Dr Frederick H. Miller is a writer for The Q newsletter, and
other Freedom and Privacy Publications.
OPS Guest Editorial: The Biggest Police State in the World.
I was shocked by a television documentary I watched the other
day while on a recent visit to Frankfort, Germany. “America
has become the biggest police state in the history of the
world,” according to the program.
I was shocked! I was shocked because this was not a case of
me talking about the USA, nor of anyone writing for any of the
so-called underground or avant-garde publications. No, this
was German network television at its best.
Those of you who have read my writings and ramblings on these
pages know that I have been prone to make such a pronouncement,
as did the German television station. So have other people who
write on the subjects of freedom, privacy, and matters offshore.
We’re considered crackpots by the mainstream press, so that
makes this pronouncement by the German television network even
more astounding. This is indicative of how America is now
viewed by many Europeans: a police state.
How the did home of the free and the land of the brave get to
be, in the opinion of some (yours truly included), the biggest
police state in the history of the world?
Well, before September 11th, we know that there were a lot of
changes in the USA. Most of them have been chronicled on
these very pages.
As America came out of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, one
of the more startling discoveries that was made by the modern
day politicians was the extent to which a war time footing
for the country could not only fire up the passions of the
people a la Pearl Harbour, but it could fire up the economy,
too.
Americans weren’t too motivated to get into World War II until
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. Then, it was “Katie bar
the door!” We all now know that the White House knew the
Japanese attack was imminent, but did nothing, in order
eliminate the isolationists in Congress who didn’t want
to enter into the war in Europe.
Attack the Japanese in the Pacific, defend England against the
Nazis and take the rest of Europe and North Africa away from
Adolph and Benito. This motivation required a tremendous
mobilization of men and materiel supported by money. Money
which was lent by the wealthy of the world. And, it turned
America into a debtor state in that it owed far more than
it made.
The longer the war raged on in the Pacific theatre and in
Europe/North Africa, the better and healthier became the
American economy. And, the better the health of the economy,
the better it is for the tycoons who manipulate the political
process.
After World War II, there was a brief period of tranquillity
and euphoria because the war was over and because the Americans
had played such a significant and deciding role in it. Then,
wartime footing no longer in force, recession began to rear
its ugly head.
In the meantime, there had been some division and insurrection
in South Korea, there was threat of a Northern invasion. Late
on the night of August 10, 1945, the U.S. made the decision to
annex and occupy south Korea.
Interestingly, this decision was taken to keep the Soviet Union
from annexing the entire country, even though the soviets had
only joined the fight in Korea during the preceding week.The
U.S. made the decision to partition the country at the 38th
parallel, in order to keep Seoul in the south. Even more
interestingly, the soviets did not contest any of this and
acquiesced graciously.
By the end of 1946, both regimes were pretty much solidly in
place, and the two de facto governments were formally
recognized in 1948 by the U.N. The soviets withdrew their
troops at the end of 1948 concurrently, more or less, with
the U.N. recognition.
There was considerable factionalism in Korea because of the
conflict of “left” and “right” ideologies which conflicted
primarily over land reform. The U.S. participated to the
extent that it suppressed the left-wing faction and supported
Syngman Rhee as the de facto south Korean leader. Rhee had
lived for many years in the U.S. and was an avowed
anti-communist.
In support of Rhee, the U.S. sent some 500 “advisors” to South
Korea to advise on the suppression of the leftist movement.
U.S. participation escalated. According to U.S. military records,
most of the skirmishes and incursions were by the U.S. support
south, not by the north. However, by October 1950 and backed by
the Chinese government, the north invaded the south.
By 1950, America was looking for another means of jacking up
the economy, and, lo and behold, the Chinese and Kim Il Sung
(north Korean leader) gave them just what they were looking for
in Korea. An opportunity for a police action in Korea which
lasted three years and many more soldiers, many more dead.
Then, following eight years of the Eisenhower administration,
new blood and new outlooks entered the American White House.
John Kennedy was approached about sending “advisors” to Viet
Nam (as had so recently been done in south Korea) and declined.
