Monday, November 28, 2011

The Making of a Prison Society




"That's why you shouldn't bring kids to protests."

This taunt, which issued from the sneering lips of an armored riot policeman, struck Don Joughin with the force of a billyclub as he tried to comfort his children – a three-year-old and a newborn – after they had been showered with a chemical agent by a riot policeman.

That assault did not take place during any of the recent “Occupy”-inspired protests. It occurred in August 2002, during a fundraising visit by then-President George W. Bush to Portland, Oregon. 

In keeping with then-recently established “security” protocols, local police were deployed in riot gear to keep demonstrators confined inside "free speech zones" located several blocks away from the motorcade route. Joughin, who was accompanied by his wife and three children, was present when police unleashed a pepper-spray fusillade against a small group of protesters who had taken a few steps outside the designated protest zone.

After the police attack began, Joughin and his family attempted to leave, but found themselves penned in. Acting on the tragically innocent assumption that the police were present in order to keep the peace, Joughin politely asked the officer obstructing an exit how he and his family could leave the turbulent intersection. "He pointed and said to exit to the [northeast], into the spraying police opposite him," Joughin recalled.

Don Joughin comforts his son after the infant suffered a pepper spray assault by a Portland cop.
 
With his family in danger of being trampled by protesters fleeing the chemical barrage, Joughin asked the officer to let him and his family through. "He looked at me, and drew out his can from his hip and sprayed directly at me," Joughin recalled. He didn't bear the brunt of that criminal assault, but his three-year-old caught some of the blast. The assailant then turned on Joughin's wife and the infant "and doused both of their heads entirely from a distance of less than three feet," Joughin testified.

As his children were screaming in agony, Joughin pleaded with the cops to allow him and his family to leave and seek help. They responded by closing ranks and blocking the Joughin family's escape. They didn't relent until someone in "authority" gave them permission to set them free. The last thing Joughin and his traumatized family heard as they left the scene was the sadistic taunt hurled by one of the tax-devouring thugs who had assaulted the children with a chemical weapon. 

While millions of Americans have been horrified by recent incidents of armored police officers beating and pepper-spraying unarmed, unresisting protesters, those nauseating spectacles are neither novel nor particularly rare. In “Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks,” a heavily sourced paper recently published in the journal Sociology Compass,  Patrick F. Gillham of the University of Idaho observes that current police doctrine dictates that public protests are to be treated as “security threats,” and dealt with using methods inspired by “a new penology philosophy.”

From that perspective, every public demonstration -- however peaceful and orderly it might be --  is to be treated as the equivalent of a prison riot. This means that police are free to employ every available means – pre-event surveillance, pre-emptive arrest, hostage-taking, and the use of incapacitating “less-lethal” weaponry – in order to “neutralize” people suspected of being “disruptive” elements.

Illegal mass arrest in St. Paul, Minnesota.
 
Under the “strategic incapacitation” model, Gillham notes, “police often refuse to communicate at all with possible or actual transgressive protesters except to issue commands once protest events have already begun.” (Emphasis added.) It’s not enough to confine protest to “free-speech zones”; the right to assemble itself is subject to modification or revocation without prior notice – even in the absence of disorderly behavior on the part of the protesters. 

Typically, phalanxes of riot police will appear and slowly herd protesters into a confined area. An announcement will be made that the demonstration has been designated an “unlawful assembly,” and shortly thereafter the attack will begin, typically culminating with either mass arrests, needless injuries, or some combination thereof. 

A September 2001 anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. offered the first opportunity to field-test this approach. A small group of anarchists were driven into an improvised holding area by riot police, where they were literally held as hostages: “After 2 hours of detention, police conveyed the terms under which protesters would be released to a neutral third party of legal observers and not to the detained protesters.”

Two years later, during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami, “police not only pre-emptively arrested perceived transgressive protesters, they also arrested scores of union members and student activists walking to permitted events, as well as credentialed reporters and curious bystanders,” recalls Gillham. Most of those arrested had not been ordered to disperse, and had violated no law – including a draconian anti-assembly law that had been enacted by the city government just days prior to the summit. In addition, Gillham observes, “Bails were set high as a further way to keep those arrested off the streets.”



