5 Reasons You Should Never Agree to a Police Search

Scott Morgan

Associate Director, FlexYourRights.org

 

(Even if You Have Nothing to Hide)

Do you know what your rights are when a police officer asks to search you? If you're like most people I've met in my eight years working to educate the public on this topic, then you probably don't.

It's a subject that a lot of people think they understand, but too often our perception of police power is distorted by fictional TV dramas, sensational media stories, silly urban myths, and the unfortunate fact that police themselves are legally allowed to lie to us.

It wouldn't even be such a big deal, I suppose, if our laws all made sense and our public servants always treated us as citizens first and suspects second. But thanks to the War on Drugs, nothing is ever that easy. When something as stupid as stopping people from possessing marijuana came to be considered a critical law enforcement function, innocence ceased to protect people against police harassment. From the streets of the Bronx to the suburbs of the Nation's Capital, you never have to look hard to find victims of the bias, incompetence, and corruption that the drug war delivers on a daily basis.

Whether or not you ever break the law, you should be prepared to protect yourself and your property just in case police become suspicious of you. Let's take a look at one of the most commonly misunderstood legal situations a citizen can encounter: a police officer asking to search your belongings. Most people automatically give consent when police ask to perform a search. However, I recommend saying "no" to police searches, and here are some reasons why:

1. It's your constitutional right.

The 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. Unless police have strong evidence (probable cause) to believe you're involved in criminal activity, they need your permission to perform a search of you or your property.

You have the right to refuse random police searches anywhere and anytime, so long as you aren't crossing a border checkpoint or entering a secure facility like an airport. Don't be shy about standing up for your own privacy rights, especially when police are looking for evidence that could put you behind bars.

2. Refusing a search protects you if you end up in court.
 
It's always possible that police might search you anyway when you refuse to give consent, but that's no reason to say "yes" to the search. Basically, if there's any chance of evidence being found, agreeing to a search is like committing legal suicide, because it kills your case before you even get to court.

If you refuse a search, however, the officer will have to prove in court that there was probable cause to do a warrantless search. This will give your lawyer a good chance to win your case, but this only works if you said "no" to the search.

3. Saying "no" can prevent a search altogether.
 
Data on police searches are interesting, but they don't show how many searches didn't happen because a citizen said no. A non-search is a non-event that goes unrecorded, giving rise to a widespread misconception that police will always search with or without permission.

I know refusing searches works because I've been collecting stories from real police encounters. The reality is that police routinely ask for permission to search when they have absolutely no evidence of an actual crime. If you remain calm and say no, there's a good chance they'll back down, because it's a waste of time to do searches that won't hold up in court anyway.

4. Searches can waste your time and damage your property.
 
Do you have time to sit around while police rifle through your belongings? Police often spend 30 minutes or more on vehicle searches and even longer searching homes. You certainly can't count on officers to be careful with valuables or to put everything back where they found it. If you waive your 4th Amendment rights by agreeing to be searched, you will have few legal options if any property is damaged or missing after the search.

5. You never know what they'll find.
 
Are you 100 percent certain there's nothing illegal in your home or vehicle? You can never be too sure. A joint roach could stick to your shoe on the street and wind up on the floorboard. A careless acquaintance could have dropped a baggie behind the seat. Try telling a cop it isn't yours, and they'll just laugh and tell you to put your hands behind your back. If you agreed to the search, you can't challenge the evidence. But if you're innocent and you refused the search, your lawyer has a winnable case.

Remember that knowing your rights will help you protect yourself, but no amount of preparation can guarantee a good outcome in a bad situation. Your attitude and your choices before, during, and after the encounter will usually matter more than your knowledge of the law. Stay calm no matter what happens, and remember that you can always report misconduct after things settle down.

Finally, please don't be shy about sharing this information with your friends and family. Understanding and asserting your rights isn't about getting away with anything, and it isn't about disrespecting police either. These rights are the foundation of freedom in America, and they get weaker whenever we fail to exercise them.

Scott Morgan is Associate Director of FlexYourRights.org and co-creator of the film 10 Rules for Dealing with Police.

 

Follow Scott Morgan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drugblogger

Crisis and the Creeping Militarization of US Society

By Christopher J. Coyne & Abigail R. Hall
George Mason University 

[REPRINT]

February 21, 2012 "Daily Caller" -- Earlier this month, Congress passed House Resolution 658, the “Federal Aviation Administration Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act,” which President Obama is expected to sign. One of the over 1,000 sections of H.R. 658 authorizes domestic use of aerial spy drones by the U.S. government.

This is but the latest case of the increased militarization of U.S. police forces. Other examples abound. Under Program 1033, the U.S. military provided police with over $500 million in military equipment in 2011, more than double the amount allocated by the government a year before. Small town police forces have been equipped with SWAT gear and automatic weapons. State and local law enforcement are receiving training akin to that expected in the armed forces.

Such activities fuel an ongoing debate regarding their implication for civil liberties. But H.R. 658 and these other examples also draw attention to a broader point. They lead us to wonder about government constraints, particularly during and after times of crisis.

The Founding Fathers understood the “paradox of power” — the need to simultaneously empower government and constrain its ability to use that power to violate the rights of citizens. They addressed this paradox by creating checks and balances that would, in principle, constrain the activities of government. One of the most important checks, noted the Founders, were vigilant citizens who monitored the activities of their government.

But sometimes, citizens are not so careful to check their government. There are instances which work to loosen the restraints on government. One of the greatest threats is the onset of crises. A crisis event induces citizens to call for government to do something and do it quickly. The demand to act swiftly results in an aggressive government response absent public debate and scrutiny. This leads to increases in both the scale and scope of government activities, many of which persist well after the crisis has ended.

