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              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 1  Num. 62
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")


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POLICE STATE AMERICA
by Brian Francis Redman, Editor-in-chief, Conspiracy Nation
Copyright (c) 1994 -- All rights reserved

For starters I want to say that in my younger days, in my 
encounters with the police, many times they "cut me some slack." 
For that I am grateful.

What sort of person would want to be a politician? I am 
suspicious of anyone saying they want to go to Washington to "do 
good." It may be that there are some who really *are* that 
altruistic, it may be that some of them at least *think* their 
motivation is that they want to "do good." But I've got to 
wonder: Who in their right mind would want that job?

Ditto for policemen. Why on earth would anyone want to be a 
policeman? It immediately cuts you off, whether you are aware of 
it or not, from your fellow citizens. You become a snoop, whether 
you mean to be or not, wherever you go. Who do policemen 
associate with? Answer: other policemen. "I won't bust you if you 
don't bust me."

I am not scared of crime. I just avoid certain areas, especially 
at night. What I am scared of is being rousted from my bed at 4 
in the morning. I am a law-abiding citizen, yet I am more afraid 
of the police than I am of the crooks.

From here on, I am going to start being blunt in what I say. And 
right off, there is some apprehension that they are going to "get 
me" for boldly speaking my opinion. I already suspect that my 
apartment was searched during the last Christmas season when I 
was out of town. Maybe next time they will *plant* the "evidence" 
that they didn't find then.

But basically, nothing personal Mr. Policeman, but I don't like 
you guys. When Clinton says he will give us 100,000 more police, 
and says it as if that is something that most people want, I am 
personally not happy at the news. My experience with police is I 
feel uneasy when they are around.

I am not saying that police are not necessary, to an extent. But 
things in this country have been and are getting more and more 
ridiculous. How many cops is enough? When we make everyone a cop 
will there then, at last, be no crime because, after all, the 
police never break the law? (I won't bust you if you don't bust 
me.)

Or will we just lock up nine-tenths of the population and then 
have one-tenth working as guards? An article in the Summer 1994 

	Adbusters* suggests that this *is* where we are headed. As the 

article points out,

    Millions of people are already prisoners of television 
    technology. Although they are allowed to leave their 
    living rooms on "work furloughs," they have given up 
    control of their time to the rhythms and dictates of 
    institutional marketing strategies. But even television 
    technology is primitive compared with what's coming. 
    Designed to channel the flows of data and political 
    power, the panoptic project is a transnational effort to 
    overlay Earth with a computerized surveillance grid. 
    {1}.


I recently watched a show that is on in the afternoons called 
something like "Tales of the Highway Patrol." The show has a 
camerman ride along with various state highway patrol officers as 
they do their job. One segment had the Utah highway patrol 
following a car that was travelling 4 miles an hour over the 
speed limit. So they pulled them over. According to what I saw, 
the fact that they were going 4 miles per hour over the speed 
limit (i.e. something like 59 m.p.h. in a 55 m.p.h. zone) gave 
the officers probable cause to search the vehicle. (I personally 
don't see how that could possibly constitute probable cause to 
search the car without a warrant. Maybe one of my readers can 
enlighten me.)

So they had the guy get out of his car and said to him, "Empty 
out your pockets." His fiance was sleeping in the back seat. They 
woke her and commanded her to get out of the car. These two, the 
guy and his fiance, were in their twenties. If impressions count 
for anything, they seemed like nice kids. They were travelling 
from Utah back to California, as I recall.

The highway patrol (a.k.a. the highwaymen) searched through the 
car and at last they found an empty pint of rum, a pipe that 
could be used to smoke marijuana, and one marijuana cigarette.

So they arrested the guy. By now, his fiance was in tears. They 
took him to the magistrate. The "Tales of the Highway Patrol" did 
not follow them into the little office where sat the magistrate, 
but it did show the aftermath:

    HIGHWAYMAN: You are so lucky. I have never seen the 
    judge let anybody off like he did for you. I don't know 
    why, but you just have to pay a $200 fine.

    THE GUY: Gee, thanks, Mr. Highwayman.


In olden times, the highwayman was a guy who harassed travellers. 
If they wanted to travel on *his* road, then by God they would 
have to pay *him* some money. In a larger sense, the police in 
general can be seen as a sort of armed tax collection agency. Of 
course, they *say* things like "Your muffler is too loud," or 
"The light over your license plate has gone out." But maybe the 
highwaymen of olden times used to say things like "Your horse 
needs new horseshoes," or "His neighing is disturbing the 
neighborhood." (Maybe that is the etymology of *neigh*borhood, by 
the way. It comes from the days of the highwaymen patrolling the 

	neigh*borhood.)


So what is the policeman? He is an armed tax collector, *if* you 
have money. If you are poor, or young, or working-class, then you 
must "empty out your pockets" to the highwayman and say, "I have 
no money left to give you, sir."

