Fuck the (corporate) police state
I am usually not given to link to articles on "The Blaze", but this morning I found this, which when googling the different A-Z headings runs into a tidal wave of undeniable truth that the USA has become a police/military state which no longer pays any heed to your civil liberties, or peace in our countries around the world.
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/the-american-police-state-from-a-t...
USA cities (and even rural areas in North Dakota and elsewhere) are looking like occupied Palestine. If the background changed from worn out cement block houses to strip malls, one couldn't tell the difference in police state tactics and justice.
Police states can be defeated through peaceful non-compliance, non-violent resistance. The goals must be set, the strategy must be well known, the tactics made to fit the strategy, the new way of governance needs to be in place and the whole thing must be strictly non-violent. In addition, if one has watched some of the recent protests, some individuals are talking to he police and National Guard. It is important that the ones who support social justice have ways to help...
Thats why I no longer say, "Fuck the Police", but "Fuck the (corporate) police state."
And except for voting for Green or World Workers... to assure that the winner of the present farce of a rigged election is a minority ruler with no mandate, is a good short term goal. I can see no other reason to participate in the election. The consequences of a Clinton (or Trump) landslide is highly dangerous to the well-being of Usaians and the world.
Here is a video from the (two nights ago) recent candlelight vigil in San Diego (El Cajon) in which we see how far down the totalitarian repressive police state tube of death the USA has fallen. I hope the link works. If not, let me know... I originally found it on the Uhuru Solidarity facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=343577585982714&id=100...
Which leads me to comment that there are several protests going on simultaneously, none of which seems to be connected one to the other and therefore isolated locally and ignored by mainstream media. There are daily shooting of people in the back by police state employees we never hear about. Advocates for people with mental disabilities should be outraged and on the street in mass. #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) on twitter and facebook follows all police shootings regardless of race, not just deadly crimes against African-Americans. There is a growing awareness, thanks to BLM that we are all victims of the police state, and there is also an increased participation of all races and ethnicities in the protests (although I am ashamed to say Latinos seem to be way in the back row).
In conclusion I will parrot one of the slogans I hear at protests, "Silence is Consent.". And this from an activist in Pasadena yesterday, "Fuck this Shit."
Comments
Strong Language
I don't want to sidetrack the discussion (if any) but, for those who object to the strong language our black brothers and sisters (and myself) use in describing our outrage, I would say that wishy washy whitey language is not nearly strong enough to express our anger.
From the Light House.
Not too strong Alex...
if it wakes people the fuck up.
Here's a link to John Whitehead's site, I read him regularly.
The Rutherford Institute
Thank you Alex.
Rock on, Brother!
This shit has got to stop! Language has to reflect that.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Too big to be ignored.
At some point, there will be a tipping point and the people's fight won't be able to be ignored.
The corporations and politicians with the help of the media have gagged the citizens of this country.
And your language is appropriate. I will still use, "fuck the police".
I've been uncounted many times before. Got home from a huge protest of maybe 30K only to find the slob of the news said there were hundreds.
I've now been unregistered and wasn't able to vote.
Too big to be ignored, people. We are the 99%
Not protesting now only makes it harder to protest later.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
You can say that again
I've been saying it for 15 damn years :)
protesting Hillary is the worst. You'd think Cheney or Rove would be. Nope. Ms Rodham has no qualm with seeing people roughed up.
But that's just my personal protest observation.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
It is a good tune
I recently watched "Straight Outta Compton" and didn't really know much about NWA or other similar artists, but have gotten into it a bit since. I think the song is dated to the crack epidemic that took place in the late 80s and 90s. BLM, for instance, is all about non-violence and how it is the "corporate police state", not the good people who choose to be cops, that uses institutional racism.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WiT-c3NA0M]
Beware the bullshit factories.
Rage Video
What Did You Learn in School Today?
I found this from "Rage Video" while I was looking through Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton songs. The commentary and "label" seems to hide the deeper meaning of this very odd and powerful video.
