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The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with former Chicago Tribune reporter and author Will Potter on how terrorism laws are used to criminalize social and political activism and construct a police state.
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We have cops that act increasingly like a hostile occupying military force.
Unless someone can tell me why patrolling the bad streets of Riverside, Iowa (population 1,059 or so) requires the police to have a mine resistant armored personnel carrier in inventory.
They e been trained in Israel. It’s no wonder they see every civilian as evil.
LIfe is far too strange when you are a stranger I think the group was the Doors and the lead singer ODed in Paris. I do do celebrity very well.
I born in Quebec and came back to die at 75 I am half in half out of Quebec.
How does one explain liberal democracy to people who speak 1984.
In Quebec, Unions are more powerful than government or corporations.
In a social democracy people have rights, governments and corporates have only the privileges the people grant them. The base is the foundation of liberal democracy. Our top management is our ethical philosophers like Cornel West or a John Ralston Saul.
How unAmerican is that?
Fred C Koch founded the John Birch Society. He had a very short book of ethics it was about his power and influence. It is now his America. He gave you Reagan to replace Jimmy Carter.
I’m offended by the implication that this is a matter of race. This makes the ruling class grin. And it will make the ruling class win.
I’ve been protesting police violence since 1966. I’ve also been a victim of it for that long. Only, back then we all marched together, all resisted together. Everybody knew that the drug war, and the Viet Nam War targeted black people and activists of all shades. We didn’t let them divide us by skin color then and we shouldn’t let them do it now.
When ignorant people like Whoopie Goldberg tell us that the Holocaust was just about “you white people”, and weak thinkers such as Kendi try to frame all injustice as racially based, we give up half our power and half our humanity.
I sat once having coffee with one of the great activists of the civil rights era. A young man passed us wearing a tee-shirt that said: “You wouldn’t understand, it’s a black thing.” Disgusted and disappointed, he said “Idiot. Tell that to Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney.”
Not to mention John Brown.
The lot of the havenots has grown steadily worse for forty years. Among other things, the evergrowing wars divert more and more resources to the haves. During the COVID pandemic their fortunes suffered a sudden and unexpected downturn. Many lost income while trillions of dollars were given to wealthy established interests. To rid themselves of this excess cash, these haves purchased real estate and raised the rent, further impoverishing the havenots. There is rebellion. The haves had a choice : they could either change policy to help the havenots, or they could repress the havenots. The haves chose door number two.
This repression takes the form of putting down potential leaders, fostering divisions within the havenots, depriving them of the means of communication they need to organize, and punishing them severely when they pursue other means of protest. The havenots are angered by this oppression thus making them more to be feared. As the anger grows, so must grow the effort to keep the havenots down. The anger grows stronger, the oppression more severe, and so forth.
As for the future, it can be expected that a major goal is to incite violence by the havenots thus enabling a highly profitable network of re-education camps, owned by the haves.
I am 75 autistic, happy and enjoying every moment writing, watching baseball and talking philosophy. I am not sure if people looked after by our Department of Autistic Affairs can speak directly to "normal" people but in Quebec's social democracy freedom to speak is a sacred human right from 1789
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Declaration-of-the-Rights-of-Man-and-of-the-Citizen
The war in Ukraine is very old The Declaration of the Rights of man and the constitution came into conflict as they were being signed in 1789.
Stalin the pig said it best "Some are more equal than others.
I am 75 and still a Labour Zionist but Orwell understood in his essay on Nationalism . He said Israel would become a fascist state and no one understood fascism like Orwell.
His essays on how to write now that I am finally able to write are awesome in a California kind of way and I like my writing I blame more than a little of my joy on Orwell. I guess I shouldn't have opened Orwell's Why I Write.
I was never sure why my classmates thought 1984 was science fiction in 1963 when it was clearly Biblical Allegory. Orwell hated fascism and was a democratic socialist and a Socratic philosopher. He wrote simple basic prose because he was a philosopher and philosophy ns supposed the simplest most basic metaphysical understanding which is great if one is autistic and me.
I am 75 and was reading 72 years ago and reading anything I could find like Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Paine's Common Sense books I am sure are found in every home throughout America
We understand why the grandchildren and children don't want to visit all we want to do is talk about philosophy we never ever talk about money even when there is inly my wife and I. We don't even have a cell phone and I can't handle most social media it is far beyond my skill level.
I am trying to figure out how to publish on Substack so people have to look for me to call me names. Can I do like video monologues and dialogues with myself I like responding to question I have little original to offer. I am only a savant.
I love Orwell but don't understand why in America you can have good fascism and bad fascism. America's fascism is fascism and Russia's fascism is fascism.
I believe ALL fascism is bad, that is what Orwell believed.
I would look for places where there are no fascists they are much harder to find than places with fascists. Thomas More called it Utopia a place that does not exist.
To me the American divide is a religious divide and in Quebec there is no religion in our politics. The power belongs to the people and the people are all of us.
In America it is always which side are you on.
It is time for some Pete Seeger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iAIM02kv0g
Life sure is strange my father in Law was named Eugene after his godfather Eugene Victor.
I no longer donate to "mainstream" organizations that choose to ignore what is happening to these nonviolent activists. If they want to bury their heads in the sand thinking it will save themselves from illegal, unjust harassment and prosecution, fuck them.
Great reporting.
Our civil liberties are being constantly eroded. As this discussion concludes: we as citazens have to gather under the tent advocating the right to peaceful protect on issues we are passionate about. To be labeled an (eco) terrorist and prosecuted for participating in peaceful protest is a denial of our civil rights. This police state creep needs to stop....or else a neofacist state we become.
Thank you, once again.
Plus --- truly OUTSTANDING and courageous -- US War party will go berserk !!!
70M++ views in less than 24 hours. Tucker on Twitter – Ep. 1 – June 6, 2023
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1666203439146172419?s=20
Very well done, Chris. The usual merger of state and corporate power. The only problem is the name people use for politicians; they call them politicians/ congresspeople/ legislators, etc. Politicians are whores who sell-out for power and money. Banana Republic 101.
To say that “It is a war base where police will learn military-like maneuvers to kill black people and control our bodies and movements,” is overkill, big time.
Thank goodness we have a police and first responder forces trained to deal with murderous riots such as Jan 6 at the Capitol and White Supremacy marches in Virginia (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40546260).
The statement becomes specious and is a half truth, one sided, and diminishes the veracity of the article.
You are hypersensitive, Jon, which makes you unable to be objective.
The statement suggested police are being trained to specifically be brutal to Black people and that is not true.
All police are not racist as your comments suggest, and your use of "honkies" is racism personified. In psych it is called projection. Many police are black, does that make them Black supremacists? No.
You also said "Race doesn't exist" which does not compute as we are all of the Human Race. The suggestion that "WS is why we are the most genocidal nation in history" is also hyperbole, we are not the most genocidal nation in history, i thought the Turks and the Germans held that dishonor.
Calm thyself, Jon, cracker class also suggests you are racist as hell.
B
To a certain extent, yes. We also ignore the crimes of the terrorists that we like. I addressed this very topic in a law school paper I wrote in 2005. I recently reread it, and it’s scary at how much it fits our position today.
Thank you. I am in the midst of high school graduation weeks and many of these young people have no idea what awaits them.
Yes, police brutality has been endemic in many of their departments that need to be corrected. For this there are many possible solutions as proposed by Professor Joanna Schwartz in a recent Chris Hedges report. But we need the police for protection in our society. I personally never has had problems with the police and actually, in many occasions, they have been very helpful to me for which I'm thankful. Of course, training the police for urban warfare is wrong!