Snapshots of a Sadean State

One of Sean Hannity's "great Americans" in action.


On two occasions I can recall, a book has disgusted me so thoroughly that rather than setting it aside lightly, I threw it away with great force.

The first volume to go airborne in that fashion was the Satyricon of Petronius Aribter; the second was Juliette by the Marquis de Sade. Both of them were assigned reading. I made it through neither. Beyond its opening sixty or seventy pages, Juliette remains entirely unknown to me.

What I did read in that book, unfortunately, made an indelible impression. Some of it reads very much like this:

“[An] interrogator bragged about doing lap dance on a d [detainee at the Guantanamo military base].... [We learned of] another making d listen to satanic black metal music for hours then dressing as a Priest and baptizing d to save him.... [M]ale d was dressed in female clothing, made up and given a lap dance by female prison guard. [Investigator] was told that this was a tactic to break the d and get cooperation..... [We learned of another incident] in which d alleged female guard removed her blouse and, while pressing her body against a shackled and restrained d from behind, handled his genitalia and wiped menstrual blood on his head and face as punishment for lack of cooperation.”

In these Gitmo glimpses – culled from FBI reports pried from the Bureau through a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU -- we see a refined application of the methods described by Sade in Juliette – the co-mingling of sexual perversion with brutal violence against the helpless, the profanation of Christian ritual and symbolism, and the unabashed embrace of satanic imagery.

All of these acts fell within legal guidelines handed down from Donald Rumsfeld's office. They were carried out by military and intelligence operatives paid with our tax dollars (some of the latter most likely were private contractors, and from what we know of Abu Ghraib, Israelis and other foreign nationals may have participated as well).

Those entrusted with these chores weren't inhibited with a normal capacity for shame. FBI accounts describe female interrogators tittering with glee as they described the sexual debasement of detainees; on one occasion, interrogators were laughing as they described wrapping a detainee's head in duct tape as punishment for reciting the Koran.

These tactics weren't improvised at Gitmo, although heaven knows our depraved popular culture would provide suitable inspiration. They were the result of long, detailed study by people who specialize in this kind of thing, and were eager to try their skills out on anybody who fell into their hands.

As O'Brien pointed out to Winston Smith, the purpose of torture is torture. Granted, it may have ancillary benefits to those who carry it out – such as extracting useful information, or gratifying the prurient interests of the State servants charged with the task. But its central function is simply to reduce a victim to something worse than a corpse. This is why torture, in some ways, is morally worse than murder.

The FBI, which collected the Sadean snapshots from Gitmo, displayed its own expertise at Mt. Carmel outside Waco nearly 14 years ago. With the able assistance of Igor Smirmov of Moscow's Institute for Psycho-Correction, the FBI mounted a 50-day psy-war campaign against the Branch Davidians that was designed (in the words of one horrified law enforcement analyst) to torture the Davidian children into forcing their parents to surrender. When that failed, the FBI simply attacked the Davidian sanctuary with tanks, poison gas, and incendiary rounds.

I bring up the Waco holocaust again in order to emphasize this fact: The conduct of military and intelligence interrogators at Gitmo was found to be unacceptably sadistic by agents of the same FBI that tortured and then incinerated the Branch Davidians.

This is how the Regime that rules us operates when nobody but those in its employ are watching. And lest we think it only authorizes such indulgences when the subject is a foreign detainee, we should focus our attention once again on the pathetic figure of Jose Padilla, a U.S. Citizen (albeit hardly an exemplary one) who was held for roughly three years in military confinement as an “enemy combatant.”



The purpose of that designation was to induce Padilla to become an intelligence asset – either an informant or a provocateur. But as a result of being confined and tortured, Padilla was deprived of his sanity. He is now a human wreck, his mind destroyed by the Regime.

Like its Soviet predecessor, the Regime that rules us will occasionally destroy an individual and then allow the result to be paraded before the public to illustrate what can be done to those upon whom the State visits its wrath.

Leviathan's Web

The most critical disclosure offered by the Washington Post's report on the “OneDOJ” database being built by the Department of “Justice” is found buried near the end of the piece – as we'll see anon.

