Editors Note:This garbage goes on many times all over the country and to all races of people.
I'm not sure if these sorts "stop and see" operations fall under the patriot act or not,
but regardless, they are always humiliating and usually unnecessary.
The below story was sent in by the victim in the story, Merle T. Rutledge Jr.

CHATHAM Va.— A Chatham man filed a complaint against the town’s
police department Tuesday accusing an officer of violating his civil
rights when he stopped and detained him as he walked down the street.

Merle T. Rutledge Jr. said he was walking Tuesday along the sidewalk
up North Main Street in front of the Express station in Chatham when
officer Nathan Roach pulled his car over past him, got out of his
vehicle, told him to stop and asked for his identification because
“people want to know who I am,” Rutledge, who is black, states in
his complaint.
“(There) was no probable cause or reason of suspicion for this
incident,” Rutledge states. “This stop was (an)
unwarranted/illegal stop and (I was) detained illegally for (an)
unnecessary amount of time.”
Roach and Chatham Police Chief Marvin Wright declined to comment on
the complaint Friday.
Rutledge claims Roach ran a check on him for warrants, handed back
his license and asked him where he lived, where he was from, how long
he had been in the area and why he was in Chatham. Rutledge said he
asked Roach for his badge number but “He (Roach) says there’s no need
to go that far with it.”
“Officer Roach violated civil rights by carrying out a(n)
unwarranted and illegal stop, obtaining property without probable
cause or reason of suspicion,” Rutledge, who said he has lived in
Chatham for 12 years, states in the complaint.
Rutledge said he has filed complaints with the Chatham Police
Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department
of Justice, the Virginia governor’s office and the Virginia attorney
general’s office.
He claims the incident took place near the Express station and Old
Dutch Supermarket, and was humiliating, Rutledge said during an
interview at his Pine Street home Friday.
“People passed by in their cars and walked pass(ed) as this officer
stopped me illegally in front of a business area of Chatham, Va.,”
Rutledge wrote in his complaint. “This was humiliation and
embarrassment to someone that never cause a problem nor was involved
in any criminal activity.”
Rutledge also claims Roach was 30 minutes late to a scheduled meeting
Thursday among Rutledge, his mother, Roach and Wright regarding the
complaint.
Rutledge said Friday he wants Roach fired and that the Chatham Police
Department needs an internal affairs department.
He also wants the state to pass a law that specifies requirements
police officers have to meet before they’re allowed to stop and ask
a person to identify themselves.

The Internet as you know it is in serious, serious danger. Some of the most powerful communications companies in the world have been involved in negotiations and have been making agreements that would throw net neutrality out the window and would move us toward a two-tier Internet.  So exactly what would that mean?  It would mean that the big corporate giants that have a virtual monopoly on other forms of media and entertainment would be able to buy access to the blazing fast “next generation” Internet that communications companies are developing and the rest of us (like this site for example) would be stuck on the decaying “gravel roads” of the old Internet.  The threat that this poses to freedom, liberty, Internet commerce and the free flow of information should not be underestimated.

I want you to take a few moments and imagine with me what the future of the Internet could look like if something is not done.  Imagine a world in which your Internet service provider gives you more ”choices” regarding your level of Internet access.  For a “budget” price, you can get email and access to several hundred of the hottest and most popular websites (controlled by the big media conglomerates of course) on the incredibly fast “next generation” Internet.  For a bit more, you can get access to thousands of websites (once again, controlled by the big media conglomerates) on the new blazing fast version of the Internet that has been developed.  Or lastly, you can get the “premium package” which will give you access to the entire Internet, including the millions of websites that are still chugging along on the “old Internet”.

Wouldn’t that be great?

Of course not.

Isn’t it obvious what would happen?

The millions of websites that are unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant “tolls” to get on the new blazing fast version of the Internet would rapidly start losing traffic and would eventually fizzle out almost altogether.

After all, in this day and age who is going to stick with technology that is slow and outdated?

