After filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Richmond Police Department for police training documents, Mo Karn received much more than expected in return: homeland security and crowd control guides that show how the police target protests.

The police filed for an emergency court order yesterday to prohibit Karn from publicizing any of the documents, which should never have been released. The cops’ reasoning? “Defendant Mo Karn is a known and admitted anarchist.”

The documents, however, have already been published online. And buried in the training guides are insights into three trends in law enforcement that have been occurring not just in Virginia, but nationally: the demonization of protest, the militarization of police, and turning local cops into “terrorism” officials.

The Demonization of Protest
The Richmond Police Department’s Emergency Operations Plan
includes a section on “civil disturbances.” While this sounds innocuous, “civil disturbances” are defined so broadly as to include what the police call “dissident gatherings.”

“The City of Richmond is a target rich environment” for antiwar protesters, the document says. And it warns that police and homeland security have reason to be increasingly concerned:

“Current training and intelligence reveals that protestors are becoming more proficient in the methods of assembly.”

Militarization of Local Police
Such a depiction of “assembly” (a First Amendment right) as a “disturbance” and a threat is all the more troubling when put in the context of the other police department guides. Richmond’s Crowd Management Operating Manual is for the police unit assigned to large protests (no experience required). Among the tools that the crowd management team are issued include riot shields, chemical agents, cut tools, helmets, body armor, cameras, video cameras, batons, gas masks, and a “mass arrest kit.”

Deputizing Local Cops as Counter-terrorism Officials
This militarization of local police is accompanied by another trend in law enforcement since September 11th: deputizing local cops to becoming “homeland security” and counter-terrorism officials. According to the Homeland Security Criminal Intelligence Unit Operating Manual, “The Richmond Police Department is under contract with the FBI to provide assistance through staffing, intelligence and equipment.” And one member of the homeland security unit is assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The result? Documents like the Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment. The 2009 document was created by the Virginia Fusion Center, of which the Richmond Police Department is part. Fusion centers are ostensibly designed to gather terrorism intelligence from multiple police agencies, and make us safer. In practice, they routinely label activists as “terrorists.” Among the “terrorist threats” identified in Virginia were animal rights activists, environmental activists, and anarchists.

According to the threat assessment, “The Virginia Federation of Anarchists has held two conferences in Richmond in November 2007 and January 2008″ and “Anarchist protesters at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. spilled over into Prince William County.”

Karn, meanwhile, wears her scarlet circle ‘A’ with pride, and has no problem being labeled an anarchist. The FOIA was submitted by the Wingnut Collective, a Richmond anarchist group, as part of their police accountability project.

In his court motion warning that Karn is an “anarchist,” Richmond’s Deputy Assistant Attorney Brian Telfair doesn’t allege the possibility of any violence or property destruction. Instead, he cites a blog post by Karn about acquiring government information through legal requests. The title? “FOIA Rocks!”

From Michelle Obama… -

For only the second time in my adult life, I am not ashamed of my country.  I want to thank the hard working American people for paying $242 thousand dollars for my vacation in Spain .

My daughter Sasha, several long-time family friends, my personal staff and various guests had a wonderful time.  Honestly, you just haven’t lived until you have stayed in a $2,500.00 per night private 3-story villa at a 5-Star luxury hotel.

Thank you also for the use of Air Force Two and the 70 Secret Service personnel who tagged along to be sure we were safe and cared for at all times.  By the way, if you happen to be visiting the Costa del Sol, I highly recommend the Buenaventura Plaza restaurant in Marbella ; great lobster with rice and oysters!  I’m ashamed to admit the lobsters we ate in Martha’s Vineyard were not quite as tasty, but what can you do if you’re not in Europe , you have to just grin and bear it?

Air Force Two (which costs $11,351 per hour to operate according to Government Accounting Office reports) only used 47,500 gallons of jet fuel for this trip and carbon emissions were a mere 1,031 tons of CO2. These are only rough estimates, but they are close.  That’s quite a carbon footprint as my good friend Al Gore would say, so we must ask the American citizens to drive smaller, more fuel efficient cars and drive less too, so we can lessen our combined carbon footprint.

