The USA gas-tapo

The FBI is the new world order gestapo in this country.  They answer only to the big dog.  The big dog is an english bull dog (Not Judas Priest, which are the original British bull dogs.)  The FBI spies on people and keep "tabs" on people in the United Sh*ts of Amerika.

USA Secret Police

The USA Has their own gestapo now.  This is an Orwellian nightmare.  Ever read 1984?

The Secret Police and Political Dissent

by John W. Whitehead
2/6/2006

Once upon a time, a handful of colonists, fed up with being arrested and jailed for speaking out, decided to take on the British Empire. These great dissenters won the war. And when it came time to write the Constitution, they made sure that they included the rights to free speech and to protest by enshrining these essential freedoms in the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, many of us have not learned the lessons that our forefathers tried to teach us. Indeed, as we move further into the new millennium, the American government increasingly resembles the empire against which our ancestors fought.

This fact was made abundantly clear with the passage of the USA Patriot Act and more recently with the revelation that President Bush bypassed federal law in approving warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans. And a new bill, sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), gives the Secret Service unbridled authority to suppress political dissent—one of the most basic and essential elements of democracy.

The proposed law, with the Orwellian title “Secret Service Authorization and Technical Modification Act of 2005,” states: “It shall be unlawful for any person or group of persons to willfully and knowingly enter any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance.” Without defining what a “special event of national significance” is, the provision continues: “It shall be unlawful for any person or group of persons to willfully, knowingly, and with intent…engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within such proximity to, any building or grounds designated a special event of national significance.” The phrase “engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct” is not defined, either. This means that whatever constitutes an event of “national significance” or “disruptive conduct” is left entirely to the discretion of the secret police.

And the penalty for breaking this law would increase the maximum imprisonment from 6 months to 10 years if committed with a weapon or 1 year if committed without a weapon.

The proposed law also creates a new federal police force: “There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the ‘United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.’” And: “Under the direction of the Director of the Secret Service, members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division are authorized to…carry firearms; make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence.”

This law reaches a legitimate and necessary concern. And to the extent that it merely intends to protect the President without trampling on the civil liberties of Americans, the law makes sense. But that is precisely the problem—it provides law enforcement officials broad authority and discretion over our most basic rights. By giving federal agents the ability to prevent a citizen from attending a political event based on the belief—unfounded or not—that they will protest or speak unfavorably about the government, the law violates the right to speak freely on matters of public concern. After all, at the heart of the First Amendment is the ability to criticize the government and have an open and free discussion about its policies. The law also allows these new federal police agents the power to arrest and conduct warrantless searches, arguably in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

All this despite the fact that federal law currently provides criminal penalties for entering a restricted area where the President or other person is protected by the Secret Service.
However, even under current law, the Secret Service has participated in harassment of individuals who have appeared at taxpayer-funded forums with the President if they are perceived to disagree with the Bush Administration’s position. For example, on March 21, 2005, two Denver students who had obtained tickets from their Congressman were expelled from a “town hall” forum because they had an anti-war bumper sticker on their car. Officials, including one who identified himself as a Secret Service agent, told the students the event was limited to audience members who shared the President’s views and that they would have to leave, even if they had no intention of disrupting the event. It apparently made no difference that the topic of the forum was Social Security reform, not the Iraq war. Similar incidents have occurred at presidential visits throughout the country.

The new law could seriously worsen the impact on free speech by banning any form of dissent, peaceful or not. It would allow the Secret Service, in effect, to declare martial law, cordon off areas and enforce exclusion zones at any event deemed a “special event of national significance.” This even if no Secret Service protectee were scheduled to speak or attend.

In fact, it most likely would be used against groups from diverse political backgrounds. For example, if the Secret Service declares the next U.N. conference on population control an “event of national significance,” it could arrest members of anti-abortion groups who want to protest. And under this new law, the Secret Service could shut down areas throughout the conference and arrest any potential protester who might violate the zone.

Sadly, the targets of the Secret Service under this law will not be terrorists or threats to national security. Perhaps that is the problem with post-9/11 America—the cloud of fear is so pervasive that we can no longer make commonsense judgments about own security and safety.

All law enforcement officers—federal, state and local—take an oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of the United States [Including Obama]. And while many of them make a commendable effort to fulfill this obligation, others fail to understand the very document they swore to uphold. Countless congressional actions are passed every year seeking to address legitimate and pressing problems. But many of them, like this one, naively assume that they will be enforced by individuals who have a clear understanding of and appreciation for our Bill of Rights.

