Chris Hedges: Legalized Murder and the Politics of Terror

[marmar]

from truthdig:


by Chris Hedges


Police officers carry out random acts of legalized murder against poor people of color not because they are racist, although they may be, or even because they are rogue cops, but because impoverished urban communities have evolved into miniature police states.

Police can stop citizens at will, question and arrest them without probable cause, kick down doors in the middle of the night on the basis of warrants for nonviolent offenses, carry out wholesale surveillance, confiscate property and money and hold people—some of them innocent—in county jails for years before forcing them to accept plea agreements that send them to prison for decades. They can also, largely with impunity, murder them.

Those who live in these police states, or internal colonies, especially young men of color, endure constant fear and often terror. Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” calls those trapped in these enclaves members of a criminal “caste system.” This caste system dominates the lives of not only the 2.3 million who are incarcerated in the United States but also the 4.8 million on probation or parole. Millions more are forced into “permanent second-class citizenship” by their criminal records, which make employment, higher education and public assistance, including housing, difficult and usually impossible to obtain. This is by design.

The rhetoric of compassion, even outrage, by the political class over the police murders in Baton Rouge, La., and near St. Paul, Minn., will not be translated into change until the poor are granted full constitutional rights and police are accountable to the law. The corporate state, however, which is expanding the numbers of poor through austerity and deindustrialization, has no intention of instituting anything more than cosmetic reform.

Globalization has created a serious problem of “surplus” or “redundant” labor in deindustrialized countries. The corporate state has responded to the phenomenon of “surplus” labor with state terror and mass incarceration. It has built a physical and legal mechanism that lurks like a plague bacillus within the body politic to be imposed, should wider segments of society resist, on all of us. ............................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/legalized_murder_and_the_politics_of_terror_20160710

[puffy socks]

1. ...

"Police can stop citizens at will, question and arrest them without probable cause, kick down doors in the middle of the night on the basis of warrants for nonviolent offenses, carry out wholesale surveillance, confiscate property and money and hold people—some of them innocent—in county jails for years before forcing them to accept plea agreements that send them to prison for decades. They can also, largely with impunity, murder them."

The only requirement for wielding this kind of power is a high school diploma or GED, a below 100 IQ, a physical and a rorschach test.

[Igel]

2. And in most states certification for firearms use and other topics,

usually as part of a months-long training program.

BTW, half of the population has an IQ below 100.

And the average LEO's IQ, as of a few years ago, was around 102.

UvT rules.

[puffy socks]

3. All that training taught them

how to shoot
Big deal. Thats the problem . Its all they know how to do. Its the solution to every problem --well that and a smear campaign, banding together for a cover up and spending hours watching videos so they can piece together believable narrative to sell the public. Then , like the St Louis police, hire a PR guy so they can make sure they've used all the right words to sway the general public into believing the lies as well as garner sympathy by pushing the "lives on the line" hero meme.


Half the nation isn't fit for a job that wields that much power.

I believe police have an average IQ of 102 just like I believe that 80% of Tea Party Patriots have college degrees.

There are even reports showing they won't allow anyone with an IQ iover 100 to become an officer.... so there's that.