“The Pride weekend has shown that an overwhelming majority of the community appreciate and support (the) police,” says Thomas Decker, the Toronto Police Service’s lesbian, gay, bi and trans [LGBT] liaison officer.

Decker’s comments come after a June 30 Pride week reception, held by police chief Bill Blair at the 519 Church St Community Centre, turned ugly. Police kept gay and trans people out of the 519 for more than an hour as a growing crowd on the sidewalk demanded answers about police conduct during the G20 summit.

Pride Toronto (PT) executive director Tracey Sandilands told the crowd through a megaphone that the event was organized by Toronto Police — not her organization — and that event organizers were dealing with capacity issues. In fact, the event was organized by the Toronto Police Services Board as a PT affiliate event. The PT logo appeared on the invitations and photos taken inside show the reception room well below capacity.

Blair arrived in a dark SUV to chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Surrounded by police, he pushed through the crowd, entering through the front door. He paused to tip his hat, a flippant move that seemed only to anger the crowd.

Journalist Lisa Walter outside the June 30 police Pride reception. Watch the video at the end of this story.

Lisa Walter was among the crowd at the 519. As a journalist covering the G20 for Our Times, an independent Canadian labour magazine, she was arrested on June 26 after shooting photos and video of the arrests of two colleagues.

“We had shown our press passes; officers said mine was fake. I was called ‘a fucking dyke,’ a ‘douchebag’ and other slurs by officers,” she says. “The most aggressive sergeant loudly questioned my gender and started calling me ‘sir’ and ‘mister’. He mocked my need for medication and later claimed I was the ‘girl in high school who never got laid.’”

Decker says anyone who feels they were mistreated should file a formal complaint to have their case investigated.

“All interactions with members of the public at the Prisoner Processing Centre were recorded using CCTV recording equipment,” he says. “As allegations proceed to formal complaints, they will be fully investigated. Persons who feel they have been treated inappropriately can file a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD).”

“Like the overwhelming majority of people, I was not informed why I was arrested, given access to a lawyer or phone, nor informed of my rights,” says Walter, who has since retained a lawyer and filed a complaint with the OIPRD.

“I was handcuffed with plastic ties the entire 13 hours of my detention, and my medication was withheld for about nine hours. When an officer finally arrived to give it to me, I was told I had to be in a separate cell. I was released at about 1:30 am… without having been charged with any violation. Later I discovered that my video camera’s hard drive had been erased, and the memory card from my other camera taken.”

Event organizers told a crowd of angry gay people that they were being kept out of their own community centre due to capacity issues on June 30. But photos taken inside show the room nearly empty.

(Matt Mills photo)

“We do know that some in the LGBT community were unfairly and illegally arrested as part of the mass arrests that occurred,” says Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA).

“And, as such, they also share much of the same treatment that was given to many other people who were peacefully demonstrating as well as some journalists, human-rights monitors and passersby.”

Des Rosiers says she has heard several reports of officers acting with courtesy and respect when dealing with the public during the summit but admits the relationship between the community and police force has been affected.

She says law reforms are needed if both sides are to move forward.

“Unfortunately, there has been some loss of confidence and trust, and it is my hope that it will be regained by the way in which they confront the mistakes that were made and make the changes that are appropriate so that it does not happen again,” says Des Rosiers.

To file a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), go to oiprd.on.ca.

Watch our video report from the June 30 protest at the police Pride reception:

| July 15, 2010

I wanted to reprint this article from Jeff Shant’z blog about how the police and activists themselves can both work in tandem to criminalize the movement.

Their Laws – Our Loss by Jeff Shantz.

In events like the G20 protests and clampdown there emerge real opportunities for recognition and understanding that are not always so readily available behind the screen of “business as usual.” The learning curve shifts and some things become much more clear.

One of the interesting revelations of the G20 fallout is the extent to which many in the social movements or “the Left” are ruled by the morals, values and prejudices of the dominant classes.

This has been expressed in the numerous calls for repression of the black bloc by would-be figure heads of the comfortable Left in Canada. I won’t bother naming them, most have already read the stuff. A rather stunning case in point has been the number of open statements of support for, indeed appeals for, the state capitalist rule of law.

For some the rule of law should have held against the black bloc. Others turn to the the rule of law as a statist security blanket providing the basis for-the very conditions of-their “peaceful protests,” which the black bloc supposedly infringed upon. One of the most striking examples comes in the form of an incredible statement from CUPE-Ontario (Canadian Union of Public Employees), my former union federation:

“Property was damaged, publically-owned [sic] police vehicles were burned, and innocent people were attacked and detained as a result of taking part in protests. All of this is wrong. What we have witnessed is nothing short of the abandonment of the rule of law, both by a small group who took part in the protests, and by a massive and heavily armed police force who were charged with overseeing them.”

Having equated the black bloc with the police in their scorn, the statement goes on to say:

“And it’s a sad day when some of those, who feel powerless to change the direction of their elected leaders, find in that feeling of powerlessness an excuse to break the law and vandalize the property of their fellow citizens and who, in so doing, silence the legitimate voices of so many others whose commitment to protest and dissent is matched by their rejection of violence and vandalism.”

