NAPERVILLE, IL- The deployment of the “smart grid” took a dark turn on Wednesday in Illinois, as residents in the City of Naperville (CON) woke up to the reality of ‘smart’ meters forced on their homes by police officers and municipal utility installers working together to intimidate- and in two cases arrest- residents who continue to refuse the meters and protect their homes. This follows CON’s FINAL NOTICE to residents days before.
These developments would be unbelievable in and of themselves as flagrant violations of constitutional property rights. The fact that the meters emit a Class 2B carcinogen, have caused at least hundreds of fires, and clearly violate privacy laws including the 4th Amendment, not to mention that these facts are all at issue in an ongoing federal lawsuit brought against the city by its own residents- makes these events all the more troubling.
New details are emerging about the CON’s installation “blitzkrieg” – backed up by armed police- that hit neighborhoods in this Illinois city of 150,000 people starting on Wednesday January 23rd. The forced installations have continued since then.
Why legalizing recreational marijuana improves my opinion of Washington State
BTC Commentary -- Washington State recently approved I-502, a measure to legalise an ounce of marijuana November 6th, dismissing 175 misdemeanor cases almost immediately after. The measure had its critics and its proponents in mortal combat to do something new. Washington State intends to makes hay from abolishing drug prohibition.
Every American locale has their version of freedom. 60% of Washington State voted in a new AFIS tax for biometric captures. The same population approved what is considered a libertarian measure to legalize marijuana. Washington State still leans statist regardless of party along with their budget ledgers.
BTC - Two activists from the Fully Informed Jury Association or FIJA were assaulted and unlawfully detained by federal agents agents while video taping an outreach effort on public property in Allentown, PA. Their video equipment was aggressively seized by the agents as bystanders witnessed the altercation. According to the Libertarian Examiner, the interaction escalated as one FIJA member "chose to argue" with a female US Marshall.
As 911 report followed, dispatched as a "robbery in progress". The camera operator, George Donnely, has been detained since the incident. The charges to continue to hold him in a local Federal Detention Center are obscured.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was hailed as a hero alongside former Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and nearly became chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced to four years behind bars Thursday for eight felonies.
Kerik admitted in November that he lied to the White House, filed false taxes and committed other crimes.
"The fact that Mr. Kerik would use that event (9/11) for personal gain and aggrandizement is a dark place in the soul for me," said federal Judge Stephen Robinson. An apologetic Kerik said before the sentence was pronounced: "Allow me to return to my wife and two little girls as soon as possible."
Federal guidelines indicated Kerik's sentence should be between 27 and 33 months in prison. Robinson said he went beyond the guidelines because they could not account for certain factors. Kerik was "the chief law enforcement law enforcement officer for the biggest and grandest city this nation has," Robinson said. The crimes were committed "in the process of attempting to become a cabinet level position in the government of the United States."
The prosecutor, Michael Bosworth, said the misdeeds were "driven by arrogance, personal greed and professional ambition."
Kerik will be allowed to surrender voluntarily on May 17; the prison has not been chosen yet. Kerik, 54, has already been ordered to pay $188,000 in restitution and to pay past-due taxes and penalties on six years of tax returns.
"...I'd like to apologize to the American people for the mistakes I've made and for which I have just accepted responsibility," Kerik said outside the courthouse. "As history is written, I can only hope that I will be judged for 30 years of service I've given to the country and the city of New York."
"...Although this has been the most challenging period of my life ... it will not diminish my love and admiration for this country, which it has been one of my greatest privileges to serve." Just before pleading guilty, Kerik spent three weeks in the Westchester County Jail for releasing secret pretrial information. While there, he was voluntarily admitted to the psychiatric ward for observation because of stress. Doctors concluded he did not need mental care.
After admitting his crimes, Kerik was freed pending sentencing. He had to post a $1.5 million bond, wear an electronic monitor and generally stay inside his home in Franklin Lakes, N.J. In presentencing memos to the judge, the defense and prosecution painted sharply different portraits of Kerik.
The defense spoke of his bleak upbringing, his steely leadership after the terror attacks, his remorse and the debt he has incurred to defend himself. It supplied letters of support from his son, fellow police officers, a priest and a man who lost two sons on Sept. 11. There was no letter from Giuliani.
