The Niggerization of America

"Against a historical backdrop of a people who have been so terrorized, traumatized and stigmatized that we have been taught to be scared, intimidated, always afraid, distrustful of one another and disrespectful of one another.

When you niggerized you unsafe,unprotected,subject to random violence,hated for who you are and you become so scared that you defer to the powers that be and are willing to consent to your own domination"

Cornell West

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Unarmed 19 year-old Kendrec McDade was shot at point-blank range on March 24,2012 by one Pasadena police officer and handcuffed after being struck by a total of seven bullets, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's office autopsy report. McDade was killed when Pasadena officers Jeff Newlen and Mathew Griffin responded to a report of an armed robbery at a taco truck in Northwest Pasadena. One of the officers pursued him on foot and another from his police cruiser. The first officer who fired did so while seated inside the patrol car as McDade approached with his hand at his waistband. McDade and the officer were "within a foot" of each other, according to the autopsy report. After he was shot, authorities determined McDade was unarmed and that the theft victim, Oscar Carrillo, had lied about his assailants having weapons in order to get a quicker response from police. The officer who was seated inside the patrol car fired four rounds through an open window, according to the autopsy report. The second officer, who was on foot, fired four rounds, believing his partner was involved in a firefight.

Unarmed Ramarley Graham, 18, was shot dead in his bathroom on February 2,2012 after NY police officer Richard Haste followed him to his home and kicked down the door. Graham was suspected of possibly carrying a firearm. No firearm was found. Officer Richard Haste, 30, who has been a policeman for four years recently told the grand jury "I feared for my life, so I shot him." Haste supporters in court yelled and cheered when the officer pleaded not guilty while Graham's sobbing parents were also seated in the courtroom.

In the early morning hours of October 28th 2008, a 20 year old named Julian Alexander was fatally shot by Anaheim police officer Kevin Flanagan . Alexander’s crime: he was standing in his own front yard, attempting to protect himself and his pregnant wife with a stick in hand. Oh, and he happened to be black. The white officer, Kevin Flanagan had been chasing a group of juveniles who allegedly broke into a department store when he encountered Alexander. The newly married Anaheim resident had come out of his house to investigate the ruckus. After shooting him twice in the chest, Flanagan handcuffed him to the ground. Julian Alexander, who had just gotten married 9 days earlier, died after being taken to UCI Medical Center – his family claims he was delayed medical treatment as a result of being handcuffed. Within hours of the shooting, the Anaheim Police department issued an apology for the shooting, calling it a “tragic situation,” and clearing the victim of any wrong doing. Now, the Orange County District Attorney’s office did not to press charges against the police officer. Kevin Flanagan has been back on routine patrol duty since mid-December 2008.

Unarmed Davinian Darnell Williams, 36, was shot and killed by a white Jacksonville, Florida police officer Jeff Edwards. Officer Edwards pulled over Williams for "driving suspiciously in an area known for drug activity." Edwards has stated Williams tried to make evasive moves by making sudden turns and running stop signs. When Williams finally stopped, the police chief said, he refused commands to show his hands and was moving around inside the vehicle. Officer Edwards moved from one side of the car to the other to get a better view of what Williams was doing. "At that time, the suspect made a sudden motion, reaching down," Police Cheif Hackney said, Edwards then opened fire, shooting seven times through a side window and hitting Williams with six of the shots. Williams died at the scene. Police found 17 grams of powder cocaine in one of Williams' socks and less than a gram of crack cocaine in the other. There was no weapon on Williams or in the car. The police chief Hackney said,"had the suspect not been fidgeting in car." his death may have been avoided.

Months after unarmed Reka Boyd was shot and killed on March 21,2012 by a Chicago police officer the family has few answers. Chicago Police Det. Dante Servin, the officer who pulled up to Boyd and a group of friends in an unmarked vehicle as they stood near 15th Place and Albany Avenue on March 21. Servin, according to Boyd's family, told the group to "shut up" and, after a verbal altercation with one person in the group, Servin allegedly opened fire. Antonio Cross, 39, was shot in his hand and Boyd was shot in the head. She died nearly 24 hours after the shooting. In April the family of Rekia Boyd filed a lawsuit against the city and Chicago Police Det. Dante Servin.

