I just looked at an article from the paper earlier today and I've noticed a historical trend. I don't want to say this is a historical fact here. But I've noticed more and more that in oppressive regimes and in supposed Democratic ones that the police always seem to be in favor of the state. Why is it that the police seem to be unwilling to follow unconstitutional orders, and, illegal actions, such as oppressing peaceful protests, not just in our country, but also in other countries around the world? First I'd like to show a few examples from our country, the United States, and I'd like to show examples from other countries like Thailand, China, and perhaps Israel, where the Police have been used against protesters who haven't done anything wrong. But they just try to stir up trouble to make them look bad. Our government has something called cointelpro. Other governments do things that are similar. I don't think it has to be this way. But I'm thinking more and more often that it is. Just an FYI, for those who don't know what COINTELPRO is. COINTELPRO is why the anti-war protests have been targetted for speaking out against the government. Democrats have been operating with a clandestine COINTELPRO program against the tea party. It still lives on today. It's what the government does when it wants to smear peaceful protesters. They have the police go after protesters who are using their constitutional rights, and, to smear them for going against the establishment.
COINTELPRO is an acronym for a series of FBI counterintelligence programs designed to neutralize political dissidents. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO's of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against radical political organizations. In the early 1950s, the Communist Party was illegal in the United States. The Senate and House of Representatives each set up investigating committees to prosecute communists and publicly expose them. (The House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy). When a series of Supreme Court rulings in 1956 and 1957 challenged these committees and questioned the constitutionality of Smith Act prosecutions and Subversive Activities Control Board hearings, the FBI's response was COINTELPRO, a program designed to "neutralize" those who could no longer be prosecuted. Over the years, similar programs were created to neutralize civil rights, anti-war, and many other groups, many of which were said to be "communist front organizations." As J. Edgar Hoover, longtime Director of the FBI, put it The forces which are most anxious to weaken our internal security are not always easy to identify. Communists have been trained in deceit and secretly work toward the day when they hope to replace our American way of life with a Communist dictatorship. They utilize cleverly camouflaged movements, such as peace groups and civil rights groups to achieve their sinister purposes. While they as individuals are difficult to identify, the Communist party line is clear. Its first concern is the advancement of Soviet Russia and the godless Communist cause. It is important to learn to know the enemies of the American way of life. The FBI conducted more than 2000 COINTELPRO operations before the the programs were officially discontinued in April of 1971, after public exposure, in order to "afford additional security to [their] sensitive techniques and operations."
Most transparent White House ever... Police chased reporters away from the White House and closed Lafayette Park today in response to a gay rights protest in which several service members in full uniform handcuffed themselves to the White House gate to protest "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." People who have covered the White House for years tell me that's an extremely unusual thing to do in an area that regularly features protests. A reporter can be seen in the YouTube video above calling the move "outrageous" and "ridiculous." UPDATE: U.S. Park Police spokesman David Schlosser tells POLITICO his service erred in pushing the reporters back, and stressed that the White House played no role in the move. "That was strictly the U.S. Parks Police that screwed up – that has nothing to do with the Secret Service of the White House or the Administration," said Sergeant Schlosser. "We had some young officers who, when they were told to move the people back -- which we typically do when we're going to make arrests - they moved the people back a lot further than we typically do. That was a rookie, amateur error and they screwed up on that."