Although the Post refers to the database as OneDOJ, it is also known as the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. However we refer to it, the system would allow “state and local police officers around the country to search millions of cases from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies,” as well as information compiled by state and local police agencies. The system, which a present is limited to a pilot program involving a small number of agencies, “will be a central mechanism for sharing federal law enforcement information with local and state investigators,” observes the Post.

“The goal is that all of U.S. Law enforcement will be able to look at each other's records to solve cases and protect U.S. Citizens,” insists Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty. (.pdf) “With OneDOJ, we will essentially hook them up to a pipe that will taken them into its records.”

Michael Hampton, a diligent investigator of the Homeland Security State, points out that within the next three years, the N-DEx/OneDOJ system “will provide local and state law enforcement with access to each other's data. N-DEx will contain incident/case reports, arrest, booking and incarceration data, and parole/probation data contributed by DOJ and participating law enforcement agencies.”

A “Justice” Department PowerPoint briefing found by Hampton points out: “Ideally, N-DEx would obtain its data from the 50 States' repositories, however, this model is not occurring nationwide and as such, N-DEx must be able to obtain its data through a variety of options as permitted by policy.”

Those “options” would likely involve data streams carrying huge volumes of personal data about people who have never seen the inside of a jail cell or courtroom. All of that information would be passed along the federal pipeline to officers making traffic stops, or conducting checkpoints. That pipeline will not be equipped to filter out unproven or baseless allegations. As the Post points out, through the system “tens of thousands of local police officers could gain access to personal details about people who have not been arrested or charged with crimes.”

While the database will include details harvested from proctoscope-level scrutiny of the public at large, however, it will demurely refrain from intruding into the affairs of the State's loyal servants. Notes the Post:

“Much information will be kept out of the system, including data about public corruption cases, classified or sensitive topics, confidential informants, administrative cases and civil rights probes involving allegations of wrongdoing by police....”

This is the above-mentioned “critical disclosure” offered in the Post story. In the omissions we can see, once again, the true priorities that govern the Homeland Security State: Protect the Regime and its servants uber alles, while treating the public at large as criminals who are free only by the grace of the Almighty State.




It's worth noting as well that the development of this huge database has proceeded without so much as a syllable of protest from the Republican-aligned conservatives who, a decade ago, rent the air with anguished cries over the Clinton White House's illegal acquisition of “raw” FBI files on hundreds of Republican officials.

GOP fellow travelers charged – quite plausibly – that the 8-900 files – each of which was an omnium gatherum of personal information, some of it little better than gossip – would be used as what the Russians call compromat against the Clinton administration's political enemies.

Last May, Republican-allied media critic L. Brent Bozell III condemned the mainstream media for offering more critical coverage of the Bush regime's illegal electronic surveillance program than it did for the Clinton administration's “Filegate” scandal.

“It's only when Republicans hold the White House that the networks fear an `imperial presidency,'” whined Bozell. This may be true. It's also entirely irrelevant to those of us who, like myself (I was a spokesman for the National Impeach Clinton ACTION Committee) have nothing but contempt for both of the Ruling Party's retail outlets.




Ten years ago, Republicans were in a lather over the fact that Party leaders and operatives were vulnerable to political blackmail. One year ago, many of the same Republicans insisted that only “terrorists” needed to worry about their telephone and e-mail communications being intercepted by the NSA.

Now we see the “Justice” Department rolling out the first stage of what they hope will be a seamless data network connecting every police agency and officer, giving them access to what eventually could be every recorded personal detail about every U.S. Citizen.

They'll "Find A Reason" To Lock You Up

"Checkpoint Charlie," the notorious gateway to Communist East Germany. Germany is now united, and Soviet-style checkpoints are now common in the U.S.


“You better stop runnin' your mouth, or the other officer will find a reason to lock you up tonight.”

In those words, recorded by Missouri resident Bret Darrow (my nominee for 2006 Whistleblower of the Year), we find perhaps the definitive snapshot of the Regime under which we live: Any armed agent of the Regime can contrive a reason to lock any of us up at whim.

