Amusing, perhaps.

From Democracy Now!
[Updated with the Army Times article.]

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

(Bolding mine.)

Look people. If the American Government is preparing to subdue civil unrest with a dedicated active unit, can we all stop pretending that we have the time and resources to kick back and ignore what is happening in the country?

I’m fairly jaded, yes. I’m bitter. But I have some skill at watching the signs, and I really think it’s time to get our shit together and start paying attention. Time to organize. If the government is ready to subdue “dangerous individuals and crowds” I think we need to be networked and ready to defend our constitutionally given right to protest with technological proof that we are breaking no laws.

The only way this isn’t going to get ugly is if we refuse to let anyone characterize our response as dangerous.

[also updated to add: It’s not that I don’t trust our armed forces, it’s that I don’t trust our government to remember we have rights.]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 6:37 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.