The United Militarized Police States

bruno

est malade
also, zhao, please don't take offence, but your country did not wake up to its current militaristic self yesterday, this has been building up for some time. i suppose the feeling of being on the receiving end of this stuff is what is new, and it's a shame, but let's not pretend this is something alien that has overtaken an otherwise peaceful nation, that would be a distortion of memory.
 

bruno

est malade
Well how do you quantify 'freedom'? There is not and can never be a society in which everyone is totally free, clearly.
exactly right, i was about to qualify 'freest societies' with the world relative but thought, what is the point? communist societies thought the freedom to have education and not die of hunger was essential and a step above political freedom, and i while disagree with the unbalance i agree with the idea of health and education as a right that should be guaranteed by the state. my frame of reference for un-freedom is a state that uses violence against its own citizens, mass diappearing and torturing opponents, limiting political expression and civilian organization, and for all its flaws i live in a state that does none of these things, or at least not on that scale. of course i am not completely free as i have to pay through the nose for health care and am subject to the whim of the state, but by and large i am (relatively) free. it could be worse. much worse, in fact.
 

luka

Well-known member
i think they're preparing (rightly) for societal breakdown, mass civil unrest and so on.

im glad im not the only on bruno. i mean, if you are told there is at least a 50% chance of massive upheavel in the next few years, and it seems there is a good chance of climate chaos etc then you got to take steps to deal with it. katrina was a good trial run. that showed them they're off the pace a bit.
 

luka

Well-known member
i think zhao is right though. i bet there have been heaps of tribes that were freer than us. the technology for total control more or less exists and is in opertation, it just isnt being used to the degree it could be. but the potential is certainly there.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
also, zhao, please don't take offence, but your country did not wake up to its current militaristic self yesterday, this has been building up for some time. i suppose the feeling of being on the receiving end of this stuff is what is new, and it's a shame, but let's not pretend this is something alien that has overtaken an otherwise peaceful nation, that would be a distortion of memory.

i've said time and again that the words democracy and the United States should not appear in the same paragraph, not even on the same page.

America is a Republic, created to make money for the few, off of the slavery and genocide of the rest. Thus it is an institution firmly structured in the language of violence, founded on the virtues of inequity and injustice. and as such, the US has been actively destroying democracies with brutal force around the world for more than a century, for economic self interest.

i have also said that Capitalism is only the latest manifestation of the real problem -- a form of social organization called Centralized Power (which comes with sedentary lifestyle, agriculture, large population, etc.), which is roughly 10,000 years old.

what does bother and frustrate me immensely is your conflation of short term history with long term history -- your conflation of the history of the United States with the history of Humanity -- your conflation of the history of The State with the history of Humanity. *

that is just fucking absurd man!

* this is in bold not because i like to yell or am offended, but because this is one of the most common fallacy i have encountered - this kind of conflation - and it needs to be stressed.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
i think zhao is right though. i bet there have been heaps of tribes that were freer than us. the technology for total control more or less exists and is in opertation, it just isnt being used to the degree it could be. but the potential is certainly there.

tribal society, usually around 100 to 300 in population, is already structured with centralized power.

the true free form of society is band level society (population under 100), which in most cases have zero authority, zero private property, zero division of labor, etc, etc, etc.

i didn't want to go down this road again.
 

lanugo

von Verfall erzittern
This latest bolstering of the domestic police state dovetails nicely with the recent US efforts to finally take on the big boys Iran/Pakistan and conflagrate the Middle East for good - WWIII, here we go!

It seems that the Arab Spring has played out exactly as its engineers desired, resulting in a systematic de-secularisation of the Middle East, as exemplified by the 60 % majority of the "moderate"/hardcore islamist coalition in the first democratic election in Egypt.

Consequently, politicised Islam is steadily gaining the upper hand against secular and nonsectarian pluralistic governments (Iraq, Libya, Syria) to set the stage for an ethnically and confessionally homogenous Muslim bloc to play its assigned part in an imminent Clash-of-Civilisations-type scenario.

In addition, a destabilised and increasingly fundamentalist MENA neatly reinforces the islamisation tendency in Europe and, for that matter, Russia, prompting the local populations to turn to authoritarianism as well, possibly of a fascist kind, to deal with the perceived threat.

With the implementation of the US-NATO sponsored European Missile Defense, expected to be operational in 2016, the elite schemers behind the upcoming global crisis are obviously aiming at establishing the basic conditions for a future internecine Euro-Russian conflict. The US is recklessly pushing forward with its anti-missile agenda so that Russia has no option but to take appropriate steps against this blatant attempt at amputating her strategic capabilities and rendering her practically helpless against a US nuclear first strike.

All this is happening in the name of a policy of tension for the purpose of fostering global war of an unprecedented scale.

