Civil libertarians have been concerned for years with the move toward greater use of the military in domestic operations by both President George W. Bush and now by President Barack Obama. The military continues to shift resources for prepare for large-scale domestic operations. Most recently, the Marines moved to create a battalion to allow the military to “be capable of helping control civil disturbances, handling detainees, carrying out forensic work, and using biometrics to identify suspects.” Now the Small Wars Journal, a respected publication closely followed in the U.S. military, has published an article entitled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future” by retired Army Col. Kevin Benson of the Army’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Jennifer Weber, a Civil War expert at the University of Kansas. It lays out not just the military but the legal basis for military operations to crush domestic insurrections in the United States.
The authors write how the military must be prepared to act against citizens when they received orders regarding domestic threats to the government. What is troubling is the lack of balance in the article and the general assumption of legality in the full spectrum of such operations. What is clear is that, again, Congress is allowing for such preparations without any serious discussion or review. The assumption of legality will soon become the acceptance of legality in domestic use of military forces.
The article lays out how the existing policies regarding “full spectrum” operations require the military to prepare for internal campaigns against our own citizens: “full spectrum operations in the coming two decades (US Army Training and Doctrine Command, The Army Operating Concept 2016 – 2028, TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1, dated 19 August 2010, p. iii. Hereafter cited as TD Pam 525-3-1. The Army defines full spectrum operations as the combination of offensive, defensive, and either stability operations overseas or civil support operations on U.S. soil).”
The underlying scenarios are set for as soon as 2016 if the economy does not improve and unrest grows. Focusing on a town called Darlington, the article explores an order to “Fix Darlington, but don’t destroy it!” The authors write “We cannot discount the agility of an external threat, the evolution of Al Qaeda for example, and its ability to take advantage of a ‘Darlington event’ within U.S. borders.”
The authors write “once it is put into play, Americans will expect the military to execute without pause and as professionally as if it were acting overseas.” The article takes on a chilling tone, telling its many military personnel readers that “the Army cannot disappoint the American people, especially in such a moment.”
The authors spend comparatively little time considering the constitutional and legal barriers to the operations. They details how “Federal forces continue to tighten the noose as troops seize and secure power and water stations, radio and TV stations, and hospitals.” Yet, legal limitations are treated as largely irrelevant.
I have no problem with provocative articles exploring scenarios. This are issues that we should be discussing. However, the tenor and one-sided analysis of the piece is rather chilling. What is even more chilling is the lack of national debate as the Obama Administration continues the expansion of the military into domestic law enforcement and operations. It is indeed a “vision for the future” — the question is whether this is the vision that most citizens have for their government and themselves.
Source: Wasington Times
Idealist:
For military use purposes, hollow point ammo is prohibited by The Hague Convention of 1899 (Declaration III). This convention does not apply to civilian agencies, only military forces.
The reason why hollow-point ammo is used by police agencies in the US is an ugly truth but is what it is. Generally the reasons are as follows:
In the past, most police agencies used .38 caliber, round nosed bullets. Later, this was abandoned due to under performance issues where the cartridges were not effective in stopping violent offenders.
The hollow point, or specifically the jacked hollow point (JHP) or Semi-jacketed version (SJHP) became the standard due to better performance. The reasons are:
The bullet expands significantly, often with jagged edges which sever more veins and arteries, leading to rapid blood loss and faster incapacitation.
The expansion tends to prevent over-penetration in which the bullet passes easily through the intended target and threatens others.
Hollow point bullets do not have the same richochet potential as FMJ ammo does.
Hollow point ammo tends to be somewhat more accurate as this shifts the overall weight to the back of the bullet and this causes a minor benefit of increased stability during flight.
Hollow point ammo is better for use against metal targets since it does not damage the target as quickly as FMJs do.
Given these traits of the new bullets one cannot help but look at this with a bit of revulsion, but as I said it is what it is. A LEO or anyone else who is being attacked and needs to use a firearm to defend herself wants that threatening person to be incapacitated as fast as possible. Currently firearms provide the best protection to a person trying to kill the victim. I don’t see this changing in our lifetimes. Tasers are not effective against someone shooting at the victim, especially at distances greater than 20 feet. Tasers do not always work due to the darts not hitting properly. A LEO cannot take a chance on dying by using these.
