Death Penalty opponents declared Terrorists

With the majority of American’s supporting capital punishment and the politically motivated “war on terror” making it only too easy to label anyone who engages in any form of anti-American activity as un-American, it was really just a matter of time before some of these conservative boneheads running government started to label anyone who didn’t agree with their pro-police state mentality a “terrorist”

This week the USA Today released a story about how the Maryland State police had spent 14 months in 2005 and 2006 illegally conducting secret investigations against anti-death penalty groups and had labeled 53 people involved in anti-death penalty and anti-war protests as “terrorists”

These investigations were conducted under the direction of then Maryland state police superintendent Tim Hutchins, and only came to light because the former Maryland Attorney General found that the state police had violated federal regulations and “illegally intruded upon law-abiding residents” rights to express themselves. Now Hutchins says they “made a mistake” and apologized, and that they would attempt to contact these individuals improperly labeled as” terrorists” and expunge their records. (See Washington Post October 8, 2008)

This didn’t happen in China or Russia – this happened in America. Incredibly, very few even comprehend the significance of this police state mentality. As a constitutional democracy founded upon the doctrine of “free speech” it boggles the mind to even imagine any police agency conducting secret investigations against law-abiding citizen then declaring these individuals as “terrorists” for no other reason but that they expressed an opposition to the death penalty.

Is this what America has become? We are only now beginning to understand just how destructive a generation of “conservative” right-wing politics has been. Under their “God and Country” mantra, these elitists such as the Bush dynasty have sold America out, and transferred what was once the model of human rights into what it is today.

As the rich got richer, the middle class became increasingly burdened with both private and public debts. When Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981 the total debt our Federal government owed was about 500 Billion dollars – now only a generation later the entire economic system is on the verge of total collapse and America now owes more than 10 Trillion dollars, with almost 6 Trillion dollars attributed to just the present Bush administration. And before he is run out of office it will undoubtedly go even higher.

And what do we have to show for all that debt? Our public schools and transportation infrastructure is in a shambles. Many states now spend just as much, if not more, money on maintaining the ever-growing prison systems as they do education. In recent years states such as California, Texas and Florida have actually cut funding for public education to pay for expanding their prison systems.

Even with everything that America stands for - the very foundation of our fundamental belief in a constitutional democracy built upon the beliefs that “we, the people” control government – now falling down around us like a house of cards, too many Americans still refuse to see it.

Our sons and our brothers are now fighting a war that we cannot win, giving their lives in vain because the arrogance of an elected President deliberately lied to the American people and invaded Iraq on the pretence that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorists. Now we know this was not true, but there is no easy way out.

Under the Bush administration we have used our military to invade two sovereign countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) with the specific intent to overthrow their governments and install a government we wanted in place – yet nobody seems to be bothered by the significance of that action. But when Russia sent its troops into neighboring Georgia, after being deliberately provoked, the Bush administration labeled Russia an evil empire and threatened to resurrect the “cold war”

Under the Imperial Dynasty of the Bush administration we declared the Geneva Convention inapplicable to us as we began to systematically torture and imprison those labeled as “enemy combatants”, denying them even the most basic rights – and then declaring that they will be provided a “military trial” before hand-picked officers who will then adjudicate them guilty and sentence these “terrorists” to death.

And now we learn that a state police agency within a stones throw of our capital in Washington has declared private citizen to be “terrorists” for no other reason but that they dared to express their moral opposition against the death penalty. This is the America we have become and nobody cares.