Prisons in the USA

From Indymedia:

AMERICAN TORTURE CHAMBERS: A Report on Today’s Prisons & Jails, Part 1

by Kiilu Nyasha

(Originally written in 12/06, this report is just the tip of the iceberg. I've had to cut so much of the information I've gleaned doing the research into U.S. gulags to curb length. So this paper is just the first part of a series I'm pulling together. The next segment will focus on the history of U.S. prisons and the rise of the prison industrial complex. I'm hoping this series will be a wake-up call to the general public as well as the Movement that we must take action against the terror of a growing police state -- and fascism. Although written in 2006, the information herein is still valid and very likely an understatement of the current prison conditions since they've grown substantially worse five years beyond.)

The recently exposed tortures by American troops at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were part of a long history of prison brutalities in America’s torture chambers. In fact, among the torturers were prison guards transferred directly from U.S. prisons where similar tortures are inflicted on their captives.

The director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prisoner Project, Elizabeth Alexander, accused U.S. governments of honing torture tactics in American prisons before they were implemented in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “If you look at the iconic pictures from Abu Ghraib,’ she told reporters, “you can match up these photos with the same abuses at American prisons, each one of them." (CNS News.com)

Then there’s extraordinary “rendition,” the secret transfer of so-called terror suspects into the custody of other nations – including Egypt, Jordan and Syria – where physical and psychological tortures are used to gather intelligence, and to keep detainees away from any judicial oversight. (“USA Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and ‘disappearance,’” April 2006 Amnesty International)

American torture chambers necessarily include death rows. It is surely a torture to have impending execution hanging over one’s head for years on end. Just this month, at San Quentin -- where over 650 await state murder -- a death row prisoner committed suicide (S.F. Chronicle, 12/2/06).

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS),as of 2003, reported of over 3300 condemned prisoners, 267 had their death sentences overturned or removed, 60 percent from Illinois where the Governor commuted all 155 death sentences after learning of the innocence of a dozen or more prisoners slated for death

In a national study (Hayes and Rowan 1988) of 401 suicides that took place in U.S. jails in 1986—one of the largest studies of its kind—two out of every three people who committed suicide were being held in a control unit. In one year, 2005, a record 44 prisoners killed themselves in California prisons alone; 70 percent of those suicides occurred in segregation units (Thompson 2006).

From 1995 - 2000, the daily count of people in disciplinary segregation increased 68 percent -- a rate of growth more than double the growth rate of the prison population overall Some 80,000 people were confined in lockups, only a fraction of all those in high-security control units or supermax prisons. (BJS 1998, BJS 2004).

In the words of prison chaplain Sister Antonia Maguire, prisoners are treated like “animals, without souls, who deserve whatever they get.”

Endless stories of “appalling, sadistic treatment inside America’s own prisons” were uncovered during a four-month investigation, culminating in a video report titled, Torture Inc. America’s Brutal Prisons, produced for BBC Channel 4 last Spring. “Abu Ghraib...was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time.” 

I might infer that the wardens of prisons treat activists in the prison system worse than the inmates who cause problems and many look the other way with the bad inmates.  I used to joke about New York City being a maximum security prison, and that was from a movie called "Escape from New York"

Repeal USA Patriot act.

Unmasking "Secret Law": New Demand for Answers About the Government's Hidden Take on the Patriot Act

In the days before last week's Patriot Act reauthorization vote, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised concerns — see here and here — about the way that the Justice Department has interpreted and used the Patriot Act's Section 215, which is perhaps the most controversial of the provisions that Congress reauthorized. "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act," Colorado Senator Mark Udall said, "they will be stunned and they will be angry."
Today we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding that the Justice Department release information about the government's use and interpretation of Section 215. We anticipate litigating the request. Those of you who have followed the Patriot Act debate since 2001 will know that this isn't the first time we've sought information about the government's use of this provision. Back in 2002, we filed litigation under the Freedom of Information Act that eventually resulted in the release of a few hundred documents — including this, this, and this. But now the FBI is using Section 215 much more aggressively. It's using it more often. And statements by Obama administration officials raise the distinct possibility that the government is using the provision to support entire surveillance programs.
The secrecy surrounding the government's use of new surveillance powers is unwarranted and fundamentally antidemocratic. The public should know, at least in general terms, how the government interprets its surveillance authority and how that authority is being used. It's shameful that Congress didn't insist that the Obama administration release this information before the reauthorization vote. We'll ask the courts to do what Congress failed to.

The USA Patriot Act smacks of Hitler's Gestapo.  We now have secret police in the USA, and the Patriot Act is being construed to take our freedoms away from us.  We went through this sh*t when Adams, the second President of the US was in office.  He enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts.  He also jailed newspaper editors on the charge of sedition.  Needless to say, Thomas Jefferson, when he took office, repealed these acts and freed the newspaper editors from prison.  All of us that care, particularly Reclaiming Collective should protest this act.  We need the CIA in the Dept of homeland security and the FBI in the DEpt of justice. as well as the DEA