This logic helps to explain the increased militarization of U.S. domestic police forces, which began with the onset of the War on Drugs in the 1980s. This militarization accelerated in the wake of September 11th, as federal dollars flowed through the Department of Homeland Security to local police forces in the name of fighting terrorism. Under this broad umbrella, domestic police have justified the acquisition of military technologies and equipment, ranging from assault rifles and armored cars to tactical training, and soon drones.

There is reason to expect such expansions in the reach of government power to continue. As the threat of terrorism remains a focal point of elected officials, government is able to justify a myriad of expenditures and policies that may reduce the rights of its citizens, like the new stipulations in H.R. 658.

American citizens have reason to be concerned about their civil liberties. It is immensely important, however, that citizens recognize the broader process through which the government expands its powers. Only then may these powers be checked. American citizens would be wise to heed the words of Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”

Christopher J. Coyne is the F.A. Harper Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Abigail R. Hall is a Mercatus Graduate Fellow, Department of Economics at George Mason University.

 See also  - Michigan State Police: Veterans A Good Fit: Col. Kriste Kibbey Etue said she is looking at veterans to be among the 400 troopers she aims to recruit and train, as her department prepares to significantly expand for the first time in decades and state officials focus on lowering a high jobless rate among the vets.

The Atheist Cosmological Argument

by Adam Lee on February 16, 2012, 6:00 AM 

[REPRINT]

In my past writings, I've made it a hobby to call attention to potent, but often overlooked, reasons to believe that atheism is true. Two of these that I've written about are the argument from mind-brain unity and the argument from locality. In the last few months, I've come to realize that there's another powerful argument for atheism that doesn't get as much attention as it should, and I want to discuss it today.

As creationists have brought up ad nauseam, the Earth is very well suited for life like ours. And that's true, and not at all surprising to an atheist: in a natural universe, we'd expect that beings like us would exist only where natural laws permit us to exist. If we found ourselves in a place where the laws of physics weren't conducive to our continued existence, we'd have reason to suspect supernatural intervention.

Of course, to decide how likely our existence is, you also have to take the background probabilities into account. If the Earth was the only life-supporting planet in a very small universe, as the medieval cosmologies taught and expected, then we might well suspect that someone had rigged the circumstances in our favor. What we need, to have a planet well-suited for life in a godless universe, is a large quantity of chance resources - in other words, enough time and space, enough opportunities to get it right, that eventually it would be reasonable for our number to turn up in the cosmic lottery.

To put it another way: If there's no intelligent supernatural creator tweaking the laws of physics to create a life-friendly cosmos, there's only one other scenario we'd have any right to expect: a very old, vast, and chaotic universe, one where it's plausible that a planet like ours and living beings like us could come about by chance.

And guess what? As our scientific knowledge expands, we've found we live in a universe that's very old - 13.7 billion years, according to data like WMAP; that's very vast - we see billions of galaxies, and the full number may even be infinite; and that's highly chaotic - we observe stars of every possible size and variety, from red dwarfs to luminous blue supergiants; and the better our observational techniques become, the more we find that many of them have planetary systems, also of every kind and configuration. Some planets are icy and dark, orbiting very far from their parent stars; some are boiling cauldrons orbiting very close in. Some are rocky, some are gas giants, some may be completely covered with water, and some may even be solid diamond.

Out of this vast profusion of planets, it's entirely reasonable to expect that a rare few would have everything right: the right distance from their parent star, the right material composition, the right amount of liquid water, and all the other factors necessary for life to arise and thrive. We are the lucky ones, because we wouldn't be here if we weren't. Thus, the well-suitedness of our planet - compared to all the other planets that aren't - isn't an argument for theism, but a potent argument for atheism. The universe we live in is what we'd expect a godless universe to look like, or to put it another way, this hypothesis has superior explanatory power: atheism predicts a universe just like the one we see.

Although some religious believers have come up with post-hoc excuses for why God would have created a universe that was so vast, chaotic and mostly empty, the fact is that, before the truth was known, the major religions of the West all imagined small, human-centered cosmoses. (Granted, a few Eastern belief systems came closer to the truth.) And we shouldn't let them forget that. The universe we live in makes far more sense if there is no higher power, and that's a conclusion we can and should hammer on.

Image credit: HubbleSite

Anonymous - Operation Black March

Thursday, March 1st 2012 to Saturday 31st March 2012

With the continuing campaigns for Internet-censoring litigation such as SOPA and PIPA, and the closure of sites such as Megaupload under allegations of 'piracy' and 'conspiracy' the time has come to take a stand against music, film and media companies' lobbyists.

The only way is to hit them where it truly hurts.

Their profit margins.

March 2012 is the end of the 1st quarter in economic reports worldwide.

Do not buy a single record. Do not download a single song, legally or illegally. Do not go to see a single film in cinemas, or download a copy, Do not buy a DVD in the stores. Do not buy a videogame. Do not buy a single book or magazine.

Wait the 4 weeks to buy them in April: see the film later, etc. Holding out for just 4 weeks, maximum, will leave a gaping hole in media and entertainment companies' profits for the 1st quarter, an economic hit which will in turn be observed by governments worldwide as stocks and shares will blip from a large enough loss of incomes.

