Comments on the State of Our Democracy

[Guest guest]

Comments on the State of Our Democracy:

 

In understanding the treatment of the demonstrators

during the Republican Convention (see below Sept 22,

2004 Boise Weekly article, Little Guantanamo,

http://www.boiseweekly.com/comments.php?id=3885_0_1_0_C

) it helps to understand the definition of a

“terrorist” in the Patriot Act. It’s important to

recognize that this broad definition of “terrorism”,

any act which breaks federal or state law and

threatens to harm can be deemed a terrorist act. We

are not just speaking about foreign terrorists in the

traditional sense of the word. Recently a teenager

was charged and arrested as a “terrorist” for

threatening a school staff member at a high school

football game.

(http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/3778894/detail.html

Jackson Student Arraigned on Threat Charge).

 

The bottom line is that any expression of negative

emotion is viewed as potentially “dangerous.”

 

This reduction or supression of individual freedom

to complain, demand public input, or express

discontent of any kind spells an increase in

“security” and “control” for every aspect of our

government, and I believe that is why most

governmental workers are fully cooperating with the

control grid as it is lowered in place over us all.

Government workers view themselves as insiders and

part of the power structure that will benefit from

these increased controls and rules which restrict

opposition or criticism. They have forgotten that

they are government workers. As Thomas Jefferson

would say, the government is there to deliver the mail

and perform basic services.

 

The control grid I am referring to consists of a

governmental culture in which the workers are trained

to look for signs of a “potentially dangerous” member

of the public. This would especially be anyone who

expresses criticism for the system, anyone who insists

on redress of wrong (such as a mother loudly

protesting porn on a library computer her child just

walked past), anyone who shows negative emotions in

their mannerism (such as a protester who is being

shoved), anyone who refuses to back down and conform (

such as a customer who disagrees with toll roads being

put in and keeps protesting despite the city council

passing it against all opposition). The bottom line

is, obey what you are told or be isolated, one way or

another. The pinchers will come, if you want to

challenge Big Daddy.

 

The little ants working at the front lines file

reports or pass on complaints to sophisticated teams

of attorneys, whose job is to “defend” the government

at all costs. Consolidation of police, medical,

credit report info, and other personal information as

well as a proposed chip in the national id card which

will allow the card to be scanned from a distance of

200 feet will allow Officer Friendly to know a bit

about your before he makes his decision to act or not.

Key to these provisions has been a selective

enforcement, standing ready to be used when and if

needed to neutralize an offender. Tracking devices on

all cars will be phased in as well as a trend towards

national toll roads which would track each car’s

movement. VIP travelers and customers will submit to

background checks as well as thumb and retina scans,

possibly microchipping as well. Soon there will

literally be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide if Big

Daddy wants to disappear you. A system of secret

files could frame anyone the powers-that-be at any

given time want to frame. This is the trend which is

rapidly falling into place and which is addressed in

the bill as well.

 

A very sophisticated psychology is used where each

part of government is approached separately and asked

to get on board to a plan that will help with making

their workplace (bus, school, office, police car,

hospital) safer and to help stop “terrorists. “ Little

do they know that a “terrorist” could be—anyone who

bucks the systems or who says or does anything that

can be interpreted as a threat at the same time as

breaking a state or federal law.

 

Without seeing the bigger picture of a total control

grid being established, each small step might sound

reasonable, the end result will be a gradual system of

tightening controls which will force us all into

submission, or else.

 

House Bill HR 10 would set in place a control grid

where the movement and activities of each citizen

would be centralized and tracked. It is outlined

below. Depending on the government in power at any

given time, this system would efficiently remove any

opposition from the population, even allowing secret

executions! Family and neighbors would be forbidden to

disclose that a neighbor or family member had been

disappeared.

 

I know this all sound so bizarre and un-American that

it is hard to believe. The best source of information

on the subject of the current political state of

affairs that I have found is the group of websites:

http://www.prisonplanet.com,

http://www.prisonplanet.tv,

http://www.infowars.com,

http://www.propagandamatrix.com Alex Jones works long

days studying this legislation and the associated

press on the subject. Extensive audio/visual and

written documentation is archived here. Additionally,

he has a daily radio show over the Internet.