The same approach was used at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2008. In one particularly memorable application, 284 people were arrested at a public park in St. Paul, Minnesota on Labor Day 2008 during the Republican Convention. A huge contingent of riot police – supplemented by the National Guard’s JTF-RNC, and equipped with chemical munitions and gas masks -- cut off access to the park, which was bordered on one side by train tracks and the other by a river. This turned the park, however temporarily, into a huge open-air detention center.


An amplified version of the same tactics was employed by police in Pittsburgh when the 2009 G-20 summit brought the crème de la scum of the world’s criminal class to that city.
As helicopters plied the night air and serried rows of armored riot police assembled, a robotic voice announced: “By order of the chief of police, this has been declared an unlawful assembly. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. You must leave the immediate vicinity. If you do not disperse, you may be subject to arrest, and/or other police action” – the latter being a euphemism for summary punishment through “the use of riot control agents and/or less lethal munitions.” 

Once again, protesters were ordered to leave, and threatened with severe reprisals if they didn’t – only to find that the police already had them surrounded and were determined to arrest and assault at least some of them. 


Those crackdowns, in keeping with the “strategic incapacitation” doctrine, were not employed in response to criminal violence, or to deal with any impending threat of the same. Gillham points out that under the new approach “arrests are selectively applied to neutralize known or suspected transgressive actors often times before any crimes are committed.” 

The same is true of aggressive violence employed by riot police, notes Gillham: “Less-lethal weapons such as tear gas, pepper spray, Tasers, rubber bullets, wooden missiles and bean bag rounds are now the weapons of choice…. Evidence suggests that police use these weapons as a means to temporarily incapacitate potentially disruptive protesters and repel others away from areas police are trying to defend such as entrances and exits to secured zones.” 

Of course, once the riot police appear and the decree goes forth that a given protest is an “unlawful assembly,” the protest area itself is designated a “secure zone,” and those within it can only leave with the permission of their captors. 

Thugswarm: Riot police assault female student in Pittsburgh.

All of this is manifestly the product of a military mind-set – one better suited to a military prison camp than a battlefield. The behavior of domestic police in dealing with political demonstrations is nearly identical to that of specialized “Immediate Reaction” forces (IRFs) deployed  in military prisons such as those at Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

In his memoir, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, Turkish national Murat Kurnaz – who was kidnapped by Pakistani bounty hunters and sold into U.S. custody for $3,000 – describes his captivity in Gitmo (as well as Bagram) as a supposed “unlawful combatant." Any violation of the arbitrary -- and ever-changing -- rules of prisoner conduct provoked an attack by the IRF, a unit consisting of "five to eight soldiers with plastic shields, breastplates, hard-plastic knee-, elbow-, and shoulder-protectors, helmets with plastic visors, gloves with hard-plastic knuckles, heavy boots, and billyclubs." In other words, they were accoutered exactly like the domestic riot police who have become such a familiar presence in recent weeks.

Breaking a rule wasn’t a prerequisite for a visit from the IRF. The team would be summoned to inflict punishment for any act of defiance -- such as an insult hurled at an abusive guard, or even an attempt to exercise. Typically the IRF would soften up the target by infusing the cell with a liberal dose of Megyn Kelly’s much-discussed “food product” – weaponized capsaicin. Once the prisoner had been left entirely incapacitated, the IRT would swarm him to deliver a beating.

Former military interrogator Erik Saar provides a parallel account in his remorseful memoir, Inside the Wire.

“The five IRF-team MPs lined up outside the cell door,” writes Saar. “Starting in the back, they each shouted `Ready!’ and one by one slapped the shoulder of the next soldier up. The first soldier opened the door and directed a good dose of pepper spray at the detainee, then started to back him into a corner with his shield. But the captive managed to swipe the shield away and tried to kick the second soldier in line. He landed a good blow to the shoulder, but before he could put his foot down the third soldier, thinking fast, grabbed it and jerked. The detainee’s body rose in the air and came crashing to the metal floor.”

“All five MPs swarmed over him,” continues Saar’s account. “One was responsible for securing his head, and the other four were supposed to take one limb each. The detainee was kicking and squirming, fueled by his hostility. Mo [an Army translator] was shouting to him in Arabic to stop resisting. One of the stronger soldiers who had a solid grip on one arm was punching him in the ribs….” 

