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Is The US a Police State? (Read 1799 times)
Brendon
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Is The US a Police State?
Feb 13th, 2010 at 12:42am
 
Anyone Could be Next

The U.S. is Now a Police State

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as “the 760 most dangerous men on earth,” there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children were with her at the time she was abducted, one an eight-month old baby. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach resulting in her near death.

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.

Wikipedia has this to say about the trial: “The trial took an unusual turn when an FBI official asserted that the fingerprints taken from the rifle, which was purportedly used by Aafia to shoot at the U.S. interrogators, did not match hers.”

An ignorant and bigoted American jury convicted her for being a Muslim. This is the kind of “justice” that always results when the state hypes fear and demonizes a group.

The people who should have been on trial are the people who abducted her, disappeared her young children, shipped her across international borders, violated her civil liberties, tortured her apparently for the fun of it, raped her, and attempted to murder her with two gunshots to her stomach. Instead, the victim was put on trial and convicted.

This is the unmistakable hallmark of a police state. And this victim is an American citizen.

Anyone can be next. Indeed, on February 3 Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee that it was now “defined policy” that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of someone in the government’s judgment that an American is a threat. No arrest, no trial, no conviction, just execution on suspicion of being a threat.

This shows how far the police state has advanced. A presidential appointee in the Obama administration tells an important committee of Congress that the executive branch has decided that it can murder American citizens abroad if it thinks they are a threat.

I can hear readers saying the government might as well kill Americans abroad as it kills them at home--Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Black Panthers.

(next page...)

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Brendon
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #1 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 12:44am
 
(...cont)

Yes, the U.S. government has murdered its citizens, but Dennis Blair’s “defined policy” is a bold new development. The government, of course, denies that it intended to kill the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver’s wife and child, or the Black Panthers. The government says that Waco was a terrible tragedy, an unintended result brought on by the Branch Davidians themselves. The government says that Ruby Ridge was Randy Weaver’s fault for not appearing in court on a day that had been miscommunicated to him, The Black Panthers, the government says, were dangerous criminals who insisted on a shoot-out.

In no previous death of a U.S. citizen by the hands of the U.S. government has the government claimed the right to kill Americans without arrest, trial, and conviction of a capital crime.

In contrast, Dennis Blair has told the U.S. Congress that the executive branch has assumed the right to murder Americans who it deems a “threat.”

What defines “threat”? Who will make the decision? What it means is that the government will murder whomever it chooses.

There is no more complete or compelling evidence of a police state than the government announcing that it will murder its own citizens if it views them as a “threat.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that “the war on terror” to make us safe ends in a police state with the government declaring the right to murder American citizens who it regards as a threat.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02102010.html
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Soren
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #2 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 9:08am
 
Brendon wrote on Feb 13th, 2010 at 12:42am:
Anyone Could be Next




Anyone?? She isn't exactly 'anyone'.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/24/aafia-siddiqui-al-qaida



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Annie Anthrax
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #3 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 12:20pm
 
America isn't a police state. Yet.
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #4 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 3:17pm
 
Dr. Aafia Sidduiqi is an innocent Pakistani woman who was kidnapped along with her children and has been held in U.S dungeons (black sites) in Afghanistan for about 5 years now. She has reported being repeatedly raped, tortured and there's also speculation one of her children was tortured to death in front of her.

She was finally charged with attempted murder, after soldiers shot her and then transported to the U.S at which time the U.S finally admitted she in their custody.

She is an example of how the U.S has become the worst terrorist state in existence. May her justice be exacted promptly!!!
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #5 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 3:28pm
 
What is the point of it all then? Why would the US waste its efforts on an ordinary neurosurgeon?

Most significantly, why would they bother putting her on trial, in front of a jury, in the US? Why not just shoot her in the back of the head somewhere in the Hindu Kush and be done with it? Why risk the bad publicity?






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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #6 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 4:08pm
 
Annie Anthrax wrote on Feb 13th, 2010 at 12:20pm:
America isn't a police state. Yet.

Depends on what part of the States you're referring to.

Apparently the policing of the border between the US and Mexico has made policing a major part of the economy of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and this is reflected in the attitude of the citizens of those states towards law and order.

South of the border in cities like Juarez, Mexico, narco-crime is so established, powerful and flush with cash that its drives the economy such that it has spawned a diabolical symbiosis between itself and the US policing economy of the southern states.
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #7 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 5:17pm
 
Helian, the policing of borders is to keep the Mexicans out, isn't it? That's very different from a police state in itself, especially in the context that the author of that article is using. The right to free speech is typically one of the first things to go in a police state, and I can't see a US government daring to infringe on such a fundamental part of the constitution.

Abu, I'm not so sure she's innocent. Her sister refuses to let Aafia's son (who was apparently with her during those 5 years that she was allegedly imprisoned) speak to the press, even though his version of events could have had a great impact on his mothers trial if her story is true.

On the other hand, to look at the before and after pictures of Aafia, and on observing her mental state during the trial compared with before it, maybe she was tortured for those 5 years. She's undergone a huge physical and mental transformation. I seriously don't know what to believe in her case.

