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  1. #171

    Default Re: Fuck the Police State

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.1773070

    Family of slain ‘Tosh.0’ production assistant to sue L.A. sheriff’s department

    John Winkler, 30, was shot to death after sheriff’s deputies mistook him for a man who had been holding him and several others hostage at a West Hollywood apartment complex earlier this month.

    BY Philip Caulfield
    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
    Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 3:08 PM




    Facebook John Winkler, a 30-year-old production assistant on the Comedy Central show 'Tosh.0,' was reportedly gunned down by Los Angeles sheriff's deputies who mistook him for a hostage taker.
    The family of a "Tosh.0" production assistant who was shot and killed by L.A. County Sheriff's deputies after being mistaken for a stabbing suspect filed a claim against the department for $25 million.
    John Winkler's family announced the claim, which is a precursor to a lawsuit, at a news conference Tuesday in the Seattle area, where the young Hollywood hopeful was raised.
    "John Winkler was a hero who was a hostage and he saved his friend," Sim Osborn, the family's lawyer, told reporters. "We intend to uncover the truth."
    Winkler, 30, was trying to escape alleged attacker Alexander McDonald when he was gunned down outside at his West Hollywood apartment complex on April 7.
    Los Angeles sheriff's officials admitted deputies mistook Winkler for the attacker when they opened fire on him and another man as they fled McDonald's apartment at around 9:30 p.m.
    Winkler was struck in the chest and died later at a local hospital.
    Deputies later arrested McDonald after finding him fighting with another man he'd held hostage at knifepoint.
    Facebook Alexander McDonald, 27, allegedly took the aspiring producer and two other men hostage at knifepoint.
    McDonald, 27, has since been charged with murder, torture and attempted murder.
    Winkler had moved to California from Washington State six months before the tragic shooting to pursue a career as a film and TV producer, his family said.
    He and McDonald lived in the same apartment complex and were friends with the same circle of neighbors, Osborn said.
    "Our family wants to find out the truth of what happened that night and want those officers to be held accountable for what they've done," Winkler's mother, Lisa Ostergren, said in a statement.
    "It never should have happened," she said, fighting back tears. "Words really can't express how devastated we really are."
    When deputies arrived at the Palm Ave. apartment complex, they were given a photo of McDonald and told he was wearing a black shirt.
    KTLA The deadly incident played out at an apartment complex on Palm Ave. in West Hollywood on April 7.
    Police said they announced themselves outside McDonald's apartment before the door suddenly opened and Winkler came rushing out with a man who was bleeding from the neck.
    The sheriff's department said Winkler was wearing a black shirt and appeared to be lunging at the wounded man when deputies opened fire.
    The other man was struck in the leg and survived.
    "We have many questions for the LASD, including how they could have confused McDonald for John — two very different looking men — when witnesses had given them a photo just moments earlier," Osborn said in a statement.
    The sheriff's department has launched an internal investigation into the shooting.
    On Thursday, several comedians, including Daniel Tosh, were planning to hold a benefit in Winkler's honor at the Hollywood Improv.
    Proceeds from the show, Laughing for Winkler, will benefit the Boys and Girls Club of America.


    Last edited by the_unnatural; 07-27-2014 at 02:30 AM.

