militarisation of the police

[alanjjohnstone]

Both Janet and i have blogged on how even small-town America have turned their local police into a paramilitary force, taking advantage of a US military programme to access surplus equipment.

Anyone watching the coverage of the protests in Ferguson will have noted the consequence of this. 

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/76934000/jpg/_76934018_76934017.jpg

Surprising (but perhaps not) the BBC reports on those making much of this is the right-wing libertarians who criticise the State for its excessive suppression of liberties even if this is an example of their own belief in States' rights and local autonomy against central government. I say perhaps not because i suspect that the BBC agenda may be not to give attention to the peoples resistance that the protests reflect and instead concentrate on a side-show (another thread discusses BBC bias)

It is not mentioned in the article  but i think the right wing seek to link this with the Bundy ranch Nevada stand-off rather than any real concern or sympathy for police attacks on blacks!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28779376

[Anonymous]

Now they can not say that it only takes place in the so called  Banana Republics. The situation is so obvious that the journalists ( or cardboard readers, or teleprompter readers )  can not cover up the situation. Blacks and whites are protesting together. It looks like Chile during the government of Augusto Pinochet. 

[J Surman]

Coincidence – just posted this: http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com.tr/2014/08/how-much-pentagons-gifts-to-local-police.htmland then came here to find current conversation.

[Anonymous]

J Surman wrote:

Coincidence – just posted this: http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com.tr/2014/08/how-much-pentagons-gifts-to-local-police.htmland then came here to find current conversation.

 SOYMB writes and publishes many good articles. It is one of the best socialist website that exists in the whole world at the present time. The comrades in charge of SOYMB keep us pretty well informed. Most of the time their analysis are totally correct and accordance with socialist principles. I visit many websites and forums every day, but this is my favorite one,  besides the website of the SPGB. Some of their 

[Young Master Smeet]

And here is a very useful *cough* scientific analysis of the situation…http://dontpaniccorrectingmythsaboutthecrowd.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/ferguson-riots-militarised-policing-is.html

Quote:

'Studies [ ] show that police have the power to either lessen the tensions of an angry group of people or goad them into a riot. This conclusion is based on the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), which is the leading scientific theory on managing a boisterous horde of people. What the ESIM shows is that an angry crowd can be driven to riot if they believe they are being treated unfairly—for example, by being confronted by cops decked out with military weaponry. When police treat a crowd justly and humanely, the chance of an uproar decreases and participants trust law enforcement more.'

[HollyHead]

"Boistrous horde" eh?I like it. It reminds me of the phrase used to describe official reaction to the 1966 Chicago anti-Vietnam demo as a  "police riot".

[Ozymandias]

And we expect the police and the armed forces to eventually join the class war? What a fuckin joke. These pathetic slaves will do anything their masters tell them to do because they love power. That's the reason they get up in the morning. How can we possibly rely on this filth? Many of these fuckin cretins are psychopaths. We are so fucked. Socialism? Forget it. That cunt Mao said only one thing that I would go along with (that Nuclear War is in some way inevitable) and I hope when the end does come it's quick. 

[Anonymous]

Ozymandias wrote:

And we expect the police and the armed forces to eventually join the class war? What a fuckin joke. These pathetic slaves will do anything their masters tell them to do because they love power. That's the reason they get up in the morning. How can we possibly rely on this filth? Many of these fuckin cretins are psychopaths. We are so fucked. Socialism? Forget it. That cunt Mao said only one thing that I would go along with (that Nuclear War is in some way inevitable) and I hope when the end does come it's quick. 

