Proof Repeal of Posse Comitatus Will Establish Police State

A victim’s first-hand accounting of an actual illegal military assault on an American neighborhood with terror and abuse of rights

THIS IS INDEED A WARNING YOU SHOULD HEED!

Updated Feb. 21, 2013  Recent events cited below reveal the incident depicted here is currently being experienced wholesale fashion around the nation. There is little difference in neighborhood impact between the events described here and those which have been routinely put into action in major cities across America. And media tells us not. Local media, yes, but national media, almost always no. Ask yourself why that is, and then see if you think your news ‘fair and balanced,’ or if it more closely resembles the propaganda we always accused Russia of using in the Cold War era?

 

The only difference is that the current events are ‘military raids,’ not ‘police raids with military help,’ (some exceptions may exist) and the raids are not targeting individuals, but whole neighborhoods, and instead of having a warrant and a crime for which the warrant was approved, they have no warrant, and simply attack because they can. Fear and panic spread from the neighborhoods all the way to City and County officials, who in almost every instance were in no way warned or notified the attacks were to take place:

 

Helicopters swept in low between hi-rise office and apartment buildings, often discharging gattling guns, troops repelled to rooftops, streets, and parking lots, and went door-to-door through target buildings engaging in gun battles and tossing grenades as needed. Mock drills using blanks and flash-bang grenades, they claimed, but tell that to the citizens who, in some cases, grabbed their guns thinking they might need them any minute… to parents and teachers who feared for the lives of their kids as they put their schools into lockdown… to the city officials who’s 911 switchboards lit up and resulted in countless cars being dispatched, only to be repelled by armed soldiers.

 

The entire city thought war had broken out, or that Obama had decided to try to take the guns by force. And though neither was the case, that did not improve the safety of citizens at large. Any of those helicopters could have crashed, it being true that there are many such crashes in training exercises, as well as when on real missions. Anyone might have fired live rounds at the soldiers misunderstanding their purpose, including any illegal drug dealers unfortunate enough to be nearby. Anyone could have crashed their car in distraction, or had a heart attack in their panic. And for what? A practice at what? Raiding a U.S. city?

 

How dare the United States Military deem us a target, even in mock!

 

How is it they have the right to bear arms against us this way? The whole purpose of the second amendment is that we bear arms to protect ourselves against them, or a government gone mad and employing them against us. The military and White House has forgotten who they are, who we are, forgotten the Law of the Land, and thereby so dare. They have forgotten their oaths of Office each and every member has sworn, and  have moved forward the date and time when the second amendment will become our duty to defend by force of arms, thereby validating our Forefather’s concerns which drove its penning.  Shame on them for allowing it to happen.

 

This scenario played out in various forms in Chicago, Houston, Miami, Boston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. So as you read this review of a real raid where people were shot, consider carefully, for your city may be next. And, regardless of any foreknowledge that such raids exist and take place, you, too, will be forced to wonder: is this merely a drill, or is the government coming for the guns. Just another reason to fear your government, another reason to cower and let them get away with oppressive laws. Shame on you if you allow it to continue.

 

End update

 

There is no copyright or author to be concerned about citing as source associated with this article. I would appreciate any reproduction include all links in tact and point back to proparanoid.wordpress.com as it was I who obtained the material as part of my investigations and interviews with victims. The original author and his neighbors rightly feared for their safety (death threats had been delivered) and thus asked that I redact things which identify any who were not already named in news stories of the event. The material, which I have also included in my book set, Fatal Rebirth,  was prepared for use as a public notice and warning posted on doors of homes and public places in a Portland, Oregon, neighborhood in August, 1993:

military police state repeal of posse comitatus

Background and relevance to today’s militarization of Police methods:

This is almost exactly what businessman Johnny Senteno saw on a Portland Oregon neighborhood street seconds before being shot point-blank twice for the unpardonable offense of lighting a cigarette in front of his company truck. No one knows if it was Police or Oregon National Guard who shot him, as they dressed identically with no front-facing identification. Portland paid him $100,000 in a settlement.

(This introduction, and inserted notes are provided by me, author H. Michael Sweeney) In August of 1993 there had already been nearly two-dozen violations of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 taking place in various forms around America as the Bush Administration, through Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, were testing to see what could be gotten away with with respect to Posse Comitatus. Most such events were singular violations of a given aspect of military use in Police actions, such as outlined briefly in another of my blog posts. This post will also reveal other forms of criminality used to fund black operations such as CIA drug running in America, and political graft.