 Nearly identical tactics were used at “Camp Greyhound” in New Orleans, an improvised jail modeled after Gitmo and operated by FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Among those imprisoned there was Syrian-American businessman Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who was seized in his own home by National Guardsmen, imprisoned on unspecified charges, and escaped with his life only because of the providential intervention of a Christian clergyman who happened to visit his cell after Zeitoun had been transferred to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center

For Zeitoun and the other prisoners, the Camp Greyhound experience was one of tedium punctuated by sheer terror. The guards exploited any excuse to inflict exemplary "discipline" on the detainees, most of whom had been arrested for violating curfew or similar petty matters.

"Always the procedure was the same," recalled David Eggers in his book Zeitoun; "a prisoner would be removed from his cage and dragged to the ground nearby, in full view of the rest of the prisoners. His hands and feet would be tied, and then, sometimes with a guard's knee on his back, he would be sprayed directly in the face" with pepper spray. "If the prisoner protested," continued Eggers, "the knee would dig deeper into his back. The spraying would continue until his spirit was broken. Then he would be doused with [a] bucket and returned to his cage."

The victims of this pointless and whimsical cruelty included one disturbed man with the intellectual and emotional capacity of a child who was "punished" because he displayed the irrepressible symptoms of mental illness.

FEMA camp survivor: Abdulrahman Zeitoun with his family.

These ritual acts of sadism, Eggers observes, were "born of a combination of opportunity, cruelty, ambivalence, and sport." They were intended to torment the other prisoners, most of whom -- like Zeitoun – were possessed of more decency than their captors and thus left sick with rage by the spectacle of helpless men being tortured.

"Under any normal circumstances [Zeitoun] would have leapt to the defense of a man victimized as that man had been," observes Eggers. "But that he had to watch, helpless, knowing how depraved it was -- this was punishment for the others, too. It diminished the humanity of them all."

The same treatment continued once Zeitoun was transferred from the makeshift FEMA detention camp to a “regular” prison. For more than two weeks he and his cellmate were abused, insulted, humiliated, and treated to a visit from a Gitmo-style "Extreme Repression Force" (ERP). Swaddled in riot gear, wielding ballistic shields, batons, and other weapons, the ERP "burst in as if [Zeitoun] were in the process of committing murder," writes Eggers. "Cursing at him, three men used their shields to push him to the wall. As they pressed his face against the cinderblock, they cuffed his arms and shackled his legs."

After heroically subduing an unresisting man -- who by this time was dealing with an infected foot and a mysterious kidney ailment -- the ERP tore apart the cell before forcing the victim to strip and submit to another body cavity search. By some oversight, the ERP neglected to use pepper spray on the innocent and helpless man. All of the prisoner-control tactics used in Gitmo and "Camp Greyhound" have been employed against peaceful protesters in New York, Oakland, and elsewhere
 
Civil libertarians are understandably concerned about sections 1031 and 1032 of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act, which would authorize the indefinite military detention of Americans – including those seized here in the United States – who are suspected of terrorism. That abhorrent measure represents an enhancement of current policies and procedures, rather than an abrupt departure from them. Whether or not the Senate approves the NDAA, the people in charge of Regime Security already consider this country to be one vast military prison, and are willing to act on that assumption whenever the opportunity presents itself. 

Obiter Dicta 
Anyone who has donated to Pro Libertate and is still awaiting a copy of Global Gun Grab, please contact me -- WNGrigg [at] msn[dot] com -- and I will get it to you as quickly as possible. Thank you for your generosity, and your patience. 

Your donations are still very much needed, and deeply appreciated. Thank you!






Dum spiro, pugno!

26 comments:

  1. A 'Free-Speech Zone' , yikes , any more and they'll stretch across the whole country.

    I live in Czech Republic and have seen a few marches and demos here.

    The police are much more likely to enter into 'discussion' with protestors while keeping their 'position'.

    The police , from what I have seen , tend to keep their hands behind their backs when dealing with argumentative citizens [ citizens note this and tend not to act in a physically aggressive way], essentially because no-one wants a return to totalitarianism.

    In the US and other 'democratic' states aggressive [ and illegal] police tactics are swiftly passed over by the media for the next 'new' thing [ pepper-spraying on Black Friday - "look everyone's doing it, it's not soooo bad!"].


    cheers

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  2. The cops don't get it, we are getting tired of this... they have no understanding of what we are capable of...

    Cederq

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  3. Zig Heil. Welcome to NAZI America.

