Huawei spat - China's other nuclear option in trade war with US

 Rare earth materials are indeed one more way China can retaliate.

China's other nuclear option in trade war with US – Rare earth materials
RT : 22 May, 2019

Beijing has yet another economic weapon to use against Washington in the escalating trade row – a possible embargo on vital rare earth metals needed to make everything from high-tech devices to fighter jets.

A routine visit by President Xi Jinping to a Chinese rare earths facility earlier this week came amid rising tensions between the two countries and shortly after the US turned up the heat on Chinese tech giant Huawei. Despite the lack of any official announcement from Beijing, the visit has triggered fears that China is ready to use the materials, specifically a ban on their export, as an advantage against the US.

Rare earth materials are indeed one more way China can retaliate, independent political analyst, Alessandro Bruno, told RT.

“It could put heavy restrictions on the rare earth metals that are necessary to make all kinds of electronic equipment, especially phones. This is a significant threat because the West does not have its own supply,” he explained.

The minerals are unsurprisingly not included on the US list of $200 billion worth of Chinese goods facing higher import tariffs. Shortly after Chinese and other media reported that Beijing is considering an embargo, shares of rare earth miners skyrocketed.

On Tuesday, the rare-earth sector jumped by 8.5 percent, according to Global Times. China Rare Earth Holdings Ltd enjoyed the biggest gains in the industry as its shares soared 108 percent.

The strategic importance of rare earth elements, which are mostly metals so the group is often referred to as “rare earth metals,” is hard to overestimate. We use them every day even without knowing it – from your smartphone to a laptop to hybrid or electric vehicles. Rare earths are also used in modern weapons, for example in missile guidance systems and fighter jets.

So it is obvious that American industries would suffer a painful blow should China cut the supplies. The most painful part for the US is that China has a virtual monopoly in the sphere, as it accounts for around 80 percent of the imports, according to the US Geological Survey. This could make Beijing's ban on such materials a nuclear option against Washington.

The US used to be the largest rare-earths-producing country in 1990, but China has stolen the crown long ago. In 2018, Beijing mined 120,000 tons of the materials – a 15,000-ton increase compared to a year earlier, while the US produced just 15,000 tons in total. China holds 44 million tons of the elements if its reserves, while the US just 1.4 million tons.

“To demonstrate their strategic importance, rare earths are among the few Chinese items that Trump (or his officials) has excluded from the list of items subject to extra tariffs/duties,” the expert said, adding that “China understands the strategic importance of rare earths and it establishes export quotas.”

The United States relies on China, the leading global supplier, for about 80 percent of its rare earths.
But what are rare earths, what are they used for, and why do they matter for all of us?

Rare earths or rare metals are a group of 17 chemical elements with special characteristics. The materials are actually not rare, despite their name, but they are difficult to find in the desirable concentrations and they are difficult to process as the ores often contain naturally occurring radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium.

The group consists of yttrium and the 15 lanthanide elements (lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium). Scandium is found in the rarest earth element deposits and is also classified as a rare earth element.

The elements are often referred to as “rare earth oxides” because many of them are typically sold as oxide compounds.

China controls around 85-95 percent of all the rare earths’ production and supply. Last year, the country produced about 78 percent of the global volume of rare earths.

The metals and alloys that contain them are used in many devices that people use every day such as computer memory, DVDs, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, catalytic converters, magnets, fluorescent lighting and so on.

During the past 20 years, there has been an explosion in demand for many items that require rare earth metals. There were very few cell phones in use then but the number has risen to over seven billion in use today. Rare earths’ use in computers has grown almost as fast as the number of cell phones.

Many rechargeable batteries are made with rare earth compounds. Demand for the batteries is being driven by demand for portable electronic devices such as cell phones, readers, portable computers, and cameras.

Rare earths are also used as catalysts, phosphors, and polishing compounds for air pollution control, illuminated screens on electronic devices, and much more. All of those products are expected to experience rising demand. The military uses rare earth elements in night-vision goggles, precision-guided weapons, communications equipment, GPS equipment, batteries, and other defense electronics.

“Then there are the aerospace and defense considerations. The US Department of Defense is concerned about the lack of adequate US supplies of rare earths, noting it compromises weapons manufacturing capabilities,” said Bruno.

He explained that China could cripple global industry, especially emerging technologies, if it were to ban exports of rare earth materials. There are very few options in sourcing those essential technology metals from anywhere else, the analyst said. “Of course, China does not necessarily want to do this, because, it plays a long game – and it does not want the West to develop alternatives.”

America stoking Iran to sell more arms to Mideast...

This stage-managed drama is all about selling more arms to America’s Gulf allies in an attempt to undercut the strategic gains that Russia and China’s “military diplomacy” have recently made.

Will America Go to War? Trump’s Middle East Troop Dispatch Is Nothing More than Chest-thumping

By Andrew Korybko

Global Research, May 29, 2019

The entire world is wondering whether the US will go to war with Iran after Trump urgently dispatched 1,500 more troops to the Mideast, but there’s really nothing to worry about since this is just a marketing stunt for selling more arms to America’s Gulf allies. The entire so-called “crisis” was caused by vague intelligence that supposedly came from Israel warning about Iran’s allegedly secret deployment of missiles in the region.

