[Author]We live in a state of undeclared martial law

by John Whitehead

Tenth Amendment Center
[/Author]
“If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?”—Sunil Dutta, an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department for 17 years

Life in the American police state is an endless series of don’ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don’t talk back to police officers, don’t even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don’t run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don’t carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don’t expect privacy in public, don’t let your kids walk to the playground alone, don’t engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don’t try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don’t play music for tips in a metro station, don’t feed whales, and on and on.

For those who resist, who dare to act independently, think for themselves, march to the beat of a different drummer, the consequences are invariably a one-way trip to the local jail or death.

What Americans must understand, what we have chosen to ignore, what we have fearfully turned a blind eye to lest the reality prove too jarring is the fact that we no longer live in the “city on the hill,” a beacon of freedom for all the world.

Far from being a shining example of democracy at work, we have become a lesson for the world in how quickly freedom turns to tyranny, how slippery the slope by which a once-freedom-loving people can be branded, shackled and fooled into believing that their prisons walls are, in fact, for their own protection.

Having spent more than half a century exporting war to foreign lands, profiting from war, and creating a national economy seemingly dependent on the spoils of war, we failed to protest when the war hawks turned their profit-driven appetites on us, bringing home the spoils of war—the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.—to be distributed for free to local police agencies and used to secure the homeland against “we the people.”

It’s not just the Defense Department that is passing out free military equipment to local police. Since the early 1990s, the Justice Department has worked with the Pentagon to fund military technology for police departments. And then there are the billions of dollars’ worth of federal grants distributed by the Department of Homeland Security, enabling police departments to go on a veritable buying spree for highly questionable military-grade supplies better suited to the battlefield.

Is it any wonder that we now find ourselves in the midst of a war zone?

We live in a state of undeclared martial law. We have become the enemy.

In a war zone, there are no police—only soldiers. Thus, there is no more Posse Comitatus prohibiting the government from using the military in a law enforcement capacity. Not when the local police have, for all intents and purposes, already become the military.

In a war zone, the soldiers shoot to kill, as American police have now been trained to do. Whether the perceived “threat” is armed or unarmed no longer matters when police are authorized to shoot first and ask questions later.

In a war zone, even the youngest members of the community learn at an early age to accept and fear the soldier in their midst. Thanks to funding from the Obama administration, more schools are hiring armed police officers—some equipped with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles—to “secure” their campuses.

In a war zone, you have no rights. When you are staring down the end of a police rifle, there can be no free speech. When you’re being held at bay by a militarized, weaponized mine-resistant tank, there can be no freedom of assembly. When you’re being surveilled with thermal imaging devices, facial recognition software and full-body scanners and the like, there can be no privacy. When you’re charged with disorderly conduct simply for daring to question or photograph or document the injustices you see, with the blessing of the courts no less, there can be no freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And when you’re a prisoner in your own town, unable to move freely, kept off the streets, issued a curfew at night, there can be no mistaking the prison walls closing in.

This is not just happening in Ferguson, Missouri. As I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, it’s happening and will happen anywhere and everywhere else in this country where law enforcement officials are given carte blanche to do what they like, when they like, how they like, with immunity from their superiors, the legislatures, and the courts.

You see, what Americans have failed to comprehend, living as they do in a TV-induced, drug-like haze of fabricated realities, narcissistic denial, and partisan politics, is that we’ve not only brought the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan home to be used against the American people. We’ve also brought the very spirit of the war home.

This is what it feels like to be a conquered people. This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation. This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of doing something you never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your movements tracked, your motives questioned.

This is what it’s like to be a citizen of the American police state. This is what it’s like to be an enemy combatant in your own country.

So if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, by all means, stand down. Cower in the face of the police, turn your eyes away from injustice, find any excuse to suggest that the so-called victims of the police state deserved what they got.

But remember, when that rifle finally gets pointed in your direction—and it will—when there’s no one left to stand up for you or speak up for you, remember that you were warned.

It works the same in every age. Martin Niemoller understood this. A German pastor who openly opposed Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in a concentration camp, Niemoller warned:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

[Author]by Tony Cartalucci
[/Author]
Russia is consistently portrayed in the Western media as the “aggressor” amid the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, however, it is clear through overt moves by NATO’s proxy regime in Kiev, that attempts are being made to intentionally provoke, not defend against Moscow’s ire.

The New York Times, in a recent article admits that the military campaign Kiev is carrying out against its own citizens in eastern Ukraine is overt brutality carried out by literal flag-waving Nazis, with the all but stated goal of provoking a Russian invasion.

