---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 10:05:32 -0500
From: Bruce B. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Police State Is Here [with media's blessing]
As I understand it, the author of this article is a "liberal's
liberal." In reading this article, however, I believe he sounds
like a Libertarian. In any event, I'm glad to see that, pretty
much across the whole political spectrum, acknowledgment exists
that this country is in deep trouble. It appears that we are now
in some sort of tin-horn banana republic dictatorship.
BB
************************
CommentMax
Police State Is Here
Alexander Cockburn
May 3, 2000
Maybe Elian Gonzalez will have achieved a miracle after all,
alerting mainstream America to the fact that the Bill of Rights
have disappeared, restrictions on the role of the military in
domestic affairs have been thrown overboard, and all the
appurtenances of a police state are in place. Twenty-five years
after the war ended in Vietnam, we see what happened when that
war came home. We lost abroad. And at home, we've lost, too.
For blacks and Hispanics, the reactions to that famous photograph
of the Elian snatch by the INS team have been comic in a macabre
sort of way. After all, they've been putting up with these
no-knock forcible entries by heavily armed cops or INS agents for
decades. On the religious right, fears about the onrush of
tyranny hardened into certainty back at the time of Waco, in the
dawn of the Clinton era.
The week before the Elian raid, the left saw the state in action
against their demonstrations in Washington, D.C., against the
World Bank and WTO.
Here's how Sam Smith, longtime Washington reporter and editor of
The Progressive Review, evoked the events unfolding in the
capital: "Illegal sweep arrests. Print shops intimidated into
closing by police. Universities canceling public forums under
pressure from officials. Homes of opposition leaders broken into
and ransacked. Headquarters of the opposition raided and closed
by police. These were the sort of things by which we defined the
evil of the old Soviet Union. And now, they have become
characteristics of the federal government's handling of the
current protests."
It should be added that in Washington, the treatment of arrested
people (some of them delegates swept up in the cop rampage) makes
for hair-raising reading, with random beatings, denials of food
and water for 24 hours, racial abuse, threats of rape and
refusals to allow consultations with attorneys. As in the 1960s,
white, middle-class demonstrators (and their parents) are
learning what happens to poor people all the time.
There's no sign that mainstream politicians were a whit perturbed
by police conduct in Seattle or Washington, D.C. The picture of
the Elian snatch did elicit some reaction. Illinois Rep. and
House Speaker Dennis Hastert proclaimed sternly that "our
government has invaded the home of American citizens, who deserve
the protection of our laws and a certain respect for their
rights."
Will Congress take a serious look at the rise and rise of our
jackboot state? On the evidence of the last 30 years, no. Both
parties have eagerly conjoined in militarizing the police,
extending police powers and carving away basic rights. Very
often, the Democrats have been worse. It was Republican Rep.
Henry Hyde of Illinois who led the recent and partially
successful charge against asset seizure. It was Democratic Sen.
Charles Schumer of New York who was the factotum of the U.S.
Justice Department in trying to head off Hyde and his coalition.
The rise of the jackboot state has marched in lock step with the
insane and ineffective "War on Drugs," and this has been a
bipartisan affair. Its consequences are etched into the fabric of
our lives. Just think of drug testing, now a virtually mandatory
condition of employment, even though it's an outrageous violation
of personal sovereignty, as well as being thoroughly unreliable.
In the era when America has been led by two self-confessed pot
smokers - Clinton and Gore - the number of people held for drug
crimes in federal prisons has increased by 64 percent.
No-knock raids - a prime feature of any police state - are
becoming more common as federal, state and local politicians and
law-enforcement agencies decide that the War on Drugs justifies
dumping the Fourth Amendment. Even in states where search
warrants require a knock on the door before entry, police
routinely flout the requirement.
The Posse Comitatus Act forbidding military involvement in
domestic law enforcement is rapidly becoming as dead as the
Fourth Amendment. Because of drug-war exceptions created in the
Posse Comitatus Act, every region of the United States now has a
Joint Task Force staff in charge of coordinating military
involvement in domestic law enforcement.
In many cases, street deployment of paramilitary units is funded
by "community policing" grants from the federal government. The
majority of police departments use their paramilitary units to
serve "dynamic entry" search warrants. The SWAT team in Chapel
Hill, N.C., conducted a large-scale crack raid of an entire block
in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. The raid,
termed "Operation Redi-Rock," resulted in the detention and
search of up to 100 people, all of whom were African Americans.
(Whites were allowed to leave the area.) No one was ever
prosecuted for a crime.
There are signs of popular unrest and mutiny. The ACLU and the
National Rifle Association have jointly called for President
Clinton to appoint a commission to investigate lawlessness in law
enforcement. States with democratic processes such as ballot
initiatives have seen brave efforts to curb the war on drugs.
California has a medical marijuana law, and Hawaii's legislature
just passed one. Oregon and Arizona have also moved to
decriminalize personal use. The feds' reaction has been to attack
these states by threatening to withold highway funds, the usual
mode of persuasion.
Let's see what those legislators indignant about the INS
snatching of Elian do next. Right now, the swelling police state
is an expression of the War on Drugs. No politician who does not
call for a cease-fire and a rollback in that cruel, futile war -
our domestic Vietnam - has any standing to bewail the loss of our
freedoms.
COPYRIGHT 2000 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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