Suggesting that the black bloc is an expression of powerlessness rather than confidence is one thing, but suggesting that breaking the law renders any activists or organizers illegitimate, as the statement does, is incredible. It is the logic of the bosses and the state (who set the property laws and benefit from them in the first place). And why should we view capital as our “fellow citizens anyway?” (This is not about CUPE-O, this statement expresses sentiments that have been put forward by many erstwhile members of the Left).

Even conservatives, like the sociologist Emile Durkheim and those influenced by him (Marcel Mauss, Kai Erikson) have noted that lawbreaking can provide a tremendous service to society.

Often rules are not what they should be. Violations of the rule of law can be a signal that something is wrong with the rules or that the organization of society itself is a problem. Some of the greatest social improvements have resulted from acts of law violation.

Virtually every progressive social movement has engaged in acts of law violation to achieve successes that are taken for granted today. The lawbreaker by putting themselves at risk, may be acting to benefit conformers who would otherwise suffer in silence.

In recognition of the positive social effects of deviance, Durkheim argued that a certain amount of lawbreaking is required by societies. It allows for innovation and progress. Those societies that have minimal lawbreaking (by the general population) tend to be marked by atrocities and excesses by the state (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia).

When indigenous communities stood against the racist John A. MacDonald were they illegitimate? Should unionists have called for the rule of law?

When gays and lesbians organized and fought (literally) against homophobic laws and practices were they illegitimate? Should supposed allies have argued for the bigots and their rule of law?

When women had abortions-sometimes openly and in defiance of the laws-should unionists have stood with the moralists and “right to lifers” in support of the rule of law?

All of these fights continue. Why should acceptance of the “rule of law” provide the basis for any of these movements? There are plenty of reactionaries who will wield adherence to the rule of law as a stick against movements for change (as Gary McHale has against Six Nations people reclaiming their lands). No need to do it to each other.

In expressing fidelity to the “rule of law” what is really being affirmed is fidelity to the state and to the bosses. Any union that expresses fidelity to the rule of law is not worthy of the name.

To do so is to negate the rich history of the working class and labour movements. For much of its history, right up to the present, the union movement has been “against the law,” its actions criminalized, its organizers arrested and worse.

Anyone who’s been on a picket line when it really mattered should know how to take the “rule of law.” Would CUPE-O have sided with the rule of law against the sit-down strikers of the 1930s, against the Windsor strikers of 1945, the Mine Mill strikers of 2000-01, against the various general strikes? What about the recent factory occupations?

Siding with the rule of law really does make clear “which side you are on,” to answer one of labour’s ancient questions. Union’s that uphold the “rule of law” in the face of employers who steadfastly and routinely do not are accepting conditions of capitulation and defeat. Nothing less.

It is crucial to stress that during actions like the G20 demonstrations (as in numerous other cases before such as June 15, 2000 and Quebec City 2001) there were rank-and-file union members who chose to go to the front to challenge the police lines, fences and weapons that are the material expressions of the rule of law. Many refused simply to march to hear empty speeches or uphold the fetishization of “peaceful protest” regardless of actual effectiveness.

After Quebec City, in fact, rank-and-file unionists, angry with the defeatist call of leadership to march away from the fences, demanded direct action training in their locals when they returned home. Many of those who called for and those who gave direct action workshops were CUPE members.

Even the conservative sociologists recognized that law breaking allows for freedom and growth within society. So why are so much of the Left (or at least those with access to mainstream media) having such trouble getting it after the G20 actions?

Why on earth would progressive organizers or activists call for the rule of law as a marker of the legitimacy of social movements? To do so is to call for the rule of (by and for) elites-in other words, the status quo. Who has made, and continues to make, the laws? Almost entirely they are political and economic elites. Working people and the oppressed have been largely excluded.

The rule of law also surrenders social life to administration by elites, those who study the laws and legal procedures, who run the legislatures and courts. To call for the rule of law is to call for the maintenance of the system of inequality, exploitation, injustice and oppression that has given rise to and been sustained by the rule of law in the first place. All of this is what we are supposed to be getting rid of.

As Marxists have known, or used to know (before becoming professional passive-ists), justice is not about absolutes-absolute good or absolute bad-there is a class basis to it. We cannot let the capitalist state dictate our terms.

To adhere to the rule of law as a marker of our legitimacy is to accept the masters’ rules. It is to wage a fight we cannot win-because the game is fixed from the start. Their laws ensure our loss. Where our social needs are impeded by the rule of law, there should be no question where our allegiance is, on which side our commitment rests.

Only when we confront and break through the rule of law do we stand a chance of seeing the authorities retreat, break ranks, run away. We cannot lose sight of that reality. A better world will not be legislated into existence, no matter how badly some might wish it so.

| July 15, 2010

“Mummy, what happened?”

Those were the first words uttered by a little girl when she saw her mother wearing a huge bandage around her left wrist and hand.

“How do you tell a five-year-old that mummy was beaten by police?” said Jean McDonald at a press conference Tuesday announcing the launch of a “People’s” investigation into the actions of the police during the G20 Summit weekend.

“It’s hard to do that in a way that’s not going to terrify your child, but is also honest and real and describes what happened.”

On Saturday during the G20 Summit weekend, McDonald and her partner were near the front lines with other protesters at Queen and John Streets when she said police moved in quickly, swinging their batons.

“I saw them coming towards us and I was trying with my partner to move back,” said McDonald. “That’s when they struck both of us several times.”

