Police Force, the New Military

[Motor Jax]

so i was thinking about this for the past couple of months. and it has somehow dawned on me that the police force is more like a combatant military force.

in the constitution, it is worded that american civilians will not be ruled by militia forces. but if you look at the police force today, there is almost no way of telling the difference

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i also know that there are a lot of criminal conduct being comited every day. but the police military force uses is more and more like an army that has much more liberties than the military

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the movie Training Day is also a perfect example of crooked cops. the movie Dirty (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) is also a good example.


but i am troubled more and more about how i perceive the police force

i mean, they look more and more like these guys:

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opinions? comments?

[deevee]

The police even do joint training with the military now. There really isn't much difference between them. Both will kick your door down and kill your dog and maybe kill you if they feel like it.

[Kemmler]

Well, in a simple way, the military is used to protect a nation from outward threats whilst the police works to protect a nation from inward threats.

[blueback]

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Yeah, the Police are really scarey ;-P

But seriously, you showed pictures of tactical units. Those guys have to deal with riots and gangs of well armed criminals. Of course they need to be more hard core. Don't you think it's a bit ironic that one of your pictures is a guy using pepper spray. . .he's not even beating the other guy, or using his gun. Anyone can buy pepper spray.

[SShack]

The police even do joint training with the military now. There really isn't much difference between them. Both will kick your door down and kill your dog and maybe kill you if they feel like it.

Are you a Radley Balko reader? If not those of you concerned about police militarization should read his blog (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). He's on vacation in Alaska right now, but he's been a major investigator of the militarization of police tactics.

[Purple]

Am I totally wrong in saying that you tell how much of a dick a cop is going to be by how much his haircut mirrors military style haircuts. :)

[Motor Jax]

Are you a Radley Balko reader? If not those of you concerned about police militarization should read his blog (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). He's on vacation in Alaska right now, but he's been a major investigator of the militarization of police tactics.

he has some interesting things in there

here is an example:
Last December, I posted about a botched SWAT raid on an innocent Minnesota family. Acting on bad information from an informant, the police threw flash grenades though the family’s windows, then exchanged gunfire with Vang Khang, who mistook the police for criminal intruders. Seven months later, no one in the police department has been held accountable for the mistakes leading up to the raid.

However, this week Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan and Mayor R.T. Rybak did give the raiding officers medals and commendations for their bravery in nearly killing Vang Khang, his wife, and their six children.

Said Chief Dolan while handing out the hardware:

"The easy decision would have been to retreat under covering fire. The team did not take the easy way out," Dolan told the crowd. "This is a perfect example of a situation that could have gone horribly wrong, but did not because of the professionalism with which it was handled."

This is really beyond outrage. The city of Minneapolis is commending and rewarding its police officers for firing their weapons at innocent people. A family of eight was terrorized, assaulted, and nearly killed, and it’s the "perfect example" of a situation that could have gone wrong?

[zibber]

he has some interesting things in there

here is an example:

I think this will pretty much automatically get the "to make an omelet you gotta break some eggs"-type counter (used to defend anything from illegal wiretapping to Iraqi collateral damage (civilians)). In other words: to maximise the amount of times you're right, in strictly quantative terms, you have to tolerate the occasional mistake. In order to allow authorities to maximise safety and "freedom", you have to give up some rights. (In this case, the right never to have SWAT unjustly raid your house and shoot at your face.)

(If that reads like satire, it is because I am unsure whether to flat out laugh at the argument or take it seriously.)

[blueback]

Actually, I was going to say that we probably aren't getting the whole story.

[Mozzes]

I'm not sure what's funnier, that a SWAT team discharged 22 rounds and didn't hit a single person while Vang Khang managed to hit 2 police officers or that said SWAT team is apparently being awarded medals for...raiding the wrong house.

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I've never had a bad police experience and I think they generally do a good job. If people want to play cowboy and have a shootout at the O.K. Corral that's all well and good but shouldn't we have the proper safeguards to prevent something like this from happening? This was one misstep away from being, "Innocent Family Murdered in Botched SWAT Raid." Yeah, that looks real good.

[blueback]

There's more info in the article than was mentioned in the OP. So if filtering is going on at our level it is probably going on at every level. The article itself probably doesn't have all the info.

From the article it sounds like an unfortunate combination of circumstances. The SWAT guys raided 4 houses that night and found the person and stuff they were looking for. For all we know the police department has a policy that compells them to hand out medals for that, or the union demaned it, or something I haven't even thought of. Besides, they were getting shot at. If they did what they were supposed to do when they thought they were being shot at by gang members then they did that part of their job correctly. Some other stuff got screwed up at the same time.