Globally speaking, one has to look at the reason for the use of JHP ammo not the ammo itself. If the public believes the police or individuals only use firearms when lawful or for the purpose of self defense they are in my view benign. Abusive governments are worse than the ammo they possess, which I suspect is your main concern.
Consider the alternative, an abusive government with FMJ ammo. People hit by say the Syrian government’s forces’ FMJ ammo are not going to declare “Thank God these abusive police forces shot me with FMJ rounds, I could have been really hurt badly. When they shoot FMJ they show they are the more progressive belligerant.”
Until humantiy declares universally a farewell to arms we have the reality in which we presently live.
“once it is put into play, Americans will expect the military to execute without pause and as professionally as if it were acting overseas.”
I suppose dissenters can look forward to “enhanced interrogation”, and posthumous potraits of themselves while grinning hillbillies hover over them.
Dredd 1, August 14, 2012 at 9:57 am
Jefferson was quoted up-thread, so to show accord with Jefferson note what another early president said:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.
(Greatest Source …, quoting James Madison).
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History repeats itself, get ready.
George W. Bush is an eternal teenager. And he was elected twice. Welcome to reality, America.
Here’s more information on the present. Find at wikileaks on twitter: “Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries
It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, including for ’political opponents’ are a reality. Today WikiLeaks began releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry. Working with Bugged Planet and Privacy International, as well as media organizations form six countries – ARD in Germany, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK, The Hindu in India, L’Espresso in Italy, OWNI in France and the Washington Post in the U.S. Wikileaks is shining a light on this secret industry that has boomed since September 11, 2001 and is worth billions of dollars per year. WikiLeaks has released 287 documents today, but the Spy Files project is ongoing and further information will be released this week and into next year.
International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users’ physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.
But the WikiLeaks Spy Files are more than just about ’good Western countries’ exporting to ’bad developing world countries’. Western companies are also selling a vast range of mass surveillance equipment to Western intelligence agencies. In traditional spy stories, intelligence agencies like MI5 bug the phone of one or two people of interest. In the last ten years systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm. Intelligence companies such as VASTech secretly sell equipment to permanently record the phone calls of entire nations. Others record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 meters. Systems to infect every Facebook user, or smart-phone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.
Selling Surveillance to Dictators
When citizens overthrew the dictatorships in Egypt and Libya this year, they uncovered listening rooms where devices from Gamma corporation of the UK, Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp of China monitored their every move online and on the phone.
Surveillance companies like SS8 in the U.S., Hacking Team in Italy and Vupen in France manufacture viruses (Trojans) that hijack individual computers and phones (including iPhones, Blackberries and Androids), take over the device, record its every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in. Other companies like Phoenexia in the Czech Republic collaborate with the military to create speech analysis tools. They identify individuals by gender, age and stress levels and track them based on ‘voiceprints’. Blue Coat in the U.S. and Ipoque in Germany sell tools to governments in countries like China and Iran to prevent dissidents from organizing online.
Trovicor, previously a subsidiary of Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied the Bahraini government with interception technologies that tracked human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar. He was shown details of personal mobile phone conversations from before he was interrogated and beaten in the winter of 2010-2011.
How Mass Surveillance Contractors Share Your Data with the State
In January 2011, the National Security Agency broke ground on a $1.5 billion facility in the Utah desert that is designed to store terabytes of domestic and foreign intelligence data forever and process it for years to come.
Telecommunication companies are forthcoming when it comes to disclosing client information to the authorities – no matter the country. Headlines during August’s unrest in the UK exposed how Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry, offered to help the government identify their clients. RIM has been in similar negotiations to share BlackBerry Messenger data with the governments of India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Weaponizing Data Kills Innocent People
There are commercial firms that now sell special software that analyze this data and turn it into powerful tools that can be used by military and intelligence agencies.
For example, in military bases across the U.S., Air Force pilots use a video link and joystick to fly Predator drones to conduct surveillance over the Middle East and Central Asia. This data is available to Central Intelligence Agency officials who use it to fire Hellfire missiles on targets.
The CIA officials have bought software that allows them to match phone signals and voice prints instantly and pinpoint the specific identity and location of individuals. Intelligence Integration Systems, Inc., based in Massachusetts – sells a “location-based analytics” software called Geospatial Toolkit for this purpose. Another Massachusetts company named Netezza, which bought a copy of the software, allegedly reverse engineered the code and sold a hacked version to the Central Intelligence Agency for use in remotely piloted drone aircraft.