The prosecution memo said Kerik had "shamelessly exploited" the terror attack, had shamed his gold shield and might flee if he weren't sent to prison right away. Kerik was Giuliani's police commissioner when New York City was attacked, and he was praised worldwide for his leadership. At Giuliani's urging, he was nominated to the top Homeland Security post in 2004. It was the peak of his fast-rising career — as corruption allegations began to mount.
Kerik said in court that while being vetted for that position, he falsely denied that he had any financial dealings with anyone doing business with New York City. He said he also lied when he claimed he had specifically refused payments that were offered.
In truth, he said, he had accepted renovations of his Bronx apartment from a company seeking city work.
Those apartment renovations were the focus of the original corruption charge, which alleged that Kerik accepted the renovations in exchange for vouching for the company. Kerik did not admit that.
PHOENIX — Stun-gun maker Taser International has started telling police agencies to avoid firing the devices at suspects' chests, explaining that there's an "extremely low" risk of ill effects on the heart and that doing so will make defending lawsuits easier.
The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company made the recommendation in an Oct. 12 revised training manual, saying it "has less to do with safety and more to do with effective risk management for law enforcement agencies."
The manual also includes a lengthy explanation about deaths caused by sudden cardiac arrest.
"Should sudden cardiac arrest occur in a scenario involving a Taser discharge to the chest area, it would place the law enforcement agency, the officer, and Taser International in the difficult situation of trying to ascertain what role, if any, (the device) could have played," according to the manual.
The manual includes a graphic displaying the human body and "preferred target areas." The company recommends firing Tasers anywhere but at the head, neck and chest. The manual says to avoid chest shots "when possible" and "unless legally justified."
Taser critics call the company's new recommendation an admission that the devices can cause heart attacks.
"It's a sea change, a passive acknowledgment that Taser has indeed been overconfident about its claims of safety," said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado. "It underscores the question marks that have been adding up along with hundreds of bodies."
Amnesty International says more than 350 people in the U.S. died after they were shocked with Tasers, and that in 50 of those cases, medical examiners cited a link between Taser shocks and death. ::: MORE HERE:::
"We moved down the street and the truck came too. But we made a lot more noise. Prisoners in orange from Witness Against Torture chained themselves to the White House fence. So did Cindy Sheehan whose son died in Iraq. Veterans for Peace displayed US, Afghan, and Iraqi coffins and read the names of the dead and shouted: "Mourn the dead! Heal the wounded! End the wars!" The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, the World Can't Wait, and lots of other groups joined in. Many of us donned black shirts, white placards with the names of dead troops or civilians, and white masks: the March of the Dead. We marched on the sidewalk in front of the White House in silence.
For OpEdNews: David Swanson - AfterDowningStreet.org
U.S. Park Policeman (USPP) who shall remain nameless on Monday, October 5, 2009: Next!
Me: Is that me?
USPP: Whoever. I'm flexible. I'm agreeable. I'm just here to please.
Me: Except for the whole arresting us part, huh? [climbing out of a cramped metal van where I'd been stuck with a dozen other men, our hands cuffed behind our backs so tightly they left marks and my friend's hands went numb]
USPP: What? I thought that was the whole point. You wanted to get arrested.
Me: No, we didn't want to get arrested. We wanted to engage in free speech.
USPP: Oh, I'm not going to get into that. Step over here. [He asks me my name and address.] Charlottesville? It's beautiful down there. Why would you want to come here and do this? [cutting himself off quickly] I mean I know why, you don't need to tell me.
But of course I did need to tell him. He just didn't want to know.
Earlier that day in front of the White House:
Another police officer (APO): You all will have to move off the sidewalk into the street.
Me: Are you sure the First Amendment says that?
APO: Oh you want to play that game? We can shut the whole area down if you want to play that game.
Me: I didn't say anything about a game.
The president was holding a press conference inside the White House fence with a bunch of doctors who oppose serious healthcare reform. Donna Smith, star of Michael Moore's "Sicko", was standing next to me and telling me that every patient who had appeared in that movie had determined that the healthcare bills now under consideration in Washington would not have done anything to help them and won't now.
