TDV Week in Review July 14, 2013: Police Morphing Into Domestic Extension Of The Military

July 14, 2013 / Redmond W /

The Police Are Now Domestic Occupying Soldiers

This week I was driving around suburban Minneapolis with a friend when we came upon an orange road sign in the middle of the street that read: "Police Training." A few feet beyond the sign there was a menacing streamlined black tank and a dozen local police officers decked out in camouflage fatigues. It was as if we'd turned the corner and driven into Iraq.

You wouldn't think that suburban police outside of a small Midwestern city would need a mini-tank at all or to engage in military-style training. But even the smallest police departments in the most sparsely populated American municipalities are getting in on this act. The Patriot Act made a buttload of stolen (tax) money available for Homeland Security to hand out via grants to police departments of all sizes across the Fatherland. These police departments have been using the loot funnelled through the feds to beef themselves up into miniturized versions (dare we say "cells") of the world's largest terrorist organization.

The most in-demand police vehicle in America is the Lenco BearCat G3, a ten-officer 16,000-lb, bullet-proof tank that can thunder along at 80 mph. The federal government buys dozens of these vehicles each year for local police departments. The feds are directly outfitting these departments with military hardware. The police departments themselves have been hiring military veterans with direct experience controlling occupied populations on the ground in countries the US government has recently invaded. The US government is preparing local police to act like a domestic wing of their imperial occupying forces around the world because brutal suppression will be required as the monetary system continues toward complete collapse.

What we are watching is the steady assimilation of local police into Fatherland Security. We are watching the transformation of an already inherently fascist public police system into a nation-wide force of heavily armed federal stormtroopers. What I saw up close just a few miles from my Minneapolis-St. Paul home has been playing out across the country for years. It's just a little more disturbing to watch it happen on your own streets rather than reading about it on the internet.

Honestly, if you are the typical statist sheep who loves taxes and government and who thinks private citizens shouldn't have guns, then you probably have very little to worry about from the growing militarized police state. But the very fact that you're reading this means you're one of the people who have a lot to worry about in the coming years if you remain in the US. We offer what tips we can on thriving economically and staying clear of trouble with fascists during the economic collapse in TDV Homegrown…but if you are in a position to leave the USSA permanently, that should be your goal. Find out how TDV can help by clicking here.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

Sundays, before we get to the Week in Review, we like to tell you about what was in the week’s TDV subscriber-only publications that looks for better ways for you to survive The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI).

In this edition of the Dispatch I kicked things off with my “Memory Hole”, this week confronting changes in Cuba. Next, Jeff Berwick looked at the whistleblowers in Obama’s America. Ed Bugos updated us on investing in his “TDV Portfolio: Review & Outlook”. TDV Santa Cruz group moderator, Mark Meador, told us all about Bolivia, and Jeff collected the absurd in “Other News from TEOTMSAWKI and TDV Related Tidbits”. Finally, we featured a profile of English columnist and novelist, James Delingpole.

All these incomparable contributions, as well as TDV Homegrown and our monthly Issue, can be subscribed to here. Come see what you’re missing!

Here’s what we wrote about this week…

MONDAY, July 8

We Pissed Away Our Heritage: The End

Jim Karger argues that America, as we knew it, is gone forever.

“I guess that gentle reminder should not be surprising since the NSA finally admitted the reason they hold records on everyone is so they can easily build a case against them if they need to. And considering the average American commits 3 felonies per day, it is easy to lock you (or me) up if you cause too much trouble, rub some government sycophant the wrong way, or express yourself in a manner the owners don't like. Jeff Olson is a good example of that dark principle. He wrote some unkind things about Bank of America on a sidewalk in California and was facing 13 years in prison if convicted. They claim it was for defacing property, but even a half-wit knows that is bullshit. It was, is and will always be about expression deemed inappropriate, or at least unhelpful. He was lucky in that he will only be faced with financially crippling attorney's fees after a sober jury threw out the government's case like yesterday's coffee grounds.”

TUESDAY, July 9

Greenwald's Courage Can Be Contagious. So Can Fear. Choose.

Wendy McElroy celebrates the journalistic integrity of Glenn Greenwald.

“On June 28, the Guardian (UK) reporter Glenn Greenwald delivered a speech at a Socialist Convention in Chicago. He opened by thanking the conference organizers for allowing him to participate when ‘I wasn’t going to be able to actually physically come to the United States.’ Instead, he spoke ‘from the comfort of [his] little Skype prison. Which…is actually definitely preferable to an actual prison.’ The American-born Greenwald chose to stay in England. He chose wisely. It is likely he would have been detained by authorities once his soles hit U.S. soil.”

Wednesday, July 10

A Major Bank Makes a Freudian Slip About the Dollar

Jeff Berwick on Wells Fargo’s gaffe.

"The cognitive dissonance about the dollar never fails to amaze me. People know in their bones that their dollars will be worth a lot less in the future…yet they continue to trust and cling to the dollar as a store of value. They invest in things denominated in dollars that pay interest well below the rate of inflation. Or they go for all out gambling in the stock market to have a hope of outpacing inflation enough to build a tiny bit of wealth to leave to their grandkids.

Commodities like copper with an industrial demand may fall in price — even drastically — in the midst of a global depression. But the 30% or so drop in the price of something like copper will be running hard against the US government's need to inflate away the value of the US dollar by having the Fed create new money to buy up more and more government debt. Inflation tends to outpace falling prices due to falling demand. The folks at Wells Fargo understand this and seem to be trying to help clear up some of the public confusion.”

THURSDAY, July 11

More Than One Slave Card… Don't Leave Home Without It

Jeff Berwick on the whistleblowers in Obama’s America.

“Barack Obama was correct. It will be the most transparent and exposed in history thanks to the internet… and specifically thanks to Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.

For their help in making the US government more transparent, Assange was entrapped into a bogus sexual scandal (not wearing a condom with a Mossad agent) and now calls the Ecuadorian embassy in London his home… if he leaves, he dies. Manning was imprisoned for over three years without trial and held in conditions that human rights organizations called 'torture.' He has plead guilty to charges that will imprison him for 20 years, and a death sentence is still possible.”

FRIDAY, July 12

Feedback Friday – July 12, 2013

In this week’s Feedback Friday: Skills for the dollar collapse, truth in fiction, and more.