Silence Is Betrayal: Get Up, Stand Up, Speak Up for Your Rights,

by John W. Whitehead,

18 Jan 2018; USDOJ

Office of the Inspector General

OIG 

United States Department of Justice

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Ladies, Gentlemen:

Re:  "Silence is Betrayal: Get Up, Stand Up, Speak Up for Your Rights", by John W. Whitehead, January 18, 2018; Article below will be requested to be part of the Record.

Please be advised that I, and many others, remain available to communicate, meet, converse...with you and, almost, anyone.

Respectfully submitted,

David M. Townsend, Jr., J.D.

"...mediator, advocate..."

Copy as deemed appropriate and necessary.

Begin forwarded message:

Love, Compassion, Peace...

Comments, questions...

David Townsend 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/18/silence-is-betrayal-get-up-stand-up-speak-up-for-your-rights/

Silence Is Betrayal: Get Up, Stand Up, Speak Up for Your Rights

John W. Whitehead

I’m tired of liars, scoundrels and cheats.

I’m sick of circus politics, sex scandals and partisan hypocrisy.

I’ve reached the limits of my tolerance for individuals who have bartered their morality, consciences, integrity, religious beliefs and liberty for political gain.

Enough already.

This is not a reality show. It is not an experiment in political theories or a contest over who generates the biggest laughs, or the highest ratings, or the best polling numbers.

Enough with the deafening silence in the face of outright corruption, base immorality, denigrating language, demoralizing greed, abject cruelty, derision, cynicism, violence, oppression and tyranny.

The United States of America is run by a cabal of racist, classist, sexist, militaristic, misogynistic, greedy, heartless thugs who are obviously satisfied that their latest CEO—Donald Trump—is doing such a great job of keeping the nation polarized and pole-axed by his reality show antics.

After all, why hire a statesman when you can hire a buffoon who will entertain, enrage and incite a nation to the brink of madness.

They—the powers-that-be, the Deep State, the controllers, the financiers, the war hawks—want us at the brink of madness. They want us in a state of civil unrest. They want the riots and the mob violence and the political discord and the state of panic. They want us to fight each other and be incapable of taking a united stand against tyranny.

They want us silent and subservient.

We have been silent too long. We have been silent for all the wrong reasons.

We have been silent when the universe demanded that we get up, stand up, and speak out.

There comes a time when silence is betrayal, warned Martin Luther King, Jr.

We didn’t listen.

We ignored King’s warning about the triple evils of poverty, racism and militarism, and look where it’s gotten us: mounting national debt, impoverished communities, racial unrest, endless wars abroad and a military industrial complex that has turned its greedy sights o­n America.

We can no longer afford to ignore the warnings about where this is all leading.

The clock is ticking us down to doomsday.

Remember that dystopian Pentagon training video being used to prepare armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems? It’s o­nly five minutes long, but the military training video says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the military must be prepared to address in the near future, which include criminal networks, illicit economies, decentralized syndicates of crime, substandard infrastructure, religious and ethnic tensions, impoverishment, economic inequality, protesters, slums, open landfills, over-burdened sewers, and a “growing mass of unemployed.”

The Pentagon is anticipating that all hell will break loose by 2030. That’s o­nly 12 short years away.

We can no longer afford to pretend that we are just playing a game. The stakes are too high. In this particular game, winners take everything, and losers lose their lives.

This is life in the American people state and it is increasingly becoming desperate, dangerous and heart-breaking for everyone who doesn’t belong to the elite class of corporate/government operatives that are really in charge.

We’re all in this together.

It doesn’t matter what your politics are, where you worship, whom you love, where you live, how much money you make, what language you speak, what color your skin is, whether you’re a high school dropout or a college graduate, what kind of car you drive, or any other “differences” that are used to divide us into opposing factions: what unites us is that we’re all traveling this road together.

Right now, we’re so focused o­n what divides us that we can’t see the danger looming ahead.

While Congress is debating whether the president is racist for referring to African nations as “shithole countries,” no o­ne is talking about the racist government policies that will ensure that “1 of every 4 African American males born this decade can expect to go to prison in his lifetime.”

Take the criminal justice system, for example—one of the most racist institutions around. It is a fact that crime happens. It happens whether you’re white, black, brown or some shade in between. However, while white Americans make up 76% of the population, African Americans and people of color are the o­nes who are disproportionately being singled out for police stops, searches, use of force during arrests, prison terms for drugs, and longer jail terms.

America is a racist nation, but the racists are o­n the government payroll.

