(Copyright © 2005 T Bruce Tober)
"Police State - A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government." The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
"Police State - A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company
For the G8 Conference this week in Scotland security plans include a five-mile long, six-foot tall "ring of steel" fence having been constructed around the Gleneagles Hotel, scene of the latest meeting of the so-called leaders of the eight most powerful (in economic and other terms) countries in the world. Military gunship helicopters and other military hardware. In addition 10,000 police have been seconded in from throughout the UK to provide security. And we will never know how many hundreds of secret police and how many thousands of military.
In the nearby city of Auchterarder, where the Make Poverty History, anti-globalization, and other demos will be taking place, some 4,000 police (that's at least two police officers for every resident of the city) have been brought in.
Has the world gone mad? These are allegedly the leaders of the world's greatest democracies. And in a democracy, the people rule.
By what right do these so-called "leaders" have to be isolated from their public, which is to say their employers, by rings of steel, thousands of police, and thousands of other security people and machinery?
By what right do they hide from the massed presence of We The People?
By what right do they ignore the massed voices of We The People?
When I was a kid I attended several conventions at which JFK was the speaker. I was able, after the event, to join the crowds outside the convention centre and shake his hand.
In 1964, not even a year after JFK was assassinated, I was a volunteer at the Democratic National Convention with its, at the time unprecedented high security, and had fairly free reign of the convention hall and hotels at which the key politicians were housed. During the week of the convention I was able to talk with some and shake hands with others.
During the 1968 election campaign I was able to get close enough to Democratic presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, during a speaking engagement in a hotel, amongst other times. Close enough to chastise him for allowing a couple of peaceful demonstrators to be rounded up by the cops in the hall, after which he ordered them to be released and allowed to speak.
In 1972 I was able to get close enough to Democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern to shake hands and speak with him, several times.
In 1980 I was able to get close enough to Republican presidential candidate, George Bush senior, to glad hand him.
I won't waste time mentioning all the various other similar incidents. And yes, in one or
two of those occasions
I was able to do so because of press credentials but not on most of them.
These days, when George Bush comes to London, or anywhere else for that matter, even in the States, the public/protesters are kept far enough away from him that he neither sees nor hears them. Except, of course, for those with excellent party credentials, invited guests all.
And Tony Blair follows that example. Crowds other than those specifically invited supporters, are kept far away from him.
It's absolutely pathetic, not to mention anti-democratic.
The granting of rights carries with it the obligation of certain responsibilities, one of the key such responsibilities these "leaders" are obligated to carry out is the obligation to do our bidding, for they are our chosen representatives.
Another of their responsibilities is to carry out their duties and to adhere to their responsibilities regardless of danger to themselves. As JFK said, no matter how much security is provided, if someone wanted to assassinate him strongly enough, they would succeed. The same is true today.
Not one of the "leaders" at Gleneagles took on his (and they are all hes) came to the job by surprise. No. They all aspired to it. They all implicitly, if not explicitly took on the rights, privileges, responsibilities and dangers knowingly.
US Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas in his 1970 book, Points
of Rebellion, presciently said,
"There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a
society where law is responsive to human needs. If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring
of our laws is essential.
"Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people’s unrest—in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing."
I believe we are at that point and the need to "awaken to the urgency of the young people’s unrest" is more important today than it was even when Douglas wrote this warning during the Vietnam War era.
Something these "leaders" appear to forget is that we hire them and we can fire them. And yet we have no right to such isolation. Well, that's not quite true. We do have such rights, they are just being taken away from us at a rather rapid pace. A key feature of the English legal system (that used by most of the G8 countries) is that a man's home is his castle.
But increasingly, no man or woman is safe in attempting to protect his privacy. The state can (and increasingly does) track virtually his every movement. Tabs are kept on citizens via their credit card use, they are tracked by their mobile phone use, they are, and increasingly will be, tracked via computer chips in their cars which are reported on via satellite tracking, records are kept of their movements via Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) bracelets worn on their wrists or ankles and tags implanted within their bodies. And let us not forget the Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) cameras with face-recognition software attached, which increasingly are installed on our city streets and in our public and private buildings.
And then there are the forthcoming biometric ID cards and passports. These little beauties have computer chips installed which contain all sorts of vital statistics about the person to whom they're assigned; eye scans, fingerprint scans, health and medical information, and more. Allegedly required in order to protect against everything from terrorism to ID theft and welfare fraud, not only is the biometric technology iffy (according to a large number of experts) but who's to say tracking systems won't be surreptitiously implemented for these cards also.
And while I could also touch on recent implementations of the arrest and detention of persons with no legal representation, no charges, no communication with family etc, or the stop and search techniques being used by police forces (usually against those citizens of a darker complexion), I won't. It's too depressing
Welcome to the Police State Orwell and others warned us of.