09.23.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 1:14 pm by George Smith
It’s another great day in the United States of Security.
Where else in the world can you wake up to a press conference announcing the success of two or three military strikes on enemies capable of posing an existential threat to the digestion of Americans who don’t have to fight remote control war? One against a terrorist group you never heard of previously, but threatening to our homeland?
The President, quite naturally, thanked the troops for their duty, there being a slight hazard of repetitive stress injury when pushing the launch keys for 40 Tomahawks and a higher degree of risk in flying over a country in a new jet where no one has a hope of shooting back because, you know, a bird could fly into an intake or a part could malfunction. It could force an ejection into a territory where they would not be glad to see you.
In this great country, combat mission is now redefined as dropping bombs and missiles on territory against no opposition or as aptly described in the news: “the Syrian radar defenses were passive.”
Quote of the day, from a Syrian Twitter tweeting (we invented that!) near a target: “The sky is full of drones…”
Welcome to the United States of Security, we’ll check you now for purity. If you have gold and your ass don’t smell, we won’t bomb you straight to Hell.
We’ve got predator loans, iPhones and drones!
— The National Anthem, from Loud Folk Live
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09.22.14
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 2:30 pm by George Smith
In the distant past I wrote that Americans ought to get something for contributing to this country’s position as the leading arms dealer to the world. The American people, out of their generous pockets, have underwritten everything that’s made our war machine the biggest in world history. We’ve paid for the development, purchase, maintenance and distribution of the world’s biggest, most expensive and most scary weapons. We have created through direct action, avarice, fear, voting patterns and general indifference the perfect business environment for the development of the globe’s most advanced and coveted killing technology. We continue to support, enhance and advertise it through the prosecution of continuous globe-spanning war. Our toadies and proxies look on with envy, just waiting for great deals on big fancy arms packages, bulk allotments of riot control chemicals, and anything related for use on neighboring failed states, their own people or both.
I wrote about it at GlobalSecurity.Org back in 2011 (gee, look at all those ‘likes’, how did that happen?):
Record numbers of Americans apply for food stamps and unemployment. Every job not in finance or arms manufacturing gets beggared or threatened with shipment to China. Saudi Arabia and Iraq get tanks. More and more tanks. There are never enough.
As a thought experiment, I am going to propose a war-profiteering dividend/tax on US arms sales.
Since the core markets for all these businesses are essentially guaranteed by the US taxpayer and government, it seems only fair Americans ought to be regarded as shareholders. And as shareholders, they ought to be in for some rewards. It’s the American way.
Let’s make the war-profiteering tax significant because, although even though I haven’t researched it yet, the US arms industry is probably quite adept at tax avoidance already. So I make it twenty percent of all profits in overseas arms sales — weapons, tanks, aircraft, ships, guns, ammo, bombs, missiles, rockets, chemicals, computer systems, engineering, construction, software, consulting services and support staff — everything.
Here’s the calculation, using SIPRI’s latest data:
20 percent of 247 billion in sales = 49 400 000 000
Further, I will propose a yearly war-profiteering dividend check for everyone in the United States on food stamps. According to Reuters: “For fiscal 2011, average enrollment is forecast for 43.3 million people.”
Here is the calculation:
49.4 billion divided by 43.3 million = 1 140.8776
Everyone on food stamps, no exceptions, gets a check from the protected US arms industry, for roughly $1,140.88. That would certainly be a help.
One could also extend the dividend to all tax-filers for a given fiscal year although it would probably cut the size of each check by at least two thirds.
The only people who wouldn’t be entitled to checks would be employees of the US arms manufacturing base. They’re already getting dividends as well as security. Of course, none of this has any chance of consideration. It’s all in the imagination, delusional. The protected industry of American weapons production is a third rail. No one will seriously discuss taking any big whacks at it.
Over the weekend, from the wire, a big sale of MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to our famous ally and functional dictatorship in the war on terror, Pakistan:
WASHINGTON: The US State Department on Saturday approved the sale of 160 mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles to Pakistan at an estimated cost of $198 million.
Islamabad had requested 160 Navistar Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles with spare parts, support and test equipment, publications and technical documentation, personnel and equipment training, US government and contractor engineering, technical and logistics support services, and other related elements of logistical and programme support.
Following the State Department’s determination approving the sale, the Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale.
“The proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a country vital to US foreign policy and national security goals in South Asia,??? DSCA said.
In 2011, I proposed a 20 percent tax to be collected on American bulk arms sales, to be paid back to the American people as a royalty.
