Free Republic

China has “enforced maritime management and exercised sovereign jurisdiction” over an uninhabited reef in the disputed South China Sea, planting the country’s flag on the tiny sand bank just kilometers from a key Philippine military outpost. Photographs released by Chinese state-run media on Saturday showed China Coast Guard officers unfurling the flag as part of an effort to effectively seize Sandy Cay reef, which Beijing calls Tiexian Jiao, earlier this month. The reef, located in the flash point Spratly Island chain, is also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Sandy Cay also sits just over 3 kilometers from Thitu...

It may sound like the beginning of a Star Trek plot, but there’s a very real arms race going on in space. And Russia may have just made the first move. According to some startling reports, Russian military satellites have apparently launched unknown objects into Earth’s orbit. Space.com described the trio of Russian satellites as “secretive” objects “whose purpose is unknown.” “The three satellites, designated Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583, launched on a Soyuz-2.1V rocket from Plesetsk cosmodrome early on Feb. 2,” the outlet reports, adding that the satellites “have displayed interesting behavior.” That behavior includes getting oddly close to...

ermany's defense minister has warned that "there could be a threat of war in Europe" as he defended his administration's response to emerging threats, including Russian and Iranian aggression. Speaking to German broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, Boris Pistorius, a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party, said nations like Germany would have to increase their armed forces capability to maintain peace in the region, and needed to change their mentality to one in which war was possible.

U.S.A. — Iowa Senator Joni Ernst introduced a bill last week titled “Why does the IRS Have Guns Act,” which would prohibit the IRS from buying or storing guns and ammunition, transfer all IRS firearms to the General Services Administration so they could be auctioned off to licensed gun dealers to reduce the national debt, and move the agency’s Criminal Investigation Division to the control of the Justice Department. “The taxman is fully loaded at the expense of the taxpayer,” Ernst said in a statement. “As the Biden administration has worked to expand the size of the IRS, any...

The Environmental Protection Agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on military-style weapons to arm its 200 “special agents” to fight environmental crime. Among the weapons purchased are guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities, according to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books. “Protecting the environment just got real. With millions of dollars spent on military style weaponry, the EPA is now literally ensconced with all institutional force,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books and the author...

The military is forbidden from enforcing the law in the U.S. But the police have become so militarized that there's hardly a distinction anymore. Any reasonable person could agree that sometimes a cop needs a machine gun – but when? Read more about machine guns and the cops who wield them in Weapons of War On Our Streets: A Guide to the Militarization of America's Police.

The NYPD is warning police officers about a possible threat from the MS-13 gang, particularly when they are off-duty. CBS2’s Dick Brennan reports that in a bulletin the NYPD put out this alert: “Members of MS-13 are looking to ‘hit’ NYPD police officers, specifically in the Brentwood/Central Islip area as well as possibly Patchogue.” The bulletin says that the gang members would carry out the attacks on off-duty officers “in order to gain street credibility.”

“There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.” - Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century I have known a lot of good cops, I have defended a lot of good cops, and I have been fortunate to call a number of good cops friends. So when I say that warrior cops - hyped up on their own authority and the power of the badge - have not made America any safer or...

Just to get on record that I am NOT a cop hater. What I DO hate is the POLICE STATE to which we are headed. I blame the cops less than I do the utopian control freaks who have tightened that noose around our necks with stupid and unnecessary "laws" they then send the cops out to ATTEMPT to enforce. And so should you! Ever since the so-called War On Drugs (WOD) and, now, the War On Terror (WOT) -- actually more like the War On The Bill of Rights) -- began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training....

The FDA is stockpiling military weapons — and it’s not alone AMERICA’S GUN CULTURE has been a subject of intense interest and controversy for years, with concerns frequently raised about shadowy militias, paramilitary extremists, and unstable zealots in possession of alarming quantities of explosives and firearms. Amid the current din over assault weapons and body armor, consider one domestic organization’s fearsome arsenal of military-style equipment. In the space of eight years, the group amassed a stockpile of pistols, shotguns, and semiautomatic rifles, along with ample supplies of ammunition, liquid explosives, gun scopes, and suppressors. In its cache as well are...