  2. #172

    Default Re: Fuck the Police State

    In Virginia, the Death Penalty for Gambling

    Published May 01, 2006NONE


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    About a month ago, I wrote a column about efforts in Congress to ban Internet gambling. There are lots of specific problems about those bills. But the broader issue is troubling, too: Why does our government insist on policing our personal lives for bad habits?
    Because there is almost never a complaining victim in vice crimes, law enforcement offers must go to extraordinary lengths to investigate and prosecute these crimes. This leads to all sorts of other problems, including invasions of privacy, entrapment, and police corruption.
    The sad case of Salvatore Culosi provides a recent, vivid illustration of the folly of vice laws. Culosi (as irony would have it, he was named after a police officer) was a 37-year old optometrist in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Fairfax, Virginia. According to friends, Culosi was a wealthy, self-made man. He was easygoing and friendly, a guy who enjoyed his success.
    He was also a small-time gambler. Culosi and his friends regularly met at bars in the area to watch sports, and frequently wagered on the outcomes of games. The wagers weren't insignificant -- $50, $100, sometimes more on a given afternoon. But the small circle of friends also had the means to back up their wagers. No one was betting the mortgage, here.
    As one friend of Culosi's told me, "To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends...none of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting $50 bucks or so on the Virginia-Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation."
    Apparently, it was. Fairfax police detective David J. Baucom met Culosi in a bar one evening last October, befriended him, and was soon making wagers himself. According to those close to Culosi I've spoken with, it wasn't long before Baucom began upping the ante, encouraging Culosi to wager larger sums than what the friends were used to. Baucom would later report in an affidavit that he'd wagered close to $30,000 with Culosi over a three-month period, and had lost nearly $6,000.
    Baucom eventually encouraged Culosi to wager at least $2,000 in a single day, the lower threshold under which Culosi could be charged under state law with "conducting an illegal gambling operation." On January 24 of this year, Detective Baucom assembled the Fairfax County SWAT team, and marched off to Culosi's home to arrest him.
    According to press accounts, police affidavits, and the resulting investigation by the Fairfax prosecutor's office, Baucom called Culosi that evening, and told him he'd be by to collect his winnings. With the SWAT team at the ready just behind him, Baucom waited outside Culosi's home in an SUV. As Culosi emerged from the doorway, clad only in a t-shirt and jeans, SWAT officer Deval Bullock's finger apparently slipped to the trigger of his Heckler & Koch MP5 semiautomatic weapon, already aimed at the unarmed Culosi.
    The gun fired, releasing a bullet that entered Culosi's side, then ripped through his chest and struck his heart, killing him instantly.
    It only got worse from there. This month, Culosi's parents called a press conference to release details of their own investigation into their son's shooting. They found that police waited more than five hours to inform them of their son's death, denying the Roman Catholic family the opportunity to administer Culosi the sacrament of Last Rites.
    Hospital records show that a staff social worker was prepared to contact the Culosi's when their son arrived at the hospital, but were barred from doing so by Fairfax police. In fact, the Culosis weren't permitted to see their son's body until two days later, when it was released to a funeral home.
    Over the next few months, as Culosi's death made news and raised outrage in the Washington, D.C. area, Detective Baucom stubbornly continued his investigation, to the point of calling friends and acquaintances he'd gathered from the dead man's cell phone.
    He even called Culosi's grieving brother-in-law, menacingly inquiring,"How much are you into Sal, for?" The brother-in-law would later tell the Washington Post that the call smacked of witness intimidation, given the family's inevitable lawsuit against the city and the police department.
    The incident didn't deter the Fairfax police department's anti-gambling crusade, either. As the NCAA tournament was about to tip-off, the police department issued a poorly-timed, insensitively-worded press release declaring, "Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk."
    Given that the Culosi case was over the media at the time, the release carried the troubling, if unintended, implication that said "risk" could well mean a fatal visit from the Fairfax SWAT team. Meanwhile, the state of Virginia continued to spend the $20 million it allocates each year toward marketing and promoting the state's lottery.
    Last month, Fairfax County prosecutor Robert Horan announced that he would not press charges against the officer who shot and killed Culosi. That's no surprise. In his 39 years as a prosecutor, Horan hasn't brought a single charge against a police officer. Not only that, but both Horan and the Fairfax County police department have yet to mention the officer's name in public. We only know Officer Bullock's identity due to the perseverance of a Washington Post reporter.
    I'm not a fan of criminal negligence laws, but if we're going to have them, certainly our law enforcement officials should be among the first we require to follow them. In this case, Officer Bullock improperly had his finger on the trigger of his weapon, and improperly had his weapon pointed at Culosi. Somehow, he improperly fired, and improperly registered a direct hit. Tests show there was nothing wrong with the gun.
    Were any citizen to accidentally and fatally discharge a weapon in the same manner, it's difficult to believe that Mr. Horan wouldn't be quick to file charges, and release the name of the suspect to the public. One wonders why he doesn't hold police officers to a higher standard than average citizen, much less why he holds them to a lower one.
    A spokesman for the Fairfax police department originally said that the department serves nearly all of its search warrants with the SWAT team. Local officials have since backed off from that statement. In this case, the SWAT team was wholly inappropriate. And it's hard to believe this is the first time it's been used on a nonviolent suspect. A competent investigator would have discovered that Culosi had no weapons in his home, had no history of violence, and, had he actually talked to Culosi's friends and acquaintances, wasn't the kind of guy who would put up a fight. As Horan himself conceded, "He doesn't look like a kingpin."
    I'm sure that Officer Bullock didn't intentionally shoot and kill Salvatore Culosi. Instead, the man's death is the end result of a series of bad policies instituted by state legislators, misplaced priorities on the part of the police department, and a lack of oversight from the prosecutor's office. His wasn't the first needless death stemming from the misguided, overly aggressive approach our government takes to consensual crimes. Sadly, it won't be the last, either.
    Whether or not Sal Culosi represents the last time something like this happens in Fairfax County rests with if citizens there demand accountability, transparency, and reform from the officials who serve them.
    Radley Balko is a policy analyst for the Cato Institute specializing in "nanny state" and consumer choice issues, including alcohol and tobacco control, drug prohibition, obesity, and civil liberties. Separately, he maintains the The Agitator weblog. The opinions expressed in his column for FOXNews.com are his own and are not to be associated with Cato unless otherwise indicated.