[NephilimAzrael]

Am i glad that Ireland does not have it's police forces armed or what!!

[127001]

Perhaps if the U.S. would not let everyone and their uncle and dog buy guns, the police force would not have to be so well armed.

[ScurvyRose]

Perhaps if the U.S. would not let everyone and their uncle and dog buy guns, the police force would not have to be so well armed.

We would just get something else to use. Tazers seem to be rising in popularity.....

[deevee]

Perhaps if the U.S. would not let everyone and their uncle and dog buy guns, the police force would not have to be so well armed.

Yea lets give up our freedoms for a little bit of security. Brilliant plan.

[Motor Jax]

Yea lets give up our freedoms for a little bit of security. Brilliant plan.

you know, history has also seem to teach us that the less freedoms we have, the more the rulers will weild their power... and that never ends very friendly...

and leaving your own security in some else's hands? not a good move...

talk about playing a very, very bad game of chess against an army of queens...

[searcheagle]

Contrary to the pictures that were posted, these are not typical police forces. In fact, I've lived in the country my entire life, and I have never seen a single SWAT officer.

Typical Police Officers are lightly armed and lightly armored. The SWAT officers in the pictures above are going into situations that were just short of war: Riots, Building Seiges and Hostage Situations.

[le Duc]

Interesting topic. I don't really have a well-developed opinion on this issue, but I would like to point out two things:

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First, the printing on the top line of the uniforms in the above picture doesn't look like English to me, thus making me doubt whether those are actually American police.

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Second, I believe these are security contractors for Blackwater, and I am unaware of them being hired by any US police forces for police activity, but I could be wrong.

I think more appropriate photos for the original post would be of rank-and-file police officers who are heavily armed or over-equipped.

[Motor Jax]

oh, that's right

here's a Washington DC police officer

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sorry 'bout that...

[PeterBristolUK]

Perhaps if the U.S. would not let everyone and their uncle and dog buy guns, the police force would not have to be so well armed.

Has anyone seen bowling for Columbine?

According to the film Canada has as many if not more guns per person that the US but their murder rate is a fraction of America's. They also say that a lot of people in Canada leave their doors unlocked allday

Guns don't kill people...people kill people

I do agree the police are getting too heavy handed, if you look up any of the footage from the Kingsnorth power station in Kent UK you will see. It was a climate camp to protest against a new coal station, and the police were exceedingly heavy handed even towards people who wern't acting in a threatening manner.

[SShack]

Guns are far too entrenched in American culture to ever be removed. Even if they stopped manufacturing guns now, criminals would still have access to them for decades, and that would probably just create another whole black market anyway and we'll have to deal with gun smugglers along with the drug smugglers.

[Motor Jax]

the riot police in LA

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and in DC... (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Knock, Knock... Hello people...the Militarized Police are now shooting young women in the back!! Do you get it now? 200+ people were arrested for no reason other than holding signs like "Shame on you corporations" or "People over Profits", clearly a threat to our national security. Please read the 1st hand accounts below of what happened in Miami 11/20/03 and judge for yourself... was that Michael Jackson scandal really that important?

A first hand account of some friends protesting greed gone wild, a cameraman and friends shot, see the video to verify the naked aggression of the Military Police beta version. Are you just going to sit there and tell your kids this is how it's got to be? Think of your grandchildren, is this the kind of world you want to leave them?

We've been trying to tell you that this whole 'patriot' act thing is bogus, gov't spying gone wild and it's not to protect us from terrorists. The 'patriot' act allows gov't spying specifically to silence dissent, Big Brother. The Police Brutality in Miami is further proof that Big Brother is here, now- are we just going to accept a police state? Hell no! These protestors are simply saying, "It's time to end the greed, that's not what America is all about." And for that, they are beaten and shot and the corporate media tell us that there's just a few vandals that the police had to stop. They are lying, foxcnnprabcnbccbs are all full of fake news, wake up and see the matrix you've been living in!

We need to break thru these police officers training and get them to see what they are doing. We need to get them to all turn at once and join us, stop being a stooge for the rich. Please send this to everyone, hoping that eventually this page will reach the friends and family of the police. Open your heart dear Mr. Policeman, can't you see that these protestors are fighting for justice for all. They are not the enemy. Please talk with all of your fellow officers and their families.

