posted on February 13, 2002 01:12:29 PM new
Have a neighbor who doesn't like you? Know any petty authoritatian types of people, the sort who scream at children in their officious position of crosswalk monitor, who given a uniform, a badge, or any sort of responsibility for overseeing the behaviors of others take it to heart and seem to immediately style themselves as some sort of supercop?
Men too short to be police officers and so become security guards; the junior auxiliaries to the Coast Guard, or junior auxilliary to nearly any sort of enforcement activity. You know he type - we all do.
Now the Orwellian dimensions of the resident’s "Freedom Corps" initiative go beyond the deceptive language in which it is presented. The "Citizen Corps" component of the Bush proposal has the potential to become an institutionalized surveillance network of the sort seen in Cuba, China, and other totalitarian societies.
According to the White House summary of the proposal, the organization would be built upon a network of local "Citizen Corps Councils" organized in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. With FEMA’s help the councils would coordinate medical, law enforcement, and emergency response efforts to deal with terrorism and other crises. Coordination of this sort is worthwhile, and it should be undertaken without federal intervention.
The White House also intends to use the Citizen Corps program to nationalize the Neighborhood Watch Program "to incorporate terrorism prevention into its mission." Another feature of the program would be Operation TIPS: Terrorist Information and Prevention System, which according to the White House "will be a nationwide mechanism for reporting suspicious activity…." Operation TIPS would begin with a pilot program in ten cities to enlist postal workers, employees of public utilities and transportation services as the "eyes and ears" of the Homeland Security system.
This certainly seems innocuous enough. Americans should report suspicious behavior to local police authorities. But the use of citizens as the "eyes and ears" of a central government has been a feature of Orwellian police states in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Communist Cuba, and Communist China. Each of those regimes used networks of civilian informants to keep so-called enemies of the state under surveillance.
Already there have been incidents in which Americans who criticized President Bush or various government policies have been questioned by federal agents. Three such cases were described in the January 8th Christian Science Monitor:
*Agents from the FBI and Secret Service were sent to Houston’s "Car Art Museum" after a tipster complained that the tiny gallery was involved in "anti-American activity." The complaint was provoked by an exhibit entitled "Secret Wars" that dealt with covert operations and government secrets.
*A.J. Brown, a college student in North Carolina, was questioned in her doorway by Secret Service agents and a local police officer for more than a half hour. They
were responding to a report that she had displayed "un-American material" in her dorm room – in this case a poster critical of President Bush’s stance on the death penalty.
*San Francisco resident Barry Reingold was also quizzed by two FBI agents on his front doorstep last October 23rd. The retired 60-year-old was amazed to discover that they were responding to a report that he had expressed views critical of President Bush during a workout at a local gym. "Some fellow weightlifters called Reingold a disloyal American," reported the Monitor. "One, apparently, called the government."
According to the paper, "The rise in doorstep inquiries reflects, in part, a new law-enforcement reality." It also reflects an increasing tendency on the part of Americans to equate principled criticism of government policies with disloyalty.
That tendency will almost certainly be encouraged by the President’s "Citizens Corps" proposal – which might be its entire purpose [MIGHT be?]. If that tendency infects a sufficiently large portion of our population, the "midnight knock" from the secret police may become a grim new "law enforcement reality" as well.
There's no doubt in my mind that significant numbers of people in this country will adopt this program as though it were a realization of their life purpose. Someone will listen to their gossip and and petty bigotry if they couch it in terms of a threat to the nation. False and unjustifiable reports will be filed by the ream-hundreds of thousands of them per day. And all the justification the government will need to take you away in the night will be "We had a report".
posted on February 13, 2002 01:36:21 PM new
That's very disturbing, KRS. Like I've been going on about in here, I was wondering exactly what form "Homeland Security" would take effect. That this Orwellian nightmare turns out to be the true form of the OHS says that we're all in BIG TROUBLE!
What the only stumbling blocks that are in the way of this totalitarian takeover stands the U.S. Constitution. Certainly, if someone reports your "unAmerican activities" when you criticize our government, you are allowed both Due Process AND the ability to confront your accuser! You watch: these two primary stumbling blocks are exactly the main targets of this new legislation that is removing our guaranteed rights and freedoms even as we speak! (along with the Right to Privacy)
I tell ya -- there'll be a Civil War here in the USA if he doesn't quit doing this crap. Everyone's not so blind as they'd like to hope that we are. Unfortunately, it'll be brother against brother again: those who fight for our freedom against those who are following their orders to take it away from us. That the real instigators will be so protected with their own elite private armies that no force could hope to get to them, justice will never ultimately prevail.
Borillar
"Friends don't let friends vote republican"
posted on February 13, 2002 02:28:07 PM new
Congress needs to wake up and see that The Office of Homeland Security is a covert agency designed to operate as a state political police force with power to suspend citizens legal rights.
This kind of unsupervised power is exactly what the framers of the Constitution were trying to avoid.
posted on February 13, 2002 02:52:23 PM new
Borillar,
All you need do is research into the McCarthy investigations to find that there are dozens of ways to circumvent the constitutional guarantees. Even without doing an end run around the constitution there are hundreds of ways by which they can virtually destroy a person, or any number of persons. A challenge takes so long now and costs so much that few would have remaining resources to reestablish what they'd lost. And the power of public censure is very great. Though many of the victims of the McCarthy era hearings or investigations were ultimately able to win out on principle most of them had been subjected to such levels of public and professional ostracism that they were never able to recover their previous lives.