Hundreds of peace activists made their way to the White House sidewalk. We joined with some doctors and nurses who were not permitted to take part in the events inside because they support single-payer healthcare. We shouted "Healthcare Not Warfare." We shouted "Troops Home Now. End Warfare." We shouted "Single Payer Now. End Warfare." We made a lot of noise, but we were in the street rather than on the forbidden sidewalk. And there was an incredibly noisy truck behind us that had chosen this moment to clean Pennsylvania Avenue with pressurized hoses.
We moved down the street and the truck came too. But we made a lot more noise. Prisoners in orange from Witness Against Torture chained themselves to the White House fence. So did Cindy Sheehan whose son died in Iraq. Veterans for Peace displayed US, Afghan, and Iraqi coffins and read the names of the dead and shouted: "Mourn the dead! Heal the wounded! End the wars!" The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, the World Can't Wait, and lots of other groups joined in. Many of us donned black shirts, white placards with the names of dead troops or civilians, and white masks: the March of the Dead. We marched on the sidewalk in front of the White House in silence.
Then the police horses came at us. The police tried to drive us into the street with their horses, but we lay down on the sidewalk, and they didn't trample us. Instead they put police tape around a huge area, moved everyone else out of it, gave three warnings, and began arresting people. We lay on the sidewalk for approximately two hours, rode with lights and sirens blaring in an escorted caravan of vans and buses to the jail, and were out within an hour with tickets to pay $100 fines or challenge in court.
The crime? Exercising free speech in a group of more than 25 people. Seriously. We're charged with failing to obey a lawful order. And the order was to move farther away from the White House because with more than 25 people you have to have a special permit in order to exercise free speech. At least 50 of us, maybe closer to 100, went to jail, while many more chose to comply with the lawful (if unconstitutional) order.
And what did the Park Police SWAT team do? Nothing but follow orders. They followed orders to the exclusion of all thought. They asked us not to encourage them to think. They didn't want to think about freedom of speech. They didn't want to think about arresting nonviolent people for peacefully demanding peace. They didn't want to think about whether protesting illegal wars actually constitutes something closer to law enforcement than what they themselves were engaged in. And they certainly didn't want to think about the men and women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan who will die because the US Park Police arrested peaceful people assembling and speaking, rather than arresting war criminals like Richard Cheney who confess to felonies on television and lives right across the river.
David Swanson is the author of the new book "DAYBREAK: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book
A trend to push conservative civil libertarians towards Democratic representation is evolving for challengers of the national identity agenda. The trend affects states who endorse the surveillance industrial complex and whose interests create competition among Republicans maintaining career partisan allegiances. Opposing the Real ID card program has an ability to create division amongst Republicans, the weaker party among Legislative, Judicial and Executive branches.
North Carolina identity activist Jim Palmer of NCard.info was asked by Rep. Mitch Gillespie (R) to seek support on the anti-Real ID effort from state level Democrats.
"Mitch Gillespie is so unconcerned, he is willing let all of our personal and private data be put into a centralized database including our biometric facial features that can and will be hacked. Since 2005, over 263 million personal records have been breached," said Palmer whose back and forth with Rep. Gillespie resulted in his dropping the issue via e-mail.
Gillespie's retort was telling about the balances of power currently dominated by Democrats.
"This thinking shows you don't understand anything about the political process. I will remove you from my contacts. You need to contact Sen. Queen in the future, " said Gillespie, who later quailed " ..maybe a democrat will get elected."
The fight to secure drivers licenses in North Carolina has been visceral. There are at least 2 North Carolina grassroots organizations that are single issue focused on Real ID and identity surveillance. It does seem like the North Carolina Democrats took up opposition to the national ID issue so that any worthwhile legislative effort would be sure to drop dead. Earlier this year, Rep. Cole adopted NCard's trusts, stringing them along. In the end Cole was found stalling, using his "support" as a placeholder for representation during the legislative session.
Economic development dominates legislative concerns in a state with one of the highest unemployment rates of the nation. An immigration reform carrot holds less sway with North Carolina's citizens than it would in a border state like Texas, where an Enhanced Drivers License seems more pragmatic. Economic leverage from banking interests and local unemployment rates propel the difference.