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17 April, 2003
Lawsuit Against City: Update
author: CatWoman Alan Graf appeared in front of city hall today, along with Miranda May, Randy Lyon, and William Ellis. May and Ellis were both assaulted by Portland police officers while exercising their first amendment rights during an anti-war protest on March 25th, 2003. Lyon was assaulted by Portland police officers on March 20th, 2003, while working as an engineer for KATU.
During the press conference, Alan Graf announced that he and the victims of police aggression are filing federal civil rights lawsuits against the City of Portland, Mayor Vera Katz, police chief Mark Kroeker, officers Mark Kruger and Joe Hanousek, and "several yet-to-be-named police officers." This comes in the wake of several chilling incidents across the city in which police abused their authority and assaulted peaceful anti-war protesters and others after the US began bombing Iraq. In a press release, graf and the National Lawyers Guild ask, "How much is the Bill of Rights worth, Mayor Katz? What dollar amount would you assign to the First Amendment?"

Graf noted that all three people who were victimized by police were acting in a legal, peaceful manner. William Ellis had been standing on the sidewalk holding a sign when riot police approached on the street. Video tape from the incident clearly shows that Ellis was not doing anything illegal at the time. He was approached by a riot officer who demanded his name. Since he had done nothing illegal and had no reason to believe himself under arrest or being detained at the moment, Ellis refused to give his name. He was promptly attacked by the officer and several others. He was thrown to the ground, handcuffed, had his face repeatedly smashed into the sidewalk, was pepper sprayed while handcuffed, and was hit in the head with a pepper spray cannister. He was then taken to jail.

Miranda May was attacked in an incident that has been publicized on indymedia and elsewhere. She was standing on the sidewalk with several others, protesting as the police arrested people for jaywalking. The police turned on the crowd in their frenzy and began pepper spraying the people on the sidewalk. May became trapped between a newspaper box and a street sign, and was repeatedly assaulted with pepper spray.
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Shortly after this incident, numerous people contacted the mayor's office to complain after seeing still photographs of the officers smiling and laughing as they sprayed May in the face while she was trapped and screaming. The mayor's office responded by claiming that the photographs were fake, that the incident did not happen. Despite these claims, numerous witnesses came forward and several people who had been videotaping the incident were able to provide videotaped proof that it did, in fact, occur. Viva la camera.

May reported that her faith in America has been severely shaken since this incident. She also noted that the stories reported in the corporate media did not appear to match her own experiences on the day of the protest.

Randy Lyon, an engineer for KATU, was wearing press ID and was working with video cable behind the KATU news van when a police officer assaulted him in the head with a baton. At this point, although Mr. Lyon identified himself as a media person, the officer dragged him behind the van and continued to beat him. Lyon reports that he has recurrent migraines and memory loss as a result of this incident.

Graf noted that the attack on Lyon appears to be related to numerous incidents in Portland in which police seem to be intentionally targeting members of the media. Graf describes this pattern as a "cover up," in which police officers are attempting "to cover up their misdeeds by intimidating members of the press who have attempted to cover the protests." In a press release, Graf noted the similarity between this incident and another incident in which a woman was pepper sprayed as she attempted to videotape misconduct by the Portland police. He may have been referring to the incident on February 15th, 2003, when an indymedia reporter was illegally pepper sprayed by Marty Rowly, badge #8969.

Police have attacked several other indymedia reporters in recent months, and have falsely arrested three of them. In two cases, police confiscated the reporters' cameras. Police still have one of them, and would not have released the other if not forced to do so through the courts. Similarly, police pepper sprayed many members of the media during the anti-bush protest last August, including Beth English from KPTV. More recently, another KPTV camera operator was assaulted and arrested as he attempted to cover police violence during an anti-war protest. In a live broadcast from the scene, a KPTV reporter who had also been present stated that the news photographer had been thrown to the ground along with his camera, and was then arrested. According to the reporter, the photographer had done nothing illegal. This story promptly disappeared from the airwaves. No mention was made of the incident during a later, taped broadcast.

The attack against Lyon put him in an interesting position, since KATU and other corporate media had been ignoring police violence. In fact, they had been reporting that police were "lenient" with protesters.

When Lyon was asked whether he felt that the attack may have tempered any of the pro-police bias in the corporate media, he replied that he couldn't comment.

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The End of America: 10 Steps to Facism (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

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Police Brutality (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

[Tocsin]

There is no doubt that the closer you look, the more the United States begins to look like the violent police state caricatures it uses (used) to discredit places like North Korea or the former East Germany.

Many people assume that it can't be so in America because "nothing bad's ever happened to me," and that the victims of police brutality must have somehow deserved their treatment by some act of provocation.

This is often not the case, and such denial of police brutality is simply a psychological crutch to shield people from the guilt implied by allowing such brutality to be tolerated within their own nation.

