Do you believe growing police state at home is directly linked to foreign interventions?

[Danke]

What police state?

 

[enhanced_deficit]

No. The Police State was already in the making way before Oklahoma City Bombing.

The key word is "growing". While it is true that various US governments have tried to muscle up domestic policing/spying programs going back many decades to face "threats" like communists, civil rights movement, black nationalist groups etc, nothing puts these programs on steroids like war atmosphere married to "national security" where fear factor of foreign threats provides easy justification and more than willing masses. Many of the police tanks and ammo are literally being moved from war zones to homeland currently. We are always at war for a long time and that war addiction is reaching a breaking point.



THE FBI WAR AGAINST POLITICAL DISSENT

In the 1960s, America's long tradition of political activism reasserted itself in a decade of new politics, dissent, and protest. A nonviolent civil rights movement emerged. Student activists joined in that struggle, started university-based protests aimed at "free speech" and academic reform, and established the New Left, a nonsectarian, unorganized radical movement committed to reform and "participatory democracy." Black militants called for "black power" and women started their own liberation movement. The Vietnam War molded many of these protest groups and millions of other Americans into a coalition to end the war in Vietnam. In 1972, these same Americans became delegates to the Democratic National Convention and helped to nominate the party's candidate for president of the United States.
The antiwar movement also caused the president to order the FBI into operation. Warned by the CIA that foreign countries and Communists might exploit the movement, Johnson issued instructions to Hoover in 1965 to determine the extent of subversive influence behind the antiwar protests. Johnson informed Hoover that he wanted the information to use in speeches against his critics. Hoover responded by putting the antiwar movement and the New Left under more intensive surveillance and even dispatched agents to monitor the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings to compare the statements of Senator Wayne Morse and other Senate war critics with the "Communist Party line."
Executive branch officials did not turn just to the FBI for intelligence on Americans. By 1968, all intelligence agencies were enlisted to spy on Americans. The CIA was ordered to investigate the foreign links of antiwar activists in 1967. Military intelligence opened up a major surveillance program aimed at Americans to prepare for "civil disorders." The National Security Agency was brought in to monitor the international communications of black extremists and antiwar activists, and the Justice Department set up an Interdivisional Information Unit (IDIU) to collect, computerize, and evaluate reports coming primarily from the FBI and military intelligence agencies. Sharing information with all of these agencies authorized to collect information on the political activities of citizens, the bureau was at the center of a massive surveillance effort ordered by the executive


1956 March 8

Notorious FBI COINTELPRO Program Approved

At a regular meeting of the National Security Council on this day, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover proposed the COINTELPRO program (Counter Intelligence Program) to combat the Communist Party. With President Dwight Eisenhower and Attorney General Herbert Brownell present, the NSC approved the program, even though Hoover described actions that were clearly illegal, including warrantless wiretapping and break-ins. For some of the notorious COINTELPRO activities, go to August 4, 1960; July 30, 1964; August 25, 1967; and May 9, 1968.
The exposure of COINTELPRO began when a group of anti-Vietnam War activists broke in the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, on March 8, 1971, stole FBI documents and then leaked them to the news media (see Medsger’s book, below). Only one document among those stolen had the word COINTELPRO on it, and no one knew what it referred to. Nonetheless, the first news stories on FBI spying on, and attempts to disrupt, political groups appeared in March 1971, and led to further inquiries into FBI misconduct. The full story of COINTELPRO was not known until the Senate Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies that began on January 27, 1975.
The other most notorious FBI program was its campaign to “neutralize” Martin Luther King as a civil rights leader, which was discussed and approved on December 23, 1963.

http://todayinclh.com/?event=notorious-fbi-cointelpro-program-approved

 

[enhanced_deficit]

What police state?

Glad to hear this question.


Update 2:

Do US police really need mine-resistant TANKS to protect us from our own veterans? Indiana sheriff claims soldiers back from Afghanistan have created a new kind of criminal

Small town America shouldn't resemble war zone: Column
Hank Johnson and Michael Shank
March 10, 2014

Why do police departments need military vehicles and weapons?
Story Highlights

• The Roanoke Rapids Police Department acquired some Humvees and MRAPs from the Pentagon.
• In the last several months, many small towns have acquired MRAPs from U.S. war zones.
• Is this the country we want to live in?

Something potentially sinister is happening across America, and we should stop and take notice before it changes the character of our country forever. County, city and small-town police departments across the country are now acquiring free military-grade weapons that could possibly be used against the very citizens and taxpayers that not only fund their departments but who the police are charged with protecting.

