Tuesday video — the brutality of Iran’s totalitarian state

No video fun here. This clip was posted at the Daily Dish and graphically illustrates the brutality and sheer immorality of the current Iranian leadership. The state is using law enforcement vehicles to savagely run over Iranian citizens rising against an increasingly totalitarian state.

Nanny state in action — UK-style

From the Cato Institute, civil liberties in the UK are withering along with economic prospects.

From the link:

Warning to tourists – it is now illegal to take a photo of a London bobby (policeman). The time-honored tradition of tourists having their pictures taken with London cops is being dealt a silly death blow by those who control the British nanny-state. The British are not only losing their economic prosperity, but their civil liberties as well.

Also from the link:

Civil libertarians on both the left and right are increasingly concerned that Britain is drifting toward becoming a police state. The government has been trying to obtain the right to detain anyone up to 42 days without bringing charges, which would severely undermine the centuries’ old right of habeas corpus. Police monitoring cameras in London are more pervasive than in any other city in the world. Public demonstrations near Parliament and other government buildings are restricted more and more. British libel laws are much more restrictive than those in the United States and have effectively make it increasingly difficult to charge public officials with wrongdoing.

Police state in action — Fed style

This is unbelievable. Unless there’s a lot more to this story than the article suggests it seems if you are a US citizen consider your civil liberties threatened, if not nonexistent, until a sane group of individuals (either party will do just fine) can get into the halls of power next January.

If this activity is common and has become standard operating procedure, the terrorists truly have “won” the last six-plus years. I wonder how a group of dark age fools could wreak such ongoing havoc on the very fabric of the world’s largest, and really only, superpower.

The Bush 43 regime has been an abject failure on so many levels it’s truly astounding. In 2000 I honestly thought he would be an adequate president, and that might have come to pass had 9/11 not occurred. Of course it seems Cheney and a small group of the ex-Nixon administration neocons had some objectives going into their second tour of the White House that might have been executed with, or without, 9/11. We’ll never know, but man we’re dealing with an awful aftermath of failed policy, government overreach and the absolute gutting of the civil liberties on which our founding fathers placed the utmost importance. 

From the link:

Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan’s luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? “Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop,” says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.

Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. “It was fortunate that I didn’t use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information,” he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.

 

The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler’s privacy. Lawsuits have also been filed, challenging how the program selects travelers for inspection. Citing those lawsuits, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to say exactly how common the practice is, how many computers, portable storage drives, and BlackBerries have been inspected and confiscated, or what happens to the devices once they are seized. Congressional investigators and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits believe that digital copies?so-called “mirror images” of drives?are sometimes made of materials after they are seized by customs.

Domestic aspect to John Yoo’s torture memo

I’m sure the interested web surfer has found plenty of information about the now declassified “torture” memo authored by John Yoo.

Here’s a Boing Boing post oulining a chilling domestic aspect to the memo. The Bush 43 regime essentially gutted the Bill of Rights on US soil.

The post:

Bush administration: Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to domestic military operations

Posted by Cory Doctorow, April 2, 2008 10:59 AM | permalink

Danny sez, “Following on from the memo allowing torture overseas, Kurt Opsahl from EFF has spotted a footnoted reference to a memo from the Administration that says ‘our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.’ So, if you’re abroad and deemed an enemy combatant you can be tortured. If you’re in the US, and you’re caught up in a “military operation”, you lose the bill of rights. Where exactly is the constitution supposed to apply?” Link (Thanks, Danny!)