As Thoreau once noted, "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." And the people who are cowed into inaction by the fear of suffering the same fate as the people who dare to resist do their best to keep their eyes tightly shut while they shout out their "I can't hear you, la-la-las" to cover the sound of other people's screams.

Here are a couple of examples that are hard to ignore...

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A young women shot in the face with a "non-lethal" wooden slug.

Oakland Cops Under U.N.'s Watchful Eye

THERE'S NOTHING like making the list of the world's worst government violence against activists. The Oakland Police Department earned that distinction for its assault on peaceful anti-war demonstrators at the port last year. The action, in which police fired wooden dowels and shot-filled bean bags at protesters, was noted in the recent report of an investigator for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. "This alleged incident was the subject of a letter of allegation by the Special Rapporteur on the question of torture and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression ..." reads the report. The question of torture, that's pretty scary. For the protesters who were hit, the unprovoked attack was a form of torture. The more seriously injured went to the hospital. One woman needed surgery. Even the less-seriously injured suffered enduring physical pain. Another woman who was hit in the back of the leg and the back of her upper arm limped for a couple of weeks and suffered pain for several months.

You may have noticed I unequivocally called the action an assault on peaceful demonstrators and an unprovoked attack. While the department claimed protesters threw rocks and objects at the officers, a police video of the demonstration did not show protesters throwing anything at officers. Department spokesmen continued to claim a video shot by a television news station showed objects being thrown, but no video was ever produced.

Full article: Oakland Cops Under U.N.'s Watchful Eye (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Then there is this...

Laurel Ripple, 21, is everything we say we want our young people to be -- smart, driven, socially conscious.

When she was a senior at MAST Academy, Laurel delivered 3,000 postcards to Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, signed by high school students opposed to his plan to build an airport on the edge of the Everglades.

A member of the Sierra Club since she was a teenager, Ripple spent the last six months encouraging college students like herself to come to Miami and oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

On Nov. 21, Laurel was part of a vigil outside the county jail for the protesters arrested the day before. After three hours, the Miami-Dade police ordered everyone to leave. As anyone who watched the scene unfold live on television can attest, the police moved forward into the crowd of 100 people, cutting off about 40 protesters and trapping them against a chain link fence.

''The front line of the police all had shields, and they kept pushing in, pinning us against the fence,'' recalls Laurel, who grew up in South Miami. After a few minutes, Laurel said she fell to the ground and covered her head, whereupon an officer grabbed her wrists with one hand, lifted her arms and began blasting her with pepper spray.

''I started screaming in pain,'' Laurel says. ``He had held the canister so close to my face that my hair and face were dripping with pepper spray.''

In the melee, she said she badly twisted her ankle. She was taken to a makeshift jail in Earlington Heights for processing and decontamination.

''Because I couldn't walk, they dragged me,'' she recalls. ``They had a shower set up in the parking lot. Two officers held me up as I was drenched for a few seconds with water. I was then dragged into this tent. It was dark. There were four men in white biohazard suits. I'm still coughing and crying from the pepper spray. I can't really tell what is happening.''

With her hands still bound behind her back, she said she felt her T-shirt coming apart. ''That's when I realized they had scissors and they were cutting my clothes off of me,'' she says.

She said she begged them to stop, saying she could take her own clothes off. And she asked why there wasn't a female officer present. ''They didn't say anything to me,'' she says, her hands shaking as she lights a cigarette. ``No one ever said a word to me while they were doing this.

``After they cut my shirt off, they cut off my jeans and my underwear. I'm standing there totally naked. I felt completely violated. It was humiliating.''

Wearing a set of surgical scrubs, she was booked into jail barefoot, and claims she never received medical attention for her ankle.

Her criminal charge: unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor.

Sgt. Pete Andreu, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, said he could neither confirm nor deny Laurel was pepper-sprayed by police. The ''chemical agent'' could have been released by one of the protesters, he said. He also doubted she ever asked for medical help. The decontamination, he added, was done by the Miami-Dade Fire Department.

The fire department said Laurel received standard treatment for ''gross decontamination.'' ''If we had permitted her to remove her own clothes, she could have recontaminated herself,'' said fire department spokesman Lt. Eugene Germain Jr.

I wonder how Penelas or Miami Mayor Manny Diaz would feel if their wives or their children were put through such a process.

Jonathan Ullman, South Florida field representative for the Sierra Club, saw Laurel being arrested on television.

''She's a great kid,'' he says. ``I couldn't believe it.''

Ullman called the Washington office of the Sierra Club, which dispatched attorneys to get Laurel out of jail within a few hours. The Sierra Club's executive director wrote President Bush this month demanding a Justice Department investigation into Laurel's arrest and the allegations of police misconduct made by other Sierra Club members.