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  4. Great piece brother Grigg!
    There is no doubt that those controlling the cops (probably the FBI/CIA at one level up) want violence. It will be much deserved when it happens, but will give the designers of our society the chance to crack down even further for a situation that they themselves created. It's the Hegelian dialectic at work again.
    And without a doubt many useful idiots will cheer the police.

    "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." John F. Kennedy 1962

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  5. I understand that the police in this country are quickly becoming something more...and less. But I have to wonder what kind of parent, that has the full knowledge of what these armored crewcuts are willing and able to do to them, would bring a child, let alone his whole family, into an area where these thugs are sure to congregate.

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  6. Most likely those parents DIDN'T know how savage the cops have become. Most people think of police in terms of the idealistic ubermenschen they see on television shows like Bones or the CIS shows, or the well-behaved everymen on COPS. They just don't know, have no way of knowing, until it happens to them.

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  7. It's possible that Joughin thought the police would understand the right to peaceably assemble, since they take some kind of oath to that effect. What he failed to understand is that sometimes you have to destroy freedom in order to preserve it. He could have learned that from Bush if only he had listened.

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  8. Great article, as always.

    Made me think of this incident:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Baker

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  9. Unknown
    In the information age there is no way of not knowing unless you choose to remain that way.

    Many people even when they see it still keep their minds closed at to what is going on.

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  10. Inalienable, I suspect that a great number of people exercise "The Stages of Grief" because the cold, hard, sad truth is too painful. That they're willing to ignore and even support their oppressors only goes to show how conditioned they've become. It wouldn't take much to passively round up and herd them into waiting train cars.

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  11. Oh, forgot to mention, that the usual running at the mouth fascists such as Graham wholeheartedly, of course, endorse such laws. His goose-stepping fantasies most likely include himself with riding crop and boots.

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  12. I need to share this with you due to the importance of the subject.

    I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn’t seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again.

    The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination. The inventor of civilization – the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers – was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies – especially military hierarchies.

    Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as their power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld – the overlapping criminal syndicates that lurk above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it.

    During the past fifty years, psychopaths have gained almost absolute control of all the branches of government. You can notice this if you observe carefully that no matter what illegal thing a modern politician does, no one will really take him to task. All of the so called scandals that have come up, any one of which would have taken down an authentic administration, are just farces played out for the public, to distract them, to make them think that the democracy is still working.

    http://www.whale.to/b/callahan1.html

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  13. Anonymous above: This is almost word for word out of the intro to the book by Lobaczewski, "Political Ponerology: A Science On The Nature Of Evil Adjusted For Political Purposes" that is, a book about how the world is controlled by criminals and especially psychopaths.

    Everyone should read this book!

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  14. "Bad cops make the other 5% look bad'."
    ~Dave Champion

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  15. Anon, if by “psychopaths” you mean politicians and the “ruling class,” I agree. After reading letters from the “founding fathers” to each other, and parts of the Constitutional convention, and the Federalist Papers, I've come to the conclusion that all the major players were power-hungry psychopaths.

    The difference between Hamilton and Jefferson is just one of degrees. In Fed. 15, Hamilton wrote:

    “Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.” …”Government makes laws and it is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a SANCTION… a PENALTY or PUNISHMENT for DISOBEDIENCE. This PENALTY can only be inflicted in two ways: by the agency of the courts and ministers of justice, or by MILITARY FORCE; by the COERCION of the magistracy, or by the COERCION of arms.”

    Jefferson believed that man is somewhat more rational and need be “restrained” only by “moderate powers.” Washington told Jefferson that ours was an experiment in republican government and “with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good.”

    From Washington to Obama, psychopaths all. Without government to save us from ourselves, there would be insurrections, anarchy, rebellions, sedition, revolts, usurpation, and incitements. We are deluded, turbulent, contentious, and ruled by our “passions.” ( this is how we are described in the Fed. Papers.)

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  16. However, I don't believe that civilization is the creation of psychopaths; I believe that ALL governments are the creation of psychopaths to rule over society. They, themselves, are the destroyers of society.

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  17. Thanks for telling it like it is Mr. Grigg!

    The following is not advocating violence or hatred; it is advocating self defense against criminals.

    Total slavery is how this story will end.

    People have 2 choices - to accept the coming global total slavery or reject it.

