@tadoflamb and
@Fish and Bread, this is what is going on at Standing Rock right now. The water protectors are in desperate need of prayer, protection and intervention. Just look at how they are being treated by law enforcement officers.
I am trying to think of a response that stays within CF's guidelines on profanity, and am failing. I suppose the non-profane way to put it is that I am in a state of extreme shock seeing American citizens treated that way by domestic police forces. This is really not a good sign, folks- not for any of us, whether you care about this particular issue or protest or not.
I can't believe I even have to say this, but obviously we need our police force to follow international and constitutional protections and obligations in terms of the human rights of prisoners. These reports of torture and that photo itself are really troubling.
This is part of why so many of us were so adamant that Bush's torture of suspected terrorists captured internationally needed to stop, and we needed to prosecute everyone involved for war crimes. Fortunately, Obama did stop the torture, but our failure to prosecute what happened during the Bush administration torture wise allows for situations like we're seeing here (Not legally or morally, but people probably have the impression they won't go to jail for doing this in part because we didn't send people to jail for doing this in other contexts during the Bush administration).
Hopefully, the people involved in this treatment of protesters are all charged with crimes, but i wouldn't count on it happening. After seeing so many police officers shoot restrained and/or unarmed African-Americans and such, and wind up without jail sentences, I think we have a real problem in this country when it comes to our judicial system's failure to prosecute police misconduct.
When you say military is getting involved, do you mean the National Guard or literally the US Army? The difference is that in theory a Governor of a state can legally send the National Guard to do things within his state (Even though he or she *shouldn't* be doing so in this situation IMO), whereas the US Army and the other branches of the military (Navy [Including the Marines], Air Force) can not legally operate on US soil except of course for having things like military bases, defending those bases, training, having naval ships sailing around, air patrols, etc.). They can't be used for domestic policing or anything of that nature. This is why when you see a city flood during a hurricane or whatever, you see the National Guard out there trying to build up sand bags to stop the water, help with repairs, keep order, etc, but you don't see the army or the navy.
Of course, these days we sometimes use the National Guard as the first ground troops in when we fight wars and have units on rotation overseas in conflicts regularly (Literally as recently as Vietnam, people would join the National Guard to avoid being drafted and fighting in that war. It worked if you could get a spot- obviously there were a lot of applicants under those circumstances for a limited number of spots. However, it wouldn't work today, because we are using the NG units as combat units overseas at times now.), so the distinction between the National Guard and the military is beginning to fade (They'd look like military to people. Of course, these days, even police have tanks and combat fatigues in some places and situations...), but *in theory* the National Guard (national guards, really, each state has one) is the descendent of the militias referenced in the US constitution, that would defend in the (Right now very unlikely) against a ground invasion. A lot of people are National Guardsmen (and women) part time, taking one weekend a month to keep trained and ready, and then serving tours overseas or being called out by the Governor for things (riots, natural disasters) in the state on an as-needed basis, while maintaining regular jobs (Which I think by law can't fire them for missing work due to their service obligations).
We're really spiraling out of control on this torture, police brutality, and militarization of the police stuff.. I think it would get much, much worse under Trump. I think the status quo would hold under Clinton. I'd like to back to where we were in like the 70s, respecting people's human rights and demilitarizing the police force, but, you know, lesser of two evils, etc.. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary, we tried. He would have changed some of this. For me Hillary Clinton is vastly superior to Donald Trump, so she will get my vote in the general election, even though we do not agree on everything. She is also in theory accountable to a party base that is generally opposed to this stuff and might listen (I'm not counting on it- but you know Trump wouldn't be accountable to those voters and wouldn't listen- Clinton counts on those voters to work for her and vote for her and win her elections, and has to at least pretend to listen.).