Recently in a small, sleepy North Carolina town of roughly 16,000 people, the Roanoke Rapids Police Department acquired some Humvees and Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles (or MRAPs), which it proudly displayed at a recent car show. Roanoke Rapids got them free from the Pentagon, returned from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The town's police chief, Tommy Hathaway, noted, perhaps unintentionally, the misuse of this equipment on America's main streets, saying that "its intended purpose is to prevent mass casualties and to extricate people," but that hopefully Roanoke Rapids will never need it.
Next door, in South Carolina, the Columbia Police Department also received a free MRAP from the Pentagon, which otherwise would have cost Columbia nearly $700,000 (though the city is responsible for all repairs and upkeep going forward). Their interim police chief, Ruben Santiago, justified the acquisition saying that the MRAP "will be a barrier between the public and a hostile person or situation such as a barricaded suspect with weapons who may be threatening someone's life." We are quickly redefining what a rational response to a security threat looks like.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...olumn/5789445/


Obama official: MLK would love our wars!
A top Pentagon official says the antiwar civil rights leader would support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan


Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Right: Jeh C. Johnson

Hands up, Don't shoot

 

[donnay]

The key word is "growing". While it is true that various US governments have tried to muscle up domestic policing/spying programs going back many decades to face "threats" like communists, civil rights movement, black nationalist groups etc, nothing puts these programs on steroids like war atmosphere married to "national security" where fear factor of foreign threats provides easy justification and more than willing masses. Many of the police tanks and ammo are literally being moved from war zones to homeland currently. We are always at war for a long time and that war addiction is reaching a breaking point.



THE FBI WAR AGAINST POLITICAL DISSENT

In the 1960s, America's long tradition of political activism reasserted itself in a decade of new politics, dissent, and protest. A nonviolent civil rights movement emerged. Student activists joined in that struggle, started university-based protests aimed at "free speech" and academic reform, and established the New Left, a nonsectarian, unorganized radical movement committed to reform and "participatory democracy." Black militants called for "black power" and women started their own liberation movement. The Vietnam War molded many of these protest groups and millions of other Americans into a coalition to end the war in Vietnam. In 1972, these same Americans became delegates to the Democratic National Convention and helped to nominate the party's candidate for president of the United States.
The antiwar movement also caused the president to order the FBI into operation. Warned by the CIA that foreign countries and Communists might exploit the movement, Johnson issued instructions to Hoover in 1965 to determine the extent of subversive influence behind the antiwar protests. Johnson informed Hoover that he wanted the information to use in speeches against his critics. Hoover responded by putting the antiwar movement and the New Left under more intensive surveillance and even dispatched agents to monitor the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings to compare the statements of Senator Wayne Morse and other Senate war critics with the "Communist Party line."
Executive branch officials did not turn just to the FBI for intelligence on Americans. By 1968, all intelligence agencies were enlisted to spy on Americans. The CIA was ordered to investigate the foreign links of antiwar activists in 1967. Military intelligence opened up a major surveillance program aimed at Americans to prepare for "civil disorders." The National Security Agency was brought in to monitor the international communications of black extremists and antiwar activists, and the Justice Department set up an Interdivisional Information Unit (IDIU) to collect, computerize, and evaluate reports coming primarily from the FBI and military intelligence agencies. Sharing information with all of these agencies authorized to collect information on the political activities of citizens, the bureau was at the center of a massive surveillance effort ordered by the executive


1956 March 8

Notorious FBI COINTELPRO Program Approved

At a regular meeting of the National Security Council on this day, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover proposed the COINTELPRO program (Counter Intelligence Program) to combat the Communist Party. With President Dwight Eisenhower and Attorney General Herbert Brownell present, the NSC approved the program, even though Hoover described actions that were clearly illegal, including warrantless wiretapping and break-ins. For some of the notorious COINTELPRO activities, go to August 4, 1960; July 30, 1964; August 25, 1967; and May 9, 1968.
The exposure of COINTELPRO began when a group of anti-Vietnam War activists broke in the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, on March 8, 1971, stole FBI documents and then leaked them to the news media (see Medsger’s book, below). Only one document among those stolen had the word COINTELPRO on it, and no one knew what it referred to. Nonetheless, the first news stories on FBI spying on, and attempts to disrupt, political groups appeared in March 1971, and led to further inquiries into FBI misconduct. The full story of COINTELPRO was not known until the Senate Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies that began on January 27, 1975.
The other most notorious FBI program was its campaign to “neutralize” Martin Luther King as a civil rights leader, which was discussed and approved on December 23, 1963.

http://todayinclh.com/?event=notorious-fbi-cointelpro-program-approved

I understand what you are saying but most of the foreign interventions have been predicated on lies-- as Smedley Butler stated; "War is a Racket." As Ron Paul has said for years, "We need to stop policing the world and mind our own business!" --Nevertheless wars (foreign and domestic) are profitable. After Oklahoma City, Clinton militarized the police. Then the Pentagon sells their used toys to the local standing army (circumventing The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act) and make money to buy more 'new and improved' weaponry. It's a vicious cycle but all done by design--but it is always been about controlling us.