BIOMETRICS, IDENTITY FRAUD & LOCAL MOTOR VEHICLE DIVISIONS
Palmer claims national financial pressures have created a spike of internal DMV fraud. Fraudulent activity may seem like a way to pay down debts and stay afloat in a time of high unemployment for some.
Biometrics and drivers license divisions seem to have a simpatico relationship. Some claim biometrics actually help stop immigrant identity fraud. However, those opposed to the current Real ID program believe border fence and corrupt anti-immigration advocates are creating false solutions to real problems in order to keep the broken system in place. The benefits of dirt-cheap wage labor, without the fuss of human rights or health insurance benefits, maintains local profitability for businesses. The same businesses who rely on current immigration trends to just stay afloat. If that makes theWestern Hemisphere Travel Initiative's demand for pro-biometrics propagandalook good, that's what gets in the mainstream news.
With so much to lose, key political challengers become targets for media hit pieces.
TROUBLED CHAMPIONS IN THE CAROLINAS
While Anti-Real ID representation is getting the cold shoulder from some state level Republicans, transpartisan national champions of the anti-Real ID effort appear to have been targeted for smears in the Carolinas.
For those with open eyes - politicians are known to have numerous dalliances, sometimes deviant sex, with anyone from prostitutes to government aides if they allow self delusion to set in. Sexual indiscretion and power are potent cocktails for anyone who assumes a lot of responsibility. The stage is perpetually set for political entrapment. When it's no longer expedient to keep each other's secrets, indiscretion is political capital. Threat of ruin is a threat of force.
As part of the 2008 post-election coverage, the press refreshed Edwards' outed affair as news. Edwards became the target for a media campaign feeding frenzy. It is our assessment that the North Carolina Senator provoked a political enemy enough to convene with a smear campaign. If the only obstacle to material compliance in North Carolina on a federal ID card program was Senator John Edwards, opponents might have found a way to ground him.
The problem with politicians today is they have no moral high ground left. They do what they want, have political opponents assassinated, employ lawyers to uphold thinly veiled double standards between themselves and the public and allow the corporations to shot call in their offices. Even the idealists believe U.S. politicians are little more than mobsters with a good haircut. It's low living at the highest levels of power. This is why every 2-4 years you have a chance to elect someone different.
Case in point, Jim Palmer asserted that North Carolinians who care about their identity have an opportunity to elect someone who stands strong on the issues other than Mitch Gillespie regardless of party.
In 2009, extramarital affairs do not oust people from elected positions. What does oust the "monogamy-challenged" is public funding of private indiscretion and further entrapment by the press. This is currently consistent with the media beatingconservativeGovernor Mark Sanfordis sustaining after the outing of his affair. At last report, Sanford had returned the money.
Smear campaigns are the last line of fire before all out floor skirmishes take place over controversial issues, such as national identity. We, the people, have representation from elected officials who are corruptable, human and sometimes too politically weak to take up the charge. If there is no one left qualified to represent us, the dedicated must persist in finding someone who will represent them.
North Carolina private identity advocate Jim Palmer is doing just that.
"[It's been] another Session with Mitch [Gillespie] ignoring the voice of We the People. Perhaps he won’t be reelected. My fingers are crossed. My emails are being sent out across the district."
BTC - On the student drag close to where I live, new cameras are sitting on top of street lights. They don't even try to conceal it with aesthetics. It's like being in the presence of an aggressive cockroach guarding the garbage. An immediate reflex is to shriek and then try to find a way to kill it (the cameras).
Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed.
The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.
In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.
David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent."
The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV
He added: "CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.
"It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.
US cities investing in public video surveillance should take heed of this new report. Proponents of CCTV often admit that cameras don't reduce crime, but instead argue that they help solve them after the fact. But Britain's example shows that's not true, either. In that light, there's little sense in throwing good money after bad to follow the Brits' lead. In a tight budgetary environment, cities should shelve CCTV programs and shift resources toward priorities that measurably affect crime.
As an agitator and activist, I love what I do, but I know when it is simply not working.
I came up with the term, cosmetic activism, over a year ago regarding a complaint I have with contemporary political culture. In Los Angeles, the best you can do is have roving performance art with a permit and call it a protest. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the best you can you do is show up to a scheduled Town Hall meeting and be allowed 3 minutes of public input. This is all I have ever had allowable in my adult life for political mass protest.
