Bill of Rights

“Defendant Shall Not Attend Protests”: In Portland, Getting Out of Jail Requires Relinquishing Constitutional Rights

By Dara Lind | – ( ProPublica ) – Federal authorities are using a new tactic in their battle against protesters in Portland, Oregon: arrest them on offenses as minor as “failing to obey” an order to get off a sidewalk on federal property — and then tell them they can’t protest anymore as a […]

Authoritarianism

Understanding Trump’s game plan in Portland could be the key to preventing a coup in November

Waging Nonviolence

George Lakey | – (Waging Nonviolence ) – While outrage was still growing in Oregon over federal agents’ intervention in Portland, President Trump on July 20 named Chicago, New York, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland, California as possible next targets. Since then Albuquerque was added to the list. Although the agents’ mission was supposedly to protect […]

Authoritarianism

How US Immigration Policies Foreshadowed Violence Against Protesters

Human Rights Watch

Trump Administration Planning to Send Federal Agents to Other Cities

Bill of Rights

The Attack of the Feds from the Deep: Autocratic Trump is Testing his Limits

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Federal agents poured into Portland, Oregon this month to crack down on anti-racism protests. They beat up peaceful protesters and fired impact munitions at demonstrators, seriously injuring one of them. They drove around the city in unmarked vans pulling people off the street. Oregon officials at every level — […]

Authoritarianism

Trump’s Secret Police whisk Portland Protesters into Unmarked Cars, but allowed Right wing armed militiamen to invade Michigan State House

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ryan Haas and Conrad Wilson at Oregon Public Broadcasting report that Federal agents with no name tags pulled at least two persons off the street in Portland without obvious probable cause and put them in unmarked vehicles. Responsibility for one of the kidnappings has been admitted by U.S. Customs and […]

Bill of Rights

Liberty Endangered: This July 4, let’s lay claim to the freedom we’ve celebrated, but seldom practiced

OtherWords

By Robert P. Alvarez | ( Otherwords.org ) – When I was a child, I learned to believe that Americans valued freedom and equality more than any other place on the planet. I learned that, in our criminal justice system, we were innocent until proven guilty. It’s hard to still believe that now. Call me […]

Bill of Rights

How Trump brought US Racist Policing and Racist Foreign Policy Together on D.C. Streets

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

(Code Pink) – On June 1, President Trump threatened to deploy active-duty U.S. military forces against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in cities across America. Trump and state governors eventually deployed at least 17,000 National Guard troops across the country. In the nation’s capital, Trump deployed nine Blackhawk assault helicopters, thousands of National Guard troops […]

Authoritarianism

Esper and Mattis try to put the Genie of Trump Militarism back in the Bottle, Years too Late

Juan Cole

Former SecDef Mattis calls Trump a Danger to the Constitution

Bill of Rights

How American cities were Reduced to Esper’s “Battlespace”: From Fallujah to Minneapolis

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Bush administration’s war of aggression on and military occupation of Iraq that began in 2003 shifted the United States to a militaristic society. Some 2.7 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, an astonishing number. The Bush administration began the practice of sending to civilian police departments military […]