Tag Archives: police state

The Evil of the Drug War, by Jacob G. Hornberger

Posted on October 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

The drug war has wreaked enormous damage on America. From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

With the exception of the U.S. national-security state and its foreign policy of empire and intervention and its torture, state-sponsored assassinations, coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, illegal and unconstitutional wars, mass secret surveillance, indefinite detention, secret prison camps, drug experimentation on unsuspecting people, denial of due process, denial of trial by jury, kangaroo military tribunals, and other dark-side practices, it would be difficult to find a better example of an evil and immoral program than the war on drugs.

Consider:

1. Everyone, including the most ardent drug-war proponent, agrees that this decades-long program has failed to achieve its goal, which is a drug-free society.

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2002 Landmarks on the Road to “1984” Orwellian Hell, by James Bovard

Posted on August 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

In the aftermath of 9/11, the US made its greatest pivot towards becoming a police state. From James Bovard at lewrockwell.com:

Next month will be the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Politicians and bureaucrats wasted no time after that carnage to unleash the Surveillance State on average Americans, treating every person like a terrorist suspect. Since the government failed to protect the public, Americans somehow forfeited their constitutional right to privacy. Despite heroic efforts by former NSA staffer Edward Snowden and a host of
activists and freedom fighters, the government continues ravaging American privacy.

Two of the largest leaps the largest leaps towards “1984” began in 2002. Though neither the Justice Department’s Operation TIPS nor the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program was brought to completion, parcels and precedents from each program have profoundly influenced subsequent federal policies.

In July 2002, the Justice Department unveiled plans for Operation TIPS — the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. According to the Justice Department website, TIPS would be “a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity.” TIPSters would be people who, “in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve as extra eyes and ears for law enforcement.” The feds aimed to recruit people in jobs that “make them uniquely well positioned to understand the ordinary course of business in the area they serve, and to identify things that are out of the ordinary.” Homeland Security director Tom Ridge said that observers in certain occupations “might pick up a break in the certain rhythm or pattern of a community.” The feds planned to enlist as many as 10 million people to watch other people’s “rhythms.”

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Law, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance

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The American Gulag: Brick by Brick, Our Prison Walls Get More Oppressive by the Days, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on August 28, 2019 | 1 comment

None dare call it a police state, but that’s where we’re heading, if we’re not already there. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea.”— Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History

This is how freedom dies.

This is how you condition a populace to life as prisoners in a police state: by brainwashing them into believing they are free so that they will march in lockstep with the state and be incapable of recognizing the prison walls that surround them.

Face the facts: we are no longer free.

We in the American Police State may enjoy the illusion of freedom, but that is all it is: an elaborate deception, rooted in denial and delusion, that hides the grasping, greedy, power-hungry, megalomaniacal force that lurks beneath the surface.

Brick by brick, the prison walls being erected around us by the government and its corporate partners-in-crime grow more oppressive and more pervasive by the day.

Brick by brick, we are finding there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Brick by brick, we are being walled in, locked down and locked up.

That’s the curious thing about walls: they not only keep those on the outside from getting in, they also keep those on the inside from getting out.

Consider, if you will, some of the “bricks” in the police state’s wall that serve to imprison the citizenry: Red flag gun laws that strip citizens of their rights based on the flimsiest of pretexts concocted by self-serving politicians. Overcriminalization resulting in jail time for nonviolent offenses such as feeding stray cats and buying foreign honey. Military training drills—showy exercises in armed intimidation—and live action “role playing” between soldiers and “freedom fighters” staged in small rural communities throughout the country. Profit-driven speed and red light cameras that do little for safety while padding the pockets of government agencies. Overt surveillance that turns citizens into suspects.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Law, Politics, Psychology, Surveillance

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The Rise of the American Gestapo: Has It Already Happened Here? John W. Whitehead

Posted on July 30, 2019 | 1 comment

John Whitehead’s title question is not at all far-fetched. From Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“Adolf Hitler is alive and well in the United States, and he is fast rising to power.”—Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, on the danger posed by the FBI to our civil liberties

Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at every turn, the question is not whether Donald Trump is the new Adolf Hitler but whether the American Police State is the new Third Reich.

For those who can view the present and past political landscape without partisan blinders, the warning signs are unmistakable: the Deep State’s love affair with totalitarianism began long ago.

Indeed, the U.S. government so admired the Nazi regime that following the second World War, it secretly recruited Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order, implemented his tactics in incremental steps, and began to lay the foundations for the rise of the Fourth Reich.

Sounds far-fetched? Read on. It’s all documented.

As historian Robert Gellately recounts, “After five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.” The Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police—the Gestapo.

The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the New York Times, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, History, Intelligence, Law, Military, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance

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The War On Truth, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on June 4, 2019 | 2 comments

Somebody has to fight the police state, and Paul Craig Roberts has tirelessly done so. From Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

“The ability of the owners of the political/media class to discredit and neutralize anyone who poses a threat to their interests simply by rearranging the narratives about them is one of the most destructive psychological weapons in their arsenal. The main reason it’s so hard to convince the public that they have been taken in by propaganda and smear campaigns is because for some stupid reason, one of the most shameful things anyone can do in our society is be fooled. If we are to overcome the narrative dominance of the powerful, it is essential that we find a way to shift that shame from those who have been fooled onto those who have been fooling them.”  — Caitlin Johnstone

Dear Readers:

This is my quarterly call for your donations.

