Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?
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Acoustic Cannon Sales to Police Surge After Black Lives Matter Protests
Acoustic Cannon Sales to Police Surge After Black Lives Matter Protests
During a company conference call with financial analysts last week, Tom Brown, the chief executive of LRAD, a military contractor, informed investors that sales were rolling in, not just from Chinese government agencies and the U.S. Navy, but also from American law enforcement.
LRAD manufactures an acoustic cannon that can be used either as a mounted loudspeaker or as a weapon to fire deafening noises at crowds of people.
Over the last year, following a wave of protests over officer-involved killings of black Americans, LRAD has seen an uptick in inquiries from police departments around the country.
Brown told financial analysts in a May conference call about the “renewed interest” from police departments. “A lot of grant money starts to flow to law enforcement, and we’re getting a lot of inquiries” following protests, he said. One inquiry he mentioned came from the Maryland Sheriff’s Department following the protests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray.
Speaking to investors, LRAD executives explained that their product was on site in Baltimore, on loan from Montgomery County, Maryland, though officers ended up not using it on demonstrators. But, the LRAD executives added, the New York Police Department used the cannon as a loudspeaker to order demonstrators in Union Square who were holding a solidarity protest in support of the Baltimore actions to disperse.
Videos of the NYPD using the LRAD cannon to manage the demonstrators were widely circulated on YouTube, company officials boasted. “So we have been getting good press,” Brown noted, adding, “depending on which side of the press you’re looking at, but we’ve been getting very strong press from law enforcement.”
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FBI Uses Surveillance “Air Force” To Monitor US Citizens, AP Finds
FBI Uses Surveillance “Air Force” To Monitor US Citizens, AP Finds
In the wake of the violent protests, looting, and riots that shook Baltimore to its core and left parts of the city smoldering in late April, Benjamin Shayne — who had just sat down in his backyard to enjoy a radio broadcast of an Orioles game — inadvertently uncovered a secret FBI aerial surveillance program when he noticed a small plane circling overhead and asked Twitter if anyone could explain the aircraft’s low, circular flight pattern. As it turned out, one of Shayne’s followers had some answers:
@scanbaltimore It’s registered to NG Research: http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=539MY … For some other info: http://www.reddit.com/r/nova/comments/2bgj1p/plane_circling_over_mcleanlangley_area_last_few/ … pic.twitter.com/eGXFIKXCgr
That exchange would culminate in a Washington Post article which outlined the “aerial support” provided to the Baltimore Police Department by the FBI.
We went on to take a closer look and, in “Meet The FBI’s Secret Eye In The Sky Overseeing The Baltimore Riots”, we postulated that the Cessna’s monitoring the riots may have been equipped with night vision equipment provided by Persistent Surveillance Systems, a company which has worked with the Baltimore PD in the past. Here’s a schematic (via WaPo):
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Violent Conditions Generate Violent Revolts: The Logic of Rebellion
Violent Conditions Generate Violent Revolts: The Logic of Rebellion
My eyes were glued to my television set as I watched civil unrest unfold in Baltimore. Yet, as a historian who has studied urban rebellions, I was not surprised. Since last August, the question for me has not been why, but when.
I watched CNN’s and MSNBC’s coverage. What I noticed was not surprising, but vexing, nonetheless. Commentators like Al Sharpton, Dr. Jamal Bryant, and others resorted to condemning and condescending participants and denying the uprising’s political significance. The assumption that violence is senseless and apolitical was embedded in their sanctimony.
Now, I do not aim to advocate for the use of collective violence, but I believe it is imperative that we analyze its political significance. In yesterday’s press conference, President Obama argued that the “riot” distracted us from the pursuit of reform. I argue otherwise, the Baltimore rebellion not only highlights the problem of policing, it opens a space for analysis and conversation of all of the structural problems that President Obama mentioned in his reactions yesterday. Rebellions historically have also created political opportunities for reform. Dismissing collective violence as senseless, criminal, and apolitical narrows our frame for understanding the history of interconnected problems plaguing cities and municipalities like Baltimore and Ferguson such as racial and economic segregation and redlining, deindustrialization, overpolicing, the emergence of mass incarceration, and even criminal activity. I argue that collective violence is protest politics. Violent protest does contain a logic, even if it appears chaotic.
The pressing question underlying live analyses of the Baltimore uprising was: Why do African Americans rebel?