This action can give a statement of intent:

"We will not tolerate the Media Industries' lobbying for legistation which will censor the internet." Regarding Black March: If you want to do something that makes a statement, consider shifting your money not only away from corporate media but to independent media. Buy comics published by someone other than DC and Marvel. Buy books from small and independent presses. Support independent production companies who fight to stay independent and fan-focused. Better yet, buy things directly from creators and artisans. Support independent retailers. Don't just blanket punish media producers and distributors—refocus those resources into supporting the ones who espouse and depend on free exchange of information and ideas. Because those are the people preserving intellectual freedom. Those are the people creating work of substance. And those are the people struggling to make a living, because they aren't bankrolled by the Corporate Elite lobbying for SOPA and PIPA.

April 9-15, 2012 -- 100,000 Americans Will Train for Non-Violent Direct Action

Published on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 by Common Dreams  

 [REPRINT]

DATE: February 15, 2012
TO: America
RE: The 99% Spring

Things should never have reached this point.

Every day, the American Dream seems a little farther away. More of our grandparents are being thrown from their homes.

Our mothers and fathers can’t retire because their pension funds tanked. Our brothers and sisters are burdened by student loan debt. For our children, budget cuts have resulted in crumbling schools, skyrocketing class sizes, and teachers being denied the supports they need to do their best. Our friends and family are being denied collective bargaining rights in their workplaces and are falling further and further behind. Our neighbors are being poisoned by pollution in our air and water.

The numbers are staggering: in recent years, millions of jobs have been destroyed, homes foreclosed, and an unconscionable number of children live in poverty.

And worst of all: this is no accident. It is a result of rampant greed—the deliberate manipulation of our democracy and our economy by a tiny minority in the 1%, by those who amass ever more wealth and power at our expense.

We are at a crossroads as a country. We have a choice to make. Greater wealth for a few or opportunity for many. Tax breaks for the richest or a fair shot for the rest of us. A government that can be bought by the highest bidder, or a democracy that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The choice is in our hands. This spring, we will act on that choice and rise up in the tradition of our forefathers and foremothers. We will not be complicit with the suffering in our families for another year. We will prepare ourselves for sustained non-violent direct action.

From April 9-15 we will gather across America, 100,000 strong, in homes, places of worship, campuses and the streets to join together in the work of reclaiming our country. We will organize trainings to:

Tell the story of our economy: how we got here, who’s responsible, what a different future could look like, and what we can do about it Learn the history of non-violent direct action, and Get into action on our own campaigns to win change.

This spring we rise! We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.

We know great change is possible. We inherit a history of everyday people standing up for their own dignity, freedom, and self-determination, shaping our direction as a country. The seamstress in Alabama who launched a bus boycott. The farmers in New England and Virginia who imagined we could be a free nation. The workers in Flint, Michigan who occupied their plant to win collective bargaining rights. The farmworkers in California who liberated our fields. The women in New York who dreamed they could one day speak with equal voice. The mother who stood up in Love Canal to stop the poisoning of her community. And the students who risked their lives during Freedom Summer to register voters.

In the last year alone we watched the teachers and fire fighters of Wisconsin stand for the rights of workers. And we joined those who Occupied Wall Street, inspiring us to stand with the 99%.

We will rise this spring, because we DO hold these truths to be self evident—that all men and women are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Will you rise with us? Can we count on you to join us April 9th to 15th to stand with the 99% for America?

 

Signers:

Sarita Gupta
Jobs With Justice
Bob King
United Auto Workers
George Goehl
National Peoples Action
Ai-jen Poo
National Domestic Workers Alliance
Justin Ruben
MoveOn.org
Joy Cushman & Judith Freeman
New Organizing Institute
Liz Butler
Movement Strategy Center
John Sellers
The Other 98%
Mary Kay Henry
Service Employees International Union
Van Jones and Natalie Foster
Rebuild the Dream
John Wilhelm
UNITE-HERE
Phil Radford
Greenpeace
John Cavanaugh
Institute for Policy Studies
Scott Reed
PICO National Network
Tracy Van Slyke and Ilana Berger
New Bottom Line
Leo Gerard
United Steel Workers
Daniel Cantor
Working Families Party
Larry Cohen
Communications Workers of America
Victor Sanchez Jr
United States Student Association
Becky Tarbotton
Rainforest Action Network
Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers
Brian Kettenring
Leadership Center for the Common Good
Randy Jackson
UNITY
Saket Soni
National Guestworker Alliance
Bill McKibben and May Boeve
350.org
Sharon Lungo and Megan Swoboda
The Ruckus Society
Ian Inaba
Citizen Engagement Lab
Patrick Reinsborough
smartMeme Strategy & Training Project
Rachel LaForest
Right to the City Alliance
Brigid Flaherty
Pushback Network
Tim Carpenter
Progressive Democrats of America
Bob Callahan
Change to Win
Michael Leon Guerrero
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Roger Hickey
Campaign for America’s Future
Aaron Ostrom
Fuse Washington
Jeff Ordower
Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment
Karen Scharff
Citizen Action of New York
Marianne Manilov
Engage
Bruce Klipple
United Electrical Workers Union
Pablo Alvarado
National Day Laborers Organizing Network
LeeAnn Hall
Alliance for a Just Society
Leslie Moody
The Partnership for Working Families
Teresa Cheng
United Students Against Sweatshops

Click here to sign up for the 99% Spring!

You May Already Be an FBI Terror Suspect: 85 Things Not to Do

Communities Against Terrorism enlists everyday busybodies to spy on us.

 
By Allan MacDonell
[REPRINT]

February 18, 2012 "Information Clearing House" 

---  Keeping America safe from totalitarian ideologues is a big, big job, too big in fact for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the entire Department of Justice to handle on their own. The DOJ commands a $27.7 billion annual budget, and the FBI employs 35,629 full-time foes of evil. Their business is to protect the United States from bad people. Those bad people might be 15-year-old computer punks; they might be sophisticated zealots who hate America’s freedoms with such vehemence that they want to blow us all up. 

