How did we get here? The numbers are chilling: 2.2 million people behind bars, another 4.7 million on parole or probation. Even small-town cops are armed like soldiers, with a thoroughly militarized southern border.
Continue . . . http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-crisis-of-distraction-widespread-media-distortion-concerning-ukraine/5468255
The Making of the American Police State
Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by poncho, Aug 13, 2015.
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Had the wrong link posted.
This should be the right one . . . http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-making-of-the-american-police-state/5465535
Sorry about that.
In 1967 the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, found that in every single case the precipitating cause of the riots was police brutality. Furthermore, the commission found that police tactical incompetence usually made things worse.
It was in response to this panorama of formal and informal rebellion — and law enforcement’s apparent inability to stop it — that the massive criminal justice crackdown began. The opening move was President Johnson’s Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act of 1968.
Congress passed the bill literally in the shadow of smoke from yet another riot — this one in outrage at the murder of Dr Martin Luther King. From the passage of the Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act of 1968 emerged a new super agency, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), which over the next ten years spent a billion dollars annually rationalizing and retooling state and local law enforcement.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-making-of-the-american-police-state/5465535 -
Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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FBI Dedicates New 360,000 Sq Ft Biometric Technology Center in West Virginia
Government spying hasn’t been curbed in the least since Snowden’s leaks came out. It’s more just about having it rubbed in our faces every other five minutes than anything else.
Take the new state-of-the-art FBI biometrics facility opening in West Virginia.
“Tuesday started a new era for fighting crime and protecting our country with the dedication of the new FBI Biometric Technology Center in Clarksburg,” local West Virginia WDTV 5 reported.
Uh huh. Sure. Just like the $3 billion NSA spy hub sitting out in Bluffdale, Utah, right? For “fighting crime and protecting our country”? (Against us, the enemy?)
The new 360,000 sq-ft center, under construction since 2011 but in the works for eight years now, has been officially dedicated to house the FBI’s new biometrics facility.
Via the official FBI website for the “the Biometric Center of Excellence (BCOE)”:
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/fbi-dedicates-new-360000-sq-ft-biometric-technology-center-in-west-virginia_082015 -
And...
Too many people have no respect for anyone, including themselves.
Christ is absent from too many lives. -
Evidently fighting crime is even more profitable.
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http://rare.us/story/has-the-war-on-drugs-been-mostly-about-funding-the-police/
http://www.cato.org/events/policing-profit-abuse-civil-asset-forfeiture
http://www.vice.com/read/whos-getting-rich-off-the-prison-industrial-complex
http://www.globalresearch.ca/profit-driven-prison-industrial-complex-the-economics-of-incarceration-in-the-usa/29109
An annual report released by the CCA in 2010 reiterates the importance of influencing legislation:
“The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior. Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitoring who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates or resources dedicated to prevent and enforce crime could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.”
Considering today’s private prison population is over 17 times larger than the figure two decades earlier, the malleability of the judicial system under corporate influence is clear. The Corrections Corporation of America is the first and largest private prison company in the US, cofounded in 1983 by Tom Beasley, former Chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. The CCA entered the market and overtly exploited Beasley’s political connections in an attempt to exert control over the entire prison system of Tennessee. Today, the company operates over sixty-five facilities and owns contracts with the US Marshal Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Bureau of Prisons. The GEO Group operates 118 detention centers throughout the United States, South Africa, UK, Australia and elsewhere. Under its original name, the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation was synonymous for the sadistic abuse of prisoners in its facilities, resulting in the termination of several contracts in 1999.
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Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this obstinate moral predicament presents itself in the private contracting of prisoners and their role in assembling vast quantities of military and commercial equipment. While the United States plunges itself into each new manufactured conflict under a wide range of fraudulent pretenses, it is interesting to note that all military helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags, uniforms, tents, bags and other equipment used by military occupation forces are produced by inmates in federal prisons across the US. Giant multinational conglomerates and weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation employ federal prison labor to cheaply assemble weapons components, only to sell them to the Pentagon at premium prices. At the lowest, Prisoners earn 17 cents an hour to assemble high-tech electronic components for guided missile systems needed to produce Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles and anti-tank projectiles. -
Garbage post.
Nowhere do you tell us how much the profit is. -
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All you did was post your usual rants on your pet obsessions.
Nowhere did you back up your assertion.
But, then, I knew you wouldn't. -
Try asking relevant questions. -
Then obviously you can't prove there is a profit. Just saying. :rolleyes: -
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/red-herring.html
The politicians profit from spreading fear, (they gain more money and power) the FBI has profited by getting a brand new spy center because of the sense of fear the politicians and media have been spreading, the military industrial complex has benefited from all the so called wars (war on terror, war on drugs) the government and media have gotten us into (by spreading fear) with big juicy contracts to supply the military with more weapons and services from private contractors, the prison system has benefited from laws that are aimed at protecting people from themselves (which has failed miserably and the proof is in our huge prison population and the fact that little Johnny can still get any drug he chooses from the unregulated and uncontrolled black market that doesn't benefit society in any shape or form) and putting those found guilty of crimes against their own person behind bars for long periods of time and turning them into low wage slaves for the military industrial complex.
No one can put a dollar figure on that kind of profit. You knew that when you asked the question. And that's why you asked the question.
I know you aren't capable of looking at this big picture honestly but if you were you would notice the "war on drugs" has profited the government on a federal, state and local level, the military, the military contractors, the police, the intell agencies, the prison system, the drug cartels, the inner city drug gangs and the big banks.
Society hasn't benefited one iota. -
Which obviously you can't. -
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You dodged the question completely and threw up your usual assortment of garbage posts on your pet obsessions to confuse the issue.
Didn't work.