Dangerous Innocence

This video of a huge train loaded with tanks and even rocket launchers is alarming.  Where are these tanks going? Not to the two wars we are winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan, surely. Then where? For sale to dictators? Or to American cities?

One of the most alarming aspects of the repression of #Occupy demonstrations has been the militarization of police. Police officers, in the many military-type operations conducted against #occupywallstreet protests, dressed in full battle gear, used chemical weapons, conducted stealth operations in the dead of night, and systematically kept the press away, even with the threat of violence.

Where are these tanks going?

One of the most important Just Peace practices is “reduce weapons and the weapons trade.”  There is no place in the world that needs more tanks and rocket launchers.

As millions and millions of dollars of corporate money are funneled into the American electoral process, we can see why the Founders left corporations out of this fundamental assertion of who gets to be “We the People.” In his famous dissent to the “Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission,” ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens made this very clear:

“It might also be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their “personhood” often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”

Read more here. http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_brooks_thistlethwaite/2010/10/god_didnt_create_corporations.html