It also comes on the tail end of the nuclear deal’s ultimate unraveling after the Islamic Republic declared that it’ll return to enriching uranium in response to the US refusing to renew its oil sanctions waiver for the country’s main energy partners. This contextual backdrop was made all the more dramatic after the US accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of being behind the shadowy sabotage of oil tankers in the UAE earlier this month, sparking fears that this was either a false flag attack or a prelude to war.

The picture that was just painted is admittedly very concerning, but it’s nevertheless incomplete, and the full one should put most people’s fears to rest about the future. Hidden from plain sight is the fact that Russia and China’s exercise of “military diplomacy” over the past couple of years has been hugely successful in wooing the Gulf Kingdoms into purchasing their wares, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE (the world’s largest and seventh-largest arms customers according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) being foremost among them.

Saudi Arabia already bought so many state-of-the-art attack drones from China that it asked the People’s Republic to build a factory for them in the country. On top of that, Riyadh also purchased rocket launchers and other arms from Russia and is in talks with it for the S-400s too. As for the UAE, it’s officially been Russia’s strategic partner since last year and the two sides are naturally stepping up their military cooperation.

From an American strategic standpoint, this is extremely troublesome because its regional allies are becoming more independent in the military sphere, which will eventually translate to political and economic independence too with time. In order to avert the long-term scenario of “losing” the Gulf Kingdoms like could possibly happen if this trend is left unchecked, the US is resorting to a combination of anti-Iranian hysteria, its own “military diplomacy”, and sanctions threats.

Fearmongering about these countries’ prime nemesis is a surefire way to get their attention, after which Trump not only dispatched 1,500 troops in order to calm their false worries, but he even circumvented Congress in order to sell over $8 billion in arms to them that was being held up over concerns about their conduct in the War on Yemen. In case they still have a need for more weapons and consider purchasing them from Russia and/or China, they’ll soon have to contend with the threat of CAATSA sanctions after the promulgation of a new American policy for punishing those countries’ customers.

With this in mind, Trump’s latest decision to send more American troops to the region appears less like a purely military move and more like a marketing stunt to justify the arms sales that he just authorized without Congressional approval. He couldn’t have avoided intense criticism for this bold act of “military diplomacy” had there not been a supposedly urgent threat to explain it, ergo the drama that he stirred up about Iran.

While there are obvious reasons why intensifying military pressure on the Islamic Republic serves American interests, it can’t be overlooked that it also provided the pretext for executing this $8 billion arms sale that was really intended to undermine his country’s Russian and Chinese competitors. It’ll now be more difficult for them to profit off of this lucrative market and make strategic inroads into it after its largest customers’ military needs were mostly met. That’s not to say that there’s no future for their “military diplomacy” in this region, but just that it won’t be as easy to practice as it was before this sale was authorized.

In terms of the bigger picture, a very distinct pattern is now emerging whereby the US hypes up what it portrays as the “regional threats” from Russia, China, and Iran in order to get its allies to purchase more American arms, usually pairing these sales with some dramatic military deployments to its rivals’ part of the world in order to distract attention from these deals.

In none of these cases, however, does it seem that the US is seriously considering military action against any of those three potential targets, but is just chest-thumping in order to calm its allies’ false worries. By playing to its allies’ fears and manufacturing regional drama, the US is able to convince them to buy more of its arms instead of its rivals’, which serves the dual strategic purposes of undermining its competitors and preventing its partners from becoming too independent.

*

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War

This text was translated from the Italian document which was distributed to participants at the April 7 Conference. It does not include sources and references.

The Western American Empire Plays the War Card
The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War
By Comitato No NATO (Italian Committee No War No NATO)
Global Research, May 10, 2019

1. A vast arc of growing tensions and conflicts extends from East Asia to Central Asia, from the Middle East to Europe, from Africa to Latin America. The “hot spots” along this intercontinental arc – the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine, Libya, Venezuela and others – have different histories and geopolitical characteristics, with specific internal socio-economic factors, but they are at the same time linked to a single factor: the strategy with which the United States of America seeks to maintain their position as the dominant superpower.

2. The United States is still the leading economic power in the world, above all thanks to the capital and the mechanisms with which it dominates the global financial market, to the multinationals with which they exploit human and material resources of every continent, to the high technologies and to the relative patents in their possession, to the pervasive role of their multimedia groups that influence the opinions and tastes of billions of users on a planetary scale.

3. Their supremacy is however jeopardized by the emergence of new state and social subjects. What is being questioned by Russia, China and other countries is not only the exorbitant power of the petrodollar (reserve currency from the sale of oil), but the hegemony of the dollar itself. Its value is determined not by real US economic capacity, but by the fact that it constitutes almost two-thirds of world currency reserves and the currency with which the price of oil, gold and other raw materials is established on global markets. in general of the goods.