HuffPost has comprehensive coverage of the Tax Day Tea Party protests. Click here for the latest photos and video. UPDATE 2:15 P.M. The tea party protest in Washington, D.C., outside the White House was just shut down by police. A Secret Service agent told Huffington Post's Arthur Delaney that a demonstrator had thrown a package over the fence onto the White House lawn. Below is video of an organizer explaining the protest cancellation. From AP: Tax protesters threw what appeared to be a box of tea bags toward the White House on Wednesday, prompting officials to lockdown the compound. The Secret Service also used a robot to inspect the package thrown in an apparent act of defiance meant to echo the rebellion of the Boston Tea Party. UPDATE 2:40: The conservative protesters were allowed to return to an area around the White House after a robot was used to open the package that had been thrown onto the lawn. * * * * * EARLIER: The Tea Parties here in Washington DC are off to a roaring start, right? Not really. Right now, the Tea Parties are contending with a number of terrible struggles, which this report from Fox News documents. In the first place, the big event of the day was to be the dumping of one million teabags. The Washington Post notes that this was originally supposed to happen at the Potomac River but was shifted to Lafayette Park because of issues of legality. And seriously, why anyone thought it would be legal to further pollute the Potomac is beyond me. But! As it turns out, the alternate plan -- 1. Take a million teabags to Lafayette Park, 2. Dump them on a tarp, 3. Yell at them, 4. Clean up the teabags -- also isn't happening, because of permit issues. Story continues below According to reports, the truck filled with teabags pulled up to Lafayette Park, but didn't have a permit, and so they were loaded back on to the truck and driven off to an undisclosed location. Also, the plan to have a second rally in front of the Treasury Department was scotched after the Secret Service objected. So, this epochal day is off to an amazing start. And somewhere out there, a truck full of teabags rolls on, destination unknown, into an uncertain future. [WATCH.] UPDATE: HuffPost's Arthur Delaney was in attendance at the DC tea bag protest and has many more details: * * * * * Tea party protesters braved some very uncooperative weather Wednesday to join a tax day tea party in a park next to the White House in Washington, D.C. Several hundred protesters (an event organizer tallied no fewer than 1,500 attendees) withstanding driving rain to chant slogans and wave signs decrying government spending and taxes. "Hell no, we won't pay!" they chanted. "I'm here to protest the spending and the taxes and the government running the private affairs of private industries," said Steve, 51, a computer programmer who took the day off to drive from Northern Virginia and pay "a big chunk of money" to park in a downtown garage. "I'm here to protest the bailing out of companies when they should be going bankrupt." Steve came prepared. He'd waterproofed his sign, which depicted 1990s sitcom icon Steve Urkel saying "Did I do that?" next to a downward-sloping stock market graph. The other side of his placard showed Obama with a long Pinocchio nose. Rain aside, the event hit a few snags. The original plan had been to dump a million teabags onto the ground, but authorities shot that down. There was also supposed to be a second event outside the Treasury department, but authorities said no to that as well. Chalk it up to the fickle D.C. police department. "We thought we had a permit but then they were like, 'No, you don't,'" says organizer J. Peter Freire. Many tea partiers stressed that they were not attacking the administration from the Right. "My sign is non-partisan," said Jill, who took a day off from her job in the insurance industry to commute from Woodbridge, Virginia. Her sign said she was registered to vote and that Congress was in trouble. "I'm hoping this is a non-partisan event." Another non-partisan attendee, 29-year-old Abraham Mudrick, says he flew in from Oregon just for the tea party. "There were plenty of tea parties in Oregon, but I wanted to be in the belly of the beast," he told the Huffington Post. Freire told the Huffington Post that while famous types like Alan Keyes were scheduled to speak at the event, they were given not given better billing than regular folks who wanted to talk. At one point, a speaker yelled out, "To hell with the Left!" The crowd responded with a chant: "USA! USA! USA!"
Police tactics used to disperse a large student assembly at the University of Pittsburgh on Friday evening have become the focus of an Internet media firestorm. Multiple videos of the police action against apparently peaceful students have surfaced on the Internet. Confirmed details apart from recordings are scarce at this hour, but the first clip included below shows two officers in riot gear hitting a young female with batons, while others show numerous seemingly random arrests taking place as students were forced out of the public areas on campus by police firing tear gas and other projectiles. "The group, estimated at close to 500 people, gathered near Schenley Plaza around 10 p.m., with students saying they were drawn because they were angry over Thursday’s protests and how the riot police treated students," reported The New York Times. "Some students say their curiosity was piqued by a university message warning them to stay off the streets." According to the Associated Press, police say they arrested 60 people after declaring the student gathering to be "illegal" -- a figure that makes up the bulk of the 83 arrested all across Pittsburgh during the G20 summit. The G20 summits routinely attract crowds of activists for scores of causes as well as anarchists opposed to what they see as inhumane free market policies. Story continues below... An earlier, larger demonstration took place without any incident. Security forces in Pittsburgh said there were up to 4,500 marchers, but Peter Shell, president of the Thomas Merton Center which helped organize the march, estimated the number at twice that. "It was the biggest protest march in Pittsburgh since the 1970s protests against Vietnam," Shell told AFP. The videos below contain profanity and some violence. This video was uploaded to YouTube on Sept. 25, 2009.
