Excerpt: "You know you live in a police state when you are under surveillance by Federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, for your political views rather than the commission of any crime against the state, and when said agencies can access your medical records, bank statements, and 'private' papers, tap your telephone, question your neighbors and employer and follow you around."

A young girl protesting at an Occupy Portland demonstration has military grade pepper spray sprayed down her throat at close range by riot police, 11/18/11. (photo: Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian)

Is America a Police State?

By Sherwood Ross, OpEd News

07 February 12

ou know you live in a police state when the president orders the assassination (i.e., murder) of American citizens without bothering to arrest them and bring them to trial. You know you live in a police state when police forces across the country attack unarmed and non-violent citizen protesters with pepper spray and clubs.

You know you live in a police state when the president allows the military to continuously harass a prisoner against whom no crime has been proven by interrupting him every five minutes of the day to ask him, "Are you okay?" and forces him to stand to attention naked at roll call. What it can do to one man it can do to every man.

You know you live in a police state when said prisoner is barred from exercising in his cell and told where he may and may not put his hands when he goes to sleep at night. Only a police state would dictate how an individual can sleep.

You know you live in a police state when the government punishes, rather than honors, whistle-blowers who reveal its crimes such as the U.S. massacre of civilians in Baghdad that Bradley Manning exposed.

You know you live in a police state when wardens force pregnant women prisoners to deliver their babies while in chains. (Not exactly "the new birth of freedom" of which Abraham Lincoln spoke.)

You know you live in a police state when the president orders the assassination (i.e., murder) of American citizens without bothering to arrest them and bring them to trial.

You know you live in a police state when police forces across the country attack unarmed and non-violent citizen protesters with pepper spray and clubs.

You know you live in a police state when hundreds of thousands of citizens are rotting in prisons for victimless "crimes" such as smoking pot and your country leads the world in incarcerations with 2.3 million behind bars and when hundreds of thousands of these prisoners are sexually assaulted.

You know you live in a police state when working people who say overwhelmingly that they want to join a union cannot do so for fear of being fired, and in which the money earned by the poor is taken by the state and given to the rich. If the government can rob one person, it can rob every person.

You know you live in a police state when your government makes terrible, punishing wars on small countries after falsely accusing them of having a "weapon of mass destruction" while it possesses tens of thousands of them.

You know you live in a police state when the president signs into law an Act allowing him to arrest innocent citizens on his say-so and have the military imprison them indefinitely without charge, legal counsel, or trial before a jury of their peers.

You know you live in a police state when you can be barred from flying in an airliner on suspicion of "terrorism" that has not been proven and which is impossible for you to challenge.

You know you live in a police state when you are under surveillance by Federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, for your political views rather than the commission of any crime against the state, and when said agencies can access your medical records, bank statements, and "private" papers, tap your telephone, question your neighbors and employer and follow you around.

You know you live in a police state when the military gets the biggest percentage of your tax dollars so that it can spend as much for war as the next 20 nations combined while claiming it is attacking other countries in the name of peace and order.

You know you live in a police state when the Pentagon has more than a trillion dollars in research projects underway to make sophisticated killing machines that will give it control of the entire planet from 2,000 military bases and outer space and to terrify the world with its arsenals of nuclear weapons and germ warfare.

You know you live in a police state when people write to you to commend you for your "courage" for writing critically against the government when, in fact, you should have every good reason to live in fear of so doing.

Sherwood Ross has worked as a publicist for Chicago; as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and workplace columnist for Reuters. He has also been a media consultant to colleges, law schools, labor unions, and to the editors of more than 100 national magazines. A civil rights activist, he was News Director for the National Urban League, a talk show host at WOL Radio, Washington, D.C., and holds an award for "best spot news coverage" for Chicago radio stations for civil rights reporting. He is the author "Gruening of Alaska,"(Best Books)and several plays about Japan during World War II, including "Baron Jiro," and "Yamamoto's Decision," read at the National Press Club, where he is a member. His favorite quotations are from the Sermon on The Mount.

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+14 # Holyone 2012-02-07 07:52

It was much worse under Karl Rove and Bush. Carl Levine and Congress are to be blamed as well as Eric Holder for most of the non-sense regarding overblown terriorist responses.

Obama did not have to sign Levine's Holocaust document into law. He really failed to push back on this dispiciable piece of legislation with force.

+35 # John Locke 2012-02-07 10:24

Holyone: But Obama did sign the Homeland Detension bill, NDAA, into law showing which side he really is on...There is NO doubt but that we are a police state. and no longer a democracy... The last confrontation in Oakland says more than the police intended. They were trained by the military (under Obama's authority) So if anyone still considers Obama to be the lessor of the two evils, perhaps they need a quiet drink and another dose of TV News propaganda.

+7 # dorianb@fuse.net 2012-02-07 14:00

You are an excellent historian and clear thinker when it comes to politics, John

+5 # Cambridgemac 2012-02-07 13:04

As far as we know, Bush was not assassinating American citizens. Please supply the reasoning behind your contention that it was worse under Bush.

