Women are being arrested for using crack cocaine while pregnant, even if their baby is perfectly normal at birth. Indeed the idea of the crack baby may well be a myth.

Government agencies and private corporations are not giving gay couples or unmarried heterosexual couples the same benefits they offer married heterosexual couples. Homosexuals are being discharged from the military because of their sexual orientation, even if not charged with any misbehavior.

Task forces of international, federal, military, state and local law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as well as private entities, are employing increased interaction, abundant funds, new laws, new technologies and new octopus-like databases to spy on and harass activists of many stripes: Irish and Middle-East support groups, human rights, immigrants rights, civil liberties, prison reform, minorities, labor, environmental, animal rights, nuclear power and anti-imperialism activists, even if there is no evidence of violence or illegal activities.

The FBI and police are noting license plate numbers of people attending meetings and demonstrations, photographing people, paying informers to infiltrate groups, breaking into offices to steal mailing and contributor lists, rifling through files and carrying out harassment arrests (i.e., arrests where charges are later dropped). Individual members of these groups are receiving FBI visits at their homes and workplaces, or the Bureau is sending anonymous letters to the persons colleagues implying that s/he is actually an informer, as well as sending assorted poison-pen letters to employers, landlords and spouses designed to produce maximum distress.

Airport passengers are being detained for hours, even days, and are missing flights because they fit a terrorist profile based on their nationality, ethnicity, appearance, airport behavior, travel itinerary or other criteria. They are being strip-searched, including body cavity searches, X-rayed, forced to take laxatives, their bowel movements monitored.

The FBI is urging librarians to report on the books taken out by patrons with foreign-sounding names, particularly scientific and technical books. (When this program was first revealed and criticized, the FBI proceeded to do checks on the critics.)

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is demanding that a publisher provide it with the names of people who bought a marijuana cultivation book.

The police are confiscating the cars of customers of prostitutes, sometimes after a female police officer has lured the man into offering her money for sex. It matters not if the car does not belong to the man.

Other police officers somewhere are forcing prostitutes to perform sex acts by threatening to arrest them if they dont comply.

Women desiring an abortion are finding various daunting obstacles placed in their path by state and federal authorities.

The FBI or the police are carrying out a sting operation in order to arrest a black elected official regarded as too charismatic or uppity . (The repeated case of former Washington, DC mayor Marion Barry is highly instructive.)

People are being rejected for housing and employment because of their race.

Numerous foreign academics and activists are being refused entry to the US to attend a conference due to their ideology and/or the ideology of the conference not being to the liking of the US State Department.

Language minorities are facing discrimination and hostility from the English Only movement.

US government agents provocateurs are encouraging some people, as in the World Trade Center bombing or within militia groups, to carry out a bombing or other terrorist act.

The judge sentences you to prison. Then the prison officials sentence you to helL.Prisoners are being handcuffed or hogtied and forced to lap their food like dogs from plates shoved under their faces...non-violent drug offenders are thrown in with dangerous murderers, rapists and robbers, despite court orders to segregate them... guards are kicking inmates in the groin, siccing dogs on them...female prisoners are being beaten and raped by guards, sold for sex to male prisoners, taken off the grounds to work as prostitutes, forced to perform stripteases for corrections officers (14 states do not outlaw sexual contact between correctional staff and prisoners), womens sex acts are photographed by guards, prisoners of both genders are kept naked or in their underwear, and monitored by the opposite sex...male prisoners are slain, with impunity...guards are using tear gas, Mace and pepper spray against prisoners in handcuffs or locked in their cells...prisoners are not protected from assaults, physical and sexual, by other prisoners...guards instigate fights between prisoners...inmates are kept in shackles, belly chains and handcuffs at all times when outside their cells, even in the shower...chain gangs are resurrected...guards who report abuses risk reprisals from prison officials...the California Correction Officers union makes large political contributions to public officials and prosecutors so that the guards can continue to act with impunity.

Increasingly, those incarcerated in the US, now approaching two million in number, are seeing their rights and privileges taken away or seriously curtailed in regard to academic classes, vocational training, reading materials, sports, exercise, prison law libraries, access to free legal advice, ease of appealing their cases, access to media. They are being charged for room and board, for doctor visits, forbidden to receive packages, forced to shave off beards and long hair and remove earrings; their phone use is limited to

a few minutes a week, visits to one hour a month, visiting family members are treated rudely and subjected to humiliating searches and disrobings, prisoners are transferred to other prisons very far from their families; HIV-positive and terminally ill prisoners are denied special care, asthmatics are not monitored, those on anti-psychotic medications miss their doses, hypertensives cannot get proper diets; prisoners are confined to cells for all but a few hours a week; lights are on in cells 24 hours a day.

In a new prison being built 3,000 feet up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, windows in each cell command spectacular views of the valley below. Prison officials are planning to smoke the windows so inmates cant see out.

Various levels of government agencies are seizing bank accounts of men who supposedly are deadbeat dads, but its later determined that they arent.

Educational institutions are being forced to allow military recruiters on campus to avoid losing government grants for student aid and other purposes.

The US military is carrying out one of its many urban exercises, such as this one described in Massachusetts: Last week Navy Seals landed from helicopters on top of some buildings, rappelled down the buildings and had fun and games shooting and throwing dummy explosives around. They woke half the city of Lowell. Early that evening our house shook and the windows rattled violently as several helicopters flew over at no more that 200 feet.

In some of their exercises in the US, the military uses live ammunition.

A driver, stopped by the police, tapes the encounter. When he goes to the local police station to complain about his treatment, he is asked to hand the tape over. Hes then charged with illegal wiretapping.

Intercity buses and trains are being boarded by DEA agents to conduct searches of passengers belongings. Passengers are assured that its all voluntary .

Law enforcement authorities of various stripes are routinely confiscating a computer from the home of someone charged with drug something or other...or whatever...They take the computer back to the office where the good oP boys can have a thigh-slappin time reading the personal mail. Theres no telling when theyll get around to returning the computer.

In the Miami area and sections of New Jersey, those who dont toe the anti-Castro party line are being subjected to a wide range of abuses. Suggesting a rapprochement with Cuba, calling for an end to the US embargo, arranging for travel to the island, shipping medicines there, etc., has on hundreds of occasions led to bombings, shootings, death threats, murder, beatings, being driven out of business, fired from a job, forced off the air. Perpetrators of these acts have enjoyed a virtual immunity from prosecution.