https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53453077
In Portland, Oregon, federal goons in camouflage without identifying insignia are cruising around in unmarked rental vans and seizing people off the street at random. Both the mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon have demanded that they leave, but the extrajudicial kidnappings continue, along with illegal tear gassing of peaceful protestors and other provocative acts of violence.
It is clear that these thugs are under the control of Trump and Barr (Trump's Top Thug at the Department of Justice). It is also clear that they are attempting to fan the flames of chaos and civil unrest, perhaps in the hope of obtaining a pretext to declare martial law in cities across the land.
This is fascism. It is coming, and anyone who cares about preserving any remaining vestiges of civil norms and the rule of law must be ready to act, should the fascists attempt to seize complete control. This includes people of conscience in the military.
Trump is a chickenhawk, however. He historically tends to scurry back to his bunker when faced with enough vocal opposition by decent people of conscience. But action has to be swift, because if the small p "president" does something rash that cannot be readily reversed, thereby putting his (proverbial) bunker out of reach, he may decide instead to forge on and start a civil war.
Another article:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-protests-portland/u-s-swoops-down-on-portland-protesters-after-trump-order-to-protect-monuments-idUSKCN24I2W5
Some selected paragraphs:
PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Federal law enforcement officers are cracking down on protesters in Portland, Oregon, under the Trump administration’s new executive order to protect U.S. monuments in what the state’s Democratic governor has called “political theater.”
Multiple videos posted online show camouflage-clad officers without clear identification badges using force and unmarked vehicles to transport arrested protesters.
“It’s kidnapping people!” one person said off-camera, as officers marched a protester away.
[...]
One video posted online shows an officer bundling a protester into a dark minivan. The CBP spokeswoman said the agency had information that person was suspected of assaults against federal agents or destruction of federal property and “a large and violent mob” moved toward the agents once they approached the suspect.
[...]
Another video shows an officer shoving away medics trying to aid someone. And still another showed a protester bleeding profusely from his head after federal troops allegedly shot him with a weapon firing non-lethal munition.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/17/1961412/-What-Donald-Trump-is-doing-in-Portland-is-just-as-big-a-threat-to-America-as-COVID-19
First few paragraphs, though the article itself has many substantiating links interspersed throughout the text, if anyone thinks Daily Kos is just all fake news:
As the protests over the police murder of George Floyd spread across the nation, and especially as those protests began to bear fruit in terms of real change in attitudes toward policing, symbols of racism, and support for Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. That opportunity wasn’t to embrace this moment and move the nation forward. Trump never thinks that way. Instead, Trump went deep into Nixonian demands for “law and order.” Only what Trump means by that isn’t really law, it’s force. And it’s not really order, it’s fear.
What’s now happening in Portland, Oregon, is a deployment of that strategy. Unidentified men in camouflage uniforms on are on the ground in Portland over the express orders of both the governor and the mayor. And they are taking people off the streets for simply being protesters, no crime required. They aren’t arresting people, because these aren’t really police. This is military rendition. Or even more accurately: extrajudicial kidnapping. It’s happening repeatedly in an American city, and it’s barely bringing notice. Pay attention to Portland: What's going on is a trial run for what Trump is bringing to the rest of the nation.
This isn’t the first version of Trump’s nameless, badgeless, not-so-secret police. Trump did a test run in Washington D.C., where Barr rolled out a “policing force” of various elements taken from the sub-basement of the Justice Department, including forces within the Bureau of Prisons meant to quell uprisings in federal facilities. There was absolutely no justification in deploying these people, and absolutely no chain of command. They reported to Barr and Trump, local officials be damned.
Now a similar force has been deployed in Portland. As The Washington Post reports, a flood of “men in green military fatigues” and driving unmarked vehicles, many of the apparently rental cars, have appeared in areas of Portland. This time, instead of the Bureau of Prisons, the source of the unbadged “police” appears to be the U.S. Marshals Service and Department of Homeland Security—in other words, bounty hunters and border patrol. None of them are trained either in dealing with protests or even ordinary law enforcement. They have already shot one unarmed, peaceful protester, and as the Post account relates, are taking others off the street without charges, and holding them without access to an attorney. They’re behaving as if they are beyond all laws, because, thanks to the backing of Trump and Barr, they absolutely are. That includes laws in Oregon that don’t allow the use of tear gas against protesters—Trump’s un-secret police are using it anyway.
