" The Smell of the Weimar 
  Republic is in the Air " 
-Gore Vidal 
 
1996 Speech at the National Press Club
 
 

POLICE STATE: Can't happen in America, right? 
No this can't happen in America, right? Rhetorical question. -Michael

Military Police asked in the TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) Q&A Forum

 In the March 1999 issue of Soldier of Fortune, there's an excellent overview of the merging and blurring of function between military and police in the US, which will apparently lead inexorably to a police state. Perhaps not news to this NG's regular readers, but worth perusing for discussion. Many of the developments noted are precise fulfillment's of Jacques Ellul's prophecies of about future technology state, from the 1950's. Some quotes below the line.
-RC

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) admits that it is no longer capable of protecting Americans from incoming nuclear missiles. Yet NORAD enjoys hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding, as part of a $1.8 billion systems upgrade, having convinced congress to assign NORAD the mission of tracking planes and ships that might be carrying drugs.

In 1986, the nation had 3,000 deployments of paramilitary police units. In 1996, it rose to 30,000.

The [black] helicopters, writes [Prof. David] Kopel, "are part of the National Guard's marijuana eradication program. They are flying over rural property as a result of 1981 and 1989 congressional amendments which created a partial drug exception to the Posse Commitatus Act."
 
These days it's not just the radical fringe types who warn of a police state. Rather it is quickly becoming a mainstream concern.
 
"Once the military is used for local police activity, however minor initially, the march toward martial law with centralized police using military troops as an adjunct force becomes irresistible." said Rep. Ron Paul R-Texas, addressing the United States Congress.
 
The reign of Hitler began with a mixing of police and military roles. "Modern societies are characterized by a rather neat separation between police and military forces; each maintaining very different principles of recruitment, training and organizational functioning and operating under completely different frameworks of legal rules and political supervision," writes Prof. Hans Geser, of the University of Zurich's Institute of Sociology, in a study of United Nations international policing.
 
"Law enforcement must serve persons who are guaranteed presumptions of innocence and right not appropriate when dealing with an enemy during times of war," Kopel writes. "Our citizens are not supposed to perceive themselves as subjects of an occupying force."
 
"A series of drug war amendments to Posse Commitatus during the 1980s under Presidents Reagan and Bush, has changed that and placed Marines on patrol at home," says Kevin B. Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, explaining why Marines who shot Zeke Hernandez were patrolling the Texas/Mexico border in the first place. Unlike a cop, the Marine's career isn't founded on two fundamental rights: assumption of innocence and Miranda rights. "Our soldiers are not trained to make arrests, Mirandize and bring to justice. They are trained to kill," says Mr. Zeese.
 
Defense Secretary William Cohen went so far as to suggest border states sign agreements to provide immunity to local criminal laws, similar to the "status of forces agreements" the department has with foreign governments.
 
With constant advancements in technology, however, police are becoming more capable of finding crimes - and therefore articulable suspicion – that would otherwise go undetected. Random enforcement is becoming a thing of the past. Today's police are like small armies that target groups in the name of social reform. Now and in the future, you'll have to watch out who your friends are. You can be targeted for who you associate with."
 
"There's an unsettling trend among police to view demonstrations as crime scenes," says Blewitt. "Police are beginning to view crowds of demonstrators as enemies of the state, to be controlled, rather than groups of people exercising their constitutional right the police should be working to uphold."
 
"It's all being done out in the open, and many people don't see it as frightening," says defense lawyer Blewitt. "That's because Americans have been conditioned to think it will affect only criminals. They've been convinced society if being destroyed by crime - even though violent crime has steadily decreased in recent years - and these military style police are our only hope. What they should worry about is an emerging police state that threatens the very fabric of free society."
 
-- Runway Cat Runway_Cat@hotmail.com, January 24, 1999
 
Answers
 
We became an official police state last year with the passage of Janet Renos' wish list of extended powers. These powers were tacked onto existing legislation completely bypassing Congress. Under this expanded powers act any phone ascribed to a suspect can be tapped without a warrant or court order. Justice dept. Alphabet agents now can get blanket search warrants without a specific address or search target, (i.e. drugs, guns, etc.) Confiscation of assets was expanded to include a multitude of crimes and is no longer dependent on conviction. You can be charged with a crime, with absolutely no proof you committed one, and they can take everything you own. Court proceedings to recover your property will take years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. You cannot sue the government to recover court cost.

Now let's revisit that original power of wiretaps. Under this policy a government agency can move an undercover agent into a neighboring home or apartment. Using his clandestine cover as an enemy of the state they can then tap every phone surrounding his location including private residences without a court order or any evidence whatsoever that the owners of the phones are criminals. If one of the tapped lines belongs to a targeted person you now introduce an agent provocateur to either implicate the person in a crime or plant false evidence in his residence. The courts have also ruled that videotaping a person without their knowledge or consent is not a crime as long as there is no audio on the tape. Using a blanket search warrant they can enter your home while you are at work and install hidden surveillance cameras. These cameras can be placed in your bathroom, bedroom, anywhere they want them. Now if they have gone to this much trouble do you seriously believe they will not have a microphone installed separately? As long as it isn't an integral part of the camera this also would be legal.
 
Now this week Clinton proposes a completely new branch of the military to police the civilian population. We're not talking happy face national guard troops here, this is nothing more than an attempt to establish his own personal SS unit whose sole duty will be to smash any group that dares stand up to the nazification of America.
 
-- Nikoli Krushev doomsday@y2000.com, January 25, 1999.
 
Have a look at Gerry Spence's book, From Freedom to Slavery : The
Rebirth of Tyranny in America. Published 1996, ISBN: 0312143427

 -- Tom Carey tomcarey@mindspring.com, January 25, 1999.
 
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