The Mayor of Toledo, Ohio has been castigated by the mainstream
media for taking the decision to order 200 Michigan based Marines
out of his town just before the unit was supposed to start a weekend
of urban warfare training downtown.
Mayor Carty Finkbeinerexpelled
the members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines from Grand
Rapids, Michigan last Friday because he did not think it a good
idea to have uniformed soldiers drilling in a highly visible area
as it may have disrupted and frightened residents.
In addition, despite police knowledge of the scheduled
exercises, the mayor told media that he was not informed of the
exercises until the night before they were due to begin.
Police issued a press release earlier in the
week saying the Marines would be wearing green camouflage uniforms,
operate military vehicles, carry rifles, perform foot patrols,
and fire blank ammunition during the exercise.
NBC also spoke to Jack Smith who recalled that after
the Marines last visit, he and the mayor had a heated exchange
about the training, during which the mayor told him he did not
want marines "playing war in Toledo".
Mayor Finkbeiner said downtown, particularly on
a weekday afternoon, was not suitable for military staging operations
since up to 14,000 people would have been departing their office
buildings at the same time. He also pointed out that thousands
of schoolchildren would have been transferring buses downtown
Friday just as the exercise would have begun, reported the
Toledo Blade.
However, since the story broke, the mainstream media
has enacted a sustained smear campaign against Finkbeiner. Check
out the following one sided reports from CBS, Fox and CNN:
(Article continues below)
Note how two of the networks use the same hand picked clips of
the same few residents who said they thought the decision to expel
the marines was wrong, without providing any counter examples.
Some of the residents interviewed believed it was
right for the marines to be in their cities for their own "protection",
clearly unaware that the use of military for law enforcement violates
the Posse
Comitatus Act.
NBC rounded off the one sided affair with its "fair
accurate honest" poll, showing that 89% of people want the
military running around in their town conducting urban warfare
training.
In response to the criticism and even small protests
in Toledo, Finkbeiner said “Anybody who suggests that this
man is in some way, shape, or form not loyal to this country or
not loyal to the military of this country, well that person is
just a plain baboon who doesn’t know me in any way, shape,
or form and what I stand for,”
In further developments, the Mayor's
spokesman, Brian Schwartz, has since been suspended
for three weeks for allegedly using a vulgarity while speaking
off air during a radio interview concerning the controversy. It
appears that Schwartz was angry at the one sided coverage the
story has received.
The military has purpose
built facilities for training, it is unacceptable
and unlawful to have troops training on the streets of towns and
cities in America. Nevertheless, the media castigates the idea
of preventing it from occurring.
Reporting on this saga, Jim
Kouri of NewsWithViews.com interviewed former and
current police chiefs who believe the motive for training US troops
inside American cities is more sinister:
“The police power has traditionally been reserved
for the states. The fact that we’re allowing military troops
to train in US cities is a violation of that tradition. We don’t
need federal troops to intervene in matters that should be handled
by local police officers, state troopers and the National Guard,”
one former detective states.
“The increasing use of Urban Warfare Training
Exercises, I believe, desensitizes both the public to the deployment
of military forces in their own neighborhoods,” warns a
police chief, whose mayor endorses the use of military forces
within the US.
“It also desensitizes military and police personnel so
that they will accept what was once considered unacceptable,”
another police chief comments.
We have previously
reported on the coordinated program of urban warfare
drilling in America and how such activity has increased in tandem
with an growing effort to erode the ancient law of Posse Comitatus.
The Mayor of Toledo, Ohio has been castigated by the mainstream
media for taking the decision to order 200 Michigan based Marines
out of his town just before the unit was supposed to start a weekend
of urban warfare training downtown.
Note how two of the networks use the same hand picked clips of
the same few residents who said they thought the decision to expel
the marines was wrong, without providing any counter examples.