 

Why is this legislation being rushed through without

public comment or feedback?

 

To protest related upcoming legislation on the 911

Bill and the National ID databank, HR 10, go to

http://www.downsizedc.org for a link to your

congressperson. The vote is due tomorrow or Saturday

in the House.

 

 

Summary of proposed legislation. S.2845 has passed the

Senate Oct 6, 2004 and HR 10 is due to be voted on in

the House, possibly tomorrow. (Oct 8, 2004) (Taken

from earlier post:Civil Liberties in Grave Danger)

 

Some of the legislative measures and amendments,

particularly S. 2845, a

measure introduced in the Senate by Sen. Collins (ME)

and Sen. Lieberman

(CT), have been bi-partisan efforts, carefully drafted

to respond to the

commission's recommendations. Others, most

dramatically HR 10,

introduced by Speaker Hastert (IL) in the House, and

amendments to S.

2845 introduced by Sen. Kyl (AZ) in the Senate, do not

follow the 9/11

Commissionís recommendations about security and are

freighted with

provisions that diminish civil liberties protections.

Taken together,

these provisions include (but are not limited to):

establishment of a national ID card, disguised as

national

standardization of drivers licensing;

establishment of a national electronic database for

birth and death

certificates, with permanent identifying information

assigned to each

individual, such as a national ID number;

biometric identifiers including fingerprints, face

recognition

software photos, iris or retinal scans, and other

private physical

identification for travel documents which would be

used for security

in domestic air travel as well as overseas travel;

expanded secret eavesdropping and search powers to be

used against

individuals suspected of terrorist activity, whether

or not the

individual is associated with a foreign power;

further weakening of individual privacy rights in

library, medical, and

other personal records, removing all federal court

oversight;

enhanced " material support " provisions, allowing guilt

by association

with a group targeted by the administration; removal

of habeas

corpus relief for those detained under repressive

immigration measures;

approval of automatic detention without bail in

immigration matters at

the government’s request;

increased secrecy in immigration court matters;

approval of the use of secret evidence in immigration

courts secret

even to the immigrant being examined;

deportation of immigrants before final appeal;

allowing the death penalty in terrorism cases (with

" terrorism " as

defined in the USA PATRIOT Act);

explicit approval of transfer of prisoners suspected

of terrorism to

nations known to practice torture; and

failure to provide for a cross-agency civil liberties

board for

oversight and investigation of civil liberties

practices and procedures

in the executive branch of the federal government.

The message to Congress should be straightforward:

Legislation

responding to The 9/11 Commission Report must be

limited to the core

recommendations of the report. All extraneous law

enforcement and

immigration provisions must be stripped from any such

legislation prior

to final passage by the House and the Senate.

 

 

 

 

http://www.boiseweekly.com/comments.php?id=3885_0_1_0_C

Boise Weekly

Best of Boise

 

OPINION Sep 22, 04

 

 

Ted RALL: Little Guantánamo

 

 

During Republican Convention, marchers treated as

enemy combatants

NEW YORK—At first the enemy is foreign, alien,

incomprehensible: to post-9/11 America, a nation

founded by fundamentalist Calvinists, they were

Afghans, Iraqis, Muslims in general. We locked them

into places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay and we

threw away the key. Denied access to a lawyer, never

charged with a crime, their names and locations hidden

from family and the media, dismal treatment—including

torture—was inevitable.

In a classic step in the devolution from democracy to

police state, we’ve run out of foreigners to bomb and

imprison. Our rulers have been forced to look inward,

among the previously protected class of United States

passport holders, for new scapegoats. Like their

brethren at the naval base in Cuba, these Americans

are being deprived of their most basic human rights.

They are people who dare to pick up a sign and march

against such Bush Administration policies as the war

against Iraq.

Media accounts of massive protests against the

Republican National Convention—some 500,000 people,

ranging from leftists to pacifists to mainline

Democrats came to New York—focused on attacks on the

police and GOP delegates. “The most damaging act of

violence, in fact, appeared to occur against a police

officer, who was kicked as he lay on the ground,”

reported The New York Times. “In addition, there were

the demonstrators who consistently and at times

aggressively badgered delegates, telling them in

unprintable words that they ought to leave Manhattan

posthaste.”