Darrow, a shrewd but unassuming 19-year-old motorist, was stopped at a DUI roadblock in St. Louis last November. He was cooperative and non-confrontational when the officers enforcing that unconstitutional mass detention instructed him to provide his driver's license and proof of insurance. But he was singled out for exceptional detention when he presumed to behave as a free, law-abiding citizen.

(For a transcript of the episode, go here. For the video, go here.)

Specifically, when asked by an officer, “Where are you headed tonight?” Darrow replied: “I don't wish to discuss my personal life with you, officer.”

Ordered out of the car and forced to surrender his car keys, Darrow was told by an officer that he had to submit to an “interview ... because you didn't want to interview. You didn't want to sit down and have a talk with me.”

While this was happening, a second officer unlocked Darrow's 1997 Maxima and conducted an illegal warrantless search. A third tax-fattened hero, for whom manual transmission is a mystery as impenetrable as Fermat's Last Theorem, then got behind the wheel and attempted to move Darrow's car (the driver hadn't been permitted to move it out of traffic). In doing so, this good-enough-for-government-work drudge stalled the car repeatedly, seriously burning the clutch.

As the cops were illegally rifling through his property and vandalizing his car, Darrow was threatened with arrest for the supposed offense of asking why he was being detained.

“You're saying you're going to make up a reason to arrest me?” Darrow asked.

“No I didn't,” lied the officer. “I said we would find a reason.” He repeated that phrase a few seconds later. When Darrow asked again why he was being detained, the officer replied, “Because you don't have a driver's license” -- which was true only in the sense that it had been taken from Darrow by another officer.

Note this well: The mindset of the officers involved in this incident dictates that they can “find a reason” to send anybody to jail. It isn't necessary for an individual to commit a crime against persons or property, or even an offense against what is considered good public order. All that is necessary is for an agent of the State to decide that an individual is insufficiently submissive.

This symbolic function of a checkpoint -- providing a tangible reminder to the public that anybody can be deprived of his freedom at any time -- is its chief practical value to the Regime (although there are ancillary benefits for local franchises of the Homeland Security State, the most obvious being easily obtained revenue).

I've made this point before, adverting to the observation by author Richard Ben Cramer referring to the use and purpose of security checkpoints in Israel and the Palestinian Territories: "The function of the checkpoints is to show who's boss." In his book How Israel Lost, Cramer describes a conversation with an Israeli soldier newly arrived from Russia (and who, like most such immigrants, is almost certainly not Jewish). Cramer inquired why checkpoint guards routinely stop people who are obviously neither criminals nor potential terrorists.

The guard replied: "Because the bad attitude -- you know? If they are acting like they are good, and we are the bad one. Then, you must show them control."

This is the mantra of the checkpoint guard:

You must show them control.

You must make them submit.

You must force them to recognize the innate superiority of those who represent the Almighty State.

This is the real function of checkpoints, wherever they exist. And the mindset of checkpoint guards is the same, whether in Israel, your nearby airport, or your local sobriety stop.

One motorist in Elgin, Illinois collided with that mindset a few days ago. Angry over being stopped without cause and issued a $20 ticket for a seatbelt violation, the motorist honked his horn and began “blasting his tunes.”

This act of defiance – understandable to those of us on the receiving end of the State's harassment – provoked the officer issuing a ticket to “find a reason” for additional deprivations of liberty and property.

Elgin Police Officer Matt Udelhoven, who “often runs patrols looking for cars violating Elgin's loud music ordinance, went and got a laser gun that measures distance, walked about 150 feet away, and determined he could still hear the man's stereo,” reported the Elgin Courier News. Accordingly, he slapped the protesting motorist with a $250 fine and confiscated his car, which most likely means that the driver will be stuck with $250 in towing and impound fees.

“He got home in a hurry – on foot,” smirked Lt. Jeff Adam, who – like any other bully who taunts a helpless victim – really deserves to lose a few teeth.

