what methods did the u.s. gov use to subdue and control american indains

This article has been updated.

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The United states is at the forefront of an international artillery development effort that includes a remarkable assortment of technologies, which look and sound similar they belong in a Hollywood science fiction thriller. From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams, to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control.

The Pentagon'southward approved term for these weapons is "non-lethal" or "less-lethal" and they are intended for use against the unarmed. Designed to "control crowds, articulate streets, subdue and restrain individuals and secure borders," they are the 21st century's version of the police baton, pepper spray and tear gas. As journalist Ando Arike puts it, "The outcome is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the full general population."

The demand for not-lethal weapons (NLW) is rooted in the rise of television receiver. In the 1960s and '70s the medium permit everyday Americans witness the violent tactics used to suppress the civil rights and anti-war movements.

Today's rapid advancements in media and telecommunications technologies allow people to record and publicize images and video of undue force more than than ever before. Authorities are well enlightened of how images of violence play out publicly. In 1997, a articulation report from the Pentagon and the Justice Department warned:

"A further consideration that affects how the military and law enforcement apply force is the greater presence of members of the media or other civilians who are observing, if non recording, the state of affairs. Even the lawful application of force tin can be misrepresented to or misunderstood by the public. More than than always, the police and the military must be highly discreet when applying forcefulness."

The global economic plummet coupled with the unpredictable and increasingly catastrophic consequences of climatic change and resources scarcity, along with a new era of austerity divers by rise unemployment and glaring inequality have already led to massive protests in Spain, Hellenic republic, Egypt, and even Madison, Wisconsin. From the progressive era to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, Americans take a rich history of taking to the streets to demand greater equality.

Meanwhile, tens of millions of dollars have been invested in the enquiry and development of more "media-friendly" weapons for everyday policing and crowd control. This has atomic number 82 to a trade-in of old school weapons for more than exotic and controversial technologies. The following are six of the most outrageous "non-lethal" weapons that will define the time to come of crowd control.

1. The Invisible Pain Ray: The 'Holy Grail of Oversupply Command'

Source: Pasadena Star News

It sounds similar a weapon out of Star Wars. The Active Deprival System, or ADS, works like an open-air microwave oven, projecting a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation to rut the skin of its targets to 130 degrees. This creates an intolerable burning sensation forcing those in its path to instinctively abscond (a response the Air Force dubs the "good day effect").

The Pentagon'south Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Plan (JNLWP) says, "This adequacy will add to the ability to stop, deter and plow back an advancing adversary, providing an culling to lethal force." Although ADS is described equally not-lethal, a 2008 report by physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Jürgen Altmann suggests otherwise:

" ... the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and tertiary degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the trunk, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening – due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection – and require intensive care in a specialized unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target discipline, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. "

The weapon was initially tested in Afghanistan, but subsequently recalled due to a combination of technical difficulties and political concerns, including the fearfulness that ADS would be used as a torture tool making it "non politically tenable," according to a Defense Science Lath report. The tens of millions of dollars spent to develop the ADS did not necessarily become to waste, all the same.

While the weapon may be too controversial for utilize on the battlefield, information technology appears that zero is too sadistic for use on U.s. prisoners, and then the ADS has since been modified into a smaller version by Raytheon, for utilise in police force enforcement. Final year, the renamed Assail Intervention System (AIS) was installed at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correction Facility at the behest of the Los Angeles County Sheriff'south Department (LASD). Old LASD Commander, Charles "Sid" Heal had been lobbying for the hurting ray for years, calling it the "Holy Grail of Crowd Control," due to "its power to make people besprinkle, well-nigh instantly."

The device is operated by a jail officer with a joystick, and is intended to break upward prison riots, inmate brawls and prevent assaults on officers. Sheriff Lee Baca added that it would let officers to "quickly intervene" without having to physically enter the area to incapacitate prisoners.

The ACLU claims that employ of such a device on American prisoners is "tantamount to torture." The organization even sent a letter to the sheriff in charge, enervating he never use the energy weapon against inmates. "The idea that a war machine weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against canton jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded," said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison house Project. "Unnecessarily inflicting astringent pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people'south lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.Southward. Constitution."