Even those of us who have worked in Washington for many years and become accustomed to the inner workings of government can still be amazed by what lurks behind the curtain sometimes. Case in point: the Environmental Protection Agency.Most Americans have at least heard of the EPA, even if they have only a dim notion of what the agency actually does. It tends to skate along under the radar, unless something unusual happens, such as the toxic spill that turned the Colorado’s Animas River orange last August. Of course, what really made the spill unusual is that the EPA itself caused it.Otherwise, Americans don’t hear...

The phrase "police militarization" conjures up an image of cops wrapped in Kevlar, barging into homes with semi-automatic weapons. But familiar as that image is, we don't know how common it is. There are simply no good statistics on police tactical operations in America. The federal government doesn't keep track, and neither do the states — with one exception: Utah. The pressure to start counting the operations there dates back to 2012, after a drug raid gone wrong in Ogden. A tactical team from the local drug task force had gone into a little house where marijuana was being grown....

While the widely reported de-militarization edicts were issued last week by the federal government, the real agenda surrounds empowering Washington, D.C. to have even more control over local police departments. ---- Obama Usurps Local Police With Fake “Ban” on Militarization The New American 25 May 2015 After having drastically accelerated the militarization of local police forces by the federal government, Obama is now having second thoughts about it — or so the administration and the establishment press would have you believe based on widely reported “de-militarization” edicts issued last week. But while the decrees were framed by virtually all of...

Militarization of Law Enforcement These are not American Soldiers. They are Police Officers at the Ferguson Missouri protests. On May 18th, 2015, President Barack Obama announced that he was limiting the types of military equipment which can be transferred to police departments. He also announced the implementation of training programs to assure the appropriate use of other items. Because of his announcement, Homeland Security and the military can no longer transfer some weapons, such as grenade launchers, and IED resistant armored personnel carriers, other weaponized vehicles, and bayonets to police departments. Obama stated, "We’ve seen how militarized gear can...

“If we’re training cops as soldiers, giving them equipment like soldiers, dressing them up as soldiers, when are they going to pick up the mentality of soldiers? If you look at the police department, their creed is to protect and to serve. A soldier’s mission is to engage his enemy in close combat and kill him. Do we want police officers to have that mentality? Of course not.”— Arthur Rizer, former civilian police officer and member of the military Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment...

The family of a Santa Rosa man who killed himself during an armed standoff last year with Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies sued the county Friday in federal court, alleging an unwarranted, militarized assault on his home forced him to take his own life Dozens of deputies, including a SWAT team with an armored vehicle, descended on Swindell’s home and remained for hours after he released the kids and refused to come out. He committed suicide sometime the next morning when deputies filled the attic he was hiding in with tear gas and other chemical irritants, causing him extreme suffering, the...

<p>The NYPD will launch a unit of 350 cops to handle both counterterrorism and protests — riding vehicles equipped with machine guns and riot gear — under a re-engineering plan to be rolled out over the coming months.</p> <p>The Strategic Response Group, or SRG, will be devoted to “advanced disorder control and counterterrorism protection,” responding to the sort of demonstrations that erupted after the Eric Garner grand jury decision and also events like the recent Paris terror attacks.</p>

The police response to protests in Ferguso[n] over the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown brought the issue of militarized police into the forefront of national dialogue.  The fight against police militarization became a sort of culture war thing. Eager to show that he sympathized with protesters and to distance himself from the actions and consequences of a federal government he's indisputably at the head of, President Obama ordered a review of the Pentagon's 1033 program, under which military surplus is sent to local law enforcement. Demilitarizing our cities and communities was always going to be an uphill battle;...

Habersham County, Georgia is nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, just south of stunning Tallulah Gorge.  The biggest city in the county is Cornelia, with 4,160 residents.  The entire population of Habersham County would fill slightly more than half the seats in the Georgia Dome. Yet Habersham County Sheriff’s Department has a SWAT team, complete with flash-bang grenades, one of which exploded in a 19-month-old’s crib on May 28, 2014.  A drug raid gone wrong.  In fact, gone so wrong that there wasn’t even a hint of a drug dealer at the home, just a sleeping family. [WSB-TV]...

"So I'm thinking that is totally appropriate in Iraq, but where-what kind of situation in the U.S. would you see that happening?" "I mean, we've got a lot of constitutionalists, a lot of people that stockpile weapons, a lot of ammunition. You know, they have weapons here locally." (2:50-3:10)