Unarmed 23 year old unarmed Amado Diiallo,Guinean immigrant,in New York City who was shot and killed on February 4, 1999 by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss. The four officers fired a total of 41 shots. The shooting took place at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of The Bronx. The four were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit. All four officers were acquitted at trial in Albany, New York.

Unarmed Oscar Grant was fatally shot by white BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California, in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009. Officer Johannes Mehserle and another officer were restraining Grant, who was prostrate and allegedly resisting arrest. Officer Mehserle stood and, according to witnesses, said "Get back, I'm gonna tase him." Then Mehserle drew his gun and shot Grant once in the back; Mehserle appeared stunned, put his hands to his head and exclaimed "Oh my God!" During his court testimony, Mehserle said that Grant then exclaimed,"You shot me! Grant turned out to be unarmed;he was pronounced dead the next morning at Highland Hospital in Oakland. Mehserle is free and recently lost an appeal to have his conviction overturned.

Unarmed Aaron M. Campbell was shot and killed on Jan 29,2010 by Portland police officer Ronald Frashour with a AR-15 rifle. The 25-year-old Campbell was shot and killed after he emerged from a Northeast Portland apartment where officers had been called to perform a welfare check on a suicidal,armed man.

Frashour said he saw Campbell's left hand reach toward his back waistband.

"I mean he just dove his hand straight down the middle of his back, and instantly thought, 'He is pulling a gun out,'" he said. He said he saw Campbell running toward the apartment complex, toward the right corner of a parked Volvo. "I remember thinking, 'I cannot let him get to hard cover 'cause he's gonna shoot at us, and he's protected if he shoots at us from there.' ... I knew there was a gun coming out of back of his waistband and before he got to the corner of the Volvo, I shot him.

A Multnomah County grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing. Jury members decided the officer reasonably believed Campbell was reaching towards his pants for a gun.

Campbell was unarmed; a gun was found later in his girlfriend’s apartment. After their decision, jury members released a three-page letter that blamed lack of communication among officers, inadequate command and poor training for Campbell’s death. The jurors said the Portland Police Bureau should be held responsible.

Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley Jones (July 20, 2002 – May 16, 2010) was a seven-year-old girl from the East Side of Detroit, Michigan who was shot and killed during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team on May 16, 2010. Officer Joseph Weekley was indicted on charges of felony involuntary manslaughter and misdemeanor careless discharge of a firearm causing death in the May 2010 shooting of Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Case is currently in trial.

Unarmed 26 year old Tarika Wilson was shot and killed on Jan. 4, 2008 by white police officer Joseph Chavalia in a drug raid on her residence. A forensic pathologist and firearms expert each said that bullet wounds indicate that Wilson wasn't standing and was likely on her knees and complying with a SWAT team's orders to get down when she was hit in the neck and chest. Chavalia shot 26-year-old Wilson and her year-old son she was holding, killing her and hitting him in the shoulder and hand, during a SWAT raid on her house. One of the child's fingers had to be amputated. A all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty of misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault. He had faced up to eight months in jail if convicted of both counts.

Unarmed Mark Anthony Barmore, 23, was shot and killed on August 24,2009 by two white Rockford Police Officers Oda Poole and Stan North inside the basement of the House of Grace pre-school and daycare which is housed inside the black church. Both police officers Stan North and Oda Poole were found justified in their use of deadly force. Two crucial witnesses, Sheila and Marissa Brown ,who actually saw the events which led to Barmore's death, failed to appear before the grand jury on the advice of their attorney. The judge in the case said the Browns’ testimony could have been critical to the deliberations of the grand jury. The judge is now referring their attorney to the Illinois disciplinary committee for the bad advice he gave clients.

Unarmed and mentally disabled Ronald Madison (on right) was shot in the back and killed by New Orleans police at the Danziger Bridge which took place six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Members of the city's police department killed two people: seventeen-year-old James Brissette (on left) and forty-year-old Ronald Madison. Four other people were wounded. All victims were unarmed. New Orleans police fabricated a cover-up story for their crime, falsely reporting that seven police officers responded to a police dispatch reporting an officer down, and that at least four people were firing weapons at the officers upon their arrival. Recently a judge sentenced five police officers to sentences ranging from 5 years to 65 years in prison.