McDonald suffered several blows to her left hand and her partner was hit numerous times on his torso and shoulder.

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“My baby finger was basically shattered.”

Later, when McDonald went to see a surgeon, she was shocked when he described it as “in pieces.”

McDonald told a crowded room full of reporters and television cameras how terrifying that weekend was for her.

“When I look at the videos (of other protesters) I get shaky and feel nauseous because of the psychological impact of that kind of police violence,” said the York University Ph.D. candidate.

“That kind of police presence on our streets just gives me chills to think about it.”

But at the same time, she said it’s given her a glimpse into the research she carries out about violence against women living with precarious immigration status in Toronto.

“Women in that situation have to deal with this kind of violence and fear walking the streets every day,” said McDonald, who also sustained a small fracture in her wrist.

Even now, McDonald admitted that she has to step back and take some deep breaths when she’s in a large crowd or sees a police officer.

“But racialized communities across the city and country have to deal with this type of violence on a daily basis.”

Nathan Prier was at the Justice for Our Communities march the previous day, where he saw an escalated police presence that he feared would lead to a crackdown on individual civil liberties on Saturday and Sunday.

“When we reached Queen and John (on Saturday) we were advanced upon by a line of riot police,” said Prier. “For standing near riot police I was batoned in the face.”

He suffered a concussion, requiring seven stitches to close a gash on the right side of his forehead.

“There was a gentleman next to me that the Street Medics deemed to be in critical condition,” said Prier, adding that police wouldn’t allow an ambulance into the area.

“The Medics were forced to make a makeshift stretcher to carry him out of there.”

Prier pointed out that this altercation occurred before any police cars were set on fire or any windows were smashed along Queen and Yonge Streets.

After being released from Mount Sinai Hospital, Prier went home but returned to the front lines at a Jail Solidarity rally on Sunday at the Eastern Avenue Detention Centre.

“In front of the Detention Centre with people sitting down and singing, a van full of unmarked police officers pulled up, jumped into the crowd and grabbed individuals randomly who were arrested and beaten,” he said.

“Thirty seconds later, a line of riot police marched against the peaceful protesters, firing rubber bullets.”

Still shaken by what he experienced, Prier said “it was a horrible experience to see that level of police brutality”, but after hearing from the detainees about what they went through he considered himself fortunate to have “only received a concussion.”

Dr. Abeer Majeed, a family physician and member of Toronto Street Medics, was on the streets during the G20 Summit weekend, providing emergency care to injured protesters.

“It is of great concern to us medics that there has not yet been any meaningful, binding public inquiry launched into large scale extreme violence we witnessed against people exercising their right to dissent and bystanders,” said Majeed.

Majeed and her colleagues treated protesters “with serious trauma from blows to the head by police batons, fractures and soft tissue injuries.”

She noted that the majority of injuries treated did not take place during the rampage on Saturday afternoon, when store windows were smashed.

Majeed was on the south lawn at Queen’s Park on Saturday afternoon when she witnessed injuries caused by charging horses, pepper spray and blows to the head and bodies by police batons.

“Most of those injured fell behind police lines,” she said. “Street Medics were prevented from reaching and providing care to them by the police.”

Street Medics spoke with many released detainees “exhibiting symptoms of significant psychological distress” and its members were running all over the place trying to find or replace people’s medications following their release from detention.

As a result, the Toronto Community Mobilization Network (TCMN) decided to launch a People’s investigation “into the severe and widespread abuses of police power” that happened during the G20 Summit weekend.

Representatives from NGO’s, academics, community groups, legal and medical professionals and residents plan to produce a report calling for formal charges and terminations against those deemed to have been responsible for the “abuses” that took place during the last weekend in June.

“We are aware that the rogue officers were not acting alone,” said Farrah Miranda, an organizer with the TCMN.

“They were (allegedly) part of a coordinated conspiracy by police chiefs and politicians that led to injuries, detentions and the largest mass arrest in modern Canadian history.”

The TCMN is asking members of the public to come forward and assist in the investigation by submitting photos, video or testimony, but warned they cannot ensure the confidentiality of any submissions.

LGBT voters came out and contributed en masse to Barack Obama’s campaign. A year ago, he promised them action on, among other things, repeal of the military’s discrimination policy, Don’t ask Don’t Tell. This May it seemed as if they’d won. To much ballyhoo, on the eve of a war appropriation vote, the White House announced what sounded like repeal.

Now half the LGBT community thinks Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is already repealed, Miriam Perez of Feministing told GRITtv recently.

Except what the President actually announced wasn’t repeal. It was a compromise that opened the way for a vote on repeal if a Pentagon working group, the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs all approved such a thing.

Now it turns out that 400,000 service members are going to have their say as well.

As the jobless go with nothing and school libraries are shut up tight for lack of cash, we the taxpayers have, it turns out, paid a research firm some $4.4 million to send an email-survey to 400,000 troops.

Leaked copies include the following questions: “If a wartime situation made it necessary for you to share a room, berth or field tent with someone you believe to be a gay or lesbian service member, what are you likely to do?” (The survey offers options.) “If Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is repealed and you are assigned to bathroom facilities with open bay showers with a gay or lesbian service member, would you: Take no action? Use shower at different time?”