In the meantime, police personnel show up in full riot gear, hyper-vigilant for violence and are often guilty of provoking it themselves to bring dissolution to any legitimate mass protest.
I do not want to be jailed or beaten. Often during my militarized upbringing, I was not spared roughness by military police and arbitrary threat of force by U.S. soldiers stationed for duty. I learned early that the only divine hand strong enough to stop the U.S. military must be your own.
Rosa Parks & You
The problem with movement for social justice today is that Rosa Parks does not have permission to do today what she did for civil disobedience in American history. Non-violent civil disobedience today is met with tasering and blows by armed forces - forget that they are police. What's happening right now is that police forces are now being trained as civilian military and given license to enforce federal law over State affairs. This is why you see America breaking out in hives by the titles Tenth Amendment Center, Campaign for Liberty, American Freedom, Courage Campaign and many many others who are out of practice, maybe new to the game of public protest, but understand acutely that something is wrong and they are afraid to do nothing and to stand by while Bush continues as Obama.
I don't really have privacy anymore. Those paid to oversee also know I don't care. It's not really stopping me from creating a bridge to those who deliver on progress.
Mohandas Ghandi said of the British occupiers, challenged by India's resolve for national independence, "they are desperate when they resort to martial law." Martial paranoia includes citizen surveillance to preclude public prisoners of the state, watching for non existent wrong doing. This practice spawns boredom, from boredom wickedness and from wickedness, violence.
Ghandi did infinitely more than he said as an example to remedy blow-for-blow retaliation. Labor protests and marches are among the most effective and least utilized forms of protest in national histories. During one of Ghandi's more famous labor rights protests in South Africa, the offending corporate tycoon sent in police wielding batons as threat of force. All the marchers followed Ghandi's instruction to simply lie down. No one was within a baton's reach. No one was hurt, except the corporation who lost productivity.
America & Real Protest
American patriots are known for hawking blood soaked, revolutionary tactics with slogans like "It's time to water the tree of liberty." However, it is such a different story when it's no longer Hollywood props, cardboard, and makeup. After dealing with activists suffering from critical head injuries and a few who took longer to get out of jail than intended, you try to qualify protest efforts as "calculated risks" much as possible. Responsible activists with children, do more to make sure if they get hurt or seized upon by planning ahead if the police send in artful provacateurs. When you meet and speak to people targeted as examples for their resistance to the Federal government as gun owners, you have to appreciate the dichotomy which accompanies our culture. Our culture honors and respects brutality and bloodlust. However, when it is returned on the heads of those doing the dealing ... Intuitively, we know the ugly and thoughtless results of this double standard.
"Smart people don't need guns," softer urbane civilians say; those with degrees, living decent lives. However, American life is getting less decent by the day as the unemployment and the bills climb paired. Smart, strapped people get desperate and angry too. That is why the Obama administration and the stagnant water in Washington, which won't change itself, are fearful. It's too little, too late and for far too long to not fear the American blowback for our luckless inheritance.
The real question is, what happens when smart, desperate, angry Americans with nothing to lose aim their lives at changing the way government happens?
Real protest. Not drive-time dinner theater. Convention defying, legal bending, technologically mutating protest that is both organized and effective. It won't be your grandma's protest. My only hope is that it will be peaceful.
It's out there and its habit forming for people with less to lose everyday.
Jack Blood - my favorite interweb talk show host, delivers a verbal knock-whilst-smoking to Austin's Vampire Police Chief, Art Acevedo. Acevedo looks way too comfortable around these patriots in the beginning of this interview.
Jack wrecks it here. HIIIII-YAHHW! WOOT- TAWWW! [4:15 - 7:08] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0TAhbSPVMw
BLOOD FU FEATURE FLICK : Orwell Rolls in His Grave [1:45 minutes]
Finally, the committee approved a bill, SB 1175, that would allow police to give a Class C ticket for "failure to identify" when they detain a suspect. (Discussion of the bill begins at the 1:32:00 mark.) Currently, Texans don't have to identify themselves unless they're actually arrested, and it's not a crime if you don't do so. In practice, of course, police can't write a ticket without the identifying information, so this would give them cause to arrest you and cart you off to jail (under authority affirmed by the US Supreme Court in Atwater v. Lago Vista, a Texas case).