I know times are hard and millions of you are struggling to put food on the table and trying to make ends meet.  So I do appreciate your sacrifices and do hope you find work soon.

I was really exhausted after Barack took our family on a luxury vacation in Maine a few weeks ago.  I just had to get away for a few days.

Cordially,

Michelle  Obama

P.S. Thank you as well for the $2 BILLION dollar trip to India from which we just returned!

P.SS. Thank you, too, for that vacation trip to Martha’s Vineyard ; it was fabulous. And thanks for that second smaller jet that took our dog Bo to Martha’s Vineyard so we and the children could have him with us while we were away from the White House for eleven days. After all, we couldn’t take him on Air Force One because he might pee on some wires or something.

P.SSS. Oh, I almost forgot to say thanks also for our two-week trip to Hawaii at Christmas. That 7,000 square foot house was great!

Love ya!

Remember we all have to share the pain of these economic times equally! Love to -redistribute- share- the wealth.

Mike Riggs | March 22, 2012

Eighth-graders at Liberty Middle School in Fairfax, Virgina, were assigned opposition research on the four remaining GOP presidential candidates, and told to forward that research to the Obama campaign, reports The Daily Caller:

The assignment was for students to research the backgrounds and positions of each of the GOP candidates for president and find “weaknesses” in them, the parent explained. From there, students were to prepare a strategy paper to exploit those weaknesses and then to send their suggestions to the Obama campaign.

Liberty teacher Michael Denman, who declined to comment, unveiled the assignment in mid-January when he broke the Civics Honor’s class into four groups, one for each Republican candidate. The students were then to collaborate as a group and research the backgrounds of their assigned candidate.

Denman assigned two kids to write a paper revealing the identified “weaknesses,” two to write the attack strategy paper and two others to locate an individual inside the Obama campaign to whom they could send the information.

“My classmates don’t actually know a lot, but a few of us tended to agree that the most recent instruction on this project just didn’t seem right,” one of the students told TheDC. “Mr. Denman didn’t tell us where to find the information, just to research on them.”

More here. Who needs Citizens United when you have millions of impressionable young people trapped under the thumb of the American Federation of Teachers and a compulsory education system?

A crowd of more than a thousand people met alongside the Washington Monument Monday afternoon and marched to the White House in a demonstration of support for Ron Paul. With an “about face,” veterans and active duty service members turned their backs to the White House and sent a message to the President: Ron Paul is the choice of the troops.

Adam Kokesh, founder of Veterans for Ron Paul 2012 and a veteran of the Iraq war, said, while he couldn’t speak for everyone, a majority of the people at the event support the Texas congressman in his 2012 presidential campaign — especially for his foreign policy positions.

“It seems very clear to me that those of us who are willing to put our lives on the line to defend this country want a commander in chief who is going to be decisive, who’s going to put America’s security interests first, and who’s only going to send us into harms way with a clear mission,” Kokesh said. “Ron Paul is the only candidate that comes close to measuring up to that standard.”

Alex Schlegel, a Baltimore native and member of the Air Force, said he also agrees with Paul’s foreign policy ideals, as the U.S. hasn’t fought in a war constitutionally since World War II.

“I raised my right hand to defend the Constitution,” Schlegel said.

Standing at the gates of the White House, hundreds of veterans and active duty service members, including Schlegel, turned their backs. Together, they saluted one second for every service member who has committed suicide during Barack Obama’s presidency. After eight minutes of saluting, they observed a 21-minute silent prayer – one second for every service member who died abroad during President Obama’s term.

Kokesh said he believes the message sent by the “about face” is anything but unpatriotic. “It’s not about the office, it’s not about the building, it’s not about the White House,” he said. “It is a symbolic repudiation of Barack Obama’s foreign policy.”

In front of the formation, supporters watched and cheered as the demonstration finished. Grey Zachary from Knoxville, Tenn., was there with her husband in mind, as he’s been serving in Korea for two years. “I’m supporting the man that supports my man,” she said.

With three brothers also in the military, Zachary understands the strain it can put on a family. She supports Paul’s message of reducing troops, and agrees that we’re sending the wrong message by deploying troops around the world. “Why would I expect a country not to fight back if we were there first?” she asked.