In Portland, Oregon, the Chief of Police at the time was one Charles Moose, who had a background in Military Intelligence in the National Guard, and who was being groomed to be Police Chief in Washington, D.C., where crime was so rampant that the current Mayor was pushing for legalizing military use in Police actions in the city… and he would indeed get that post in time to be boosted to international attention as the Cop in charge of hunting down the D.C. Sniper, which this author feels was part and parcel of the DOD plan called Operation Northwoods, the blueprint for fomenting our false-flag war on terrorism. This is all documented in my book set, Fatal Rebirth.

Therefore, this ‘raid’ was a building-block tool for Chief Moose and quite tied in several ways to the ‘terrorist’ events to unfold on Sept. 11, 2001. More than this, it was a training exercise in general for the intended Police State future envisioned by the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama regime. I state it as a single regime because Bush programs aimed at achieving a Police State were continued and augmented under Clinton, and his under Bush, and his under Obama. It matters not who you vote for if in mainstream elections, they are all the same conspiratorial NWO players pretending to have varied political agenda worthy of providing distraction from their unified hidden agenda.

Posse Comitatus is not currently repealed. This is NOT a Police state under siege by revolutionaries… not quite yet. If and when that happens, government will have ONLY ITSELF to blame. Yet the government has taken steps to establish a de facto repeal to bypass the law (this Senate link details section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act signed by Mr. Obama, and there are other Acts and Executive orders which play to the matter). I fear it will eventually lead to armed rebellion if things get out of hand such as exemplified herein; if you allow our outlaw government to continue to ignore the Constitution and Bill of rights to undo Posse Comitatus, this is what you can look forward to on a regular basis… if not worse:

military police state repeal of posse comitatus

Public Notice and Warning (posted on neighborhood doors)

My name is [REDACTED], and I’ve been living here since 1967. A few months ago, the Police served a warrant on our house in what they said was a drug raid. Since we don’t use drugs we thought they had the wrong house — the people across the street were known Police informants and drug users, but they were not raided.

Even worse was how the warrant was served, and the aftermath. Part of it has to do with the fact that they used the National Guard in the raid — which I am told was done illegally, and in direct violation of a judge’s ruling. The cops dressed like soldiers but had permanently sewn Police patches, and the soldiers wore temporary strap-on license plates for Police markings — making it impossible to know who you were dealing with in the confusion — especially since they didn’t announce the raid or say they were cops. Everyone in the neighborhood at first thought war had broken out, since these Police markings were only visible on their backs.

Note: Chief Moose had already used the National Guard and military APC units in several Police matters in violation of Posse Comitatus. This had prompted a judge to issue a ruling in favor of The Posse comitatus Act of 1878 (which stipulates that the US military can-not be used in law enforcement duties except by declaration of Martial Law) — unless under direct order by the Governor under Martial Law.

Chief Moose continued in violation of the Court Order to cease and desist, citing ‘public safety concerns.’ But as you read this material, the reverse is shown to be true — the military put the public safety in greater danger. I wrote Governor Barbara Roberts about this and was given a copy of a ‘blanket authorization’ issued to Charles Moose (no Martial Law involved) to use National Guard… dated AFTER they had been used, and AFTER the judges order had been violated, but claimed to authorize the prior events, as well. Moose, by the way, several times on live TV agreed to meet with me for interview but in over a half dozen attempts to do so, I was informed he was ‘on vacation’ that day. So was the City Attorney, the Mayor, the Police Public Relations Officer, and anyone else I attempted to interview in his stead.

The first thing we knew, soldiers burst into our bedroom and pulled us naked from our bed. Instead of identifying themselves or why they were there, they only cursed and called us foul names, telling us to shut up. They forced us to cower nude for a good part of an hour, not letting us ask even for our clothes or covers. Eventually, they told us they had a warrant, but they also made lewd comments about my wife’s nudity as if trying to provoke me to fight. I worried it was to justify shooting me, and held firm.

They repeatedly ran a drug dog onto the waterbed, records and electronics, and delicate items on shelving, running him back and forth to maximize damage. They trashed the house so bad you couldn’t even walk through some rooms from the overturned furniture. Even though they had access to the whole house and keys to all doors, they continued to smash windows and locks. They threw birth certificates and personal papers into the wet sink and trash, and spilled solvents and paints on expensive automotive manuals for my work. They took live ammunition out of its box, took it outside the building, and threw it into deep grass. I hate to think what could have happened if I had mowed the lawn without noticing.