While the media swarms all over accusations of sexual misconduct against prominent men in Hollywood, few are addressing the devastating scope of sexual misconduct within the nation’s police forces. According to Newsweek, “At the national level, 990 officers had their licenses revoked between 2009 and 2014 because of rape, sodomy or other sexual misconduct, an Associated Press investigation found. Some of the victims had just been victims of a crime. o­ne-third were juveniles.” That doesn’t include the numbers that go unreported because the victims were scared to speak out.

America is a nation of sexual predators, but the predators are pulling government salaries.

While the government continues to wage its misguided war o­n drugs, helped along by Jeff Sessions and his gang of militarized, battle-ready SWAT teams that shoot first and ask questions later, not enough is being done to root out those government agents who are padding their pockets by trafficking drugs and sex. For instance, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was recently charged with selling drugs and offering the protection of other cops to dealers. The Huffington Post reports o­n a long list of police officers who have been arrested for pimping young girls.

It turns out that America is also a nation of drug and sex traffickers using their government jobs for cover.

Those are just a few examples of the many injustices being perpetrated against the American people by government agents and agencies who don’t care whether “we the people” live or die, whether babies are born into poverty, whether children are dying at the hands of government officials, whether communities are being ripped apart by violence, or whether citizens of all colors, creeds and religions are spending their lives shackled and broken and powerless to do anything to escape the prison cells into which they’ve been thrown.

Remember this the next time you find yourself drawn into a heated debate over the antics of this president and his inhumane policies and his outlandish reality show.

The next time you hear any government shill talk about the need to keep America safe, remember that the people of the United States continue to be robbed, cheated, tasered, stripped, searched, bullied, threatened, jailed, shot and killed by the very government agents entrusted with protecting their rights. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War o­n the American People, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

So enough with the lies. Enough with the fast-talking, foul-mouthed, slick politicians. Enough with the silence.

The time has come for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As George Orwell noted, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

John W. Whitehead is the president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War o­n the American People.

19-01-18

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Battlefield America: The War o­n The American People 
April 14, 2013

by John W. Whitehead (Author)

Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied o­n, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a o­ne-way trip to jail, or even death. Battlefield America: The War o­n the American People is constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. This follow-up to Whitehead’s award-winning A Government of Wolves, is a brutal critique of an America o­n the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it. Hands up!―the police state has arrived.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590793099/counterpunchmaga

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John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization whose international headquarters are located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Whitehead serves as the Institute’s president and spokesperson, in addition to writing a weekly commentary that is posted o­n The Rutherford Institute’s website (www.rutherford.org), as well being distributed to several hundred newspapers, and hosting a national public service radio campaign. Whitehead's aggressive, pioneering approach to civil liberties issues has earned him numerous accolades, including the Hungarian Medal of Freedom.

Whitehead has been the subject of numerous newspaper, magazine and television profiles, ranging from Gentleman's Quarterly to CBS' 60 Minutes. Articles by Whitehead have been printed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and USA Today, among others.

Whitehead gained international renown as a result of his role as co-counsel in Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton. Whitehead continues to speak out in defense of a woman's right to be free from sexual harassment and frequently comments o­n a variety of legal issues in the national media. He has been interviewed by the following national and international media (partial list): Crossfire, O’Reilly Factor, CNN Headline News, Larry King Live, Nightline, Dateline, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, CBS This Morning, This Week with Sam and Cokie, Rivera Live, Burden of Proof, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, FOX News Sunday, Hardball, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Public Radio, BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio, British Sky "Tonight" and "Sunday," TF1 (French TV) and Greek national television.

The author of numerous books o­n a variety of legal and social issues, as well as pamphlets and brochures providing legal information to the general public, Whitehead has also written numerous magazine and journal articles. Whitehead's most recent books include Battlefield America: The War o­n the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. In addition, he wrote and directed the documentary video series Grasping for the Wind, as well as its companion book, which focus o­n key cultural events of the 20th Century. The series received two Silver World Medals at the New York Film and Video Festival and is now available o­n DVD.

Whitehead has filed numerous amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also been co-counsel in several landmark Supreme Court cases as well. His law reviews have been published in Emory Law Journal, Pepperdine Law Review, Harvard Journal o­n Legislation, Washington and Lee Law Review, Cumberland Law Review, Tulsa Law Journal and the Temple University Civil Rights Law Review.

Born in 1946 in Tennessee, John W. Whitehead earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Arkansas in 1969 and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1974. He served as an officer in the United States Army from 1969 to 1971.

Click here for John Whitehead's Extended Bio

Read John W. Whitehead's 1973 interview with Bill Clinton (PDF)

https://rutherford.org/about/about_john_whitehead

Contact:

The Rutherford Institute
Post Office Box 7482
Charlottesville, VA 22906-7482

Phone: (434) 978-3888 (8:30 AM - 5:00 PM EST)
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Email: staff@rutherford.org

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