The Guardian reports that "Britain is preparing for a summer of rage." Has President Obama failed to reinstate Posse Comitatus because he is expecting and preparing for riots in the USA?

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The Guardian reports that "Britain is preparing for a summer of rage."  Has President Obama failed to reinstate Posse Comitatus because he is expecting and preparing for riots in the USA?

french rioters in 2007, flickr image by Nocturnales

I just spoke to a friend who knows someone who is trying to get out of the military because they are training returning troops for riot control to take over US cities and he doesn't want to be a soldier dealing with US citizens. On top of that, these returning Iraq vets are burned out and "fried" with PTSD and exhaustion. And he doesn't want to pick up arms against his own country.

This same source says the military is setting up a separate communication system. In the military, securing or taking out communications is one of the first steps. If you are an invader, you need to bring your own communication system because you have to assume that the existing system will be destroyed or compromised. 

This is the kind of talk that gets labeled tinfoil hat, except... riots have already happened in Iceland, Greece, Latvia,  Nigeria, Pakistan, Guadeloupe, South Korea.  Naomi discussed riots in her recent article, All of Them Must Go - "¡Que se vayan todos!"  Klein points out that like the rioters in Argentina, in 2002, the new rioters are challenging the politico-economic system.

Glen Greenwald wrote about the beginnings of what I just heard about back in September last year, in his Salon article, Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?

Greenwald cites an Army Times article,  about "an on call federal response force."

They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we're undertaking we were the first to get it."

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

"I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered," said Cloutier, describing the experience as "your worst muscle cramp ever -- times 10 throughout your whole body". . . .

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced "sea-smurf").   

Greenwald observed, back in September, that there was no risk of Bush cancelling elections, but, he said, "the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in the future."  

How long should we wait before it looks bad, that Obama has failed to reverse the end of Posse Comitatus?  Or should we expect this administration to keep it in anticipation of the riots we are likely to see? Yes. I think we're going to see riots here. The economic crisis has not it's bottom. More jobs are being lost. More businesses are going under. Even if the level of monthly unemployment figures started to drop, we'd still see, by the end of the  year, millions more unemployed.

It may be that we should be asking WHEN there will be riots. This will be a hot summer. Many companies are holding on until the end of June. Others are collapsing as their customers or suppliers fold.

The Guardian reports, today, in an article titled, Britain faces summer of rage - police ,

Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.

Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become "viable targets". So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.

Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly "intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder".

The warning comes in the wake of often violent protests against the handling of the economy across Europe. In recent weeks Greek farmers have blocked roads over falling agricultural prices, a million workers in France joined demonstrations to demand greater protection for jobs and wages and Icelandic demonstrators have clashed with police in Reykjavik.

In the UK hundreds of oil refinery workers mounted wildcat strikes last month over the use of foreign workers.

Hartshorn goes on to suggest that extreme right AND left wing groups will exploit the situation. Maybe he doesn't get it that when tens of millions lose their jobs and the ability to take care of their families, all of them become radicals.

Just this past Saturday, 5000 people showed up in South Florida, hoping to apply for subsidized housing benefits. The officials only had 3000 application forms. This Miami Herald article reports that "scuffles" occurred. CNN reports that people "desperate for housing" showed up, that mace was used that"fights broke out." And CNN shows a wall of police cars, with police wearing riot gear.

When the riots start, don't expect the mainstream media to immediately report them. Some might even call what happened in Fort Lauderdale "riots."


One thing is clear. Congress is still not dealing with the extremity of the crisis. Obama isn't either. The small steps taken so far are woefully inadequate. The reality is, the appointees, from the same companies and system that created the problem are not the right ones to do the necessary job.

We need people who are not Siamese twin attached to the system, like Summers and Geithner are. We need people with the kind of long term vision AND independence from the system, who are able to see whole new ways to navigate  beyond this crisis, not just staying a tiny bit above water.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
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Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

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