They found no drugs, but they opened and took mail. They took cash from a recently cashed pay check, and an uncashed check from a relative. They took all sorts of contractual documents about our finances, as well as property titles and all of our personal ID. They didn’t even offer us a receipt. When I later tried to get our things back, they said I had to obtain a notarized statement which, because they had our ID, was impossible. When I pointed this out, they just laughed at me and said, ‘Tough luck.’

But that’s still not the worst. In serving the warrant, the soldiers surrounded the entire neighborhood and went into yards everywhere, also arriving in an armored personnel carrier and with an Army helicopter overhead. They shot my dog in the eye and fired shots over the head of a woman opening her back door to see why a neighbor child had burst into her house screaming in fear. They also fired shots at a neighbor who was simply walking in the street, and forced him to the ground and cuffed him. Another neighbor, his wife, and an infant where held at gunpoint on their own porch while their property was illegally searched — they were not listed on the warrant.

A Hispanic businessman standing by his truck with both hands already raised to light his smoke was shot twice without a word of warning. When he asked for help, they shouted racial slurs, and told him to shut up as they cuffed him. Everything described so far took place before the Police drove up to announce “Police” and “warrant.” No one mentioned thus far, except for our home, was listed on the warrant or even near property on the warrant.

Few heard the announcement of “Police” or “warrant” because of the noise from the Army helicopter and Armored tank-like vehicle. Despite many witnesses, Police denied shootings took place. It was later discovered they had used a new kind of “non-lethal” gun outlawed in Europe by every major law enforcement agency as being too dangerous for general use.

Note: The businessman, Johnny Senteno, eventually won a $100K cash settlement against Portland Police for the shooting, which was proven in court to have taken place. In my investigation, the head of the SWAT Team involved first agreed to speak with me but terminated the interview when I raised the point about the weapon involved, which fired a dense compressed pepper-spray-based compound intended to ‘disintegrate’ on impact to engulf one with pepper spray at distance. However, fired at near point-blank range, they fractured bones and left bruises which took weeks to heal.

Many people, including several bystanders having nothing to do with the raid, and a pregnant woman, were cuffed and held at gunpoint for hours but never arrested or told why they were being held. Only after the TV crews had left, were these people released. They were instead warned to “keep quiet about this” if they didn’t want any “future problems.”

Cops told media our neighborhood was a drug haven where you could get anything you want, but several independent investigators say only a Police informant ignored by the raid was ever seen dealing. One private investigator made several connections between the raid and the murder of Anthony Duane Shaw by Police — thought to be blackmailing dirty cops, as was the other person named on the raid warrant. One connection led to my house, and two to the other house raided.

Note: Myself and at least four independent filmmakers and radio or cable TV show producers spent an estimated 400 hours between us investigating the matter, resulting in more than 12 hours of radio and TV presentations. This was on the heels of a like investigation of Shaw being shot 13 times by Police (his family won a $100K wrongful death award). My part was the least of the effort, but my methods allowed me to get closer to the identity of background players and their motives, uncovering profitable leads resulting in the more interesting discoveries.

Their experience was much like ours, but there, Cops took even stranger stuff — a guitar, a video tape of an episode of a real-life Cops TV show, and absolutely everything in the yard and a garage which they promptly declared as junk and a nuisance — even though the items in the garage were neatly boxed. This was true because the occupants had just moved in — those named on the warrant no longer lived there. This was done outside of due process, and investigators believe it was not taken to the dump, but rather to a convenient place for detailed search conducted out of the eyes of all authority.

But the Police did make an arrest — despite admitting to the press that no drugs were found. In fact, they left some rooms unsearched, almost as if they had found what they were really looking for. They later said one marijuana joint was found. This was then changed to drug distribution on court documents, but by the time they went to court, it had become drug manufacturing. The person charged was the fellow with connections to Shaw, and who, like Shaw, had himself claimed to be blackmailing dirty cops to leave them out of their drug dealing. He was railroaded. He was such a dangerous felon, by the way, that he turned himself in when he learned of the raid on the news, driving back to Portland from out of town to do it.