Because times are worse for many Americans I now propose raising our theoretical value added tax to 30 percent.
30 percent of $198 million is $59,400,000
In essence, it would be a way of giving a small basic income to every American on a national resource we have been responsible for husbanding and making available to the world.
You could consider it as the the citizens of Alaska feel about their oil checks:
(Reuters) – Nearly every Alaska resident will soon be $1,884 richer, thanks to an annual payout from an oil wealth trust fund that has been credited with keeping many low-income families out of poverty, state officials said on Wednesday.
More than 640,000 Alaska residents will receive the payment from The Alaska Permanent Fund next month, which Department of Revenue Commissioner Angela Rodell says is the third largest since the state began paying such sums in 1982 with a $1,000 check.
The sum is more than twice the $900 paid to each Alaska resident last year and more than the collective payments from each of the last two years. But it is still off from a high of $2,069 paid in 2008.
Alaska’s Permanent Fund was established by a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 1976 requiring a portion of state oil revenues be put into a savings account to be available for the distant future …
A value added tax on the sale of arms could easily be thought of as a way of collecting money for a resource wealth fund, to be paid back to the citizenry as a royalty for its long and continuing support of the resource.
In this specific case, the block sale of 160 MRAPs to Pakistan.
It’s a perfect idea. Can you come up with a good argument against declaration of American-made Department of Defense-approved and battle-tested weapons of war as a national resource we’ve all made possible? Didn’t think so. 
Slap a value added tax on the damn thing and use it to pay back Americans. We made it possible. We’re the makers, not the takers. We want our share.
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09.15.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 1:32 pm by George Smith
Nineteen year old Georgetown U. student Danny Milzman has pled guilty to “making ricin.”
Like everyone else in America, Milzman actually made castor powder, which contains some ricin.
Allegedly inspired by the Walter White character in Breaking Bad, this is another sad case, one in which a troubled student made one serious lapse in judgment. In the past, I’ve argued for diversion programs for some first-time American ricin offenders. Daniel Milzman is one such a person, not a threat to the community or his school.
Wire news indicates he could be sentenced to one to two years in jail.
From the net:
A former Georgetown University student accused of making ricin in his dorm room pleaded guilty Monday, and could face up to two years when he’s sentenced …
The amount of ricin Milzman produced was enough to kill an average person weighing 220 pounds if inhaled or injected, officials said. According to court documents, Milzman spent [about] a week researching ricin online, and watched 13 episodes of the show “Breaking Bad,” during which ricin was used as a weapon to injure or kill someone.
When sentenced, Milzman faces between 366 days and two years behind bars.
The news is in error. In Breaking Bad, Walter White “cooked” ricin to put into the meal of a drug lord who was holding him and his partner hostage in Mexico. The plot failed.
Ah, my bad. Must be the heat wave. In the final episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White finally puts his “cooked” ricin in the hot drink of a former partner in crime, apparently killing her.
Danny Milzman — from the archives.
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09.13.14
Posted in Crazy Weapons, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 11:32 am by George Smith
Chagrined over having to get rid of it.
Today the New York Times ran a story that’s been floating around California for a couple weeks, fallout from the Ferguson riots and the national discussion on he arrival of heavy armored cars on American streets.
The city of Davis was perhaps not the best place to shove an MRAP into, it being the town where a peaceful student protest was painfully put down in now famous imagery of security blithely hosing down young people with pepper spray.
From the NYT:
The police department of this modest college town is among the latest California beneficiaries of surplus military equipment: a $700,000 armored car that is the “perfect vehicle,??? the police chief told the City Council, “to perform rescues of victims and potential victims during active shooter incidents??? …
But the City Council directed [Chief Landy Black] last month to get rid of it in the face of an uproar that had swept through this community, with many invoking the use of similar equipment by the police against protesters in Ferguson, Mo., after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.
“This thing has a turret — it’s the kind of thing that is used in Afghanistan and Iraq,??? said Dan Wolk, the mayor. “Our community is the kind of community that is not going to take well to having this kind of vehicle. We are not a crime-ridden city.???
Kudos for having the fortitude to make an emphatic stand and statement.
While some police in very large metropolitan police departments can make a case, not necessarily always a good one, about the need for what is a heavy armored fighting vehicle, most of the burgs, which is where many of them are now, can’t.
The country’s medium-sized and small towns do not need combat-tested armor nor are they likely to. Mines and artillery barrages are not coming to this country and the number of deployed MRAPs now far outweighs, out guns and out numbers the potential for terrorism or the need to be ready to put down insurrection with overwhelming force.