And the bad people just might win, according to our country’s law-enforcement elite, unless we, the American public, help.   

The FBI and DOJ have launched the “Communities Against Terrorism” program. The campaign seeks assistance from workers in 25 industries to spy on their fellow citizens ferret out the terrorists among us. Citizen spies are being recruited from hotel and motel personnel, dive shop operators, car and property rental agents, the inky patriots who run tattoo parlors, gun dealers and baristas at Internet cafes.

Obviously, an invective-mumbling individual “refusing to complete appropriate paperwork” while paying cash to buy large quantities of explosives and asking for driving directions on a map that has skulls-and-crossbones marked across every Mall of the America emergency exit has raised a red flag. Report this person to the appropriate authorities.

 If you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, or in some other way interact with one of the Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away.

The Communities Against Terrorism directives go further, warning some on the American labor force, such as Airport Service Providers, to monitor even their coworkers for suspicious behavior. But when the FBI’s “Suspicious Activity Reporting” forms are distributed to all potential spies on a given airport food court, any terrorist manning an espresso machine is given a heads-up.

Meanwhile, some free spirit whose FBI memo went to a spam folder, oblivious that profiling eyes peer out from behind every cash register, unknowingly embodies an alarming combination of DOJ-designated terrorist traits.

4) Do Not: Attempt to shield your computer screen from the view of others.

The lesson here is that if you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, play paintball or in some other way interact with one of the presumed legion of Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away. In light of this fresh peril necessitated by the threat of totalitarian ideologues, TakePart presents 85 behaviors to avoid if you want to stay off the FBI’s lists of terror suspects:

 

Know the Universal Declaration for Human Rights

1) Do Not: Use Google Maps to find your way around a strange city.
2) Do Not: Use Google Maps to view photos of sports stadiums.
3) Do Not: Install online privacy protection software on your personal computer.
4) Do Not: Attempt to shield your computer screen from the view of others.
5) Do Not: Shave your beard, dye your hair or alter your mode of dress.
6) Do Not: Sweat.
7) Do Not: Avoid eye contact.
8) Do Not: Use a cell-phone camera in an airport, train station or shopping mall.
9) Do Not: Seek to work alone or without supervision.
10) Do Not: Appear to be out of place.
11) Do Not: Have bright colored stains on your clothing.
12) Do Not: Be missing any fingers.
13) Do Not: Emit strange odors.
14) Do Not: Travel an “illogical distance” to do your shopping.
15) Do Not: Have someone pick you up from a beauty supply store.
33) Do Not: Act impatient.
16) Do Not: Be nervous.
17) Do Not: Be a new customer from out of town.
18) Do Not: Use a credit card in someone else’s name.
19) Do Not: Chant environmental slogans near construction sites.
20) Do Not: Enter a construction site after work hours.
21) Do Not: Rent watercraft for an extended period.
22) Do Not: Make comments involving radical theology.
23) Do Not: Make vague or cryptic warnings.
24) Do Not: Express anti-U.S. sentiments.
25) Do Not: Purchase a quantity of prepaid or disposable cell phones.
26) Do Not: Leave store without preprogramming disposable phones.
27) Do Not: Be overly interested in satellite phones and voice privacy.
28) Do Not: Ask questions about swapping SIM cards in cell phones.
29) Do Not: Ask questions about how phone location can be tracked.
30) Do Not: Rewire cell phone’s ringer or backlight.

 

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31) Do Not: Express out-of-place and provocative religious or political sentiments.
32) Do Not: Purchase a police scanner, infrared device or 2-way radio.
33) Do Not: Act impatient.
34) Do Not: Drive a vehicle that appears to be overloaded.
35) Do Not: Depart quickly when seen or approached.
36) Do Not: Be a person “acting suspiciously.”
37) Do Not: Make illegible notes on a map.
38) Do Not: Take photos of the Statue of Liberty or other “symbolic targets.”
39) Do Not: Overdress for the weather.
40) Do Not: Ask questions in a hobby shop about remote controlled aircraft.
41) Do Not: Demonstrate interest that does not seem genuine.
42) Do Not: Request specific room assignments or locations at a hotel or motel.
43) Do Not: Arrive at a lodging with unusual amounts of luggage.
52) Do Not: Make notes that are illegible to passersby.
44) Do Not: Refuse cleaning service.
45) Do Not: Avoid the lobby of a hotel or motel.
46) Do Not: Remain in your hotel or motel room.
47) Do Not: Leave your hotel for several days, then return.
48) Do Not: Leave behind clothing and toiletry items.
49) Do Not: Park your vehicle in an isolated area.
50) Do Not: Be observed switching a cell phone SIM card.
51) Do Not: Be observed using multiple cell phones.
52) Do Not: Make notes that are illegible to passersby.
53) Do Not: Communicate through a PC game.
54) Do Not: Download “extreme/radical” content.
55) Do Not: Exhibit preoccupation with press coverage of terrorist attacks.
56) Do Not: Wear a backpack when the weather is warm.
57) Do Not: Speak to mall maintenance personnel or security guards.
58) Do Not: Make racist comments.
59) Do Not: Mumble to yourself.
60) Do Not: Pass along any anonymous threats you may receive.
61) Do Not: Discreetly take a photo in a mass transit site.
62) Do Not: Arrive with a group of people and split off from them.
63) Do Not: Demand “identity privacy.”

