Tag: donald trump

US Intelligence: If Trump Wins Russia Did It, If Biden Wins It Was China And Iran

What this completely unsubstantiated narrative means, of course, is that no matter who wins in November America’s opaque government agencies will have already primed the nation for more dangerous escalations against countries which have resisted being absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized empire. If Trump wins we can expect his administration to continue its escalations against Russia in retaliation for its 2020 “election interference”, and if Biden wins we can expect his cabinet of Obama administration holdovers to ramp up escalations against China in the same way while Joe mumbles to himself off to the side as his brain turns to chowder.

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How a rural US sheriff’s department was able to obtain a military-grade vehicle

A sheriff’s department in a remote rural California county with only 18,000 people, no incorporated cities, few sworn officers and almost no crime, was able to obtain a second military-grade MRAP armored vehicle in 2017 by giving brief answers to a simple questionnaire, according to documents obtained under freedom of information requests.

MRAP stands for mine-resistant ambush protected, though the prospect of encountering mines or being ambushed would seem to be unlikely in even the toughest US police precincts.

The documents, provided to the Guardian by the transparency non-profit Property of the People, show how quickly Donald Trump’s 2017 reversal of the Barack Obama administration’s curtailment of the transfer of battlefield equipment to law enforcement agencies led to their renewed proliferation, and how little agencies had to do to demonstrate any real need for them.

The documents include Mariposa county sheriff’s office (MCSO) application for the second MRAP from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The application in September 2017, about a month after Trump reversed a 2015 Obama executive order which prohibited the transfer of equipment like armored vehicles, grenade launchers and high-caliber weapons to civilian agencies.

With one-line or one-paragraph answers to 15 questions, the rural county sheriff was able to add the vehicle to its already extant Mamba MRAP, acquired in 2014.

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