I do like this comment, adding my own take in brackets:
The first part, reminds me of my experience in a USA school in the 1950's. Although we weren't trained to remember the parts of an assault weapon, we were trained to cheer for and know the parts of tanks, attack aircraft, nuclear bombs and the like. ROTC and Recruiters always at the High School trying to convince us to murder Koreans, Russians, Chinese, Guatemalans, Iranians, Palestinians, Dominicanos, Haitians and many others). The bullying for us who were different.
The whole authoritarian schooling regime was anathema to me. Has anything changed? Is it a softer version of the old style? I frankly don't know.
The second part of the film reminds me of the logical outcome from such schooling as the sorts of authoritarian and militaristic values are spread around the world like cancer, not only by the USA, but by any number of people made insane by such schooling and corporate state and adjunct religious propaganda.
From the Light House.
My daughter's initial being bullied
probably started because a teacher or room aide noticed she was not mouthing or saying the Pledge of Allegiance in class. My daughter, at a young age, already knew it was bull.
Then the other reason she continued to get bullied: She was super duper smart.
That's what she learned in school. Act like all the other idiots and you might make it out alive. Be yourself and you'll get piled on.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
Rage video
started to watch... but have to run to work.
But it reminded me of SOA - School of the Americas. We have dumbed down our public schools and turned them into little breeding grounds of ignorance, propaganda and fear factories.
No home economics. No vocational training. No technical training. Just pass them off for the cannon and religion fodder.
But they have live gunman drills.... in both SOA and our public schools.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
My diploma is well on its
Way to social security. I graduated HS in 1979. I recieved a really well rounded education. But it is three areas that have served me well. Art, agriculture, and woodworking have played a large roll in my quality of life either as professions or life skills I learned to improve quality.
These semi elective classes also provided the seed of the love of learning something new even when I didn't have to. The school experience tends to set people up for how they view learning for the rest of their life.
Thanks for the post Alex
I can relate to your memory of the 50s propaganda regime. A constant barrage of war movies, cowboy and indian shows on tv, even on the radio with cops and robbers.
Every where you looked were the goog guys, through gallant battle, overcome the evil attacking our country and way of life.
Throw in the pledge of allegiance, a prayer, and a quick Atom bomb drill, and it is a wonder I came out as nonviolent as I am.
A clue may be in that I didn't read comic books when I was a kid (pre-ad). I just didn't like them. Instead I read Popular Science and Amazing Stories. I had a collection of Tom Swift paperbacks and a scrapbook of every article in the LA Times on our space program.
Don't know how, exactly, to interpret that.
But I understand what you are saying.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
that blaze article, "A to Z ..." looks priceless, thanks
just looking at all the links, from motherjones to the americanbar,
to the guardian and wired, i can tell i could take a whole day or two just reading ...
The Blaze's Glen Beck
was on MTP yesterday, and he pretty much agreed with everything Michael Moore said. My favorite from Moore (I'm paraphrasing) was that the people are so angry at both parties that they view Trump as a human Molotov cocktail to throw at the whole rigged system.
Beck was hypocritical, but the message he had was a good one, and that is that we need to stop arguing with each other over politics - we have lost friends, neighbors, family to politics but it is time for us to unite. The fact that he was a major player in fomenting the divisions between the people was completely ignored by Chuck Todd.
Here's a link to the piece by Moore: http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/on-voter-angst-michael-moore...
Ever since
they started storing grain from season to season in the prehistoric villages somebody has had the keys to the granary.
That is, wealth in the first organized farming societies was food. Much culture developed to explain to the common people why they couldn't have more. The same control of wealth continues in all societies through today. Racial and other discriminations are inventions of society, like laws, religion and nationalism, to limit the distribution of wealth among the people.
When a society is relatively equal there is less need for state force to control wealth. One could probably graph the violence visited upon the designated lesser classes and the greater accumulation of wealth at the top of the income graph.
It's the way of the world. When Bill Clinton began shifting weapons and armor to local police forces back in the nineties, it was an acknowledgement of the process that had already been in place in the US.
Social justice requires economic justice. Greedy obsessions of the ruling elite eventually destroy society for everyone else.
Outstanding essay, Alex!
Most people still are unaware of just how repressed we all are. We are living in a police state, but most white people are in denial of that fact. The police state happens only to "others," particularly blacks and minorities, or poor whites who "deserve" whatever the police have dished out to them. When I try to talk about this to good white folks, they do not want to hear about it.