Fear is what has driven the spread of the MRAP. The theology is that there is always the potential for some terrible criminal or terrorist assault somewhere in America and that these are the things, along with many others, that must be around to guarantee the safety of the police and the public. It is a nationwide view that feeds itself. Under this logic there can never be an end to the acquisition and stockpiling of weapons.
This well done video, with a point — When Did Americans Become the Enemy — nicely shows the ridiculous (and really now kind of oppressive) nature of the Department of Defense’s giveaways to small town America.
The New York Times includes the argument made by in Los Angeles about the infamous North Hollywood shootout of 1997. Now seventeen years past, two bank-robbers armed with fully automatic assault rifles and kitted in bullet-resistant clothing, engaged the police in a firefight that was carried on television.
In the battle, they were killed. Eleven police officers were wounded.
However, the passage of time and history have shown this is an outlier. Not a sign of things to come but that kind of event that may happen once or twice in a lifetime. (For a laugh, re-watch the movie Predator 2. Released in 1990, it is cast in the Los Angeles of 1997, the beginning throwing the movie-viewer into a pitched battle in downtown Los Angeles, one between machine-gun and grenade armed “Colombians” and an, of course, out-gunned police detachment. Even the North Hollywood gun battle that actual year wasn’t as apocalyptic. And since, Predator 2’s Hollywood interpretation of a future LA looks increasingly anachronistic.)
Newly released information from the DoD shows that Los Angeles County police forces field nine Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.
The Pentagon’s MRAP program was a consequence of the war based on fraud in Iraq. In essence, it was free money to arms manufacturers globally, if they could come up with vehicle impervious to roadside bombs and large buried mines.
The result of the program was a number of only roughly similar vehicles, the commonality being they were all huge, heavy, armored and expensive, ranging in price from around 700,000 to over 900,000 dollars.
Search Google images and you can see the various models like the MaxxPro or the Caiman, the latter coming in four-wheel and six wheel models, optimized for the US Marine Corps but now plainly visible in police departments.
The Davis MRAP is, I think, a MaxxPro. The link above shows the city of Guthrie’s Caiman. The town, population 10,600 or so, is in Logan County, Oklahoma.
These vehicles are a burden on the taxpayers of such towns, one of the reasons the DoD wanted to offload them while still maintaining ownership. It would seem they must be covered by a special kind of insurance and they must be maintained. Can just anyone in small town America maintain a Caiman MRAP? Where do the spare tires come from and what do they cost?
“The Council’s decision set off waves of concern among police officials across the state and highlighted the fact that California — whose crime rate, like those of many other states, is on the decline — has one of the highest concentrations of surplus military equipment in the nation,” writes the Times.
Ultimately, little will be done, except perhaps at the local level as in Davis, about MRAP distribution. Legislation to control or stop police acceptance of such things will die in Congress, as everything does.
And while the President has indicated he supports looking into whether or not DoD gear to police departments ought to be slowed, will not pursue it. The obvious reason, again, is it will immediately be a political millstone. The other side will predictably tell its base that the President, the socialist foreign-born tyrant, is trying to disarm the police.
The presence of the MRAP is not only a product of America’s Culture of Fear. It’s a WhiteManistan thing, too.
Don’t believe it. Look at all the pictures of them in police departments. Note the majority of faces, when shown.
It is within this context that the decision made by the city of Davis is a remarkable one. For various reasons, one mentioned previously,
occasionally other towns have decided they will disengage, too.
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09.12.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, Why the World Doesn't Need US at 8:37 am by George Smith
Yesterday, the Prez, addressing 9/11:
“As Americans, we don’t give in to fear, ever.”
Look, I like the man. He had to say something that at least sounded like it had some gravity and truth but this is too unfortunate a stretch.
From the wire: “[7 out of 10] of Americans are worried about the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) and support military action against the terror group, according to [a CNN poll].”
After 9/11 Americans were explicitly told to be in fear. A color code system for fear was made just for that. Fear drives over half the economy. Yay, for those of you working in the national security infrastructure! Fear gave us Keith Alexander and his surveillance monster of the National Security Agency. Fear in America has given all of you over a decade of solid job security.
The United States couldn’t exist without fear in the polity: Fear of Ebola, fear of not-white people, fear of people without money and things, fear of foreign enemies in nations, tribes, little gangs, pirates, single individuals with funny names. As this week has more than adequately shown again, fear is the lubricant for the gears of America, its lifeblood, too.