John Kennedy did not want a war, did not see war as the
solution to economic problems. His disinclination to send
advisors to Viet Nam and his strong support for change in
social policy, in part, as economic stimulus, really offended
those in the so-called military industrial establishment
(and may even have resulted in his death).
When Lyndon Johnson was approached, even during his term as
vice-president, he was a hawk in favor of sending the advisors.
When Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson promised the generals
and the corporate honchos of the companies that supported the
military that they could have their war, so long as it didn’t
interfere with his programs on social policy. In the social
responsibility sense, Johnson was with Kennedy, but opposed his
dovish stance on military activities. Hence, the Johnson era
slogan “Guns and butter”.
As in Korea, the war in Viet Nam, although giving the economy
a boost for a time, proved too costly in the light of the
expensive list of social programs that Johnson wanted and,
in fact, implemented. The economy faltered terribly. And,
the terrible emotional depression suffered by the American
people as a result of the Kennedy assassination was exacerbated
by the riots and demonstrations against Johnson’s war in Viet
Nam. The moral fibre and emotional stability of the country
was irreparably damaged.
All through the ‘70’s the economy was mostly stagnant with
occasional flashes of life from the equities markets. OPEC
created huge gas lines at petrol stations around the world,
but especially in America which depended so much on foreign
oil. Inflation became a prime topic of conversation on
everyone’s lips. Inflation fuelled by high oil prices.
It wasn’t until the Justice Department convinced President
Reagan that a war on drugs was necessary that America’s
economy once again began to be revitalized. In the aftermath
of Viet Nam, Americans were not receptive to a “military” war.
Still, in order to stop drug traffickers from selling drugs
to their children on the school grounds, a “war on drugs”
was widely supported by most Americans.
Little did we know then what the war on drugs would bring.
First, it brought more drugs. That sure spruced up the
economy. Increased the budget for a new law enforcement
agency, the DEA. Then, someone got the bright idea of
nailing the drug lords for unpaid income taxes on their
ill-gotten gains. This last proved to be the key to a
treasure trove, and it was followed by legislation permitting
confiscation of assets without due process and a monumental
effort to find all the bad boys’ money.
That got us money laundering legislation. How to track
financial transactions? Where it the money? Who owns it?
How do we get it when it’s offshore? Money laundering
legislation led to more and more erosion of individual
freedoms as the privacy of the individual became subordinate
to the quest for more and more dollars generated by more
and more traffickers in a war on drugs which was less and
less effective.
Doing drugs became a crime. The longest most outrageous
sentencing in the world for even nominal drug use is a fact
of life in the U.S. There are more users in jail in the U.S.
than there are drug traffickers, by and large, with longer
sentences.
Importing and selling drugs became a crime. Kids were urged
to “grass” on their grass-using parents. All the flower
children and baby boomers who were using so-called recreational
drugs or who had used them became paranoid all the time, not
just when they were smoking.
Then, someone got the bright idea of using the same technique
that put Al Capone in jail to fight the drug traffickers, i.e.,
to go after them for unpaid taxes on their ill-gotten gains.
This led, in turn, to the war on money laundering, the war
on tax avoidance, the war on offshore banking havens, all
the other invasions of privacy we so often write about on
these pages.
However, for the most part, other than for specific drug
interdiction escapades by the American military in the jungles
of south America, none of this latter activity had much of a
positive economic impact on the military-industrial
establishment nor on the American economy.
In the aftermath of September 11th, however, we have
experienced a resurgence of war time footing, first with
the initial marshalling of resources to defend against
further terrorist attacks, the passage of the Patriot Act
(tipping laws in Big Brother’s favor in more than 350
different subject areas involving more than 40 separate
federal agencies), arbitrary detention without due cause
of aliens with foreign sounding names, and, finally, the
conquest of Afghanistan.
