Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/29/why-is-customs-and-border-prot.html
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It’s them damn Canadans sneaking over the border, stirring up trouble, I bet. Couldn’t be racist cops.
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In case anyone is wondering, we are not in a democracy.
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Race riots being suppressed by militarised riot police with the help of unmanned airplanes with live video feeds. Americans, I hope you realise that you are not only living in a dystopia, but an 80s action movie dystopia specifically.
(I also know that these aren’t race riots but rather mostly peaceful protests against appaling police violence and systemic racism. It just sounded more 80s that way)
Edit: just realised that it makes sense, since your main villain is also stuck in the 80s
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Stand by for the gun-toting champions of small government to express their full-throated opposition to this disturbing development…
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[crickets chirp]
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I was assured we’d all have cool leather outfits by now.
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Oh, this isn’t fucking terrifying at all. Oh, no.
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Isn’t this where Arnold refuses to fire on hungry civilians and gets sent to The Running Man?
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Did you not see the videos of them defending stores already?
Broken ones.
A block or two from the “front line”.
But they had rifles!
And a little excess weight.
OK, a lot of excess weight…
But they were definitely cos-playing as Patriots!
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it’s easy to get worried about them getting all murder-y but the reality is what they are doing is high resolution recording so they can go “back in time” after something happens
they can see someone throw a firebomb or something at midnight then just tell the computer to track that one person minute by minute back in time to where they came from where they were
yes it is dystopian as hell, these are weapons of war even if only reconnaissance but oddly right now it’s the smallest of all the problems this country has since a few years ago
oh they are also pretending to be a cellphone tower and overriding all other local towers so they can record all phone numbers and internet traffic
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We drove across Mexico a few times last decade. Military checkpoints were near every state and federal border. We skirted cities under total lockdown. Mexicans were very aware they lived in a police state. Americans are learning.
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Authoritarians here have been looking at what they do during protests in China and salivating. They want to use all that tech and they’ve been itching for a confrontation to test it out on.
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CBP? That’s OCP!
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CBP is a law enforcement agency. Posse Comitatus prevents (and rightfully so) the US military from deploying or operating within the United States.
What CBP is operating, is an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft to coordinate law enforcement and fire / medical units to put fires out and set cordons up to prevent crowds from turning violent.
I firmly believe all four officers involved in George Floyd’s death deserve murder convictions, I firmly believe the police in the US are too “militarized” and violent, I firmly believe institutional racism is still a problem in the US, and I firmly believe people are reading too much into a flying camera being used to coordinate emergency response efforts.
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I hear they are going to get to that right after they use their 2A rights to tear down the tyrannical government that refuses the oversight of our duly elected representatives…
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[more crickets]
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Without the context of how African Americans have had their voices stolen in this country, maybe. But you can’t point to the vote - we have a president who was voted in by a minority of voters; where African Americans are disenfranchised by BS police, prosecutors, and judges and are incarcerated at a rate of almost 6 times whites; where almost 40% of African Americans live in states that are gerrymandered to prevent them from having a voice in government; where African Americans often have to wait 7 or more hours just to vote, because they have one polling place in their precinct of 500,000 people while white suburbanites have 8 polling places for 100,000 people.
White people in the US have the luxury of “protesting;” shit, I have that luxury. How do African Americans get their voices heard? Seems like they are being heard now. What are we going to do about it?
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This administration is approaching its end. It might get a little crazy but 100,000 American already died because of Trump’s incompetence. Again, it falls to state governments to maintain security and protection of its citizens. I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes to county by county, municipality to municipality.
The predator drone is just a threat. Trump is a chicken shit. Like all bullies, it’s all show.
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You see, they’re afraid. They stink with fear.
what the f is a “non-combatant”? you think that looting a store or burning down a police station is remotely similar to war?
if so, what do you think of people like mitt romney who bought up companies to load them up with debt and extract millions in bonuses, looting people’s jobs and pensions?
what about people like steve mnuchin who’s company foreclosed on homeowners who had been conned into bad loans, looting families of generational wealth?
wall st stole millions from people during the last financial crisis - and they’re doing it again right now during the pandemic - often targeting black people specifically.
that’s real looting and real violence. but now everyone is supposed to protest nice and quiet, even while police kill black americans with impunity?
“no justice, no peace” has many meanings, not the least of which is that if you keep oppressing a people, they’re going to get angry.
no. here’s what you do. you say enough is enough. you take the guns away from the police, and you kick police officers with a record of violence to the curb.
you create national registries of violent cops, and you withhold funding from police departments if they don’t use the registry.
you end no-knock raids, you stop selling military hardware to police departments, and you end civil forfeiture.
you base the compensation of da’s and police chiefs on minority representation in their departments.
you pass laws to remove qualified immunity.
you disband ice, and reform cbp. you get predator drones out of our skies.
you stop treating people as an enemy. these aren’t combatants and non-combatants. they are our brothers and sisters. so start with that.
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