Can You Hear Jackboots Thundering On The Horizon?
Oh Land of Freedom and Liberty - bless your Peace and Security Enforcement Army in the name of the Great Leaders whom shall nevermore tolerate dissent. Amen.
You think that I am kidding? That I am once again going over the top and far off the grid about the Security State that is looming over North America like the sword of Damocles ready to fall down our collective necks?
Well, how about the Bush administration having attempted/considered to create Gitmos (plural) in the U.S. for citizens and legal residents? Or that CSIS and the RCMP continue to run extensive "intelligence probes" to counteract "potential threats" from activist protest groups, using the ever convenient rationale of Security States? Or this "all-knowing/all-seeing" cybernetic overseer scheme?
In any case, looks like I'm in good company indeed:
You think that I am kidding? That I am once again going over the top and far off the grid about the Security State that is looming over North America like the sword of Damocles ready to fall down our collective necks?
Well, how about the Bush administration having attempted/considered to create Gitmos (plural) in the U.S. for citizens and legal residents? Or that CSIS and the RCMP continue to run extensive "intelligence probes" to counteract "potential threats" from activist protest groups, using the ever convenient rationale of Security States? Or this "all-knowing/all-seeing" cybernetic overseer scheme?
In any case, looks like I'm in good company indeed:
Leahy Concerned about NorthCom’s New Army Unit
By Matthew Rothschild
Senator Patrick Leahy is concerned about the Pentagon’s decision to designate an Army unit to Northern Command.
On October 1, the Pentagon, for the first time ever, dedicated an Army force specifically to NorthCom, which is in charge of securing not some foreign region but the United States of America.
The unit it assigned is the 3rd Infantry, First Brigade Combat Team, which has spent three of the last five years in Iraq. It was one of the first units to get to Baghdad, and it was active in retaking and patrolling Fallujah. One of its specialties is counterinsurgency.
This marks a change for NorthCom, which was established on October 1, 2002. Its website still says it “has few permanently assigned forces,” and that “the command is assigned forces whenever necessary to execute missions, as ordered by the President and the Secretary of Defense.”
Leahy “asked for a briefing from his staff” on this development and “wants to monitor the situation,” an aide to Leahy said.
Leahy was instrumental in getting Congress to repeal the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act. The rider authorized the President to have troops patrol our streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite.
Leahy said last December that this rider “made it easier for the President to take over the Guard and to declare martial law.” In a Senate statement on April 24, 2007, he cautioned against inserting the military “into domestic situations.” As he put it: “One of the distinguishing characteristics of the United States is that we do not use the military to patrol our communities and neighborhoods.” A few months before that, he warned that we must ensure that “the military is not used in a way that offends and endangers some of our most cherished values and liberties.”
The repeal of the rider was signed by Bush on January 28, though Amy Goodman reports that “Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal.”
The roles the 1st Brigade Combat Team will take on at NorthCom are a bit unclear.
“They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control,” said the Army Times when it first reported on it. These duties would be in addition to dealing with “potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”
Soldiers in the unit “also will learn how to use ‘the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has field,’ 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them,” the article noted.
Cloutier even bragged to the Army Times: “I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered.”
(Keep reading ...)
Addendum: yet more can be read here. "In good company" indeed ...
By Matthew Rothschild
Senator Patrick Leahy is concerned about the Pentagon’s decision to designate an Army unit to Northern Command.
On October 1, the Pentagon, for the first time ever, dedicated an Army force specifically to NorthCom, which is in charge of securing not some foreign region but the United States of America.
The unit it assigned is the 3rd Infantry, First Brigade Combat Team, which has spent three of the last five years in Iraq. It was one of the first units to get to Baghdad, and it was active in retaking and patrolling Fallujah. One of its specialties is counterinsurgency.
This marks a change for NorthCom, which was established on October 1, 2002. Its website still says it “has few permanently assigned forces,” and that “the command is assigned forces whenever necessary to execute missions, as ordered by the President and the Secretary of Defense.”
Leahy “asked for a briefing from his staff” on this development and “wants to monitor the situation,” an aide to Leahy said.
Leahy was instrumental in getting Congress to repeal the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act. The rider authorized the President to have troops patrol our streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite.
Leahy said last December that this rider “made it easier for the President to take over the Guard and to declare martial law.” In a Senate statement on April 24, 2007, he cautioned against inserting the military “into domestic situations.” As he put it: “One of the distinguishing characteristics of the United States is that we do not use the military to patrol our communities and neighborhoods.” A few months before that, he warned that we must ensure that “the military is not used in a way that offends and endangers some of our most cherished values and liberties.”
The repeal of the rider was signed by Bush on January 28, though Amy Goodman reports that “Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal.”
The roles the 1st Brigade Combat Team will take on at NorthCom are a bit unclear.
“They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control,” said the Army Times when it first reported on it. These duties would be in addition to dealing with “potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”
Soldiers in the unit “also will learn how to use ‘the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has field,’ 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them,” the article noted.
Cloutier even bragged to the Army Times: “I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered.”
(Keep reading ...)
Addendum: yet more can be read here. "In good company" indeed ...
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