There’s also a question asking service members, if a gay or lesbian member moved into military housing with a same-sex partner, would they pick up their family and move out.

There’s no question about how troops feel about serving under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (of course.)

And — no question, this is a first. No one surveyed the troops when it was time to desegregate. No one surveyed male soldiers about allowing women in. When it came to school desegregation, the Supreme Court didn’t survey white kids. In fact it’s impossible to imagine such a thing.

About as impossible as imagining that LGBT campaign contributors will be doling out much cash to Democratic candidates this fall.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.

Herb Titus, a lawyer for the far-right Gun Owners of America, is jubilant over last week’s Supreme Court decision in the case McDonald v. City of Chicago, finding that state and local regulation of gun ownership must comport with the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The decision has also pleased the National Rifle Association, which sees it as ammunition for challenging gun control laws across the country. But for Titus, who thinks the NRA “compromises” on gun rights, the Second Amendment isn’t solely about “firepower,” he says. “You have to see it in its spiritual and providential perspective.”

That perspective is about far more than hunting and self-defense. For Titus, the Court’s 2008 recognition of an individual right to bear arms, and its application of that principle to the states in the McDonald case, are crucial steps toward arming Americans against their own government. Titus cites the “totalitarian threat” posed by “Obamacare” and “what Sarah Palin said about death panels.” People need to be armed, he said, “because ultimately it may come to the point where it’s a life and death situation.”

“[I]f you have a people that has basically been disarmed by the civil government,” he added, “then there really isn’t any effectual means available to the people to restore law and liberty and that’s really the purpose of the right keep and bear arms—is to defend yourself against a tyrant.”

If this sounds like standard-issue Tea Party fodder, it’s because the Tea Party movement emerges out of the confluence of different strands of the far right, including Christian Reconstructionism. Titus has long been a player at the intersection of Christian Reconstructionism, the standard religious right, and other far-right groups in which the Tea Party finds its roots. He was a speaker at the Reconstructionist American Vision’s annual “Worldview Conference” in 2009, has been a member of the Council for National Policy, and is a longtime homeschooling advocate from a Reconstructionist perspective. In 1996 he was the running mate of conservative icon (and Christian Reconstructionist) Howard Phillips for the far-right US Taxpayers Party (now called the Constitution Party) whose platform included the restoration of “American jurisprudence to its biblical premises” and, notably, opposition to every gun law in the United States.

Now a lawyer with the firm William J. Olson, P.C., Titus was a founding dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, where he was the chair of a three-member committee that supervised Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s now-notorious graduate thesis. In it, a recitation of the religious right’s agenda, McDonnell called working women and feminists “detrimental” to the family, argued for policy favoring married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators,” and called the 1972 legalization of contraception by married couples “illogical.” During his 2009 campaign, McDonnell tried to distance himself from his own work, but Titus told the Washington Post that McDonnell’s thesis was “right.”

In 2004, after Judge Roy Moore, another Titus client, was stripped of his position for defying a federal court order to remove his 2.6-ton monument to the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court, he joined Titus in drafting the Constitution Restoration Act. The bill, had it passed, would have deprived federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases challenging a government entity’s or official’s “acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.”

This clear articulation of the religious right’s dominionist aims, framed as a challenge to what the Right asserts is the excessive power of the federal government, did manage to receive Republican support. It had nine co-sponsors in the Senate and was introduced in the House by Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt, who had 50 co-sponsors, including now-Minority Whip Eric Cantor, now-Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and Rep. Mike Pence, who is thought to be considering a 2012 presidential run.

Partners In Arms: Militias, the Religious Right, and Biblical Law

The militia movement and Christian Reconstructionism both contend that our current civil government, most especially the federal government, is illegitimate: that it has overreached the limits of its divinely ordained authority, and that it continues to do so. At this intersection of the religious right and the militia movement, gun ownership is portrayed as a religious issue. “When we’re talking about firearms,” GOA executive director Larry Pratt told RD, “we’re not really talking about a right but an obligation, as creatures of God, to protect the life that was given them.”

Many in the militia movement, the Tea Party Movement, and Christian Reconstruction also share the view that civil government should be reformed according to the dictates of biblical law.

In describing the “fundamental issue” as “God’s authority,” Titus echoes themes from Christian Reconstructionist founder R.J. Rushdoony, including the notion that civil government has certain limits established by God. Although Titus, who earned his law degree from Harvard in 1962, claims he is not a Reconstructionist, he doesn’t deny its influence on his thinking, acknowledging how, after he was saved in 1975, his new jurisprudence was shaped by Rushdoony’s seminal text, The Institutes of Biblical Law.

Like Rushdoony, Titus argues that government is by covenant; that authority is distributed by God among three institutions with distinct (and distinctly limited) jurisdictions: family, church, and civil government. To root this view in the American Constitutional system, Rushdoony and Titus both read the secular language of the Constitution in the context of the invocation of “the Creator” in the Declaration of Independence: “Inalienable rights are endowed by the Creator.” These rights, both Rushdoony and Titus contend, are not granted by either document, only recognized in them; these rights exist only because they were granted by God.