- - and, quite frankly, I can't help but think that turmoil and hardship at home might be the only remedy to the morally corrupt condition of the West. Could war, as Marinetti said, be the world's only hygiene?
 

bruno

est malade
ultimately, any state will do whatever it takes to protect its own interests, and will suspend the rights and freedoms you enjoy temporarily or for long periods of time, and sometimes enagage in atrocities against its own citizens to satisfy the central objective, which is to function as a cohesive unit and to achieve its geopolitical objectives, to think otherwise is to live in a fantasy world. it's also possible to live in a state that is not democractic and where you can live a good and happy life, providing you don't make too much noise. all the so-called western democratic states, even shining beacons of probity like germany and france engage in abject stuff outside of the bounds of the state, money is funneled in from very dodgy sources, it's only when the same logic is applied within that people begin to notice.

the u.s. is not alone in having many dark facets, zhao, and while i am fully aware that it is not the source of all evil since forever, especially given its youth, it is not exceptional or immune to human nature either. it would not be the first time in human history that a state goes against its citizens, i think on the contrary that this has been going on with or without a state apparatus and with even greater crulety since the dawn of man, i won't go into a hypothetical archaic mushroom-eating society because i think it's bullshit, but i do think that this is as good as it gets. enjoy it while it lasts.
 

luka

Well-known member
i won't go into a hypothetical archaic mushroom-eating society because i think it's bullshit

it was a long time ago. its the sort of thing you just decidde whether you want to beleive it or not. theres no conclusive evidence eithere way which makes it a pretty pointless argument. we will avoid having it. you me and zhao.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
theres no conclusive evidence eithere way which makes it a pretty pointless argument.

false. and false.

there is plenty of evidence, not the least in currently surviving, and surviving very well, band level societies which exist in the world today, whose leader-less, private-property-less world is a reminder of how most humans lived for TENS, HUDNREDS of thousands of years, perhaps millions, prior to the advent of Centralized Power.

i fear i have to repeat myself from a year or 3 ago, because none of you fucking listen to a thing which does not conform with the lies your civilization has told you.

but OK. lets drop this about how the world used to be and concentrate on how most of it is royally fucked now.
 
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bruno

est malade
i have also said that Capitalism is only the latest manifestation of the real problem -- a form of social organization called Centralized Power (which comes with sedentary lifestyle, agriculture, large population, etc.), which is roughly 10,000 years old.
what makes you think decentralised groups are incapable of violence against each other and others? how is it that a country like finland, to give one example, can achieve its level of well-being in a peaceful way, with respect for human dignity, today, within a largely capitalist framework? surely there is a way of living freely now, with the tools we have, and with respect for each particular culture, without having to devolve into some tribal order.
 

luka

Well-known member
no zhao, you are wrong, and at the moment, shrill, which hurts my brain.
whether or not you belive things were better in the old days is not a decision based on a rational examination of the availabl evidence. never can be. it is an emotional decision. there is evidence on both sides, neither conclusive. on these sorts of things i have my prejudices and preferenecs but being dogmatic about them is ridiculous.
you and bruno have both just made choices about what you want to believe and so have i. im sure we could all marshall evidence to support our cases.
 

luka

Well-known member
i worked in a pie shop that had no customers. there was a point when i noticed things were not getting fixed whn they broke, orders weren't coming in, stock was being run down. so i knew they were about to close although they had kept that information fom the staff. so i told everyone. it took thm a while to get thir heads around it but when the evidence was stacked up we could all see what was happening. im getting th same feeling now with the world.
a note on languao. we have a tendency as a group to hound out nutters and buffoons. we then regret it as we make the board a more boring place. i think we should try to hang onto languo. unleses the obvious nazi symapthies gt out of hand, then we'll have to bin him i guess.
 

bruno

est malade
i suspect one reason for all this, luka, and i'll confess this only to you to spare me the ridicule of the board, is that this is preparation for massive political and social unrest as a result of something extraordinary coming to light. a suspicion that puts me firmly in the lanugo camp (hint, hint).

and zhao, i'm not super dogmatic, i am open to the idea of an alternate form of organisation, but i am equally wary of radical change on the political front as it has traditionally gone hand in hand with violence. i believe in change as a result of a natural progression of ideas and voluntary adoption rather than imposition, and i see violence not as some inherent quality of ours but as a side effect of our greed, ignorance, lack of empathy, etc. these faults can and should be overcome (this is me being an optimist), but never in ways that violate our basic humanity and never by imposition.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
what makes you think decentralised groups are incapable of violence against each other and others?

violence against each other:

not incapable, but the values of many examples of currently functioning (in 2011) Band-Level and even some Tribe-Level societies suggest that violence is kept to a bare minimum and reduced to almost non-existent. things like selfishness, greed, competition and assertion of ego are intensely frowned upon in such "primitive" societies, from South Africa to Indonesia to the Amazon forests.

