Entries Tagged 'police state' ↓

The point about the arrest Monday by a Cambridge Police sergeant of Harvard Distinguished Professor Henry “Skip” Gates is not that the police initially thought the celebrated  public intellectual, PBS host and MacArthur Award winner might have been a crook who had broken into Gates’ rented home.  Anyone capable of seeing a 58-year-old man with a cane accompanied by a man in a tux as a potential burglar might make the same mistake, given that a neighbor had allegedly called 911 to report seeing two black men she thought were breaking into the house.

But after Prof. Gates had shown the cops his faculty ID and his drivers’ license, and had thus verified his identity, and after he had explained that he had just returned home on a flight from China and had been getting help from his limo driver in opening a stuck door, the cops should have been extremely polite and apologetic for having suspected him and for having insisted on checking him out. Continue reading →

Imagine that one day in the not to distant future you answer a knock on your door and find that the Police are there to arrest you for a crime that you haven’t committed, but someone has identified you as having the potential to commit that crime some time in the future. Sounds like 1984 Science fiction doesn’t it. But what if it was actually happening right then and there? What would you do? More appropriately, would there be anything you could do? Or are you one of those who loudly state “That could never happen here?” Continue reading →

There is always some reason that they will try to convince you not to believe what you feel in your gut. They will try to bamboozle you
– Barack Obama

I admit I was swept up in the national euphoria of President Obama’s election. I really believed that something would be done about the economic crisis, our unjust “War on Terror”, and the creeping fascism these wars have engendered. But by now it should be clear that President Obama has no plans to change anything. Continue reading →

At least three US federal laws should concern all Americans and suggest what may be coming – mandatory vaccinations for hyped, non-existant threats, like H1N1 (Swine Flu). Vaccines and drugs like Tamiflu endanger human health but are hugely profitable to drug company manufacturers.

The Project BioShield Act of 2004 (S. 15) became law on July 21, 2004 “to provide protections and countermeasures against chemical, radiological, or nuclear agents that may be used in a terrorist attack against the United States by giving the National Institutes of Health contracting flexibility, infrastructure improvements, and expediting the scientific peer review process, and streamlining the Food and Drug Administration approval process of countermeasures.” Continue reading →

There’s always the possibility that the reason only five percent of people released from Guantanamo are “returning to terrorism” and only another nine percent are returning to the fight against American forces in their homelands is that they were the only ones who were actually terrorists and enemy fighters in the first place, and the other 86 percent of released detainees were just innocent people captured, detained, tortured and finally released. FULL ARTICLE

Media reform activists have drawn a line in the sand. Net Neutrality must be defended at all costs. Preserving a viable, independent, free and open Internet (and the media overall) is essential to a functioning democracy, but the forces aligned against it are formidable, daunting, relentless, and reprehensible. Some past challenges suggest future ones ahead. FULL ARTICLE

Featured Post for 05-/22-05/28:

“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it”

I recalled this statement while I was reading a very powerful look at the My Lai massacre that took place during the Vietnam War. The depravity of humanity gone mad is revealed in this account and one would think that we would never again commit such atrocities. But the powers that be convinced us that we should put it behind us and move on. And now it seems we have repeated the depravity again in Iraq.

Is it true that our future is shaped by what and how we react to events and realities of the present? Have we gone even deeper into depravity since My Lai? And if that is true, what did we not do that would have kept us from drifting into an open acceptance of torture and unjustified bloodletting today? If the future we get IS up to us, what failures of our past determine what we leave for our children today? Continue reading →

Featured Post for 05/08-05/14 I wrote this to Mr. Obama after reading the following article. I guess we’ve got to keep trying.

Red Cross Confirms Dozens Dead in Afghan Air Strikes

Mr. Obama,

I do not understand what is going on. When you inherited the White House, did you also inherit the bubble that your predecessor lived in?

You campaigned for change. We the People, after eight years of Cheney/Bush flouting the Constitution, causing a million or more deaths in their endless search for oil, thought we might have a new broom in Washington that would sweep these people into the dustbin of history and reverse the draconian laws that were put in effect. Continue reading →

Featured Post for 05/01-05/07
CommonDreams reports:

62 Americans, dressed in the orange jumpsuits and black hoods that have become the symbol of Guantanamo detainees, were arrested in front of the White House in a nonviolent demonstration this afternoon.

The First Amendment to the Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Continue reading →

Recent News reports that Obama says those who actually did the physical torture of detainees cannot be tried for their crimes because they were “just following orders.” On the other hand, “those who ordered the torture cannot be tried as they only ordered it – They did not physically participate in the torture.” Therefore no one can be tried for torture. This is a perfect case of Circular Logic.

And a Carbon Copy of the Nuremberg Defense used by Nazi Torturers. Which didn’t save them. Bush, Obama, Congress, Cheney, Political Parties, people, are you listening? Continue reading →