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It is easy enough just to pretend that "This is America... things like that don't happen here," but... obviously... they do.

There are images I can remember of German citizens being paraded through the concentration camps after WWII, forced to confront the truth of what their nation had done while they had kept their eyes shut.

I can't help feeling that someday Americans will be forced to undergo the same horrid realizations, and that the nation will need to if it is ever to recover from "the dark side" that it has descended into.

[blueback]

There is no doubt that the closer you look, the more the United States begins to look like the violent police state caricatures it uses (used) to discredit places like North Korea or the former East Germany.
Come up with a few thousand more of these and your claim will start to be worth listening to. Seriously, East Germany?

[Tocsin]

Come up with a few thousand more of these and your claim will start to be worth listening to. Seriously, East Germany?

I've already collected a couple of hundred articles along such lines, and that is when I gave up trying to keep up with them during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

I could probably find a couple of thousand cases of violent abuse and/or civil rights violations in 2004 alone.

Like I said, if you can't see it, it is because you're trying not to - especially if you have access to the internet.

This doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of privacy violations for which the telecom industry has been granted immunity.

East Germany... Seriously.

[Mechanical Messiah]

As I've mentioned elsewhere:

Here in the Land of the Free, we imprison more people both per capita and in sheer numbers than any other country on earth. Not just a few more- A LOT more.

So I don't understand why anybody is surprised by these news stories or pictures. We literally live in the LEAST free country on earth. And our militarized police force reflects that.

[blueback]

Define "free."

[searcheagle]

So I don't understand why anybody is surprised by these news stories or pictures. We literally live in the LEAST free country on earth. And our militarized police force reflects that.

Really???? We live in LITERALLY the least free country on earth? I bet that 2/3's of the countries in the world love to be as "unfree" as the US is.

In 1995, The New York Times say "a total of 3.5 million people waiting -- some in lines that stretch for 40 years or more -- to join relatives in the United States."
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(Although I'm sure the number hasn't changed that much since then. It was just the most recent article I could find)

In 2006, the number of legal immigrants living in the US totaled 37.5 million.[2][3]

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While police need to take all precautions against raiding the wrong house, most alleged incidents of police brutality occur during riots.

During riots, there are only 3 alternatives for police: 1. Allow the rioters to take over the city, 2. Use non-lethal tactics, 3. Use lethal tactics.

A perfect example of the first tactic is the Paris Riots in 2005, where Muslims affect 274 towns, nearly 9,000 vehicles, 200 Million Euros of Damage and 126 Police and firefighters injured. (The French also arrested nearly 2900 rioters.)

My preference will be use non-lethal force when necessary to protect people, property, and society from rioters.

[Mechanical Messiah]

Define "free."

Not incarcerated? I don't reckon it's a complete definition... but it's a pretty good start.



Searcheagle- I didn't say that U.S. wasn't a good place to live. We've got a pretty damn good standard of living, and it's relatively safe here (in direct proportion to how much money you have).

I just said that this here country ain't free. That's all.

[blueback]

Here in the Land of the Free, we imprison more people both per capita and in sheer numbers than any other country on earth...We literally live in the LEAST free country on earth.



Not incarcerated? I don't reckon it's a complete definition... but it's a pretty good start.


Your logic is circular. You simply stated the definition of the word twice.

[Mechanical Messiah]

Hmmm... yeah... don't care.

We have about 2.2 million people behind bars. Those evil communists in China are a distant second at 1.5 million- with FOUR TIMES the population.

LET FREEDOM RING!!

[Dreamer]

Well,you gotta give credit to the Chinese, they do dicipline their citizens well so they don't need to imprison as much people.

-therefore they're freer, duh.

[blueback]

Oh, so that's how we are analyzing a system that incorporates millions of people. . .with a single metric. Well, I must admit, that is much easier than what I was trying to do.

[Mechanical Messiah]

Well, it certainly takes up less space.

See, we live in a country where a man can scarcely get through the day without breaking MULTIPLE laws & ordinances. I'd wager that the majority of people on this forum are unindicted felons.

That ain't rule of law... nor is it "freedom". It's essentially a license for beaurocrats & police to fuck with whomever they choose, whenever it suits them.

[Wufnu]

Hmmm... yeah... don't care.

We have about 2.2 million people behind bars. Those evil communists in China are a distant second at 1.5 million- with FOUR TIMES the population.

LET FREEDOM RING!!

It's likely that their big offenders (like drug dealers) are executed. You don't even have to commit a crime. Whoops! Are you a government official that oversees the quality of exported pet food goods? Was there a recent batch of harmful products released to other countries from yours? Congratulations, you just earned yourself a bullet to the brain. They're even executing prisoners just to harvest and sell their organs. Good times.