Because Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan refused to acknowledge the divine source of the Constitution, and in particular the Second Amendment, Titus believes she is not qualified to serve on the Court. (Titus’ law partner testified on behalf of the GOA against Kagan’s confirmation, one of several witnesses called by the Republicans.) Echoing the Christian Reconstructionist view, Sen. Charles Grassley asked Kagan, “did the Second Amendment codify a preexisting right or was it a right created by the Constitution?”—something Kagan, not surprisingly, said she’d never contemplated.

“Here’s a woman who’s being nominated to sit on the United States Supreme Court and she’s never thought about the question whether rights are given by God or given by men,” Titus exclaimed incredulously. “She’s never even considered it!”

God and Guns: The Christian Duty to Take Up Arms Against the Government

While many gun advocates are concerned with preserving access to firearms for hunting, and others argue that the right to possession of firearms is essential for self-defense against criminals, Reconstructionists have a loftier argument: so Christians can exercise their duty to take up arms against a government that has exceeded its bounds established by God.

The view that gun ownership is a Christian duty, rooted in the overlap between Reconstructionism and the survivalist/militia movement, has become common in both. In his “Bring Your Pieces to Church” essay, Reconstructionist Joel McDurmon makes this point, suggesting that believers should organize target practice after church:

Christians should be aware that the use of force in preservation of life is a biblical doctrine (Ex. 22:2–3; Prov. 24:10–12; Est. 8–9; Neh. 4; cp. John 15:13–14). Likewise, those who possessed weapons in Scripture are often said to be well skilled in the use of them (Judg. 20:15–16; 1 Chron. 12:1–2, 21–22). We can only surmise that 1) God gave them talent in this regard, and that 2) they engaged in target practice regularly. Further, under biblical law, to be disarmed was to be enslaved and led to a disruption of the economic order due to government regulations and monopolies (1 Sam 13:19–22).

Reconstructionists are critical of those who defend the Second Amendment only in terms of hunting. They believe that the protection of a sporting activity would not have been the basis of an amendment to the Constitution intended to protect basic rights that were fundamental to liberty. McDurmon also points to widespread gun ownership as a defense against tyranny, tracing the colonial laws that required gun ownership and arguing that “in the context of the War for Independence, ministers saw guns as tools of liberty and defense against tyranny.” In fact, he argues that gun ownership by individuals should be the basis of national defense and that a standing army is unbiblical.

The Tea Party-Christian Reconstructionism-Militia Connection

Rep. Ron Paul, a godfather of sorts to the Tea Parties, calls the GOA “the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington.” Indeed, Pratt, GOA’s executive director, told RD that he has spoken at Tea Party events, calling his group “a natural match for the folks in the Tea Party.” Pratt believes the federal government is largely unconstitutional, and that all federal agencies save the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury (which should be “a lot smaller”), should be abolished. (The Internal Revenue Service is a part of Treasury that Pratt would like to see abolished.)

GOA’s political action arm has endorsed Paul’s son, Rand, in the Kentucky Senate race, as well as other Tea Party favorites for Senate Sharron Angle (Nevada), Marco Rubio (Florida), J.D. Hayworth (Arizona), David Vitter (Louisiana), Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), and Jim DeMint (South Carolina), as well as eight House candidates. The Angle campaign embraced the endorsement, with her spokesperson saying, “Not only is Mrs. Angle unafraid of guns, but she is also unafraid to stand up against those who would attempt to deny the legal rights of other gun owners.”

Pratt, whose advocacy has led him to intersect not only with the Tea Partiers, but also with neo-Nazis and white supremacists, sees the revitalization of the 10th Amendment movement—far-right agitators who believe the federal government is largely unconstitutional—as evidence of states “pushing back federal authority.” Pratt believes that states should be “reactivating” militias; which should be at their disposal “instead of relying on the [federal] government to come and screw things up… these things should be given new life.”

Pratt refuses the label “Christian Reconstructionist,” telling RD he prefers to identify as a “Biblical Christian.” He advocates for militias which he describes as “the sheriff’s posse” and that the “availability of it will further cool their [the federal government’s] jets. No more Wacos. Because if you try something like that again, we’re not going to stand around and watch. We’re going to put you in our jail. Which is what the sheriff in that county should have told the thugs in Waco.”

This is predicated, Pratt insists, “on the actual meaning of the word militia, as it was put into the Constitution and into the Bill of Rights.”

Citing Romans 13, Pratt said the “magistrate is a servant of God. He’s supposed to be a terror to evildoers and a comfort to the righteous. So we talk in terms of protecting the people’s liberties. That’s really the same concept.”

In an essay posted on the GOA Web site, “What Does The Bible Say About Gun Control?,” Pratt argues that “resisting an attack is not to be confused with taking vengeance, which is the exclusive domain of God,” citing Romans 12:19. That domain of God, he maintains, “has been delegated to the civil magistrate” who is “God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”

Likewise, Titus, in his interview with RD, referred to this notion of legitimate civil uprising or resistance resting on the support of “lesser magistrates.” This concept derives from Calvin but is a concept central to Reconstructionism—that Christians are obligated to obey civil authority because it is delegated by God; they can only resist one civil authority when in submission to another one. Put in secular terms, this dovetails with their longstanding support for “states’ rights” and their desire to see organized militias that can be called up by state governors (who are “lesser magistrates”) for the defense of a state against what they claim is the tyrannical overreach of the federal government.