If you have no money left to give, then you are effectively 
punished for having no money. How dare you say, "I have no 
money," when the armed tax collectors pull you over or otherwise 
stop you under some pretext?! Just think if *everyone* started 
telling them "I have no money left to give" when the highwayman 
comes riding, riding, riding up to your door. These citizens have 
got to be beaten, imprisoned, and otherwise punished to show them 
that "By God, you'd better have some money when I come 
a'callin'." The word gets around, whispered from ear to ear, 
about how dismal the jails are, how overcrowded they are, how all 
sorts of disgusting things can happen to you in there. So you 

	know*, it is common knowledge, that when the coppers come 

a'callin' you'd better have some bucks you can give them.


	That* is what the police are about in Police State America. 

Billy Boy Clinton doesn't give a damn about how safe you are. 
Billy Boy's job is to bring in the bucks for =The State=. And 
nowadays, with =The State= having to pay huge interest on its 
debt, the need for a massive influx of funds is desperate. It is 
so desperate that =The State= is about to put 100,000 new, armed 
tax collectors out on the street.

Coincidentally with their "fine" collecting function, the 
plethora of police will also serve to dampen criticism of =The 
State=. You don't want to get fined, do you? But that is 
incidental (although it *does* serve to maintain things as they 
are). What you should know is, at this point in time, =The State= 
is absolutely desperate for funds. =The State= will seize your 
property, it will increase your taxes, it will disguise new taxes 
as social security payments, it will seize your cash, *and* it 
will put 100,000 new police on the street, for your "safety."

Why do we put up with it? Well we are heavily propagandized so 
that we do not see the police for what they are: (1) armed tax 
collectors, and (2) muscle for the elite class. Why is it there 
are and have always been so many police shows on television? All 
my life the cop show has been a mainstay of "entertainment" in 
this country. We are instinctively repulsed by these henchmen of 
=The State= as they stick their noses into our lives. To make the 
situation more palatable, =The State= *massively* exaggerates who 
these people are. We see them in television-land as if they are 
the last hope of civilization. We see "bad guys" massively 
caricatured as major, heavy-duty foul protuberances who must be 
beat back to the pit from whence they came. We see the saintly 
policeman, overworked, hemmed in by the pesky Bill of Rights, 
nobly doing his all to save us from these "others".

For any police forces who are monitoring this, I have a major 
question to ask: If you are so concerned about saving us from the 
"drug menace," then why aren't you speaking out about Bill 
Clinton? There is convincing evidence that our President not only 
used and abused drugs, but it appears that his political campaign 
was actually financed in part by illegal drug sales. Why don't we 
hear you speaking out about this, since you are supposedly so 
concerned about saving us all from the "drug menace"?

Here's another question for you: Suppose you were to actually win 
this thrice-cursed, never-ending "War on Drugs". Wouldn't you 
then be out of a job? You know, like with the military finally 
winning the Cold War. Hooray! We've Won! (You're fired.)

So you see, these guys have a career at stake. Best to keep on 
pushing around the little guys rather than really do anything 
serious. Don't worry. The television will cover up your true 
purpose.

Why are the police wearing star-trek uniforms now? Here at the 
university of Illinois, training ground for future forces of the 
law, I have been seeing guys wearing these weird helmets with 
visors that don't let you look 'em in the eye. Why the new police 
fashions? Is this the new trend? Don't you want us to be able to 
see the man behind the uniform anymore? Is this meant to isolate 
you more, robotize your function, hide your human side, or what?

One last thing. There used to be a class of people called 
"reporters." This bunch often had working-class roots, working- 
class sympathies, and wasn't afraid to take on the big guys. 

	Then*, they went to college, became journalists, and I swear 

they are now just *so sweet*. Why *no one* ever gets offended by 
what they say anymore! They wouldn't *dream* of "rocking the 
boat" or anything like that. Nope. No need to worry about them.


	Now* we have the police doing the same thing. The police used to 

come, in large part, from the ranks of the working-class. But 
now, we have got this new, improved, college-trained police force 
arriving on the scene. I suspect that many of these "Babes in 
Badgeland" have gone straight from high school, to college, to 
policeman -- all without having much of a connection with, or 
much of an empathy for, those beings who work at minimum wage and 
crawl back exhausted to their hotel rooms at night.

So where is the wisdom? A lot of the old-time cops at least had 
that. They came from or had in their memories what it can be 
like. How can they teach these new techno-cops what it is to have 
a heart?

Hey, coppers. Wise up.

Get a real job.

Stop bugging us.

-------------------------<< Notes >>-----------------------------
{1} "Techno Prisoners" By Rick Crawford. *Adbusters*, Summer 
1994, Vol. 3 No. 2.

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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9