the sultans of swat

Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory, often with the help of Uncle Sam’s armory, and where even nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality. (ACLU's Matthew Harwood @ TomDispatch).

 There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, you can't take part. And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. (Mario Savio, author of UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, 1963)

Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines. And in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them. (Abbie Hoffman, activist)

This would be one thing if Ferguson were in a war zone, or if protesters were violent — although, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which American police would need a mine-resistant vehicle. But an episode of looting aside, Ferguson and St. Louis County police aren’t dealing with any particular danger. Nonetheless, they’re treating demonstrators — and Ferguson residents writ large — as a population to occupy, not citizens to protect. (Jamalle Boule in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

I suppose it was inevitable that the War on Terror, like the War on Drugs, would become a War on American Citizens. In fact, it was from the beginning. And in any War on American Citizens, America's minority communities are the front line. (Mark Summer @ Dailykos.com)

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace, but there is no peace... (Patrick Henry)

At the website Naked Capitalism,  Lambert Strether asks, 'Will the  political class of today ever  admit the U.S. lost the two major land wars they got us into?" then answers his own question: "Sure! On the 1st of Never."

Having lost in Iraq & Afghanistan, but still looking to let out no-bid contracts to their fat friends, since that, not victory, is the real objective of the U.S.'s war machine today, our political class has decided to continue the war on our own ground. They've sent innumerable armies among us, armed with humvees, grenade launchers, machine guns, racial animosity and ethnic chauvinism. Police departments nationwide are now fully equipped to continue their War on Terror right here in the USA. (Originally it was called the War on Drugs, but they lost that one, too.)

If it's war they want, we'll bring it. Keeping in mind that there's no way we can ever hope to prevail in a hardware war, we'll need to fall back on the strategy and tactics taught to us by Mr. Gandhi, via Dr. King, and lie down on the pavement. The neighborhoods, those places I still call "the ghetto" are the front lines, and we'll have to be willing to become martyrs along with the the people who live there if it's required of us. We'll also have to take the war to the enemy, in his precinct stations, bomb factories (Pantex, Amarillo, Texas), nuclear firepower depots (the Trident bases in Bangor, Washington, and Camden County, Georgia), and it will require are opening the doors of the endless interstate gulag where the best of our soldiers are warehoused by the millions -- young black men doing 10,20, or 30 years for possession of a joint.

It'll be a long war.. I don't expect it to be concluded in my lifetime, but one can hope,