We keep them alive.

[Mechanical Messiah]

According to Amnesty International, China executed about 3400 people last year... which doesn't amount to even a drop in the bucket of the MILLIONS of incarcerated people that we're talking about here.

So that was a nice attempt to justify our current police state by claiming that some other police state is worse. But it doesn't stand up to a 20-second google search.

[blueback]

See, we live in a country where a man can scarcely get through the day without breaking MULTIPLE laws & ordinances. I'd wager that the majority of people on this forum are unindicted felons.

Your point is. . .what? If someone's an UNINDICTED felon then they aren't in prison, right? Technically the US is still at war with Korea but that doesn't mean we really bother to fight them.

That ain't rule of law... nor is it "freedom". It's essentially a license for beaurocrats & police to fuck with whomever they choose, whenever it suits them.

Would you prefer that they never do anything? You have a problem with government officials attempting to enforce laws? If government officals never tried to enforce laws you would say that they weren't earning their salary.

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"The use of the term is motivated as a response to the laws, policies and actions of that regime, and is often used pejoratively to describe the regime's concept of the social contract, human rights, and similar matters.
Genuine police states are fundamentally authoritarian, and are often dictatorships. However the degree of government repression varies widely among societies. Most regimes fall into some middle ground between the extremes of pure civil libertarianism and pure policestatism"

Is your complaint that the state has a police force, or is it that the police force enforces laws you don't agree with, or is it that the police force oversteps the bounds of proper balance?

[Wufnu]

Are you sure that wasn't a number for Beijing alone? A 20 second google search is nice and all but hardly concrete. 我信任没甚么。

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The interesting thing here is, their government isn't like the government here. The local government officials have much more authority than they do here and it's possible they don't have to report an execution carried out through local systems to anyone but the Chinese government, ever, and the government doesn't tell how many people they've executed. Sometimes, rarely, they'll post an execution in the obituaries which is probably where AI gets 90% of their numbers (nevermind the other 50% of the country which won't even show up in the larger cities AI is watching). If the family is lucky, they may get a letter stating their child suddenly decided to be an organ donor before drying. Over the course of, I dunno, lets say 5 decades this could be millions of people that would be alive if they were in the US judicial system.

I'm glad you know where the google box is on your firefox browser but if you honestly expect to convince someone who has studied this country for around 3 years based on 20 seconds of web browsing, you've got another thing coming. Looking up a number and stating blankly that it shows some type of correlation is absurd. You can't just ignore situational factors.

If you really believe that they're more free than us then get into a hot and heavy debate with a cabby outside of Beijing, but still in a large city. Lets say Heibei or Guangzhou. In around a minute, you'll likely attract the attention of a police officer. Since you're white and China has been hardcore about making itself look good to other countries, he'll like arrest the cabby. Things will be easy for you, at least until a year or two after the olympics are over. Here's where things get awesome: start yelling at the cop. Feel free to get all up in his face. If you're lucky, he'll just bust your face with his baton. If you're unlucky, he'll bust your face with his baton and take you to jail for a day or two then have you sent back to the US. If you're REALLY unlucky, he'll do all of the above and take your passport. He's gotcha by the balls, then. Have fun and get your wallet handy. Perhaps that's where the big difference in the numbers come from: here, we arrest you. There, they smash your face.

Here's my own feeble attempt at a 20 second google search:
"No official figures are available for China's execution rate, and Amnesty has changed the method it uses to calculate the number of executions there. According to Amnesty's report for 2003 China carried out at least 726 executions. The much higher figure of 3,400 executed last year is an estimate based on internet reports of trials, although it is still described as the 'tip of the iceberg'."

Further:
"Amnesty quoted a delegate at the National People's Congress in March last year, who said that 'nearly 10,000' people were executed every year in China." That's half a mil, over 50 years. Half a million that actually had a trial, as opposed to the local only stuff that wasn't reported or recorded.

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[blueback]

America got lucky. We have unique history which allowed us to jump straight to a form of society/government that is close to optimal without all the baggage that other countries have. China's got that silly confuscinism thing that makes them think communism is kind of a good idea. They don't have millions of immigrants pouring in from every other country and culture on the globe. Ergo, change is very slow.

Plus, for a group of people who all look alike Asians can get crazy racist. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans all hate each other cuz, you know, why not? Finally China's got a chip on its shoulder because they keep getting "emberassed" by foreign powers. That just makes them cling to what makes them Chinese even more strongly. If having cops that bust your face in for arguing with them makes you Chinese, then that's what they'll want.