Ultimately, Zachary said, it’s up to voters to bring about real change, from who they elect as representatives to who they elect as president. Her choice for president is Ron Paul, she said.

“To support any other candidate, I would lack integrity,” she said.

Overall, Kokesh was thrilled with the turnout and plans on continuing his efforts all the way to the Republican National Convention.

“If we have to march on the RNC we’re going to march on the RNC and we are going to make the Republican base listen to the troops that they claim to support,” he added.

by Frank Karsten

Although almost every democratic country suffers from bloated government, over-regulation, heavy taxation and enormous public debts, few people see a causal connection between these problems and the democratic system itself. For many, the solution to these problems is more democracy, not less.

Democracy tends to be equated by many people with prosperity, equality, fairness, togetherness and liberty. There is no evidence for any of this. Democracy rests on three main principles: you have the right to vote, you have the right to run for office, and the majority rules. That’s it. Nowhere is it written for instance that democracy guarantees the right to free speech, a right that many people link with democracy. Nor is there any reason why democracy should lead to prosperity.

In fact, the very principles of democracy give rise to processes that lead society to the opposite of freedom and prosperity.

The most important of these processes are the following.

1) Short-termism

As Hans-Hermann Hoppe explained in his 2001 book Democracy, The God That Failed, democracy leads to high time preference, both among rulers and citizens. Since democratically elected politicians are only temporarily in office, and since they are not the owners of the resources at their disposal, they have a strong incentive to spend money on projects that make them popular, with little regard for the future. The problems they create along the way, such as massive public debts, they leave for their successors to solve. A democratic society is like a rental car – or worse: a car that is owned by no one and used by everyone. It is quickly run down.

2) Parasitism and social strife

3) Meddling and interfering

Although many people associate democracy with freedom, in reality no liberty is safe from democracy. If the majority (or often some small influential group) wants it, they can intervene into any kind of voluntary action, transaction or relationship – and that’s what they do. They forbid people to drink booze, burn flags, speak out against wars, watch particular movies, ‘discriminate’, and so on. Democratic governments continually intervene in voluntary transactions between sellers and buyers, employers and employees, teachers and students, doctors and patients, renters and landlords, service providers and customers, et cetera. They also meddle in people’s personal choices: their choice to smoke, to use drugs, to engage in a particular profession (without a ‘license’), to ‘discriminate’ (i.e. to choose with whom they want to associate), to make particular products (for which others have been granted a ‘patent’, i.e. a government monopoly), et cetera. There is no limit to how far this meddling can go. The little freedom we still have in western societies we owe not to democracy, but to our freedom loving heritage.

4) Collectivism and docility

In pre-democratic times rulers tended to be distrusted and every new tax was seen as an infringement of liberty. But democratic decisions are seen as fundamentally legitimate because they are supposed to have been made by the people themselves. In monarchical times few could ever hope to gain power, so most were suspicious of the ones in power. But democracy leaves, at least in theory, the door open for everyone to gain power. This makes people believe that they ought to subject themselves to the rule of the majority. They might not agree with specific laws and regulations but they feel they ought to abide by them. But naturally they then will try to get a party in power that adopts laws and doles out money for their own benefit. This is how state spending grew from roughly 10% of GDP prior to the First World War to almost 50% now in most democratic countries. And why we have so many laws on the books now that it’s safe to say there is a law for everything under the sun.

5) Corruption and abuse

So the cause of our economic and social ills is not that the wrong politicians are in power. It’s the democratic system itself that causes the problems. What we need to do is start changing the system so it becomes less rather than more democratic. The most important way to do this is by taking away the government’s powers and decentralizing decision-making processes.

February 16, 2012

Frank Karsten (send him mail) is founder of the libertarian More Freedom Foundation in The Netherlands. Together with Karel Beckman he wrote Beyond Democracy, Why democracy does not lead to solidarity, prosperity and liberty but to social conflict, runaway spending and a tyrannical government. This new libertarian book debunks 13 great myths with which democracy is usually defended. It also offers an alternative: a society based on individual freedom and voluntary social relations. Order the book from Amazon in paperback or Kindle edition. More can be found on beyonddemocracy.net

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.