Lawyers: Connect with Experts Who Represent Detainees

64) Do Not: Appear to endorse the use of violence in support of a cause.
65) Do Not: Make bulk purchases of meals ready to eat.
66) Do Not: Arrive in America from a land where militant Islamic groups operate.
67) Do Not: Take a long absence for religious education or charity work.
68) Do Not: Travel to countries where militant Islam rules.
69) Do Not: Study technical subjects that would aid a terror operation.
70) Do Not: Work in a field that “serves as a cover for preparing for an operation.”
71) Do Not: Exhibit ire at global policies of the U.S.

www.takepart.com/

Millions of Evangelical Christians Want to Start WWIII to Speed the “Second Coming”

Neocons are Using Religion to Rile Them Up to Justify War Against Iran

By Washington's Blog
[REPRINT]

................. The Founding Fathers weren’t particularly anti-Islam.

But millions of Americans believe that Christ will not come again until Israel wipes out its competitors and there is widespread war in the Middle East. Some of these folks want to start a huge fire of war and death and destruction, so that Jesus comes quickly.

According to French President Chirac, Bush told him that the Iraq war was needed to bring on the apocalypse:

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”…

There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.

And British Prime Minister Tony Blair long-time mentor, advisor and confidante said:

“Tony’s Christian faith is part of him, down to his cotton socks. He believed strongly at the time, that intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone – Iraq too – was all part of the Christian battle; good should triumph over evil, making lives better.”

Mr Burton, who was often described as Mr Blair’s mentor, says that his religion gave him a “total belief in what’s right and what’s wrong”, leading him to see the so-called War on Terror as “a moral cause”…

Anti-war campaigners criticised remarks Mr Blair made in 2006, suggesting that the decision to go to war in Iraq would ultimately be judged by God.

Bill Moyers reports that the organization Christians United for Israel – led by highly-influential Pastor John C. Hagee – is a universal call to all Christians to help factions in Israel fund the Jewish settlements, throw out all the Palestinians and lobby for a pre-emptive invasion of Iran. All to bring Russia into a war against us causing World War III followed by Armageddon, the Second Coming and The Rapture. See this and this.

This all revolves around what is called Dispensationalism. So popular is Dispensationalism that Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series has sold 65 million copies.

Dispensationalists include the following mega-pastors and their churches:

• Jerry Falwell

• Pat Robertson

• Billy Graham

They are supported by politicians such as:

• Newt Gingrich

• Joseph Lieberman

• John McCain

• Texas Senator John Cronyn

• Former House Minority Whip Roy Blunt

• Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

• And others

Dr. Timothy Webber – an evangelical Christian who has served as a teacher of church history and the history of American religion at Denver Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Vice-President at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL, and President of Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee – notes:

In a recent Time/CNN poll, more than one-third of Americans said that since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they have been thinking more about how current events might be leading to the end of the world.

While only 36 percent of all Americans believe that the Bible is God’s Word and should be taken literally, 59 percent say they believe that events predicted in the Book of Revelation will come to pass. Almost one out of four Americans believes that 9/11 was predicted in the Bible, and nearly one in five believes that he or she will live long enough to see the end of the world. Even more significant for this study, over one-third of those Americans who support Israel report that they do so because they believe the Bible teaches that the Jews must possess their own country in the Holy Land before Jesus can return.

Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible’s prophetic passages, especially those in Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They make up about one-third of America’s 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century, dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel’s best friends-an alliance that has made a serious geopolitical difference.

***

Starting in the 1970s, dispensationalists broke into the popular culture with runaway best-sellers, and a well-networked political campaign to promote and protect the interests of Israel. Since the mid-1990s, tens of millions of people who have never seen a prophetic chart or listened to a sermon on the second coming have read one or more novels in the Left Behind series, which has become the most effective disseminator of dispensationalist ideas ever.

***

During the early 1980s the Israeli Ministry of Tourism recruited evangelical religious leaders for free “familiarization” tours. In time, hundreds of evangelical pastors got free trips to the Holy Land. The purpose of such promotional tours was to enable people of even limited influence to experience Israel for themselves and be shown how they might bring their own tour group to Israel. The Ministry of Tourism was interested in more than tourist dollars: here was a way of building a solid corps of non-Jewish supporters for Israel in the United States by bringing large numbers of evangelicals to hear and see Israel’s story for themselves. The strategy caught on.

***

Shortly after the Six-Day War, elements within the Israeli government saw the potential power of the evangelical subculture and began to mobilize it as a base of support that could influence American foreign policy. The Israeli government sent Yona Malachy of its Department of Religious Affairs to the United States to study American fundamentalism and its potential as an ally of Israel. Malachy was warmly received by fundamentalists and was able to influence some of them to issue strong pro-Israeli manifestos. By the mid-1980s, there was a discernible shift in the Israeli political strategy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish state’s major lobbying group in Washington, D.C., started re-aligning itself with the American political right-wing, including Christian conservatives. Israel’s timing was perfect. It began working seriously with American dispensationalists at the precise moment that American fundamentalists and evangelicals were discovering their political voice.

**

Probably the largest pro-Israel organization of its kind is the National Unity Coalition for Israel, which was founded by a Jewish woman who learned how to get dispensationalist support. NUCI opposes “the establishment of a Palestinian state within the borders of Israel.”

***

In their commitment to keep Israel strong and moving in directions prophesied by the Bible, dispensationalists are supporting some of the most dangerous elements in Israeli society. They do so because such political and religious elements seem to conform to dispensationalist beliefs about what is coming next for Israel. By lending their support-both financial and spiritual-to such groups, dispensationalists are helping the

future they envision come to pass.