4. This allows the Federal Reserve, the Central Bank (which is a private bank), to print thousands of billions of dollars with which the colossal US public debt is financed – about 23 trillion dollars – through the purchase of bonds and other securities issued by the Treasury. In this context, the decision taken by Venezuela in 2017 to release the price of oil from the dollar and tie it to that of the Chinese yuan causes a shock that causes the entire imperial palace founded on the dollar to shake. If the example of Venezuela spread, if the dollar ceased to be the dominant currency of international trade and foreign exchange reserves, an immense amount of dollars would be placed on the market bringing down the value of the US currency.

5. Washington looks with growing concern above all at the Russian-Chinese partnership: the interchange between the two countries is in strong growth; at the same time, Russian-Chinese cooperation agreements on energy, agriculture, aeronautics, space and infrastructure are on the rise. The supply of Russian gas to China through the new Sila Sibiri gas pipeline, starting in 2019, opens the way to Russian energy exports to the East while the US tries to block the way to the West towards Europe.

6. In the Middle East, in addition to the military intervention blocking the US / NATO plan to demolish the Syrian state, Russia uses economic instruments, stipulating in 2017 agreements with Iran for the construction of railway and energy infrastructure, including a pipeline between Iran and India strongly opposed by the USA. Washington responds with a move previously agreed with Israel: President Trump violently attacks Iran, accusing him of violating “the spirit” of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with Group 5 + 1 (US, Britain, France, Germany , China and Russia). Despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency itself guarantees that Iran is abiding by the agreement and is not attempting to manufacture nuclear weapons, the issue is artificially reopened by initiating a dangerous process with unpredictable results. The Washington attack is directed not only against Iran, but against Russia which is reaffirming its presence in the Middle East.

7. “Moscow – writes the New York Times in October 2017 – tries, through the giant state oil company Rosneft, to gain influence in places where the United States has stumbled. The biggest bet is Venezuela. In three years Russia and Rosneft have provided Caracas with financial assistance for 10 billion dollars, helping Venezuela avoid default. Russia increasingly uses oil as a tool, spreads its influence in the world and challenges the interests of the United States “.

8. A growing challenge to US interests comes simultaneously from China. The world’s leading exporter of goods, it rose, as a gross national income, to second place in the world after the United States and recorded economic growth rates higher than those in the United States. The most ambitious project, launched by China in 2013 and shared by Russia, is that of a new Silk Road: a road and rail network between China and Europe through Central and Western Asia and through Russia, roughly along the route of the ancient Silk Road. The project, already under construction, foresees, together with the terrestrial one, a sea route through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. For road and railway infrastructures, which should cross and connect over 60 countries, investments of over 1,000 billion dollars are expected. The project, which does not include military components, is not simply economic. If it were realized according to the original idea, it would reshape the geopolitical architecture of the entire Eurasia, creating on the basis of mutual convenience a new network of economic and political relations between the states of the continent.

9. The drive to remodel the global economic order does not only come from large state actors, such as China and Russia, which want a world that is no longer unipolar but multipolar. It comes, in multiple forms and degrees of awareness, from immense social subjects, billions of human beings who, on every continent, suffer the consequences of the current global economic order. An economic globalization centered on the search for maximum profit which, while on the one hand cuts down borders so that capital and production can circulate freely, on the other it sets up other borders, invisible but no less concrete, which exclude the majority of the world population from the benefits of that economic growth built with human and material resources around the world. This system creates a growing polarization between wealth and poverty in the world. Over 85% of global wealth (in terms of money and property) is concentrated in the hands of 8% of the world’s adult population. The remaining 92% owns just 14% of global wealth. Over 3 and a half billion people, representing almost three quarters of the global adult population, have a total of less than 2.5% of global wealth.

10. Over 2 billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America, especially in rural areas, live in poverty or at least in conditions of severe economic hardship. Among these, about one billion are in extreme poverty, that is, in a social condition characterized by chronic malnutrition, disastrous housing and hygiene situation, high incidence of infectious and parasitic diseases, high mortality above all in children, short average life span, illiteracy, lack of decision-making power, dependency, marginalization, vulnerability and constant insecurity. From the villages of sub-Saharan Africa to the Asian and Latin American slums, the poor experience the same drama caused by the same underlying causes.

11. This is the global economic order that the United States seeks by all means to preserve and control. The strategic aim pursued by Washington is clear: to remove any state or political / social movement that could damage the fundamental political, economic and military interests of the United States of America, endangering their supremacy. In this strategy they are supported by the European powers of NATO and others, such as Israel and Japan, which, despite having contrasts of interest with the US, are under US leadership when it comes to defending the economic and political order dominated by ‘West. Not having the economic strength to do so, the United States and its allies increasingly play the card of war.

12. In addition to the wars properly called, Washington increasingly leads “unconventional wars” through “covert operations”, that is to say secret. The Intelligence Community is formed by 17 federal organizations. In addition to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) there is the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), but every sector of the Armed Forces – army, air force, navy, corps of marines – has its own secret service. The State Department and the Homeland Security Department have it. Among these services, in fierce competition with each other to grab political support and federal funds, the NSA, the National Security Agency, specializing in telephone and IT interceptions, through which they are not only spied upon, plays a primary role. the enemies but also the friends of the United States, as confirmed by the “datagate” aroused by the revelations of the former contractor Edward Snowden.