Almost all the subjects I’ve written about in the last twenty years are direct consequences of the American culture and business of fear. You’ve lived it.
On a related note, everything old is new again. What were crap stories a decade ago are back. The people now responsible for bearing the public relations water of fear were in their teens when it all started. Now they’re the fresh paid idiots, lickspittles and mountebanks servanting for it. And in this country, history is a liability, the wisdom to remember the taste of the old stale bread, a character defect. More today, maybe. You’ll recognize it.
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08.21.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 2:48 pm by George Smith
This, from a comment rescue, on the American way of establishing order.
For as long as the blog has been around, as long as you have, for the last 20 years the national security strategy has been about only one thing: Using overwhelming technology in weaponry and money to beat the poverty stricken, around the globe, into place.
The Department of Defense and our military theorists came up for a laughable justification, a buzz term, really, to describe it 20 or so years back.
The asymmetric threat. The asymmetric threat is a nation, or a trans-national group, a handful of “bad guys,” or even a single person who could theoretically come up with a way to take down the country, or at least create great disasters, by attacking the national security structure at any number of imaging, easily smashed, weak points.
The asymmetric threat was one where its operators knew they couldn’t rival the US military in direct spending or equipment, nobody can. So something needed to be invented to explain how those much poorer, read everyone else in the world we’re after, could strike at the security of everyone in this country.
So with that explanation done with, let’s call it what it is: Bombing Paupers. And everything comes out of that from the development of weird torturing non-lethal weapons to opening the development of mine resistant ambush protected vehicles to the western global private sector for the accumulation of a mix armored force bigger than any other nation’s which is then passed off, in part, to the interior. It’s Keith Alexander’s National Security Agency explaining, without even a hint of self-consciousness or shame, about its technological skill in intercepting the telephone calls of piss poor Somali pirates, in the name of protecting us.
You’ll have noticed another common feature. Bombing Paupers is only used on people who aren’t white. The last time the American military actually did carry out an action against a white-skinned group was way back in the Clinton administration, in the bombing campaign against Serbia.
Which is why you won’t see any direct confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine. The national security megaplex won’t bomb the property of a country armed with thermonuclear weapons, one with a military that could cause some pain in retaliation.
That’s the way it has worked in all the time I’ve been here. You could write a book on it.
Take a look at the MRAP program. Thousands were orders, from multiple vendors. It was free money for gargantuan vehicles with names like the Navstar MaxxPro, the BAE Caiman and the Cougar. (Look them up at images.google.com and add the word “police.” You see the amazing result.)
The Pentagon brought many of them home at great expense. It doesn’t want to leave any to the Afghan military, making the excuse they wouldn’t be able to operate and maintain them. The real reason is the Pentagon expects Afghanistan to disintegrate and doesn’t want them in the hands of various warlords and the Taliban. Maybe Pakistan could be persuaded to buy a few, but that’s not certain.
What has been proved certain is that a plan to lease them for free to American police departments of any size, as long as those police departments picked up the tab for maintenance and upkeep, works.
The MRAP, depending on what was bought, cost anywhere between $350 – 650,000 dollars, taxpayer money. That was money that were never spent on any kind of economic stimulus or building of opportunity in this country. And now it’s a really bad deal because police department use more taxpayers to keep them going, for no apparent social benefit.
There’s a clear villain here. It’s whatever group, or individual, that came up with the plan for it. And was rewarded with success.
Some people come to their senses eventually. From Saginaw County, Michigan, I read this week:
I made the decision about a month ago to decommission that [MRAP] vehicle,??? [the sheriff of Saginaw County] said, noting he did it based on financial concerns due to unforeseen maintenance costs.
While the military was to provide any needed parts, Federspiel said he still had to pay for a specialized mechanic to install the parts, along with insurance and fuel for the vehicle.
When Saginaw County Commissioners asked him to look for cost-saving measures before setting the budget in July, the MRAP was the first thing to go …
Go out to the link. The rationale on how to support the vehicle, as it has been explained by other police departments, was to use money from drug forfeiture cases.
But with something like MRAP vehicles and a bad economy, that money just isn’t enough.
The ACLU, throughout the crisis in Ferguson, pointed out that military tactics used in drug cases have fallen predominantly on the black and brown poor, despite the fact that my tribe uses drugs at equivalent rates of incidence.
