encourages and applauds this cowardly form of brutality, as revealed by messages sent between K-9 handlers involving the case of 18-year-old Jared Lemay.

Jared Lemay.

Lemay’s mother had called the North Port PD when she learned that her son was apparently about to commit suicide. Keith Bush, the leader of their K-9 unit, responded to the scene, but not before telling a fellow K-9 handler to come join in the fun:

“On this day, before he or any other officer reached Jared Lemay’s home, Bush sent a message to fellow K-9 handler Michael Dietz: “COME GET UR BITE.”

Minutes later, records show, Bush messaged Dietz again: “IM GONNA TAKE UR BITE IF U DONT HURRY UP.”

Lemay, who was found unarmed and hiding in a trash can in his garage, was bitten in the face and back by Dietz’s dog, a Belgian Malinois named Cammo.”

After he was taken to the emergency room, another cop, William Carter, messaged Dietz “CONGRATS,” commending him for his dog’s first bite.

Another dialogue between Officers Bush and Brandon McHale further reveals the culture of brutality.

“YOUR BITE OR (Dietz’s)?” McHale inquired.

“I LET (Dietz) HAVE IT,” Bush replied.

“NICE, HOW BAD?” McHale asked.

“BAD,” Bush wrote. “FACE AND BACK.”

“SKIN GRAFT BAD?” McHale asked.

“NO,” Bush wrote.

“COULDA BEEN WORSE THEN, HE SHOULD HAVE COMPLIED,” McHale said, ending the conversation.”

According to Lemay, who was hiding in a trash can after contemplating suicide, the cops entered the garage, peeked inside the trash can and closed the lid, and then pushed it over and sicced the dog on Lemay before he could do or say anything. The Belgian Malinois latched onto Lemay’s face and dragged him from the trash can, and then bit him on the back before an officer stopped the attack.

As a result of this barbaric attack, Lemay could not eat for a week and is permanently scarred.

This premeditated attack on an unarmed, suicidal juvenile was approved by North Port police supervisors, and no investigation was done on the attack or the messages sent through the police cruisers’ mobile messaging system.

The Herald-Tribune found that “North Port’s K-9 handlers commanded their police dogs to attack more people from 2010 through 2014 than did the police K-9 handlers of neighboring municipalities Sarasota, Bradenton, Palmetto, Venice and Punta Gorda during the same period – combined.

Close to 37 percent of apprehensions made by the K-9 unit ended with a dog attack, which was higher than a 30 percent threshold that many American law enforcement agencies use to monitor their K-9 units’ performance for potential misconduct.”

In response to the paper’s investigation, the North Port PD quickly whipped up a “memorandum of counseling” (the least severe form of discipline) and gave it to Officer Bush, two years after the attack. It said Bush’s messages via the mobile digital terminal were “unprofessional,” but said the attack on Lemay was “found to be within policy.”

The department is unabashed in defending its K-9 culture of commanding their dogs to attack unarmed, defenseless citizens, saying:

“We have reviewed all current legal authority and have found our K-9 handlers and the animals which we rely on to keep our community safe, to have acted in accordance within the law and in keeping with best practices.”

Officer Bush, the North Port PD’s senior K-9 handler, has racked up what would be considered by his colleagues an admirable count of 25 dog bites since the start of 2012. Three civil rights lawsuits have been filed in federal court against the department, two involving Bush and his K-9. Lemay intends to file his own suit.

Charles Mesloh, a former K-9 handler for the Venice Police Department, called Bush’s messages to Dietz “horrifying” and said a serious investigation is warranted.

“This is people deciding in advance deciding how they’re going to hurt someone,” said Mesloh. “In my opinion it should be investigated by the Department of Justice. I have defended agencies accused of civil rights violations in the past, and I have never seen anything that has approached what I have seen in this report.”

Reprinted with permission from  Free Thought Project

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Henderson NV Police Allowed K9 to Bite One Year Old After Detaining Wrong Man

Ayleen Arenas suffered multiple bites to her arm during the attack last January 30th. Police hid the video for a year.

By Kelly W. Patterson
Even after realizing they had detained the wrong person, police in Henderson Nevada released a K9 into his car where his 17 month old daughter was. By the time they managed to stop the dog, it had already bitten the infant, leaving her with nine wounds on her right arm.

The incident, which actually happened on January 30th of this year, came to light after the Henderson Police Department agreed to force Nevada taxpayers to pay the victim’s family $13,000 to make up for their reckless actions. In addition, police released the dash cam videos of the incident after the settlement announcement.

Although the police at the scene had already determined they had the wrong person before the K9 officer arrived, confusion over the fact that the girl’s father didn’t speak English is being used as the excuse for why the dog was released. In reality, it was a lack of communication between those officers that resulted in an innocent toddler being mauled by a vicious dog for no reason whatsoever.

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