IISI, which says that the software could be wrong by a distance of up to 40 feet, sued Netezza to prevent the use of this software. Company founder Rich Zimmerman stated in court that his “reaction was one of stun, amazement that they (CIA) want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work.”
Orwell’s World
Across the world, mass surveillance contractors are helping intelligence agencies spy on individuals and ‘communities of interest’ on an industrial scale.
The Wikileaks Spy Files reveal the details of which companies are making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial regimes that abuse human rights.
ME 1, August 14, 2012 at 9:24 am
What a pleasure it is to see all of you quasi-commies working yourselves up into a frothy, inconsolable, irrational terror. I’m sure when the crap hits the fan it will be you all acting like loons running, screaming and ducking for cover.
What did you all expect would happen when you continually hand the central government more and more cash and power?
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Ask Stalin. Or Hitler. Or the dumb Dago.
Wow, just spun through the replies of this article, which is a pleasantly surprising loud criticism that we just don’t see enough of.
What is happening here is similar in many ways to what happened in Germany, circa 1930’s.
A democratically administered nation, slowly and incrementally pushed towards tyranny, with the complacency of the public at large, and with a few loud doomsayers that no one took seriously. Eventually the doomsayers were taken seriously enough by the govt to shut them up.
By the time the voting public did take it seriously, they could no longer vote to undo it. At that point the Stockholm syndrome for self-survival kicked in, the public mostly going along with it, and the only way to undo the seizure of the nation by jingoists, statists and extremists in power, was either by revolution or by what happened – being beaten militarily by other powers.
We here on the internet are still relatively comfortable, but inch by inch the govt is most definitely encroaching very personally on your lives. You feel it in many incremental ways, but by necessity and practicality dismiss the real urgency of it all. You still have that mental cushion that says, “Well there not here banging at my door.”
But the encroach is multifaceted and has become a mental mindset of all branches our goverments, national as well as the very local.
For me, they can and have started banging at my door; my little pit of hell of overarching, insinuating and presumptuous govt action has expressed itself in the local agencies of the Family Court system, which comes with it the very real and instant probabilities of ruinous fines, property seizures, licensure revocations, and imprisonment, for non-crimes.
That is my bette noir, but you can be sure there are dozens of others custom made for each person in this country.
But I see that aggressive attitude and heavy-handed unconstitutional assertion of power over the individual in America, as a symptom across the board. All our govt branches and agencies have developed this mindset, and they feed off each other’s confidence that they can and will do these things.
The checks and balances are compromised and muted, the courts feel the same anti-individual thrust, and are not curbing their dogs.
In sum, it is fk’d, and it will be only too soon that they will be knocking at your door too, for one reason or another.
Then you will no longer have that mental cushion, or any resources, to scurry back to, and will have to face what another part of you has known all along to be true.
ID707
Since they see us as potential rebels, is it not time to rebel, before their plans have been fully executed?
We have a moral leader in TJ. How to do it without the preparations being detected? No preparations. Just blood on the streets.
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Surprise.
ID707,
Don’t talk to me about sex. I know what I am. What are you?
oops …
the link to the quote of Madison is here
Darren,
Just goes to show you can’t trust figures, or figures that produce them rather. Take your pick. You seem good at it. Thanks for the math. International convention required soldiers to use bullets which disable but do not maxiamize trauma, thus full jackets.
But who gave police the right to use hollow point? There was some discussion in the newspapers in Sweden when they were proposed some few years ago.
When I hear figures used to impress I usually say: In comparison with what, in what percent, per capita, per annum, per what you idiot.
Bla bla increased profit by xxx million (0.05 percent WOW). But here I swallowed the bait and the opinion which followed it. Fool, am I, and I have company.
Jefferson was quoted up-thread, so to show accord with Jefferson note what another early president said:
(Greatest Source …, quoting James Madison).
lottakatz:
“That we are watching an artificial impoverishment in the western world is not an accident IMO, and it’s not an end in itself, just a means to an end.”
Let me guess who your bad guys are, no need. Now how can we see the same thing happening and have 2 different conclusions as to why it is happening?
