D.C., the 51st Police State

wow, you'd think d.c. would be the place you'd follow the constitution the most...curfews and no gun rights...sounds like a dream.

punish everyone for the actions of a few...FREEDOM!

[align=left]D.C., the 51st Police State[/align]
A shocking story of today's high school hoodlums, running wild in the nation's capital!
Macy Hanson / Reason Online | August 8 2006
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Well, that and anyone under the age of 17.
So follows the logic of the Washington, D.C., City Council, which, in response to a devastating "crime wave," has passed emergency legislation that strengthens curfew laws and greatly expands the powers of the Metropolitan Police Department.
This emergency legislation, passed on July 20, makes it illegal for anyone under the age of 17 to be out past 10 P.M., D.C. resident or not. The law also requires the installation of surveillance cameras in undisclosed residential neighborhoods and grants police instant access to previously-confidential files on juveniles.
The law is effective from July 31 to August 30, although Mayor Anthony A. Williams has expressed his desire to see these changes made permanent when the Council reconvenes for business in the early Fall.
The Enhanced Crime Prevention and Abatement Emergency Amendment Act of 2006 gives the Mayor the authority to set alternative curfew hours. (The Juvenile Curfew Act of 1995 already prohibits 16-and-unders from being out past midnight.) According to a government press release:

Mayor Williams's emergency anti-crime legislation centers on authorizing Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey to deploy officers on a six-day work week. The extra manpower means at least 300 more uniformed officers on the streets. The plan also provided the Mayor with the authority to modify curfew time, and it authorized the expansion of closed circuit television cameras to be used in some neighborhoods for both crime prevention and investigation.
One portion of the new law not mentioned in this press release is that it provides police with immediate access to information on juveniles' involvement with the court system and their experiences with the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, the unfocused and overburdened agency that has the responsibility of holding juveniles picked up on curfew violations. The Metropolitan Police Department, meanwhile, has not announced specifics on where thee surveillance cameras will be installed, what information will be collected and how this information will be used.
If the Enhanced Crime Prevention and Abatement Emergency Amendment Act of 2006 tells us anything, it's that D.C. government rules not only with an iron fist but with a head full of rocks. The impetus for this expansion of police powersâ??the deadly crime wave sweeping the streets of our nation's capitolâ??does not seem to exist.
As of July 31, when the law took effect, D.C. had experienced a 1.9 percent decline in its homicide rate from last year. And compared to other years (last year's number was abnormally low), the rate of violent crime is dramatically lower than is typical for the District of Columbia.
All of this can only mean one thing: it is an election year. Similar measures have been introduced throughout the country. Philadelphia residents recently approved an ordinance that required police to install surveillance cameras in residential neighborhoods, and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has voiced his support for curbing all sorts of freedoms, from the random searching of vehicles entering Massachusetts to adopting strict regulations on Boston-area pay phones.
The D.C. law has drawn considerable opposition, and youth rights groups like Facilitating Leadership in Youth have joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to protest the emergency legislation. But hysteria about crime is always an easy sell. A Washington Times editorial compares the current crime wave to the crack explosion of the l980s.
"The sense of urgency guided City Hall toward its shift on law and order," the Times claims. "It was a big step toward fundamental policy change, and we're confident the momentum will shift yet again with the elections. Nonetheless, as we have editorialized before, Chief Ramsey and the Metropolitan Police Department need every available tool at their disposal to prevent and combat crimeâ??regardless of where it occurs."
The Times editorial, which summarizes the argument in favor of the emergency legislation, makes two important, if inadvertent, points. First, it does not hide the fact that this issue is primarily one of political gain. Second, it is unapologetic with regard to the at-all-costs mentality of the "law-and-order" crowd to which the D.C. Council is pandering for votes.
The D.C. statehood movement may be stalled, but the D.C. police-state movement moves full steam ahead.

Chinese Regime Eyes Texas Port Facilities

Mike Blair / American Free Press | August 7 2006

The Chinese are eyeing facilities in Texas to further their economic invasion of the United States.

