[Previous entry: "The Hurtt Prize"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "ACLU Pizza"]

02/24/2006 Entry: "U.S. moving Further toward the military/police state?"

Thanks to David Theroux of the Independent Institute for bringing this chilling editorial to my attention. The editorial in Consortium News links two separate news items that are each frightening in their own right and exponentially so if they are connected, as the commentator suggests.

The article opens with the first item: Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy. “The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

The second news item: Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006] Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]

Consortium News asks, "what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people?" Daniel Ellsberg -- of the Pentagon Papers whistleblowing fame -- offered one explanation, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”

It is time for anyone who values his or her personal liberty and safety from the omnivorous State to leave America. Leave right now while it is still possible and relatively easy to get a passport. Throughout history, the well-meaning citizens of countries that gradually slid into totalitarianism have looked back at the process after the fact and said, "How did that happen?" Reread the two preceding news items. Give a minute's thought to how little attention the items have drawn. The military and police solution has become so much the automatic default position that no one even notices them in action. The military-police society is simply "the norm" and who notices what's normal? A population numbed to State authority by having their bags and persons frisked for the State-privilege of travelling within their own nation now looks suspiciously at anyone who doesn't think the pre-emptive building of huge detention centers is normal. The kindest assessment of such dissidence is "paranoid." Less kind: you are a Fifth columnist.How much longer do you think it will be safe to speak out? Do you think it is safe right now?