Soren, maybe they thought she had done something wrong. Her ex husband has made a lot of nasty accusations against her.
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #8 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 6:32pm
 
Annie Anthrax wrote on Feb 13th, 2010 at 5:17pm:
Helian, the policing of borders is to keep the Mexicans out, isn't it? That's very different from a police state in itself, especially in the context that the author of that article is using. The right to free speech is typically one of the first things to go in a police state, and I can't see a US government daring to infringe on such a fundamental part of the constitution.

And to deal with a tidal wave of US based narco-crime and other related crime that has flourished in the states bordering Mexico.

The existence of a massive policing economy concentrated in those areas of the US has a dramatic effect on policing of those states' US residents and the mindset of those residents.

Constitutional rights have been violated to a significant degree by the Patriot Act, including freedom from unreasonable searches, the right to a speedy and public trial, the right to free association, the right to legal representation and confidentiality, the right to free speech, the right to liberty.

Growing Presidential power has also been eroding civil rights and openness in government for decades.
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #9 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 6:44pm
 
Arizona is a desert. Any industry that exists is going to be a major part of the local economy. Which means people smuggling and policing.
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #10 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 8:17pm
 
I love that show Cops.

And yes, it does present America as a police state.

With almost 1% of its population incarcerated, and a huge prison industry built up to accommodate this, it must be. More prisons, more prisoners. More prisoners, more prisons. And on it goes.
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #11 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 9:26pm
 
Quote:
Abu, I'm not so sure she's innocent. Her sister refuses to let Aafia's son (who was apparently with her during those 5 years that she was allegedly imprisoned) speak to the press, even though his version of events could have had a great impact on his mothers trial if her story is true.


The entire family is under a gag order by the Pakistani government. That was the condition under which he was released. and it's quite obvious why. If they talk about what happened, then it will not be pretty for the U.S.

Quote:
After the guilty verdict against Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman charged with attempted murder in the U.S, was announced, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, her attorney, told reporters outside the Federal Court House in New York Wednesday that government of Pakistan had put a gag order on Dr. Siddiqui’s family as a pre-condition to release her son, Ahmed.
(draafia.org)
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #12 - Feb 13th, 2010 at 9:34pm
 
Abu, Aafia's sister who is raising her son had no problem talking with a journalist from the Guardian. It was only when a request was made to talk to the son that the sister shut down. There may be a gag order on the child, but there certainly isn't one on the rest of the family.
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #13 - Feb 14th, 2010 at 8:06am
 
Soren wrote on Feb 13th, 2010 at 3:28pm:
What is the point of it all then? Why would the US waste its efforts on an ordinary neurosurgeon?

Most significantly, why would they bother putting her on trial, in front of jury, in the US? Why not just shoot her in the back of the head somewhere in the Hindu Kush and be done with it? Why risk the bad publicity?


To tie up loose ends. To try and stop accusations being made in Pakistan. There was accusations that a woman was held at Bragram and that she had been tortured. A victim of Bragram, who was wrongly arrested and finally realeased told of this. A British journalist who also reported it. The US ambassador in Pakistan is on record as denying this priior to her "capture". Alledgedly she was caught with her son and a purse containing maps of New York, and intstructions on how to make weapons, etc. One wonders how she managed to stay on the run for so long being that careless.

Why was she not just killed? The US system isn't some monolithic entity bent on evil with a bald guy with a bald cat on his lap giving out orders. Maybe her situation was discovered and stopped by certain depatments in the US government. But what has transpired is a messy compromise outcome that removes her from Bagram. The New York Judge ordered her not to speak about her whereabouts prior to 2008. That got you thinking?


How else to you explain that she was never charged with terrorist activities?

The Pakistan police were doing sweeps of Pakistanis with American connections back in 2003. Her estranged husband was also detained. At the time she "disappeared" she had 3 children with her, the youngest being 8 months. Two of her children are missing, presumed dead. Her estranged husband has made all sorts of accusations against her. They are fantastic. See what a little waterboarding can get you?

Pakistan authorities have already said she was arrested back in 2003. Her sister says she was detained back in 2003.

American authorities claim that while she was heavily pregnant, she was off organizing financial transactions for Al Qaeda, the most misogynist of organizations. There is a press release that says her uncle says she turned up on her doorstep looking for the Taliban. Huh? This is the same woman who was dubbed Ms Al Qaeda. Once again, fantastic.

She overpowers a soldier in an interrogation room, and fires two rounds. In the interrogation room at the time are 8 soldiers (witnesses), and one or two interrogators. How the hell could she miss everyone, even with her eyes shut? How does such a weak looking frail woman with no known history of weapons handling get the gun in the first place?

The only evidence she married the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was given under "interrogation" at Bagram. Spanish Inquisition anyone?

The stories are too fantastic to believe. This is a test for the American people. If they swallow this, then there is no reason to have a police state. No police state has ever been set up for sheep.


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« Last Edit: Feb 14th, 2010 at 8:13am by Brendon »  
 
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Re: Is The US a Police State?
Reply #14 - Feb 14th, 2010 at 8:51am
 
Brendon wrote on Feb 14th, 2010 at 8:06am:
The stories are too fantastic to believe. This is a test for the American people. If they swallow this, then there is no reason to have a police state. No police state has ever been set up for sheep.

Of course they'll believe it. As every political primate from Julius Caesar to George W Bush understands, terrify the people and they'll surrender anything unto Caesar, including their freedoms and rights, for safety and an assurance that they're not going to suffer or be killed at the hands of the enemy.
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