This website originated on New Year’s Eve 2011.  I had enjoyed two months retirement before you called me back into action.  We are now well into the 8th year of my recall from retirement.

I am pleased that you called me back. The column is read by millions of people annually in many languages. The columns have resulted in three books translated into Russian, Chinese, Korean, Czech, Turkish, German, and French. They don’t make much money, but they help the world to wake up to the evil that has an iron grip on the Western World.  The endless wars based entirely on lies serving hidden agendas have destroyed the concept of the West as the hope of humanity.  The soft power behind which secret agendas operated is gone forever.

The brute open power is now checked by the military power of Russia, backed up by China.  The latest EU elections demonstrate that the European and British peoples have had all they can take of Washington and the EU’s destruction of countries based on ethnic nationality.  If Israel can be for Jews, then France can be for French, Germany for Germans, Britain for British, Italy for Italians, and, perhaps, America for Americans.  The Ziocon idea that all white countries, except Israel, are for everybody is failing in the European elections.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Law, Media, Surveillance, Technology, War

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Doug Casey on What Happens After the Next 9/11

Posted on March 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

We’re one big crisis or tragedy away from a full-on police state. From Doug Casey at caseyresearch.com:

Is a police state in the U.S. possible? Absolutely.

That’s because people are essentially the same the world over, regardless of their culture, religion, race, or what-have-you. A certain percentage of them are sociopaths.

There is a standard distribution of sociopaths across time and space. It’s a function of Pareto’s Law, better known as the 80-20 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Another 20% are responsible for 80% of the crime. 20% of the population always winds up with 80% of the wealth. And so forth, through all areas of human endeavor. This observation can be represented by a bell-shaped curve – a “standard distribution” – with a small minority at each extreme, but the large majority in the middle. The people who will take us to a police state are sociopaths – criminal personalities who don’t respect the liberty or property of others. And sociopaths gravitate towards government, and eventually come to control it.

My view is that 80% of human beings are basically decent, get along, go along types. 20% are what you might call potential trouble sources, that can go either way. But then you take 20% of that 20% and you’re dealing with the sociopaths.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance

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Break the Cycle: In 2019, Say No to the Government’s Cruelty, Brutality and Abuse, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on January 3, 2019 | 1 comment

The Founders are spinning in their graves. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”—Edmund Burke

Folks, it’s time to break the cycle.

Let’s make 2019 the year we say no to the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government for way too long.

Let’s make 2019 the year we stop living in a state of utter denial, desensitized to the government’s acts of violence, accustomed to reports of government corruption, and anesthetized to the sights and sounds of Corporate America marching in lockstep with the police state.

Let’s make 2019 the year we refuse to allow the government’s abusive behavior to be our new normal. There is nothing normal about egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, or pay-to-play politicians.

Here’s just a small sampling of what we suffered through in 2018.

The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

The president became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Debt, Economy, Foreign Policy, Government, History, Intelligence, Law, Media, Military, Morality, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance, Taxes, War

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Government Shutdown or Not, the Police State Will Continue to Flourish, by John Whitehead

Posted on December 26, 2018 | 2 comments

Tyranny never takes a day off, even when the government is shut down. From John Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men.”—Ludwig von Mises

The government has shut down again.

At least, parts of the government have temporarily shut down over President Trump’s demand for a $5 billion border wall.

Yet while these political games dominate news headlines, send the stock market into a nosedive, and put more than 800,000 federal employees at risk of having to work without pay, nothing about this government shutdown will diminish the immediate and very real dangers of the American Police State with its roadside strip searches, government surveillance, biometric databases, citizens being treated like terrorists, imprisonments for criticizing the government, national ID cards, SWAT team raids, censorship, forcible blood draws and DNA extractions, private prisons, weaponized drones, red light cameras, tasers, active shooter drills, police misconduct and government corruption.

Shutdown or not, war will continue. Drone killings will continue. Surveillance will continue. Censorship and persecution of anyone who criticizes the government will continue. The government’s efforts to label dissidents as extremists and terrorists will continue.

Police shootings will continue. Highway robbery meted out by government officials will continue. Corrupt government will continue. Profit-driven prisons will continue. And the militarization of the police will continue.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Privacy, Surveillance, Taxes, Technology, War

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Three (3) Reasons Why Elections Don’t Matter, by Doug “Uncola” Lynn

Posted on November 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

Doug “Uncola” Lynn examines the trends and forces that render elections irrelevant. From Lynn at theburningplatform.com:

In so many ways, elections in America have become just another manifestation of bread and circuses; like watching a reality TV show when your house is on fire.  It’s why this article was almost named:

“The Inevitableness of Reality Requires Honesty and Acceptance”

Of course, the 2018 Midterm Elections will be analyzed ad nauseam, with other writers and pundits parsing it better than this blogger.  However, suffice it to say:  There was no Blue Wave and Trump has now solidified leadership of his Republican Party; at least more so than during the last two years of his administration.

In a raucous press conference the day after, Trump claimed victory and said his party “defied history to expand our Senate majority”. The president also said his focus in the days prior to the election remained on the senate and pointed out that most of the candidates for whom he campaigned had won their respective races.

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Posted in Crime, Debt, Economics, Economy, Government, Morality, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance

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Has America Become a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy? by John W. Whitehead

Posted on October 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

Pull back the curtain on present-day America and you certainly don’t see the country our founding fathers had in mind. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”—They Live, John Carpenter

We’re living in two worlds, you and I.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released 30 years ago in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Government, Law, Military, Morality, Movies, Politics, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

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