***

Dispensationalists believe that the Temple is coming too; and their convictions have led them to support the aims and actions of what most Israelis believe are the most dangerous right-wing elements in their society, people whose views make any compromise necessary for lasting peace impossible. Such sentiments do not matter to the believers in Bible prophecy, for whom the outcome of the quarrelsome issue of the Temple Mount has already been determined by God.

Since the end of the Six-Day War, then, dispensationalists have increasingly moved from observers to participant-observers. They have acted consistently with their convictions about the coming Last Days in ways that make their prophecies appear to be self-fulfilling.

***

As Paul Boyer has pointed out, dispensationalism has effectively conditioned millions of Americans to be somewhat passive about the future and provided them with lenses through which to understand world events. Thanks to the sometimes changing perspectives of their Bible teachers, dispensationalists are certain that trouble in the Middle East is inevitable, that nations will war against nations, and that the time is coming when millions of people will die as a result of nuclear war, the persecution of Antichrist, or as a result of divine judgment. Striving for peace in the Middle East is a hopeless pursuit with no chance of success.

***

For the dispensational community, the future is determined. The Bible’s prophecies are being fulfilled with amazing accuracy and rapidity. They do not believe that the Road Map will-or should-succeed. According to the prophetic texts, partitioning is not in Israel’s future, even if the creation of a Palestinian state is the best chance for peace in the region. Peace is nowhere prophesied for the Middle East, until Jesus comes and brings it himself. The worse thing that the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations can do is force Israel to give up land for a peace that will never materialize this side of the second coming. Anyone who pushes for peace in such a manner is ignoring or defying God’s plan for the end of the age.

***

It seems clear that dispensationalism is on a roll, that its followers feel they are riding the wave of history into the shore of God’s final plan. Why should they climb back into the stands when being on the field of play is so much more fun and apparently so beneficial to the game’s outcome? As [one dispensationalist group's] advertisement read, “Don’t just read about prophecy when you can be part of it.”

 

Not a Problem with Judaism … Or Christianity
 

Most Americans confuse Zionism and Judaism.
 
But many devout Jews are against Zionism, and Zionists can be Christian.
 
Those who say that criticizing Zionism is anti-semitic are misleading people for their own ulterior motives which have nothing to do with ensuring the safety of the Jewish people.
 
Israeli Zionists are no more true to the cultural heritage of the Jewish people than Christian Zionists are.
 

Atheist War Hawks Manipulate Believers to Beat the Drums of War
 

Leo Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of the current administration.

Indeed, many of the main neocon players – including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky – were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years.

The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.) For example, Shulsky was the director of the Office of Special Plans – the Pentagon unit responsible for selling false intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass. He is now a member of the equivalent organization targeting Iran: the Iranian Directorate.

Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli. Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that: 

A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured

(the quote is by one of Strauss’ main biographers).

Indeed, Stauss used the analogy of Gulliver’s Travels to show what a Neocon-run society would look like:

“When Lilliput [the town] was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect.” (this quote also from the same biographer)

Moreover, Strauss said:
 

Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic . . . Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.

So Strauss seems to have advocated governments letting terrorizing catastrophes happen on one’s own soil to one’s own people — of “pissing” on one’s own people, to use his Gulliver’s travel analogy. And he advocates that government’s should pretend that they did not know about such acts of mayhem: to intentionally “not know” that Rome is burning. He advocates messing with one’s own people in order to save them from some “catastophe” (perhaps to justify military efforts to monopolize middle eastern oil to keep it away from our real threat — an increasingly-powerful China?).

What does this have to do with religion?

Strauss taught that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not believe in religion.

As Wikipedia notes:

In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this – along with support for religion generally – may have been a case of a “noble lie”, intended to protect public morality, or even tactical politics, to attract religious supporters.

So is it any surprise that the folks who planned war against Iraq and Iran at least 20 years ago are pushing religious disinformation to stir up the evangelical community?

I’ve recently seen a swarm of spam claiming that all Muslims are evil, that they want to take over the world and establish a Muslim caliphate, and that they want to nuke Iran. They misquote Muslims and use false statements to try to stir up religious hatred.

They are simply promoting the Straussian playbook: stir up religious sentiment – even if you are personally an atheist – to create and demonize an “enemy”, so as to promote war …

Postscript 1: While there are certainly some Arab terrorists, Islam cannot be blamed for their barbaric murderous actions, just as Christianity cannot be blamed for the Norwegian Christian terrorist – Anders Behring Breivik’s – actions.

University of Chicago professor Robert A. Pape – who specializes in international security affairs – points out:

Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn’t to blame — the root of the problem is foreign military occupations.

And the 9/11 hijackers used cocaine and drank alcohol, slept with prostitutes and attended strip clubs … but they did not worship at any mosque. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

Postscript 2: Neoliberals and Neoconservatives are very similar in many ways. And because Neocons are not conservative, nothing in this post is meant to criticize conservatism.

Postscript 3: Most evangelicals are not dispensionalists, and so do not want to bring on armageddon.

How Violence Protects the State

Published on Friday, February 17, 2012 by Common Dreams

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'Violence is the modus operandi of the State. To build a free society, we will have to use different means.'

by Stephanie Van Hook

 

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, he spoke passionately in a sermon at Riverside Church in New York about the war in Vietnam. In this gripping speech about the hypocrisy of bringing democracy through napalm and the audacity of fostering a brotherhood through war and killing, he made a daring confession: “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today —my own government.”