The Patriot Act alone is one of the biggest chops taken out
of the Freedom Tree in the history of the United States. The
Act allows “black bag” searches of all your personal financial,
computer, telephone and medical records, even your history at
the public library. Top Secret warrants are issued under the
Foreign Surveillance Act to target foreign powers, but these
warrants can be issued and the surveillance carried out
against American citizens. “Probable cause” in the legal
sense no longer applies.
The American government has imposed many changes in the legal
rights of American citizens as part of its fight against
terrorism, just as the erosion of freedom began under the
guise of the war against drugs. But, now, the balance
between freedom and security seems to have swung away
from freedom.
Now, the government has the authority to imprison AMERICANS
indefinitely, without charges or defense lawyers, and the
government’s ability to investigate, arrest, detain and try
anyone has been substantially expanded. Law enforcement
now has far easier access to your personal lives while
operating in total secrecy. And, you can forget about
the concept that law-abiding citizens can freely associate
with other law-abiding citizens without the threat of
government surveillance.
Where once the U.S. government used “possible drug trafficking”
as a means to investigate money laundering, as it has used
“possible money laundering” to investigate tax evasion, tax
avoidance and other so-called crimes, it now uses
“anti-terrorism” as its excuse for violating what used
to be your rights.
The Bush administration has gone so far as to impose other
“legal” changes without congressional consent, such as
allowing federal agents to monitor attorney-client
conversations in federal prisons and prodding federal
bureaucrats to refuse to provide access to documents under
the Freedom of Information Act. FBI can now monitor political
and religious meetings inside the U.S., even where there is
no reason to believe that a crime has been committed. They
haven’t done that kind of thing for years, not since the
days of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
Since September 11th, untold thousands of men and women of
middle eastern origins have been arrested and detained by
the United States government without probable cause, without
charges being rendered against them, without benefit of a
legal defense or even access to a lawyer. Some have been
questioned and deported after immigration hearings which
are no longer held in the public eye. Some were just
questioned and detained and are still in detention.
The administration refuses to reveal the names of these people
and is refusing to adhere to a court order of a federal judge
to reveal the names, claiming that Mr. Bush’s war on terrorism
can’t be challenged by the judiciary and that civilian courts
have no jurisdiction over the detention of these thousands
of people.
Any foreigner now entering the United States must allow
him/herself to be subjected to fingerprinting by the American
authorities.
Countries around the world have been told that “either you
are with us, or you are terrorists, too”, in order to get
them to comply with the provisions on the Patriot Act and
other quasi-legal investigatory activities in which the
Americans want to engage in that foreign country.
In a recent revelation, it was revealed to me by a fairly
high official of a middle eastern country that, when his
country refused to allow an American task force of IRS
agents and FBI agents to come into his country to
investigate all the banking transactions of the past five
years (ostensibly to find the money links to terrorism),
the Bush administration froze all of that country’s assets
in the USA, as well as all of the assets of its ruling
leaders which were in American financial institutions.
The particular country in question is without doubt NOT a
supporter of Osama Bin Laden and had been, before the
high-handed actions of the Bush administration, a staunch
supporter of the U.S. policy in the middle east and elsewhere
and certainly in the war against terrorism. But, this
country is an “offshore banking haven” and therefore a
target of American curiosity with respect to its banking
clientele. Apparently, from what I can gather from my
sources, this is not an isolated incident.
The IRS anti-offshore forces were in full operations mode
this past week when they went to court seeking MasterCard
records the years 1999, 2000, and 2001 in more than 30
“offshore” jurisdictions, including Switzerland, Bermuda,
Liechtenstein, and Belize. Not just MasterCard records
for Americans, but all MasterCards.
These continuing activities of IRS are primarily directed at
Americans who dare to think that they can exercise their
freedoms by using offshore banking institutions to privatize
their financial transactions on credit card. Previously,
IRS has gone after records for earlier years in such places
as the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. Earlier this year,
access to VISA card records for the same 30 plus countries
was authorized by a U.S. federal district court in
San Francisco.