[Wufnu]

Maybe I painted too dour a picture. Please understand that all of the cops everywhere in China aren't going around beating people up for fun. Most Chinese people are very happy and live their lives well and the local officials and cops are mostly a nuisance and one of those things you have to deal with to get stuff done. You just don't mess with the police; sometimes you might have to give them a little money to get things done. In the US this requirement of bribery and the threat of physical violence would be an outrage and would be food for the mechanics tirade. Over there, it's just the way things are and has been for a long time.

If you were to talk to someone living in China, odds are they'd be pretty content with the way things are. Think of it from this perspective: if someone from another country were reading this thread and was curious if the police in the US were hardcore killers just waiting for you to step out of line and they were to ask me what it's like to live here they might be surprised to find that I haven't even talked to a cop, or seen anyone arrested, in about a decade (except for one time last year when a campus police offer jumped my car off when my battery was dead). They might also be surprised to know that nobody I know has been in prison, etc. I have never seen a police officer holding an automatic weapon, in person. It would be an entirely different discussion if they were asking someone that lived near the white house.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this post is that you can't put China in a box and classify it as one thing or another. It's far too dynamic from one location to another and would be best left out of this debate entirely. It's not comparable to the US in this regard. If you insist, then Dreamer would be the closest to accurately describing the disparity between the number of incarcerated people in the US vs China.

[Mechanical Messiah]

It's likely that their big offenders (like drug dealers) are executed. You don't even have to commit a crime. Whoops! Are you a government official that oversees the quality of exported pet food goods? Was there a recent batch of harmful products released to other countries from yours? Congratulations, you just earned yourself a bullet to the brain. They're even executing prisoners just to harvest and sell their organs. Good times.

We keep them alive.

Let's re-examine your claim, Wufnu. The way I read this post... it looks to me like you're implying that the difference between China and U.S populations is due to China's executions.

The U.S. has roughly 700,000 more people incarcerated than China. Amnesty international estimates that roughly 3400 people are executed annyally in China. Even if they got this number wrong by a factor of TEN, it'd barely make a dent in this descrepency of 700,000 people... especially when you consider that China has four times the population of the U.S.

All that is assuming that I understood your point correctly. You COULD have been using hyperbole (which I can understand... I do it all the time) to imply that that police state is nastier than our own. If that's what you were getting at... then it's a pretty low standard to compare the Land of the Free to... but point taken.





Mechanical Messiah added to this post, 16 minutes and 57 seconds later...

Your point is. . .what? If someone's an UNINDICTED felon then they aren't in prison, right? Technically the US is still at war with Korea but that doesn't mean we really bother to fight them.

Would you prefer that they never do anything? You have a problem with government officials attempting to enforce laws? If government officals never tried to enforce laws you would say that they weren't earning their salary.

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"The use of the term is motivated as a response to the laws, policies and actions of that regime, and is often used pejoratively to describe the regime's concept of the social contract, human rights, and similar matters.
Genuine police states are fundamentally authoritarian, and are often dictatorships. However the degree of government repression varies widely among societies. Most regimes fall into some middle ground between the extremes of pure civil libertarianism and pure policestatism"

Is your complaint that the state has a police force, or is it that the police force enforces laws you don't agree with, or is it that the police force oversteps the bounds of proper balance?

I'm not sure what's so complicated about this "mechanic's tirade"... but I'll spell it out for you if that's what you need.

My complaint is that here in the Land of the Free, there are so many laws- covering so many situations and actions- that a person cannot live a normal life without breaking MULTIPLE laws... many with significant prison terms attached.

Ever work on an air conditioning system without a license? That can get you several years in prison.

Ever work on your own car? If you improperly repaired your emissions control system... you're due some prison time.

Ever take prescription medications in some way that was NOT according to your doctor's instructions? Like saving a few leftover pain pills for a rainy day? Ever give/take meds to/from somebody else? If so... then you're a criminal.

Ever make any income that you didn't report on your taxes (over $600, I think)? You're an unindicted criminal if you did.

Ever buy something off ebay... but didn't pay your state some sales tax?

Ever have sex as a teenager?

Did you ever have sex while you or whomever you were fuckin' had ANY alcohol in their system? If so... then you're a rapist.

Have you ever driven a car after taking over-the-counter allergy medication? You may have committed a felony.

Have you ever had a gun in your vehicle (even unloaded and partially disassembled) and drove past a school? If so... you're a felon.

Think you have the right to remain silent? Actually... you don't- not until AFTER you've been arrested. Remaining silent is a crime- there was a Supreme Court case about this a couple years ago.