The most significant social movement in the US in the coming months will be the Occupy movement, as it returns in some numbers to the street. As the Occupy movement grows more polarized between strategies in light of its upcoming spring activities, it might do well to reflect on the logic of Dr. King’s brave statement. Contrary to what Peter Gelderloos and others have claimed, it is violence and the stasis of a dysfunctional system of oppression that protects the state, not nonviolence. How does violence protect the state? Do a few general internet searches on the Occupy movement in images to see how that movement is visually narrated (not to mention how it feels to see the portrayed reduction of a promising national movement into a series of police confrontations).

“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today —my own government.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Examining these images with some detachment, we might wonder how this civil war with police began. This examination might also give us some clues about the general population’s confusion about “what Occupy wants,” and the US citizenry’s preference for political candidates who do not create violence on the streets—even if those elected officials ultimately maintain systems of greater violence within our society and between it and other nations. If the choice is between unruly demonstrations and elections, Occupy risks becoming a reason to turn to politics as usual.

Paradoxically, while the public will be fascinated by police/Occupy confrontations, and while the media will mock activists’ lack of moral character and strength for accepting violence as an effective strategy, it will only make the way safer and clearer for greater state violence to be perpetrated in the name of national security. Who knows, we may be pulled into a new war with Iran in the coming year —what better way to stifle a movement: delegitimize it (through violence), and then unite us against a common enemy!

Violence in opposition to the State relieves the State and the citizenry of any guilt for a brutal response to all protesters—and it refocuses from the nominal issue to the issue of violence by protesters. Thus any violence by protesters serves the state well (just ask anyone employed by the government who has hired an agent provocateur). It is a weapon of mass distraction. Stop worrying about the uptick in home foreclosures, the dead being shipped back from Afghanistan, and the new increases in the Pentagon’s proposed budget—look at the violent window-breakers from Occupy who threaten us all!

Just a few weeks ago, I was in dialogue with an official from the Pentagon’s weapons acquisitions team. In his final assessment (the conversation was about the present year’s National Defense Authorization Act and our Metta Center advocacy of alternatives to killing), our organization’s proposal of a nonviolent policy—a new U.S. policy of deep reconciliation to combat terrorism— “creates guilt, which is not good.” In other words, by repressing guilt, we can continue killing people.

Keep in mind that soldiers are committing suicide in higher numbers than ever before, and therefore we should pay attention to what this guilt is telling us. This mindset of denial echoed by the Pentagon official, integral to waging war, is rooted in a belief about ourselves as separate from one another—in other words, that we should be able to kill one another without remorse, which is the supreme superstition of a violent system. On the level of the Occupy movement, we might formulate it as a principle: activists cannot harm the actors of the State without harming our movement. The more we fight against the police, the more we allowing ourselves to be seen as accepting violent tactics, the stronger we make the system we want to change, the deeper that system digs in its heels. The more we entertain the use of violence, or even create occasions where it can break out, the more violence is justified. Why? Because as Max Weber’s definition of the State suggests, it "upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order." Violence is the modus operandi of the State. To build a free society, we will have to use different means.

Nonviolence is not just protest, it is not simply occupying space and it is not just about adversarial confrontations; it’s about our humanity. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan brilliantly document the power of civil resistance when it uses nonviolence as its means to replace leaders. We should read their work and others, but we should not be afraid of going deeper either; more than changing a certain regime at this time, we need to transform a culture.

In short, in order to delegitimize a violent system, we have to delegitimize violence. This change requires us to adopt a principle about human beings and human dignity: we will not use violence against others because we want to create a vibrant culture, a merciful culture, a generous culture because we as human beings have the potential to nurture these qualities within ourselves and each other. We will not degrade human dignity because it is not worthy of ourselves as people; let this be the motivation for our long-term struggle. The power of the violent State system would stand much less chance against a movement committed to this nonviolent, compassionate spirit of unity.

Stephanie Van Hook is co-Director of the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, CA. She is an earnest student of principled nonviolence, passage meditation and Gandhian thought (and action). She is on the board of the Peace and Justice Studies Association for issues relating to women and gender, and she has taught, written and spoken on such topics as atonement, nonviolence, domestic violence and reconciliation. E-mail: stephanie (at) mettacenter.org

Capitalism Versus Democracy

Political leaders love to talk about our freedoms and civil liberties--while they continually act in ways that undermine them. Eric Ruder explains how and why.

February 6, 2012

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THE CRACK of the police baton, the whiff of tear gas and the spectacle of mass arrest became all too familiar in city after city this fall and winter.

This was the response of the authorities to the rise of the Occupy movement and its challenge to the wealth and political privileges of the 1 percent. Occupy's tactics of choice were peaceful encampments and mass marches, supposedly guaranteed by the First Amendment right to free speech and peaceful assembly.

But in a matter of weeks, city officials from coast to coast had sent out police in riot gear, with zip-tie handcuffs dangling from their military-issue body armor, to harass and arrest Occupy protesters, and drive them from the streets.

Under the guise of concerns about "public health and safety," mayor after mayor ordered police to tear down encampments--a curious justification after the years of cuts to public hospitals, heating subsidies and homeless shelters that have actually endangered "public health and safety" for millions of Americans.

The total number of arrests of Occupy activists now stands at 6,475 and counting.

The treatment of the Occupy movement by elected officials and law enforcement sends an unmistakable message: Sure, you have the right to free speech, but once you try to use it, we will do all we can to stop you.

Part of this assault has involved elected officials--most of them members of the Democratic Party, which claims to stand for the rights of working people--bending the laws to ensure they can crack down on demonstrators at will.

