“Respect My Authoritah!” Part Infinity.

Remember when bloggers were considered hysterical – no, shrill – for warning about the accelerating development of fascism and the corporate state? Well, it’s too late for recriminations and we told you so’s now – it’s already here and this is what it looks like.

It’s tempting to consider that video from a complacent British standpoint – with vague, amused contempt for the untutored colonials, and oh, look it’s Utah, well what can one expect with all those religious nutters? Besides everyone knows (except them apparently) that the yanks have gone batshit insane. Common knowledge, innit. But we’re OK, aren’t we? That de Menezes thing, that was just a one-off. wasn’t it?

If only. When it comes to being subject to the whims of a sadistic copper we British are no better off. Take this postman who refused to move his van and took a beating, for example:

Now give those coppers tasers… oops, we have.

Even untrained, ‘unarmed’ British plods are now getting these electric cattle prods and the power to use them pretty much at will; and when police have tasers, they tend to use them.

They get to decide what’s an arrestable offence and consequently what resisting arrest is. There’s no such thing as ‘reasonable suspicion’ any more. They can even use them on children. What might have happened had these police had had tasers and had Darren Pollard, the videomaker, been less even-tempered?

An enormous amount of money has been made by the Taser corporation and the morally dubious cops that work hand in hand with it, selling torture instruments to US and British police, to sleepy rural police forces and riot squads alike. Remember the movie Hot Fuzz, where the sleepy Somerset vilage has an armoury the size of a small state? It’s not that big a joke.

The Police Federation, which represents junior ranks, has called for funding to supply a Taser to every British officer. Well, there’s a surprise.

I’ve written before about the connections between former NYPD chief Bernie Kerik, now charged with corruption, but less well-known are the ties between senior British police offioers and the sale of tasers.

There is a revolving door between UK and US government, civil service, police, defence and the arms industries. The profit-making corporations have merged with the political parties, the state and the apparatus of state security.

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini.

Well, this is what corporatism looks like, in the US and at home. What are we going to do about it?

[Edited April 2009 to add additional video, to fix links and for general grammar.]