America Is A Police State
MARTIAL LAW: THE ANTI-TERRORISM BILL
VIOLATED VIOLATOR: MR. BILL AND HIS RIGHT TO PRIVACY
Laughing along with Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect, you get the comfortable sense that-hey, we knew Bill Clinton was kind of a
libertine guy, an easy-going, hip liberal sort of fellow. And now this paragon of personal liberty is being attacked by a right wing
inquisitor. The reality is that Mr. Clinton has been our "right wing" inquisitor (right wing here meaning authoritarian), the man who
has--according to the ACLU--"crippled... the Bill of Rights."
Watching Mr. Bill whine on national TV about his right to privacy and justice was a moment of high irony for those few of us who
have been reading the fine print. Tell it to a few million medical marijuana users, Bill. And don't forget to use encryption!
Let's have a look at the record, shall we?
While Bill was enjoying phone sex with Monica, he could have been vulnerable to victimization by his own attempts to radically
expand the FBI's wiretapping authority in several bills.
In collaboration with the FBI, El Presidente pushed for a plan that requires the phone companies to reformat their new digital
technology to allow government agents to wiretap with great ease. The ACLU said the plan was "similar to requiring homes and
offices to have microphones built into the walls which the government can turn on. The FBI would require that companies enable
government agents to eavesdrop on at least 1 in every 100 lines in use in major U.S. cities and other targeted areas-a capacity
believed greater than the KGB ever commanded in Soviet Russia."
Clinton also asked Congress to pass legislation that would give the Federal Bureau of Investigation the power to use "roving
wiretaps" without a court Order -- in other words making warrantless wiretaps the rule rather than the exception. The legislation was
appended to an intelligence authorization bill and passed during the week of October 5, 1998.
Even without this legislation, federal agents have set themselves a proud record for the most wiretaps ever placed in one year for
"intelligence" purposes without establishing probable cause of crime.
I don't suppose Bill had encrypted cybersex with Monica, but that's not because of the success of any of the silly schemes against
the encryption of online communications unsuccessfully attempted by his administration. After failing to impose the "Clipper chip,"
which would have required any encryption device to have a backdoor giving government agents convenient unannounced access for
eavesdropping, they tried "Clipper II." In this scheme, anyone using encryption would have to give the government the key so that
they could read your mail without you noticing. While both these schemes failed to gain political traction, and encryption policy has
improved somewhat under the watch of Clinton's new Internet advisor, Ira Magaziner (the man who made a hash of universal health
care), the administration still wants easy government access to your email.
Of course, when you can't pass legislation, you can always due maximum damage via executive order. As you may recall, the
American Revolution was fought largely over warrantless searches by British enforcers. In the name of national security, Clinton's
Executive Order 12949 authorized physical "foreign intelligence" searches of homes and other places without a court order and
without probable cause. In essence, there now needs be no evidence of criminal wrongdoing for law enforcement organizations to
ransack your home. And since everybody's talking about Watergate, it's worth noting that under Executive Order 12949, Tricky
Dicky's minions might have gotten away with searching McGovern headquarters. They certainly would have been able to excuse
their third-rate burglaries against that threat to national security, Daniel Ellsberg. Of course, the mainstream American press would
probably be too chickenshit now to publish The Pentagon Papers anyway, since they were illegally o!btained (see Chiquita Banana).
The secret police are out there. It's known that several warrantless searches have already occurred under Janet Reno's watch,
although the numbers and specifics are clandestine, known only to certain White House and Justice Department officials.
The Clinton Administration has also instituted a plan in which public housing tenants have to sign leases that allow government
agents to randomly search their homes.
The Clinton Administration has defended warrantless "suspicionless" drug testing in the public schools and endorsed the idea that
welfare recipients should be subject to random warrantless, suspicionless drug tests.
The Clinton administration has, of course, continued funding and support for the War On Some Drugs, violating not only the privacy
of people's bedrooms but their brains. The rights violations that have resulted from the drug war are so vast, and its impact so
devastating,that I don't have the space or time to begin to do them justice here.