For example, how many people still use “dial-up” anymore?  There are a few, but it is just not that many.

For years, the big Internet companies have been dreaming of getting permission to sell access to an Internet “fast lane” to the highest bidder.  The potential profits to be had are staggering.

But right now there is one thing that stands in the way of those profits and that must be eliminated according to them.

Net neutrality.

Up until now, any information sent over the Internet has been treated more or less equally.  When a data packet enters the Internet, it is directed to its destination regardless of the identity of the customer or the importance of the information.

But now some very powerful interests want to change all that.  The idea is to have the Internet much more closely resemble cable television.

In particular, a recent agreement regarding net neutrality between Google and Verizon is causing alarm among Internet users.

The following is how The Daily Mail described the recent agreement between Google and Verizon….

Technology giants Google and Verizon have today paved the way for a future ‘two-tier’ internet in which companies can pay extra to make sure their services get through.

Whenever anyone starts using phrases like “pay extra” when it comes to access to the Internet, alarm bells should start going off in your head.

Once we start going down that road, the big media companies with the deep pockets will do all they can to gain a “competitive” advantage.

The future of the Internet is at stake.  Are we going to continue to have a free and open Internet with millions of choices, or are we going to have an Internet dominated by “toll roads” where there are only a few thousand choices which are all tightly controlled by the giant media conglomerates?

Already, there is a lot of talk about the new “high bandwidth” Internet that is coming.

According to The Daily Mail, even Verizon’s CEO admits that the agreement between his firm and Google would create a “separate” high bandwidth Internet….

The new high bandwidth internet would remain separate from the normal public internet and would probably include services such as healthcare and 3D video and gaming, according to Verizon’s chief executive, Ivan Seidenberg.

So what do you think is eventually going to happen if a new “high bandwith Internet” is set up?

Well, everyone will want to move over to it of course.

And that is exactly the idea.

Over the past several years, the big media conglomerates that dominate television, newspapers, radio, movies and even video games have come to realize that they have completely and totally lost control over the Internet.

The Internet has given the common man a voice in the world, and it is probably the greatest breakthrough for the free flow of information since the printing press was invented.

But to the big media conglomerates there is a big problem.

They have lost their monopoly.

People are not forced to come to them for their news and entertainment anymore.

The rise of the alternative media has been one of the most incredible stories of this past decade, and today information flows more freely around the globe than ever before.

But now there are some very powerful corporate interests that would like to force alternative websites, radio programs and television shows to shut down for good.

They realize that they need to make their move quickly, because we are rapidly approaching a critical turning point for the Internet.

You see, the truth is that virtually all communications will eventually go through the Internet.  Phone service, television service and Internet access are rapidly merging into one.

The battle for control over this media pipeline we call the Internet is only going to heat up even more.  Literally trillions of dollars will be made or lost depending on the direction that the Internet takes in the years ahead.

So will we allow the Internet to become a network of private toll roads where the big media conglomerates control what we see and hear and think?

Or will we stand up and demand that the Internet remain a free and neutral platform where information flows freely and where we can all have our say?

As for me, I choose to stand on the side of Internet freedom.

[Via:Michael Snyder]

free speech ruling

US supreme court likely to have to rule on issue of balancing national security and freedom of speech, says judge

Sonia Sotomayor described the balance between national security and free speech as 'a constant struggle in this society'. Photograph: Ed Andrieski/AP

Sonia Sotomayor described the balance between national security and free speech as ‘a constant struggle in this society’. Photograph: Ed Andrieski/APUS supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor has said the court is likely to have to rule on the issue of balancing national security and freedom of speech due to WikiLeaks posting a cache of US military records about the Afghan war.

Sotomayor said the incident, which has been condemned by the Pentagon, was likely to provoke legislation in Congress that would require judicial scrutiny.