violence against others:

It should be clear that war arises from complex social ties, and its scale exponentially expands with the size of the social groups which are in conflict. From the level of 60 people who share everything with each other who has not much trade with other such groups, to the level of conflict between nation states which binds its citizens together with ideological conditioning, the capacity for violence increases exponentially.


how is it that a country like finland, to give one example, can achieve its level of well-being in a peaceful way, with respect for human dignity, today, within a largely capitalist framework?

this sounds like Steven Pinker's ridiculous proclamation in his new book: "Wars between developed countries have vanished...". um... vanished? really? for how long? 60 years?? that's like saying "i quit smoking. 3 minutes ago."

small pockets of peace within a constantly warring world demonstrates nothing in terms of the success of such social organization in avoiding war.

it is like saying "because 1 out of 10 Cancer patients (in this one tiny little study) did not die from it, therefore Cancer is not a fatal disease, and we should figure out a way to live with it, rather than try to find a cure".

it appears that the most common perceptual distortion when it comes to this stuff is a problem with SCALE, especially when it comes to TEMPORAL DURATION. people constantly think data from a few decades, or even a few centuries, is enough to draw some kind of conclusion. and constantly equate how humans have behaved for 10,000 years with how they have behaved for 800,000 years.

surely there is a way of living freely now, with the tools we have, and with respect for each particular culture, without having to devolve into some tribal order.

your notions of evolution and devolution, progression and regression, "advanced and civilized" VS. "primitive and under developed" are out-dated remnants of Social Darwinism, as invented by the Colonial mentality to justify its violence. Such ideas worked very well together with other "sciences" such as Eugenics and Racism in shaping the world we know today. It is the conceptual structure which makes possible things like the "civilizing nature of Empire" ---- the duty of superior white men and their western civilization to teach the brown god-less animals how to properly behave.

and can we live "freely", and peacefully, without war, within the framework of global capitalism and the structural inequity, pandemic injustice, and systematic cruelty it entails?

NO.
 
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luka

Well-known member
zhao, youre not thick. a lot of people here think you are but youre not. you make some good points but you sabotage your own argument by being so shrill. does the no really ned to be in massive bold print? NO OF COURSE IT BLOODY DOESNT
i dont beleive that you dont care about alienating people and being mocked. nobody enjoys that. why not make life easy?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
back to the main topic.

Pentagon project lets police forces – even in small towns – arm themselves with military gear

A rapidly expanding Pentagon program that distributes used military equipment to local police departments — many of them small-town forces — puts battlefield-grade weaponry in the hands of cops at an unprecedented rate.
...
The surplus equipment includes grenade launchers, helicopters, military robots, M-16 assault rifles and armored vehicles.
occupy THIS, low-life hippie scum!!!
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i think zhao is right though. i bet there have been heaps of tribes that were freer than us.

This is probably true, but I was talking more or less about kingdoms, empires, nation-states...in most societies like these people are not terribly free. Authoritarian control and unfreedom would seem to be the norm, not the exception.

the technology for total control more or less exists and is in opertation, it just isnt being used to the degree it could be. but the potential is certainly there.

Again true, but I don't think technology is really the main thing here. How many tyranies existed in the pre-modern world? Shitloads, clearly. You don't need phonetapping technology if there are no phones. Look at the power held by the Church in Europe in the middle ages, or the theocracies in pre-Colombian America.
 

luka

Well-known member
i dont know. i think th technology available opens up the policing of thought and speech in a way that wasn't possible before.
what do you think the main thing is?
what are we arguing about? im not entirely sure. as i say i think we are split by a difference in temperament. those who think modern life is not so bad, despite its obvious imperfections, and those that think its a bit fucked up. naturally we all waver between the two positions to a degree. realists and idealists or what have you.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
It's clear that most people are very much not free as soon as they try to actually exercise any freedoms that may come into conflict with the laws, which are (obviously) designed by those in power to keep those in power, in power (class/demographic-wise, rather than political party-wise).

The constant bleating about the exceptionalism of the modern West, and the extent to which it has taken as true by its citizens is what annoys ultimately - as Tea says, unfreedom is and always has been the norm. Such wilfully false 'beliefs' (I think deep down everyone, or at least most people, knows the score when you defy authority) engender widespread apathy, as if we couldn't hope for more.

As Luka says, technology makes all this stuff a little more frightening. Being sent to prison for four years (?) for what one has said on Facebook (which anyone with half a brain knows wasn't incitement to violence, just an unwuse joke) is pretty dystopian, and has made me think twice about some things I've written online. Obv it's one's choice to write on Facebook etc etc. Anyways, it really feels like freedom of speech is purely nominal at the moment, as everything political could potentially be reconstrued as transgressive of some law or other (and laws can obv change v swiftly to allow for this).
 
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