{"id":9621,"date":"2015-08-24T09:40:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T13:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=9621"},"modified":"2015-09-24T09:42:26","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T13:42:26","slug":"the-raping-of-america-mile-markers-on-the-road-to-fascism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/the-raping-of-america-mile-markers-on-the-road-to-fascism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFreedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.\u201d\u2014Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking<\/a>. The people are directionless<\/a>, and politics provides no answer<\/a>. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a fa\u00e7ade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.<\/p>\n

Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms\u2014especially the Fourth Amendment\u2014continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0individual at\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0time and for the\u00a0slightest<\/em>\u00a0provocation.<\/p>\n

Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.<\/p>\n

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases\u2014these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.<\/p>\n

Indeed, on a daily basis, Americans are being forced to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are\u2014our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)\u2014in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States.<\/p>\n

In other words, we are all guilty until proven innocent.<\/p>\n

Worst of all, it seems as if nothing will change as long as the American people remain distracted by politics, divided by their own prejudices, and brainwashed into believing that the Constitution still reigns supreme as the law of the land, when in fact, we have almost completed the shift into fascism.<\/p>\n

In other words, despite our occasional bursts of outrage over abusive police practices, sporadic calls for government reform, and periodic bouts of awareness that all is not what it seems, the police state continues to march steadily onward.<\/p>\n

Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.<\/p>\n

Consider, for example, what happened to Charnesia Corley after allegedly being pulled over by Texas police for \u201crolling\u201d through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of the police cruiser, and then searched her car for almost an hour. They found nothing in the car<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the Houston Chronicle<\/em> reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her. Then\u2026Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley\u2019s legs apart to conduct the probe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As shocking and disturbing as it seems, Corley\u2019s roadside cavity search is becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry\u2019s bodily integrity.<\/p>\n

For instance, 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her 24-year-old niece, Ashley, were pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 13, 2012, allegedly for flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Insisting that he smelled marijuana, he proceeded to interrogate them and search the car. Despite the fact that both women denied smoking or possessing any marijuana, the police officer then called in a female trooper, who carried out a roadside cavity search, sticking her fingers into the older woman\u2019s anus and vagina<\/a>, then performing the same procedure on the younger woman, wearing the same pair of gloves. No marijuana was found.<\/p>\n

David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy<\/a> after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops justified the searches on the grounds that they suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his \u201cposture [was] erect\u201d and \u201che kept his legs together.\u201d No drugs were found.<\/p>\n

Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic during a routine traffic stop, while her two children\u2014ages 1 and 4\u2014waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer \u201cforcibly removed\u201d a tampon from Tarantino<\/a>. Nothing illegal was found. Nevertheless, such searches have been sanctioned by the courts, especially if accompanied by a search warrant (which is easily procured), as justified in the government\u2019s pursuit of drugs and weapons.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, four Milwaukee police officers were charged with carrying out rectal searches of suspects on the street and in police district stations over the course of several years. One of the officers was accused of conducting searches of men\u2019s anal and scrotal areas, often inserting his fingers into their rectums<\/a> and leaving some of his victims with bleeding rectums. Halfway across the country, the city of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $4.6 million to 39 men who had their pants pulled down by police<\/a> on city streets between 2002 and 2009.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s gotten so bad that you don\u2019t even have to be suspected of possessing drugs to be subjected to a strip search.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in Florence v. Burlison<\/em><\/a>, any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials without reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is carrying a weapon or contraband.<\/p>\n

Examples<\/a> of minor infractions which have resulted in strip searches include: individuals arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with an inoperable headlight, failing to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, making an improper left turn, engaging in an antiwar demonstration (the individual searched was a nun, a Sister of Divine Providence for 50 years). Police have also carried out strip searches for passing a bad check, dog leash violations, filing a false police report, failing to produce a driver\u2019s license after making an illegal left turn, having outstanding parking tickets, and public intoxication. A failure to pay child support can also result in a strip search.<\/p>\n

It must be remembered that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to prevent government agents from searching an individual\u2019s person or property without a warrant and probable cause (evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot). While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the indignities being heaped upon us by the architects and agents of the American police state\u2014whether or not we\u2019ve done anything wrong\u2014don\u2019t end with roadside strip searches. They\u2019re just a foretaste of what is to come.<\/p>\n

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People<\/em><\/a>, the government doesn\u2019t need to strip you naked by the side of the road in order to render you helpless. It has other methods, less subtle perhaps but equally humiliating, devastating and mind-altering, of stripping you of your independence, robbing you of your dignity, and undermining your rights.<\/p>\n

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we\u2019re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives. As Rod Serling, creator of the\u00a0Twilight Zone<\/em> and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, \u201cWe\u2019re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won\u2019t be able to think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we\u2019re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them\u2014tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.<\/p>\n

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp\u2014call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.<\/p>\n

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.<\/p>\n

If there is any hope to be found it will be found in local, grassroots activism. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., it\u2019s time for \u201cmilitant nonviolent resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, however, Americans must break free of the apathy-inducing turpor of politics, entertainment spectacles and manufactured news. Only once we are free of the chains that bind us\u2014or to be more exact, the chains that \u201cblind\u201d us\u2014can we become actively aware of the injustices taking place around us and demand freedom of our oppressors.<\/p>\n

WC: 1718<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFreedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.\u201d\u2014Martin Luther King Jr. There\u2019s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a fa\u00e7ade of law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,214,226,212],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9621"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9622,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9621\/revisions\/9622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}