The hurting ray's use in the Pitchess Detention Centre is a pilot plan. If successful, the weapon could find its mode into other prisons around the country. The National Constitute of Justice has also expressed interest in a hand-held, rifle-sized, short-range weapon "that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials."

ii. The Laser Blinding 'Dazzler'

Source: Air Force Fact Sheet

The Personal Halting and Stimulation Response rifle, or PHaSR, is a massive laser shooter. PHaSR technology is beingness co-funded past the National Found of Justice (NIJ), Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP), and the Role of the Secretarial assistant of Defence force, and is beingness adult by the Air Force Enquiry Laboratory. While JNLWP is interested in the engineering for military applications, NIJ is focusing on its law enforcement utilise.

Then what is the purpose of this light-shooting toy? Well, it won't kill you, but information technology will temporarily bullheaded you — or every bit the NIJ prefers to say, it will "dazzle" y'all into disorientation — by shooting you with two depression­-ability diode­-pumped lasers.

Protocol IV, the Blinding Laser Protocol of the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, states that, "The use of laser weapons that are specifically designed, as their sole combat function or every bit ane of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision is prohibited."

After the U.s.a. agreed to the Blinding Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation Protocol in 1995 under President Clinton, the Pentagon was forced to cancel several blinding laser weapon programs that were in the works. Just the PHaSR burglarize can skirt this regulation because the blinding outcome is evidently temporary due to its low-intensity laser.

According to a U.S. Air Strength fact sail, "The laser low-cal from PHaSR temporarily impairs aggressors by dazzling them with one wavelength. The 2nd wavelength causes a repel consequence that discourages advancing aggressors." The JNLWP website says that "a meaning corporeality of inquiry and experimentation is still required to proceeds a total agreement of the condom, military effectiveness, and limitations of these future capabilities."

3. The Taser on Steroids

Source: Taser website

The Albuquerque Police Section at present has Taser shotguns in its arsenal. Nearly of us are familiar with hand-held Tasers and empathise that they merely piece of work if the police are standing pretty close to you lot (most xx anxiety).

But Taser has adult the Taser X12, a 12-estimate shotgun that instead of firing lethal bullet rounds, is designed to fire Taser projectile rounds. Known as Extended Range Electronic Projectiles (XREP), the XREP cartridge, as defined past the Taser website, is a "cocky-contained, wireless projectile that delivers the same neuro-muscular incapacitation bio-effect [a fancy fashion of saying electric shock] equally the handheld Taser, simply upward to 100 feet."

According to a July 21 press release, Taser International has taken the XREP to the side by side level, teaming upward with the Australian electronic gun company Metal Tempest to enhance the 12-gauge Multi-Shot Accessory Nether-Barrel Launcher (MAUL).

The ii companies volition combine Metal Storm's MAUL stacked projectile technology to "provide semi-automatic burn down as fast as the operator can squeeze the trigger," which boasts a full weapon reload of up to 5 rounds in less than 2 seconds. Picture 5 rounds of Taser XREP cartridges flying out in less than two seconds upward to 30 yards away -- that is the plan.

In September 2010 Raw Story reported that the rate of Taser-related deaths were on the ascent. The story cited an Amnesty International written report from 2008 that establish "351 Taser-related deaths in the US between June 2001 and August 2008, a rate of but slightly in a higher place four deaths per month." About 90 percent of the victims were unarmed and did not announced to pose whatsoever serious threat, according to an article in the Boston Review. The Immunity report points out that Tasers are "inherently open to abuse as they are like shooting fish in a barrel to carry and like shooting fish in a barrel to use and they can inflict severe pain at the push button of a push button without leaving substantial marks." In Amnesty's Us 2010 report, the Taser-related death toll had increased to 390. If the MAUL-Taser combined shooter find its fashion into police departments around the country, it may not bode well for the rate of Taser-related deaths.

Some other projection of Taser International described by Ando Arike is the Shockwave Surface area-Denial Organisation, "which blankets a large expanse with electrified darts, and a wireless Taser projectile with a 100-meter range, helpful for picking off "ringleaders" in unruly crowds," In 2007, Taser's French distributor announced plans for a stun-gun-equipped flying saucer that shoots stun darts at "criminal suspects or rioting crowds"; however, it has yet to be unveiled. Clearly in that location is no limit to Taser International's capacity for inventiveness.

iv. Calmative Agents for Anarchism Control

The Sunshine Project, a transparency and accountability system, defines calmatives as "chemical or biological agents with sedative, sleep-inducing or like psychoactive furnishings." Although the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the employ of anarchism command agents in warfare, JNWLP and NIJ accept long considered calmatives for both military machine and law enforcement applications, such every bit dispersing a oversupply, controlling a riot or calming a noncompliant offender.

