Barry Cooper, former Texas police officer, has made it his mission to expose the heavy handed tactics that police are using these days to fight the war on drugs.  There are quite a few cops that have seen the light and now oppose the incendiary and ineffective war on drugs.

It was fantastic.  They rented a house and set up a couple of Christmas trees under high powered lights, similar to those used in a marijuana grow operation.  And then they waited.  Sure enough, 24 hours later, the cops came busting in the door – only to find benign Christmas trees and a lawyer waiting for their arrival.

One question.  Where’s the probable cause??????

I can pretty confidently say that pine trees and marijuana do not smell at all similar.  Obviously if a cop had *seen* the plants, he would have rightly come to the conclusion that they do not look similar either.  Interestingly enough, the Austin cops are refusing to release the search affidavit – which, in this case, is clearly full of lies and false statements.  Just to be clear, lying to get a judge to sign a search warrant is highly illegal and is very dangerous to a free society.

Click here to view the video!

For those that know me, you know that I support the libertarian viewpoint on drug legalization.  I say legalize ‘em all.  The argument is very simple and has three major points.

First, for over 30 years, the war on drugs has done very little to actually reduce the amount of drugs on the streets.  Instead, it has caused prices to rise, further increasing the alure for young kids and law-dodging entrepreneurs to make huge sums of money.  The underlying effect has been to actually increase supply.  It’s been proven over and over, especially during the times of prohibition, that when a “popular” thing is made illegal, it does not go away and it concentrates the activity into less-than-desirable underground movements.

The second is that legalization would do nothing to increase usage.  I ask every pro-drug-war proponent this question:  “If drugs were legalized tomorrow, would YOU go out and start dropping heroin and meth?”  The answer is by and large no, and that truth stands for me as well.  Those who will experiment will experiment, regardless of what the law says.  The difference is that legalization would bring things out in the open, where dangers could be warned against at the time of sale.

The fundamental argument is whether we are allowed to put whatever we want into our bodies, so long as it does not harm others.  The problem of addiction is a health matter, not a criminal one.  Causing harm to others is all ready against the law – so things like hurting another person or driving under the influence are illegal regardless of the status of drug legalization.

In conclusion, I give my props to Barry Cooper and his group KopBusters for performing this little stunt.  The trap they laid was awesome and will hopefully go a long way to expose the police, judges and other parties that were involved in this.

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Are you on the terrorist list?  Think you’re not doing anything wrong and so you have nothing to worry about?  Well, as us watchdogs have been telling you for years, you don’t have to be doing anything wrong to be labeled as a terrorist in America these days.

I read this article from the LA Times this morning and it just further confirms that we must remain vigilantly on guard against being tossed down the path of being a “homegrown terrorist.”  Even if you’re a nun.

Spying on pacifists, environmentalists and nuns

Reporting from Takoma Park, Md. — To friends in the protest movement, Lucy was an eager 20-something who attended their events and sent encouraging e-mails to support their causes.

Only one thing seemed strange.

“At one demonstration, I remember her showing up with a laptop computer and typing away,” said Mike Stark, who helped lead the anti-death-penalty march in Baltimore that day. “We all thought that was odd.”

Not really. The woman was an undercover Maryland State Police trooper who between 2005 and 2007 infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups.

Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by “Lucy” and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database — and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.

Among those labeled as terrorists: two Catholic nuns, a former Democratic congressional candidate, a lifelong pacifist and a registered lobbyist. One suspect’s file warned that she was “involved in puppet making and allows anarchists to utilize her property for meetings.”

“There wasn’t a scintilla of illegal activity” going on, said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit and in July obtained the first surveillance files. State police have released other heavily redacted documents.

Investigators, the files show, targeted groups that advocated against abortion, global warming, nuclear arms, military recruiting in high schools and biodefense research, among other issues.

“It was unconscionable conduct,” said Democratic state Sen. Brian Frosh, who is backing legislation to ban similar spying in Maryland unless the police superintendent can document a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” of criminal activity.

The case is the latest to emerge since the Sept. 11 attacks spurred a sharp increase in state and federal surveillance of Americans. Critics say such investigations violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly, and serve to inhibit lawful dissent.

In the largest known effort, the Pentagon monitored at least 186 lawful protests and meetings — including church services and silent vigils — in California and other states.

The military also compiled more than 2,800 reports on Americans in a database of supposed terrorist threats. That program, known as TALON, was ordered closed in 2007 after it was exposed in news reports.

The Maryland operation also has ended, but critics still question why police spent hundreds of hours spying on Quakers and other peace groups in a state that reported more than 36,000 violent crimes last year.

Stephen Sachs, a former state attorney general, investigated the scandal for Gov. Martin O’Malley — a Democrat elected in 2006. He concluded that state police had violated federal regulations and “significantly overreached.”

According to Sachs’ 93-page report and other documents, state police launched the operation in March 2005 out of concern that the planned execution of a convicted murderer might lead to violent protests.

They sent Lucy to join local activists at Takoma Park’s Electrik Maid, a funky community center popular with punk rockers and slam poets. Ten people attended the gathering, including a local representative from Amnesty International.