+2 # ericlipps 2012-02-10 08:45

Quoting

As far as we know, Bush was not assassinating American citizens. Please supply the reasoning behind your contention that it was worse under Bush.

"As far as we know . . . ". Of course, a central premise of the Cheney, ahem, that is, the Bush administration was that we mere peasants were not supposed to know what our government was doing, except insofar as it deigned to tell us.

+3 # dorianb@fuse.net 2012-02-07 16:53

Please explain Levine's Holocaust?

+16 # James Marcus 2012-02-07 09:38

Time to 'Occupy the IRS'.
NO MONEY FOR THESE AGENDAS!
(It seems they may just Print what they need, anyway)

+18 # maddave 2012-02-07 09:40

Common Quotation, above:
"Only a police state would . . . etc ."
Unquote

I'd suggest the this general wording be changed to: "Only a police state or a bunch of psychopaths would . . .", but you'd accuse me of being redundant, wouldn't you?' .

+24 # Karlus58 2012-02-07 09:55

"You know you live in a police state when people write to you to commend you for your "courage" for writing critically against the government when, in fact, you should have every good reason to live in fear of so doing."

....this one hurts....

+17 # CandH 2012-02-07 10:22

Yes, people have been writing about these experiences/problems for years now, but to see all of them together at once is distressing to say the very least. And it is very telling this last statement, as most who do write critically, often get singled out by the "police state" for illegal harassment and wanton gangster-like hazing activities by their collusive minions:

"You know you live in a police state when people write to you to commend you for your "courage" for writing critically against the government when, in fact, you should have every good reason to live in fear of so doing."

Read an article today by a OO disabled participant who is experiencing said harassment. She writes:

"Before Occupy Oakland I was no fan of the police, I’ve been far from an angel throughout my life, but I didn’t realize they were so sadistic. I had no idea they would brutalize people for doing absolutely nothing." (http://occupiedoaktrib.org/2012/02/06/interview-with-alyssa-eisenberg/)

+22 # reiverpacific 2012-02-07 10:22

Can't argue this one but it's been growing for much longer than just the last couple of decades, perhaps starting with the free passage of the more "useful" Nazi scientists and doctors, who should have been in the dock at Nuremberg with Goering, Frick and co., some to the US, some to refuges in certain South American countries.
I've lived in Franco's Spain, Suharto's Indonesia and Stroessner's Paraguayan police states and traveled in some of the former Soviet Bloc countries and have often reflected that the current US is beginning to exceed them in it's increasingly sophisticated and interlinked surveillance networks, which these former dictatorships would have loved and were probably wishing for.
It's a classic case of as in these countries "Love the county and it's people and cultures, despise the rulers".
How a couple to add to the list:
"You know you live in a police state when openly corrupt power laughs in the population's face from the judiciary to the seats of government which, with a huge military, combine to buttress and empower it's ruling global corporations".
Or:
"You know you live in a police state when a president who seeks international peace and nuclear disarmament, can be undermined and murdered by plots hatched and carried out within his own intelligence/military apparatus"

+8 # Observer 47 2012-02-07 11:07

Right on all counts, reiverpacific. As to your last sentence---very well put, btw---would you not say that that tragedy was the beginning of the overt police state? In other words, the powers in control explicity showed their hand in this country? And it has been spiraling downward ever since.

+4 # Kootenay Coyote 2012-02-07 10:52

Goodbye, dream....

+4 # Activista 2012-02-07 11:13

We are police state - and they are showing off their power at any opportunity.
Yesterday at the river there was a girl "rescue" - helicopter, 4 ambulances, 20 police cars. Like war zone.
The 13 year old girl was pulled out by kayaker - but police show continues at least one hour afterward. I believe that it was intentional.

+28 # seeuingoa 2012-02-07 11:30

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1938) in a
message to congress:

"The liberty of a democracy is in danger if the people tolerate the growth of
private powers
(corporative power / Sheldon Adelson)
to a point where it becomes more powerful than the democratic
state itself.
That, in it´s essence is fascism."

+16 # RMDC 2012-02-07 12:35

Yes, this is a police state and it is getting worse at an alarming rate. In the 60s and 70s, the FBI ran death squads and frame ups, and provocateurs called COINTELPRO. The program was "officially" closed down, the the FBI tactics never changed.

Our system of government is "electoral fascism" -- we stage very elaborate elections but they have absolutely no impact on government policies. The difference between Bush or Obama is 95% style. The policies remain the same.

+3 # Glen 2012-02-08 13:36

I agree with you RMDC, and gave up on the differences between so called parties while Bush was in office.

To paraphrase William Burroughs, as a comment on the police state: A well run police state does not need police.

+7 # Dave_s Not Here 2012-02-07 13:06

I used to think I was blessed to be living in Canada but, since "The Harper Government" gained a majority in parliament, most of the same shit has been going on here too. Of course the USA is a police state but now so is Canada.