What a pleasure it is to see all of you quasi-commies working yourselves up into a frothy, inconsolable, irrational terror. I’m sure when the crap hits the fan it will be you all acting like loons running, screaming and ducking for cover.
What did you all expect would happen when you continually hand the central government more and more cash and power?
Idealist:
With many of your points I consider to be true or at least plausable, I might not hold as strong their inter-relation. But what can be worrisome is to presume seemingly related events draw proof of a particular outcome, in this example the belief of an upcoming oppression by the federal government. We certainly should work to prevent this from happening by ordinary means, namely the voting booth, but also with investigative reporting, news media or simple word of mouth.
As for the 450M rounds of 40 caliber hollow point ammo, I might offer at least a measure of reassurance this might not be the concern as it might appear.
DHS employs 200 thousand individuals. Surely all of these persons are not commissioned officers and do not carry firearms but a large number do. If we assume that 60% have handguns that makes 120,000. Hollow point ammo is not used in general by military personnel but is in LE uses. I would suspect that is for police type agencies. If you take the 120,000 and divide this into 450,000,000 that is 3,750 rounds or 75 boxes per person. This does souund like a large number but consider also that a LEO can easily shoot 20 boxes of ammo per year just on training and qualification per year. The DHS also maintains the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and new officers can easily shoot 3000 rounds or 60 boxes of ammo during firearms training. Given also the fact that LE egencies have been plagued with ammo shortages over the years, buying this amount might be reasonable for supply purposes.
Darren Smith,
Just for comparison and reflection.
Operation Northwood, signed by JCS chief Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, available in fotostat copy on the net, was aimed at providing military motivation to attack Cuba, Its form was to do a false flag operation to dupe the people, outrage them, scare them, and provide pressure for the desired decision.
9/11 was a revival in far greater scope and expertise and with a greater goal. Its ultimate purpose was to create a continuous war against an adversary who could never be regarded as defeated finally. The war on terrorism.
Let us now contemplate 450 million hollow point 40 caliber rounds ordered by Homeland Security.
Does anymore convincing fact be necessary to convince us that there is one with our names on it?
War empties the coffers. Kings were in the hands of financiers. Now we are in the hands of the financiers also. And the whole conspiracy. And for every leaker we have 10 million picking happily up there paychecks and pensions. Some becoming millionaires after early retirement, so has been proven as CIA employees start companies for doing contracts for their old employer.
Duplicity and greed feed corruption and defeat justice and democracy at every joust.
Since they see us as potential rebels, is it not time to rebel, before their plans have been fully executed?
We have a moral leader in TJ. How to do it without the preparations being detected? No preparations. Just blood on the streets.
Matt Johnson,
Thanks. You inspired a good one on my part.
A retreat to verbal abuse shows but a lack of more fertile words with which to pursue an argument.
Dedicated to the master of alliteration, sex unknown but suspected.
David Blauw,
Schmognitive or smognitive. Only yiddish speaking or LA-ans care. We are illiterate, speaking for myself, on such questions.
Hopefully, one outcome of this defense analysis debacle will outrage enough people that it will politically forestall any movement toward moving toward this military posturing.
It’s much easier at this state to prevent such a bad outcome in the beginning before it expands to a worse situation.
Better that the cat’s out of the bag now; better than heading down the wrong path secretly. I don’t want to see bad things for us or those in office. People need to undertand the average person does not pose a threat to the security of our country.
Aaron,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
Don’t use words you don’t understand as pejoratives. In a democracy, the power rightfully rests with the people which is by definition a collective of individuals. Jefferson’s words mean the same thing now as they did then, including the collective right of the governed to control the government and be free of oligarchical despotism and tyranny.
Individual rights are of critical importance but they only exist in the context of a society – a group – that protects them. The protection of individual rights is not just a singular effort, it is a singular effort aided and enforced by the collective.
The erosion of our civil rights is not a function of collectivism. The erosion of our civil rights is a function of democracy being supplanted by the creeping tyranny of plutocratic oligarchical corporatist fascism which by definition puts the needs and desires of a few ahead to the needs and the desires of the many ergo it is antithetical to the collectivist form of government known as democracy because it concentrates power in the hands of the few and once concentrated that power is threated by dissolution and distribution of power to the many in a democracy.
And with this article and mention of TJ how could I not add this…
“What country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
-Thomas Jefferson