http://www.airforcetimes.com/…

Republicans receive the largest slice of presidential campaign contributions made by military members and their spouses, but leading anti-war candidates are getting a substantial cut, too, according to an independent analysis of political contributions.

From January 2007 through March of this year, service members or civilian employees of the military donated at least $766,000 to presidential candidates, according to data made available April 20 and provided by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group in Washington.

The analysis included donations of at least $200 made by individuals who listed their employer as one of the four branches of the military - Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps - or the Coast Guard, National Guard, Army Air Force Exchange Service, armed forces or military.

These donors gave the largest amounts to Rep. Ron Paul, the long-shot Republican candidate from Texas who has acknowledged defeat in the nomination process but continues to campaign, and Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrat from Illinois.

During the reporting period, Paul - a former Air Force surgeon who broke with his party to vote against the Iraq war - received the most military contributions, with $201,271.

That’s significantly more than the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain from Arizona, who received $132,133 from military donors, according to CRP.

“I think that our fighting men and women want to protect America, defend our Constitution and defend our borders,” said Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Rep. Paul’s campaign. “I think they’re sick and tired of being sent overseas on these police actions and getting caught in the middle of these civil wars, and want someone like Ron Paul speaking sense.

“They signed up to defend our country, not police the world,” Benton said, “and I think they’re hungry for leaders who do that.”

Obama, meanwhile, whose opposition to invading Iraq has been a centerpiece of his campaign, has received $178,456 in military contributions, compared to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s $85,000, the analysis shows.

“To see two anti-war candidates getting more money from the people fighting the war or providing support for the war effort was surprising to us,” said Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics.

However, the donations cannot be considered representative of military employees’ political preferences as a whole because the analysis does not include donations of less than $200, the point at which campaign finance law requires campaigns to disclose the name of a donor and contribution amount. Thus, individuals who give less than $200 aren’t counted.

“The picture could be completely different if you were able to look at smaller donors,” Ritsch said. “You’re looking at a tiny slice of the military who have enough disposable income to donate to a candidate.”

Overall, military donors still favor Republicans to Democrats, 62 percent to 38 percent, according to CRP. But Ritsch said at the beginning of the war, three-quarters of military donors favored GOP candidates.

And you can bet this won’t get much MSM coverage.

http://www.azcentral.com/…

Police departments at Arizona’s three universities plan to arm their officers with military-style assault rifles within the next year, officials said Tuesday.

The new rifles would give campus police officers long-range shooting capabilities, allowing them to hit targets at the end of long hallways or atop tall buildings, officials said.

Arizona State University will be the first of the three schools to use the weapons. Officers there will be trained to use the rifles in the next few months, said ASU police spokesman Cmdr. Jim Hardina.

Officers will undergo 40 hours of training before using the weapons.

“We don’t want to just throw rifles out there,” Hardina said.

Eight officers at the University of Arizona will get similar training before a rifle program launches there in four to five months, officials said. Northern Arizona University officials said a rifle program was in the works, although a specific start date was not immediately available.

ASU has bought four of the new rifles at $700 each, and is looking to find money to purchase four more. One challenge the department is facing: finding ammunition for the rifles. Increased military operations mean that the police department and the armed forces were competing for the same ammo, Hardina said.

First they militarized the militias turning them into the National Guard, then they militarized the city police creating to deal with drug prohibition later creating SWATs, then they moved on to smaller cities and towns teaching their police how to handle military grade weapons and now they are turning school police into soldiers. No need to worry about the Posse Comitatus Act when you’ve turned the “peace” officers into secondary military agents. Not that that matters after the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007.

I like how the faculty member says effectively that if the guns are out of sight than they are out of mind and therefore alright to have. That’s some logic there. Who wants to be that students and faculty aren’t allowed to carry on campus?

http://www.canada.com/…

Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.

The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.

“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

Actually sounds more like Canada is becoming officially the 51st state. Sounds like their military will be like one of the state’s National Guard.

They will:

• Occasionally get lucky and catch someone. Only because the net is thrown so wide and is constantly running.
• Continue to infringe on our rights. Our right to be secure in our persons and effects, our privacy. Our right to property.
• Push people, who may have otherwise not have, over the edge because of their infringements.
• Continue psyops, in airports, in cities, through the media
• Possibly perform false flag actions to ‘prove’ their effectiveness.

In the NYC Port Authority Bus Terminal on the way to the subway there are a set of glass doors. In between is just 20 or so feet of nothing except to one side an exit to 8th Ave. This morning for the first time that I’ve seen since I started taking the train every day was two tables with 10 or so cops standing around them in between those sets of doors. Half were sitting down and half leaning against the wall. Not a one was searching any of the hundreds passing by them every minute. They weren’t even paying attention as far as I could tell. Just hanging out, relaxing, talking to each other. There was no dog to sniff for explosives. The only thing missing in this mesh of blue uniforms and cream plastic tables was a bright pink box of donuts.

Read More…