In Chicago, where the NATO military alliance and G8 club of powerful governments is due to meet in a joint summit in May, Mayor Rahm Emanuel went the furthest--under the proposals he drove through the City Council, it's a violation of the law, for example, for two people to carry a banner or sound amplification device that wasn't described in a permit application filed months ahead of time.

On New Year's Eve, Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, giving him the power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, without charges. This was a new milestone in the assault on civil liberties inaugurated by George W. Bush's "war on terror," but continued under the Democratic Obama administration.

During this same period, the federal government disbursed more than $34 billion in grants to help transform local police departments into small armies, equipped with military-grade hardware. Under the guise of equipping themselves for "terror scenarios," even sleepy towns like Fargo, N.D., have acquired armored personnel carriers, assault rifles and Kevlar helmets. Montgomery County, Texas, now deploys a $300,000 pilotless surveillance drone, just like the ones the U.S. military uses in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

No one seriously considers Fargo a target for "terrorists," begging the question of why cities with budget crises would want to bear the enormous expense of acquiring and maintaining such arsenals.

The answer is that the emergence of a powerful social movement at a time of social crisis is precisely the "threat" for which they have been preparing.

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POLITICIANS INVARIABLY use every opportunity to thank "our men and women in uniform" for protecting "the freedoms" that we hold dear. How many times has this kind of rhetoric been used to shame critics of war?

But the irony is that U.S. military deployments abroad have always been accompanied by a restriction of civil liberties at home, as the federal government prepares to meet popular mobilizations against their war aims--and the necessary budget cuts to fund military spending--with arrest, infiltration and imprisonment of "the troublemakers."

During the First World War, the socialist Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned for his impassioned antiwar speeches. During the Second World War, the federal government passed legislation, like the Smith Act, aimed at radicals. During the Vietnam War, the FBI spied on, infiltrated and sowed dissension within the ranks of the American antiwar, civil rights and Black Power movements.

In fact, throughout American history, the promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" contained in the Declaration of Independence has never been offered willingly, but rather surrendered grudgingly. From the very beginning, the "Founding Fathers" feared the "rule of the mob" and sought to restrict the vote to men--and only men--of property like themselves, who could be trusted to exercise good judgment.

During the American Revolution, John Adams warned against "attempting to alter the qualifications of voters. There will be no end of it...Women will demand a vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man, who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks, to one common level."

Another "Founding Father," Alexander Hamilton, agreed with the problem. "All communities divide themselves into the few and the many," he wrote. "The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people." Hamilton's solution: Since the "turbulent" property-less masses "seldom judge or determine right," the wealthy must be given "a distinct, permanent share in the government."

This aversion to full democracy wasn't unique to America's self-professed democrats. "Universal suffrage would be fatal for all purposes for which government exists," wrote 19th century British historian and Whig politician Lord Macaulay, and was "utterly incompatible with the existence of civilization."

But why would the leaders of the world's democratic governments have qualms about democracy? After all, if there's one thing that politicians in the industrialized world talk about all the time, it's the centrality of democracy--at least when they're lecturing governments in other parts of the world about how they should behave.

To make sense of this seeming contradiction, it's necessary to look at the historical circumstances that accompanied the growth of democratic forms of government.

The feudal order that dominated in Europe before capitalism was ruled by monarchs whose right to govern was supposedly ordained by God. But with the growth of trade, the rise of cities and the early development of industry, a growing class of merchants found that its economic clout, though substantial, was hindered by its lack of political influence. In particular, patchworks of fiefdoms and kingdoms posed a constant challenge to the free flow of goods--in the form of taxes, local currencies and other barriers to trade.

But the rising bourgeoisie that dominated these new forms of commerce was still a minority in society. In order to wrest political influence from the feudal monarchs who were acting as a brake on developments that were necessary to fully establish capitalism, the bourgeoisie therefore had to mobilize the lower classes to fight with them against the old order.

The capitalist class drew behind them workers, peasants and small shopkeepers under the banner of "liberty, equality and fraternity," to cite the rallying cry of the French Revolution of 1789. But at the same time, the wealth of the bourgeoisie derived from exploiting other groups, and so mobilizing the lower classes had to be done carefully--so as not to pose a threat to the bourgeoisie's own position of privilege.

The promise of democracy thus served to unite and motivate a cross-class alliance of capitalists, peasants, artisans and the urban poor, but the radical implications of equality and liberty had to be carefully managed.

Therefore, in addition to limiting the promise of universal rights by extending them only to wealthy men of property, the guarantee of equal rights in the abstract was accompanied by the fact of massive inequality in wealth--and the scale of this inequality has only increased over time.
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TODAY, THIS means that the bulk of decisions that govern our economic lives--how long we work, under what conditions, at what wages and to what ends--are made by capitalists outside of any democratic process.

Thus, bourgeois democracy has always really been more "bourgeois" than "democratic." That's why Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that "the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway"--and that "the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

It has required massive and heroic struggles by the downtrodden--by women, by African Americans and by the poor--to remove formal barriers to equality. Meanwhile, the American capitalist class has refined the means by which it uses its immense wealth to finance campaigns, and lobby and otherwise buy politicians--to make sure that the right to vote never threatens in any fundamental sense their own power and privileges.

That's why there's never enough money to rebuild crumbling schools or end hunger and homelessness, but there's always hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the bankers or fund the Pentagon.

And it's why the same politicians who wax lyrical about freedom, democracy and equal rights feel no shame about changing laws and using repression to shred civil liberties. At the very moment that people might put their rights to use in order to demand real change, the political guardians of the system are trying to deny them.

But the fact also remains that no matter how monstrous a form repression takes, eventually people fight back--from Egypt to Wisconsin to Wall Street to Anytown, USA.