 I have seen in several occasion policemen and military men taking sides with the peoples, and several of them have been killed, or they have died defending the interests of the workers, and they have turned their backs against their own superiors. I have a long list on my mindI have seen military peoples turning themselves into revolutionary persons, or adopting revolutionaries ideas. I have also  seen ex-guerrillas fighters becoming reactionaries peoples.The USA is a country where historically the capitalist class has always influenced completely in the minds of the workers, since the very beginning of its foundation,  and most members of the working class have always supported their own rulers, but that rule does  not apply to most of the working peoples of the whole world.In Yahoo and Gmail there are commentaries made by workers ( in regard to the incidents that are taking place in Ferguson)  which are not policemen or military, their  expressions are worst than any military person, and they are not old peoples, they are young persons, and it is great shock for me, because as a young person I never had that kind of mentality.I think it is possible to establish socialism in our society, and it is possible that most workers including militaries and policemen can become socialists too, if we did it, they can do it too. I think all wars are inevitable,Mao had some crazy ideas about wars, but , one of the merits of  Lenin and the Bolsheviks is that,  they  showed that war can be stopped when the Russian did not want to fight any longer in WWI.There are many psychopaths on the streets who are not policemen or military, and most of them do not have any access to psychiatric treatments, and most of the psychiatric hospitals have been closed, and peoples have preferred guns instead of butter and medical services.Only idiots, or political ignorant  can say that Obama care is a communist measure, or that Obama, or some members of the US congress are  communist, or that some states inside the US are more socialists than others,   and that the NY Times is a communist newspaper,  it shows how politically distorted they are.The rulers and the religious leaders  have done a tremendous job  in the minds of many workers, but my grandfather who never had any formal academic education, he  knew that the soviet union was not a socialist country, and I have seen peoples with PHD ( in history and social sciences )  who believe completely  the lies of the capitalist class

[Anonymous]

In several countries around the world  including  Latin America ( Argentina and Ecuador )  the police forces have gone into a workers strike like any other group of the working class, and they have been reprimanded by the military forces, and they have asked others  workers  to support them.In Ecuador they were considered as counter revolutionary by the left wingers, the main problem is that they do not understand that policemen and militaries are also members of the working class employed by the state.What about the workers that manufacture guns, tanks and war airplanes, battleship used to kill others workers ? The majority of those workers they think that they are serving their country instead of serving their own ruling class. If Boy Scouts are trained by the capitalist class as defender of their countries and give guns to them, and screw that concept in their minds,  they will go to the streets to kick the assess of others peoples.If we ask to any policemen what they are doing, the answer would be: I am doing my job, in the same manner that many workers use the expression of "we" or 'our"  when they are referring to the company that they are working  for, they do not call themselves as wage slaves. List of police strikes[edit]United Kingdom (1918, 1919); Main article: Police strike 1918 and 1919Boston (1919); Main article: Boston Police StrikeMelbourne (1923);[1] Main article: 1923 Victorian Police strikeShanghai (1940)[2]Cairo (1948)[3]Detroit (1967)[4]Paris (1944);[5] see Liberation of ParisNew Delhi (1946)[6]Cicero, IL (1969)Montreal (1969); See: Murray-Hill riotNew York City (1971)[7]Baltimore (1974); Main article: Baltimore police strikeSan Francisco (1975),[8]Cleveland (1978)[9]New Orleans (1979)[10]Birmingham (1979)[11]Toledo (1979)[12]Santa Barbara (1980)[13]Milwaukee (1981)[14]Corona, CA (1983)[15]Ljubljana (1993)[16]Bahia, Brazil (2001)[17]Alagoas, Brazil (2001)[18]Brazil (2004)[19]Amsterdam (2007)[20]Ljubljana (2010)[21]Bahia, Brazil (2012)[22]Córdoba, Argentina (2013)[23] 

[Ozymandias]

