Over the past several months, there has been much discussion over the militarization of the police. There have been calls to demilitarize the police and to the end the federal government's program of transferring military equipment. This is a fraud though because even if the government stopped the program which they did not, Homeland Security is spending billions giving police departments grants to buy military equipment. Also, police departments can use money obtained via asset forfeiture, which is where the government legally robs people, to buy military equipment. Defense contractors also targeting local departments to buy their equipment too to expand their market. In effect, de-militarization of the police will NEVER happen.
But why is the police being militarized in the first place? It is not for officer safety as the rate of citizens killing police has gone down even though the rate of police killing citizens has skyrocketed dramatically. It is not to fight crime as crimes rates have been steadily decreasing. Police militarization first started in 1960s with the government's assault on the Black Panthers and has continued to escalate to fight the phony war on drugs, war on terror, and overall war on Americans i.e. war on civil liberties. However, the real reason for police militarization is because we are at the end times of the American Empire.
The police militarization is due to the impending societal collapse which the Pentagon is expecting due to climate change and the coming resource scarcity in particular oil scarcity which is soon to come. In the next coming years, there will be a financial/debt collapse, an economic collapse, water scarcity, food scarcity, continued droughts and extreme weather due to climate change. Climate change, soil erosion, acidifying oceans, ecosystem collapse, water and plastic pollution, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity will continue to accelerate. There will also be resource wars between China, Russia, and the US in the Arctic and the Middle East over increasingly scarce oil supplies. Peak Oil is a reality and major oil producing countries i.e. Saudi Arabia are running out of oil thus why the US empire is running around frantically to control all of the remaining oil supplies in the world hence the reason for the Iraq War, the future war against Iran, and the US invasion of the entire African continent. However, they are now in competition with the Russian and Chinese empires over these scarce resources and they have been wargaming in preparation of war with these two empires already. The injustice and collapse of the system was going to eventually generate protest movements throughout the country and the system knew that and was ready to suppress these movements with the huge police militarization that has been occurring over the past several decades. Militarized police forces for example are spying on and terrorizing people who have the audacity to oppose fracking or the deadly drilling for natural gas, which is destroying entire communities, polluting local water supplies, and will make climate change ever worse!
Why Police Militarization Will Continue
The military industrial complex is the biggest and most politically influential industry in the US and profits are made off war and when weapons are sold. America is a war economy and an imperial state with over 100 military bases around the globe. The government spends half a trillion annually on weapons of mass destruction and genocide which is the way the weapons industry likes it. Naturally, since the Pentagon is not going use all these weapons, they will give some to the federal government's domestic military, local police. Even more, weapons companies directly market and sell their products to individual police departments throughout the country and police chiefs gets bribed to make sure that more military weapons get sold in the same way that the military industrial complex bribes politicians to continually increase the war budget and have more endless imperial wars. War is a racket and very profitable one! Besides, the militarization of police first started with the phony war on drugs (which is really a war on Black males) and now the domestic military i.e. police are fighting several more phony wars: the war on crime, the war on terror, the war on gangs, and war on protestors and dissidents. Pretty soon, the police are going to be using drones and dropping bombs on people. NYPD is in the process of ordering drones now. Police militarization is a problem but like all problems in the world, a profitable one and thereby one which will NOT go away. So as long as profits are made, the police militarization will continue unimpeded.
What Can Be Done to Bring Social Change?
The first thing that must go after are the usage of all fossil fuels. Nuclear, biofuels i.e. ethanol must also go too. Next, you eliminate capitalism and the infinite growth debt based monetary paradigm. In effect, you eliminate the market economy and "money" and oppressive governments who all serve the needs of private capital and banks.
The new economic paradigm would be a resource based economy which would serve human needs globally and all the world's resources would be shared. Alternative methods like wind, solar, and tidal energy would be the new energy resources of the future.
References:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16043524-rise-of-the-warrior-cop
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/15/cops_or_soldiers_pentagon_dhs_helped
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/new-documents-reveal-fearmongering-local-cops-use-score-military-gear-pentagon
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/swat-warrior-cops-police-militarization-urban-shield
http://www.thenation.com/article/stop-urban-shield-join-a-grassroots-campaign-to-fight-police-militarization/
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/20937-obama-usurps-local-police-with-fake-ban-on-militarization
https://www.aclu.org/feature/war-comes-home?redirect=war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-policing
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/11/1320245/-The-Pentagon-is-preparing-for-societal-collapse-due-to-Climate-Change
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/12/pentagon-mass-civil-breakdown
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30910-dahr-jamail-the-navy-s-great-alaskan-war#
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015/08/13/dahr-jamail-interviewed-by-derrick-jensen-about-us-navys-northern-edge/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPDoiSP-XYs
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681552/forget-peak-oil-were-at-peak-everything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHnZuxA3slg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2iQ7XKJK1U
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/01/389598765/fracking-opponents-feel-police-pressure-in-some-drilling-hotspots
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