You can’t get blood from stones. One doubts taking the valuables of the poor swept up in drug busts in an area and boiling it down to cash furnishes even close to enough to maintain vehicles that originally cost from something over a quarter million to 650,000 dollars a piece.
Bombing Paupers, if not lethally, is a domestic strategy to curb unrest.
The Department of Homeland Security did not make block grants of over a million dollars to communities during the war on terror under the rationale that an economically successful region with opportunity is one that is safer and more secure.
What if it had? Rhetorical. A silly suggestion. Socialism, no rewarding of takers and leeches!
More later.
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08.16.14
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 12:09 pm by George Smith
From the NYT, yesterday (no link):
All these programs began or were expanded in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when the authorities in Washington declared that local police departments were on the front lines of a global war on terrorism. Terrorism is exceedingly rare, however, and the equipment and money far outpaced the threat.
“You couldn’t say that back then with as much certainty as you can say that now, though,??? said Frank J. Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. After Sept. 11, few people asked whether the police would use the equipment against protesters, Mr. Cilluffo said. “By and large, I don’t recall an outcry of any sort historically along these lines.???
For years, much of the equipment has gone unnoticed. But as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn down, police departments have been receiving 30-ton, mine-resistant trucks from the military.
An MRAP in Salinas, CA. Note armored machine gun cupola, an absolute must on America’s streets.
From the Daily Mail, last year
A California police department has received a 37,000 armored truck that was once used in military training exercises.
The Salinas Police Department took ownership of the hulking tank-like vehicle on December 17 and parked it in front of the town’s Rotunda for public viewing.
The $650,000 truck has caused quite a stir in the town, with many residents questioning why a military armored vehicle would be needed in civilian situations.
“In a press release, Police chief Kelly McMillin said the department was in desperate need of a replacement for the 1986 Ford money carrier officers used as a rescue vehicle,” it continues.
Look at this picture, and all the pictures of MRAP armored fighting vehicles in small town America, here at Google, and you begin to see the nature of the problem. Everyone likes showing off their panzer.
Look closer at the collections of armored fighting vehicle photos and where they are archived. You’ll also notice a character trait: People get hard over the pictures of heavy military gear.
While the stocking of American police departments with MRAP AFVs is now big news (it’s also worth noting one was not in Ferguson), there has never been any well-publicized outcry in the mainstream on the matter.
Anything for fighting the bad guys and keeping us safe from terrorism. Search and destroy.
On the small town of Dundee, MI, population 4000:
Participating in the exercise was the Dundee Police Department’s armored vehicle called MRAP, or Mines Resistance Ambush Protected. Operated by Chief David Uhl and Sgt. David Kottke, the vehicle became part of Dundee’s force about nine months ago.
The 22-ton former military vehicle, which has a value of about $850,000, came to the department at no cost. Chief Uhl said it provides security for police officers in dangerous situations and is available to any police agency in Monroe County.
“It was an opportunity of a lifetime to get a vehicle like this for Monroe County,??? the chief said.
And this link shows a rough collection of counties which were given MRAP AFVs by the Dept. of Defense, situations where it was thought they would better serve a collection of small towns.
While viewing, always keep in mind that no terrorist groups actually had armored fighting forces. Until Iraq, where we have now bombed an MRAP seized from the American-trained Iraqi military by ISIS:
U.S. warplanes on combat patrols over northern Iraq increasingly are hitting U.S.-made armored vehicles captured by Islamic militants from the fleeing Iraqi army.
In the latest airstrikes Thursday, the U.S. Central Command said that a mix of fighters and armed drones destroyed one of the heavily-armored Mine Resistant-Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles that were a mainstay of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The MRAP was targeted after the warplanes destroyed two other armored vehicles northeast of the Kurdish capital of Irbil that were being used by fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to fire on positions held by the Kurdish peshmerga forces, the Central Command said in a statement.
The MRAP had a use. Now it doesn’t. It would be fair to describe the Dept. of Defense’s giveaways of them in the continental US as a program that’s a potentially menacing nuisance, but more commonly of little or no social benefit to anyone.
It would be an interesting exercise to find out who, at DoD, thought that providing these things to small and medium-sized town police forces was a capital idea. Did they write a white paper on it?
There should be no optimism, despite all the current press, that there will be changes.
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08.14.14
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 6:19 pm by George Smith
Racism and over-militarized police forces have combined in Ferguson to produce another uniquely American disaster. The result: A domestic unrest that could easily be duplicated in other cities around the country.