13. The field actions are carried out by the USSOCOM, the Special Forces Command, which has tens of thousands of commandos from the four sectors of the armed forces. As emerges from a Washington Post inquiry, special operations forces are deployed in 75 countries. The USSOCOM employs private military companies at the same time. In the area of the US Central Command, which also includes Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s contractors number over 150,000. Added to those assumed by other departments and allied armies, the number of which is unknown, but certainly high. All belong to the private shadow army, which joins the official one.

14. To this is added the “humanitarian army” formed by all those “non-governmental organizations” which, endowed with huge means, are used by the CIA and the State Department for internal destabilization actions in the name of “defense of rights of citizens ». In the same picture is the action of the Bilderberg group – which the magistrate Ferdinando Imposimato denounced as “one of the leaders of the strategy of tension and massacres” in Italy – and that of the Open Society of the “investor and philanthropist George Soros”, creator of the «Color revolutions».

15. The United States – which since 1945 has caused 20-30 million deaths with their wars and coups (more than hundreds of millions caused by the indirect effects of such actions) – are willing to do anything to preserve military superiority on which they base their empire, which is crumbling with the emergence of a multipolar world. Within the framework of this strategy, political decisions are taken first of all in the “deep state”, an underground center of real power held by economic, financial and military oligarchies.

Eating More Rice Could Help Fight Obesity!

Don't be surprised if you hear a newer study in the future contradicts this finding... Keep your fingers crossed!

Eating More Rice Could Help Fight Obesity, Study Suggests
Press Association, May 1, 2019

Eating rice may help prevent obesity, research suggests.

Experts found that people following a Japanese or Asian-style diet based on rice were less likely to be obese than those living in countries where rice consumption was low.

Researchers said low-carbohydrate diets – which limit rice – are a popular weight-loss strategy in developed countries but the effect of rice on obesity has been unclear.

They looked at rice consumption in terms of grams per day per person and calorie intake in 136 countries.

They also looked at data on body mass index (BMI).

In the UK, people were found to consume just 19g of rice a day, below dozens of other countries including Canada, Spain and the US.

The researchers calculated that even a modest increase in rice consumption of 50g per day per person could reduce the worldwide prevalence of obesity by 1% (from 650 million adults to 643.5 million).

Professor Tomoko Imai, from Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts, Kyoto, Japan, who led the research, said: “The observed associations suggest that the obesity rate is low in countries that eat rice as a staple food.

“Therefore, a Japanese food or an Asian-food-style diet based on rice may help prevent obesity.

“Given the rising levels of obesity worldwide, eating more rice should be recommended to protect against obesity even in western countries.”

Giving possible reasons why rice can help, Prof Imai said rice was low fat, adding: “It’s possible that the fibre, nutrients and plant compounds found in whole grains may increase feelings of fullness and prevent overeating.”

The authors concluded: “The prevalence of obesity was significantly lower in the countries with higher rice supply even after controlling for lifestyle and socioeconomic indicators.”

Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “We have known for centuries that far eastern populations tend to be slimmer than in the west because rice is a staple food, but few obesity specialists may have appreciated why.

“This novel research is the first to hypothesise that we could nail obesity by eating a modest amount more.”

The study was presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Glasgow.

D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy

A great many people in the west fail to realise this truth in disguise...

D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy

By John W. Whitehead

The Rutherford Institute, May 07, 2019

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.” — Professor Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the Age of Show Business

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better.

Week after week, the script changes (Donald Trump’s Tweets, Congress’ hearings on Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, the military’s endless war drums, the ever-widening field of candidates for the 2020 presidential race, etc.) with each new script following on the heels of the last, never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.

The players come and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the audience members are quick to forget past mistakes and move on to the next spectacle.

All the while, a different kind of drama is unfolding in the dark backstage, hidden from view by the heavy curtain, the elaborate stage sets, colored lights and parading actors.

Such that it is, the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and scripted theatrics is what passes for “transparent” government today, with elected officials, entrusted to act in the best interests of their constituents, routinely performing for their audiences and playing up to the cameras, while doing very little to move the country forward.

Yet behind the footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or engage in any kind of discourse until it’s too late.

It’s the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.

Indeed, while mainstream America has been fixated on the drama-filled reality show being televised from the White House, the American Police State has moved steadily forward.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, roving VIPR raids and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government’s war on the American people.

The American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.

None of these dangers have dissipated.

They have merely disappeared from our televised news streams.

The new boss has proven to be the same as the old boss, and the American people, the permanent underclass in America, has allowed itself to be so distracted and divided that they have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State.

Frankly, it really doesn’t matter what you call the old/new boss—the Deep State, the Controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that no matter who occupies the White House, it is a profit-driven, an unelected bureaucracy that is actually calling the shots.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer to spell out the grim realities of life in the American Police State that no one is talking about anymore.

A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS. In the cop culture that is America today, where you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is rarely held accountable for violating your rights, the Bill of Rights doesn’t amount to much.

C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE. This governmental scheme to deprive Americans of their liberties—namely, the right to property—is being carried out under the guise of civil asset forfeiture, a government practice wherein government agents (usually the police) seize private property they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity. Then, whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the government keeps the citizen’s property.