As Oregon Public Broadcasting reports, following a night of peaceful protest in which there were no clashes with police, “people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.” These federal forces have been driving around Portland in unmarked vehicles since at least Wednesday. They have repeatedly detained people without explanation, or providing information.
There’s a name for that action. It’s called kidnapping, and it’s a federal crime. Except that these are sanctioned federal criminals.
@dood111 saidThere are no "riots" going on in US cities. Some unrest here and there, yes, but overall crime rates in cities are down compared to last year. Murders are up some, but one need not look any further back in time than the 1990s to discover comparable rates.
Well, after 50 nights in a row of riots SOMETHING had to be done, and the weak spineless governor and mayor weren't doing anything.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/upshot/murders-rising-crime-coronavirus.html
The national numbers for murder and other types of violent crime rarely move in opposite directions.
But this is no ordinary year.
Overall crime is down 5.3 percent in 25 large American cities relative to the same period in 2019, with violent crime down 2 percent.
But murder in these 25 cities is up 16.1 percent in relation to last year. It’s not just a handful of cities driving this change, either. Property crime is down in 18 of the 25 sampled cities, and violent crime is down in 11 of them, but murder is up in 20 of the cities.
The F.B.I. doesn’t supply recent crime statistics, so we collected Uniform Crime Report (U.C.R.) data for these cities (each with over 250,000 people), which reported data at least through the end of May. Crime in the report is divided into violent crime — murder, aggravated assault, rape and robbery — and property crimeposed of theft, auto theft and burglary.
Homicides usually rise in the summer, which coincided this year with many people emerging from pandemic lockdown. In one recent weekend in Chicago, 14 people were killed and at least 106 people were shot, the most in eight years.
And as The New York Times reported recently: “It has been nearly a quarter century since New York City experienced as much gun violence in the month of June as it has seen this year.” (On Sunday, there were at least nine killings in the city.)
An additional 11 cities provide year-to-date murder data. Murder is up 21.8 percent in all 36 cities with 2020 data through at least May, with 29 of those cities seeing an increase this year relative to last year.
A spreadsheet with crime stats for numerous US cities:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z9b5mIwztAwmEHJW7Q5DHMjS14-Rs7XIXOt33Al_rDw/edit#gid=1774879893
Many of these trends predate the big protests that occurred in late May into June, and so may be attributable to other factors such as the pandemic.
This narrative that the cities are on fire and are having riots night after night for weeks is just plain false on its face. Fox News and rightwing media are just distorting reality beyond recognition as usual, to try to distract from the very real mass killing that is happening thanks to "wartime president" Trump's complete and unconditional surrender to a virus.
You tell people what Fox is saying is going on in their city and they look at you like you're from Mars. It's not happening. Isolated incidents of violence, yes -- as is typical of big cities in the US -- but wholesale rioting and murder? Laughter. But if you don't even believe the people who actually live in the cities, you could always do your own research out beyond the rightwing media bubble.
Graffiti and toppled monuments to Confederate traitors by no means furnish a sufficient cause to suspend Constitutional rights anywhere in the country, much less subjugate a civilian population to Gestapo tactics by a secret police that answers directly to the president and Dept. of Justice. That non-thinking types such as yourself don't understand this is a real problem for the future survival of democracy, but it is not my problem tonight.
@dood111 saidWhy?
Well, after 50 nights in a row of riots SOMETHING had to be done, and the weak spineless governor and mayor weren't doing anything.
I read about $50,000 of damage in Portland so far.
That is pretty peaceful if you compare with historical demonstrtaions around the world.
YOU CANNOT GO SHOOTING PEACEFUL PROTESTERS IN THE HEAD
@wolfgang59 saidMaybe. It is an idea I have already seen mooted earlier today somewhere. It should be done, I think. It's a good idea. Get the Oregon National Guard on every street corner to keep an eye out for these unmarked vans the unidentified federal goons are cruising around in. The city's police force isn't large enough to do this task on its own.
A thought.
Can the Governor get the National Guard in to protect protesters from the Feds?
In the end it may be up to citizens themselves to do the policing with cell phone cameras at the ready throughout the city of Portland. The goons are also in the city of Eugene, Oregon as well, according to some.
This article has a video clip of the goons in action:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/17/1961511/-Portland-is-what-Trump-s-America-will-look-like-if-he-s-reelected-An-authoritarian-nightmare
Their military camouflage says simply "Police", with no other markings. They grab people off the streets, often without saying anything, in flagrant violation of standard police procedure. There are other videos out there that are more violent.