What kind of situations are we talking about? Under what circumstances might you be "detained" when police have no cause to arrest you? The examples given were things like "taking pictures in front of a nuclear power plant," but I think the new power would be used more widely than that, and mostly in non-terrorism related cases.
I wrote about a situation last year where I was detained on the street for, essentially, "babysitting while white." Some busybody called 911 because they saw me walking down the street with a two-year old of a different race. Three police cars were sent to detain and question me over this grave matter. That was a formal "detention" and Sen. Patrick's statute would have applied. More than a few commenters were offended that I wasn't more cooperative with police - though I did give my name and address when asked, I refused to answer detailed or personal questions. I thought a lot afterward about why I reacted the way I did. Mostly it's because the officer precisely didn'task for my name at first, but instead asked a series of questions aimed at determining whether I was some sort of child molester or kidnapper.
Sen. Whitmire asked why any law abiding citizen would refuse to identify themselves, and while I can't speak for others, I know why I wouldn't answer questions that day. As I said in reply to a commenter in that post, "Talking to cops who want to investigate you for false allegations of sex crimes has many potential negatives that simply refusing to speak to them wholly avoids." When the conversation starts out with an accusation, it's wholly justified and probably wise from the perpective of a potential defendant to not give police any information at all.
Whitmire himself identified another reason someone might not want to tell police who they were - if they were having an affair or some other "domestic situation." There are many possible scenarios where someone might not want their spouse, their job, etc., to know their whereabouts, but that wouldn't imply a crime was committed. The point is, in a free society, that person has free will to make bad choices as long as they don't harm others or violate the law. "None of your business" is still a valid response.
To demand, "if you don't have cause to arrest me, let me go" IMO is a reasonable exercise of one's rights and shouldn't require subjecting yourself to a check in the warrants database, which is the main thing this is really about at the end of the day. With more than 10% of adult Texans having outstanding traffic warrants, every time someone walks away without running them through the system, police miss a 10% chance they'll owe money that can be leveraged from them with a trip to the jail.
This is not a slippery slope toward a police state but a straight chute. I've joked before how, during the Cold War, we used to consider it the height of totalitarianism that Communist police might stop an average citizen on the street, demand to see their papers, and arrest them if they didn't comply. But that's exactly the kind of power Sen. Patrick's legislation would give police in Texas: Identify yourself or go to jail. "Can I see your papers, comrade?" That's unnecessary. The law's just fine like it is.
While Nash-McAdam doesn’t think that this incident will keep him from visiting Downtown Phoenix in the future, he says that it has cemented his view that Phoenix is a “police state to me when held in comparison to my hometown of Orange County and the numerous other cities I’ve traveled to.”
If you oppose the use of RFID in your identity documents or licenses you are on alert for Missouri, according to Constitution Party Candidate Chuck Baldwin.
"Beyond that, the MIAC report paints with a very broad brush. In addition to supporting Ron Paul, Bob Barr, or myself, a review of the report reveals that opposition to any of the following risks someone being classified as a potential "domestic terrorist":
Thanks to a concerned Missouri state policeman, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host stated that he was alerted last week to a secret Missouri state police report that categorized supporters of Congressman Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and myself as "’militia’ influenced terrorists." The report, he said, "instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties." [MORE]
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States military's Northern Command, formed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, is dedicating a combat infantry team to deal with catastrophes in the U.S., including terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
Soldiers preparing for a mission coordinated by Joint Task Force North, the U.S. Northern Command unit.
The 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry, which was first into Baghdad, Iraq, in 2003, started its controversial assignment Wednesday [October 1, 2008].
"Alicia Forrest {CODE PINK ACTIVIST} has just been released from jail, where she has spent the greater part of the day. Her charge was "Interference." Her bail was in excess of five hundred dollars. As Alicia explained to me this evening, the sheriff actually hit her twice with the baton - the first time off camera - the second time on. I've personally witnessed the abrasions on Alicia's wrists from the tightly fastened plastic restraints. To the credit of the Denver Sheriff's Department, this incident is currently under investigation by their Internal Affairs Department."