 

[surf]

I voted yes, but it's all (more directly) linked to government growth in general.

 

[Danke]

I understand what you are saying but most of the foreign interventions have been predicated on lies-- as Smedley Butler stated; "War is a Racket." As Ron Paul has said for years, "We need to stop policing the world and mind our own business!" --Nevertheless wars (foreign and domestic) are profitable. After Oklahoma City, Clinton militarized the police. Then the Pentagon sells their used toys to the local standing army (circumventing The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act) and make money to buy more 'new and improved' weaponry. It's a vicious cycle but all done by design--but it is always been about controlling us.

Smedley who?

 

[donnay]

Smedley who?

My husband's uncle. Smedley Darlington Butler.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Obvious question is obvious.

 

[Wolfgang Bohringer]

"Either give up your empire, or live under it" -- Chalmers Johnson (late and great Rudy's Reading List author, since purged from Rand's web site)

 

[mad cow]

Well,i'm in the minority here,but I would like to point out two historic examples.

Albania under Enver Hoxha was one of the most isolationist countries in the 20th century and yet a complete and total police state.

Great Britain in the 19th century was the largest Imperial power of those times with countless foreign interventions yet also surely in the top 5 or ten countries in regard to individual liberty at home during the same time period.

Of course I want to do away with the police state and foreign intervention,I just think they are two separate problems

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Well,i'm in the minority here,but I would like to point out two historic examples.

Albania under Enver Hoxha was one of the most isolationist countries in the 20th century and yet a complete and total police state.

Great Britain in the 19th century was the largest Imperial power of those times with countless foreign interventions yet also surely in the top 5 or ten countries in regard to individual liberty at home during the same time period.

Of course I want to do away with the police state and foreign intervention,I just think they are two separate problems

The fact that interventionism and the police state had no connection in Albania or Great Britain in the past, does not mean the two are not related in the United States today.

You have a revolving door between police forces and the military, and combat veterans are bringing tactics learned in war back home to main street. The Circular Force Continuum now creating a 'shoot first' climate in the United States, was developed in Baghdad and Fallujah. The tactical gear and body armor used by special response police units was developed and fielded for war. Surplus weapons vehicles and equipment are coming to your local police straight from the overseas wars, with a simple coat of new paint.

That's tactics, personnel, and equipment that are fed directly into local policing from our ongoing wars in the Middle East.

I have no doubt that you are correct that in Albania in the 1950's there was no relationship between the police state and foreign interventionism. I have no doubt that in Great Britain in the 1880's there was no connection between the police state and foreign interventionism.

In America in 2015, however, the connection exists and it is in-your-face obvious.

 

[mad cow]

So do you think that if we do away with the police state,foreign intervention will magically disappear or if we brought home every single troop from overseas save for Marines guarding embassies tomorrow,the ever increasing police state would evaporate?

 

[GunnyFreedom]

So do you think that if we do away with the police state,foreign intervention will magically disappear or if we brought home every single troop from overseas save for Marines guarding embassies tomorrow,the ever increasing police state would evaporate?

Lung cancer is linked to smoking. Having the cancer cut out does not necessarily mean the patient will quit smoking, and once a tumor is established, quitting smoking will not make it evaporate.

 

[enhanced_deficit]

The fact that interventionism and the police state had no connection in Albania or Great Britain in the past, does not mean the two are not related in the United States today.

You have a revolving door between police forces and the military, and combat veterans are bringing tactics learned in war back home to main street. The Circular Force Continuum now creating a 'shoot first' climate in the United States, was developed in Baghdad and Fallujah. The tactical gear and body armor used by special response police units was developed and fielded for war. Surplus weapons vehicles and equipment are coming to your local police straight from the overseas wars, with a simple coat of new paint.

That's tactics, personnel, and equipment that are fed directly into local policing from our ongoing wars in the Middle East.

I have no doubt that you are correct that in Albania in the 1950's there was no relationship between the police state and foreign interventionism. I have no doubt that in Great Britain in the 1880's there was no connection between the police state and foreign interventionism.

In America in 2015, however, the connection exists and it is in-your-face obvious.

Thought provoking post.