+1 # bugbuster 2012-02-07 13:46

The biggest problem with Big Brother, as I see it, is that we have seen example after example of how uninformed Big Brother actually is. For example, Homeland Security has gone after people, thinking they were terrorists, because the people were known to eat hummus.

All that information they are stealing doesn't seem to be informing them much.

+8 # Observer 47 2012-02-07 14:04

OUTSTANDING comment, RMDC! Anyone who does much reading at all immediately discovers the truth of your statements.

-1 # cordleycoit 2012-02-07 14:21

I have a question, not are they going to start the Drone Strikes in country? the question have they commected the Drone strikes internally? And who is doing the murdering?

+2 # MainStreetMentor 2012-02-08 06:06

While there is evidence of police state leanings and tactics employed, I believe those examples are but extensions of growing corporate influence and control over those agencies. I don’t believe we should focus on the tactics employed, but rather the enabling strategy behind them. A police state only becomes possible when the stage for it is set by the influential power behind it – in this case greed-driven Corprotocracy. Corporations are buying our elected officials’ votes, and through such means indirectly garner the control of the law enforcement bodies that lay within such jurisdiction. It is an essential element of what becomes fascism. If we can curtail the influence of Corprotocracy, the proclivity for the forming of a police state will cease.

+2 # futhark 2012-02-08 12:47

Now we have a Nobel Peace laureate President who cannot keep from boasting at the success of his hit men and drones in pursuit of assassinations. That's not a police state, that's a crime empire.

+2 # 2wmcg2 2012-02-09 19:45

You also live in a police state when Domestic Abuse laws allow the police to invade the family and arrest people, without visible evidence, upon the assertion of one family member against another and keep the not-yet-convicted from returning to their home or communicating, directly or indirectly, with the complainant. Such a police state is the state of Minnesota.

0 # Emil Sinclair 2012-02-15 20:19

...And every other state in the union, for decades now. You see, it's all been being intentionally and systematically built towards more and more control of every aspect of "We, the People's" lives, until very soon we have no True Liberty, Freedom, Privacy, Dignity or Rights left whatsoever. Absolute control of everyone by the state, and criminalization of everyone who doesn't totally bow down to it without question, complaint or dissension, giving the government "excuse" to exterminate them as a result, is their goal that they're almost finished making a complete reality, first in the U.S., and then throughout the world as a whole. Global eradication of True Human Rights and Civil Liberties equals worldwide enslavement. And their message? "You better totally bow down to it, or else the 'national security' police state will completely destroy you and/or your entire family 'for your and/or their own good', and/or 'for the good of the state'; and 'that's all there is to it'! You got that, you peon?!"...

0 # Emil Sinclair 2012-02-16 08:17

...That's why we've ALL got to stand up against all of this liberty-and-freedom-eliminating madness, or we're all screwed! We should have started doing so a long time ago, but we let the authoritarians little by little bring in due-process-of-law-destroying, and innocence-until-proven-guilty-eradicating, incursion into the privacy of the family [thus intentionally destroying family(ies)], presumption-of-guilt drunk driving laws, and on and on and on. "We, the People" have just sat back and let them do it, fooling us into believing that it was all for "our best good", thus deceiving us into not recognizing how nefarious, insidious and human-rights-and-civil-liberties-destroying it all is, and/or is all leading to; until, as I said, it leads to our all not having any True Liberty, Freedom, Privacy, etc., at all anymore, and we become nothing but slaves in the land and/or world of our forebearers, all by design of the corporate-fascist globalists who run everything, everywhere, the world-over, or very soon will...

If "We, the People" don't put a complete stop to it, that is!

+1 # Cassandra2012 2012-02-15 13:06

You know you are in a police state when the Chicago police (and cohorts) proudly display their new $$$ toys to hurt/kill/thwart protestors as if these protestors were not bonafide American citizens exercising their constitutional rights to speak out, and to assemble.
Here comes Rahm's neo-gestapo tactics!

0 # Emil Sinclair 2012-02-15 19:36

Duh! Of course it's a police state! And it's getting worse and worse every day!

If people aren't already doing so, please study what's really going on, all over the country (as if what the U.S. government is doing to other parts of the world isn't proof enough that they're a police state), to see the endless proof of their turning more and more into a police state!

Therefore, the title of this article should NOT be a question, but rather a statement of fact! Wake up and COMPLETELY face the fascism, and PLEASE fulfill your DUTY(IES) to stand up against ALL OF IT!

http://www.infowars.com/

http://www.prisonplanet.com/

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/

http://www.wolfbritain.com/

http://www.infowars.com/amerika-land-of-the-snitch/

...And MANY other excellent websites and/or articles pointing to more and more excellent websites and articles for studying what's really going on.

Totally face the truth, because IT WILL set you free (John 8:32) no matter how "depressing" it is!

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