MARTIAL LAW: THE ANTI-TERRORISM BILL
They got the wrong guy? Been unjustly imprisoned? Clinton wants to keep you in jail anyway! Remember freedom of association,
even with people other than Monica Lewinsky? Forget it!
Martial Law was declared, quietly, on April 24, 1996 when our horny president signed the Anti-Terrorism Bill. In the straight-forward
and heartbreaking words of the ACLU, " With the stroke of a pen, President Clinton today crippled the century-old authority of the
federal courts to enforce the Bill of Rights." Please let that sink in.
The Secretary of State can now label any foreign-based organization he or she pleases as "terrorist." There is no legal recourse for
removing the assignation. Banks are authorized to freeze assets of American citizens and organizations suspected of being agents
of one of these declared terrorist groups. Again, there is no legal recourse to challenge such an act. Law enforcement can also now
easily investigate individuals suspected of terrorism based on activities protected by the First Amendment.
The bill also guts prisoners' right to habeas corpus. Prisoners can no longer challenge the constitutionality of state court
convictions, since this law requires federal courts to defer to state court interpretations of constitutional issues, even when the state
is wrong. The bill also prevents consideration of innocence unless they are "backed by clear and convincing evidence," something
nearly unattainable by current legal standards. In other words, let's show how tough on crime we are by keeping innocent people in
jail too!
The bill also denies undocumented aliens, including those seeking political asylum, the right to challenge deportation. If the
government declares that an alien is suspected of association with "terrorist groups," then they can use secret evidence that need
not be disclosed to the suspect. In other words, the government need not even prove that the person is, in fact, in any way
associated with a "terrorist" organization. After all, how would you know whether they've proved it or not.
If that isn't enough, there's also been:
Several cases of the Clinton Administration intervening in the judicial process against the constitutional rights of the accused.
Limits placed on anti-abortion protesters that would have had us screaming
fascist pig
had they been tried against the anti-war and civil rights movements
"Overenthusiastic" gun law enforcement. However you feel about the second amendment's protection of citizens' rights to
unlicensed access to the varieties of modern armaments, the Clinton Administration's anti-gun zeal has unleashed the fury of the
BATF, most memorably in the slaughter in Waco Texas.
Dress codes that would have made Chairman Mao smile. I doubt if Clinton, in his youth, would have sat still for mandatory school
uniforms, but we understand that new uniforms will come pre-cum-stained to symbolize Mr. Clinton's commitment to youthful
abstinence.
AMERICA IS A POLICE STATE
Now it can now be told. As most non-white people in America know, and many of the rest of us suspected, in the wake of the war
on crime and drugs America has become a police state. In the politicians' and citizens' zeal to end crime, they have unleashed a
new criminal element. This element has murdered, tortured, and abused thousands, if not millions, of American citizens - many of
them innocent. And they've gotten away with it. These police officers, prison guards, immigration officials, DEA agents, and other
enforcement agents have more-or-less had carte blanche to do what they will. Recourse to sadism is not surprising when you give
some human beings that much power over others, particularly the type of human being who is attracted to the power of being an
"enforcer."
THE AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE USA: GREATEST HITS
A few weeks ago (October, 1998), Amnesty International released a devastating report on Human Rights violations in a persistent
and widespread pattern of human rights violations in the USA. As a nation state worthy of being singled out by Amnesty for such a
report, America joins such vacation dreamlands as Haiti and Guatemala. Here are a few items from the report:
(There is) persistent and widespread violation of the rights to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment... and
the right to freedom from arbitrary detention
Across the USA, people have been beaten, kicked, punched, choked, and shot by police officers, even when they pose no threat.
In prisons, women and men are subjected to sexual, as well as physical abuse... isolating prisoners for long periods... using
chemical and electro-shock methods of restraint that are cruel, degrading, and sometimes life-threatening. Victims include pregnant
women, the mentally ill and even children.
As if they were criminals, many asylum-seekers are placed behind bars when they arrive in the country. Some are held in
shackles. They are detained indefinitely in conditions that are sometimes inhuman and degrading.