With the receptivity of the Tea Party Movement to arguments against supposed excessive federal power, Christian Reconstructionist-inspired militias could find new converts. Pratt said that when he speaks about his militia idea at Tea Party rallies, “it’s very well-received.” It may be “a new idea in the details,” he added, “but it certainly resonates instantly with them.”

It was reported today that New Jersey’s Governor Christie is proposing privatization of many public services. This is the precise playbook of “Economic Hitmen” aka Banks.  First, they loan ridiculous amounts of money to the public sector, knowing full well these loans can never be repaid and when state bankruptcy looms, the public infrastructure is auctioned to pirates of industry for pennies on the dollar.

According to the article on NorthJersey.com, Christie plans to privatize motor vehicle inspections and other public services:

New Jersey would close its centralized car inspection lanes and motorists would pay for their own emissions tests under a sweeping set of recommendations set to be released by the Christie administration today.

State parks, psychiatric hospitals and even turnpike toll booths could also be run by private operators, according to the 57-page report on privatization obtained by The Star-Ledger. Preschool classrooms would no longer be built at public expense, state employees would pay for parking and private vendors would dish out food, deliver health care and run education programs behind prison walls.

Get ready, as more cash-strapped states will surely follow suit and the fascist takeover of all public services at rock-bottom prices will commence.  Wouldn’t it be terrific to see Chinese companies buying up California’s infrastructure?

Aspartame: The Pentagon listed it as a biochemical warfare agent, and the FDA gave its approval as a sweetener used in over 6,000 foods. Its producers, Ajinomoto, have rebranded the artificial sweetener several times (most recently dubbed “AminoSweet”) in an effort to advertise it as a natural, harmless substance. Nonetheless there have been over 10,000 official complaints to the FDA about aspartame reactions. Dr. Joseph Mercola delves into the dangers of “America’s Deadliest Sweetener” in an article for the Huffington Post.

The most common symptoms of aspartame overdose include headaches, mood alterations, and gastrointestinal symptoms. However side effects of the toxic sweetener can also mimic the following conditions: multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, panic disorder, lupus, birth defects, Lyme disease, Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity, attention deficit disorder, and lymphoma (just to name a few).

Dr. Mercola also warns of the dangers of diet sodas and low-calorie foods:

“Drinking diet soda increases your risk of metabolic syndrome, and may double your risk of obesity—the complete opposite of the stated intention behind these ‘zero calorie’ drinks. The sad truth is that diet foods and drinks ruin your body’s ability to count calories, and in fact stimulate your appetite, thus boosting your inclination to overindulge.” (www.huffingtonpost.com)

While aspartame is made up of all-natural amino acids, these acids are used dangerously when consumed in mass quantities. When aspartame enters a person’s body, it increases dopamine levels in the brain, which can lead to symptoms of depression by disrupting the brain’s serotonin/dopamine balance.

According to Vitals.com, Dr. Joseph Mercola is a family practitioner in Illinois. He completed medical school at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1982.

You know someone is losing (a lot of) money when the heavy artillery of the rumormill department goes into overdrive. According to the Sunday Times, the Obama administration has given its blessing to Exxon and Chevron to consider takeover bids of the troubled major unimpeded. Because obviously any deal in the current environment must first and foremost get the Obama stamp of approval or else the Steve Rattners of the world will be sic-ed on your sorry derriere, and before you know it your equity will be trading above your vendor payables in right of guarantee. It is refreshing to know that the other majors can somehow handicap the outcome of the tens if not hundreds of billions in liabilities that will tie down BP in random lawsuits for decades, and that will make WR Grace et al seem like a PG-13 dress rehearsal for Scores when Lindsay Lohan is in town.

More from Dow Jones/WSJ, this time presumably without the Fed’s preclearance:

Big Brother Deploys Snooping Sensors on Private Networks

Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites, have installed a “Big Brother” police state with a mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social dissent. — Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Preface, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Montreal: Global Research, 2010, p. xx.

In a sign that illegal surveillance programs launched by the Bush administration are accelerating under President Obama, The Wall Street Journal revealed last week that a National Security Agency (NSA) program, PERFECT CITIZEN, is under development.

With a cover story that this is merely a “research” effort meant to “detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants,” it is also clear that the next phase in pervasive government spying is underway.

With “cybersecurity” morphing into a new “public-private” iteration of the “War On Terror,” WSJ reporter Siobhan Gorman disclosed that giant defense contractor Raytheon “recently won a classified contract for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million.”

This wouldn’t be the first time that Raytheon had positioned itself, and profited from, a media-driven panic. As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock documented for CorpWatch, “as the primary spying unit of defense industry giant Raytheon,” the firm’s Intelligence and Information Services division (Raytheon IIS) is the premier provider of command and control systems “capable of transforming data into actionable intelligence.”

According to Shorrock, the unit’s “most important clients … are the NSA, NGA, and NRO, for which it provides signals and imaging processing, as well as information security software and tools;” in other words, agencies that are at the heart of America’s electronic warfare complex.

The program, Gorman writes, “would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack.” While Journal sources claim the program “wouldn’t persistently monitor the whole system,” a leaked Raytheon email paints a different picture, in line with other NSA intrusions into domestic affairs.

“The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government…feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security,” the whistleblower writes. “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”

These revelations have triggered concerns that projects like PERFECT CITIZEN, and others that remain classified, signal a new round of secret state surveillance and privacy-killing programs under the catch-all euphemism “cybersecurity.”