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  3. #173
    Professional Poster TempestTS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Fuck the Police State

    Detroit Water Shut Off Protesters met with Military LRAD in the hands of Police

    - Dont worry folks - you still have free speech just not in public - and not around the police but this is in no way a police state - your first amendment right is still intact - well kinda - ummm not really


    HOLY FUCK - you cant even protest city wide water shutoffs without the police using a military crowd dispersal against a crowd of - oh yeah a little more than a Dozen people...




    Daily Kos July 22, 2014

    Nine persons were arrested at the entrance to Homrich, a demolition contractor working on a $5.6 million deal to perform the water shutoffs on residents. The rally outside the gate started at 6:30am and went for seven hours before arrests were made. Police believed the group would disperse and head to the rally downtown at Hart Plaza. The group however showed their commitment holding the gate after that rally had started. This is the second week of arrests at the entrance and the second time in the last 10 years protesters were arrested in Detroit. Last week 10 persons were arrested and released on bail awaiting trial for disorderly conduct.

    attribution: Stephen Boyle

    The first arrested of the group was Baxter Jones, a former Detroit Public Schools teacher wrongfully dismissed is in a wheelchair. Baxter had put himself on the front line during last week’s blockade which had 10 arrested as well, but the police chose not to arrest him and dragged his chair out of the way.The group doesn’t appear to be letting up on the pressure. During the protest several televised interviews were shown. One of which was with Valerie who spoke of her household and her neighborhood going through mass shutoffs as Homrich moved through a three block area. She mobilized in the moment, saving her house from being shutoff and opened up a neighborhood water location. In our worst of times community becomes very essential in getting through.
    Broadcast video from activist.
    Military Weapon Deployment


    A LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) was used to disperse a rally at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit on Friday, July 18, 2014 at 2:43pm. There has been previous use of an LRAD in Detroit on May 1, 2012 when Occupy Detroit gathered on the public sidewalk outside Grand Circus Park after park closing hours of 10pm. The use in 2012 was as a public address. The use in 2014 was to cause distress to those hearing the sound.You can hear the sound emitted in the video footage at 50 minutes into this clip (the final minute of the clip). Those who were on the platform to speak felt vibration throughout their body and some clutched at their chest during the deployment which last about 2 minutes.


    The sound dispersed the crowd which had a peaceful assembly with speakers discussing the human right to water, and the hypocrisy of Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law (PA 436 of 2012), which was brought forth after the public voted down the Emergency Manager Law (PA 4) during the November elections. Rally speakers brought the position of Detroit is being ruled by an implanted dictator who is dismantling sections of local government. Those assembled resist the interest of Kevyn Orr, the EM of Detroit, in moving the public water to a privatized service. They also resist privatization of all public services placed in the trust of our local government to provide for the well-being of our citizens. Detroit has seen public lighting turned over to a new authority which has darkened major streets such as Gratiot, Grand River, and Woodward – streets where pedestrian deaths have occurred at night in the past year.