D is for DRONES. It is estimated that at least 30,000 drones will be airborne in American airspace by 2020, part of an $80 billion industry. Although some drones will be used for benevolent purposes, many will also be equipped with lasers, tasers and scanning devices, among other weapons—all aimed at “we the people.”

E is for ELECTRONIC CONCENTRATION CAMP. In the electronic concentration camp, as I have dubbed the surveillance state, all aspects of a person’s life are policed by government agents and all citizens are suspects, their activities monitored and regulated, their movements tracked, their communications spied upon, and their lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness dependent on the government’s say-so.

F is for FASCISM. A study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups. In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere economic units.

G is for GRENADE LAUNCHERS and GLOBAL POLICE. The federal government has distributed more than $18 billion worth of battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles and equipment such as drones, tanks, and grenade launchers to domestic police departments across the country. As a result, most small-town police forces now have enough firepower to render any citizen resistance futile. Now take those small-town police forces, train them to look and act like the military, and then enlist them to be part of the United Nations’ Strong Cities Network program, and you not only have a standing army that operates beyond the reach of the Constitution but one that is part of a global police force.

H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS. The government’s efforts to militarize and weaponize its agencies and employees is reaching epic proportions, with federal agencies as varied as the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration stockpiling millions of lethal hollow-point bullets, which violate international law. Ironically, while the government continues to push for stricter gun laws for the general populace, the U.S. military’s arsenal of weapons makes the average American’s handgun look like a Tinker Toy.

I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS, in which internet-connected “things” will monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free. The key word here, however, is control. This “connected” industry propels us closer to a future where police agencies apprehend virtually anyone if the government “thinks” they may commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT. Having outsourced their inmate population to private prisons run by private corporations, this profit-driven form of mass punishment has given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep their privately run prisons full by jailing large numbers of Americans for inane crimes.

K is for KENTUCKY V. KING. In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers can break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they have a reason to do so. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by law enforcement officials.

L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country. This data collected on tens of thousands of innocent people is also being shared between police agencies, as well as with fusion centers and private companies. This puts Big Brother in the driver’s seat.

M is for MAIN CORE. Since the 1980s, the U.S. government has acquired and maintained, without warrant or court order, a database of names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation. As Salon reports, this database, reportedly dubbed “Main Core,” is to be used by the Army and FEMA in times of national emergency or under martial law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security. As of 2008, there were some 8 million Americans in the Main Core database.

N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS. Owing to the militarization of the nation’s police forces, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for routine police matters. In fact, more than 80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year. That translates to more than 200 SWAT team raids every day in which police crash through doors, damage private property, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually possession of some small amount of drugs.

O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION and OVERREGULATION. Thanks to an overabundance of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. As a result of this overcriminalization, we’re seeing an uptick in Americans being arrested and jailed for such absurd “violations” as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room.

P is for PATHOCRACY and PRECRIME. When our own government treats us as things to be manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled by police, mistreated, and then jailed in profit-driven private prisons if we dare step out of line, we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic. Instead, what we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.” Couple that with the government’s burgeoning precrime programs, which will use fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics in order to identify and deter so-called potential “extremists,” dissidents or rabble-rousers. Bear in mind that anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—is now viewed as an extremist.

Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY. Qualified immunity allows officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing. Conveniently, those deciding whether a police officer should be immune from having to personally pay for misbehavior on the job all belong to the same system, all cronies with a vested interest in protecting the police and their infamous code of silence: city and county attorneys, police commissioners, city councils and judges.

R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES and BLOOD DRAWS. The courts have increasingly erred on the side of giving government officials—especially the police—vast discretion in carrying out strip searches, blood draws and even anal probes for a broad range of violations, no matter how minor the offense. In the past, strip searches were resorted to only in exceptional circumstances where police were confident that a serious crime was in progress. In recent years, however, strip searches have become routine operating procedures in which everyone is rendered a suspect and, as such, is subjected to treatment once reserved for only the most serious of criminals.

S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

T is for TASERS. Nonlethal weapons such as tasers, stun guns, rubber pellets and the like have been used by police as weapons of compliance more often and with less restraint—even against women and children—and in some instances, even causing death. These “nonlethal” weapons also enable police to aggress with the push of a button, making the potential for overblown confrontations over minor incidents that much more likely. A Taser Shockwave, for instance, can electrocute a crowd of people at the touch of a button.

U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE. No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later, often attributed to a fear for their safety. Yet the fatality rate of on-duty patrol officers is reportedly far lower than many other professions, including construction, logging, fishing, truck driving, and even trash collection.

V is for VIPR SQUADS. So-called “soft target” security inspections, carried out by roving VIPR task forces, comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams, are taking place whenever and wherever the government deems appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the justification of a particular threat.

W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS. Using either x-ray radiation or radio waves, scanning devices and government mobile units are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home. While these mobile scanners are being sold to the American public as necessary security and safety measures, we can ill afford to forget that such systems are rife with the potential for abuse, not only by government bureaucrats but by the technicians employed to operate them.

