Police State

I'm finding it hard to report on the police state in America now. Not because it's disgusting to see peaceful people having violence brought against them. It is disgusting. It's not because the public sits by and ignores or worse, rationalizes and endorses, this activity.

It's hard to report on the police state in America because no self-respecting police state article is complete without references to Nazi Germany. The problem is, the more I think on it, the more I realize that even the Nazi's left people alone if they cow toed. In general, you were permitted to live your life in Nazi Germany as long as you didn't speak or act against the military machine.

The Nazi's didn't jail people for having their grass too high. The Nazis, to the best of my knowledge, didn't turn SWAT teams on people for dancing without a permit.

Tom commented on this article to point me to the Swing Kids, a group of Nazi opposing dancers. Thanks Tom! Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this makes me say "Oh, okay, so maybe the American jackboots aren't worse than Nazis" or if it makes me say "Yep, there's proof. Both the Nazi's and the American jackboots do this.."

That's exactly what's happened in Detroit, Michigan. The Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID), an art exhibit and gallery that has been open for nearly three decades, was spinning music inspired by or created in Detroit. Detroit, once the motor capital of the world, also has a dazzling history of music, being the birthplace of Motown Records and the genre called “Motown”. Detroit is also know as the birthplace of the techno genre, but that wasn't being celebrated this night. As greats like James Brown, Aretha Franklin and The Meters played, patrons of Funk Night danced freely.

Many patrons here come for the atmosphere. Unlike bars and nightclubs, visitors to CAID are interested in music, fun and dancing. A night out is for the enjoyment of it, not hopes of “hooking up”. CAID patrons tended to be more educated, more intelligent and more artistic than the nightclub crowed shunned by many.

The night's revelry ended as military equipped police kicked the door in, ordered patrons “On the floor!” as they panned the crowd of dancers. As CAID patrons complied, police used their feet to push questioning dissenters into the floor.

After terrifying the dancers, police began issuing tickets for “loitering where alcohol was being served illegally”, 130 tickets total. Outside, unknown to the patrons, police tow vehicles were moving cars to the impound lots in scores. Forty-four cars in total the police seized, charging the people $900 each to reclaim their own property, “generating” $39,600 in “revenue” for the city police department, ignoring entirely the windfall the county will take in if and when those loitering fines are paid.

The reason for the raid? Police raided for “dancing without a permit.” According to Aaron Timlin, a man who walked from Detroit to New York wearing a cardboard box to promote an art exhibition and current executive director of CAID, the police visited him on May 30th and informed him dancing would require a permit.

"Everyone thinks it's ridiculous we have to have a permit for dancing," said Timlin. In response to the raid, the tickets and the theft of vehicles, Timlin is organizing an 8-day long festival with live music and dancing. "We're going to dance without a permit. If we get a ticket, we'll fight the ticket and change the law. People should be able to dance where they want.”.

Freedom is about honoring the choices of our neighbor. Using force and violence against our neighbor because we don't like their choice stands against this idea. In the United States, a land proclaimed by a large portion of it's people to be the “land of the free” it has become more and more clear that the choices of our neighbor are indeed, not respected at all.

I've written before of the growing police state in the USA, which mimics the police state found in the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. When I read this story, however, I was taken aback even knowing what I know.

Canton, Ohio, USA has unanimously passed a new bill into law. This bill makes a certain lack of action a criminal offense. First time offenders will be fined $150 and second time offenders can be given fines of $250 and given jail time of 30 days. What is this new crime, you ask?

Failure to mow one's lawn.

Yes, that's right. In today's society, a man who works his days at a reputable job and purchases land and a home in portions of the United States can not choose the height of grass that he finds acceptable for his own land.

It's the type of action needed, says Canton City Mayor William Healy, “in order to clean up our neighborhoods and our city."

Respect for our neighbor's decisions has literally become such an alien concept that failure to mow your lawn can put you in jail. How long until people wake up, drop the “land of the free” platitude and begin to take action.

First they came for the drug dealers and I was quiet because I didn't like drugs.

Next they came for the immigrants and I was quite because I was a natural born citizen.
Then they came for the “religious cults” and I was quiet because I didn't like their way of life.
Later they came for the people with long grass and I was quiet because I thought it unsightly.
Now they're coming for me and there's nobody left to object!

"This man is one of the most honorable men of character," said Robert Wall, CEO and president of World Black Belt, a martial arts training firm.

Another witness described how [the man] had helped train personnel from 33 airlines on safety techniques after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, without seeking pay or media attention.

