People going to police stations to lodge complaints against officers are being unceremoniously ushered out.

Police in Los Angeles are carrying out a pre-dawn commando raid of more than 100 homes in a fishing expedition for individuals and contraband, yielding very little but many frightened and upset residents.

In many cities, the homeless are being rounded up in parks and other sites supposedly open to the public and taken to places where respectable citizens, particularly tourists, will not be forced to cast eyes upon them.

People who bring food to the homeless in public parks are being arrested, charged with giving out food without a permit, trespassing or whatever else the authorities can think of; cooking equipment and vehicles are being confiscated.

An FBI sting operation is entrapping police officers in Washington, DC and elsewhere by offering them bribes to escort supposed drug couriers, resulting in the officers being sentenced to as much as 55 years in prison without the possibility of parole-a veritable life sentence.

In many states, thousands of people are having their drivers licenses suspended for six months for any drug conviction, whether or not their offenses were related to operation of a motor vehicle.

In some localities, students are being denied a drivers license because their grades and/or attendance records are not good enough.

Numerous individuals are being harassed and/or arrested because of a positive alert from a drug-sniffing dog even though law enforcement and scientific circles have known for many years that most US currency has some amount of cocaine or other drug stuck to it-in Los Angeles it was found that more than 75 percent of all the paper money in circulation was so tainted.

Several other extreme police brutality cases like Rodney King in Los Angeles and Abner Louima in Brooklyn are taking place, but there are no video cameras or witnesses observing, or the victim dies and his death is ruled accidental or a heart attack.

A public official who questions the War On Drugs is paying an awful price, like former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders whose son was sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling one-eighth of an ounce of cocaine to an undercover police officer. His arrest took place five months after the sale, on a warrant issued a week after his mother suggested that the government study the legalization of drugs.

Then theres the thing called Waco.

And these are the good new days

The Authorities can no longer claim as an excuse for their behavior a threat from anti-Vietnam War radicals or a civil rights movement. The Black Panther Party is history, as is the alleged International Communist Conspiracy. The Central American struggles are over. And J. Edgar Hoover, proving, after all, that he actually had something in common with the rest of humanity, has died.

Yet, from 1991 to 1999, the number of people in US prisons rose by more than 50 percent.

In place of finding a commie under every bed, they now find a drug possessor, user, dealer, shipper or courier. Instead of the Soviet

Evil Empire, they now see Rogue Nations out there, Outlaw Nations, Pariah States- enemies need catchy names-with their regiments of terrorists, supporters of terrorists, acquaintances of terrorists, nuclear smugglers, questionable asylum seekers and other anti-American and un-American types. In place of civil rights agitators, the Authority Juggernaut now zooms in on youth gangs, immigrants, environmentalists, welfare recipients, prisoners and a host of other folks with a glaring deficit of political power.

What keeps most Americans from being shocked by the shredding of the Bill of Rights is that they have yet to feel the consequences, either personally or through someone close to them. It would appear, however, that they only have to wait. Americas foreign groupies, in the meantime, remain blissfully ignorant of the above and in need of a reality transplant.

Notes

OPENING QUOTES

1 September 1, 1997, cover story, p. 160 ff.

2 Washington Post, October 23, 1999, p.17

3 New York Times, January 29, 1992, p. 16

4 Washington Post, November 4, 1997, p.13

5 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (GPO), 1996, Vol. I, p.654, April 28

6 Washington Office of Amnesty International, Human Rights & US Security Assistance, 1996, p.l

INTRODUCTION

1 Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans Health? Lessons Spanning Half a Century, December 8, 1994, p.5

2 Washington Post, October 2 and 23,1996 and July 31,1997 for the estimated numbers of affected soldiers.

3 Journal of the American Medical Association, September 1, 1999, p.822

4 Washington Post, October 19,1999, p.3

5 Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans Health? op. cit., passim

6 John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War (New York, 1999), p.312. Knaus was the CIA officer who spoke to the Dalai Lama.

7 Le Nouvel Observateur (France), January 15-21, 1998, p.76. There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included

in the shorter version.

8 Washington Post, January 13, 1985, p.30

9 New York Times, March 25, 1977, p.10

10 60 Minutes , May 12, 1996

11 For the full text of the relevant part of his memo, see The Economist (London), February 8,

1992, p.66 (US edition)

12 Washington Post, April 25, 1999, p.28

13 John Judis, K Street Gore , The American Prospect, July-August 1999, p.18-21

14 Ibid.