Editor:
It is fascinating to watch plans unfold. First, the ongoing B.S. about democrats taking away your guns, which aroused you to vote republican and buy more guns. Next, laws eliminating background checks and gun registration, which allows criminals and psychos to purchase assault weapons. Then, laws ending personal responsibility for your own actions such as Florida’s ‘Stand your ground’ law. That law was put to the test recently when George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges of killing Trevon Martin. There is little doubt that it was racially motivated as Zimmerman’s voice was recorded as saying “They always get away with it” So he made sure that this one didn’t. In northern Wisconsin, at the proposed mining site, which is also a public hiking and camping area, a private army has been terrorizing the public. They have no authority to stop, search or arrest anyone, nor any real reason for their existence there. They are establishing the presence of an armed force in the public’s mind, effectively putting the mine area and it’s operations off limits to the public. The only reason would be to conceal illegal operations such as toxic waste handling. Think of their increased profits if they could get away with dumping the toxins in the river. This is the opening gambit of private armies replacing the ‘rent a cop’ security protecting the enclaves of the rich and the corporations. The agribusiness giant, Monsanto, has just purchased Blackwater, a large mercenary army that was active in Iraq. To what purpose would a massive corporation put it’s private army? I am afraid we will soon find out. With deregulation almost complete, government has been shorn of its ability to protect its’ citizens against an internal threat. You are on your own now. When you try to protect yourself against the predations of corporate forces, it will be like going up against an M-1 tank with a spit wad. All those guns you bought to protect yourself against the government; feeling kind of foolish now? Because of a galloping amygdala, or worse, the I.Q. of a slice of week old toast, many of you will never figure it out.

-Barrie Johnson, Exeland