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let's see if more can be done to right the thread after its initial contact with the ustwo effect.
1. i find all militarizations of police functions to be alarming.
in general, they seem to me little more than an aspect of the self-defeating markets-are-rational policies of the right--you increase social stratification, you increase class conflict--the response from within the upside world of the right is the legitimation of increased violence in internal repression and the militarization of the police--starting with the "los angeles" model (which is itself an adaptation of the french crs model of organizing police)---is of a piece with this.
for the right, increased state violence and a radical expansion of the prison system are, intentionally or not, a way of administering the social consequences of their own economic policies.
the moralizing discourse of crime is also of a piece with this: you attribute crime to some moral defect endured by the poor and that functions to frame state repression as a rational response of the "good people" faced with a rising tide of "bad people"--and in that, the linkages--which are self-evident--between economic policies and class conflict are disguised.
more generally: a defining feature of the modern state is, in max weber's terms, a monopoly on "legitimate violence"---a modern state run by extreme rightwing militants would maintain its monopoly on legitimate violence as well, but they would direct that violence in ways that were aesthetically pleasing to themselves---so they could pretend that their control reduced violence---but the opposite would be more likely.
so i am glad, stevo, that you have no power.
as for testing out no lethal weapons on the population--well, there have been bleeds from various psyop tactics developed by the military and the suppression of public dissent in the states for some time. all the article in the op seems to indicate is a new and improve type of bleed. if this stream of weapons system migration becomes operational, you'll probably see its effects in the acceleration of the delegitimation of the state--a process that the bushpeople have shown a certain virtuosity in extending---and it will play into a dynamic of still more increased state violence.
you would think this dynamic stupid. but if you look at the debacle of the iraq war and its relationship to...um...not having a fucking strategy, you will be able to conclude for yourself that stupidity is no obstacle for the application of state violence conservative-style.
so this could turn out to be really not good.
but not for the reasons you imagine, dk.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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