We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Why Do the Police Have Tanks? The Strange and Dangerous Militarization of the US Police Force

Click here to access article by Rania Khalek from AlterNet.

While most of the American populace shop and mindlessly listen to their boob tubes, the political operatives of the ruling class are preparing their forces to deal with citizens when they eventually wake up. Because they have nothing else to base their rule on, their faith in the use of violence to protect their system of capitalism, which has largely succeeded up till now in the rest of the world, will be coming home to the USA.
...why is it that local police departments are looking more and more like paramilitary units in a combat zone? The line between military and civilian law enforcement has been drawn for good reason, but following the drug war and more recently, the war on terror, that line is inconspicuously eroding, a trend that appears to be worsening by the decade.
I think what we are now witnessing is a calm before the storm. I see people nearly everywhere in the US in denial regarding the lies of their Imperial country, about their fake democracy, and the grand illusions of consumer society.