After seeing the use of mercenaries on American soil ( think Blackwater in New Orleans after Katrina)
the draconian reaction to Occupy and other protesters country wide, and the rapid militarization of even small town police depts.
the idea of "occupying force" has become a reality for all of us who are concerned by the history of police states.

I implore you to read Michael Parenti's "Dirty Truths". He makes an extremely clear case for this hypothesis.

http://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/EpidemicofProsecutorMisconduct.pdf

This made me think of the "Dirty Truths"

"“Selective Fascism”

Most of Dirty Truths is dated and of mainly historical interest. In his introductory chapters, Parenti, a PhD historian whose anti-Vietnam activism ended his teaching career, offers a Marixian analysis of the structural origin of poverty, corporate media censorship, and American military empire that are now taken as a given by most liberal intellectuals. Yet already in 1996, Parenti writes at length about the fascist nature of the national security state and its role as an all-powerful shadow government. Like Chomsky and other media analysts, Parenti believes the modern state mainly uses propaganda and brainwashing to prevent the working class from agitating for social justice. However when ideological control fails, it freely indulges in a a “selective fascism” of unrestrained violence, particularly against minority communities."

http://stuartjeannebramhall.com/2013/12/20/dirty-truths/

The material is dated (1996) but was very prescient. As bramhall notes, most of what Parenti laments (and predicts) is now, 20 years later, taken as a given. The union-busting, domestic spying, exclusion of leftists from the media, hate radio, corporate control of the government, and so on, were in their infancy (at least from a systemic viewpoint) in 1996. Now they are completely entrenched - "taken as a given".

Last edited Tue Mar 17, 2015, 03:47 PM - Edit history (1)

able to open it any longer. This article had pointed out that the real change would be from a citizen's over site committee.

I tried to re-post the link I opened up after going to the site independently of D.U. and posted it but it also was slow and opened to a empty page.

So if you want to go directly to site look for this article: Half a century and nothing’s changed: US Refuses to Seriously Tackle Police Brutality and Racism

However, for decades, police unions, backed by “law-and-order” politicians, in city councils, state legislatures and Congress, have vigorously opposed independent oversight by civilians and even oversight from governmental entities.

Such opposition mounted by America’s national police union – the Fraternal Order of Police – early last year killed Obama’s nomination of a civil rights lawyer to head the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The national FOP in that case made it clear it resented any Justice Department monitoring of state and local police practices. Despite patterns of police misconduct that had led to what was at best only infrequent Justice Department monitoring, U.S. Senators – Republicans and Democrats – backed the national police union’s opposition to Obama’s nominee.

The Kerner Commission, which had examined race-based inequities beyond police brutality, called for a massive influx of resources to tackle poverty and discrimination.

That proposal from President Johnson’s panel, formally titled The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders because it was a wave of riots and uprisings in cities across the country in the 1960s that led to its creation, prompted immediate opposition from conservatives. Resources being poured into the war in Vietnam further crippled that proposal…

http://warisacrime.org/content/half-century-and-nothing’s-changed-us-refuses-seriously-tackle-police-brutality-and-racism

Our fundamental problems regarding discrimination remain.

The murders, the lynchings, the torture, the suffering beyond words, and all of it bourn by the good people, not the racists.

At least they are the ones who will have to face their consciences one day when they can no longer avoid it.

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