But every harm that happens to one of our fellow human beings harms us all. And it is up to those of us of privilege to be on the forefront of the fight against the police state that is destroying so many lives and monetizing the police and corrections system in this country. The video is shocking but sadly it is one we are seeing more and more often, particularly in minority communities. I could not help but notice that every one of the officers in that video was white too.
Thank you for posting this timely essay.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
This language is not offensive to me. However, I believe that
there are some search engines that will not return results with profanity in the title, so you may want to rewrite just that, for as many people as possible to find your post.
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Well google has a lot from gangsta rap.
And I can't think of a suitable synonym, so I tried substituting a star for the u then decided to heck with it... google has plenty of blogs listed on page ten or so, LOL.
From the Light House.
Your diary, your call, of course.
I think Over There, they said something about filters at work, that's why they don't allow it in titles. .
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One of my most shameful memories of the USA school
Damnit Janet: There were maybe a half dozen people of color in my high school, one a young girl named Andrea. She was sort of a dark olive color and had "foreign" facial features so she must have been from Pakistan or India. I myself always sat alone at the lunch table but could hear the other students, all white of course (I Don't know if they were football players and cheerleaders, I never went to a single game, dance or school function), saying she was an ugly nigger whore slut, she gang banged grown men at 4 at a time, she'd pay you to suck your cock, her private parts were as big as a fist... and that they made regular incursions to her home to "gang bang" her (my guess to egg her house and shout obscenities) to mention a few. This was daily in her face and I am so ashamed that I didn't stand up for her. Didn't go and sit next to her, especially given the fact they called me similar but milder things in the male version, "faggot, sucks cocks two at a time etc." I was a communist and atheist and stood up for Cuba and Russia, refused the shitty pledge of allegiance and the dumb ass nuclear bomb drill (and was suspended many be the time), but I never stood up for Andrea. That its well over fifty years later, I still remember the shame I feel and wish I could find her and apologize and give her her childhood back.
I saw this the way they treated Ruby Bridges and her cohorts a few years later. It made me sick. The four little girls in the church, I still cry over them. And, the video of the vigil, I am older and I saw how the police state made those children cry, I don't see any progress.
I promise to never be silent again, even if nobody listens to me or "likes" me. "Fuck this shit."
From the Light House.
Thank you for telling your story
Speaking from the heart like this takes a courage not unlike that you wish for your younger self.
When we find true agreement, we will access the powers of true change.
DO NOT RESIST: Chilling Documentary - Opened this weekend
"Filmed over two years in 11 states, this film examines the increasingly disturbing realities of the rapid militarization of police forces in the United States."
After you watch the trailer, you'll want to look up this guy. Grossman's running a wildly popular police training program he calls Killology. Yeah. The science of killing. Then start researching whether your community is sending your officers to these, and follow up appropriately. The majority in our communities is not going to support this once they know.
[video:https://youtu.be/4Zt7bl5Z_oA width:854 height:480]
*added a few things
When we find true agreement, we will access the powers of true change.
The film -- The excuses
sound just like Pinochet and a few others I have heard... the reality is like the footage. Darn, not on torrentz yet. Undoubtedly the trailer shows the police are the domestic terrorists.
From the Light House.
Does show the police are domestic terrorists.
They are effectively being brainwashed against the people: All of this militarization is happening against the background of falling rates of violent crime across the nation for the last 30 years, with a precipitate drop over the last ten. Tried to find an excellent graph I saw the other day but it's long gone in my twitter TL.
And it's not just protest we need. We need organized communities demanding change in local police forces and city management. We have to remember and remind ourselves that these people work for us, and dismantle and roll back the changes they're trying to implement before they get any further.
Important to remember, too, as I think you're doing, Alex, that it's not the individual cops who are our enemy: they are the 99%. Our enemy is their corporate masters and the lethal groupthink being fostered in law enforcement.
When we find true agreement, we will access the powers of true change.
A Basket Full Of Racist Cops
Chula Vista, Pasadena and South Central. Three homicides by cop in less than a week. Three that we know about.
