Read the rest at Think Progress
Wielding assault rifles, about 20 police in riot gear stormed a derelict commercial property in the heart of Chapel Hill, NC, on Sunday afternoon, arresting activists who had taken over the space the night before....
Wielding Assault Rifles, Police Arrest Chapel Hill Occupiers Of Building Left Derelict By Developer
by Brad Johnson
Actually, we've seen this before in the US.
Washington’s Whiskey Woes
by William Hogeland
13 comments:
Tom
wrong link - right link
Thanks, Clonal. Fixed.
Tom,
Most law enforcement is just not good at doing their jobs.
At core, they want to just handle the easy stuff and in between hang out at Dunkin'... very few are true professionals.
Matt, this is way beyond being unprofessional. A militarized police force is a threat to democracy, and disbanding it is another demand to add to the list.
Assault rifles? Really? It just doesn't make any sense practically other than for effect, i.e., intimidation by threat of violence. Even right-wing Libertarians can get behind condemning that.
Both the Libertarians of the right and the anarchists of the left are united on one thing — they are both opposed to the state monopoly on violence as anti-democratic and tyrannical when misused. The problem is that its existence invites misuse.
Continuing on this riff, I think that we are seeing a cloth of one piece made up of many threads here. The militarization of the domestic security forces began in earnest after 9/11 and really took off with the creation of the DHS and the handin out of not only funding but also weapons to beff up domestic security in the GWOT. Local communities could never afford such a lavish outlay, and the voters wouldn't stand for it if officials wanted to go in that direction. It's a waste of money. Actually, it is, like the privatization of prisons, a gift to the arms and security industries, which have profited greatly from the increased level of fear in the society. Now that this is in place, be assured that army of lobbyists will be mounted to keep the policy in place and the funds rolling.
Couple this with the abrogation of constitutional rights under the Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, etc., and everything is in place for a 1984 scenario, which is what I believe we are now witnessing. There are powerful interests behind this, both to garner public funding and also to for "crowd control," i.e., the imposition of the tyranny of a soft fascism aka corporatism. What we see is the development of the corporate state through state capture through legalized bribery and the revolving door.
I have been waring about these developments and similar ones for the past decade and I am not alone. But so far, it has not been evident what was happening behind the scenes.
Now the ugly truth is emerging through suppression of legitimate dissent using intimidation and sometimes overt violence against protestors.
Meanwhile, a propaganda campaign is being mounted in the mainstream media to discredit the protests and marginalize if not vilify the protestors. This is right out of Goebbels playbook.
http://historysquared.com/2011/11/14/judge-rules-in-favor-of-surveillance-state/
Look on the bright side, no protesters have have disappeared yet. So we are still better off marginally than China or Russia.
@ TomatoBasil
No, but they are taking names.
And it is not quite true that no one has disappeared yet. Many were arrested under dubious circumstances and held in a degrading condition, obviously to teach them a lesson and to send a warning to others.
This is police state tactics. Saying that no one has disappeared yet is about the same as saying no one has been killed yet. Aren't we lucky? Shouldn't we be grateful for the mercy?
This is way over the top.
But are the authorities flouting or breaking the law?
The apathetic American public allowed their 'representatives' to enact the Patriot Act and engage in other shenanigans. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
It's not too late to reverse the situation. An active electorate, well informed on the issues and willing to participate in decision making, can do just that.
Inviting the police to bash your face in won't accomplish much.
And if intimidation avoids the use of physical force, then it is a successful tactic. It's for a similar reason that there are mating rituals in many species, full of bluff and bluster, in order to avoid actual physical conflict and injury.
Laura, virtually none of the protests have been violent, Oakland being the exception.
Moreover, in the past as now, the violence has often been attributable to agents provocateurs, sometimes even undercover police.
It seems very difficult to argue 1) that the authorities are not overreacting and acting unprofessionally (way beyond what is necessary for crowd control, and 2) that the equipage of the domestic security force has not been upgraded to a military level, basically end running posse comitatus (which has been suspended anyway).
Zuccotti Park clear.
Not to worry, Red, The Occupy=99% movement will just go asymmetric. No guerillas have ever tried holding territory against an overwhelming organized military force.
These principles are actually age-old in the East and have been adapted world-wide. See, for example, Sun Tzu, The Art of War. They are based on ancient Taoist teaching, especially the Tao Te Ching. All contemporary revolutionaries are well aware of these works and how they have been applied. Coupled with M. K. Gandhi's nonviolent approach, this operational approach is very powerful, because it rests on a moral foundation.
I participated in the Vietnam conflict as an operations officer and studied the strategies and tactics of both sides. Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap used basically the same strategy and tactics to defeat the US as he used to defeat the French, since the US general staff just didn't get it until it was too late. They were set up and the trap was sprung, leaving them to beat an ignominious retreat.
Organized security forces don't deal well with asymmetry. The real problem now is Total Information Awareness, which is basically domestic spying.
This was done in past protests as the FBI files gained under the Freedom of Information Act go to show. However, the capability of the government to monitor everyone all the time has increased exponentially. I fully expect them to use it.
In my view this is a healthy development since it will show decisively that Americans gave up the "freedoms" that according W, the terrorists wanted to deny them. Maybe then people will do something about reining in a government and security apparatus gone rogue.
The entire notion of a Department of Homeland Security (Ministry of the Interior) ought to send chills up the spine of every red-blooded American that values freedom, constitutional government, and the rule of law.
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