Note: All charges were eventually dropped since there really had been no discoveries made in the raid. The entire matter seems to have been orchestrated to obtain blackmail evidence against bad cops and sanctioned CIA drug smuggling operations, a matter in which I would later witness first hand a known CIA front’s involvement.

They later did much the same to my wife, eventually arresting and prosecuting her on minor charges equally false: after the raid they followed us everywhere we went, even into restaurants; they repeatedly made awful, insulting comments in public about us; they stopped us for phony traffic violations all the time, illegally searching our car without probable cause; they eventually planted and “found” a small quantity of drugs in the car.

Should you not believe that, consider how likely you would be to carry drugs in your car knowing the Police continually followed and stopped you, and searched your car. Unbelievably, at least one person on the jury turned out to be connected to participants in the raid by virtue of real estate deals mentioned below. The State-provided lawyer did not protest an obviously rigged jury once notified, nor did he provide good defense in court, hardly opening his mouth unless the Judge spoke to him.

Note: These matters were heating up on Public TV cable shows and though the woman was found ‘guilty,’ before sentencing could take place, the matter started to unravel;  Maj. General Gene Katke, head of the Oregon National Guard resigned his post amid an investigation described as regarding financial mismanagement. I was subsequently told the Judge declined to sentence her to jail time and instead elected community service/probation.

Another thing uncovered in private investigation is that the raid, continual Police harassment after the raid, and perhaps even the reason behind the murder — had to do with some sort of land grab by a mysterious series of dummy corporations operated by law enforcement and government officials involved in the raid. Someone representing [REDACTED] Mortgage offered us half of market value for our house “so we could walk away from all the trouble.” He told me that “powerful law enforcement and government people were in the company,” so I “should sell to them if I didn’t want any more trouble.”

I also know there are direct ties between this man, the Police, and between the company and the houses where the raid and harassment took place — where the families recently moved out after things got too scary. Men shattered the windows and beat one of the tenants with baseball bats, and threatened them with shotguns — the one who did the beating was a cop named [REDACTED] who, despite being from another county, was also involved in the raid.

Note: that cop eventually tracked me down because of my investigation of this aspect of the matter, and took action; he approached me with a gun in a folded newspaper while I napped during my lunch hour in my car at work one day. But my Guardian Angel woke me and I saw him in the rearview, and quickly exited to face him. Seeing the gun and the look on his face, I motioned with my head to inform him I had been (deliberately) parked under our companies security camera. He did an about face and I had no more trouble with him.

He wound up being the new landlord, suddenly owning a large number of houses in the area. He only accepts cash for his rent, refuses to give receipts, and will not sign a lease or rental agreement. He continually evicts people suddenly in the middle of the night by ‘Police orders’ and then keeps all their possessions they were unable to take with them. If anyone complains or takes legal actions, they get the same treatment we got.

The neighborhood continues to be harassed. Cops follow and stop most of us who have not yet sold our homes, drive by at all hours shining lights in windows, or they just sit and endlessly watch. They make us afraid to go outside. Some neighbors have been beaten by Police, had threats of arrest “to teach you a lesson,” and even threats of death. After beating one man in his front yard for mouthing back at the cops, they dragged his wife by her hair on the gravel roadway while she was wearing only a bathing suit — all in front of their kids. Despite the beating and the rough treatment, they made no arrests — underscoring that it was not “in the line of duty” or because they “resisted arrest,” though they were threatened with jail time.

Our house has been bugged, confirmed by the fact that arguments between me and my wife were being picked up on neighborhood short-wave radios, and covert entry was made to leave things, probably planted evidence for the next time. I’ve only told you a small part of the problem — I could go on for pages. Something is very wrong, and we worry that they will do something even worse. We have been tipped by friends close to Police sources to expect another raid, soon.

We are very afraid. Someone needs to expose what’s going on. Even though my wife and I have never had a history of problems with Police, they are now there every time we turn around. Our Police files were nonexistent before the raid, but now, they are inches thick with all the Police reports executed through the many harassment efforts. Not one entry has been legitimately made, but they make sure there are never witnesses, so we can’t prove it or file charges.

Rush Limbaugh mentioned the illegal use of the Guard on his show, but he didn’t know about the rest. You do, so be careful. If they want my house, they might want yours, too, since you are my neighbor. The cop has gotten at least seven houses in the neighborhood so far. You might be next…

End of original material

military police state repeal of posse comitatus

Summary Notes

I eventually managed to speak to the man representing the Mortgage company and learned that he himself was coerced and beaten (lost two front teeth) if refusing to help, and NOT an employee of the firm. He was, in fact, the ‘Police drug informant’ beaten with bats. When he did what he was told, he said, he was provided with drugs as reward.

