Holy Shit! Army building tomorrow's Storm Troopers!
Topic: police state


You'd think they'd go for something

a little less 'Darth Vader'-esque...



"What should Soldiers expect by the year 2025? According to the 24th Army Science Conference, future warriors may be wearing high-tech uniforms that field liquid armor, 360-degree situational awareness technology, plus virtual reality screens that enable them to navigate an environment by projecting maps on the ground."

read YEAR 2025: Army's Futuristic Uniform here.

9/11 Intelligence Bill Expands Powers of Patriot Act
Topic: police state
Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:54:28 -0800

Summary: The intelligence reform bill passed by Congress includes little-discussed provisions that would greatly expand the government's policing power and centralizes the intelligence community's surveillance powers which civil liberties advocates say increases the likelihood for government abuses. Amy speaks with Robert Dreyfuss of Mother Jones and Timothy Edgar of the ACLU.

Read More...

Will Smith finds his balls, makes sense.
Topic: police state
from New York Daily News:

"No. Absolutely not," Smith replied when reporter Johanna Adorjan asked if the events of 9/11 had personally changed him. "When you grow up black in America you have a completely different view of the world than white Americans. We blacks live with a constant feeling of unease.

"And whether you are wounded in an attack by a racist cop or in a terrorist attack, I'm sorry, it makes no difference."

...In the interview, in which Smith accused President Bush of lying to justify war in Iraq, the actor went on:

"In the '60s, blacks were continuously the victims of terrorist attacks. It was civil terrorism, but terrorism nonetheless. We are used to being attacked. That constant state of vigilance - a sort of defensive state - that hasn't changed at all. For me, nothing has changed at all."

Smith's PR rep, Stan Rosenfield, didn't respond to repeated phone calls and a detailed E-mail yesterday.

Lowdown was unable to reach interviewer Adorjan to verify the accuracy of the quotes. But I'm told by a mutual friend that Adorjan is a solid journalist who speaks fluent English.

Rice, Rice Baby...
Topic: police state
from Salon.com:

Colin Powell's final scene as secretary of state was a poignant but harsh reenactment of his self-delusion and humiliation. The former general held in his head an idea of himself as sacrificing and disciplined. But the good soldier was dismissed at last by his commander in chief as a bad egg... Powell has been a peripheral figure, even as a fig leaf, ever since his climactic moment before the United Nations Security Council, on which he staked his credibility, when he presented the case that weapons of mass destruction in Iraq required going to war, consisting of 26 falsehoods, and about which he later claimed he had been "deceived."

Powell had wanted to stay on for six months of Bush's second term to help shepherd a new Middle East peace process, but the president insisted on his swift resignation. Immediately, Condoleezza Rice was named in his place. She had failed at every important task as national security advisor, pointedly neglecting terrorism before Sept. 11, enthusiastically parroting the false claim that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program (while suppressing contrary intelligence), mismanaging her part of postwar policy so completely that she had to cede it to a deputy, and eviscerating the Middle East "road map."

But Bush's performance princess was his favorite briefer; ever devoted, the unmarried Rice in an unguarded moment once called Bush "my husband." As incompetent as she was at her actual job, she was as agile at bureaucratic positioning. Early on she figured out how to align with the neoconservatives and to damage Powell. Her usurpation is a lesson to him in blind ambition and loyalty.

read Bush's night of the long knives here.

Radio Raided in Oaxaca, Mexico Members Beaten and Jailed
Topic: police state
Members of Community Radio in Oaxaca, Mexico Beaten and Jailed

http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/09/111910.shtml

At 6:13 in the morning of the 14th of september, several police units, including forces of the UPOE (Special Operations Police), policia preventiva, turism police, police of the state of Oaxaca, the Federa Agency of Investigations (AFI), and plain clothed officers numbering a sum of 200 violently evicted members of Guetza Radio and the Popular Indigenous Counsel of Oaxaca - Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO - RFM) with tear gas, cuncusion grenades and water hoses. To this date seven people remain in jail.

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Blast Furnace Radio report: update by Mumia's lawyer
Topic: police state
From a talk given at CMU 9/28/04. Download MP3 here.

Blast Furnace Radio: http://www.notowar.com
Vincent Scotti Eirene: eirene@telerama.com
---------------------> (888) NO TO WAR