From: Tony Hollick (anduril@cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: Wed Jul 01 1998 - 12:47:18 MDT
Dale@Socrates.berkeley.edu makes a good point, and makes it well.
It is well worth while studying the literature on deception operations in
espionage (Epstein's 'Deception' is a good place to start), and examining
the manifold avenues to 'invisibility' that exist in the natural realm.
LOOMPANICS do some useful books (you may wish to use a cyber-cafe or
anonymous browser when accessing the site, for obvious reasons).
In all Police States, you are 'free' to do whatever the State wants you to
do, or is indifferent to. A major point to remember is that if the
State's officials want you in prison, that's where you'll probably go.
Whether you've committed any serious crime or not has very little to do
with it, alas. The 'rule of law' has almost completely disappeared.
And remember that most of the (aptly-named) 'criminal justice
system' is informer-driven: that is: informers tell the police who they
don't like; or whose business they want; or whose apartment they want; or
whatever. When the police come under pressure to produce 'results' they
ask their informers to suggest a few names.
A growing similarity between the United States prison system, and Nazi
Germany, Stalin's Gulag and the Chinese Lao-Gai system is that it's
economically-driven. The bureaucrats use the inmates as cheap labour for
public works schemes (in Seattle, the munuiciopality can rent eight
inmates and a supervisor for $30 a day in toto for highway cleaning); or
the inmates can be rented out to 'private businesses' for rates well below
minimum wage. The 'consent' of the inmates is quite tenuous, obviously.
Any money received by the inmates is taxed to pay for their incarceration.
And with 'private-enterprise' prisons, there's hardly any brake at all
left on the growth in prison population, which is currently at 1.7 million
and rising. 5 to 6 million Americans are imprisoned over the course of a
year, and the number's increasing. Thank the ersatz-'Republicans' for
this -- the prison population has _tripled_ over the past 18 years.
If you're rich, and have good lawyers, and political connections, well,
that does help, of course, as it indeed does in every country in the
world.
But "America the Free"?
"Kiss it goodbye", as the Eagles sang in 'The Last Resort.'
/ /\ \
--*--<Tony>--*--
Tony Hollick, LightSmith
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/la-agora (LA-Agora Conference)
http://www.agora.demon.co.uk (Agora Home Page, Rainbow Bridge Foundation)
http://www.nwb.net/nwc (NorthWest Coalition Against Malicious Harrassment)
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<EOT>
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