|
Ready for militarized police force Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.vallejonews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=92964&webpage=79&cp=60http://www.vallejonews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=92964&webpage=79&cp=60
6:10 pm PT, Wednesday, Oct 1, 2003
Are You Ready For A Militarized Police Force?
By Douglas MacDonald
Readers Write Contributor
The Bush administration is calling for the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, a law passed after the Civil War to prohibit the deployment of federal military forces onto American streets to control civil action - otherwise known as martial law.
Come hear Frank Morales, investigative journalist and Sonoma State University "Project Censored" winner of the 2nd most censored story on the Pentagons domestic operations, the development of the Northern Command and the miliatrization of the police. Frank will be speaking at the Vallejo JFK Public Library on Sunday October 5 at 2PM sharp. A $2-$10 donation is requested. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
One fear among civil rights activists is that now that the details of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act/Patriot Act 2 have been revealed, the proposals contained therein will be taken apart, renamed and incorporated into other, broader pieces of legislation within the Department of Homeland Security.
The United States Army Field Manual 19-15, entitled Civil Disturbances, issued in 1985, is designed to equip soldiers with the "tactics, techniques and procedures" necessary to suppress dissent. The manual states that "crowd control formations may be employed to disperse, contain or block a crowd. When employed to disperse a crowd, they are particularly effective in urban areas because they enable the control force to split a crowd into smaller segments."
Sound familiar? If you were at the February 15, 2003 peace rally in New York City it probably does. The manual goes on to state that "if the crowd refuses to move, the control force may have to employ other techniqes such as riot control agents or apprehensions..." The army "civil disturbance" manual, correlated to present-day realities, also makes the point "civil disturbances include acts of terrorism," which, "may be organized by disaffected groups," who hope to embarass the government," and who may, in fact "demonstrate as a cover for terrorism."
The sophistry involved in turning a peace rally into a pro-Al Queda rally is precisely the logic that is operative within the Pentagon driven civil disturbance planning situated in the broader context of so-called "homeland defense." In fact, rather than protest being the occasion of "terrorism", the "War on Terrorism" is the cover for the war on dissent.
Don't take (Mr. Morales) word for this. Read what California Anti-Terrorism Information Center spokesman Mike Van Winkle had to say recently to the Oakland Tribune (May 18, 2003): "You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest...You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act."
Please pick up a copy of "Media Democracy in Action: Project Censored 2004. The Top 25 Most Censored Stories" by peter Phillips and Project Censored, available at most book stores. Project Censored was contacted and has allowed this information to be posted.
Contact info: Douglas MacDonald may be reached at doug@solanoscene.net.
|
|