Unarmed 20 year old Wendell Allen was fatally shot in the chest on March 7, 2012 by officer Joshua Colclough while he was serving a narcotics search warrant. A single bullet was fired by Colclough, a 4 1/2-year veteran. Allen, shirtless and clad in jeans and sneakers, was shot in the stairwell of his family's Prentiss Avenue home. The district attorney is currently examining the case for possible criminal charges against officer Colclough.

A unarmed Army veteran Shem Walker was shot and killed on July 6,2009 by a undercover police officer in Brooklyn, N.Y. Walker, supposedly had no idea the man he tried to chase off his elderly mom's Fort Greene stoop last July was an NYPD officer working a buy-and-bust operation. It is alleged Walker, 49, punched the undercover cop, whose name has never been released and is not identified in the court papers. The NYPD said the cop fired when Walker tried to grab his gun, but it is unclear if he identified himself as an officer. Family has filed lawsuit, no addtional information on progress of investigation.

Seven years after unarmed 19-year-old Jashon Bryant was shot and killed by a Hartford police officer, his family is still waiting for justice.

On May 7, 2005 at approximately 7:15 p.m., Officer Lawlor and Special Agent Prather were interviewing an unknown white male at the corner of Main and Nelson Streets in Hartford, directly in front of Olga’s Market. Lawlor noticed a black Maxima across the street, in the parking lot of 2374 Main St., which is at the rear of the Ideal Market. Said market is located at the corner of Main and Sanford Streets. On the far side of the Maxima, Lawlor saw a black male (Jashon Bryant), outside of the vehicle, handling what Lawlor believed to be a semi-automatic handgun. Prather did not notice anyone outside the Maxima, nor did he see anyone with a gun.

Lawlor turned his attention from the unknown white male, nodded across the street and began walking across Main St. toward the parking lot of 2374 Main St., which is at the rear of the Ideal Market. A black male later identified as Brandon Henry exited the Ideal Market and began walking to the parking area at the rear of the building. Henry subsequently entered the driver’s seat of the black Maxima, and Bryant got into the front passenger’s seat. Prather proceeded to follow Lawlor across the street. While walking Lawlor asked Prather if he had his badge showing. Prather then produced the badge he was wearing around his neck, and Lawlor pulled out his service weapon, a .45 caliber automatic. Lawlor began shouting commands at Henry, "police shut the vehicle off."

When they reached the parking lot, Prather walked straight to the driver’s side of the vehicle, while Lawlor angled north and approached from in front of the vehicle. Lawlor now pointed his weapon at Henry. Henry began to slowly back the vehicle up. After commands from Lawlor to turn the vehicle off, Henry complied, raising his hands above the steering wheel. The Maxima was now facing north-northwest. Lawlor then walked from the front of the Maxima and approached the passenger side of the vehicle and began talking to Bryant. Bryant’s window was partially down. Prather remained on the driver’s side of the vehicle and began conversing with Henry. Lawlor ordered Prather to call for back up. Prather radioed fellow VCIT members at 7:21 p.m., and requested assistance. Fellow VCIT members acknowledged Prather and indicated that they were responding to his location. At this point Prather saw Henry lower his hands, and he ordered him to raise them. Henry did, resting them on the steering wheel. Prather, now standing aside the front tire, drew his service weapon, and held it down by his side. Prather turned to look for fellow VCIT members, heard a noise, and turned back to see Henry begin to drive off. Prather stated he then heard "four pops." Said pops were in fact (5) gunshots fired by Lawlor. Brandon Henry was shot in the chest and Jashon Bryant was shot twice in the head (fatally). At 7:23 p.m., Prather radioed "shots fired, shots fired".

After being shot, Henry then drove the vehicle forward, over grass and curb, creating his own exit out of the parking lot, onto Main Street. Fellow VCIT officers pursued the vehicle. Henry then drove his vehicle north on Main Street approximately 2110 feet to the intersection of Westland Street. Henry turned left onto Westland and drove west approximately 1600 feet to the intersection of Westland and Clark Streets where his vehicle collided with another car. Henry then ran from the Maxima, while Jashon Bryant remained in the car. A short time later Henry was apprehended hiding underneath a porch.