    Advance 50 minutes into the video to hear the LRAD deployment
    Background On Shutoffs

    Volunteers with the Peoples Water Board Coalition have heard from residents of rental properties that were not notified by their landlords of high water bills that resulted in water being turned off. It is inappropriate for people to have water – a human need - removed without notice. Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD) have contracted Homrich (a demolition company) to perform up to 3,000 shutoffs per week. Addresses are listed with no information about occupants of the locations being shutoff. Elders and families with small children are all treated the same. If the property is on the list it gets shutoff and those affected are told to come to a water payment center to work out arrangements. Thousands of Detroiters have experienced their water being turned off for at least 24 hours. Hundreds have been found that have had no water service for months. Sanitation concerns around the city are increasing.
    Several water stations and a number of neighborhood water friends have been setup through the Peoples Water Board Coalition (PWB) and Detroit Water Brigade. The demands of the PWB are to enable the Water Affordability Program proposed in 2006 by Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO). DWSD has opened up DRWAP (Detroit Residential Water Affordability Program) in the last month as a response after having shutoff thousands. One of the stipulations of DRWAP is 1/3 of outstanding balance must be provided to enter into the program, that is not present in MWRO’s WAP.
    If the city can demonstrate the ability to bring residential accounts current it will push the value behind privatization higher.
    There are many complex angles to this story that deserve further discussion – the shutoffs themselves are a symptom of a greater problem that is being avoided by the press. Emergency Manager Law has placed the city under a State of Michigan appointed “dictator” able to dissect City of Detroit operations, dissolve union contracts, and cram changes in public services upon the people.The suburbs are opposed to the cram-down being pushed by the State of Michigan as well. Rate hikes have been coming each year – this year 4.3% for the suburbs and 8.7% for Detroit residents. Changes in Detroit are being felt by its neighbors. More than half of Michigan’s municipalities controlled by Emergency Manager Law are in Metropolitan Detroit.


    Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/mil...tXHwhFZB04k.99
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  4. #174
    Professional Poster TempestTS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Fuck the Police State

    Owner of a private prison corporation holds 10,000 $ a plate fund raiser for the governor - gets 20 million in state funding -

    I wonder what its like to own a politician
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    Tempest TS-ROCKDOLL
    PORN SATURATED PUNK ROCK SLUT & Temptation Under Tungsten
    This Revolution Starts In The Mirror



    onlyfans.com/ts-rockdoll
    MANYVIDS

    Follow Me On Twitter
    Find me on FACEBOOK
    TS-RockDolls.com
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    My Video Clips Store and My Images Store

  5. #175
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    Default Re: Fuck the Police State

    Quote Originally Posted by TempestTS View Post
    Thats because the only thing they have is fear and guns - we have the numbers and that's where the true power lies -

    Look at a cop at a protest - every bit of armor the put on - every big APC they drive up in and and every gun and grenade the strap on to themselves is a sign of exactly how terrified they are of the rest of the population - we could throw them all out of power in a heartbeat if we really wanted to.


    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson
    Here's a link to a rather lengthy report that confirms your assertion and then some.
    http://www.thetaskforce.org/download.../ntds_full.pdf



  6. #176
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    Default Re: Fuck the Police State

    Is this thread about a police state, or the state of the police?


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  7. #177
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    Default Re: Fuck the Police State

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post
    Is this thread about a police state, or the state of the police?
    It's about:

    rising , documented police brutality as in previous police states

    similarities to previous well known 'police states'

    erosion of liberties, be it temporarily or by decree. as in previous police states

    people that don't believe any of this is happening. as in previous police states.



  8. #178
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Default Re: Fuck the Police State



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    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  9. #179
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    http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle39248.htm

    The Absurd, Bureaucratic Hell That Is the American Police State

    By John W. Whitehead

    “The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”—C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

    July 28, 2014 "ICH" - Whether it’s the working mother arrested for letting her 9-year-old play unsupervised at a playground, the teenager forced to have his genitals photographed by police, the underage burglar sentenced to 23 years for shooting a retired police dog, or the 43-year-old man who died of a heart attack after being put in a chokehold by NYPD officers allegedly over the sale of untaxed cigarettes, the theater of the absurd that passes for life in the American police state grows more tragic and incomprehensible by the day.