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Are We Being Psychologically Conditioned To Accept Martial Law In America?
Are We Being Psychologically Conditioned To Accept Martial Law In America?
Have you noticed that we are starting to be bombarded with images of troops in the streets? Have you noticed that the term “martial law” is coming up a lot in movies, news broadcasts and even in television commercials? In recent years, it seems like the solution to almost every major crisis involves bringing in troops. In fact, it has already gotten to the point where when something really bad happens a lot of Americans immediately cry out for troops to be brought in. And we are seeing the same patterns over and over again. Just remember what happened in Ferguson – protesters were whipped up to a frenzy, when the riots began the police were ordered to stand down and not intervene, and finally National Guard troops were brought in as the “solution” to a crisis that had escalated wildly out of control. This is the exact same pattern that we are witnessing in Baltimore, and as you will see below, National Guard troops all over the nation have been training for this exact type of scenario. A couple of decades ago, many Americans would have regarded the notion of “martial law in America” as absolutely unthinkable, but these days the threat of civil unrest is causing an increasing number of Americans to embrace the idea of troops patrolling our city streets.
The anger toward the police that we see in the city of Baltimore is very real, but there also seem to be a lot of signs that the events of the past several days have been orchestrated and manipulated. This is something that I covered in my previous article entitled “12 Unanswered Questions About The Baltimore Riots That They Don’t Want Us To Ask“.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In Every City In America There Are People Ready To Riot, Loot And Set Things On Fire
In Every City In America There Are People Ready To Riot, Loot And Set Things On Fire
The city of Baltimore has been transformed into an “absolute war zone“, and the governor of Maryland has declared a state of emergency as the rioting in “Charm City” continues to escalate. The funeral for Freddie Gray has unleashed a firestorm of violence, and none of it is going to do anyone any good. To their credit, some of the leaders of the African-American community are standing up and loudly condemning the violence. They know that smashing cars, throwing rocks at police and looting stores is not going to solve anything. But just like we saw in Ferguson, there are lots of people out there that are ready to riot, loot and set things on fire at the drop of a hat – all they need is an opportunity. The social decay that has been eating away at the foundations of our society for generations is now manifesting in some very ugly ways. We have raised an entire generation of young people in a “value free” environment, and now we are getting to experience some of the consequences of our foolishness. And what we are witnessing in Baltimore right now is just the start. Eventually, we are going to see scenes like this all over the nation.
Thanks to social media, the violence that we saw in Baltimore on Monday is being broadcast to the entire planet. The whole world is getting a really good look at what the decline of America looks like. The following is how the New York Times described what took place…
Angry youths could be seen surrounding a police cruiser and smashing its windows in what police described as an organized attack by criminals — not demonstrators. Cars were set on fire, and stores’ windows were smashed in. Heavy smoke poured out of a CVS drugstore, which had earlier been overrun by looters. Several other businesses, including a liquor store and a check-cashing shop, were also looted.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Civil Unrest Has Begun In Baltimore And This Is Only Just The Start Of Something MUCH Bigger
Civil Unrest Has Begun In Baltimore And This Is Only Just The Start Of Something MUCH Bigger
On Saturday night, the city of Baltimore resembled a warzone as protests over the death of Freddie Gray turned wildly violent. One eyewitness reported watching the streets around him and his friend “turn into madness” as they left a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles. Car windows were smashed, stores were robbed, chairs were thrown and large numbers of random bystanders were attacked. One prominent Democrat claims that those committing the violence were “mainly from out of town“, but how would he know that? Today, there are approximately 2.7 million people living in the Baltimore metropolitan area. It is an area that has been known for poverty, crime and drugs for many years, and as racial tensions continue to increase in this country it is a powder keg that could erupt at literally any time. We got a preview of what can happen on Saturday night. If this is how people will act while economic conditions are still relatively stable in this country, what in the world is going to happen when things really start falling apart?
On Saturday, April 11th, I delivered a presentation down in Dallas, Texas in which I warned about the rioting and civil unrest that are soon coming to this nation. On slide number 145 of the presentation, I specifically named the city of Baltimore as one of the cities where this would happen. But I had no idea that the rioting in Baltimore would begin so quickly. And the violence that we saw on Saturday night was at a level that was quite shocking. The following is how the Daily Mail described some of the chaos that ensued…
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