Slashdot Mirror

"When you are in public, you are in public." should not equal "When you are public, you are presumed to have criminal intent." This is yet another symptom of the growing perceptual gap between the police and the community they are supposed to "protect and serve". There are new stories every day about the effects of the increased militarization of the civilian police forces. Some of the stories are about SWAT teams kicking in the wrong door and terrorizing and/or shooting innocent people in their own homes. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/10/06/tennessee.shooting.02.ap/index.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188934,00.html http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1107/474003.html
Some of the stories are about police view everyone they don't like as a "badguy" and then using that to justify violence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tOVkT2YESU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e2-qi0Rc3w&feature=related
And some of the stories are about police purposefully criminalizing citizens when they want to protest peacefully (another right fading away) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/28/SURVEILLANCE.TMP http://www.notinourname.net/restrictions/infiltration-19feb04.htm http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0101/msg00193.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html

Why do we want to add power to an already out of control aspect of our government? When did the police stop serving the people of the community and start serving political masters?

Now, US is threatening other countries to cut aid if they don't exempt US citizens. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A132 57-2004Nov25.html

I guess it is OK for the US to jail citizens of other coutries WITHOUT a trial http://www.notinourname.net/restrictions/prez-powe rs-16apr04.htm, but it is not OK for others to put Americans on trial...

Saying this is not right must be a troll?

What about "the Abu Ghairab of Brooklyn?"

http://nydailynews.com/front/story/282716p-242172c .html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/21/attack/m ain564189.shtml

What about the mass roundups of immigrants that occured in 2002?

http://www.notinourname.net/detentions/solidarity- day-feb04.htm

These are just to name a few...

Do you trust the DOJ??? Seriously, it aggravates me because people's lives have been apart because of the legislation and accompanying anti-arab paranoia.

In the US people have been found guilty of helping terrorist organizations for some really lame stuff. For example the guy who for a while was a driver for osama bin laden in in guantanamo being denied human rights. Also lawyers for terrorists have been charged with aiding terrorism. .

If the US can charge people with aiding terrorism on the flimsiest of basis why can't Turkey?

This war on terrorism has given a carte blanche to all governments of the world to surpress minorities. Whether it's the chechnians in russia, chinese muslims in china, or the kurds in turkey. Just call them terrorists and go.

send in Broken iRaq and get back shining Afaganistan

send in Broken iRaq and get back shining Afaganistan

So far, the current administration has held American citizens incommunicado without charges, violated the Geneva convention many hundreds of times, demanded vast police powers without oversight, has arrested a man for providing volunteer webmonkey work to a site that links to groups that the administration has declared are "linked to terrorism" (by that metric, Rob Malda could be jailed at federal whim), demanded the right to demand information on books read and made it a federal crime to tell anyone that such information has been siezed, tortured prisoners...I'm not going to list them all. It would take hours just to list and cite atrocities and abuses associated with Iraq, much less other disagreeable things the administration has done.

The point is, it's easy to say "oh, it's just Bush". The thing is, he is our *elected representative* (well, more or less -- but he did get a lot of votes, and even if he lost the popular vote and it was dubious whether he won the electoral college vote, there are a lot of people that supported him to blame). One cannot pass off all the horrors of Soviet Russia on, say, Stalin. The people of the country chose to allow him to remain in place, granted him economic and military power, and the things he did to other countries were weighed against the Soviet people by foreigners. We, also, are judged by what Bush does.

If Bush retains office this autumn, it will be due to a complete failure of people to vote and guide their country, and a decision that will have far-reaching effects in people around the world.

You should read some of the fake names on this online antiwar petition...

reads like a who's who of bogus/joke names; I laughed 'till I cried.

Not In Our Name antiwar group