Police officers have beaten and shot unresisting suspects; they have misused batons, chemical sprays and electro-shock
weapons; they have injured or killed people by placing them in dangerous restraint holds.
Most law enforcement agencies maintain that abuses, when they occur, are isolated incidents. However, in the past eight years
independent inquiries have uncovered systematic abuses in some of the country's largest city police departments, revealing a
serious nationwide problem.
In prison, guards are subjecting their victims to beatings and sexual abuse. The victims of abuse include pregnant women and the
mentally ill.
The Justice Department and others have documented appalling conditions in dozens of jails: overflowing toilets and pipes; toxic
and unsanitary environments; prisoners forced to sleep on filthy floors without mattresses; cells infested with vermin and lacking
ventilation
While successive US governments have used international human rights standards as a yardstick by which to judge other
countries, they have not consistently applied those same standards at home. In some areas international standards offer greater
human rights protection than US domestic law, but the US authorities have refused to recognize the primacy of international law.
The USA has been slow to agree to be bound by important international and regional human rights treaties: it is one of only two
countries which have failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. (The other is Somalia.)
The report goes on to delineate specific as well as general systemic abuses by police, prison guards, and immigration officials,
American hypocrisy on human rights issues, and the creation in the United States of weapons of torture and death that are used
internationally by other abusive regimes, as well as by our own.
This devastating report, which flies in the face of America's official rhetoric and self-image, should have knocked George Clinton vs.
Ringo Starr off of the front pages. But widespread torture, false imprisonment, racist cops running on a rampage, are apparently of
little import to the mainstream media. I've yet to see a columnist even deal with it.
The rape and torture of prisoners in America is the source of much late night humor. On The Daily Show (which I generally like) on
Comedy Central, a clip of a large imprisoned black man jerking around and spasming around on a prison floor while guards tested
an electronic shock device ran without comment to great guffaws from the audience. Prisoners... criminals... are dehumanized,
providing a convenient outlet for all of the aggression and sadism current in America. The media-- newspapers and particularly TV
shows--contribute to this dehumanization by featuring the most depraved crimes and criminals, both in non-fiction and in fiction. In
keeping Americans focused on the likes of Richard Allen Davis and Charles Ng, a mentality is created that justifies all these
abuses. However, if most Americans were to review the situation case by case, they would probably feel that many if not most of
these people don't belong in prison at all. About half of them are in for drug rel!ated offenses. Some are in because of drug crimes
committed by distant family members!!!
But you don't even have to have a naughty family member to fall victim to the police state. Consider this: as reported by Robert
Anton Wilson in Everything Is Under Control: "In January 1989, the Minneapolis police smashed down the floor of the home of an
elderly black couple, using "flash bang" grenades, which accidentally set the house on fire and killed both old people. The cops
were looking for drugs, but never found any. The chief of police justified the murders of two innocent citizens by saying, "This is
war."
TRUE JUSTICE: A MODEST PROPOSAL
America is a police state. Most Americans like it that way, so long as they--or somebody close to them--don't fall victim to its
caprice. People fear crime and politicians have fed that fear unto frenzy, until the point where freedom is naught but a rhetorical
device.
The Revolution(r) would like to suggest that we get tough on crime. First of all, we would get tough by punishing only crimes for
which there are victims. That will give us lots of focused toughness. We would punish crimes of violence with greater severity than
crimes of property. We would punish crimes of the privileged -- the dumping of toxins that leave entire communities to cope with
cancer and other illnesses, Savings and Loans scams, and insurance and bank policies that clearly constitute usury -- more
severely than the crimes of the destitute. And we would punish the crimes of the institutionally those of the powerless. To that end,
we would have the Justice Department put several billion dollars towards making an example of 10,000 power abusers, putting them
into a prison system far kinder (and less crowded) then the one they have presided over. From government officials to DEA agents
to police officers to prison officials, let the word go out: if you have been a!busing your power, if you have been ransacking the
homes of innocents, if you have been dropping bombs in foreign lands, if you've been shooting black men down in the street for
traffic violations, your time is gonna come. And Mr. Clinton and Mr. Starr, adjoining cells await you.
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