Big Brother and the Holding Company: Turning Repression into Resistance

[Joanne98]

The cold winds of political repression have begun to blow a little colder. The widening FBI probe of the anti-war and solidarity movements--launched with coordinated raids in Minneapolis and Chicago in September, 2010--attests to the expanding reach of Washington's repressive apparatus. The new face of domestic repression is characterized by rapidly developing technical capacity for surveillance and data sharing, the integration of local policing into the national security system and a blurring of boundaries between private and government police functions and goals.

Repression--the use of state power to limit political action and discourse--doesn't develop in isolation. It compensates for the weakening of other, less intrusive methods for ensuring social stability. Today it corresponds to growing economic inequality driven by the flight of manufacturing, the demolition of public sector services, the decline of union power and the ascension of a ravenous financial sector. These changes severely strain the mechanisms that maintain popular consensus.

Our task in the following pages will be to note current trends in political and social police repression, identify some of the systemic vulnerabilities they betray and to find points of leverage from which to launch a pro-democracy counteroffensive. We are experiencing a system-wide assault on the democratic public space that, besides police activity, encompasses attacks on academic expression, criminalization of whistle-blowing, corporatization of elections and hobbling the open internet. Piecemeal, defensive strategies will not be adequate. We will need to mount a challenge to the repressive enterprise as a whole. In particular I would assert that our strategy should promote solidarity and cooperation among the sectors that bear the brunt of repression but have historically remained separate in their responses.

Within days of the September raids, several hundred people turned out at a south side community church in Minneapolis to begin organizing a defense campaign. Several days later, a similar-sized crowd gathered on the city's north side to support the family of Fong Lee, a Hmong teenager killed by police in 2006, at that time appealing his case to the US Supreme Court. Between them, these cases embody the two levels of a police-repressive system that has operated in the United States since its earliest days.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Big-Brother-and-the-Holdin-by-Ricardo-Levins-Mor-110204-149.html

[fasttense]

1. How are we any different then a 3rd world nation?

We have rigged National and local elections.

We have judges and a supreme court that are routinely bribed, have clear conflicts of interests, and make partisan political decision not based on law but based on political power.

We have rampant corruption in all level of government, where politicians are routinely bribed with campaign contributions and rarely make decisions that the people approve of

We have police that spy, torture, indefinitely detain and harass citizens on whims and personal likes and dislikes.

We have a hidden secret police force in the FBI, CIA and NSA who are allowed to monitor citizen's e-mails, phone calls and locations.

We have a president who can order the murder of any citizen and deprive anyone of due process.

We have roving terrorists who bomb and murder abortion clinics, doctors or any liberal they find unappealing.

We have radio and TV that spews propaganda and incites terrorist.

We have a small rich ruling class and a ever growing peasant population.

We have homeless people in the streets

We have children going hungry and starving.

We have people who can't get medical attention.

We have politicians who do not believe in science and promote and foster almost mystical beliefs in the goodness of the corporate aristocracy.

What actually makes us any different from any other 3rd world dictatorship?

We only have the trappings of democracy.

[peacetalksforall]

2. We have fear and hate filled vigilantes 'taking care' of the border.