Death in Oregon, the Realities of the American Police State

American police are no better than the communities they serve. Corrupt communities have corrupt police. Racist communities have racist police. Lazy communities, communities that care more about feeling safe than protecting individual rights end up living in a police state.
On a national basis, America has, since 9/11, become a full-blown surveillance state with over-armed militarized police, in some but not all areas, a threat.
In 1881, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting the use of the army to enforce domestic policy. However, state governors who control the National Guard, the 3rd level of military reserve, have used these troops over and over to smash trade unions and, at times as with the “Black Legion,” a combination of National Guard, Ku Klux Klan and Republican Party, that terrorized trade unionists and African Americans throughout the Midwest during the 1920s and 30s.
Today the issue is militarized police, an obvious ploy to violate the still applicable and updated Posse Comitatus laws, by creating an Israeli trained military force inside the US. Law enforcement officials in the US, among the least educated and “morally concerned,” stoked up on decades of entertainment media “scare porn” vilifying Palestinians, Hispanics, military combat veterans and African Americans, live in a fantasy world seeing themselves as saviors of, well we aren’t really sure of whom.
You see, most police departments, not all but certainly most, have long allowed levels of corruption, working closely with “preferred” drug dealers, human traffickers and, of course, politically connected and powerful economic “fronts” that grew out of the Italian and Jewish mobs of the last century. These gangs no longer shoot down their enemies with machineguns. They now use courts and police and even the Federal government, their power has grown to this extent. They control entire states, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Idaho, Pennsylvania and more.
Challenging them are the Mexican drug cartels, partnered in the American Southwest with the Utah centered Mormon church. Through assassination and mass bribery, the cartel with their Mormon allies, relationships formed during the 1880s when Mormons fled to Mexico after an unsuccessful war against the United States, have taken virtual control of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, half of Colorado and portions of Oregon and Montana.
Militia’s and “supremacist” groups partnered with drug and human traffickers initially gained control over county governments and local police, spreading their power eventually to state offices and now are encroaching into Washington.
During the last election, Nevada gambling boss Sheldon Adelson contributed over $1 billion to select Republican candidates.
When taken into account that during the last Bush administration America set up the framework for the most oppressive occupation force in world history, a massive bureaucracy of dozens of organizations most dangerous of which are the Department of Homeland Security and National Security Agency, it is easy to understand the nature of the budding rebellion and threat of Balkanization of the United States.
What makes this scenario particularly dark is that those who are most radicalized and the best armed are also those who are, because of lack of education and religious extremism, “closet supporters” of those who represent the real police state threat.
Thus, those who work to appear as supporting individual rights are, in actuality opposed to current levels of “excessive freedoms.” The real divisions in America are between those who would dictate religion, enforce racial segregation, abuse surveillance and police powers to enforce their narrow views and those who fear oligarchical rule.
When non-Americans see protest from the right, where the roots of racism and fascism have long been strong, they also fail to see the long connections to economic elites, to organized crime and the hand of dark globalist forces. The right wing coup in Kiev was at the hands of the political parallel to those who are now crying out for worldwide support in Burns, Oregon. Thus we move to that story.
This week, a Utah rancher, father of 11 died in a hail of police gunfire after running a felony roadblock with an 18 year old girl, a “human shield” sitting beside him. Only days before he had announced that he was prepared to die at the hands of police.
The FBI released a video of the shooting, perhaps showing Finicum drawing a weapon after barreling past police in his white pickup truck. Finicum leaves the truck with hands raised, reaches and draws a weapon or nothing at all, pretends to draw again, points at police, turns and is gunned down. Were police right?
Legally they were, based on what we know but morally not at all. The police in this area of Oregon are among the best in the US, local people known to the community, accountable and generally acting within reason and law.
Perhaps without the FBI present, an organization that is not local and not accountable, the reasonable act would have been done, using non-lethal force to capture a suspect that we all knew never planned to kill anyone at all, someone who could have been wounded or overwhelmed and captured.
The crimes all involved in the Burns, Oregon standoff were charged with, though sounding like “terrorism” were actually simply saying stupid things, making illegal threat to the press that begged for more and having a half-baked cause that few American supported.
The “Oregon militia” was not from Oregon, mostly Mormons, an odd religious sect, and occupying a wildlife preserve that 905 of Americans want to see the Federal government protect from people like the “Oregon militia.”
The situation in Oregon, which continues at this writing, has nothing to do with “land rights” or patriotism. Few involved have a history of anything other than individual greed with several of those claiming backgrounds of military service exposed as frauds.
None involved have any history of seeking social justice, far from it, their background invariably involves “freeloading” and pandering to powerful extremist, extremist and “anti-democratic” elements.
What this incident has exposed is the ability of those undeserving of any support, and the majority of Americans would have been happy if the FBI had moved in “Waco style” and wiped out the Oregon occupiers, to use social media and the internet along with foreign press to duplicate what is seen in the Middle East.
We are talking about ISIS.
Key supporters of the Oregon militia, such as retired American Major General Paul Vallely, former head of Psychological Warfare Operations, is a big supporter of these movements as are his invisible backers. Vallely has also repeatedly travelled illegally to Syria as has Senator John McCain, to meet with “moderate rebels,” including Baghdadi who now heads ISIS.
In fact, the power right wing oligarchs that support the Oregon “occupation” also support presidential candidates like Ted Cruz and JEB Bush, pouring millions into the coffers. They also support Israel’s occupation of Arab territories, the war in Yemen, the coup in Kiev and have long advocated a war on Iran despite the recent nuclear settlement.
This same group supports military action against Russia to retake Crimea. This is the geopolitical picture that is not seen behind the Oregon “occupation.” Perhaps some should look harder.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”