X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. This top-secret program “allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”

Y is for YOU-NESS. Using your face, mannerisms, social media and “you-ness” against you, you can now be tracked based on what you buy, where you go, what you do in public, and how you do what you do. Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. The goal is for government agents to be able to scan a crowd of people and instantaneously identify all of the individuals present. Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country.

Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE. We have moved into a new paradigm in which young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, often for engaging in little more than childish behavior. In some jurisdictions, students have also been penalized under school zero tolerance policies for such inane "crimes" as carrying cough drops, wearing black lipstick, bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades. The lesson being taught to our youngest—and most impressionable—citizens is this: in the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (politician, police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the post-9/11 America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age.

You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.

Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

Example of Media Manipulation to Wage Wars...

How the media misleads with language...

Why is the US Always 'Stumbling' or 'Sliding' Into War?

By Danielle Ryan
RT News  May 16, 2019

The way the mainstream media tells it, the United States never, ever ends up embroiled in wars and military conflicts on purpose — only ever by mistake, or as a result of things like ‘bad planning’ or ‘strategic missteps’.

Very often when media coverage of war is analysed, there is a focus on how hawkish pundits cheerlead for conflict and journalists parrot official narratives while dissenting voices are drowned out. Mainstream networks, for example, have been heavily criticized by media watchdogs for almost exclusively inviting pro-war guests and ex-military hawks onto their news shows to convince Americans that war is the only reasonable course of action, while refusing to let anti-war commentators get a look in.

But there is another more subtle and unnoticeable way that the media deceives us. Even when they are not outright cheerleading for military action (as was the case in the lead up to the Iraq War), the language they use to describe events is designed to absolve Washington of blame.

Next time you read the news, notice how the US is always “stumbling into” war, or “drifting into” war or “sliding into” war — or even “sleepwalking into” war. To “stumble into” war seems to be a firm favorite among headline writers. The US has“stumbled” into war in Iraq and Syria and has been, at one time or another, at risk of “stumbling” into war with Russia, North Korea and most recently Iran.

According to these headlines, the US has also been “dragged into” (CNN) and “sucked into” (NI) war in Syria and Afghanistan, twice (NI, The Times). In recent weeks, the Trump administration has been “sliding into” (AP) a potential “accidental” war with Iran — and back in 2017, it was “dragged into” (FP) the disastrous Yemen conflict.

The examples of the US stumbling, blundering and bumbling its way into wars are endless — and it does raise a question that no one ever seems to ask: If it’s so easy to trip and fall into massive never-ending wars, why isn’t it happening to everyone else? Is Washington just especially clumsy?

With this narrative of the bumbling superpower, agency is always removed from the architects of war. Instead of enthusiastically banging the drums for war, we’re told the White House is always ‘reluctant’ to deploy its military, but is ‘forced’ into it . Then, once the war is in full-swing, when things are not panning out exactly as planned, the US can become the sacrificial hero, propelled into a deadly conflict not of its own making.

A recent headline in the Miami Herald framed recent US actions on Venezuela as the US being “pushed to act.” Pushed by who? The Trump administration voluntarily helped organize and instigate the attempted coups that worsened the country’s political crisis and proudly imposed the economic sanctions which have led directly to thousands of premature deaths. There was no “pushing” involved.

In April, Foreign Policy magazine even had Venezuela’s self-declared interim president Juan Guaido “stumbling toward a coup.” How do you stumble into a military coup? Surely that’s the kind of thing that requires careful, deliberate planning and execution? The Washington Post had Trump “fumbling” an uprising in Caracas, too.

It’s not just media pundits and journalists who employ this kind of misleading language, either. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this week that a US war with Iran could happen“by accident.” Did Hunt take a vacation from reality and miss US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton ramping up war rhetoric against Iran for months? Maybe Trump abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear deal by accident and sent an aircraft carrier and bomber task force into the Persian Gulf last week to “send a message” to Iran by mistake.

Such framing obscures basic facts about Washington’s motives and predilection toward military conflict over diplomacy. Washington doesn’t get into wars by mistake. Unless a country is directly attacked, threatened or occupied, wars are quite easy to avoid getting into if you really don’t want to be in them  — but the hawks in Washington, no matter how much they pretend to not want war, are always itching for more and they will stop at nothing to get what they want, even if that means fabricating evidence (as in Iraq) or pulling off false flag attacks to use as convenient pretexts for the US to ‘respond’ to.

US military actions are designed specifically to provoke the conflicts that they believe will be of benefit to their overall geopolitical strategy. Talk of freedom, democracy and human rights are just a convenient cover. Washington is never at risk, for example, of stumbling into war with Saudi Arabia, despite Riyadh’s laundry list of crimes against humanity.

Whether this propagandistic language is always employed in a totally conscious way or not, it’s difficult to tell. Either way, it’s a psychological trick which frames the most powerful, military-minded and trigger-happy country in the world as some kind of innocent victim of events beyond its control.

Perils of Traffic Stops in the American Police State

Clearly, in the American police state, compliance is no guarantee that you will survive an encounter with the police with your life and liberties intact.