The most well-known and widely used anarchism-command agents are tear gas (CS) and chloroacetophenone (CN), likewise known every bit mace. A few means that more advanced non-lethal calmatives might exist administered, depending on the law enforcement surround, would include "a topical or transdermal skin application, an aerosol spray, an intramuscular dart, or a prophylactic bullet filled with an inhalable agent," according to NIJ research.

In the March 2010 upshot of Harper's magazine, Ando Arike gives an extensive overview of riot control technology in his article "The Soft Kill: New Frontiers in Hurting Compliance." He wrote:

Pentagon interest in "advanced riot-control agents" has long been an open undercover, but simply how shut we are to seeing these agents in activity was revealed in 2002, when the Sunshine Project, an arms-command group based in Austin, Texas, posted on the Cyberspace a trove of Pentagon documents uncovered through the Freedom of Data Act. Among these was a l-page report titled "The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Utilize as a Not-Lethal Technique," conducted by Penn Country'southward Applied Enquiry Laboratory, home of the JNLWD-sponsored Institute for Non-Lethal Defence Technologies.
Penn State's Higher of Medicine researchers agreed, opposite to accustomed principles of medical ethics, that "the development and use of non-lethal calmative techniques is both achievable and desirable," and identified a large number of promising drug candidates, including benzodiazepines like Valium, serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, and opiate derivatives like morphine, fentanyl, and carfentanyl, the last ordinarily used by veterinarians to sedate big animals. The just problems they saw were in developing effective delivery vehicles and regulating dosages, but these problems could be solved readily, they recommended, through strategic partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry.
Petty more was heard about the Pentagon'south "advanced riot-control agent" plan until July 2008, when the Army appear that production was scheduled for its XM1063 "non-lethal personal suppression projectile," an artillery beat that bursts in midair over its target, scattering 152 canisters over a 100,000-foursquare-pes area, each dispersing a chemical amanuensis as it parachutes downwardly. At that place are many indications that a calmative, such as fentanyl, is the intended payload—a literal opiate of the masses.

5. Screaming Microwaves That Pierce the Skull

Source: Wired

Researchers are in the process of developing the Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio or MEDUSA (that's correct, from Greek mythology), which uses "a beam of microwaves to induce uncomfortable auditory sensations in the skull." The device "exploits the microwave sound effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly rut tissue, causing a shockwave within the skull that can be detected past the ears," explains David Hambling in the New Scientist. MEDUSA's audio effect is loud enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. Information technology may likewise cause a petty encephalon harm from the high-intensity shockwave created past the microwave pulse.

MEDUSA'south intended purpose is deterring crowds from entering a protected perimeter, like a nuclear site, and temporarily incapacitating unruly individuals. Then far the weapon remains in development and is funded past the Navy.

six. Ear-Splitting Siren

Source: Associated Press

The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, adult by American Applied science Corporation, "focuses and broadcasts sound over ranges of up to hundreds of yards," according to David Axe in Wired'due south Danger Room. LRAD has been around for years, but Americans outset took notice when law used it in Pittsburgh to ward off protesters at the 2009 Thousand-20 summit. David Hambling says information technology is generally used in ii means: "every bit a megaphone to order protesters to disperse; or, if they disobey, every bit an "ear-splitting siren" to drive them away." While LRAD may not be mortiferous, it can cause permanent hearing harm.

Similar sonic blasters have proven deadly. One is the Thunder Generator, an Israeli-adult stupor wave cannon that farmers ordinarily use to scare away crop destroying birds. According to a Defense News report terminal year, Israel'southward Ministry building of Defense licensed ArmyTec to market the Thunder Generator in military and security versions.

In a brief overview, Hambling explains that it works using "gas from a cylinder of domestic liquid petroleum," which is mixed with air. When detonated it produces "a series of high-intensity blasts," at a range of l meters." While the makers insist it doesn't cause permanent damage, they warn that people inside 10 meters could suffer lasting injuries or perchance decease.

The Impact

The application of pain to control to coerce people into submission helps achieve the desired aims of perception management, while sheltering the public from the brutality of such devices.

Perhaps these less-lethal tactics for crowd control practise issue in fewer injuries. But they likewise severely weaken our chapters to enact political change. Regime have ever more than creative ways to manage dissent, at a time when the need for change past pop need is vital to the futurity of our society and the planet.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article has been corrected since its original publication for more accurate attribution to original sources.

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Source: https://www.alternet.org/2011/08/6_creepy_new_weapons_the_police_and_military_use_to_subdue_unarmed_people/