“The meeting was primarily concerned with getting people to put up fliers and getting information out to local businesses and churches about the upcoming events,” the undercover officer reported later. “No other pertinent intelligence information was obtained.”

That proved true for all 29 meetings, rallies and protests that Lucy ultimately attended. Most drew only a handful of people, and none involved illegal or disruptive actions.

Using the aliases Lucy Shoup and Lucy McDonald, she befriended activists. “I want to get involved in different causes,” she wrote in an e-mail, citing her interest in “anti-death penalty, antiwar and pro-animal actions!!!”

Max Obuszewski, a Baltimore pacifist who leads antiwar protests, said Lucy asked about civil disobedience, but didn’t instigate any. “She never volunteered to do anything, not even hand out leaflets,” he said. “She was not an agent provocateur.”

Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman, said that no one in the department had been disciplined in connection with the spying program. Lucy, who has not been publicly identified, would not consent to an interview, he said.

The surveillance, Shipley said, was inappropriate. And the listing of lawful activity as terrorism “shouldn’t have happened, and has been corrected.”

Most of the files list terrorism as a “primary crime” and a “secondary crime,” then add subgroups for designations such as antiwar protester.

Some contain errors and inconsistencies that are almost comical.

Nancy Kricorian, 48, a novelist on the terrorist list, is coordinator for the New York City chapter of CodePink, an antiwar group. She serves as liaison with local police for group protests, and has never been arrested.

“I have no idea why I made the list,” she said. “I’ve never been to the state of Maryland, except maybe to stop for gas on the way to Washington.”

Josh Tulkin, 27, a registered lobbyist with the Virginia state Legislature, is cited under “terrorism — environmental extremists.” Tulkin was deputy director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group that claims 15,000 members and regularly meets with governors and members of Congress.

“If asking your elected officials a question about public policy is a crime, then I’m guilty,” he said.

Barry Kissin, 57, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2006, heads the Frederick Progressive Action Coalition, a group that works “for social, economic and environmental justice,” according to his police file. Their protests “are always peaceful,” it added.

He was labeled “Terrorism — Anti-Government.”

Nadine Bloch, 47, runs workshops for protest groups that seek corporate responsibility and builds huge papier-mache puppets often used in street marches. Her terrorism file indicates she participated in a Taking Action for Animals conference in Washington on July 16-18, 2005.

Animal rights, Bloch said, is one of the few causes she doesn’t actively embrace. Besides, she was attending an educators conference in Hawaii that week as a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“This whole thing,” she said, “is so absurd.”

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OK, I’ve had enough of reading about people getting tazered by the cops under the most ridiculous of circumstances. Now we have cops killing people with tazers for not speaking English. This needs to stop. This is the third time I’ve had to write about this crap in as many months. (Article one | Article two)

Twenty-four seconds after Canadian police approached Polish immigrant Daniel Dziekanski, police welcomed him to their country by jolting him with a tazer. Minutes later, the man died from the attack. Zofia Cisowski, mother of Daniel, grieves over the loss of her only living family member after spending months saving money to get her son into Canada.

Daniel, seeking a new life in Canada, had spent fifteen hours flying to his new home. As he spoke no English, he had previously arranged to connect with his mother at the airport. He proceeded through post-flight customs and then into a secondary customs check, standard procedure for an immigrant that doesn’t speak English. What happened after that defies explanation.

For ten hours, Dziekanski stayed in the Arrivals Hall trying to connect with his mother. Meanwhile, his mother paced the halls for six hours, trying to locate her son. After repeated attempts by the mother asking airport personnel where her son was, they were unable to locate her son. Eventually, Canadian airport personnel informed Daniel’s mother that he was no longer at the airport. Truth be told, he was probably less than 200 feet away from her. Thanks to nearly impenetrable airport security, the two were unable to see each other and received no assistance from airport security in locating one another.

Daniel, unable to communicate with anyone around him, became increasingly frightened and agitated in the busy Vancouver airport. He became increasingly disoriented and desired only to connect with the familiar, his mother, whom was less than a football field’s length away.

After 10 hours in the airport, police approached Daniel. Exactly what happened in the exchange is not entirely clear, but according to reports, twenty-four seconds after approaching Daniel, the RCMP (police) pulled their tazers in an attempt to disable and handcuff the man. He sustained “a couple shots” from a tazer, lost consciousness moments later and failed to receive medical treatment for at least 12 minutes after the attack. A few minutes later, Daniel died from injuries sustained by the ultra-high voltage tazer gun.

Here’s our security bureaucracy at it’s best – admittedly it’s not in America – but the same kind of thing could happen here just the same. Thanks to zero-tolerance police training and the human immigration process being buried by hundreds of layers of red tape, we have set the stage for killing people, simply because they are unable to speak English. It’s reasonably safe to assume that if the guy could’ve spoken English, the situation would have been quickly diffused, or more likely, never would have occurred.

My heart goes out to Zofia Cisowski, the mother. This never should’ve happened and I grieve for her loss.

What we’re doing here in “the war on terror” is not good. We have to find a better way.

