During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.
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“When you explain that you’re preparing for something that may never happen, they get it,” said Capt. Tiger Parsons of the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Office in northwest Missouri, which recently received a mine-resistant truck.
Pentagon data suggest how the police are arming themselves for such worst-case scenarios. Since 2006, the police in six states have received magazines that carry 100 rounds of M-16 ammunition, allowing officers to fire continuously for three times longer than normal. Twenty-two states obtained equipment to detect buried land mines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html
The Secular Jurist 
The contemporary armories — just like the days of old when the unionizers were the enemy — now, the enemy is comprised of people and groups that resist corporate domination and environmental destruction.
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No doubt, although there might be a little more to it than that. Robert Marston Fanney’s book Growth Shock provides a look into a dystopian future which governments around the world may be already planning for. Scary stuff.
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Good point, Robert. I have actually seen plausible evidence on a variety of blogs about government plans for anyone who challenges the existing order. And the prison sentences handed out to peaceful protesters is another telling sign that the future plan is not focused on increasing citizen rights and freedoms.
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Use of authority to scare people into submission. But I always remember the Stanford Prison Studies, where batons, helmets, anonymity and tools of intimidation created such violence the experiment had to be closed down. Normal people do terrible things when the situation calls for brutality. What are they preparing for?
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A catastrophic collapse, or at least a drastic reconfiguration, of human civilization has been seriously studied and forecast for later this century (assuming the current socioeconomic status quo). This prospect has been deemed a severe national security threat by the U.S. government. The problem is simple. We are over-consuming natural resources and damaging the environment at an increasingly rapid pace. The biosphere will degrade to the point where it will be unable to support a large human population. Then comes the crash…
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