Intentionally ignored and on a vast scale was the

shameful experience of marchers arrested by a brutal

NYPD between Friday, August 27 and Thursday, September

2.

Recognizing that political demonstrations are a fact

of life in New York, police and marchers used to work

together to ensure that peace prevailed. As a veteran

of such rallies during the Reagan years, I remember

shooting the breeze with cheerful cops between chants.

We even helped them move barriers. In the rare cases

when jittery police demanded that protesters clear a

street—typically when some official was about to

pass—they gave us every opportunity to leave. If you

got arrested, you were given a “desk appearance

ticket” and released on one’s personal recognizance

after a few hours.

Tensions escalated at the big anti-Iraq war

demonstration in March 2003. No doubt inspired by the

tough talk coming out of Washington, mounted police

reared their horses to menace marchers with trampling.

Cops ran through the streets pell-mell, arresting

shoppers and tourists who hadn’t been part of the

march. New metal barricades were used to bludgeon and

crush antiwar activists.

Beginning with a mass round-up of bicyclists

participating in their monthly Critical Mass ride to

encourage urban biking on the Friday before the

convention, New York police arrested anyone they could

get their hands on. They beat people who weren’t

resisting arrest, broke out their teeth, destroyed

their personal property and confined them

incommunicado under atrocious conditions for days at a

time, prompting a local judge to fine the city for

violating a New York rule that requires charging

suspects within 24 hours or releasing them.

“The conditions of my arrest were pretty appalling,”

says Maria Cincotta, a 26-year-old New York teacher

who was arrested on Tuesday night of convention week

near Union Square. “We were given no order to

disperse. Had I been asked to leave, I would have in a

second.” When Cincotta complained to police that her

plastic handcuffs were too tight—other arrestees’

hands turned blue—they replied with a boilerplate

“Sorry, we can’t do that.”

City officials converted a disused bus depot on the

Hudson River’s Pier 57 into what detainees nicknamed

“Little Guantánamo” for its outdoor setting and maze

of pens divided by chain-link fencing. Numerous arrest

victims reported being denied food and water or access

to an attorney or a phone. (“Sorry, I can’t do that,”

police said.) Children, some who happened to be

walking down the street when the cops arrested

everyone present, were locked up for several days.

Police refused to tell their frantic parents where

they were. Adding to the misery was a resinous layer

of gasoline and toxic cleansers coating the floor.

“Everybody was laying in filth,” said Cincotta.

“Nobody was sleeping. A lot of people were screaming

in agony.” The Times reports that “scores” of RNC

detainees contracted mysterious rashes and lesions.

Prisoners were shuttled between Pier 57 and the city’s

central holding jail in similarly dismal conditions.

Wendy Stefanelli, a 35-year-old TV hair stylist, spent

several hours locked in a hot bus—the weather was

humid with temperature in the high 80s—with a man

whose colostomy bag had burst. “He was throwing up all

over the back of the bus,” she said. “The entire bus

begged the officers present to please get medical

attention to this man. They completely ignored us.”

“My experience wasn’t nearly as bad as other folks’,”

says Jon Goldberg, 26, of Brooklyn. “There were people

roughed up who were not resisting arrest. I saw one

person with bruising on his head; he said a cop had

kneeled on his head. A lot of people had their cameras

destroyed. One had his photos deleted except for one,

a new image of a police officer’s boots and his hand

protruding toward the lens—showing ‘the finger.’”

Some police confirmed an illegal policy of

intentionally delaying the release of demonstrators

until the end of the RNC. “For disorderly conduct,

they don’t usually hold people,” said Goldberg. “There

was a deliberate attempt to get people off the

street.” Cincotta, the teacher, was ultimately

released more than 48 hours after her arrest. I asked

her what charge she faced. “I don’t know,” she said.

“I never got to see a lawyer.”

Few of these Americans broke any law. Many were

hapless pedestrians, not even part of a political

demonstration. Go ahead, call them whiners or hippies

or commies or whatever retro-Nixon-era moniker you

prefer. Turn the page or click the next URL. That’s

what your government wants you to do, because they’re

fresh out of Muslims to throw into prison. Someday

they’ll be fresh out of liberal demonstrators too.