    The job of the corporate-created, one-world-government "Attack Bots" (formerly known as "peace officer", "police", ...), whether the average cop understands it or not, is to condition people to think and behave as obedient slaves who are expected to suffer every form of abuse that the slave masters wish to inflict upon "their human resources". If we allow this to continue, it will be for the long term (e.g. look at the history of the African peoples - slavery for hundreds of years - and continuing - and imposed by the same kind of people then as now ...(historical fact)).

    Those who reject this conditioning will suffer as well and maybe even more than the obedient slaves. But their rejection will be the end of the "slave masters" and therefore will be more short term than the alternative.

    The time to act is now! Unfortunately this means very serious actions. Chose to be obedient, perpetually abused (robbed, beaten, raped, molested by thugs in uniform (e.g. Transportation Sexual Abusers) murdered, ...) slaves or reject your coming status.

    The "Attack Bots" no longer act according to the principals of Human Rights. In the USA (and around the world), they now act against the Constitutional rights -which are the natural rights afforded to all humans (rights not issued by "governments" nor can these be taken away by "governments"), therefore they are no longer lawful agents of the people.

    Here are some examples (which the controlled media does not report) of how to reject slavery and stop the "Attack Bots" (and once the "Attack Bots" have been stopped - the one-world-gov-corporate criminals will be rounded up and put where they belong - in prison for life for crimes against humanity).

    "Armed and Ready: New Mexico Residents Defy Government"

    http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/armed-and-ready-new-mexico-residents-defy-government

    " ... a woman in her 60s rose to address the feds. She pointed out that ... she (and her family were) not about to let some official from an unconstitutional bureaucracy tell her what she could or could not do with her land.

    The woman ended by warning the feds that her family has many guns and a huge supply of ammunition, and they would use all of it if needed to keep the EPA off of their land."

    "... the militia in Lincoln County – some 200 plus men who keep their rifle and battle bag in their vehicles 24/7. They can muster in about 30 minutes at any place in the county. ..."

    One more thing - for those who don't get it yet - here it is plain and simple: You are the government. The criminals incorrectly identified as "government" in DC, state and local, are your servants.

    Your servants - have declared war on you!

    How did this happen you ask? Because you let it happen until we are where we are now; with a choice between total, long-term slavery or rejection of slavery.

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  18. I agree with a commenter or on the ACLU page, “Why not urge senators to vote down the bill altogether and then an amendment would be superfluous?”

    Even if they don’t round up Americans for detention, they still do it all over the world. That's horrifying. The White House veto letter said that certain provisions in S.1867 could somehow "hinder" the President from shipping Gitmo detainees to other countries. STOP IT!

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  19. CHEE!! CHEE!! CHEE!! VIVA THE REVOLUTION!!!!

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  20. Anon@9:58 AM, I just noticed your comment. You're right, the gov considers us the enemy, and more and more, their favorite form of humiliation is groping you at airports or actually stripping you naked whenever they get close enough. I got stopped for "suspicion" (which in Alabama means if you're white, you're too close to a black neighborhood, and vice versa if you're black.)

    My license was expired, so I was handcuffed and taken to jail, where I had to go to the bathroom and lift my shirt and bra in front of a policewoman, and as horrible as that was, it's tame compared to some of the stuff you read about. Friends and family say "get over it already," and I thought about blowing my brains out.

    I think the government will implode before we do anything. I mean, I don't know what to do anyway. I hope for secession, and I don't mean a U.S. and a Confederacy, I mean a secession between those who "consent" to be governed and those who don't. And those who consent to be governed can have their presidents, Congresses, taxes, wars, cops, and all the rest of it.

    I have gone from wanting a smaller government to wanting NO government. None. Not city, county, or state, which all have their own police to "keep us in line." We can protect ourselves from real criminals, but we can't protect ourselves from the criminals who are paid to "protect and serve" their masters. Think of that phrase "protect and serve"-does anybody know of a single person that the cops have protected from murder, rape, robbery and so forth? And these "services" - what in God's Holy Name does that even mean?

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  21. Yossarian thanks for your post.

    It is a sad comment about the state of liberty in this country that a person exercising the God given right to travel is arrested, handcuffed,and humiliated, in addition to having money and time stolen from them. For what? For not having the money to pay Caesar for this permission after being robbed on so many other fronts.

    The final irony being that this is done by the very people that we pay to protect our God given rights.