This whole issue of the IRS chasing off after credit card
records in non-USA jurisdictions is illegal. It is clearly
unconstitutional. Worse yet, like so many other invasions
of privacy since the beginning of the so-called “war on drugs”
and now the “war on terrorism”, it’s just a big fishing trip.
IRS says between one million and two million Americans have
overseas ban accounts with credit and/or debit cards and that
the majority of those individuals are tax evaders. They have
no evidence to support those numbers, they have offered no
proof, and, in fact, they have not even supported a case
for “probable cause”. IRS has always been “full of it”,
but they are really showing their collective employee
backside with this latest venture.
There is a cycle underway right now which is, in part,
perpetrated by IRS and DEA called let’s capture the
drug traffickers and tax evaders laundered money side
by side with another cycle which indicates that terrorist
attacks are automatically followed by government curtailment
of civil liberties, and these two cycles are getting to be
more and more pronounced, more and more protracted.
Of course, these are not the only transgressions against
individual freedom and personal privacy.
The biggest and most frightening of these is the fact Bush
has proposed that laws which bar American military personnel
from being actively involved in law enforcement on U.S.
territory. Giving the U.S. military the right to act on
U.S. soil is truly a first step toward the dictatorship
which it appears Mr. Bush would really like to implement.
Specifically, Bush has called on Congress to eliminate the
ban on American military forces from participating in arrests,
searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activities
on U.S. soil, pursuant to the Posse Comitatus Act.
Bush’s proposal for TIPS (since soundly shot down) called
for a network of Americans to spy on Americans. They used
to have a similar system in East Germany. The east Germans
called it the Stasi.
New federal standards for state-issued driving licenses has
been proposed, too, which would determine who gets a license,
how they are issued and what information is listed on it.
Basically, it would appear to be a thinly disguised
intra-country U.S. passport or national identity card.
Imposition of smart borders has been proposed by the Bushies.
These would require biometric identification, from optical to
fingerprints and, one assumes ultimately, DNA. Future visitors
to the U.S., beginning in 2004, will be required to have
microchips in their passports, i.e., biometric data and
identifiers built into the document itself.
Bush also plans to end some sunshine laws which give the
public access to information about critical facilities and
programs, such as dangerous chemical programs on U.S.
territory. He would set up a system to track the perfectly
legal purchase of prescription drugs, antibiotics, aerosol
generators, and fermenting equipment.
With the support of the Bush White House, Congress has passed
a computer crime bill which expands police ability to conduct
internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining
a court order. Bush has asked Congress to pass a Cyber
Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) as a way of responding to
electronic intrusions and any threat of cyber-terrorism.
As it is now written, the law, which has yet to pass the
senate, calls for life sentences for computer hackers.
Any 14 year old with good computer skills who sees it as fun
and a prank to hack into a government computer could receive
a life sentence for foolishness.
Further to this, CSEA also would specify a ban on advertising
any product or device which is used primarily for surreptitious
electronic surveillance. There goes your home video security
system.
Currently, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) is awarding contracts for the design and implementation
of a Total Information Awareness (TIA) system. This system
won’t operate with megabytes or gigabytes of data, it will
operate with petabytes of raw data, all under the control
of a single agency with limited public accountability. This
would truly be a data-veillance program without equal. Are
you ready?
New airline procedures, tighter controls on immigration,
better security for cargo containers, research on vaccines
and antidotes to biological and chemical attacks, better
sensors to detect nuclear weapons, and shaper analyses by
intelligence and law enforcement agencies, greater security
at nuclear labs and facilities, protection of water supplies,
greater airport security: all these things are desirable
and practical things to do to protect against terrorist
attack.
The other freedom destroying things which are being implemented
by Mr. Bush in the name of the war on terrorism are
frightening.
First among those, unfortunately, is the fact that the conquest
of Afghanistan proved to be too short lived and too easy, the
previous problems of the Russians in doing so notwithstanding.
It was all too easy. So, now, we find the Bush administration
threatening war against Iraq, even against the better
judgement of Republican members of Congress, among others.