Her comments came in response to a question about security and free speech by a student at Denver university. The judge said she could not answer because “that question is very likely to come before me”. She said the “incident, and others, are going to provoke legislation that’s already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before [the supreme court]“.

WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the Afghan war on its website last month, providing a devastating portrait of the war. They revealed how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents and how Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The publication of the files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, was one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The Pentagon has said the leak put the lives of US service personnel and Afghan informants at risk – a charge WikiLeaks denies.

Sotomayor said the balance between national security and free speech is “a constant struggle in this society, between our security needs and our first amendment rights, and one that has existed throughout our history.”

Sotomayor compared the issue with the debate over allowing publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret study about the Vietnam war. The New York Times published those in 1971 after the supreme court declined to block their publication over the objections of the Pentagon.

“That was not the beginning of that question, but an issue that keeps arising from generation to generation, of how far we will permit government restriction on freedom of speech in favor of protection of the country,” Sotomayor said. “There’s no black-and-white line.”

[Via:Guardian]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released numerous reports of increased government spying on American citizens. Once upon an unhappy time, U.S. law enforcement agencies, from the FBI to local police, had a history of political spying during the Cold War. The ACLU said that the old political spying tendencies are running high again. Individuals and groups are being monitored and harassed for “little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.”

One ACLU report, Policing Free Speech: Police Surveillance and Obstruction of First Amendment-Protected Activity (.pdf), reveals that, in recent years, Americans have been put under surveillance or harassed by law enforcement agencies in 33 states plus the District of Columbia. What horrific acts did these Americans commit? Organizing, marching, protesting, supporting unusual viewpoints, and engaging in “normal, innocuous behaviors such as writing notes or taking photographs in public.”

The map below show states where the ACLU uncovered incidents of political spying:

In California, there were 22 reports of spying. One such example is the Los Angeles Police Department Reporting Policy which included 65 behaviors LAPD officers were required to report. “The list includes such innocuous, clearly subjective, and First Amendment-protected activities as, taking measurements, using binoculars, taking pictures or video footage ‘with no apparent esthetic value,’ drawing diagrams, taking notes, and espousing extremist views.”

13 incidents in Colorado were reported, including one when FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) agents opened “domestic terrorism” investigations after the Colorado American Indian Movement, peace groups, and environmental groups posted notices on websites. The announcements were of an anti-war protest in Colorado Springs and a protest against Columbus Day in Denver.

In Georgia, among seven spying reports the ACLU uncovered, a vegetarian activist was arrested for writing down the license plate of a Department of Homeland Security agent who had been photographing her and others during a peaceful protest outside a Honey Baked Ham store.

In Chicago, Illinois, the FBI JTTF conducted a three-day manhunt searching for a Muslim man due to him clicking a hand counter during a bus ride. The investigation revealed he was using the hand counter to keep track of his daily prayers.

In Maine, the FBI intercepted and stored e-mails planning peaceful protests. In Massachusetts, a “plain-clothes Harvard University detective was caught photographing people at a peaceful protest for ‘intelligence gathering’ purposes. Protesters who then photographed the officer were arrested.” In North Carolina, an honorably discharged U.S. Army woman, whose husband is on active duty, was put under Pentagon surveillance for participating in a protest at Fort Bragg.

Meanwhile, in Maryland, the “Maryland State Police spied on more than 30 activist groups, mostly peace groups and anti-death penalty advocates, and wrongly indentified 53 individual activists and about two dozen organizations as terrorists.” DHS further disseminated e-mails from one of the peace groups.

There are many such surveillance reports on a national level as well. An example is when a DHS contractor reported environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the Humane Society, and the Audubon Society as “mainstream organizations with known or possible links to eco-terrorism.”

An intelligence bulletin, from a DHS-supported North Central Texas Fusion System, was distributed to over 100 different agencies. It described a “purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the anti-war movement, a former U.S. Congresswoman, the U.S. Treasury Department, and hip hop bands to spread tolerance in the U.S.”