Look I concede hypothetically that a minority of the global workforce involved in the armed forces/police might end up joining the struggle for World Socialism, in fact it could even be a majority. However you're going to get a small hardcore of fanatics and psycho's in the military who will defend the property rights of their masters to the very last. And this element will exist in every country on earth. It only takes one loony to set off a chain reaction by pressing the button. In my mind all of this is conjectural anyway because for the life of me I just cannot see the 99% ever getting to the point where we've woken up enough to get things organised politically, consciously and democratically to bring about the establishment of a post capitalist society. Certainly not within the dwindling amount of time we have left before environmental or nuclear armageddon finishes us off.As far as Lenin is concerned the only thing the bastard ever wrote that I roughly agree with was his estimation of how long it would take for workers to achieve class consciousness. I think he said it might take hundreds of years. Perhaps he was right on that point although I disagree with his idea that workers at best were really only able to achieve "Trades Union Consciousness". The fact is in 2014 many workers cannot even achieve that! For instance I've heard workers praise gangsters like Thatcher by saying shit like…"At least she was tough on the unions". Workers are more stupid than they've ever been and the Internet is making it worse. It makes workers more isolated, more addicted, more phobic.The SPGB through no fault of its own has consistently failed to capture the imagination of workers for 110 years now. It is almost impossible to convince your average worker of the urgent need for World Socialism, never mind trying to appeal to the human sediment which makes up most of the armed and police forces.These are the kind of workers who love power and it's this unfortunate element in human behaviour that Capitalists are only too happy to exploit. These pathetic slaves enjoy dousing workers faces in pepper spray, they love battering black people to death in police cells, or get some of their kicks by treating "illegal" immigrants like animals in detention centres, they relish beating strikers into submission, getting deep satisfaction from electrocuting protesters with tasers, they create and cover up human tragedies like Hillsborough, they spy on innocents like Doreen Lawrence, they ritually humiliate and patronise members of the public, they protect high ranking paedophiles as well as posing as activists in pressure groups so they can infiltrate them…the sorry list goes on.The bottom line is that many of these pathetic uniformed cretins would love nothing more than to gun down "their own people". Work is like being in a video game for many of them. I do not consider such filth to be members of my class, even though economically they obviously are. For me they inhabit their own limbo land of corruption, lies, racism, violence and very low cognitive ability. Yet the entire gambit of Socialism is predicated on depending on these people to join the class struggle.Also this isn't even taking into account all of the other variables which could make a transition from this society to the next extremely hazardous. We have elite military squadrons, armies within armies, vast spy networks, intelligence organisations, secret societies (allegedly), far right wing armed paramilitary groups, survivalists, cults, religious fanatics, terrorist networks, you name it. How the hell are we ever going to get to revolution with all of this in place?Meanwhile governments continue to invest in researching ever more horrible and ghastly ways of killing workers. Licenses are issued to toy companies so sets of "Swat Team" playmobil/Lego figures can be sold in toy shops to ensure kids are desensitised to the increasing fascist police presence growing all around them. Governments are developing Frankenstein experiments with the very fabric of space time by creating mini black holes. They are rapidly developing drone technology to the extent that such machines can be minimized to the size of insects. Sonic, laser and microwave weapons are being increasingly developed to create "death rays". Robotics and nano-technologies are slowly enabling the fantasy of robot infantrymen which can be controlled like drones. Each branch of the armed forces will have an entertainment office in Hollywood so they can assist the production of increasingly militaristic movies and violent video games which often contain wild historical innacuracies which suit the neo-con worldview. Yesterday I read a report about a sergeant major and former US Army/Vietnam veteran who was caught on video saying some pretty vile things about his fellow workers. This vegetable made his remarks whilst holding a Bible during an address earlier this year to a St Louis branch of the Oathkeepers, an association of former and serving military personnel, police officers and first responders. The group says that its members “pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". This is only one example of the maelstrom of obstacles we face. How many miriad groups of "Oathkeepers" are there throughout the world? With all of them unwittingly defending their right to be slaves? Each of them staunchly believing all the lies their governments ever told them? Of course I'm hoping I'll be proven utterly wrong about everything I've said here. However workers consistently refuse to stand by each other. I despise them exactly because they lie…to themselves. They are dishonest liars because they don't know any better.The kind of mental leap we would require for Socialism to be established is of near miracle proportion. I left the SPGB 15 years ago because I was disgusted with the pathetic attitude of slaves all over the world in reaction to the news of the death of the parasite Princess Diana. I have no faith in the "Working Class" and that's why I won't be rejoining. Unless as I say there is a never before witnessed mental revolution around the corner then I think either we will blow ourselves up to Kingdom come or the planet itself will get rid of us. What is "humanity" anyway but a disgusting virus which is polluting and destroying its host. This is becoming more and more apparent. Whilst I cannot say Socialism is totally impossible I think it's establishment in our lifetime (or any lifetime for that matter) is at best almost impossible. Sorry but it's the way I feel.       