A black American civilian community, justifiably outraged and angry over the killing of one of its own by police was set upon by a thug military-style pacification operation that escalated into a social calamity, literally a crisis of democracy, over a populace’s right to assemble and protest.
In this blog I’ve occasionally touched upon the militarization of America’s police. The war on terror accelerated it, with the Dept. of Homeland Security giveaways of free money (called grants) combining with the Pentagon’s 1033 program to recycle military gear into local police forces so even the smallest town police forces could have access to heavy armaments and armored fighting vehicles.
Locally, I wrote about it in 2012 when the South Pasadena police force got a used Peacekeeper, made by arms manufacturer, Textron, from the Burbank police force which was upgrading to a Lenco BearCat, courtesy of DHS. In the war on terror years, the latter vehicle has been the buy of choice for police departments receiving DHS money. The taxpayer has been very very good to Lenco.
From the blog:
Wha? Even local shires with no significant history of violent crime or threat try to get into the act. The Los Angeles Times informs today that South Pasadena, generally known for its population of swells, tree-lined streets and swank/genteel bungalow homes has acquired an urban combat vehicle for one dollar, sold off by Burbank, which is trading up on homeland security bucks …
[The LA Times]: “Last week the city took delivery of a vehicle known as a Peacekeeper, paying Burbank $1 for the privilege. Burbank originally received the Peacekeeper as surplus from the U.S. Air Force …”The Peacekeeper saw no action during its Burbank years …
“Burbank decided to sell the armored vehicle after it obtained a new BearCat SWAT vehicle in February 2009 through a $275,000 Homeland Security Department grant.”
South Pasadena’s AFV.
Pasadena, like Burbank, has a Lenco BearCat. And, if you live in a city or even if not, you can probably find an armored fighting vehicle in a local police force near you merely by searching Google images. One feature of the militarization of American policing is the wealth of pictures showing it. In modern America, everyone loves to show off their new AFVs.
The net national affect has been intimidation. Intimidation inevitably leads to fear, anger and resistance, sometimes violent. It is a relationship, a vicious cycle, the country, from the top to the bottom, has never learned from.
From Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, military intimidation, overwhelming force and pacification always failed. And in Ferguson (or potentially other cities) it again blew up in our faces. Everyone in local government, from St. Louis, to the governor, made the wrong decisions, repeatedly, and greatly afflicted the black people of Ferguson.
And now it’s another, in a long and repeating history, of national disgraces.
Articles noting this have been published for some time. But like everything else, they have never changed the trajectory of events. More armaments are always better. It’s a dangerous world, “the bad guys” are everywhere, including people you believe to be normal citizens. And the most convenient way to deal with them is to use an armored force, courtesy of US military or DHS giving.
From the Detroit News in 2011:
Warren, Southfield and Washtenaw County each received an armored vehicle after Lt. Darcy Leutzinger, commander of the Warren Police Department’s special response team, got approval for a $1.6 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security to buy the vehicles.
Each four-wheel-drive vehicle holds up to 25 people and protects its occupants from artillery and gas attacks, Leutzinger said. All three are used frequently in Macomb, Oakland and Washtenaw counties, for situations such as hostage standoffs and drug house raids, he said.
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A police armored personnel carrier in Ann Arbor.
From NBC News, a couple years ago:
America’s most in-demand police vehicle is a 10-officer 16,000-pound armored tank that takes bullets like Superman and drives 80 mph. The federal government buys dozens each year for local police departments. Do America’s local police need tanks?
Every day, America produces a fresh batch of barricaded gunmen, some of whom want to lure police into a shootout. Roughly 50 police officers are killed every year, most in shootings, and many during arrests or ambushes.
Which is where the Lenco BearCat G3 rolls in.
Other criminal justice experts have questioned whether police need minitanks, saying they’re often used for mundane tasks such as serving warrants, and create a sense of police as military soldiers rather than neighbors. They also contend that BearCats and other SWAT machinery do little to prevent violent crimes, which have fallen steadily for a decade.
“It’s all an illusion,” said Jim Fisher, a former professor of criminal justice at Edinboro University and author of a book on SWAT teams. “The fact your police department just bought an armored vehicle does not make you safer. It’s going to make you poorer, because your taxes will go up to pay for training and maintenance.” In light of today’s budget-strapped environments, we, too, wonder whether the federal government should be paying for small counties and towns to have tanks to use against their citizens.
Ferguson has made everyone rush to publish pieces on police militarization, framed by the awful pictures from Missouri.