He indicated that Governors of at least two states (he mentioned Arizona, California), city officials, and various law enforcement people had set up a company to purchase properties as silent partners (illegally concealing their identities). He told me houses were painted in a particular combinations of various two-tone colors to indicate who ‘owned’ and got the income from a given acquired property. Indeed, I found more than two dozen homes in the greater neighborhood with these identical paint combinations, in under thirty minutes time.

He also provided me with a copy of an ad used to secure renters for the homes. It had a phone number which went directly to Clackamas County Corrections, the very place where I had already identified a CIA asset working as a corrections officer, along with several bounty hunters trained at a CIA school in California. The phone number was an answering machine which simply asked you to leave your own phone number. I left mine, and it was shortly after that that I was visited by the Sheriff with the gun in a newspaper.

I later followed up with the Mortgage company and clues there led me to a CIA front involved in each transaction. That investigation led to discovery of a murder in the State Capital which seemed to be tied to acquisition of businesses in like manner as the homes. The more public the affair became on Public Access TV, the more things began to unravel, and the hotter it got.

There were more attempts on my life, including a ‘traffic stop for a burned out tail light’ by no fewer than nine local, county, state, and federal cars. Fortunately, my Wife was driving in her car with me, and stopped, thwarting what was presumed to be an intended replay of the referenced broad daylight murder of Shaw by a similar stop. Unarmed, he was shot to death by nine officers as he sat in his car with both hands on his steering wheel as commanded. He had allegedly tried to run down a Police officer between his car and one of the two cop cars which were literally bumper to bumper with his (their story), which conflicted with eye witness statements.

Before it was over, not only had the General resigned, but also, but the elected Clackamas County Sheriff Ris Bradshaw. The CIA fronts went under ground, and $12M worth of ‘confiscated homes’ were sold by the city to fund Police operations. I sent a letter of inquiry to Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona, and he also resigned that same month after being convicted on unrelated felony charges before that lead could be pursued. Naturally, there was no response to my inquiry.

I was just a citizen acting as a investigative writer for my book (Fatal Rebirth) on abuse of power issues. Don’t let anyone tell you a single individual cannot stand against the machine and make a difference by speaking out — and especially by joining with others of like mind. One General, one Sheriff, one Governor resigned, CIA fronts shut down, stolen houses converted from graft to public revenue, and more… thanks to our efforts to get at and tell the truth. Yes, it was risky, but why live a life in fear of living it to the fullest of potential? If they can cower you that way, you are not as free as they wish you to believe.

What of Early, of Late?

How vastly different life turns out for one friend compared the next… and yet how much so alike as to be frightening

Copyright (c) 1996 by H. Michael Sweeney — All Rights Reserved

Permission to reproduce for non profit use granted provided it is reproduced in full and links back to proparanoid.wordpress.com. This article was written for the Oregonian, but the Editor notified me that they no longer wanted my Op-Ed submissions because they generated too many responses critical of government. So I added the Oregonian stings and published it instead in my book set, Fatal Rebirth.

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From the local news: A Portland man was arrested today for shooting two State Troopers in the back after being stopped for a traffic infraction. Neither officer was seriously wounded, thanks to bullet proof vests. Arrested at the scene on charges of attempted murder was Phil Early, of Portland, Oregon…

As it happens with many news stories, there is more to the story than meets the eye. Sometimes, there is a story behind the story.

I knew Phil Early in a more innocent time. I knew him as well as anyone, both teenagers attending Jefferson High School. He was a very different person then, certainly exhibiting no characteristic that might lead to his shooting a female State Trooper and young man wearing a State Trooper uniform* in the back. His worst offenses in those school days were being suspended for playing hooky.

Having lost track of Phil after I went into the military, and having often thought about him over the years and the many good experiences we had shared together, I must wonder what could have brought him to this unlikely end. Having heard that he had joined the Army and was killed in Vietnam, it is a shame that it took this tragic news event to reveal the error in that information and open the possibility of our meeting again. Perhaps, under the right circumstances, I might even have made a difference in his fate. This haunts me.

