The world that PKD made
Wed Apr 30 17:00:54 BST 2003 Permalink
Patriot Raid....A security 'mistake' has the author eating dinner at gunpoint.
Patriot Raid[Ye Olde Phart][...] "You have no right to hold us," Asher insisted.
"Yes, we have every right," responded one of the agents. "You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation." [...]
Three days later I phoned the restaurant to discover what happened. The owner was nervous and embarrassed and obviously did not want to talk about it. But I managed to ascertain that the whole thing had been one giant mistake. A mistake. Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl on their hands and knees, police officers clearly exacerbating a tense situation by kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control. A mistake. And, according to the ACLU a perfectly legal one, thanks to the Patriot Act. [...]
The text of this article made for pretty scary reading -- though not, I'm sure, half as scary as being there and, still less, being one of the poor bastards who didn't get an apology.
Of course you guys can expect a lot more, and a lot worse, of this type of thing. Patriot II may have been temporarily derailed but you can see it has the full backing of this neocon administration and they have proved themselves adroit at manipulating events to their advantage.
Whenever power can be wielded freely, and without responsibility, corruption is never far behind. Expect a big growth in the powers and budget of Homeland security, probably fuelled by an imminent danger of some kind (which may or may not come).
The USA is beginning to sound like the world that Philip K. Dick made.