So if you’re starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed, intimidated and fearful for your life and the lives of your loved ones, you should be.

Drivers Beware: The Deadly Perils of Traffic Stops in the American Police State

By John W. Whitehead

 

The Nation. The framers would be appalled.”—Herman Schwartz, “The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official“

We’ve all been there before.

You’re driving along and you see a pair of flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror. Whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, you get a sinking feeling in your stomach.

You’ve read enough news stories, seen enough headlines, and lived in the American police state long enough to be anxious about any encounter with a cop that takes place on the side of the road.

For better or worse, from the moment you’re pulled over, you’re at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

This is what I call “blank check policing,” in which the police get to call all of the shots.

So if you’re nervous about traffic stops, you have every reason to be.

Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly.

Try to assert your right to merely ask a question during a traffic stop and see how far it gets you.

Zachary Noel was tasered by police and charged with resisting arrest after he questioned why he was being ordered out of his truck during a traffic stop. “Because I’m telling you to,” the officer replied before repeating his order for Noel to get out of the vehicle and then, without warning, shooting him with a taser through the open window.

Unfortunately, as Gregory Tucker learned the hard way, there are no longer any fail-safe rules of engagement for interacting with the police.

It was in the early morning hours of Dec. 1, 2016, when Tucker, a young African-American man, was pulled over by Louisiana police for a broken taillight. Because he did not feel safe stopping immediately, Tucker drove calmly and slowly to a safe, well-lit area a few minutes away before stopping in front of his cousin’s house.

That’s when what should have been a routine traffic stop became yet another example of police brutality in America and another reason why Americans are justified in their fear of cops.

According to the lawsuit that was filed in federal court by The Rutherford Institute, police ordered Tucker out of his vehicle, and after he had stepped out, immediately placed him under arrest for “resisting” (in this case, not immediately stopping) and searched his person and his vehicle. Tucker was then ordered to move to the front of the police vehicle and place his hands on its hood.

Two more police officers arrived on the scene, walked up behind Tucker, and grabbed his arms to restrain and handcuffed him.

Then the fourth police officer arrived on the scene. According to police dash cam footage, Tucker was thrown to the ground and punched numerous times in the head and body. The police also yelled repeatedly at Tucker to “quit resisting.” Tucker, bleeding with injuries to his face, head and arm, was then placed into the back of a police vehicle and EMTs were called to treat him. He was eventually taken to the hospital for severe injuries to his face and arm.

Mind you, this young man complied with police. He just didn’t do it fast enough to suit their purposes.

This young man submitted to police. He didn’t challenge police authority when they frisked him, searched his car, handcuffed him, and beat him to a pulp.

If this young man is “guilty” of anything, he’s guilty of ticking off the cops by being cautious, concerned for his safety, and all too aware of the dangers faced by young black men during encounters with the police.

Frankly, you don’t even have to be young or black or a man to fear for your life during an encounter with the police.

Just consider the growing numbers of unarmed people are who being shot and killed just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

At a time when police can do no wrong—at least in the eyes of the courts, police unions and politicians dependent on their votes—and a “fear” for officer safety is used to justify all manner of police misconduct, “we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.

Add a traffic stop to the mix, and that disadvantage increases dramatically.

According to the Justice Department, the most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop.

On average, one in 10 Americans gets pulled over by police.

Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers, or about 23 percent more likely than Hispanic drivers. As the Washington Post concludes, “‘Driving while black’ is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon.”

Indeed, police officers have been given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons.

Predator Cops, Guilty of Sex Crimes Against Women and Children, Are a Menace to Society

This free-handed approach to traffic stops has resulted in drivers being stopped for windows that are too heavily tinted, for driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to maintain speed, following too closely, improper lane changes, distracted driving, screeching a car’s tires, and leaving a parked car door open for too long.

Motorists can also be stopped by police for driving near a bar or on a road that has large amounts of drunk driving, driving a certain make of car (Mercedes, Grand Prix and Hummers are among the most ticketed vehicles), having anything dangling from the rearview mirror (air fresheners, handicap parking permits, troll transponders or rosaries), and displaying pro-police bumper stickers.

Incredibly, a federal appeals court actually ruled unanimously in 2014 that acne scars and driving with a stiff upright posture are reasonable grounds for being pulled over. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that driving a vehicle that has a couple air fresheners, rosaries and pro-police bumper stickers at 2 MPH over the speed limit is suspicious, meriting a traffic stop.

Equally appalling, in Heien v. North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court—which has largely paved the way for the police and other government agents to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance—allowed police officers to stop drivers who appear nervous, provided they provide a palatable pretext for doing so.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone objector in the case. Dissenting in Heien, Sotomayor warned,

“Giving officers license to effect seizures so long as they can attach to their reasonable view of the facts some reasonable legal interpretation (or misinterpretation) that suggests a law has been violated significantly expands this authority… One wonders how a citizen seeking to be law-abiding and to structure his or her behavior to avoid these invasive, frightening, and humiliating encounters could do so.”

In other words, drivers beware.

Traffic stops aren’t just dangerous. They can be downright deadly.