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) - Thai police and "Red Shirt" protestors remained in a stand-off Friday in Bangkok after a deadly grenade attack the night before, reports from the region said. Hundreds of riot police confronted the protesters at a barricade made of tires demanding they leave, but later retreated without incident after the anti-government demonstrators threatened to light the tires on fire, according to Reuters and CNBC. The confrontation followed an attack overnight killed three people and wounded 75. Reports quoted Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban as saying the attack came from near the Red Shirt camp and used an M-79 grenade launcher. Agence France-Presse quoted a Red Shirt leader, Jatuporn Prompan, as saying that "whoever carried out the M-79 attacks wants people to think it was done by the Reds. We will never attack innocent people." Thailand's benchmark SET index fell 1.7% in early trading Friday. The attack marked the latest violence, after clashes between the protestors and police took 25 lives earlier this month. Read column on journalist killed in the Thai violence. The mostly rural poor Red Shirts are supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was himself ousted by the military after rival "Yellow Shirt" protests in 2006. AFP quoted an army spokesman as saying Thursday that the Red Shirts should disperse or risk death, adding: "Your time is running out. Please leave the area."
Turkish Tobacco and Liquor Administration (TEKEL) workers launched a sit-in protest after police did not let them make a press statement in front of the Turkish Confederation of Labor (Turk-Is) headquarters. Police intervened in a group of protestors who did not disperse despite their call. Then, protestors ran into other streets to escape from police, and threw stones at police officers. Police detained 15 protestors, and took them to the police department. On March 2, TEKEL workers ended their 78-day protest and removed their tents following a decision of the Council of State. Workers from the privatized TEKEL factories displayed the protest in capital Ankara for 78 days in an effort to secure a transfer to other public institutions along with their employee rights. The government offered to reemploy TEKEL workers under 4-C contract, which means a partial loss of rights for the workers, the initial cause of the protests. However, the government promised to ameliorate the conditions of the contract with the new offer. Turkey's major confederation of labor and civil servant unions had gone a one-day nation wide strike on February 4 to extend support to TEKEL workers in protest of the government.
Large protests usually get media attention. Police intervention is just their way of advertising the fact that "we the people" really need them more than ever to protect from all these hobgoblins! It's not enough that their cronies in government need to invent new crimes to slam people in the pen...
SilentXtarian wrote: I don't see why police have to be always in favor of the current regime.
I don't see why police have to be always in favor of the current regime.
You have it backwards. The current regime is always in favor of the police. The police have the guns. The regime is just the public face, and is totally replaceable.
The same in the United States: the military industrial complex doesn't care who's face is in the newspapers (Bush or Obama), as long as they don't have to find a job pumping gas.
Protesters bring into question the authority of the state. It means that the top-down structure of rulership is weakened. The police will never stand for that.
I dunno, I personally think the 1 million teabags being rerouted for lack of permit makes sense even though it's red tape at its finest. I also think investigating a package that gets thrown towards the White House makes sense. Can't be too careful and the protestors were allowed to return after the package had been inspected. I don't understand how the one about bad weather has anything to do with this. The incident at Pittsburgh does sound bad. Although if they were doing something illegal, they were doing something illegal. Either way, the police response sounds like it was unnecessarily brutal, so that's a real problem.
Sun. 10/04/25 14:02 EDT.post #76 SilentXtarian:I don't see why police have to be always in favor of the current regime.Or, it could be answered this way:Because the current regime employs the police. Therefore, the police "serve and protect" ... not "the people," but the current regime.He who pays the piper calls the tune.
SilentXtarian:I don't see why police have to be always in favor of the current regime.
I'm sorry, I don't get it. You think the current government is illegitimate, for whatever reason (birth certificate, socialism, whatever) and then you apply to it for a permit? What do you expect when you submit to having your protest be centrally planned? I prefer not to have protests, really.
If there's one thing I've learned in all these misspent years is that individual policemen may act to their own accord but the whole force always act according to orders. A few quick examples I know very well.
Fifteen years ago there was a protest involving cattle ranchers. They just hired a parcel of land from a farmer near the railway and parked there their tractors, holding up signs. It was a curious way to protest but surely nobody was hurt and no private (or public for all that matters) was jeopardized. After a few days the media began to flock there to witness this most unusual protest. The government in Rome, for reasons I do not wish to discuss, decided these ranchers needed a lesson. Police unions simply refused on grounds that there's no law against standing in a private muddy field holding signs. Government simply changed approach: they had military police conscripts do the dirty job. These boys were simply threatened with the harshest penalities if they didn't follow orders and, lacking formal anti riot training, behaved like a pack of rabid dogs.
Ten years ago we had the infamous Genoa G8 meeting. Thousands of policemen were sent there to keep the infamous "Black Block" protesters at bay. Among them was an old friend of mine who served as a third in command in a specifically trained anti-riot unit. He expected to be deployed in the thickest of the action but, to his surprise, his unit was posted to the very outskirts of Genoa where absolutely nothing happened, while police academy trainees were posted in the heat of the action. There were many injured on both sides and one protester was shot dead by an inexperienced policeman. A few years ago, after he left the service, told me he was sure "somebody" had arranged for inexperienced officers, lacking training and equipment, to be posted in the most dangerous sector as to maximize mayhem.