TheNewspaper.com, a truly indispensable resource, points out that the seizure of the motorist's car was entirely illegal:

“Elgin Police cited the city's noise ordinance which applies to those who are `operating' a vehicle – the motorist was parked – and is designed to protect citizens against `excessive noise endangers physical and emotional health and well-being.'”

So the seizure of the car was an act of armed robbery, just as the damage to Bret Darrow's Maxima was the result of armed vandalism.

The Elgin motorist, continues TheNewspaper.com, “can only challenge the seizure by first arguing his case before the deputy police chief in a hearing where `the formal rules of evidence will not apply.' The next hearing happens up to 45 days later under civil procedures that are used so that Elgin can escape the due process protections of the Constitution such as the Eighth Amendment prohibition on excessive fines.”

Notice a family resemblance to the “extraordinary” judicial procedures developed to deal with the “war on terror” -- special courts that can write their own rules, and ignore those rules altogether when it suits them?

These are not “extraordinary” measures. This is standard operating procedure for the Regime that rules us.

What do we do about it?

First of all – to reiterate a point I've made earlier – people have to understand that we no longer have local police. We have local affiliates of a centralized Internal Security force. Many have warned for decades that this process was underway, but they shrink from admitting now that it's a fait accompli.

At some point, after the churn has operated long enough, what was once milk has become butter.

Secondly, all of us need to investigate the strands of subsidy binding our state and local police to the Feds – for sobriety checkpoints, seatbelt and child safety seat inspections, and – particularly – for narcotics enforcement. At least some of the same people who are stolidly indifferent to large-scale abuses of civil liberties (extraordinary rendition, the Military Commissions Act, and the like) committed by the Regime's apex authority can be riled up very easily over more commonplace abuses of the sort inflicted by the Regime's local appendages.

Political remedies for these outrages – assuming that such exist -- will have to be obtained at the Statehouse and at City Hall, and will only come when a sufficient number of sufficiently angry people are mobilized to deal with specific policies. Find the nexus between local police harassment and federal money; use local media to educate the public about the fact that these policies aren't being driven by local problems, but rather by federal subsidy and the corrupt opportunism of local authorities.


Third, Bret Darrow's experience – like the horrifying UCLA Taser incident – illustrates the value of documenting every encounter with law enforcement officers (LEOs). As we've seen, LEOs are indoctrinated to see the public as a pool of criminals, whose daily behavior offers plentiful reasons for imprisonment.

We should reciprocate by assuming that every LEO, every day, commits offenses against the civil liberties of the law-abiding – and be prepared to document the fact if the opportunity presents itself.

Should this happen – and we shouldn't be out borrowing trouble – we should display the same polite composure exhibited by Darrow during his unfortunate encounter.

This approach is complicated somewhat by the fact that at least some police agencies are willing to arrest people for “obstruction of justice” when they use cell phones or other devices to record police activity. Witness the case of Philadelphia resident Neftaly (Neffy) Cruz, whose home was invaded and who was arrested when he used his cell phone to take a picture of a police roadblock.

“[The arresting officer] opened up the gate and ... he went out to Neffy, pulled him down, had Neffy on the car and was telling him, `You should have just went in the house and minded your own business instead of trying to take pictures off your picture phone,'” recalled neighbor Gerrell Martin.

Cruz later recalled that the police “threatened to charge me with conspiracy, impeding an investigation, obstruction of an investigation ... They said, `You were impeding an investigation.' [I asked] `By doing what?' [The officer said] `By taking a picture of the police officers with a camera phone.'”

Of course, no law prohibits anybody from taking a photograph of a police officer, or anyone else.

But as Darrow was pointedly warned, if LEOs want to do so, they can “find a reason” to put you in jail.

A tragic postscript, courtesy of the redoubtable Radley Balko:

U.S. Army Reserve Corporal James Dean was killed last Tuesday by a sharpshooter from a southeast Maryland SWAT team. Despondent over the prospect of being redeployed to Iraq, Dean became suicidal. So the Regime's local affiliate dispatched a paramilitary team to ensure that Dean got his wish.

It should be obvious, but I'll say it anyway: This kind of thing just doesn't happen in a genuinely free country.