The Daily Times Herald is reporting that the Carroll National Guard is planning a 4 day exercise April 2nd through April 5th 2009.
From the article:
The purpose of the April 2-5 drill will be to gather intelligence, then search for and apprehend a suspected weapons dealer, according to Sgt. Mike Kots, readiness NCO for Alpha Company.
Citizens, law enforcement, media and other supporters will participate.
Troops will spend Thursday, April 2, staging at a forward operations base at Carroll. The next day company leaders will conduct reconnaissance and begin patrolling the streets of Arcadia to identify possible locations of the weapons dealer.
The primary phase will be done Saturday, April 4, when convoys will be deployed from Carroll to Arcadia. Pictures of the arms dealer will be shown in Arcadia, and soldiers will go door to door asking if residents have seen the suspect.
Soldiers will knock only at households that have agreed to participate in the drill, Kots noted.
I’m really curious to know how they’re going about getting permission. Are they asking everyone if they want to or telling them they’re coming and accepting objections? What kind of pressure are they coming?
“Once credible intelligence has been gathered,” said Kots, “portions of the town will be road-blocked and more in-depth searches of homes and vehicles will be conducted in accordance with the residents’ wishes.
In accordance with the residents’ wishes? Because the people or Arcadia actually voted on this and then directed the mayor to invite the national guard to come hang out.
“One of the techniques we use in today’s political environment is cordon and knock,” Kots explained. “We ask for the head of the household, get permission to search, then have them open doors and cupboards. The homeowner maintains control. We peer over their shoulder, and the soldier uses the homeowner’s body language and position to protect him.”
YAY!! You get to help the military search your house for illegal (any) guns. I hate being left out of all the fun.
During this phase of the operation, troops will interact with residents and media while implementing crowd-control measures and possibly treating and evacuating injured persons.
The unit will use a Blackhawk helicopter for overhead command and control, and to simulate medevacs.
The drill will culminate in the apprehension of the suspected arms dealer.
Because that’s what the military is for, chasing down suspected arms dealers in American cities.
In addition to surveillance, searching and apprehension, the exercise will also give the troops valuable experience in stability, support, patrol, traffic control, vehicle searches and other skills needed for deployment in an urban environment.
“This exercise will improve the real-life operational skills of the unit,” said Kots. “And it will hopefully improve the public’s understanding of military operations.”
Wow, you’d think the military is getting ready to spend a lot of time in American cities in the future, I wonder why?
The pre-drill work with residents is as important at the drill itself.
“It will be important for us to gain the trust and confidence of the residents of Arcadia,” said Kots. “We will need to identify individuals that are willing to assist us in training by allowing us to search their homes and vehicles and to participate in role-playing.”
Yes, going in pre-invasion and doing intel/recon is a great military tactic.
“We really want to get as much information out there as possible, because this operation could be pretty intrusive to the people of Arcadia.”
There was one major problem with the Santa Clara County crime lab report that implicated a San Jose man of sexual assault:
It wasn’t true.
The document was a fake, created by a San Jose police detective. The crime lab analyst who purportedly prepared the document doesn’t exist. The number used to identify it was false.
Even so, detective Matthew Christian testified as though the phony report were authentic.
The case unraveled when the defense attorney sought the résumé of the lab analyst, only to learn there was no such person. Christian then remembered that he had concocted the report in an attempt to trick the defendant, Michael Kerkeles, 54, into admitting that he had forced a developmentally disabled neighbor into sexual acts. It was an acceptable tactic. But Christian said that by the time he was called to testify, more than a year later, he had forgotten the ruse.
The case, which attracted no public attention when it was dismissed last December, has raised concerns both about how the charges were handled and about how police and prosecutors responded when the fabrication and false testimony was discovered.
San Jose police Capt. Andy Galea said last week that after this incident, the department had banned detectives from using ruse crime lab reports when questioning suspects. He declined to say what discipline, if any, Christian received.
Prosecutors said they had referred the case to an internal committee that reviews cases involving allegations of potential criminal conduct by police officers. That committee, headed by Assistant District Attorney David Tomkins, concluded that the matter amounted to an honest mistake by the officer, Chief Assistant District Attorney Marc Buller said last week.
“We all make mistakes,” Buller said.
Are you fucking kidding me? Framing someone has become an honest mistake for a police detective? Did we skip Fascism and go straight to banana fucking republic or what?
Go ahead and watch the first part, until the reporter and cameraman cross the street, then skip to about 7:40 and you’ll see what happens when they go back across.