A case in point, though there were hundreds less in the public eye is Sterling Hayden. Whatever the opinion of his acting, he was blackballed from hollywood and didn't get a role for some thirty years. He lost home, profession, marriage, and his relations with his children largely because of the McCarthy colorization he suffered and his reactions to it. Thousands of tenured professional teachers lost their jobs because their schools at whatever level would not chance being painted as sympathetic to them. The list is long, and it would be incredible if it were not true and documented.
The key is the unwillingness of most people to seem to be associated with any sort of 'evildoer' that the government defines, and the high cost of objection to such injustices. Most people will be interested only in preservation of their own wellbeing and won't take risks with it when the risks are so in evidence around them. They will see reporting on others as an avenue to their own safe maintenance.
posted on February 13, 2002 04:50:33 PM new
McCarthy's power to ruin and his equally unethical tactics were incredible to me until I started posting on this little chat board. I've learned a lot, here. What a sorry ass individual he was.
posted on February 13, 2002 05:17:07 PM new"Congress needs to wake up and see that The Office of Homeland Security is a covert agency designed to operate as a state political police force with power to suspend citizens legal rights."
Helen, all of Congres is aware of what is going on with the OHS. Those few in Congress who were leading the charge against its establishment ended up with Anthrax in the mail; or the scare that it would appear in their mail. How conveinient.
At any rate, it will take the citizens of this country to stand up and cry out, "NO MORE!" in order to get rid of it. Unfortunately, once established, history shows that it is almost impossible to ever completely get rid of it.
"This kind of unsupervised power is exactly what the framers of the Constitution were trying to avoid."
Damned straight they were! They *HATED* the tyranny of the British Governor and of the aristocracy in England even more. You only have to read the first few amendments to the U.S. Constituion to see how they hated it. I mean, the idea of housing military soldiers in your home - at your dear expense! Fighting that sort of invasion of your privacy and the injustice of a tortalitarian state are what Democracy is all about!
Borillar
"Friends don't let friends vote republican"
sp.
[ edited by Borillar on Feb 13, 2002 05:29 PM ]
posted on February 13, 2002 05:25:33 PM new
KRS, I am well aware of the travesty of the McCarthy Ear and its associated 'Trials.' I could only WISH that this were those wonderful times! What I mean by that, is that we are in for a whole lot worse than simple McCartyism (when I say simple, I mean by comparison.)
LET THERE BE NO MORE MISTAKING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A REPUBLICAN! THOSE WHO CLAIM TO BE REPUBLICANS SUPPORT THIS SYSTEM OF TYRANNY AND THE POLICE STATE STARING AT US AN INCH AWAY. REPUBLICANS WHO CLAIM TO -NOT- SUPPORT SUCH A SYSTEM, BUT VOTE FOR REPUBLICAN POLITICANS ARE EVERY BIT AS EVIL. IT'S TIME FOR TRUE REPUBLICANS TO DECIDE WHERE THEIR LOYALTIES REALLY LIE - WITH THE POLICE STATE OR WITH AMERICANS.
Borillar
"Friends don't let friends vote republican"
sp.
[ edited by Borillar on Feb 13, 2002 05:27 PM ]
posted on February 15, 2002 04:35:48 PM new
It's an amazement to me that so far, people can't put two and two together right and come out with an even number. That before this article appeared, anyone who was complaining that the Office of Homeland Security was instigated as the State Police with plenipotentiary powers to overturn, or rather, to walk over American Citizen's rights to free expression and free speech ended up being made out to be fringe lunatics and Wolf criers. Most want this "wait and see" kind of thing before they make up their minds. Ask the Jews that were in Germany in the 1930's what happened when they took the same attitude. Does it really have to happen to us that way before we act? Aren't these fascist programs enough to call a halt to the Bush Fascist Takeover of America? Will you just sit there and continuing rooting for your team, when the team no longer cares about you and what you want, but rather is spending all of their time fixing ways to shake you down and to put you down "into your place"? If you're going to wait for an eleventh-hour Hail Mary play to get you to the field goal, it'll be too late -- as it was for the Jews in Germany in the 1940's.
You heard it here first.
Borillar
[i]"Friends don't let friends vote republican"[/i
posted on February 15, 2002 09:12:51 PM new
Quit being so defeatist yes they are powerful
but al powerful I think not, one time is was being lectured by a furious judge who told me I was bordering on contempt, I told him that It was contempt that led a handful of lightly armed citizes to throw the tea of the richest corporation off the kings own ships, that it was contempt that led John paul jones to cry I have not yet begun to fight, that it was contempt that led an American Marine sargent newly arriving in France in world war one to after being told by a French Captian to run for your life the Germans are coming' the Marine said run Hell I just got here, that It was contempt for our enemies when parents stood against forced busing and that I was only acting like an American. So get with it and show some contempt your enemies, Robert E Lee years later said ''had I known what they intended to do then I would have died with my sword in my hand at appamattox, it's not the dying that's hard only takes a second it's the living and organizing a fight under occupation, where they can destroy you and everything you hold dear that's hard. But these soldiers they have are not all lon Horiuchi heartless murderers, they see the body of ron Brown with a bullet in the base of his skull from a plane crash, they see Bush building bases to protect enron's money, they eat and drink someof them tools and some of them waiting for day.
posted on February 15, 2002 09:16:05 PM new
Thakns, Helen,m I saw that on the news. There was a anti-American Supreme Court decision that stated that by being in public that you give up a certain amount of privacy. But that does NOT translate to a loss of privacy from government agencies spying upon you! This is just another way for them to officially squeeze out the Privacy clause in the Constitution -- all in the name of "secruity"!
Remember: Real security comes from having MORE Freedoms, not less!
Borillar
"Friends don't let friends vote republican"