This creates a situation where we are ALL lawbreakers. Any of us can be arrested at any time... all that's required is that we piss off some publik servant. That's exactly what "rule of law" is intended to prevent. But we've circumvented this time-honored notion by preemptively making us ALL criminals.

You can't get through a single day without technically breaking SOME law or local ordinance... nor could you possibly have even a basic grasp of all the laws that you can be held accountable for... that ain't what I'd call FREE.

[blueback]

Let me see if I understand your argument.

You're saying that Americans are not free for two reasons:
1) a lot of people are in prison
2) all the people who aren't currently in prison could easily be put there if some jerkoff public servant decides to enforce a random law that they broke

Since apparently free is a relative term; you are contrasting the state of affairs in America with the state of affairs in China which imprisons fewer people per capita. You have not mentioned whether or not laws in China are structured similarly to laws in America.

[Karamazov]

Since apparently free is a relative term; you are contrasting the state of affairs in America with the state of affairs in China which imprisons fewer people per capita. You have not mentioned whether or not laws in China are structured similarly to laws in America.

You can make the argument that Americans, as the majority of the population would like to think otherwise, aren't really "free".

I don't think you can do that though, by comparing it with other countries who are generally stricter with incarcerating individuals who pose a supposed threat to their rule.

[blueback]

There are all sorts of absurd laws To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

It's not just an American thing. In England it's illegal to die in the House of Parlaiment. If a whale dies on a beach the head legally belongs to the King and the tail to the Queen. It's treason to put a stamp bearing a likeness of a royal person on a letter upside down. Etc.

I don't think the argument that we have stupid laws supports your idea that America is "not free". . .which you still refuse to define clearly.

I think all you can claim is a correlation, not a causation.

In Alabama it's illegal to play dominoes on Sunday but it's legal to have car races. I'm sure that China has their equivalent absurdities. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean one causese the other.

[Wufnu]

Everything you said, Mechanic, I can dig that.

I think, however, you're making the mistake of looking at "it says 3400 people, that's nothing to over a million people in jail!" but that wouldn't be accurate. Firstly, the 3400 number isn't accurate and as I quoted above, is just the tip of the iceberg. Secondly, that's how many people would die per year. If the delegates numbers were correct (10,000 per year, minimum), that's 100,000 per decade that would likely still be alive in the US system. I'm not sure how long death row inmates are typically incarcerated for before being executed. 20 years? 40? 50? Also, this is all completely ignoring the fact that our judicial systems are amazingly different and also ignoring the fact that for most of China's population (the small towns out in nowhere), they handle everything locally. There are just too many factors.

I'm sure you could make your point, I just don't think China is a country to do it with. The way things are handled is just too different. Perhaps try Norway. I thought they were rated the freest country? I'm not sure, I don't remember.

[Tocsin]

US lawmakers raise concern about FBI powers

Thu Aug 21, 5:39 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US lawmakers on Thursday expressed concern about a Justice Department plan to set new guidelines for FBI investigations that would widen powers to investigate people without basis for suspicion.

"We are particularly concerned that the draft guidelines might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities," said the letter addressed to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

In it, the four Democratic senators -- Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Ted Kennedy (Massachusetts), Richard Durbin (Illinois) and Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) -- urged the Justice Department to wait until experts and legislators could provide input on the proposed changes.

****

The proposed guidelines would "permit the FBI to use a variety of intrusive investigative techniques to conduct 'assessments' of possible criminal activity, national security threats or foreign intelligence collection -- without any initial factual predication," the senators wrote.

"We are concerned about the extent to which such authority might, for example, permit the FBI to conduct long-term physical surveillance of an innocent American citizen; interview such an individual's neighbors and professional colleagues, including based on a 'pretext' or misrepresentation ... all without any basis for suspicion."

President George W. Bush's administration has sought to enact a series of changes to intelligence gathering in its final months in order to protect increased post-September 11 security and counter-terror measures.

Full article here:
US lawmakers raise concern about FBI powers - Yahoo! News (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
--James Madison

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."
--Edmund Burke

[Karamazov]

Full article here:
US lawmakers raise concern about FBI powers - Yahoo! News (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)





Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
--James Madison

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."
--Edmund Burke

Wasn't this on an article from The Guardian? I think this just a self-fulfilling prophecy. The U.S., looking back a century ago, teetered far more closely along these lines than anything that's happened the past 8 years.

I think irreparable damage has been done but not in anyway that would foster an environment that would allow Fascism to germinate. At least, not yet.

[blueback]

So now your argument is that we are approaching a state of not being "free" but we aren't quite there yet? You still haven't defined what you are talking about.