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But that is not all that haunts

Despite the outwardly heinous act and the many negative stories of Phil in the local media, there still seems much good about Phil in tact from when I knew him. He still is a caring and giving person, according to those who knew and worked with him in his last days as a free man. It is said that he helped anyone who asked and gave of himself freely, without judgment. I even understand that he had fallen victim to con artists who took advantage of his giving nature, but he had not let their greed dim his caring for or trusting of other strangers in need.

This was the Phil I knew, who would volunteer to loan his best blazer to a casual acquaintance (I had known him all of fifteen minutes when he offered it to me), or a Phil who would give his last two bucks for gas to a stranger stuck in front of the local grocery store. And that memory does not tally with the news reports of a man who supposedly, by association with Posse comitatus, has a hatred for other races. The stranger he had helped to buy gas in the early 60’s was a black man. In those times, equality was a mere dream in Martin Luther’s sermons, but already reality in Phil’s heart.

And speaking of Posse comitatus, I try not to automatically think harshly at the sounding of the name. It was the Posse comitatus Act of 1864 which protects citizens from abusive application of military against civilians in police actions, unless under martial law. This, perhaps, is why the current group by that same name does not recognize the State Police as a duly authorized Police agency.

Rather, they feel that any armed force under direct authority of State rule, regardless of the name it uses, regardless of the document of law or charter which empowers it, and regardless of its stated mission or rules of procedure, is nothing more than a state militia — a military body. As such, just like the National Guard, it is seen as a military unit subject to the Posse comitatus Act.

It was originally reported that Phil, like many Posse members, had an arsenal of weapons and ammunition. The Posse apparently believes, like many groups, that it is up to the citizens to protect themselves from the possibility of a military overthrow of the government — a thinking which, in exercise, requires a well armed and well trained civilian population. I now understand that Phil’s arsenal has turned out to be closer to the number of guns owned by the average farming family in Kansas. The description of many of these weapons apparently better matches that of “collector items” than of “arsenal.” This is closer to the Phil I remember, who liked to collect a variety of many like things, as would please his eye. In blazer’s for instance, he had nearly a dozen. He had many fewer guns.

There is one disturbing thought, however. As different as our lives must have been, and as different as our current situations seem, there is much about Phil’s late history that matches my own life. I, too, have grown suspicious of many in law enforcement, and have had my share of confrontations with them, including multiple attempts on my life by assassination.

Phil’s negative experiences might be deemed politically shaped by Posse comitatus. Mine have been as a result of investigating illegal activities of those within law enforcement — coincidentally involving illegal application of National Guard and other Federal agencies by or within police — the very thing feared by Posse comitatus.

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The nature of fate?

In realizing this commonality, I ask what might bring us so tenuously close in our thinking and experiences, despite the many years and miles between us? I go back to the innocent times, and a possible answer seems apparent. It was the time of Camelot. We, the youth of the nation, had a man in the White House we could love and look up to, regardless of any political realities perceived by our elders. And then, he was gone, taken away in violence under questionable circumstances.

I remember well the weighty discussions with my peers at the time, including Phil, of course. Even then, the theories were abundant. As more was learned, the doubts grew about the lone gunman theory. Perhaps this dashed our innocence and planted a seed of mistrust of an armed government and its secret minions of intelligencia – a mistrust which ultimately led us each along separate but similar paths, once we parted ways at the end of high school.

Now of course, there are more facts pointing to CIA assassination than to Oswald. Despite CIA Operative testimony under oath in court that CIA was directly involved in the murder and a cover up, which necessarily and demonstrably began before the murder, media still chooses to label anyone who questions such things as “conspiracy buffs” — despite the fact that major media was present in the court at the time to hear that critical testimony.

That the CIA-Operative witness had, within weeks of the assassination, come forward to FBI with the same material, and later, also testified to the Warren Commission — and all ignored the truth, does not make us “conspiracy buffs” feel any better about media or government. Apparently media prefers to continue to publish fiction as fact rather than admitting they were blinded to the truth from day one. Perhaps government simply finds cover up the only acceptable way of life.

Come to think of it, local media and government did the same with local murders undertaken by Portland Police. Despite abundant witnesses to the contrary, media blithely published verbatim as fact, Police accounts of the shooting of a young man named Shaw — an event which I have researched to conclusions contrary to their version of the story, as documented elsewhere. There was a similar conspiracy of silence with respect to the 104th and Liebe Street Raid.

