Forum Post: The Elephant in the Room: The Police and the Occupy Movement

The Elephant in the Room: The Police and the Occupy Movement

Thursday, 05 July 2012 09:33 By Collin Harris, Truthout | Interview

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10119-the-elephant-in-the-room-the-police-and-the-occupy-movement

As the global wave of rebellion began in 2011 and eventually spread to the beating heart of empire and the new subcultures of resistance it spawned continue to grow and diversify, there is an obvious dilemma that will have to be worked out if we are serious about changing American society in any meaningful way. Of the many obstacles facing what, from our current vantage point, looks to be the only light shining on the dark and blotted American social-scape, a militarized police force stands out for its menacing and ubiquitous presence in American social life. It casts its dark shadow wherever it goes - which is anywhere it wants.

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Is US government reading email without a warrant? It doesn't want to talk about it

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/06/12583821-is-us-government-reading-email-without-a-warrant-it-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-it?lite

By Bob Sullivan

Does the U.S. government read your email? It's a simple question, but apparently there's no simple answer. And the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service are reluctant to say anything on the topic.

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The Military Solution: The Lessons Washington Can't Draw From the Failure of the Military Option

Thursday, 05 July 2012 14:06 By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch | News Analysis

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10166-the-military-solution-the-lessons-washington-cant-draw-from-the-failure-of-the-military-option

Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us -- less than 1% -- serves in the military in this all-volunteer era of ours and, on the face of it, Washington’s constant warring in distant lands seems barely to touch the lives of most Americans. And yet the militarization of the United States and the strengthening of the National Security Complex continues to accelerate. The Pentagon is, by now, a world unto itself, with a staggering budget at a moment when no other power or combination of powers comes near to challenging this country’s might. In the post-9/11 era, the military-industrial complex has been thoroughly mobilized under the rubric of “privatization” and now goes to war with the Pentagon. With its $80 billion-plus budget, the intelligence bureaucracy has simply exploded. There are so many competing agencies and outfits, surrounded by a universe of private intelligence contractors, all enswathed in a penumbra of secrecy, and they have grown so large, mainly under the Pentagon’s aegis, that you could say intelligence is now a ruling way of life in Washington -- and it, too, is being thoroughly militarized. Even the once-civilian CIA has undergone a process of para-militarization and now runs its own “covert” drone wars in Pakistan and elsewhere. Its director, a widely hailed retired four-star general, was previously the U.S. war commander in Iraq and then Afghanistan, just as the National Intelligence Director who oversees the whole intelligence labyrinth is a retired Air Force lieutenant general.