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This is an updated version showing the big 10 food companies which of October 2011 is now the big 11 (with the split of Kraft into two companies). Be wary! Also see this and this.
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Do you agree with this assessment?
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I just saw this status on facebook and I thought I’d share it. It’s interesting how the police don’t have duty to protect you at all. I just thought I’d share that.
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FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!
No, guns do kill people… Why should people be allowed to care AK-47s or any other assailt rifles around. That doesn’t seem right. Not all selling of guns can be stopped but buying of such guns can be limited.
(via communismkills)
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The Rise of the Police State and the Absence of Mass Opposition: A history of the police state from the 1950s to now →
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Big Business, made possible by advancing technology and consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State—that is to say, by a small group of party leaders and soldiers, policeman and civil servants who carry out orders. In a capitalist democracy, such as the United States, is controlled by what Professor C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite. This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country’s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controld many millions more by lending them money to buy its products, and, through the ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelinga and actions of virtually everybody.
– Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Revisted (1958) -
News to Me: Library Of Congress Analysis Of Military Support To Civil Authorities →
July 1, 2012 in United States
The following analysis of statutes, documents and regulations relating to DoD support to civil authorities was prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress for the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves.
Don’t these actions violate Posse Comitatus? I know that the national government seems to not care about this law but I am wondering if this is a violation of the important law.
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America is not America: Its a police state
Editor’s note: This post was originally posted on Interesting Blogger. Its publication on Dissident Voice (a radical magazine for social justice) was rejected interestingly.
I was recently reading the Webster’s New World College Dictionary and I came upon the word “police state.” Sadly it applied more to America than I thought. The dictionary defined a police state as “a government that seeks to intimidate and suppress political opposition by means of police, esp. a secret police force.” With the coming of the Occupy movement this has proven to be true.
On Sunday May 20th, thousands of activists engaged in #StopNATO protests in Chicago. Soon enough, Chicago police in blue helmets, dressed almost like UN peacekeepers, started to surround the crowd. People in the front were beaten were beaten with batons and tear gas was ready to be deployed. An LRAD, Long-Range Acoustic Device, which could cause permanent damage to hearing was deployed but never used against protesters. Again, this is another form of intimidation. Still, protesters got to a fence, around the compound the NATO meeting was occurring; shouting anti-NATO slogans demanding the international organization stop war against help the 99%. This type of suppression makes one think its Egypt’s Tahrir Square last year, with people saying Mubarak has friends in the United States.
The protests on May 20th were not the first time there was repression by police forces. Occupy Baltimore, the occupation in Zucotti (Liberty) Park, Occupy DC and many other occupy sites were cleaned out by police forces. On May Day, international workers day, protests by the Occupy Movement were spread across America and the world. A couple of anarchists were locked up by the FBI for trying to supposedly blow up a bridge. As antiwar.com called it, it was a “fake Cleveland terror plot,” a sting set up by the FBI to frame occupiers. That is a form of intimidation and there is no question about it.
This wasn’t the first time it was evident there is police state in America. In February 2012, the FBI arrested a Muslim in DC after a supposed “terror attack.” In addition, last year numerous people related to Anonymous, the global hacking and justice group were arrested. This occurred because a huge entertainment company, Sony, was hacked. Many Mafia, Georgia militia members, Ohio Amish, people accused of cyber fraud, gang members in Buffalo, New York, bank robbers, and celebrity-email hacker were also arrested by the FBI. Also, an alleged cable modem hacker, those accessed of healthcare fraud, supposed Russian spies, people engaged in insider-trading, an Oklahoma teabagger for threats on Twitter and supposed Al-Qaeda blogger. As a result, activists and those supposed “terrorists” were not the only target of the secret police force, the FBI.
The previous year, 2011, powers of the police state increased. In May, the USA PATRIOT ACT was extended without any reform. It was subsequently signed by President Barack Obama. Months before, a blogger critic was questioned by the FBI, possibly to shut him up. The same year, additional cyber powers were given to the Executive Branch. Even before that, during Obama’s term in office “157,461 sites have been shutdown” in the war against online piracy or the “war on downloading.”
A major indicator of a new type of state was raids on peace activists. It was a continuation of President George W. Bush’s attacks on activists. Such people were designated as “terrorists” even though such people were not even connected to actual terrorists groups. The raids were considered an attack on the antiwar movement and denounced by fellow antiwar groups across the world. The Justice Department refused to drop the false charges of abetting terrorism. From this, it is no wonder that people’s historian, Howard Zinn, would call the FBI, the “Federal Bureau of Intimidation,” even before these repressive actions.
In all, the repression of the Occupy movement and other activists by state governments and the national government through intimidation and suppression is a new type of state. Recently, according to CounterPunch, heavily redacted documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were released by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, show that there was a “nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement” stretching from the DHS, across the country and even to the White House itself. This included fake “background” statements to say that the DHS was not involved in cracking down on the Occupy Movement, approved by the White House. This makes it a police state, and a new, scary picture of America. It’s a place that seems to be more like Soviet Russia in terms of repression, something should be recognized.
By Burkely Hermann, Interesting Blogger Chief Correspondent
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– The Chicago Tribune, “Two More Accused of Planning to Use Molotov Cocktails During Summit” (via inothernews)Two more men have been charged with planning to make Molotov cocktails to be used during the NATO summit.
Police would not say whether they are connected to three men in their 20s who were arrested in a Bridgeport raid earlier this week and charged under the state’s anti-terror statutes with planning to use Molotov cocktails during the summit.
Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, of the 3600 block of North Odell Avenue, was arrested Thursday afternoon without incident at his home, according to a police report. He was charged Saturday afternoon.
Senakiewicz “had been planning/conspiring with more than two other individuals in the building of explosives, including molotov cocktails which were to be used/detonated during the NATO summit,” according to the report.
Mark Neiweem, 28, of the 2200 block of West 18th Place on the Lower West Side, was charged with one count of attempted possession of explosive or incendiary devices. Neiweem “engaged in dialogue with a subject, during which time he provided same subject with a list of ingredients that are used in the construction of an explosive device,” according to a police report.
On Wednesday, three out-of-state men were arrested in a Bridgeport apartment raid and accused of plotting to hit President Obama’s campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house and police stations with Molotov cocktails, according to court documents.
The trio — Brian Church, 20, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Jared Chase, 24, of Keene, N.H., and Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Oakland Park, Fla. — were charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device.
They were the first people to ever be charged with violating the state’s anti-terror statutes, which were enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, authorities said.
The police and the establishment want to discredit the movement completely. They don’t understand the people united will never be defeated!
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We have created circumstances under which the American people are no longer individuals protected by the Bill of Rights, but rather “enemy combatants.” The consequences of such a mindset have proven time and again to be lethal, as we now rely on military ideology and practice to respond to crime and justice. Does anyone really believe that heavily armed soldiers trained to kill are capable of maintaining an atmosphere of nonviolence? It’s important to remember that police officers are not responsible for instituting these policies…What might the end result be if the distinction between police and military ceases to exist? The answer is a police state — and certain segments of our society are already living in one.
– The problem with a police state and the possibility of America becoming like a Nazi Germany with the over presence of Police according to a startling Alternet article.