A few years ago auto union workers blocked one of our busiest highways for hours while police looked on, doing absolutely nothing. A protester was run over by a van which failed to stop in time. Blocking a highway on purpose is a crime, yet no persecution followed. As Mises rightly remarked police seems to have a soft spot when strikes are involved.
Nielsio
You have it backwards. The current regime is always in favor of the police. The police have the guns. The regime is just the public face, and is totally replaceable. The same in the United States: the military industrial complex doesn't care who's face is in the newspapers (Bush or Obama), as long as they don't have to find a job pumping gas. Protesters bring into question the authority of the state. It means that the top-down structure of rulership is weakened. The police will never stand for that.
That makes sense. As long as they have a job they won't complain. But what does that say about the private policemen who follow the orders of the state anyways although they have no real loyalty to them? I'm sure that there have been cases of private police who have done it too. Are they just grunts? I know to not make the mistake of painting all the police with the same brush... but it seems like whenever they are ordered to put down a protest they do it with no questions asked. JAlanKatz
If there's one thing I've learned in all these misspent years is that individual policemen may act to their own accord but the whole force always act according to orders. A few quick examples I know very well. Fifteen years ago there was a protest involving cattle ranchers. They just hired a parcel of land from a farmer near the railway and parked there their tractors, holding up signs. It was a curious way to protest but surely nobody was hurt and no private (or public for all that matters) was jeopardized. After a few days the media began to flock there to witness this most unusual protest. The government in Rome, for reasons I do not wish to discuss, decided these ranchers needed a lesson. Police unions simply refused on grounds that there's no law against standing in a private muddy field holding signs. Government simply changed approach: they had military police conscripts do the dirty job. These boys were simply threatened with the harshest penalities if they didn't follow orders and, lacking formal anti riot training, behaved like a pack of rabid dogs. Ten years ago we had the infamous Genoa G8 meeting. Thousands of policemen were sent there to keep the infamous "Black Block" protesters at bay. Among them was an old friend of mine who served as a third in command in a specifically trained anti-riot unit. He expected to be deployed in the thickest of the action but, to his surprise, his unit was posted to the very outskirts of Genoa where absolutely nothing happened, while police academy trainees were posted in the heat of the action. There were many injured on both sides and one protester was shot dead by an inexperienced policeman. A few years ago, after he left the service, told me he was sure "somebody" had arranged for inexperienced officers, lacking training and equipment, to be posted in the most dangerous sector as to maximize mayhem. A few years ago auto union workers blocked one of our busiest highways for hours while police looked on, doing absolutely nothing. A protester was run over by a van which failed to stop in time. Blocking a highway on purpose is a crime, yet no persecution followed. As Mises rightly remarked police seems to have a soft spot when strikes are involved.
Silent, I'm not talking about some constitutional nicety, I'm talking about the idea that you walk up to the powerful and say "yes, hi, your majesty, I'm here to ask your permission to hold a protest demanding your removal from power." What reaction do you expect? Either they'll say 'thanks for asking, but no' or they'll say 'oh, of course, there's your free speech zone' then go congratulating themselves about their tolerance and how they can't possibly be doing anything harmful to freedom because, well, they even allow you to speak about why they should be overthrown! Of course, they have no intention to listen to anything you say...
Communist dictatorships tend not to allow free speech. They crush dissent. In the US, we send everyone to public school and ensure that no one will listen to dissenters, then we let them talk as much as they want...and lecture China.
Then wouldn't you all be in favor of having peaceful protests, as long as they don't turn into violence? JAlanKatz, you gave me the impression that because in our current system that since you need a permit to protests, that it's all bad. What I'm saying, is that you shouldn't have to go to the government to get a protest. Having a protest where people don't harm other people would be perfectly acceptable with the NAP philosophy as a form of protest. Saying that because we have to get a permit to protest at all, and, that in other countries that they don't allow protests at all, and that we shouldn't have protests for those reasons... is a little silly.
I don't know about bad, but pointless is more my opinion. I don't see what message you're getting across by asking government permission to dump tea - which isn't taxed more than other things right now - into the water. Did the colonists ask permission?
JAlanKatz
No. But to say that because you have to ask permission to do it means that you shouldn't do it altogether is self defeating. It's true that you have to ask the government for permission to do a protest. That's just the way things are in our current system. You just have to work around the government, knowing that they give you permission to protest. It's just the nature of the system.