Has it gone too far? Obviously. But the New York Times, for instance, must assemble a panel of six experts to argue the “Yeses” and “Nos” in a couple paragraphs for its blogs.
“Should law enforcement agencies receive surplus military property for everyday policing in cities and neighborhoods?” asks the newspaper.
The person with the most sense is from the ACLU, Kara Dansky, who has written an extensive report on the matter.
She notes another obvious feature of what has transpired:
We also found — perhaps not surprisingly, given the appalling way in which the war on drugs has targeted communities of color — that people of color were more likely than whites to be impacted by paramilitary raids. More often than not, these violent raids are conducted to serve warrants in search of drugs, disproportionately affecting people of color, despite the fact that whites and people of color use drugs at roughly the same rates.
Near the end of the selection, a former policeman, Eugene O’Donnell, makes a truly appalling suggestion, one as a result of the belief that more military technology in the hands of the police actually cuts risk:
The one truly indispensable military technology the police should hurry into service is reliable nonlethal weaponry – like the Pentagon’s so-called pain ray.
This picture, one of the US military’s “pain rays,” known as the Active Denial System, says everything you need to know.
Yes, this would be just the thing to deploy into American cities to let the community know its safety comes first.
For this blog and other places I used to write about the pain ray, originally called “The Sheriff.”
It took over a decade to develop and was a magnet for a large assortment of ninny tech journalists and cheerleaders who would, in turn, write breathless comment on its greatness after being shot by it in a US military staged dog-and-pony show.
The ADS was deployed to Afghanistan and never used. Some intelligent military leaders recognized it would have been a relations nightmare, playing into the hands of the Taliban.
It’s use would do nothing but horrify and incense the population that was its target. It’s a good example of expensive, impractical technology for torturing, remember, non-lethally.
One can only imagine how much worse it would make things.
What is the answer to increasing militarization? In this country, there isn’t one.
We learn nothing. The country is virtually incapable of change. Sure, today there is the promised Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, something to “end the free transfers of certain aggressive military equipment to local law enforcement …”
In a month, it will be gone.
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08.12.14
Posted in Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 2:09 pm by George Smith
Rosary peas — the source of abrin. Number of fatalities from abrin poisoning in the last decade: zero.
Jesse Korff, a nineteen-year old from LaBelle, Florida, today pleaded guilty to a murder conspiracy involving abrin and ricin and the smuggling of those poisons. He stands to be sentenced to life in prison.
From this blog, in February:
A 19-year-old boy in south Florida is set to be imprisoned, possibly for life, as the result of a federal investigation of the Black Market Reloaded website, a replacement for the infamous Silk Road, where there were “numerous offerings for the sale of illegal and harmful goods, including but not limited to biological agents, toxins, firearms, ammunition, explosives, controlled substances, counterfeit goods and fraudulent documents,??? according to an FBI document …
Jesse Korff of Labelle, Florida, was arrested by agents of the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations when he delivered two vials of liquid containing a small but detectable amount of the poison abrin to them. It was the final part of a transaction started on the Black Market Reloaded site when one of the undercover men contacted Korff, inquired about buying the poison and advanced him 1.608 Bitcoin for it.
Like the Silk Road, Black Market Reloaded was hosted on the encrypted Tor network where many people seem to still believe federal agents cannot get at them. Black Market Reloaded was subsequently taken down and the sting shows that Homeland Security and the FBI are well into operations aimed at keeping similar websites and Bitcoin markets for crime under heavy surveillance.
In an FBI press release on the matter today, Korff was also linked to a British case noted in this blog around the same time:
A banker accused of trying to kill her magistrate mother at their Stratford home by lacing her Diet Coke with a poison more deadly than ricin is to stand trial in July after appearing at Southwark Crown Court today where she was further remanded in custody.
Kuntal Patel,36, is alledged to have plotted to kill Meena Patel,54, using abrin – a rare poison extracted from the seeds of a Peruvian plant.
She was arrested by counter terrrorism officers at the £450,000 home they share in Park Road earlier this month after US homeland security is believed to have tipped off Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command about a website based in the US which specialised in selling lethal toxins.
She is not facing terrorist charges, but is accused of attempted murder between December 10 2013 and January 26.
Today’s FBI release does not mention Kuntal Patel by name but it is quite obviously the same case, an arrest stemming from Homeland Security and the FBI’s investigation of the Black Market Reloaded website:
In December 2013 Korff provided a quantity of abrin to a purchaser in London who claimed she intended to kill her mother. After the purchaser’s receipt and administration of the initial dose, which she claimed was ineffective, Korff agreed to provide a second quantity of the toxin in order to assist the purchaser in the implementation of the murder plot.