There, National Guard, including a helicopter and an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), was illegally used in an alleged drug raid, but this author has discovered was more likely connected to the murder of Shaw. Local TV station KATU was the only station covering the raid, a matter itself perhaps telling since their former anchorman was also a former Police Commissioner and current City Councilman. Civic-minded KATU edited in new questions to field interviews of the neighbors of Liebe Street, in effect reversing their answers to make them sound supportive of Police actions, instead of condemning… everyone on Liebe Street was outraged at Police, the Guard, and KATU, but media would not air their grievances, nor would any government agency.

Surely, this angered the Posse. It angered many people, especially because of the abuse of power exhibited by Police. That summer saw Portland host the Guns and Hoses Olympics, where police and firemen from around the nation came to visit. With competitions in sniper shooting and police dog attacks, there was also likely an effort to show off Portland as a modern and well-equipped Police Department. Perhaps, but some would point to statistics to show it one of the more deadly departments, with the best way to die of gunfire by Police was to call 911 and threaten to kill yourself. They usually finished the job that those less dedicated to the deed could not. Perhaps it was such things, both old and new, that drove Phil’s anger.

Perhaps there are many from my generation who cannot let go of our misgivings and outrage from such things as the murder and cover up of our President by our own government agents. Perhaps there are many who, at least secretly within, believe in their heart that that terrible act in Dallas was the first of many dark chapters — chapters sufficiently dark to suggest a fearsome future at the hands of their authors.

That we see and deal with seemingly endless supply of similar Federal abuses and lesser version on a more local scale, does not help. Some of our generation are moved to action, while others prefer the safety of quiet contemplation. For those of us moved to act, some choose the pen, as have I, and some of us choose the gun, as apparently did Phil. Phil himself deeply regrets his actions, which he says were driven by the dominating and abusive attitude of the officer. Something, he says, just snapped within him.

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How do we judge such matters?

I cannot condone what Phil as apparently done. I can, perhaps, understand its root cause. Society must condemn his actions. In friendship, however, I am moved to point out that this is not a simple case of gun violence, as many in media have promoted with gusto. Indeed, there is no such thing. Gun violence is not a living thing which happens of its own volition. Gun violence is the result of a given set of life experiences and circumstances. In fact, those things would conspire to vent violent action even in the absence of a gun — such as stabbings or other assaults.

Those that believe the guns are the evil root should therefore also seek to take away all the knives, baseball bats, pillows with which to smother, stockings and ties with which to strangle, etc. Each case of gun violence deserves some degree of calm analysis towards possible prevention of future shootings — not a knee jerk call for seizure of arms. In analysis of Phil’s case, I suggest his actions were driven by something which those very actions themselves could not possibly well serve.

Could Phil have thought through the emotions that drove the instant, and looked beyond in some considered philosophical light, he might have come to the same conclusion. I would suggest to Phil that his enemy was not present when he opened fire. It was not present in the persons he shot, except perhaps by some misapplication of mere symbolism. They were most likely doing a tough job in a just cause. Nor was his enemy their leaders or those that worked to create agencies so troublesome to the Posse.

No, not these things, but far less tangible things. An unhappy history with no suitable answers of blame. A docile public apathy with unconscionable surrender of power to an increasingly errant and abusive government. A growing frustration with no means of proper release. A gradual loss of freedoms to a New World Order. A reasonable fear allowed unreasonable control.

Looking back, and talking to others, I wonder: how many of my generation have traveled so perilously close to Phil’s path? How many more of us are near the line he has crossed? Too many, I fear. A legacy, perhaps, of Dallas? A signpost, perhaps, of our future path?

~~~

posse comitatus act posse comitatus group gun control

* The second person shot was, of all things, an Explorer Scout.

Under some extremely inappropriate reasoning, the State of Oregon and the Boy Scouts of America have decided that it is appropriate to dress Explorer Scouts in full State Police uniforms, sans weapons, and put them on the streets and in patrol cars — on the front line against crime, unarmed, untrained, and often, unsupervised.

This deserves another article of its own, as yet another example of the growing Police State in Portland, Oregon. Here, in Portland, highway workers, Explorer Scouts, firemen, private security firms, the National Guard, and even gang members, have all been inducted into the general law enforcement umbrella in one way or the other. One has to ask, why?

I only wish that Phil had thought to ask such questions first, and not have shot, at all.

 

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• New Effort To Curtail Posse Comitatus After Colorado Massacre (mountainrepublic.net)