The 2016 elections: American democracy in shambles

Joseph Kishore, World Social­ist Web Site

Behind the whole rot­ten process, the fun­da­men­tal issues are cov­ered up or ignored. The real­i­ty of Amer­i­can “democ­ra­cy” can per­haps be summed up in the fact that, three weeks before Novem­ber 8, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has launched a mas­sive mil­i­tary esca­la­tion in the Mid­dle East, and there is no sig­nif­i­cant dis­cus­sion about the con­se­quences in an elec­tion that is sup­pos­ed­ly the prin­ci­pal means through which the pop­u­la­tion can affect policy.
The cri­sis of democ­ra­cy is a prod­uct of the decay of Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism, over­seen by a rul­ing class that is deter­mined to advance a pol­i­cy of war abroad and aus­ter­i­ty at home—a pol­i­cy that requires ever greater attacks on demo­c­ra­t­ic forms of rule. What­ev­er hap­pens on Novem­ber 8, it will resolve noth­ing, and only set the stage for a pro­tract­ed polit­i­cal cri­sis that can be resolved only through the inde­pen­dent inter­ven­tion of the work­ing class on the basis of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary social­ist program.

Police departments are thinking about using drones armed with stun guns

Busi­ness Insid­er, via WSJ

Police offi­cers could soon be adding a new weapon to their arse­nal: stun-gun drones.

The idea of police using drones equipped with stun guns to catch crim­i­nals isn’t all that far-fetched. Stun gun mak­er Taser Inter­na­tion­al has already approached some law enforce­ment offi­cials about poten­tial­ly using weaponized drones dur­ing encoun­ters with civil­ians, The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed Thursday.

“The idea for a com­mu­ni­ty to accept an unmanned vehi­cle that’s got some sort of weapon on it might be a hur­dle to over­come,” said Pete Simp­son, a spokesman for the Port­land police department.

Despite this, police use of robot­ic tech­nol­o­gy to deal with sus­pects is not with­out prece­dent. In July, the Dal­las Police Depart­ment used a robot out­fit­ted with explo­sives to kill a gun­man who had shot and killed five police offi­cers. It was the first time a robot was used by police to kill a suspect.

Prisoners across US on strike, demanding an end to free prison labor

Pris­on­ers in at least 20 pris­ons across 11 states have been on strike for near­ly three weeks, refus­ing to report to their prison jobs in what is like­ly the largest prison strike in U.S. history.

A group of inmates at Alabama’s Hol­man prison, the Free Alaba­ma Move­ment called the work stop­page with the stat­ed goal of end­ing prison slavery. 

Pris­on­ers on strike are call­ing for the repeal of an excep­tion list­ed in the 13th Amend­ment to the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion, which bans “invol­un­tary servi­tude” in addi­tion to slav­ery, “except as a pun­ish­ment for crime where­of the par­ty shall have been duly convicted.”

I’ll write more lat­er, but the links below will fill you in for now.

The Inter­cept

The Mar­shall Project – A Primer on the Nation­wide Pris­on­ers’ Strike

Buz­zfeed