Before Korff had an opportunity to smuggle the second dose of abrin to the London purchaser, a federal undercover agent contacted Korff through BMR and negotiated the sale of two liquid doses of abrin. Korff told the buyer about his delivery methods—concealing vials in a carved-out and re-melted candle—and discussed how much abrin was needed to kill a person of a particular weight and how best to administer the toxin. Korff also assured the buyer that a victim’s death would appear to be similar to a bad case of the flu.
Following Korff’s arrest, FBI agents searched Korff’s property over three days and recovered several computers, castor beans, rosary peas, capsules, vials, jars, syringes, filters, respirators and other items commonly utilized in the manufacture, production, sale, packaging, and shipping of toxins and chemical substances. Among the items recovered was a liquid dose of abrin that Korff had intended to ship to the London purchaser.
Nineteen year olds can’t make weapons of mass destruction. They can, however, use old literature published by the American neo-Nazi and survivalist violent right in the Eighties to make powders and liquids containing some small amount, to be identified by federal laboratories, of the poisons ricin and abrin.
These recipes now exist in digital form. And through technological progress the products from them can be marketed on black internet sites. In much the same way the original poison recipes were distributed world-wide on underground hacker bulletin board systems in the Nineties.
Another summary of that world, along with original notice of the arrest, is included here at Jesse Korff and the legacy of The Poisoner’s Handbook.
Images for castor plants and crab’s eye — the latter being the source of abrin, are here and here, respectively.
Both can be found in Florida.
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07.11.14
Posted in War On Terror at 3:43 pm by George Smith
Summer means swimming pool and water feature recreation. Sanitary water requires the regulated circulation and injection of chlorine into water.
Things go wrong.
What usually happens is nothing too serious. Chlorine is immediately perceptible when in the air and people move away quickly unless they’re cut by a puff. Chlorine, a halogen, is immediately corrosive to mucous membranes, which means one feels it in the eyes and airway at once.
And this happened today in Michigan.
From the wire:
MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI – The Hazmat situation at Michigan’s Adventure on Friday, July 11 occurred near the lazy river, according to one of those affected.
The witness, who was in the lazy river at the time of the incident, said she “got a splash of chlorine” and started coughing while finding it difficult to breath. Other witnesses reported burning lips.
At least 25 people are being individually hosed down in the Michigan’s Adventure parking lot following the medical emergency …
It happens around the country, not infrequently, although it does not always make the front page of Google news.
From Maryland, a couple weeks ago:
HIGHLAND PARK (KDKA) – The Highland Park pool will reopen this afternoon, 24 hours after a chlorine leak forced the pool to close.
An issue with a chlorine canister Thursday caused a dangerous problem.
It happened around noon, before the pool was open for the day, workers were moving chlorine canisters when the top of one snapped off, causing a major leak.
The canisters are roughly 5 feet tall and hold about 100 pounds of liquid chlorine.
Decades ago, when I ran a community swimming pool, we had chlorine cylinders just like that.
They were robust. The delivery truck used to simply heave them off the back end onto macadam. It was not something I’d have recommended but they are made to take it. None ever burst or developed leaks, although the macadam of the lot took a beating.
However, once the protective shield comes off the top where a regulator is attacked, the copper fixture is more fragile. From time to time, leaks did develop.
And, in Ohio, the same week:
More than a dozen campers and staff at a Franklin Township day camp are recovering after they got poisoned by chlorine in an indoor pool Tuesday.
“We had several children who were coughing and vomiting,??? said Lt. Patrick Edwards of the Kent Fire Department. “We also had a couple of staff members who had the same symptoms.???
[A pool supervisor] said a camper accidentally hit the emergency shut off button for the pool pump. When staff restarted the pump, an excessive amount of chlorine shot into the pool while kids and staff were in it.
And this is exactly how many small exposures happen.
Chlorine is often added to the water through a bubbler in a pipe that carries inbound water from the filters to the swimming pool. If the water flow is interrupted and the chlorine is not simultaneously shut off, it builds up in the empty pipe.
When the water is turned back on it emerges as a bubble, or a puff, at the first outlet. If swimmers are around, they are exposed.
Usually, the results are not severe because the amount is never substantial enough. However, it can still result in a great deal of irritation to the eyes and throat, sometimes requiring a check by medical personnel.
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