The Journal reports that information captured by PERFECT CITIZEN “could also have applications beyond the critical infrastructure sector, officials said, serving as a data bank that would also help companies and agencies who call upon NSA for help with investigations of cyber attacks, as Google did when it sustained a major attack late last year.”

In other words, the program will have major implications “beyond the critical infrastructure sector” and could adversely affect the privacy rights of all Americans. In fact, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to hypothesize that PERFECT CITIZEN may very well be related to other “intrusion detection programs” such as Einstein 3′s deep-packet inspection capabilities that can read, and catalogue, the content of email messages flowing across private telecommunications networks.

One unnamed military source told the Journal, “you’ve got to instrument the network to know what’s going on, so you have situational awareness to take action.”

However, as the UK publication The Register noted, “many of the networks that the NSA would wish to place Perfect Citizen equipment on are privately owned, however, and some could also potentially carry information offering scope for ‘mission creep’ outside an infrastructure-security context.”

The Register’s Lewis Page, a former Royal Navy Commander and frequent critic of the surveillance state, writes that “full access to power company systems might allow the NSA to work out whether anyone was at home at a given address. Transport and telecoms information would also make for a potential bonanza for intrusive monitoring.”

When queried whether the program would be yet another snooping tool deployed against the public, NSA spokesperson Judith Emmel told The Register Friday: “PERFECT CITIZEN is purely a vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract.”

According to NSA, “This is a research and engineering effort. There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor. Specifically, it does not involve the monitoring of communications or the placement of sensors on utility company systems.”

When specifically asked by Page if NSA is “seeking to spy on US citizens by means of examining their power or phone usage, tracking them through transport systems etc, the NSA would simply never think of such a thing.”

“Any suggestions that there are illegal or invasive domestic activities associated with this contracted effort are simply not true. We strictly adhere to both the spirit and the letter of US laws and regulations,” insisted Emmel.

Which raises an inevitable question: what would lead a Raytheon insider to compare the project to “Big Brother”? This is strong language from an employee of one of America’s largest defense firms, a company in the No. 4 slot on Washington Technology’s 2010 Top 100 list of prime federal contractors with some $6.7 billion in total revenue, 88% of which are derived from defense contracts.

At this point we don’t know, and Siobhan Gorman hasn’t told us since the Journal, as of this writing, hasn’t seen fit to enlighten the public with the full text, if one exists, as to why someone obviously familiar with the program would put their job at risk if PERFECT CITIZEN were simply a “vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract” and not something far more sinister.

The Pentagon Rules. Any Questions?

The Journal reported that the project began as “a small-scale effort” under the code name APRIL STRAWBERRY. Over time, the classified program was “expanded with funding from the multibillion-dollar Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, which started at the end of the Bush administration and has been continued by the Obama administration,” Gorman wrote. Now, with billions of dollars available “the NSA is now seeking to map out intrusions into critical infrastructure across the country.”

As Antifascist Calling reported earlier this year (see: “Obama’s National Cybersecurity Initiative Puts NSA in the Driver’s Seat”), although the administration has released portions of the Bush regime’s National Security Presidential Directive 54 (NSPD-54) in a sanitized version called the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), the full scope of the program remains shrouded in secrecy.

Indeed, most of NSPD-54 and CNCI have never been released to the public. This led the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) to write in a 2008 report that “virtually everything about the initiative is classified, and most of the information that is not classified is categorized as ‘For Official Use Only’.”

Due to the opacity of the highly-secretive program and stonewalling by the administration, the SASC joined their colleagues on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and called for the initiative to be scaled-back “because policy and legal reviews are not complete, and because the technology is not mature.”

Hardly beacons of transparency themselves when it comes to overseeing depredations wrought by the secret state, nevertheless SASC questioned the wisdom of a program that “preclude public education, awareness and debate about the policy and legal issues, real or imagined, that the initiative poses in the areas of privacy and civil liberties. … The Committee strongly urges the [Bush] Administration to reconsider the necessity and wisdom of the blanket, indiscriminate classification levels established for the initiative.”

In fact, as the investigative journalism web site ProPublica reported last summer, the White House “has erased all mention of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from its Web site. The removal, which was done with no public notice, has underlined questions about the Obama administration’s commitment to the board.” As of this writing, it remains an empty shell.

Despite repeated efforts by civil liberties and privacy groups, the Obama administration has been no more forthcoming than the previous regime in answering these critical concerns, particularly when the “policy and legal issues” are cloaked in secrecy under a cover of “national security.”

Instead, CNCI’s “Initiative #12. Define the Federal role for extending cybersecurity into critical infrastructure domains,” offer little more than linguistic sedatives meant to lull the public as to how and through what means the administration plans to build “on the existing and ongoing partnership between the Federal Government and the public and private sector owners and operators of Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR).”

While the administration claims that the “Department of Homeland Security and its private-sector partners have developed a plan of shared action with an aggressive series of milestones and activities,” as we now know the civilian, though securocratic-minded Homeland Security bureaucracy is being supplanted by the Pentagon’s National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command as the invisible hands guiding the nation’s “cybersecurity” policies.