Negotiations are under way for communist Beijing to utilize as a â??logistics hubâ?� the former Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, which was closed in 1995 during the Clinton administrationâ??s base reduction program.

If the deal is consummated the Chinese will also gain access to two major Texas ports at Corpus Christi and Houston on the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, an 11,000-foot-long airstrip, which is part of the Kelly base facilities, rail links with railcar switching facilities and links with five interstate highways. The Chinese are keenly interested in the deal because the San Antonio base will help facilitate its trade with Mexico.

San Antonio will give China access to a highway corridor along I-35, linking San Antonio to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, which is just across the border from Laredo in west Texas.

Nuevo Laredo is a major staging ground for Mexican drug cartels, which have fostered an atmosphere of lawlessness in the city. Almost daily people, including police, are shot in the streets. In addition, frequent clashes occur between drug smugglers and U.S. Border Patrol and state and local police on the U.S. side of the border in Laredo.

There have also been reports that Chinese military units have been operating with Mexican army troops, who assist the drug smugglers and have made incursions into the United States.

â??San Antonio is a strategic site for commerce between China and the United States and for the exportation of Chinese products to Mexico and Latin America,â?� Zhou Ming, general director of the Chinese State Agency of Promotions and Chinese Investments, said after a Chinese delegation visited San Antonio last year, according to a report in the Spanish-language newspaper Rumbo, which reports on activities in Mexico and U.S. border states.

Like most Chinese industrial, investment and commerce kingpins, Ming has ties to the Peopleâ??s Liberation Army, which controls most industry in China with much of the profits going to build up the Chinese military.

Considerable slave labor is used, making it impossible for U.S. workers to compete.

A year ago, San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger and other municipal officials traveled to China to promote the former air base facilities, now renamed the San Antonio Port Authority.

The mayorâ??s office is working with the Port Authority, the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio and the San Antonio based Omega Group International, which maintains offices in Austin, Texas, San Francisco, Mexico City and Beijing and Qingdao, China.

According to Rumbo, Omega International sponsored visits by Chinese officials last year to San Antonio. J.J. Saulino, press secretary to Hardberger, told AFP that the mayor is interested in the project and traveled to Guangdong province in China to promote it.

Jorge Canavati, vice president of the San Antonio Port Authority, claimed the Rumbo article was â??not accurateâ?� and abrasively brushed off questions about the effort to get the Chinese into the former U.S. air base facilities.

The former air base, often referred to as a â??dry portâ?� or an â??inland port,â?� because it is not a coastal facility or located on a navigable waterway, â??has no limits for the products, from toys to heavy equipment [from China],â?� Vivian Lee, president of the Omega Group, was quoted by Rumbo as saying.

AFP was told by Rogello Garcia, a spokesman for the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio, that a Chinese delegation was in San Antonio last spring to further work out details of the project.

Kelly Air Force Base was opened in 1916 as a training facility. Nearby Lackland Air Force Base was a spin-off from Kelly. The Texas Air National Guard 149th Fighter Wing still utilizes the facility, along with the Air Force Reserve 433rd Airlift Wing.

A spokesperson with the Port Authority told AFP that the base has been used to repair and maintain C-5A Galaxy transport planes, which are the largest aircraft in the Air Force. The base has an 11,000-foot runway to accommodate the C-5A, which the military shares with the Port Authority.

In addition to the airstrip, the Port Authority has a 1,200-acre yard operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad is also linked to the inland port.

A retired Air Force intelligence officer told AFP that taking over the San Antonio base would likely streamline Chinese exports to the United States and would give them access to ports in Houston and Corpus Christi on the Gulf coast.

The Chinese already control the Panama Canal, through the Hutchison-Whampoa Company, and maintain a major airfield and port facility at Freeport, Bahamas, where Hutchison-Whampoa has a contract through the
Bush administration to provide security for container ships bound for U.S. ports on the East Coast.

Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco has taken over port facilities and warehousing space at the California ports of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Long Beach. This is one of the reasons cited for Chinaâ??s interest in the San Antonio inland port, as it has extensive space available for constructing warehouse buildings. According to Port Authority sources, a 108,800-square-foot warehouse facility has already been built at the former base at a cost of $5 million and a slightly smaller 102,400-squarefoot building has also been built.

these people just deserve to die, don't they? i'm so glad i can sit here and feel good about people's organs being harvested and sold...just call them communists...then people won't care...meditating = terrorism.

Widening Concern Over Chinese Organ Transplantation
American ethicist calls for moratorium on collaboration with deadly system

Maria Chow / Epoch Times | August 7 2006

A medical ethicist inspired by the Kilgour-Matas report about organ harvesting from living Falun Gong adherents wishes to change the way the world's academic and medical institutions relate to China.

In a statement affirming the findings of the Kilgour-Matas report, Dr. Kirk C. Allison, associate director of the Program in Human Rights and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, calls upon academic and medical institutions not to collaborate with organ transplantation and research in China.

The "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China" by David Kilgour, a former Canadian MP and cabinet minister, and David Matas, a Canadian human rights lawyer, was released on July 6.

Through reviewing 18 different factors that would either help prove or disprove allegations of organ harvesting, the report concludes that "there has been and continues to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners" in China.

Allison's statement was released at an independent forum on July 25 held in conjunction with the World Transplantation Congress 2006 in Boston. The forum was organized by David Kilgour.


Mounting Evidence
Allison said in a phone interview that he started paying attention to organ harvesting in China in 2001 because of two incidents: The Village Voice's publication of "China's Execution, Inc." (May 8, 2001.Vol.46, Iss. 18) discussing a New York doctor's knowledge of organ harvesting from executed convicts in China; a June 27 hearing on the sale of human organs in China before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, House International Relations.

In June this year Allison was contacted by Dr. Wenyi Wang, who protested the organ harvesting in China at a speech given by Chinese Communist leader Hu Jintao at the White House in April. Wang provided Allison with the transcriptions of phone conversations in which hospital personnel in China admitted to the callers, who pretended to be seeking organ transplantation, that the organs were sourced from living Falun Gong adherents.

Allison said that even before the Kilgour-Matas report was released, he had reached a similar conclusion through his own study of the transcription of phone conversations and China's organ transplantation websites.

"I looked around at a number of the sites for organ transplantation, such as the China International Transplantation Center site, which discusses how organ transplantation in China is unique in the world, that it combines a judicial and medical bureaucracy in China. Looking at the guaranteed turn around time for organs, it became pretty clear that one could not have the type of organ tissue matching without having a stock of persons available who are already pre-blood-typed and pre-HLA-typed," said Allison.

In an email message commenting on Allison's statement, David Kilgour wrote, "I'm very grateful that Dr. Allison has analyzed our report and found it in effect unanswerable."

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa rejected the findings in the report on the same day it was released but has never given any substantive response. "All the representatives of the government of China have done is throw insults at Matas and myself," Kilgour said.


What Could be done?
Allison would now like to see the findings of the Kilgour-Matas report begin to change the way academic and medical institutions relate to Chinese institutions.

In his 4-page written statement, including about one page of footnotes, Allison has made a number of suggestions. The first of them is that "Professional associations, such as The Transplantation Society, should place a moratorium on research support and collaboration with transplantation in China given that such collaboration tacitly facilitates the continuance of a gross violation of human rights."

In the interview, Allison also suggested that the phone conversations with hospital personnel in China be transcribed in full and made available to the public.

Allison pointed out that he is not a Falun Gong adherent, and that the issues raised by the organ harvesting from Falun Gong adherents in China are universal.

Commenting on Allison's statement, Wenyi Wang said, "Transplantation to prolong life is a noble thing, but if it involves killing innocent life in China, that is a crime against humanity. In this case, Dr. Allison has made this point very clear: everyone in the international transplant profession should be made aware of the unethical medical practices in China."

Thats because D.C. is purely a federal district and does not follow under any state laws or provisions.

They may as well put the US Constitution in the President's bathroom to wipe his ass with.