[Alaska Dispatch] When agents with the Alaska Environmental mutaween Crimes Task Force surged out of the wilderness around the remote community of Chicken wearing body armor and jackets emblazoned with POLICE in big, bold letters, local placer miners didn't quite know what to think.
Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water? Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated.
Others wonder if the actions of the agents put everyone at risk. When your family business involves collecting gold far from nowhere, unusual behavior can be taken as a sign someone might be trying to stage a robbery. How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?
Miners suggest it might have been better all around if officials had just shown up at the door -- as they used to do -- and said they wanted to check the water. Only a matter of time until one of these incidents turns into a bloodbath.
#1
Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated.
Might have that been the point...?
re: Bloodbath - Besoeker is absolutely correct. Maybe Janet Reno can take herself away from strumming someone else's banjo and be available as a consultant....?
#2
I don't know the facts in this instance, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess these were not unionized miners being harassed and abused by gummint jackboots...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/05/2013 13:46 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Where did the EPA find authorization to wear Police jackets? Are they allowed to make arrests or just file complaints?
#5
I used to hunt bear and caribou out of Chicken Ak. It's a pretty remote place. The population was 7 according to the 2010 Census, but they did have a general store, a post office, a bar, a liquor store, a church, and a school, the last time I was there. They're all located in the same building if I remember correctly.
Chicken is about a six or seven hour drive (280 miles) southwest of Fairbanks, which would be the only town in the area large enough to have a SWAT team. There is a State Trooper stationed at Tok, which is about 75 miles from Chicken, but to assemble a team of eight troopers they would probably have to be flown in from Fairbanks or Anchorage.
There aren't any mines, that I know of, in the area that employs more than 5 people. You have to wonder how many thousands or tens of thousands of dollars it cost the taxpayers to have a SWAT team take a water sample.
There are a lot of grizzly bears in the area and almost eveyone you meet has a firearm of some type close at hand. But I doubt there would be a blood bath, because no matter where the police team went they would probably still have the residents far outgunned as well as outnumbered.
But you never know. They're some pretty tough, independent, and feisty people up there.
#6
Cops playing dress-up. Ask them to rush the real deal like Charles Whitman.... 2 cops, no armour, 1 crazy Marine with a Brain Toumor, no fucking around. Go up and do your job and if a redneck screaming at you worries you too much reconsider your line of work.
[An Nahar] Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... on Wednesday urged Zim-bob-wean President Bob Muggsy Mugabe Octogenarian President-for-Life of Zim-bob-we who turned the former Breadbasket of Africa into the African Basket Case... to prioritize the protection of rights, following his re-election in a disputed vote.
"President Mugabe should seize this opportunity to set Zim-bob-we on a path that respects rights and the democratic process," HRW's director for southern Africa Tiseke Kasambala said in a statement.
"Placing human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... at the top of the agenda would send a clear message that Zim-bob-we is committed to honoring its human rights obligations."
The global rights body has long expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... at Zim-bob-we's poor record for human rights.
It called on Mugabe's new administration "to embrace a new, positive rights-respecting approach to governing".
On July 31, Mugabe extended his 33-year rule after winning the general election with 61 percent of the vote. Morgan Tsvangirai, his former prime minister and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, won 34 percent.
The controversial vote was endorsed by the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc and the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... but rejected by Tsangirai who denounced it as a sham.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/05/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11123 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Shouldn't HRW be working up the fund appeal letter with all of Obama's war crimes already touted? Oh, wait, that might get a call from the IRS and they'd have to reveal their donor list. Never mind.
[An Nahar] M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... are enforcing a curfew in areas under their control, the U.N. peacekeeping mission said Wednesday, calling the move "completely unacceptable".
MONUSCO front man Felix Basse said U.N. troops were monitoring the situation in the area of the resource-rich east of the country controlled by the rebels during the current lull in fighting.
"At the moment, it is time to consolidate the positions recovered by the army pending further actions in the future," said Basse.
"The M23, which in practice controls the territory of Rutshuru (north of Goma)," has "imposed a curfew on civilians," said the Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... ese officer.
He said this was "completely unacceptable" and the situation was "being monitored by U.N. troops until future action".
Posted by: Fred ||
09/05/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11123 views]
Top|| File under:
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
