Hawking Up Hairballs

Sunday, January 03, 2010

You Could Be Next

"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008.

The above quotation comes from an article in The Nation about America's immigration prisons. Along the same lines, a poll showed that 58% of the people felt that the Nigerian who tried to blow up that jet should be tortured. Just how stupid can people be? As Chris Hedges pointed out in a recent piece, due process is gone in the USA, for citizen and non-citizen alike. If the executive branch declares a person an enemy combatant, he can be spirited away to some secret prison without access to a lawyer or to the protections that once applied in this country. It doesn't matter whether or not he's a citizen.

It's ironic. These right-wing assholes are always railing about the government but, at the same time, they have such faith in the various police agencies. If government is corrupt and oppressive, what makes them think that the police agencies are any different? And they do trust the police. That's why they don't mind the restrictions on our civil and human rights. They believe that if the police think you're guilty of a crime, then you must have done something wrong.

All I can say is, good luck, folks. The Great Recession is nowhere near over. The Wall Street scum may be doing all right, but the average person is still suffering. Sooner or later, they're going to feel the need to take action, to demonstrate and protest. Wait and you'll see it, those demonstrators and protesters will start being designated as enemy combatants.

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