U. S. rhetoric from the Bush White House has reached a point
where it defies belief and will making backing down almost
impossible. Bush has placed a chip on America’s shoulder
and pushed it right to the edge. Even Saddam Hussein will
not need to stand on tiptoe to knock it off.
In addition, the U.S. has sent troops to Russia to assist
the Russians in dealing with the dissidents, to the
Philippines to help suppress anti-government and
anti-democracy advocates, and it has increased its
troop strength in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 as
the mobilization continues. With talk now of an imminent
invasion of Iraq, it appears the war will widen
(coincidentally, just what Osama Bin Laden has said he wanted).
Osama wants a wider war which borders on world war fought
between Islam and the infidels. Bush wants a war to save his
economy. Mr. Oil Baron Bush apparently, in my opinion, also
covets the oil reserves in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and in Russia,
among others. He’s doing all he can to make those reserves
accessible and appears to be ready to whatever it takes to
make sure that he, and only he, is in a position to control
those assets and reserves.
Americans, as did the rest of the world, wanted the U.S. to
strike back at the terrorists after September 11th, all
Americans supported Mr. Bush when he promised to wipe
out evil-doers everywhere in the world. When innocent
Afghans died in the bombing, the governments line was,
“well, there will always be collateral damage”.
When security was enhanced at airports, it created enormous
inconvenience for travellers everywhere, but it was understood
to be for the public good. When habeus corpus was suspended,
the position was that the rights under the Bill of Rights
don’t accrue to terrorists.
Speaking of the Bill of Rights, when there was one in the
United States, it assured any individual from anywhere that
he/she had the right to competent counsel, that the individual
had the right to confront his/her accusers and to know the
charges against him/her, and a right to a speedy trial before
a jury of one’s peers.
Under the current suspensions of freedom in the United States,
YOU may be detained in secret, not allowed to speak with an
attorney, and you might not even receive a public trial.
Can executions in secret be far behind?
Most Americans seem to have forgotten the days when one didn’t
need to show a government issued identification document
in order to travel by airline. Remember? It was just 10 years
ago.
Now, in addition to the thought crime police as proposed under
the TIPS arrangement, Republicans in the House want to create
a whole new class of “attempted” crimes, i.e., a provision
which would make any attempt to break a federal law a federal
crime and a punishable act.
The broadness of the language in the bill pending submission
permits it to apply to everything from attempted murder or
terrorism to mislabelling baby food or snack foods. What’s
more, the crime of “attempted crime” would carry the same
penalties as “actual crimes”. Every federal law would be
complemented with a corresponding “attempted crime” provision.
There is a delicate balance between individual liberty and
national security. The American government has pushed civil
liberties protections to their limits. Clearly, the American
courts have pushed back, stopping just short of support of
Mr. Bush’s tactics or of supporting the rationales he has
offered for justifying them.
In all of American history, there have always been battles over
the reach of government. The worst of those battles have
always been over issues of a government trying too hard, going
too far, and infringing on civil liberties during a time of
war.
There have already been too many comparisons to the behaviour
of the Bush administration to that of Big Brother in George
Orwell’s 1984, albeit with some merit, but please permit just
this one small digression.
Orwell’s world did exist in a state of permanent war. The
propaganda ministry was called the ministry of truth. The
leader was omni-present and all-powerful and infallible. Big
Brother was always watching, and the thought police were
everywhere.
It would take very little at this point to upset the delicate
balance between national security and freedom of the individual
and erode the freedoms which all of us hold dear to the point
that life imitates Orwell.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Viet Dinh was recently quoted as saying
that, “I think security exists for liberty to flourish and
liberty cannot exist without order and security”.
I would submit to you that perhaps, just perhaps, as a famous
Asian human rights activist recently said, “…I am now convinced
that American democracy requires the repression of democracy
in the rest of the world” and elimination of all privacy and
freedom of action at home.
Hence, the actions of the Bush administration at home and
abroad begin to make some sense.
But I ask you: Have I not described the biggest police state
in the history of the world? History will judge, both my
opinion and the actions of the Bush White House during the
years of the War on Terrorism.
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