Remember Walter L. Scott? Reportedly pulled over for a broken taillight, Scott—unarmed—ran away from the police officer, who pursued and shot him from behind, first with a Taser, then with a gun. Scott was struck five times, “three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart.”

Samuel Dubose, also unarmed, was pulled over for a missing front license plate. He was reportedly shot in the head after a brief struggle in which his car began rolling forward.

Levar Jones was stopped for a seatbelt offense, just as he was getting out of his car to enter a convenience store. Directed to show his license, Jones leaned into his car to get his wallet, only to be shot four times by the “fearful” officer. Jones was also unarmed.

Bobby Canipe was pulled over for having an expired registration. When the 70-year-old reached into the back of his truck for his walking cane, the officer fired several shots at him, hitting him once in the abdomen.

Dontrell Stevens was stopped “for not bicycling properly.” The officer pursuing him “thought the way Stephens rode his bike was suspicious. He thought the way Stephens got off his bike was suspicious.” Four seconds later, sheriff’s deputy Adams Lin shot Stephens four times as he pulled out a black object from his waistband. The object was his cell phone. Stephens was unarmed.

Sandra Bland, pulled over for allegedly failing to use her turn signal, was arrested after refusing to comply with the police officer’s order to extinguish her cigarette and exit her vehicle. The encounter escalated, with the officer threatening to “light” Bland up with his taser. Three days later, Bland was found dead in her jail cell. “You’re doing all of this for a failure to signal?” Bland asked as she got out of her car, after having been yelled at and threatened repeatedly.

Keep in mind, from the moment those lights start flashing and that siren goes off, we’re all in the same boat. However, it’s what happens after you’ve been pulled over that’s critical.

Survival is key.

Technically, you have the right to remain silent (beyond the basic requirement to identify yourself and show your registration). You have the right to refuse to have your vehicle searched. You have the right to film your interaction with police. You have the right to ask to leave. You also have the right to resist an unlawful order such as a police officer directing you to extinguish your cigarette, put away your phone or stop recording them.

However, there is a price for asserting one’s rights. That price grows more costly with every passing day.

If you ask cops and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with police, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings.

The problem, of course, is what to do when compliance is not enough.

After all, every day we hear about situations in which unarmed Americans complied and still died during an encounter with police simply because they appeared to be standing in a “shooting stance” or held a cell phone or a garden hose or carried around a baseball bat or answered the front door or held a spoon in a threatening manner or ran in an aggressive manner holding a tree branch or wandered around naked or hunched over in a defensive posture or made the mistake of wearing the same clothes as a carjacking suspect (dark pants and a basketball jersey) or dared to leave an area at the same time that a police officer showed up or had a car break down by the side of the road or were deaf or homeless or old.

Now you can make all kinds of excuses to justify these shootings, and in fact that’s exactly what you’ll hear from politicians, police unions, law enforcement officials and individuals who are more than happy to march in lockstep with the police.

However, to suggest that a good citizen is a compliant citizen and that obedience will save us from the police state is not only recklessly irresponsible, but it is also deluded and out of touch with reality.

To begin with, and most importantly, Americans need to know their rights when it comes to interactions with the police, bearing in mind that many law enforcement officials are largely ignorant of the law themselves.

In a nutshell, the following are your basic rights when it comes to interactions with the police as outlined in the Bill of Rights:

You have the right under the First Amendment to ask questions and express yourself. You have the right under the Fourth Amendment to not have your person or your property searched by police or any government agent unless they have a search warrant authorizing them to do so.  You have the right under the Fifth Amendment to remain silent, to not incriminate yourself and to request an attorney. Depending on which state you live in and whether your encounter with police is consensual as opposed to your being temporarily detained or arrested, you may have the right to refuse to identify yourself. Presently, 26 states do not require citizens to show their ID to an officer (drivers in all states must do so, however).

Knowing your rights is only part of the battle, unfortunately.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the hard part comes in when you have to exercise those rights in order to hold government officials accountable to respecting those rights.

As a rule of thumb, you should always be sure to clarify in any police encounter whether or not you are being detained, i.e., whether you have the right to walk away. That holds true whether it’s a casual “show your ID” request on a boardwalk, a stop-and-frisk search on a city street, or a traffic stop for speeding or just to check your insurance. If you feel like you can’t walk away from a police encounter of your own volition—and more often than not you can’t, especially when you’re being confronted by someone armed to the hilt with all manner of militarized weaponry and gear—then for all intents and purposes, you’re essentially under arrest from the moment a cop stops you. Still, it doesn’t hurt to clarify that distinction.

While technology is always going to be a double-edged sword, with the gadgets that are the most useful to us in our daily lives—GPS devices, cell phones, the internet—being the very tools used by the government to track us, monitor our activities, and generally spy on us, cell phones are particularly useful for recording encounters with the police and have proven to be increasingly powerful reminders to police that they are not all powerful.

A good resource is The Rutherford Institute’s “Constitutional Q&A: Rules of Engagement for Interacting with Police.”

Clearly, in the American police state, compliance is no guarantee that you will survive an encounter with the police with your life and liberties intact.

So if you’re starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed, intimidated and fearful for your life and the lives of your loved ones, you should be.

*

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.