I'm going to a Black Panthers meeting neat South Central tomorrow. One topic on the agenda is passing out chill pills. Some Old Panthers and some young ones are shouting out a "Shoot on sight" policy for cops. If you see a cop get out of their car a brother is gonna die, so why not shoot them first?
Cooler heads are suggesting a less temperamental approach. News at 11:00.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Right. Need to contradict myself...
It's not ALL individual cops that are our enemy. They are in the 99%. But there are an overwhelming and terrifying number of psychopaths wearing law enforcement uniforms. This needs to change, and fast.
I read recently that 15% of officers any given police force will abuse their power every chance they get. 15% will do the right thing, no matter what. The 70% in the middle, will go along with whoever they're with. This was from a former LEO who had done a study. We need to organize our communities and set community standards that demand the firing of all officers who receive a certain number of complaints of abuse of power.
And of course, we need the arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of any who murder civilians in "the line of duty."
When we find true agreement, we will access the powers of true change.
Bonnie
You may be right that it isn't 99% of the cops that are involved with the shootings of unarmed people, but when people use their First Amendment right to gather or protest, look at how many cops show up in riot gear and violently arrest people.
Watch the Facebook video.
People are quietly having a bbq and remembering the person that the cops recently shot.
Suddenly they are surrounded by over 100 or more cops in riot gear with sticks. And a police dog. And a helicopter.
The people don't say anything to the cops but they start dismantling their stuff that they put up.
Does anyone think that one cop bothered to ask himself why they were hassling these people? Or ask why he or she was following the order to break up the peace gathering?
Is it the group think just going along because everyone else is doing it?
The video was hard to watch because those people had no recourse for stopping what the cops were doing.
And I'm damned sure that this would never happen in a affluent white neighborhood.
FTP!
And every person who says that people just need to do what the cops tell them to do.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Yeah, I need to clarify, thanks...
I don't AT ALL think that 99% of the cops are decent -- I offered a likely break down in my other comment.
What I mean is, in reality, they are 'of the 99%.' "They" are "ones of us" being used against us, and ultimately against their own best interests. And no, it doesn't just come down to groupthink: it's history and policy, entrenched economic and social injustice, plain ignorance and racism, and more. And it is horrific and terrifying. I didn't see the picnic video you linked, but you'll hear the same lack of self-reflection and insight you're talking about from the LEOs in DO NOT RESIST. They are so bought into their deadly worldview that they can't see reality, don't think to question they're assessments.
When we find true agreement, we will access the powers of true change.
absolutely agree we need to prosecute the killer cops
but can you tell me how that is going to happen?
Long answer: Step by step, mm by mm:
We stop accepting the status quo and insisting to ourselves that we're powerless to change it. We organize. We educate and empower ourselves and those around us. We transform the system top to bottom. Inside out. The cops "work for us" and the mayor and city council "work for us." It's time to take the ironic quotes off of that phrase, and step up, together, to create and insist on community standards. To build neighborhoods, cities, states, a nation and a world where ALL can thrive.
Difficult? Sure. Impossible. Nah. And the work will get easier as more and more of us get on board. Eventually, hopefully in my life time, the majority will be on board and the world will be heading in a survivable direction.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much my city is doing to try to stem the rise of killer cops. And freaked out to see that despite their efforts, our cops have killed more people this year than last. Obviously haven't gotten to the roots of the problem. And haven't even begun to organize.
When we find true agreement, we will access the powers of true change.
It comes down from the top.
It comes down from the top.
Part of the problem is, of course, that we generally act within the law where predators and their lackeys don't - (edit: so that we're unsure of how to deal with this when faced with corrupt officials from the top down.)
But one big thing that we all can do is to never vote for evil.
I was watching the BBQ video and wondering if it would have made any difference if the German people had had internet and video-cameras to see this sort of thing going on in their democracy at this point in their history. Would many more people have reacted in time to stop it? People are still speaking of voting for one or another evil even on this site... and we should know better...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
thank you for the break down
Agree it is possible and difficult both. If local councils re-negotiate the cop union contracts, it would be a start. Maybe at that level, accountability would be more direct.
Police Accountability