Once you unfortunately land on some kind of watchlist, it’s unlikely you will ever have your name removed. One example was a Kentucky minister who had never been arrested, had never been charged with a crime, and had never participated in a protest. During a sightseeing trip, he was detained by Canadian border officials. The ministered learned he was under federal scrutiny because, immediately after September 11, he ordered books over the Internet about the Islamic religion, like the Koran, to help his congregation better understand that faith.

Does this make you sick or does it make you mad? Does this even slightly sound like America, the land of the free?

Source: Network World

“ACLU”

Today the government is spying on Americans in ways the founders of our country never could have imagined. The FBI, federal intelligence agencies, the military, state and local police, private companies, and even firemen and emergency medical technicians are gathering incredible amounts of personal information about ordinary Americans that can be used to construct vast dossiers that can be widely shared with a simple mouse-click through new institutions like Joint Terrorism Task Forces, fusion centers, and public-private partnerships. The fear of terrorism has led to a new era of overzealous police intelligence activity directed, as in the past, against political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrants.

This surveillance activity is not directed solely at suspected terrorists and criminals. It’s directed at all of us. Increasingly, the government is engaged in suspicionless surveillance that vacuums up and tracks sensitive information about innocent people. Even more disturbingly, as the government’s surveillance powers have grown more intrusive and more powerful, the restrictions on many of those powers have been weakened or eliminated. And this surveillance often takes place in secret, with little or no oversight by the courts, by legislatures, or by the public.

The erosion of reasonable restrictions on government’s power to collect people’s personal information is putting the privacy and free speech rights of all Americans at risk. The American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates across the country have uncovered and reported on many aspects of this growing domestic surveillance activity over the last several years. Our updated Spy Files website combines the information we’ve collected from Freedom of Information Act requests, ACLU lawsuits and reports, and news accounts so that members of the public can begin to get a comprehensive view of how these networked intelligence activities threaten their civil liberities.

You can navigate the links to get updated information on spying conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the military, intelligence agencies, state and local police, and even private companies. Click here to read about specific spying platforms, such as fusion centers, Joint Terrorism Task Forces and Suspicious Activity Reporting programs.

In order to understand our history, the development of our society and political structure, the influence of the large foundations in America is an essential area of research. Their investment into the social sciences and medical establishment shaped their direction for the 20th Century and beyond. Social control and eugenics became a primary directive. These ideas, primarily due to the work of the Rockefeller and Carnegie philanthropies, spread throughout the intelligentsia and elite circles throughout the western world.

Dr. Lily E. Kay’s 1993 book “The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology” documents much of the early history behind the rise of eugenics and life sciences. Kay demonstrates that the drive for social control and eugenics was largely responsible for the emergence and growth of the science of molecular biology. Dr. Kay is a recipient of the Smithsonian Fellowship at the National Museum of American History, and an assistant professor of history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Kay’s 2001 obituary from MIT describes her as “…one of the outstanding historians of biology of her generation.”

As Dr. Kay documents, large foundations effectively drew the maps for society to follow. The intelligentsia, trained and schooled under the strong influence of the foundations, closely followed the vision of the elite. This vision extended into the realms of education, politics, religion, and the financial world. As Dr. Lily Kay has painstakingly documented, this influential group set out in the United States to engage in a massive research campaign to discover the inner workings of man and in turn to devise methods of social-biological control. The United States, in turn, became the 20th Century progenitor of eugenics.

Dr. Kay paints a clear picture of the massive influence that the wealthy elite in the United States wields, even to the “…development of culture and the production of knowledge in the United States…” Kay writes,

“Thus by the end of the Progressive Era, even before the large-scale commitment to the “advancement of knowledge” spurred by World War I, the human sciences received considerable support from the large foundations. Their numerous projects and the unprecedented scope of their financial and institutional resources shaped the development of culture and the production of knowledge in the United States. Through education, public opinion, stimulation of specific research agenda, and the promotion of selective categories of knowledge and research, the Foundation played a key role in the creation of a hegemonic bloc; the resources and prestige flowing into those fields relevant to problems of social control were instrumental in the formation of consensus between social and political elites, on the one hand, and academic interests on the other.”

