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[Angle]

But the government has plenty of control, it just doesn't want to exert that control very much. You don't see senators getting beaten up and cavity searched, do you?

[SalmonGod]

Law enforcement organizations (not just the police) are pretty blatantly used to hamper undesirable political organization and speech, and citizens do not have very much control over them, to the point that an innocent person can make themselves a target just for reiterating that they're an innocent person due to having X rights.

Words may have meanings, but that doesn't mean the furthest possible extent of that meaning has to be demonstrated before the word may be used.  Just because the police aren't actively disappearing political dissidents by the thousands doesn't mean there aren't similar principles in effect.  I think it's kind of dumb when we demand that a negative descriptor not be used until absolutely every possible association with that word is in maximum possible effect.  We can't call it this thing until it matches the dramatized depictions we've come to expect from films!

[Reelya]

In the context of making a "police state" judgement, you have to consider all the state enforcement and intelligence apparatus part of the "police". e.g. the KGB is considered "police" for these intents and purposes when you're talking about the USSR.

CIA, FBI, NSA, TSA, Homeland Security, ATF etc. These are also "police" in the context of the discussion. The term "police state" has never just refered to uniformed local cops. Also, the entire armed forces are police in the context of this discussion: If a state uses the military rather than uniform cops to exert control then that is no less a police state.

[mainiac]

But the government has plenty of control, it just doesn't want to exert that control very much. You don't see senators getting beaten up and cavity searched, do you?

In a police state opposition politicians generally are harassed by law enforcement.

[smjjames]

In the context of making a "police state" judgement, you have to consider all the state enforcement and intelligence apparatus part of the "police". e.g. the KGB is considered "police" for these intents and purposes when you're talking about the USSR.

CIA, FBI, NSA, TSA, Homeland Security, ATF etc. These are also "police" in the context of the discussion. The term "police state" has never just refered to uniformed local cops. Also, the entire armed forces are police in the context of this discussion: If a state uses the military rather than uniform cops to exert control then that is no less a police state.

And they're REALLY blurring that line between armed forces and not actually the armed forces with the militarization.

[Zangi]

But the government has plenty of control, it just doesn't want to exert that control very much. You don't see senators getting beaten up and cavity searched, do you?

In a police state opposition politicians generally are harassed by law enforcement.

That ain't how we do things in Murica.  Opposition politicians ain't given the same platforms as the established Reds and Blues.  Plus elections are First-Past-the-Post, generally sufficient at keeping out the pesky opposition politicians.

[Frumple]

That... actually is how we do things in 'murrica? Being politically active is actually kinda' risky if you're not active along fairly specific lines... sometimes even if you are. We've got a pretty nasty history regarding how we treat protesters and whatnot. Maybe not quite as straight up murderous as some other societies, but you've still got plenty of harassment and abuse.

[Zangi]

That... actually is how we do things in 'murrica? Being politically active is actually kinda' risky if you're not active along fairly specific lines... sometimes even if you are. We've got a pretty nasty history regarding how we treat protesters and whatnot. Maybe not quite as straight up murderous as some other societies, but you've still got plenty of harassment and abuse.

Obviously protestingrioting ain't political opposition, you terrorist.  So I don't know what you are getting at there.

[scriver]

The Occupy movement definitely counts as opposition. And wasn't it leaked that some agency had plans to assassinate an Occupy leader or something?

[SalmonGod]

The Occupy movement definitely counts as opposition. And wasn't it leaked that some agency had plans to assassinate an Occupy leader or something?

There was an assassination plot that the FBI was aware of, and that's all anybody knows.  It was found referenced in some documents by someone who had put in an FOIA request for a completely different issue.  I don't believe the nature of severity of the plot could be determined, last I heard no further information had been obtained.  The one thing that is clear is that they knew who the targets were, and those people had never been notified that they were in danger.

Anyway, yeah... politicians (as in people that actually hold seats in government and are able to do more than comment on politics) that seriously oppose the interests of the two main parties scarcely exist, and efforts to contest this state of affairs this generally are met with a fair amount of what I'd classify as harassment and oppression.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[SalmonGod]

I hadn't planned on looking for examples, but apparently I don't even have to.  This is the product of 10 seconds on Facebook.  I see shit like this every goddamn day.

All this girl did was make posters for the Occupy movement, and the FBI has a 7,526 page file on her.

So what are we supposed to call this?

[Reelya]

The Judy Bari bombing (1990) is another one. An Earth First organizer for anti-redwood logging protests in California had her car blown up, with her in it, plus Darryl Cheney, head of Earth First was in the car. They survive, but a newly-formed FBI anti-terrorist team are on site within minutes after the bombing to arrest them as terrorists (saying they were carrying a bomb, i.e. eco-terrorism). They then use this as an excuse to get subpeonas to wire tap hundreds of environmental group members.

Later, it comes out that this specific FBI bomb unit were all trained at something they called "bomb school" 1 month earlier, where they seemed to have repeatedly practiced planting the same type of bomb that was in her car and responding to the resultant explosion. And "bomb school" was held on land belonging to the logging company that was the target of the protests. The logging company was also caught distributing counterfeit Earth First literature around this time threatening terrorist attacks. It was known to be counterfeit since they mis-spelled and mis-signed the name of the leader of Earth First as "Daryl Cheney" with only 1 "r". Maybe they misspelled the leaders name, but no-one mis-signs their own name. Plus, the press releases read like something from Liberal Crime Squad, and not the normal language used by Earth First.

Wow, if I didn't know for a fact that law enforcement are above suspicion, it would almost sound like the logging company bribed the FBI agents to try and assasinate the leaders of Earth First and then frame them as terrorists.

This story has a happy ending though: once the evidence against the law enforcement people started coming out, the two "bombers" sued for breach of civil rights, and in 2002 a federal judge ordered the agents involved to pay $4.4 million to the pair of "eco-terrorists".

[smjjames]

Seems like it should be something that has jail time because attempted murder, plus a slew of other charges, but we know how broken our justice system is

[SalmonGod]

And it looks like we may never know any more about the Occupy assassination plot.

Note:  This is one of the reasons it was so important for Occupy to remain a leaderless movement.