    Debra Harrell, a 46-year-old South Carolina working mother, was arrested, charged with abandonment and had her child placed in state custody after allowing the 9-year-old to spend unsupervised time at a neighborhood playground while the mom worked a shift at McDonald’s. Mind you, the child asked to play outside, was given a cell phone in case she needed to reach someone, and the park—a stone’s throw from the mom’s place of work—was overrun with kids enjoying its swings, splash pad, and shade.

    A Connecticut mother was charged with leaving her 11-year-old daughter in the car unsupervised while she ran inside a store—despite the fact that the child asked to stay in the car and was not overheated or in distress. A few states away, a New Jersey man was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of his children after leaving them in a car parked in a police station parking lot, windows rolled down, while he ran inside to pay a ticket.

    A Virginia teenager was charged with violating the state’s sexting law after exchanging sexually provocative videos with his girlfriend. Instead of insisting that the matter be dealt with as a matter of parental concern, police charged the boy with manufacturing and distributing child pornography and issued a search warrant to “medically induce an erection” in the 17-year-old boy in order to photograph his erect penis and compare it to the images sent in the sexting exchange. The police had already taken an initial photograph of the boy’s penis against his will, upon his arrest.

    In Georgia, a toddler had his face severely burned when a flash bang grenade, launched by a SWAT team during the course of a no-knock warrant, landed in his portable crib, detonating on his pillow. Also in Georgia, a police officer shot and killed a 17-year-old boy who answered the door, reportedly with a Nintendo Wii controller in his hands. The cop claimed the teenager pointed a gun at her, thereby justifying the use of deadly force. Then there was the incident wherein a police officer, responding to a complaint that some children were “chopping off tree limbs” creating “tripping hazards,” pulled a gun on a group of 11-year-old boys who were playing in a wooded area, attempting to build a tree fort.

    While the growing phenomenon of cops shooting family pets only adds to the insanity (it is estimated that a family pet is killed by law enforcement every 98 minutes in America), it’s worse for those who dare to shoot a police dog. Ivins Rosier was 16 when he broke into the home of a Florida highway patrol officer and shot (although he didn’t kill) the man’s retired police dog. For his crime, the teenager was sentenced to 23 years in prison, all the while police officers who shoot family pets are rarely reprimanded.

    Meanwhile if you’re one of those hoping to live off the grid, independent of city resources, you might want to think again. Florida resident Robin Speronis was threatened with eviction for living without utilities. Speronis was accused of violating the International Property Maintenance Code by relying on rain water instead of the city water system and solar panels instead of the electric grid.

    Now we can shrug these incidents off as isolated injustices happening to “other” people. We can rationalize them away by suggesting that these people “must” have done something to warrant such treatment. Or we can acknowledge that this slide into totalitarianism—helped along by overcriminalization, government surveillance, militarized police, neighbors turning in neighbors, privatized prisons, and forced labor camps, to name just a few similarities—is tracking very closely with what we saw happening in Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

    When all is said and done, what these incidents reflect is a society that has become so bureaucratic, so legalistic, so politically correct, so militaristic, so locked down, so self righteous, and so willing to march in lockstep with the corporate-minded police state that any deviations from the norm—especially those that offend the sensibilities of the “government-knows-best” nanny state or challenge the powers that be—become grist for prosecution, persecution and endless tribulations for the poor souls who are caught in the crosshairs.

    Then there are the incidents, less colorful perhaps but no less offensive to the sensibilities of any freedom-loving individual, which should arouse outrage among the populace but often slip under the radar of a sleeping nation.

    For instance, not only is the NSA spying on and collecting the content of your communications, but it’s also going to extreme lengths to label as “extremists” anyone who attempts to protect their emails from the government’s prying eyes. Adding insult to injury, those same government employees and contractors spying on Americans’ private electronic communications are also ogling their private photos. Recent revelations indicate that NSA employees routinely pass around intercepted nude photos, considered a “fringe benefit” of surveillance positions.