Large foundations – primarily Rockefeller and Carnegie – were investigated in 1915 by the United States Congress, which reported nearly identical findings to the later 1953 Reece Committee, dedicated to the same cause. The 1915 U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations reported that:

“The domination by the men in whose hands the final control of a large part of American industry rests is not limited to their employees, but is being rapidly extended to control the education and social survival of the nation. This control is being extended largely through the creation of enormous privately managed funds for indefinite purposes, hereafter designated “foundations”, by the endowment of colleges and universities, by the creation of funds for the pensioning of teachers, by contributions to private charities, as well as through controlling or influencing the public press…

As Dr. Kay documents, many of the original members of the large foundations and their offshoots were driven by the philosophy that they were the chosen elite. In their minds, moral authority was on their side. They sought to guide the direction of the nation and mold mankind’s development. Frederick T. Gates, a Baptist minister who worked closely with the Rockefeller family and its many initiatives, is quoted as saying,

“…when you die and come to approach the judgment of Almighty God what do you think He will demand of you…? Do you think he will inquire into your trivial sins, your paltry values? NO! He will ask you just One Question: ‘What did you do as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation?’”

Chester Bernard, who served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1948-1952, was unquestionably a member of the establishment. He saw what the Rockefeller Foundation and much of the scientific community was attempting to do and spoke out against it, but couched his criticism with the assumption of pure motives. Bernard writes in the Rockefeller Foundation’s 1948 Annual Report,

“Inherent in our systematic efforts to promote the welfare of mankind there may be an assumption that… by reason and science we may govern the future of unborn generations in ways that we know are right… Do we mean that because we have learned to navigate the tides we shall also control them? … We have already begun the attempts to regulate local weather. Where do we think we shall stop — with the control of the speed of rotation of the earth, of its revolution around the sun? … Pride goeth before a fall.”

Dr. Kay comments on Bernard’s criticism, stating that, “Given this wisdom, it is paradoxical that Barnard did not hear the dissonance between his poignant words and the Rockefeller Foundation’s agenda in biology, where the primary justification for studying the fundamental mechanisms of soma and psyche was the promise of intervening in the course of human behavior on a global scale.”

This original directive has remained unchanged. However, Dr. Kay concludes by stating that “The eugenic goals, which had informed the design of the molecular biology program and had been attenuated by the lessons of the Holocaust, revived by the late 1950′s… a new eugenics… came to rest in safety on the high ground of medical discourse and latter-day rhetoric of population control.”

Today we see this agenda moving full speed ahead. Foundations are acting more and more like governments. In an interview with the Seattle Times, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was asked, “Some say the emergence of super rich philanthropies like the Gates Foundation has undermined the effectiveness of the U.N. and its member organizations, like the WHO.” Moon responded,

“On the contrary that is what we really want — contributions from the business community as well as philanthropies. We need to have political support, but it doesn’t give us all that we need. NGOs and philanthropies and many foundations such as Bill Gates Foundation — they’re taking a very important role.”

In 1996 the Rockefeller Foundation supplied grant money for early research on edible vaccines. The $58,000 grant, given to the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University, was aimed at developing and transferring edible vaccine technology to developing countries.

Edible vaccines, according to the Indian Journal of Medical Microbiology, will be a more socioculturally acceptable alternative to needles. In other words, people will be less resistant to eating a mundane banana than taking a shot in the arm. The Journal states that new edible vaccine technology may serve a dual purpose of birth control.

As calls are made for lithium to be added to water supplies world-wide and genetically modified organisms spread throughout the ecosystem, the elite agenda of “…intervening in the course of human behavior on a global scale…” is fast becoming reality.

Source – Old Thinker News