Hammer meets Nail...

Greetings good citizen,

Seems as though I’m on another ‘roll’; meaning most of my recent pieces possess a common thread…a certain ‘contrariness’ that the original reporting conceals, although not so much with tonight’s offering as the premise itself tends to boggle the mind…

While the webmaster over at Cryptogon considers this story a bit ‘tongue in cheek’, my own reaction was considerably more sobering…for reasons that may not be immediately apparent.

Interpol and UN Back Global Policing Doctrine
October 13th, 2009

I was thinking, “Wow, this seems very familiar. Where have I seen something like this before?” HAHA. This is just too much.

Start em’ young with Justice League International:

The text says:

Once upon a time—There was the Justice League of America. But that was another era, when the world could afford borders and boundaries, when heroes could claim national loyalties and feel justified in their claims.

But in today’s world there’s no longer room for borders and boundaries. The walls between nations have to fall if our planet is to survive.

So, for a new era—A new League: Justice League…International!

In case you don’t recognize the logo on the wall, here’s the real one:

U.N. Logo

(The Justice League International comic books were published in the 1980s and 1990s.)

Via: the New York Times:

Interpol and the United Nations are poised to become partners in fighting crime by jointly grooming a global police force that would be deployed as peacekeepers among rogue nations riven by war and organized crime, officials from both organizations say.

On Monday, justice and foreign ministers from more than 60 countries, including the United States and China, are gathering in Singapore for a meeting hosted by the two international organizations.

It is the first step toward creating what Interpol calls a “global policing doctrine” that would enable Interpol and the United Nations to improve the skills of police peacekeepers, largely by sharing a secure communications network and a vast electronic trove of criminal information, including DNA records, fingerprints, photographs and fugitive notices. [On the surface what we’re seeing is, as worst, an extension of global police co-operation. But wait, you have to look a little closer here and consider very carefully what is being proposed…Like the paragraph below…]

“We have a visionary model,” said Ronald K. Noble, secretary general of Interpol and the first American to head the international police organization, which is based in Lyon. More than 187 member nations finance the organization.

“The police will be trained and equipped differently with resources,” Mr. Noble said. “When they stop someone, they will be consulting global databases to determine who they are stopping.” [I ask you good citizen, which is more important, is it who is being stopped that is important or is why they are being detained more important?]

Modern peacekeeping has evolved dramatically since the blue-helmeted U.N. military force won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. Since 2005, the number of police officers within the total force of 95,400 peacekeepers has more than doubled from about 6,000 to 12,200 in 17 countries.

U.N. police are already battling kidnappings and drug crime in Haiti and illicit lumber trading in Liberia. The aim of the joint effort is to increase the ability to track the movement of criminals around the world by sharing resources and common standards, according to Mr. Noble. He is also pressing ahead with plans for special electronic passports for the agency’s staff of more than 600 Interpol investigators to speed border crossings. [I’m far from being a ‘legal eagle’ here but the thing slapping me in the face is the creation of a (super) police force that has no laws of its own to enforce! Or are we suddenly faced with that ‘legal limbo’ of…’well, it’s got to be illegal somewhere…’? Because that knife cuts both ways…will a warrant issued by any ‘dot on the map’ suddenly have a willing ‘supra-national’ force to execute it? Let’s put some hair on that bad boy, it’s already tough enough to rein in ‘local’ cowboys with badges…imagine how difficult it will be to dissuade a cowboy who doesn’t answer to the local authorities?]

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is contributing more than $2 million to finance the development of international global policing standards, according to Andrew Hughes, an Australian who currently heads the U.N.’s force of police officers.

The ambition is to create a series of networks to counter borderless organized criminal operations, Mr. Hughes said. Women, in particular, are being recruited, with a goal of reaching 20 percent of the U.N. force and the development of all-female units like the group of 140 peacekeepers from Bangladesh that is about to be deployed.

