The internet is the vast collective digital mind of the puny humans living on our pathethic spinning ball of mud called Earth. It is a growing electronic organism of unimaginable size and shape. Even powerful governments and multi-national corporations can't fully control it.
We are all part of it as contributors and spectators: buying and selling, listening and telling.
Every grand dream and dark nightmare in human history can be found within a few moments of your desire to know it. It can be a path to enlightenment and a little box of horrors.
Surfin' USA
The International Association of Chiefs of Police is holding its 2008 conference in San Diego this week. 15,000 law enforcement professionals are expected to attend. Apparently, it's like a huge gun show — the exhibitors list reads like a who's who of scary corporations — except there is better food and entertainment. Haute Chili is performing popular cover tunes during the big banquet tonight.
Militarization of Civilian Police
If you're curious where the U.S. police state is headed that Bush/Cheney amped up with their post 9-11 Shock Doctrine, check out the extensive conference program offered to law enforcement professionals at this event.
Selected 2008 IACP Conference program topics
• Implementation of Intelligence Led Policing - Centralized Investigations with support of all area commands is transitioning to an Intelligence Led Policing model. To accomplished this goal, a BJA grant was obtained and infrastructure was put into place to ensure its success.
• Combat Stress Injuries: Stigma, treatment and implications for police work after combat - The severity of combat stress injuries ranges from expected reactions to combat trauma and return to functioning, to severe PTSD. It is important to realize that the majority of those exposed to combat trauma will not develop a syndrome that will impair their functioning in their military jobs or jobs in law enforcement.
• Radicalization in the West - This presentation will involve discussion of the evolution of the threat to the United States; how it has changed over the past 20 years, and how the data on terrorists refutes conventional wisdom. Additional discussion will describe the process of radicalization as well as outline a typical trajectory of a terrorist career. This session will be closed to the press.
• Honor Israel National Police for Counter Terrorism Exchanges - (This program had no description, but I suggest it might be called "How to occupy a country for 60 years")
• Following, Forfeiting and Sharing the Money - The U.S. Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section (AFMLS) will present a workshop focusing on (1) following the money of criminal enterprises through financial investigations and (2) sharing forfeited funds with state and local law enforcement.
• Addressing the IED Threat: Enhancing Bombing Prevention and Response Efforts by Harnessing Partnerships, Training, Information-Sharing, Public-Awareness, and Planning
That last selected workshop is for your local law enforcement officers to learn about improvised explosive devices (IED). The Shock Doctrine not only works on the average citizen, it works on the law enforcement community too. Nothing like filling your local traffic cop's head with visions of you possibly exploding your car when he pulls you over for speeding on the highway. Somehow I want to say something like "Bush wants Boston to be like Baghdad" now.
Bush Crime Family
With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush administration merged civilian crime prevention with the military and intelligence communities. It's a familiar theme in the Bush Crime Family.
George H.W. Bush was responsible for merging international drug interdiction, the military, and civilian asset forfeiture domestically while flooding U.S. cities with Columbian cocaine to fund his pet covert ops projects around the planet for his ideological and corporate cronies.
It's all fun and games until the neocon nutjobs start using all that expensive high-tech surveillance and military weapons systems on U.S. citizens domestically. The Terror President has used fear to create a huge domestically-focussed military industrial complex worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
[headphones]
Sinja's Project Playlist
[lyric of the moment]
If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?
– Lynyrd Skynyrd, Freebird
Police State Propaganda War Bush Terror Lies
