In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. [This joins] the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting
anywhere near someone with secret service protection.
Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial
suit ... described having been told to "turn around. Squat and cough.
Spread your cheeks."
There's the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram, [where] in some cases,
an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee
while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or
threatened with anal sex. And there's the policy ... to grope US
travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine
–
made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA
czar Michael Chertoff
–
with images so vivid that it has been called the "pornoscanner". Believe
me: you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes
off. History shows that the use of forced nudity by a state that is
descending into fascism is powerfully effective in controlling and
subduing populations.
Where are we headed?
These recent laws ... are being set up to work in concert with a
see-all-all-the-time surveillance state. Remember, you don't need to
have done anything wrong to be arrested in America any longer. The man
who was forced to spread his buttocks was stopped for a driving
infraction. As one internet advocate said: "There is a race against
time: they realise the internet is a tool of empowerment that will work
against their interests, and they need to race to turn it into a tool of
control."
Note:
How sad that it takes a British newspaper to spell out the highly
repressive and invasive new laws being passed in the US. For many
revealing major media articles showing the dangers of big brother in our
world, click here. For excellent articles revealing the severe erosion of civil liberties, click here.
ast
week, the five Republican partisans who control the U.S. Supreme Court
were all about protecting American "liberties" against the threat of
compulsory broccoli purchases. This week, they are defending the rights
of prison guards to strip search a nun arrested in an anti-war protest
or a black guy who got nabbed by mistake for not paying a fine that he
had actually paid.