Bryant was transported by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital where he was pronounced dead. His clothing was seized as evidence by the Hartford Police, and his hands were bagged prior to his removal to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Based on the evidence recovered at the scene (shell casings), and an examination of Officer Lawlor’s service weapon, it was determined that five shots were fired, all from Officer Lawlor’s weapon.

Immediately after the shooting at 7:25 p.m., Officer Lawlor made a radio transmission in which he warned other officers, "be careful 83s in the car." Signal 83 is Hartford Police Department code for a gun or firearm.

None of the officers that pursued the Maxima ever saw anything thrown from the car during the pursuit. Following the capture of Brandon Henry, the Maxima was searched. A bag of cocaine was found under the driver’s seat. Nothing was found under the passenger’s seat where Bryant was seated. On May 7, 2005, the police conducted a massive search of the area, shooting scene and Henry’s direction of travel. No weapon was found. Two subsequent searches were conducted on May 8, 2005 during daylight hours, and again no weapon was found.

"As a result of the determination that the use of deadly physical force by Officer Robert Lawlor was not appropriate under Connecticut General Statutes Section 53a-22, and the Grand Juror’s findings that a crime or crimes have been committed by Officer Lawlor resulting in the death of Jashon Bryant and physical injury to Brandon Henry, an arrest warrant should be applied for, charging him with Manslaughter in the first degree in violation of Connecticut General Statutes Section 53a-55(a)(3) for the homicide of Jashon Bryant and Assault in the first degree in violation of Connecticut General Statutes Section 53a-59 for the wounding of Brandon Henry."

A all white jury acquitted Lawlor of manslaughter and assault charges in December 2009.

Unarmed Dexter Luckett, a 23-year-old was shot and killed by Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies Wednesday, June 16,2010 in the 16100 block of Eucalyptus Avenue in Bellflower, according to Los Angeles County coroner's records. Lakewood station deputies responded to a call of shots fired about 9:43 p.m., according to a sheriff's news release. When they arrived at the location, they contacted several informants who confirmed they heard gunshots in the area. One of the informants "directed the deputies to the rear of an apartment complex" where authorities located Luckett, who they said matched the description of the shooter given by the informant. A deputy ordered Luckett to raise his hands, walk to the radio car and place his hands on the hood. At first, Luckett raised his hands then allegedly dropped his left hand toward his waistband. According to sheriff's officials, at that point the deputy again ordered Luckett to raise his hands and he complied, but as he reached the hood of the car, he quickly dropped his left hand to his rear waistband area, out of the deputy's view.Believing the suspect had retrieved a weapon and in fear for his life, authorities said the deputy fired one round from his duty weapon, hitting Luckett in the upper body. However, in preliminary findings from the coroner's office, it was found that Luckett was shot twice, once in the arm and torso. After the shooting, Luckett was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead at 10:27 p.m., according to coroner's records. No deputies were injured in the incident. Authorities said no weapon was recovered at the scene.

Unarmed Darrick Collins Sr., 36, was shot and killed on September 14,2009 by two deputies responding to a reported armed robbery. The deputies spotted two men who matched the description of the suspects in the armed robbery. Authorities said Collins appeared to reach into his waistband for a weapon while fleeing the scene, and a deputy opened fire. No weapon was found and there was no evidence to suggest Collins had any part in the reported robbery. Eric Huckabee, brother to Collins, said, "They just murdered my brother, that's what they did. It was a wrongful shooting and whoever the deputy was should go to jail for murder."

Unarmed Orlando Barlow was shot and killed by Las Vegas policer officer Brian Hartman while surrendering on his knees on Feb. 28, 2003.

Hartman and other officers responded to a domestic disturbance.

When Barlow emerged from the home, he followed police commands to drop to his knees.

Hartman, a 30-year-old former Marine, later testified at a coroner's inquest that he fired an assault rifle at Barlow from about 50 feet away because he feared the suspect was feigning surrender and was about to pull a gun from his pants to shoot three other officers who were a few feet away from the suspect and closing in with holstered weapons.