As I reported last month (see: “Through the Wormhole: The Secret State’s Mad Scheme to Control the Internet”), corporate greed and venality aren’t the only motives behind hyped-up “cyber threats.” Armed with multibillion dollar budgets, most of which are concealed from public view under a black cone of top secret classifications, agencies such as NSA are positioning themselves as gatekeepers over America’s electronic communications infrastructure.

The Media’s Role

With corporate media serving as “message force multipliers” for the flood of alarmist reports emanating from industry-sponsored think tanks such as the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), or lobby shops like the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), it is becoming clear that consensus has been reached amongst Washington power brokers, one that will have a deleterious effect on the free speech and privacy rights of all Americans.

Floated perhaps as a means to test the waters for restricting internet access, The New York Times reported July 4 that “the Internet affords anonymity to its users–a boon to privacy and freedom of speech. But that very anonymity is also behind the explosion of cybercrime that has swept across the Web.”

Reporter John Markoff, a conduit for “cyberwar” scaremongering, informs us that “Howard Schmidt, the nation’s cyberczar, offered the Obama administration’s proposal to make the Web a safer place–a ‘voluntary trusted identity’ system that would be the high-tech equivalent of a physical key, a fingerprint and a photo ID card, all rolled into one.”

“The system” Markoff writes, “might use a smart identity card, or a digital credential linked to a specific computer, and would authenticate users at a range of online services.”

Schmidt has described the Obama administration’s approach (note the warm and fuzzy phrase hiding the steel fist) as a “voluntary ecosystem” in which “individuals and organizations can complete online transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on.”

Markoff’s reporting would be humorous if we didn’t already know that secret state agencies themselves have already compromised the Secure Socket Layer certification process (SSL, the tiny lock that appears during supposedly “secure” online transactions), as computer security and privacy researchers Christopher Soghoian and Sid Stamm revealed in their paper, Certified Lies: Detecting and Defeating Government Interception Attacks Against SSL.

In March, Soghoian and Stamm introduced the public to “a new attack, the compelled certificate creation attack, in which government agencies compel a certificate authority to issue false SSL certificates that are then used by intelligence agencies to covertly intercept and hijack individuals’ secure Web-based communications.” They provided “alarming evidence” that suggests “that this attack is in active use,” and that a niche security firm, Packet Forensics, is already marketing “extremely small, covert surveillance devices for networks” to government agencies.

Not everyone is thrilled by Schmidt’s call to create this allegedly “voluntary” system. Lauren Weinstein, the editor of Privacy Journal, told the Times that “such a scheme is a pre-emptive push toward what would eventually be a mandated Internet ‘driver’s license’ mentality.”

The stampede for increased state controls are accelerating. Stewart Baker, the NSA’s chief counsel under Bush, told the Times that the “privacy standards the administration wants to adopt will make the system both unwieldy and less effective and not good for security.” Baker and his ilk argue that all internet users “should be forced to register and identify themselves, in the same way that drivers must be licensed to drive on public roads.”

Considering that police have increasingly turned to license plate readers that are fast becoming “a fixture in local police arsenals,” as the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed last month, and that such devices have been deployed for political surveillance here in the heimat and abroad, as both The Guardian and Seattle Weekly disclosed in reports documenting outrageous secret state spying, a licensing scheme for internet users is an ominous analogy indeed!

The Grim Road Ahead

A confidence game only works when “marks,” in this case American citizens, allow themselves to be defrauded by a person or group who have gained their trust.

And when trust cannot be won through reason, fear tends to take over as a powerful motivator. This is amply on display when it comes to Washington’s ginned-up “cybersecurity” panic.

According to this reading, fraudulent internet schemes, identity theft, even espionage by state- and non-state actors (say corporate spies who benefit from NSA’s ECHELON program) have been transformed into a “war,” one which Bush’s former Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, currently an executive vice president with the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton firm, claims the U.S. is “losing.”

But as security technology expert Bruce Schneier wrote last week, “There’s a power struggle going on in the U.S. government right now.

“It’s about who is in charge of cyber security, and how much control the government will exert over civilian networks. And by beating the drums of war, the military is coming out on top.”

Schneier avers that “the entire national debate on cyberwar is plagued with exaggerations and hyperbole.” Googling “cyberwar,” as well as “‘cyber Pearl Harbor,’ ‘cyber Katrina,’ and even ‘cyber Armageddon’–gives some idea how pervasive these memes are. Prefix ‘cyber’ to something scary, and you end up with something really scary.”

Hackers, criminals and sociopaths have been around since the birth of the “information superhighway.” Schneier writes, “we surely need to improve our cybersecurity. But words have meaning, and metaphors matter. There’s a power struggle going on for control of our nation’s cybersecurity strategy, and the NSA and DoD are winning. If we frame the debate in terms of war, if we accept the military’s expansive cyberspace definition of ‘war,’ we feed our fears.”

This is precisely the intent of our political masters. And if the purpose of “cyberwar” hype is to breed fear, mistrust and helplessness in the face of relentless attacks by shadowy actors only a mouse click away then, as Schneier sagely warns: “We reinforce the notion that we’re helpless–what person or organization can defend itself in a war?–and others need to protect us. We invite the military to take over security, and to ignore the limits on power that often get jettisoned during wartime.”

Destroy trust, increase fear: create the “Perfect Citizen.”