This is what happens in America? The police make up the law as they go?
Cops like these need to be dealt such swift justice as to set an example for other law enforcement that we, the American People will not accept their tyranny. If our courts will not provide such justice then we must take it into our own hands as people and deliver that justice ourselves.
For those who don’t know, this file is used to limit what parts of a website get indexed by search engines. Looks like our protectors in the White House don’t want us Googling them.
The Bush Administration has once again declared itself above the law. Of course this is a conclusion you have to come to by yourself, as you won’t hear that from the mainstream media. Instead they say the President has claimed “executive privilege” as if this actually means something.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE
The idea that the media plays along with this nonsense is proof itself that they are working in collusion with the Bush Administration to give the idea of executive privilege legitimacy. By doing so they are guilty of treason against the US Constitution, by colluding to turn our Republic into a Dictatorship.
You can’t argue that Bush isn’t acting like a dictator. Here are the definition:
dic·ta·tor (dĭk’tā’tər, dĭk-tā’-) pronunciation
n.
1.
1. An absolute ruler.
2. A tyrant; a despot.
2. An ancient Roman magistrate appointed temporarily to deal with an immediate crisis or emergency.
3. One who dictates: These initials are those of the dictator of the letter.
ty·rant (tī’rənt) pronunciation
n.
1. An absolute ruler who governs without restrictions.
2. A ruler who exercises power in a harsh, cruel manner.
3. An oppressive, harsh, arbitrary person.
des·pot (dĕs’pət) pronunciation
n.
1. A ruler with absolute power.
2. A person who wields power oppressively; a tyrant.
3.
1. A Byzantine emperor or prince.
2. An Eastern Orthodox bishop or patriarch.
You can’t really sum it up any better than that.
Is this American? Is this what we want our children to grow up with? The longer we as a people, as Americans, put off dealing with this situation, the bigger losses we’ll suffer when we do finally address it.
I saw this in the comments on another site, and I’m reposting it here, as this deserves a post all on its own.
Victoria’s Secret underwear will generally say it is made in one of two places: the U.S.A. or Israel. If they’re made in the USA, they are made by prisoners, and that’s that. If they say “Made in Israel”, they weren’t. The US has a very unique trade agreement with Israel. See, GENERALLY a label must say what country the garment was actually ASSEMBLED in. So, if (and this happens a lot) the material is cut in Country1 and shipped to Country2 to be stitched together, then the label must say “Made in Country2.”
HOWEVER this is not so under our agreement with Israel. You look at that label, you think “Made in Israel. Well, they have pretty good labor conditions and a fairly well-off population, so labor conditions can’t be that bad there.” Well, sure, they probably aren’t that bad. But that underwear was not made in Israel. Under this agreement, material can be cut in Israel and shipped elsewhere (to any of the impoverished 3rd world nations near Israel) to be assembled, and it can still say “Made in Israel.” So regardless of where your Vickie’s underwear says it was made, you know people were exploited.
4. For the purposes of this Agreement; “country of origin” requires that an article or material, not wholly the growth, product, or manufacture of a Party, be substantially transformed into a new and different article of commerce, having a new name, character, of use, distinct from the article or material from which it was so transformed.
Now as much as there’s some ‘lawyerese’ in there this sounds pretty loose to me.
For the purposes of this Agreement, an originating good means:
(a) a good wholly obtained or produced entirely in the territory of one or both of the Parties;
(b) a good produced entirely in the territory of one or both of the Parties where
(i) each of the non-originating materials used in the production of the good undergoes an applicable change in tariff classification specified in Annex 4-A (Textile and Apparel Specific Rules of Origin) or Annex 5-A (Product-Specific Rules of Origin); or
(ii) the good otherwise satisfies any applicable regional value content; or
(iii) the good meets any other requirements specified in Annex 4-A or Annex 5-A; and
the good satisfies all other applicable requirements of this Chapter or Chapter 4;
(c) a good produced entirely in the territory of one or both of the Parties exclusively from originating materials; or
(d) a good that otherwise qualifies as an originating good under this Chapter or Chapter 4.
Wow, that sounds much more strict.
The bottom line? I believe the message from the comments on the other site was an accurate representation of what we allow Israel to get away with. Of course we all know these sweet deals are bought and paid for by AIPAC, the lobbying group for Israel that bribes, oops, I mean “lobbies” our elected officials to do favors for Israel.
Am I the only one who has a huge problem with that?