"I thought that individual was going for a gun and he was going to fire," Hartman told the jurors.


The coroner's jury found Barlow's death was excusable, a result of actions not entirely acceptable, but not egregious enough to be considered criminal.

Hartman and other graveyard shift officers, with the knowledge of some of their superiors in the Southwest Area Command, printed T-shirts with the initials "BDRT" on them after the shooting.

While the allegations suggested the initials stood for "Baby's Daddy Removal Team," the officers argued that it actually stood for "Big Dogs Run Together."

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The Oppression of Black people and the Crimes of this system

“The young man was shot 41 times while reaching for his wallet”…“the 13-year-old was shot dead in mid-afternoon when police mistook his toy gun for a pistol”… “the unarmed young man, shot by police 50 times, died on the morning of his wedding day”… “the young woman, unconscious from having suffered a seizure, was shot 12 times by police standing around her locked car”… “the victim, arrested for disorderly conduct, was tortured and raped with a stick in the back of the station-house by the arresting officers.”

Does it surprise you to know that in each of the above cases the victim was Black?

If you live in the USA, it almost certainly doesn’t.

Think what that means: that without even being told, you knew these victims of police murder and brutality were Black. Those cases—and the thousands more like them that have occurred just in the past few decades—add rivers of tears to an ocean of pain. And they are symptoms of a larger, still deeper problem.

But some today claim that America is a “post-racial society.” They say the “barriers to Black advancement” have been largely overcome. Many go so far as to put the main blame for the severe problems faced by Black people today on…Black people themselves. Others claim that better education, or more traditional families, or religion, or elections will solve things.

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2012: A Brave New Dystopia

by Chris Hedges

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.



Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement.

Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.” “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”


The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” in his book “Democracy Incorporated” to describe our political system. It is a term that would make sense to Huxley. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. The corporation state, hiding behind the smokescreen of the public relations industry, the entertainment industry and the tawdry materialism of a consumer society, devours us from the inside out. It owes no allegiance to us or the nation. It feasts upon our carcass.


The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to its total impression.”


The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems and patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, money and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of communication, whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.”


Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.

Attitudes and temperament have been cleverly engineered by the corporate state, as with Huxley’s pliant characters in “Brave New World.” The book’s protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend Lenina:

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” he asks.

“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.”

He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We have been giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania, not Huxley’s The World State. Osama bin Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, in the novel, is the public face of terror. His evil machinations and clandestine acts of violence dominate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image appears each day on Oceania’s television screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes of Hate” daily ritual. And without the intervention of the state, Goldstein, like bin Laden, will kill you. All excesses are justified in the titanic fight against evil personified.

The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans. It all presages the shift from Huxley to Orwell.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s torturer tells him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.”

The Police Murder of Tarika Wilson

On January 4, a police SWAT squad broke into the home of Tarika Wilson in Lima Ohio. They shot Tarika dead and wounded her 14 month old son Sincere. The vocal outrage among Lima’s Black community has revealed a long and bitter history of police racism and brutalization.

LIMA, Ohio — The air of Southside is foul-smelling and thick, filled with fumes from an oil refinery and diesel smoke from a train yard, with talk of riot and recrimination, and with angry questions: Why is Tarika Wilson dead? Why did the police shoot her baby?

“This thing just stinks to high heaven, and the police know it,” said Jason Upthegrove, president of the Lima chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “We’re not asking for answers anymore. We’re demanding them.”

Some facts are known. A SWAT team arrived at Ms. Wilson’s rented house in the Southside neighborhood early in the evening of Jan. 4 to arrest her companion, Anthony Terry, on suspicion of drug dealing, said Greg Garlock, Lima’s police chief. Officers bashed in the front door and entered with guns drawn, said neighbors who saw the raid.

Moments later, the police opened fire, killing Ms. Wilson, 26, and wounding her 14-month-old son, Sincere, Chief Garlock said. One officer involved in the raid, Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, a 31-year veteran, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Beyond these scant certainties, there is mostly rumor and rage. The police refuse to give any account of the raid, pending an investigation by the Ohio attorney general.