[HollyHead]

Ozymandias wrote:

The kind of mental leap we would require for Socialism to be established is of near miracle proportion. I left the SPGB 15 years ago because I was disgusted with the pathetic attitude of slaves all over the world in reaction to the news of the death of the parasite Princess Diana. I have no faith in the "Working Class" and that's why I won't be rejoining. Unless as I say there is a never before witnessed mental revolution around the corner then I think either we will blow ourselves up to Kingdom come or the planet itself will get rid of us. What is "humanity" anyway but a disgusting virus which is polluting and destroying its host. This is becoming more and more apparent. Whilst I cannot say Socialism is totally impossible I think it's establishment in our lifetime (or any lifetime for that matter) is at best almost impossible. Sorry but it's the way I feel. 

 I see. It's not you…it's all them other buggers. Disgusting Virus

[Anonymous]

HollyHead wrote:

Ozymandias wrote:

The kind of mental leap we would require for Socialism to be established is of near miracle proportion. I left the SPGB 15 years ago because I was disgusted with the pathetic attitude of slaves all over the world in reaction to the news of the death of the parasite Princess Diana. I have no faith in the "Working Class" and that's why I won't be rejoining. Unless as I say there is a never before witnessed mental revolution around the corner then I think either we will blow ourselves up to Kingdom come or the planet itself will get rid of us. What is "humanity" anyway but a disgusting virus which is polluting and destroying its host. This is becoming more and more apparent. Whilst I cannot say Socialism is totally impossible I think it's establishment in our lifetime (or any lifetime for that matter) is at best almost impossible. Sorry but it's the way I feel. 

 I see. It's not you…it's all them other buggers. Disgusting Virus

 It sounds like the original sin of Genesis.

[Anonymous]

Ozymandias wrote:

Look I concede hypothetically that a minority of the global workforce involved in the armed forces/police might end up joining the struggle for World Socialism, in fact it could even be a majority. However you're going to get a small hardcore of fanatics and psycho's in the military who will defend the property rights of their masters to the very last. And this element will exist in every country on earth. It only takes one loony to set off a chain reaction by pressing the button. In my mind all of this is conjectural anyway because for the life of me I just cannot see the 99% ever getting to the point where we've woken up enough to get things organised politically, consciously and democratically to bring about the establishment of a post capitalist society. Certainly not within the dwindling amount of time we have left before environmental or nuclear armageddon finishes us off.As far as Lenin is concerned the only thing the bastard ever wrote that I roughly agree with was his estimation of how long it would take for workers to achieve class consciousness. I think he said it might take hundreds of years. Perhaps he was right on that point although I disagree with his idea that workers at best were really only able to achieve "Trades Union Consciousness". The fact is in 2014 many workers cannot even achieve that! For instance I've heard workers praise gangsters like Thatcher by saying shit like…"At least she was tough on the unions". Workers are more stupid than they've ever been and the Internet is making it worse. It makes workers more isolated, more addicted, more phobic.The SPGB through no fault of its own has consistently failed to capture the imagination of workers for 110 years now. It is almost impossible to convince your average worker of the urgent need for World Socialism, never mind trying to appeal to the human sediment which makes up most of the armed and police forces.These are the kind of workers who love power and it's this unfortunate element in human behaviour that Capitalists are only too happy to exploit. These pathetic slaves enjoy dousing workers faces in pepper spray, they love battering black people to death in police cells, or get some of their kicks by treating "illegal" immigrants like animals in detention centres, they relish beating strikers into submission, getting deep satisfaction from electrocuting protesters with tasers, they create and cover up human tragedies like Hillsborough, they spy on innocents like Doreen Lawrence, they ritually humiliate and patronise members of the public, they protect high ranking paedophiles as well as posing as activists in pressure groups so they can infiltrate them…the sorry list goes on.The bottom line is that many of these pathetic uniformed cretins would love nothing more than to gun down "their own people". Work is like being in a video game for many of them. I do not consider such filth to be members of my class, even though economically they obviously are. For me they inhabit their own limbo land of corruption, lies, racism, violence and very low cognitive ability. Yet the entire gambit of Socialism is predicated on depending on these people to join the class struggle.Also this isn't even taking into account all of the other variables which could make a transition from this society to the next extremely hazardous. We have elite military squadrons, armies within armies, vast spy networks, intelligence organisations, secret societies (allegedly), far right wing armed paramilitary groups, survivalists, cults, religious fanatics, terrorist networks, you name it. How the hell are we ever going to get to revolution with all of this in place?Meanwhile governments continue to invest in researching ever more horrible and ghastly ways of killing workers. Licenses are issued to toy companies so sets of "Swat Team" playmobil/Lego figures can be sold in toy shops to ensure kids are desensitised to the increasing fascist police presence growing all around them. Governments are developing Frankenstein experiments with the very fabric of space time by creating mini black holes. They are rapidly developing drone technology to the extent that such machines can be minimized to the size of insects. Sonic, laser and microwave weapons are being increasingly developed to create "death rays". Robotics and nano-technologies are slowly enabling the fantasy of robot infantrymen which can be controlled like drones. Each branch of the armed forces will have an entertainment office in Hollywood so they can assist the production of increasingly militaristic movies and violent video games which often contain wild historical innacuracies which suit the neo-con worldview. Yesterday I read a report about a sergeant major and former US Army/Vietnam veteran who was caught on video saying some pretty vile things about his fellow workers. This vegetable made his remarks whilst holding a Bible during an address earlier this year to a St Louis branch of the Oathkeepers, an association of former and serving military personnel, police officers and first responders. The group says that its members “pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". This is only one example of the maelstrom of obstacles we face. How many miriad groups of "Oathkeepers" are there throughout the world? With all of them unwittingly defending their right to be slaves? Each of them staunchly believing all the lies their governments ever told them? Of course I'm hoping I'll be proven utterly wrong about everything I've said here. However workers consistently refuse to stand by each other. I despise them exactly because they lie…to themselves. They are dishonest liars because they don't know any better.The kind of mental leap we would require for Socialism to be established is of near miracle proportion. I left the SPGB 15 years ago because I was disgusted with the pathetic attitude of slaves all over the world in reaction to the news of the death of the parasite Princess Diana. I have no faith in the "Working Class" and that's why I won't be rejoining. Unless as I say there is a never before witnessed mental revolution around the corner then I think either we will blow ourselves up to Kingdom come or the planet itself will get rid of us. What is "humanity" anyway but a disgusting virus which is polluting and destroying its host. This is becoming more and more apparent. Whilst I cannot say Socialism is totally impossible I think it's establishment in our lifetime (or any lifetime for that matter) is at best almost impossible. Sorry but it's the way I feel.       

 Let me know when you find anything better than the Socialist Party. I have experienced worst situations than yours,  and I am still optimistic that a new world can be established by the working class. I do not have any faith because I am not a believer of any religion, and socialism is not a religion

[Ozymandias]

Ok I shouldn't have used the word "Faith". Still I have no hope or confidence in the "Working Class"…their brains are dormant. They are fuckin idiots.

[SocialistPunk]

Hi OzyI left the party a little after you, probably 13 years back. But hey, we keep getting drawn back. Why? 'Cos we can't find another group of people with any better solutions, like it or not we are socialists through and through. The Socialist Party is our political home.I agree with you, I don't think socialism will come into existence in my lifetime. I never thought it would even when I joined, though having Cystic Fibrosis always meant I wasn't likely to be a candidate for a birthday card from our beloved monarch.I know one thing, if I can grasp the concept of socialism, then anyone can. Dormant is a good word to describe the working class, ('cos one day they will wake up) but I don't go along with the idiot bit.

[Author]

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