To which, Rodger Silvers replied:
>
> Ian Goddard wrote:
>>
>> A must for all opposed to the entropic disease of Police Statism:
>
> Please state, eh? Are you getting paranoid?
IAN: One way to know is to examine the evidence relative to police
powers and the deployments thereof. Now it is NOT a matter of suspicion,
excessive or otherwise, that police powers are growing and that they
are only growing. Legislation, such as the anti-terrorist bill, and court
rulings that give police more and more ability to conduct surreptitious
surveillance, to search properties and imprison people are increasing by
leaps and bounds every year -- such is "police statism" by definition.
I will submit to you that as these expanded police powers are not matters
of conjecture, but are matters of fact, that to suggest that it is
"paranoid" to define such rapid and constant expansions of police power
as "police statism" is contradicted absolutely by the facts. It is more
a question of do you care or not -- I do, it seems you don't.
Furthermore, to suggest that defining police statism as a "disease" is
paranoid (if indeed that's what you suggest) is also unwarranted; yet,
it is a matter of subjective interpretation: those who value the crushing
effects of excessive police -- i.e., governmental -- controls will not
define a police state as a disease.
As to the question of whether or not the expansion of police state
powers is leading to excessive-police brutality, I suggest you examine
the evidence you deleted. For example, the FLIR video of the events at
Waco on April 19, 1993 provide compelling evidence, to say the least,
that federal-police forces massacred women and children in cold blood
as they attempted to escape the fire that the same video indicates was
set by the FBI. Dr. Edward F. Allard, an FLIR expert, gives us his
expert analysis of the many muzzle flashes seen on the video:
There is no natural explanation for these flashes.
Natural phenomena do not heat and cool in fractions
of a second. My expert opinion is that these flashes
appear to be the muzzle flashes of a fully automatic
firearm, firing at about 500 rounds per minute cyclic
rate. Carefully examined, in slow motion and by frame-
to-frame observation, the flashes originate to the left
and progress to the right, indicating that they are
being fired from a source outside the building, and
fired into the building.
I have myself seen the FLIR video. I was amazed at the certainty with
which one can determine that these are muzzle flashes. In one case you
can even see heat radiate from the spent-cartridge discharger on the
side of the firearm, which I appears to be a large M-60 machine gun.
I cannot imagine that anyone could define the cold-blooded slaughter and
burning to death of innocent women and children as anything but the worst
expression of police statism. Even more than the FLIR, pathologists who
did autopsies in the Waco case blame many deaths on the FBI tanks that
plowed deep inside the building. See my web page that covers Waco for
more details on this: http://www.erols.com/igoddard/facts.htm
Waco, while a most horrific example, is but a subset of a wider less
overwhelmingly aggressive, yet all-pervasive assault by the State on the
liberties, properties, and freedom of the American people. Every person
sitting in a prison for a victimless crime is a victim of police statism.
Every business shut down by regulators or prevented from ever existing
due to onerous regulation and taxation are victims of police statism.
We can try to define police statism out of existence if we choose -- but
we do so at our own peril. I realize that in accord with the Extropian
principle of Dynamic Optimism, awareness of police brutality is discouraged
even to the point that those who seek to raise awareness are tarred as
"paranoid," i.e., mentally defective. I believe that excessive optimism
can be as, or perhaps even more, detrimental to our future as a nation
than excessive paranoia, which, short of proving that police powers are
decreasing, that Waco was not a massacre, etc... has not even been
demonstrated to be the case here.
I encourage people to examine the evidence against the ever-growing State.
I submit that no case against Statism is complete minus a careful analysis
of its crimes against the people. I submit further that cataloging these
crimes is not a mental dysfunction, as we are encouraged believe by the
statist majority, but is an invaluble service to the future of
freedom and human progress.
***********************************************************************
IAN GODDARD (igoddard@erols.com) Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
VISIT Ian Goddard's Universe -----> http://www.erols.com/igoddard
_______________________________________________________________________
TWA 800: THE FACTS --> http://www.erols.com/igoddard/twa-fact.htm
WACO - WTC - OKC ---> http://www.erols.com/igoddard/facts.htm