Update: #OWS Occupy Movement
Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman presents an Update on the militarization of police forces in the USA . The police are dressing in full battle gear and treating American citizens involved in non-violent protesters as if they were militant well armed Terrorists or as if they were foreign invaders.
The War at Home: Militarized Local Police Tap Post-9/11 Grants to Stockpile Combat Gear, Use Drones Amy Goodman via Alternet.org, December 27, 2011
Uploaded by fal2grace1 on Dec 27, 2011
Dec 27, 2011--www.democracynow.org — A new report by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that since 9/11, local law enforcement agencies have used $34 billion in federal grants to acquire military equipment such as bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets. "A lot of these technologies and devices have been around for a long time. But as soon as they have a law enforcement capability, that is a game changer," says George Schulz, with the Center for Investigative Reporting. "The courts and the public have to ask, 'How is the technology being used by a community of people — the police — who are endowed with more power than the rest of us?'" Local police departments have also added drones to their tool kit. In June, a drone helped local police in North Dakota with surveillance leading to what may be the first domestic arrests with help from a drone. The American Civil Liberties Union has issued a new report that calls on the government to put establish privacy protections for surveillance by unmanned aerial drones, especially of people engaged in protests. "We believe that people should not be targeted for surveillance via drones just because they are they are engaged in First Amendment protected activity," says Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.
To watch the complete daily, independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, and for more Democracy Now! reports, visit http://www.democracynow.org
10 Winning Moments for the 99% in 2011 by Sarah Jaffe at Alternet.org ,December 26, 2011
This year saw working people around the world begin to stand up and fight back. Ten organizers share their most inspiring moments from the U.S.'s year of action.
The 99% Versus Wall Street: Stephen Lerner on How We Can Mobilize To Be the Greedy 1%'s Worst Nightmare by Sarah Jaffe, Alternet.org, December 22, 2011
Savvy organizer and big thinker Stephen Lerner talks to AlterNet about how to take power back from Wall Street.
The Great Republican Crackup: How Angry, White, Southern Men Took Over the GOP and Made Our Government Into a War Zone by Robert Reich at Alternet.org, December 26, 2011
The GOP's radicalism is dangerous for America. We need two political parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing.
Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican crackup threatens the future of the Grand Old Party more profoundly than at any time since the GOP’s eclipse in 1932. That’s bad for America.
...The underlying conflict lies deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old.
As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.
It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri.
Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.
This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans – only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.
...In other words, the radical right wing of today’s GOP isn’t that much different from the social conservatives who began asserting themselves in the Party during the 1990s, and, before them, the “Willie Horton” conservatives of the 1980s, and, before them, Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.”
...America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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