In 1999 an armed gang began demanding payment from a man in a fashion similar to the mafia. While not stated implicitly, the message was clear. Pay up or bad things will happen to you. Being a man of honor he refused to pay. In 2006 this armed gang decided enough was enough. They claimed that by living in their territory, the man had accruded a debt of roughly $15 million dollars, money that (in the hands of the gang) would be used to fund the slaughter of foreigners, train assassins, invade the privacy of innocent people and sustain a regime of brainwashing and intimidation.

Despite the man's offerings of $5 million dollars and pleas to "have mercy", the gang reacted.

[This] should send a loud and crystal clear message to all [..] defiers that if they engage in similar [...] conduct, they face joining him, said Nathan Hochman, a spokesman for the gang. There's no secret formula, he went on to say. Pay up in a timely manner of face their reaction.

***

It plays like a Hollywood movie and conjurs up images of smoky speakeasies and men with bad accents. Men concerned with the fear that the public has seen someone "get away with it".

But the sad, disgusting reality is that this scene didn't take place in a movie that one could get up and walk away from if they found it distasteful. This scene happend in a federal courtroom.

Wesley Snipes, a world-reknowned actor who stared in films such as "Murder at 1600" and the Blade trilogy, was sentenced to 3 years in prison today for refusal to pay taxes. Taxes which would go to fund the war in Iraq, wiretapping of American subjects and the "War on Drugs" which uses violence against people who set plants on fire.

The fact that the gang call themselves "the government" matters very little in the end. The threats, the violence and the intimidation are VERY real. Pay up, or suffer our wrath. The fact that they call their bribe money "taxes" matters little, for a man who harmed nobody will spend the next three years deprived of his livelyhood and seperated (by fear of being shot) from his family.

A crowd stood by as Mr. Snipes exited the court room and said "Wow!" but this crowd was not enough to change the situation. Letters from some of the nations social elite made recommendations to the court for leniency but the only think in the minds of the government thugs was the impression their actions would make on the populace.

On you.

What impression WILL it make? Will you sit by and doublethink this action away, calling the man a "criminal" for refusing to pay blood money? Will you quietly reflect on the fact that 'it wasn't me" and move on?

Will you take a stand and say "This isn't right!". Will you add your voice to that crowd, and do exactly what those goons feared?

Will you say 'You have no authority over me!"?

As a child going through the schools setup, administrated and funded by the US Government (which in turn gets it's money by taxes) I was taught to hate Nazi Germany. Not only did they burn Jews for being Jews but their police state laid waste to all of the values that people faught for and died to protect. Soldier-police could barge into a person's home to carry out searches under the guise of searching for closeted away Jews. This pretense, however, was abandoned as the soldier-police were granted the power to arrest on suspicion that someone had comitted a crime. Asking the solider-police "Why?" was forbidden and would put you on a list of "Enemies of the State".

This invasion of a person's home, lives and livelyhood was evil, something all vigilant Americans shouldn't tolerate.

On the flip side, we chanted the Pledge of Allegiance in a symbol of blind patriotic faith. Once done, we'd sit down and study about how the American patriots rose up against British tyranny to found "the best nation in history". Part of this indoctrination includes the premise that the checks and balances created a nation in which a police state couldn't form.

In that false sense of security, the majority of the population stopped being weary.

April 11th 2008 saw what some media outlets are calling the "largest regional crime crackdown ever taken". Large is an understatement. This undertaking, given the US Military-style name "Operation Sudden Impact" included agents from 53 federal, state, municipal and local agencies to apprehend terrorists.

Terrorism, huh?

Channel 5 News in Memphis, Tennessee reports Federal agencies raided several Memphis businesses in a coordinated effort to find information about possible terrorism ties.

The operation has been named known as "Sudden Impact."

At the same time, it is also being reported that The 100 sheriff's deputies working Saturday night and Sunday morning also recovered 12.2 grams of heroin.

What this says is pretty clear: Drugs are terrorism in the eyes of the police. Futhermore, with the police now working with the military (the National Guard was one of the 53 agencies involved) to "fight crime" AND "fight terrorism" it's pretty clear that under the eyes of the soldier-police crime itself it terrorism.

They issued citations for 202 traffic violations.

Speeders are now terrorists. If there was any doubt that the soldier-police were here in America, armed and ready to act, this should eliminate it all. Speeders are terrorists. "What we have found traditionally is that terrorists are involved in a number of lesser known type crimes," said Mark Luttrell, Shelby County sheriff.

Like the Nazi Ghestapo, all pretense of fighting a public enemy has even gone. The FBI along with hundreds of officers said they are looking for anything out of the ordinary. This statement from a national news outlet (CBS) has a two-fold impact. Firstly, doing something "out of the ordinary" itself constitutes police-soldier attention and secondly, but NOT attaching outrage and disgust to this statement, that it's already become common practice.