Black people in Lima, from the poorest citizens to religious and business leaders, complain that rogue police officers regularly stop them without cause, point guns in their faces, curse them and physically abuse them. They say the shooting of Ms. Wilson is only the latest example of a long-running pattern of a few white police officers treating African-Americans as people to be feared.

“There is an evil in this town,” said C. M. Manley, 68, pastor of New Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church. “The police harass me. They harass my family. But they know that if something happens to me, people will burn down this town.”

Internal investigations have uncovered no evidence of police misconduct, Chief Garlock said. Still, local officials recognize that the perception of systemic racism has opened a wide chasm.

Surrounded by farm country known for its German Catholic roots and conservative politics, Lima is the only city in the immediate area with a significant African-American population. Black families, including Mr. Manley’s, came to Lima in the 1940s and ’50s for jobs at what is now the Husky Energy Lima Refinery and other factories along the city’s southern border. Blacks make up 27 percent of the city’s 38,000 people, Mr. Berger said.

Many blacks still live downwind from the refinery. Many whites on the police force commute from nearby farm towns, where a black face is about as common as a twisty road. Of Lima’s 77 police officers, two are African-American.

“If I have any frustration when I retire, it’ll be that I wasn’t able to bring more racial balance to the police force,” said Chief Garlock, who joined the force in 1971 and has been chief for 11 years.

Tarika Wilson had six children, ages 8 to 1. They were fathered by five men, all of whom dealt drugs, said Darla Jennings, Ms. Wilson’s mother. But Ms. Wilson never took drugs nor allowed them to be sold from her house, said Tania Wilson, her sister.

“She took great care of those kids, without much help from the fathers, and the community respected her for that,” said Ms. Wilson’s uncle, John Austin.

Tarika Wilson’s companion, Mr. Terry, was the subject of a long-term drug investigation, Chief Garlock said, but Ms. Wilson was never a suspect.

During the raid, Ms. Wilson’s youngest son, Sincere, was shot in the left shoulder and hand. Three weeks after the shooting, he remains in fair condition, said a spokeswoman at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus.

Within minutes of the shooting, at around 8 p.m., 50 people gathered outside Ms. Wilson’s home and shouted obscenities at the police, neighbors said. The next day, 300 people gathered at the house and marched two miles to City Hall.
“The police can say whatever they want,” Tania Wilson said. “Even before they shot my sister, I didn’t trust them.”

More Than Half of ‘Armed’ Suspects Shot by LA Sheriff Were Not Armed

A new study has found that in most shootings in which Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies fired at suspects who appeared to be reaching for a weapon, the suspect turned out to be unarmed. And in the last six years, all but two of those people shot were black and Latino, according to the study by the Police Assessment Resource Center for LA County Supervisors.
Over the past six years, approximately 61 percent of all suspects shot because an officer believed they were armed were confirmed to be unarmed at the time of the shooting. A little more than half of those suspects were holding an object such as a cell phone or sunglasses that was believed by deputies to be a possible firearm.
The analysis also found that 61 percent of those shot at by deputies were Latino, 29 percent black and 10 percent white. The LA Times provides some more context: “Waistband shootings” are particularly controversial because the justification for the shootings can conceivably be fabricated after the fact, according to the county monitor’s report. The monitor was careful to point out that the report wasn’t making the case deputies were being dishonest, simply that the spike in those shootings left the department vulnerable to criticism.
Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county Board of Supervisors, also found a rise in shootings in which deputies didn’t see an actual gun before firing. In those cases, the person may have had a weapon on them, but never brandished it.
Those shootings spiked by 50% last year, according to the report. Last year also had the highest proportion of people shot by deputies who turned out to be unarmed altogether.
The sheriff’s department says these figures are not surprising because deputies patrol areas in south and east Los Angeles County that are home to “a plethora of black and Latino gangs,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.
But Bobb, the special council to county supervisors and the author of the report says training and time on the job has a lot to do with how officers react when suspects hands move. “Knowing that black and Latino men are more likely to be shot or shot at … the sheriff’s department should be doing a better job to reduce as far as possible mistaken shootings,” Bobb wrote.
His report found that in almost a third of shootings deputies had received no relevant training in the past two years.