    God Bless You. Hang in there. Find some comfort in that God is not happy with these people and you are doing the right thing in speaking out.

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  22. Yossarian, that's why I make no bones about not traveling through the Airport Gulags or any other place I feel these goons congregate. What freedoms we have are when the costumed cretins are nowhere in sight and nowhere on the payroll. That someone such as yourself was handcuffed and forced to strip for an expired license is obscene. Guess no Oath Keepers in your neck of the woods? Since when have they actually put a stop to all the illegal and immoral goings on within their respective departments? I'd like documentation. Their "oath" appears to exist betwixt their ears and sits mute and invisible. I have little faith that when the nut crunching comes that the majority of these nimrods will do anything but go along with the tide of evil all the while saying to themselves that they'll "do something" about it later. Which of course is cold comfort to the victims. Will has written about officers who actually DID do something and they were crucified for it.

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  23. To Yossarian and Inalienable Rights:

    The really sad irony of it all is that all of the "driving" statutes are most likely only for commercial drivers and their vehicles. In Colorado, "commercial vehicles" is very narrowly defined to mean cargo haulers and basically taxi-type services, people haulers for hire.

    You should load up on espresso and dive into your state's statutes, preferrably the ones with annotations. See if there are any driving statutes for "private" drivers. Also, read your state's constitution. Has there ever been a constitutional amendment (that was actually created according to your state's due process for amendments) that gives the state the right to regulate private travelers on the common ways and their chosen vehicles?

    Without that amendment, there can be no lawful restrictions on your right to travel on the public roads in the manner most efficient and affordable to you.

    In Colorado, the annotated statutes have references to case law where private people were abused for not having asked the state's permission to travel then sued and won. In all those cases, the court ruled that the state cannot deprive private people of their inherent right to travel.

    Now, having said all that, I know of no contemporary who has challenged the driving statutes in Colorado and who made perfect cases in court regarding the right to travel who (myself included) has not also been jailed even so.

    The game is so rigged now and the "citizens" (read slaves) are so conditioned that even if the judge allows you to bring up the private versus commercial defense, the jury will still be directed to convict you, and they will.

    And you know what the slaves like the most about the track and control system for travelling? The forced insurance. Every time I've tried to explain to a "normal" person why and how the statutes are purposely obscured and mis-applied, the dumb beast will bleat out the "what if you get hit by an uninsured driver" retort. Once, I had a cellmate of about 18 years old who was in jail for shoplifting. We had the conversation about why I was there, and she sneered about the insurance thing, so I responded by asking her what insurance was for. She said, in essence, that it was to protect other people from you doing something wrong. So I asked her why doesn't the government force you to buy shoplifting insurance. She told me to shut up and never spoke to me again (oh, boo hoo).

    Why are people making such a big deal about Obamacare forcing them to buy health insurance? They love being forced to buy car insurance, so they've already set the precedent that being forced into a contract is okay.

    I find it is no longer possible to penetrate the universal cognitive dissonance of the sheeple. No point in trying. Just get your own self out of the system and hold onto your hat. It's been way past the point of no return since before you and I were ever born.

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  24. MoT it is my observation and opinion that most "Oath Keepers" are clueless goons that do not grasp liberty at all. No disrespect to Stuart Rhodes I think he is doing all he can with the mush minds that he has to deal with.

    I think Oath Keepers may be better than your average cop but the still spend the majority of the day violating the inalienable rights of people.

    Do you really think an "Oath Keeper" could keep his job if he refused to enforce any of the victimless crime laws that interfere with our right to travel?
    There really is no such thing as an employed "Oath Keeper"

    Perhaps Oath Breaker is a better word for them.

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  25. And then liberals wonder why it is that Americans are supposed to be allowed to own guns...?

    I don't own one, never have, but the day I feel that my opportunity to own one is likely to disappear, I'll guarantee you I'll be out there hunting to get one without any trace of me having it.

    A government that's afraid of its citizenry is a tractable government. It knows there are limits on what it can get away with.


    "Among other things, being disarmed means being despised."
    - Machiavelli -

    "This is a test of the Emergency Monarch System. Had this not been a test, you would already be wretched."
    - Dogbert -

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  26. It takes a real man to pepper spray an infant. Pardon my French but government people are of two kinds:
    they are assholes or assholes-in-training.

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