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Last month I wrote up an article about a student being tazered by police for simply asking a question. I present you another video showing the exact same kind of abuse of power that we’re seeing today. In this case, we have a student that was using the campus library late at night and had forgotten his student ID card.

This actually happened back in 2006, I believe…but I must’ve missed it. Not watching TV or reading magazines or newpapers & always having to work for your info does have it’s drawbacks. I have to warn you…the video’s a little graphic. Not bloody graphic – just the graphic display of cops, hard at work, abusing their power of authority.

Click here to view the video!

Instead of police just cuffing & bagging to diffuse a situation, which you can’t tell me two or nine cops couldn’t do, we’re seeing rampant abuse of power all over the place. Things like this are extreme cases, but on a much larger scale with much smaller impacts, police are advancing upon us like a professional military. Instead of justice being the goal, we have public displays of outright torture by police for things that aren’t even a crime. Learn to fear, America. That’s what they’re trying to ingrain into your minds.

What angers me about this is the police officer’s unwillingness to identify themselves. They are required, by law, to identify themselves, both as a police officer and a name or badge number when asked. That, and the fact that *while* tazering the guy, they were demanding he stand. I dunno if you’ve ever been tazered, but as someone that’s touched a 110V circuit inadvertently (errr, more than once), I believe the voltage those things put would be more the enough to make it difficult to stand. Police should never give an order while making it completely impossible to follow. That is abuse of power.

It’s almost like basic civil rights are not being taught in police academies these days. Their training is designed to override human decency and patience. The Constitution and ethical behavior is most certainly not being taught. A tazer, which is known to kill people (by the way), is capable of completely disabling a person…and in fact, is what it was designed for. We allow police to have these because A) we believe every problem isn’t best solved with a gun and B) there are situations where disabling a person (e.g. meth-head gone freakin’ bezerk) might be necessary. A person that is willing to leave on their own accord, after realizing the seriousness of the situation, and committed the “crime” of forgetting a piece of identification, does not classify a justifiable use of such non-lethal force, in my opinion.

All this over a forgotten ID, by a student, in a library. (Imagine that…I thought that was a *good* thing?) Sure, he resisted leaving (probably because he wanted to study) and it was escalated into a violent crescendo of tazering, physical roughhousing and impossible demands. Despite even being willing to leave on his own accord…why must police take things to this level? Of course this all erupted from one of those ingenious plans to protect you…a policy of random ID checks after a certain hour in the library…and a hard line stance against any violations. Nothing bad could ever come from such a thing…or could it?

Of course, if you watch COPS every night…you’re nearly immune to seeing abuse of power. Cops that do this kind of thing rightfully earn the disrespectful term of “pig” and honestly, I hope these cops have a special place reserved in hell. That’s all I have to say.

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You didn’t think things like this were going to happen…but you can now be arrested and tazered by police for simply asking a question.

In utter disgust, I learned of an arrest and brutal treatment of a young man, by police, for redressing grievances to a public politician in a public venue. He was dragged away, against his will, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and then tazered by police. His crime? He asked some questions.

Freedom of speech is gone, America. Freedom to redress grievances is gone, too. Freedom from wrongful arrest has been polluted by a militaristic police state. The protections from tyranny provided by Habeas Corpus are just a faded memory. I get the feeling that most of you don’t really need those freedoms because you’re not doing anything wrong, right? Look around people. Things are wrong, more now than ever.

Don’t believe me? Here it is, straight from YouTube…and oh yeah, that’s kind of a prominent politician in the video. None other than Skull & Bonesman, John Kerry.

Thank God there was a woman who was aware enough to realize what was going on and came to the young man’s defense. That’s like one in a room full of 100. I’d have a complete feeling of disgust if nobody did anything. Especially after the near unanimous round of applause the American people gave just moments before police sent upwards of 800,000 volts through the guy’s body.

From what I understand, there are actually quite a few Americans that believe what happened here was right. I really wish they would go live somewhere else under a more suitable type of government, say Communist. I really just don’t see what was wrong here…a hard question? Has our sense of freedom really been so degraded that we can’t tolerate a question to a public politician in a public venue? The comparison I’ve heard made is that you wouldn’t want someone to come into your house and ask you such questions. Well, one…you’re likely not a public politician living in AMERICA and two, this was a public forum where the public was permitted to ask questions. If not here, then where?

There’s quite a few angles of the incident on YouTube available. Oh, and if you can’t digest any new information without it first being spinned/slanted by the media…you can see they (MSNBC, in this case) are reporting the same evidence and coming to nearly the same conclusion.

Of course, they had to spin the “disruptive behavior” piece, when in fact, had they not interrupted the man, it might have taken a minute or so to ask his three questions. What were his questions? Why, with all the evidence, did you concede the 2004 election so quickly? Are you a member of the skull and bones society? (Fact.) If you’re against going into Iran, why aren’t you calling for Bush’s impeachment before we can enter Iran? All good questions, in my opinion, that the American people should be entitled to know the answers to. Are these questions really enough to be arrested, charged with a crime and sentenced to a criminal record?

What are we going to do about this? Oh, wait…if you get tazered for just asking a goddamn question…what the fuck will they do if we stand up and fight for our rights? Better go back to being sheeple…

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