Hundreds of cities are employing highly armed and trained Special Weapons and Tactics Teams (SWAT), based on military special operations models, and told theyre part of a war on crime. Ready to terrorize the enemy (the citizens) with automatic assault rifles, tanks and grenade launchers, they are called out even in non-crisis situations, choosing a neighborhood and swooping onto street corners, forcing pedestrians to the ground, searching them, running warrant checks, taking photos and entering all the new intelligence into a state database from computer terminals in each patrol car. As they carry out this exercise, they do not trip over many members of the Fortune 500.

A known militant, but non-violent, opponent of the president is being removed by the Secret Service from a site where the president is going to speak, then released after the speech.

Defendants and prisoners appearing in court, who dont know their place, are being given 50,000 volt shocks with a torture device known as an electronic security belt.

Young men are registering with Selective Service, making themselves subject to be drafted for a future war of national security - as defined solely by the government, no opposing arguments accepted. Failure to register is punishable by a large fine, imprisonment and/or permanent loss of all federal financial aid and employment.

Those already in the service are being subjected by the military to a process aimed at breaking down their deep-seated reluctance to kill people they dont know and dont hate, so as to make them willing to risk their lives fighting in one of these national security wars, the purpose of which they dont understand at all (or, perhaps, they understand it only too well). They are being forced, under threat of court martial, discharge, deportation if not a citizen and in violation of international human rights standards, to take experimental drugs and vaccines, whose effects on health are unknown.

Aliens are being denied citizenship for refusing to agree to bear arms in defense of the United States because of their pacifist beliefs, a reason not acceptable to the INS, which insists on a religious basis.

For a citizen to qualify as a conscientious objector, it means being opposed to participation in all wars, not a selective objection to a particular war, no matter how repulsive it may appear to the individual. (A female Kansas doctor, who was an Army Reserve captain and refused to serve in the Gulf War, insisting that it was a public health catastrophe , was kept in military prison for eight months, and Kansas medical authorities moved to revoke her medical license.)

DEA, ATF, INS, FBI, DIA, Secret Service, US Forest Service, National Park Service, Sheriffs Departments, National Guard and/or other official cowboys, wearing black suits, ski masks and the like, forming massively armed mobs of screaming, swearing agents, while helicopters chop above, are battering down doors, raiding peoples homes, smashing up furniture, beating up residents, handcuffing them, manhandling pregnant

women, terrifying children, separating them from their parents, shooting people dead, looking for drugs or individuals which often are not there-this jihad being the outcome of no more than a tip from an informant.

Heavily-armed bounty hunters, with the force of law behind them, are carrying on in a similar manner to kidnap a person, sometimes killing someone, sometimes the wrong person. Operators of pirate radio stations are also being invaded, with FCC agents, federal marshals, a SWAT team, customs agents and local police comprising the attacking force.

Forced labor is thriving: people compelled to work off their welfare grants, with no prospect of real employment, sometimes at sub-minimum wages, or no wages at all; convicted defendants sentenced to community service ; conscientious objectors obliged to do alternative service, for a period longer than military service, thus being punished for exercising their conscience; inmates denied vital privileges if they refuse to work in prison, many producing for private companies, who get away with paltry wages, no benefits, no unions. (Some prison-made products are being exported, exactly what the US has condemned China for.)

US embassies abroad are surveilling selected American travelers, fingered by a joint effort of the FBI and the State Department Passport Office.

The INS and the US Border Patrol at the Mexican border are killing or physically mistreating large numbers of wouldbe immigrants* In INS centers around the country, thousands of immigrants are being held under inhumane conditions, including heads pushed into toilets, forced drugging and being made to kneel naked and chant America is Number One. Immigrants in prison are also being forced to recite America is Number One as they walk by guards who punch and kick them.

The INS is illegally seizing files of social agency employees working with undocumented immigrants. Lawyers and others working on behalf of victims of abuse are finding it almost impossible to file a complaint and receive a response from the INS or the Border Patrol. Media and human rights groups are virtually excluded.

Demonstrations against detention centers and other INS practices are being brutally quashed in Los Angeles by a phalanx of local and federal armed forces-riot squads, mounted units, ATF agents, INS commando units, water cannons, tear gas...many protestors are being injured and arrested; some of those not carrying proper documents are being deported directly from a police station.

Indigent defendants are waiting in jail for many months before the court appoints a lawyer, and then experience a further wait before they have a chance to speak with the lawyer.

The notion of bail is rapidly eroding. Were raised to believe that for other than a capital offense, reasonable bail must be offered.

We have a long history of not holding people in custody until their guilt has been determined. Thats not true anymore. We call the new concept preventive detention .

Citizens are being sentenced to inordinately long prison terms, often for life, for providing information, or merely attempting to do so, to a country not named the United States of America. The disclosure of the information-in some cases already publicly available, or declassified before the arrest-would typically cause no actual harm at all to the United States, nor to anyone else on earth, except that the act of passing it to an alien nation grates on the sensibilities of those who professionally play the secrets game, the patriots game and the enemies game. These professional players are fond of announcing that the betrayal has caused irreparable harm or incalculable damage to US national security. In some cases, the information has been passed only to the FBI, in a sting operation, yet the duped person is put away for decades.

The federal government is busily creating new documents, at the rate of some five million a year, which are unavailable to the ordinary citizens of the republic because they are stamped with words like Secret , Top Secret , or Eyes Only .

Workers in the Defense Departments Area 51 , in the Nevada desert, are suffering and dying from inhaling toxic chemicals that spew from the burning of hazardous wastes in huge open pits. They suffer severe, persistent respiratory distress, cancers, aching guts, ugly crusty scales, cracked and bleeding skin, tissues filled with industrial toxins rarely seen in humans ...But because of the ultra secrecy surrounding Area 51, they cant obtain information about what chemicals theyve been exposed to in order to get appropriate medical treatment, and they cant claim workers compensation because Area 51 cant be investigated. The place is subject to no law of the land save national security.

Black-uniformed officers in laced-up black boots, wearing black berets, with name tags missing, are descending without warning on a prison, hauling prisoners, some without clothes, from their beds, shackling them and beating them, jumping on their backs;

an inmates head is driven into a wall, a sickening cracking sound, the prisoner screams, blood splatters the wall and the ground. All to demonstrate that the Correction Commissioner doesnt coddle prisoners.

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU are finding once again that the United States is violating Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the US in 1992, which requires that all prisoners and detainees be treated with humanity and with respect to the inherent dignity of the human person . (In fiscal year 1999, there were 2,324 brutality claims against the NYPD, which kills someone every ten days on average, often unarmed, at times in handcuffs, or in jail; police officers guilty of such actions are not being disciplined; some are later promoted.)

Youre exercising your precious freedom to vote and the only candidates presented to you with more than a snowball-in-hells chance of winning are those whose ideologies enable them to raise about a half million dollars to contest a seat in the House,