“We’re working with refugees,” Mr. Hughes said. “Many of the victims of atrocities are women, and they’ve had enough of men with guns and uniforms.”

He said that among the most critical tasks for a global police force were piracy combating illegal arms and drug trafficking. His own officers in West Africa have watched the growth of cocaine smuggling by Colombian and Venezuelan drug cartels through weakened countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia to the lucrative consumer markets in Europe.

The United States remains the biggest market for cocaine, according to the U.N.’s annual report on drugs and crime. But in the past three years, South American cartels have moved more drugs to Europe using transit points like Guinea Bissau, where the president and the head of the military were killed in sophisticated bombing attacks in March. Each year, at least 50 tons of cocaine from Andean countries passes through West Africa to the streets of Europe, where the drugs are worth almost $2 billion, according to the U.N. report. [So you are expected to believe that none of the transit nations, never mind the final destinations of these shipments, have police forces capable of arresting the flow of illicit goods…which is nothing new. Billions are spent every year on drug enforcement actions that have, to date, failed miserably to even put a kink in these supply lines…so, after legions of cops working in concert around the world have failed repeatedly to do the job, is the answer, seriously, ‘more cops’?]

“Organized crime is a business that looks for opportunity to expand their market enterprise,” Mr. Hughes said. “When you have a breakdown in police and courts and corrections, organized crime is ripe. We also see the toxic effect of corruption, because they are able to corrupt officials, which makes it difficult to build a functioning society.” [Where do you suppose the best starting point is to address the corruption issue? It certainly isn’t a police problem, it’s a ‘physical properties of money’ problem…]

In Afghanistan, where heroin and hashish trafficking is also a thorny issue, NATO announced plans this month to start training the local police — a move it has avoided in the past eight years to concentrate on military responsibilities.

But Mr. Noble of Interpol says he takes a dim view of transforming warriors into beat cops, because the mind-sets are so different.

“We caution on making the delegation of civil police development tasks to military structures,” Mr. Noble said, citing the example of an attack that freed hundreds of Taliban from a prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, last year. Although Interpol immediately asked for information about the missing prisoners, he said, “we were really shocked and dismayed to learn there were no fingerprints and photographs despite billions spent to train police there.” [Since we are talking ‘coalition forces’ here it’s tough to say for certain just who ‘dropped the ball’…although finger print files and photo catalogs cost money…money the Afghans don’t have…for finger print files and photo catalogs that is…]

With the meeting of justice ministers on Monday, which coincides with a general assembly of Interpol police members, the group is expected to debate the global police issue and to craft a declaration that would lead to an action plan for international police peacekeeping within 12 months.

Once again, good citizen, we are presented with the puzzle of the chicken and the egg. Do we need more cops to take down the bad guys or do we need more courts to try them in…or are more prisons the answer?

One would think the ‘strategy’ of policy-makers is one where they, themselves plan on becoming so numerous that the criminals will go broke buying them all off.

Or so it would seem…doesn’t it appear that the more cops you throw at the problem, the worse it gets.

Left to your imagination is whether or not the, er, ‘creation’ of this new, albeit misnamed, police force isn’t a not so subtle attempt to establish a ‘Goon Squad’ that is beyond the laws of any particular nation?

This ‘alleged’ marriage of Interpol and the UN is hardly necessary, hell, Interpol IS the agency this ‘new’ force will supposedly replace! The ‘hic-cup’ here is membership in Interpol is restricted to law enforcement agents of member nations…the fact that you’re already a cop is what gives Interpol its credibility.

Understand good citizen that what we are seeing here is the next logical step in the ‘Global war on Terra!’ The unchallenged (and unchallengable) ability to go anywhere and arrest anyone on the flimsiest of evidence.

“Step out of line, the man come and take you away”…likely never to be seen (alive) again…

So, are we reading what we think we are reading or is there something more here than meets the eye?

I think the answer to that one lies with how ‘effective’ throwing more police at a given problem has proven to be…so far?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner