Yesterday I wrote a thinly sourced quickie that gained lots of attention both positive and negative.
I slapped it up because I thought it added to the discussion of what seems to many of us to be a severe and too often violent overreaction by our local governments to peaceful protests of the Occupy movement, and the seeming coordination of camp closures over the last week.
Well, here I go again with another quickie. (My wife has informed me I have to log out and get ready to ride my bike in the cold to yoga class.)
But I can't help myself-- I really like this article by Digby published by Aljazeera:
Militarising the police from Oakland to NYC
If the infrastructure of a police state is created, it's only a matter of time before those aggressive powers are used.
Heather Digby Parton Last Modified: 14 Nov 2011 11:44
Many of us are aware at the huge expenditures of Homeland Security money over the last 8 or so years in our cities, counties, and states. Many times this money seemed not to make us more secure, but was merely a new way to spread pork around.
My wife and I once took a NWS storm spotter class in Houston at the amazing Houston Transtar Center and yes, one can see how coordination of first responders could be a good use of Homeland Security money.
However you can probably list many other examples of how that money was used in your area that might not have been such a great use.
Digby had a post atHullabaloo that linked to pictures ofHomeland Security arresting a photographer in Portland.
Update: it turns out there is quite a bit of documentation out there about at least some coordination with DHS and the locals. Here are some pictures from Portland on October 31st clearly showing DHS arresting people.
This is a DHS threat assessment for Pittsburgh for an Occupy demonstration:
This product was created in response to a request for information (RFI) concerning impacts to the Pittsburgh area from the planned Occupy Pittsburgh set for October 15, 2011. This product is intended to provide the private sector and first responders information on the event and appropriate prevention and response measures. Information in this report was collected through open source materials only. Open sources used in this product may include bias and misleading information. This product is an update to a previous assessment disseminated on October 6, 2011.
Click the link to read the whole thing. I see no reference to terrorism, so I guess DHS is now in the business of doing threat assessments and advising the local authorities about tactics and strategy about peaceful domestic demonstrations. Good to know.
All the pictures of police in riot gear wreaking havoc on non violent Occupiers and Press around the country are very disturbing to me. Even if there is no coordination by Homeland Security the use of those funds and resources to focus police action on our own citizenry, if true, is just not right imo.
We simply must continue shine the light and act to reign in any overreach that we might find.
Update: Couple of interesting takes on the increasing use of violence by police:
Police State Tactics: Signs Point to a Coordinated National Program to Try and Unoccupy Wall Street and Other Cities
“We definitely feel, especially in a movement like this that has arisen so quickly in a number of cities, that there will be a coordinated national effort to try and shut it down,” says Heidi Bogosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, which has been playing a key role providing legal services to the new movement.
“We see the scapegoating of these movements, the attacks at night, and in general tactics designed to terrorize and to scare protesters away. I can’t see this as anything other than centrally coordinated.”
One indication of that coordination may have been a conference call among 18 city mayors which was confirmed by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan in a radio interview on San Francisco station KALW. Dan Siegel, an Oakland attorney who worked as an advisor to Quan, but who resigned in disgust after Oakland police and law enforcement personnel from a number of surrounding jurisdictions brutally drove occupiers there out of their park using tear gas, supposedly non-lethal ammunition (bean bags and rubber bullets) and flash-bang grenades in a night-time raid in the early hours of November 14, says that phone conference call took place, significantly, while Quan was in Washington, DC.
and
But both Siegel and Boghosian say they strongly suspect federal involvement in the planning of the recent spate of police violence against occupiers. Says Siegel, “It’s only logical to assume that the ‘Fusion Centers’ are involved, especially after the Oakland occupiers shut down the port in Oakland.”
Some 72 Fusion Centers, located around the US and funded by the US at a cost of half a billion dollars, are a post 9-11creation of the new Homeland Security Department. Bringing the FBI together with local law enforcement departments, they both collect and share domestic intelligence, and can serve as command centers to direct local law enforcement in helping implement national law enforcement goals. There are also many Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which directly link the FBI with urban police departments.
Says Boghosian, “What we are seeing here is the Miami model, with various levels of law enforcement, local, state and federal, all at work. It would be shocking if federal law enforcement were not seeing this occupy movement now as a national security threat.”
Mara Veheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s National Mass Defense Committee, based in Washington, agrees. “These crackdowns on the occupation movement certainly appear to be part of a national strategy to crush them,” she says. “We haven’t yet found overt evidence of federal involvement, but the fact that in rapid succession local authorities have taken action raises the specter of coordination.”
Update2: Interesting info (HT to southof comments http://www.dailykos.com/... )
is video exchange between KO and Naomi Wolf after he asks her arrest last month and about Homeland Security . Sorry, no transcript: