The View from "Fergustan" At G20, Politicians Push the Same Neoliberal Agenda That Got Us Into This Mess. President Barack Obama at the G20.
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Earlier this month, world leaders at the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia were promising to develop proposals to regulate big banks and international tax heavens. Meanwhile, an international group of activists in the same city were proposing a striking alternative. About the Author Alec Luhn Alec Luhn is a Moscow-based journalist who has written for The Guardian, The Independent, Slate, GlobalPost and other... Also by the Author Ukrainian officials and pro-Russian insurgents trade accusations as details of crash remain unclear. Tens of thousands have fled in the wake of ongoing fighting between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Participants in the G20 Counter-Summit spent two days discussing ways to solve the intertwined financial and environmental crises that the G20 has been unable or unwilling to seriously address for five years now.
Why Protest in Russia? Wringing Detroit Dry. A History of Disaster Capitalism. The Shock Doctrine 2009. The Shock Doctrine. In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically.
Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts....
New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. International Editions. War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. Police militarisation: Thump in the night. Turning Policemen Into Soldiers, the Culmination of a Long Trend. Ferguson, Mo. police watching over their city (Reuters) The images from Missouri of stormtrooper-looking police confronting their citizens naturally raises the question: how the hell did we get to this point?
When did the normal cops become Navy SEALs? What country is this, anyway? There will be more and more mainstream coverage of the modern militarization of the police, a phenomenon mainly of the post-9/11 years. For reference/aggregation purposes, here is a guide to further reading: 1) The Book on this topic: Rise of the Warrior Cop, by Radley Balko. 2) "Lockdown Nation," a Peter Moskos review of Balko's book last year in PS magazine. 3) "How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police," an Atlantic dispatch by Arthur Rizer and Joseph Hartman three years ago. 4) "Tanks in Small Towns," a web item I did in 2011 on signs of this trend, including this photo of a police force in South Carolina: And this one from a small town in Virginia: And this from Florida: "Self-damage"?