Brutal Provocations

The New York Times in an article titled, “Ukraine Strategy Bets on Restraint by Russia,” states:

Buoyed by successes against the separatists over the past two months — and noting that the Russians have threatened an invasion in the region before without following through — Ukrainian commanders have pressed ahead with an offensive to drive the rebels from their stronghold in Donetsk in the east.

The army continued to fire artillery into the city nightly, and paramilitary groups raided outlying villages despite warnings from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he could intervene at any time to protect Ukrainians who favor closer ties with his country. And the Ukrainians have flaunted their victories.

Shelling populated centers and raiding villages far from its tenuous base of support, does not appear to be Kiev “defending itself,” nor in line with the “international norms” frequently cited by Washington, London, and Brussels when justifying “humanitarian interventions” elsewhere throughout the world.

The NYT also notes that Russia “threatened” to intervene amid Kiev’s brutality, but never did – calling into question the notion that Russia is being “aggressive.”The NYT continues, with what appears to be language designed to provoke Russia into crossing its border with Ukraine to intervene:

But Western leaders and analysts remain unconvinced Mr. Putin will be willing to be taunted endlessly or to permit extensive deaths of pro-Russian civilians. The United Nations said recently that at least 1,543 civilians and combatants on both sides have died since mid-April.

And in this statement, the NYT admits that indeed the Banderite Nazis NATO is aiding, funding, and soon to be training and arming , are carrying out a campaign of brutality causing “extensive deaths of pro-Russian civilians.”Nazis and Western Complicity  The NYT also explicitly admits that Nazis line the ranks of the “militias” fighting for NATO’s regime in Kiev, and carrying out this campaign of provocation:

Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.

While the NYT attempts to cast as an ambiguous light as possible upon the connections Azov has with Nazism, the Azov Battalion does not simply fly a “neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.” The symbol is in fact the Wolfsangel used by Adolf Hitler’s various SS military divisions during World War II and is as good as saluting Hitler himself to affirm allegiance to his toxic ideology and to celebrate the Nazis’ numerous, notorious atrocities.

The BBC would elaborate on the nature of militias like “Azov,” who are undoubtedly the recipients of US, British, and other NATO member states’ aid, cash, and political support, in its article, “Ukraine conflict: ‘White power’ warrior from Sweden.” In it, it profiles a member of Azov Battalion, Mikael Skillt, and states:

“I have at least three purposes in the Azov Battalion: I am a commander of a small reconnaissance unit, I am also a sniper, and sometimes I work as a special coordinator for clearing houses and going into civilian areas.”

As to his political views, Mr Skillt prefers to call himself a nationalist, but in fact his views are typical of a neo-Nazi.

Dismissed by the West as “Russian propaganda,” it is clear that even the most “Western” media outlets cannot report on the Ukrainian conflict without coming across literal Nazis fighting for Kiev and operating in “civilian areas” in eastern Ukraine. The BBC would admit the Azov Battalion is far from a fringe group and was raised by the Ukrainian Interior Ministry itself. When NATO members announce “aid” to the regime in Kiev, they are also, by default, announcing aid to literal Neo-Nazi militant groups raised by Kiev’s Interior Ministry, like the Azov Battalion.

Using Humanitarian Concerns to Provoke War

It was in 2011 that the US, UK, NATO, and its regional partners carried out a coordinated propaganda campaign including the fabrication of atrocities to justify the military invasion of Libya and Syria. It would later turn out that the “civilians” the Libyan and Syrian governments were fighting were in fact heavily armed terrorists hailing from Al Qaeda. The deceit in Libya unraveled but not before NATO began military operations in support of these terrorists.

In Syria, the deception was exposed and attempts by the West to intervene directly have thus far failed.Conversely, in Ukraine, the West is backing literal Nazis who are admittedly mass murdering civilians in eastern Ukraine, in an attempt to intentionally provoke Russia into war.On one hand, humanitarian catastrophes are fabricated by the West to justify its own military interventions, while on the other, real humanitarian catastrophes are created to provoke military action from the West’s enemies.

While the NYT notes that Russia has thus far not taken the bait, “experts” it interviewed for its story claim such patience is not likely to last. In reality, Moscow has weighed its strengths, weaknesses, and the strategic lay of not only Ukraine, but the region and the world, and has made the decision that will, in the long-term based on reason, produce the best outcome for Russia, the Russian people, and its compatriots beyond its borders.

While the West continues its attempts to manipulate the public and the political circles intersecting amid the Ukrainian crisis, Moscow has already proven it will not take the bait unless it is sure it can swallow the fisherman as well.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”