    A trove of leaked documents reveals the government’s unmitigated gall in labeling Americans as terrorists for little more than being suspected of committing “any act that is ‘dangerous’ to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation.” As The Intercept reports: “This combination—a broad definition of what constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a terrorist—opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret government dragnets.” All the while, the TSA, despite the billions of dollars we spend on the agency annually and the liberties to which its agents subject travelers, has yet to catch a single terrorist.

    No less disconcerting are the rash of incidents in which undercover government agents encourage individuals to commit crimes they might not have engaged in otherwise. This “make work” entrapment scheme runs the gamut from terrorism to drugs. In fact, a recent report released by Human Rights Watch reveals that “nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the ‘direct involvement’ of government agents or informants.”

    Most outrageous of all are the asset forfeiture laws that empower law enforcement to rake in huge sums of money by confiscating cash, cars, and even homes based on little more than a suspicion of wrongdoing. In this way, Americans who haven’t been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of wrongdoing, are literally being subjected to highway robbery by government agents offering profit-driven, cash-for-freedom deals.

    So who or what is to blame for this bureaucratic nightmare delivered by way of the police state? Is it the White House? Is it Congress? Is it the Department of Homeland Security, with its mobster mindset? Is it some shadowy, power-hungry entity operating off a nefarious plan?

    Or is it, as Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt suggests, the sheepish masses who mindlessly march in lockstep with the government’s dictates—expressing no outrage, demanding no reform, and issuing no challenge to the status quo—who are to blame for the prison walls being erected around us? The author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt warned that “the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

    This is where democracy falls to ruin, and bureaucracy and tyranny prevail.

    As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we have only ourselves to blame for this bureaucratic hell that has grown up around us. Too many of us willingly, knowingly and deliberately comprise what Arendt refers to as “cogs in the mass-murder machine.”

    These cogs are none other than those of us who have turned a blind eye to the government corruption, or shrugged dismissively at the ongoing injustices, or tuned out the mayhem in favor of entertainment distractions. Just as guilty are those who have traded in their freedoms for a phantom promise of security, not to mention those who feed the machine unquestioningly with their tax dollars and partisan politics.

    And then there are those who work for the government, federal, state, local or contractor. These government employees—the soldiers, the cops, the technicians, the social workers, etc.—are neither evil nor sadistic. They’re simply minions being paid to do a job, whether that job is to arrest you, spy on you, investigate you, crash through your door, etc. However, we would do well to remember that those who worked at the concentration camps and ferried the victims to the gas chambers were also just “doing their jobs.”

    Then again, if we must blame anyone, blame the faceless, nameless, bureaucratic government machine—which having been erected and set into motion is nearly impossible to shut down—for the relentless erosion of our freedoms through a million laws, statutes, and prohibitions.

    If there is any glimmer of hope to be found, it will be at the local level, but we cannot wait for things to get completely out of control. If you wait to act until the SWAT team is crashing through your door, until your name is placed on a terror watch list, until you are reported for such outlawed activities as collecting rainwater or letting your children play outside unsupervised, then it will be too late.

    Obedience is the precondition to totalitarianism, and the precondition to obedience is fear. Regimes of the past and present understand this. “The very first essential for success,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.” Is this not what we are seeing now with the SWAT teams and the security checkpoints and the endless wars?

    This much I know: we are not faceless numbers. We are not cogs in the machine. We are not slaves. We are people, and free people at that. As the Founders understood, our freedoms do not flow from the government. They were not given to us, to be taken away at the will of the State; they are inherently ours. In the same way, the government’s appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.

    Until we can get back to this way of thinking, until we can remind Americans what it really means to be a free American, and learn to stand our ground in the face of threats to those freedoms, and encourage our fellow citizens to stop being cogs in the machine, we will continue as slaves in thrall to the bureaucratic police state.

    John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization whose international headquarters are located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Whitehead serves as the Institute’s president and spokesperson, in addition to writing a weekly commentary that is posted on The Rutherford Institute’s website (www.rutherford.org)


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