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 From: the_gowch@yahoo.com 
  
   The U.S. system of "justice" is a tragic joke, 
   and everyone knows it.  Canada's is little 
   better. 
  
   Police abuse, and sometimes kill, innocent persons 
   at will.  Cops plant evidence, they lie, they coerce 
   confessions and they commit perjury.  Many are, 
   simply, criminals. 
  
   Prosecutors suborn perjury.  They introduce "evidence" 
   they know is false, they fail to disclose and try to 
   suppress exculpatory evidence and they knowingly 
   prosecute innocent people. 
  
   The laws against some drugs are primarily a means 
   to give the cops an open-ended warrant for search 
   and seizure and a mechanism to keep poor people, 
   young people and especially poor, young *black* 
   people fearful, off-balance and easy to control. 
  
   The U.S. law that mandates heavier penalties for crack 
   cocaine possession than for the powdered Hollywood 
   variety is an outrageous act of oppression aimed at 
   ensuring that blacks are punished more harshly than 
   whites for the same offence. 
  
   The U.S. "Patriot Act," of course, is an abomination 
   that has turned that supposedly freedom-loving 
   land into a police state.  The current 
   administration's program of warrantless, covert 
   surveillance of citizens is illegal and an outrage 
   that should have people demonstrating in the street 
   or marching on Washington.  With guns in hand. 
  
   Criminal court judges, for the most part, are in 
   collusion with the cops and prosecutors and many 
   wouldn't know justice if God came down from Heaven 
   and handed it to them on a golden platter. 
  
   The result is that in the U.S., almost one in four (23 
   per cent) black men in the age group 20-29 is either 
   in prison, jail, on probation, or parole on any given 
   day (four times that of whites). The number of young 
   black men under the control of the criminal justice 
   system is greater than the total number of black men 
   of all ages enrolled in college as of 1996.  It's 
   almost certainly worse today. 
  
   That the system is a blunt weapon for the continued 
   oppression of black people -- and, in a larger sense, 
   poor people -- is so obvious it needs no further 
   assertion. 
  
   The prisons are overflowing with people who have 
   never harmed a soul, and uncounted thousands 
   who are innocent of the crimes they were convicted 
   of.  And these don't even include the suspected 
   "terrorists" being tortured in various parts of the 
   U.S.-owned and -operated gulag and denied any 
   type of due process. 
  
   The system must be brought down.  It must be 
   strangled, clogged and made so unworkable that it 
   collapses under its own weight.  Once the 
   system grinds to a halt, the powers-that-be will 
   panic, the legislators will be forced to act and the 
   laws will change. 
  
   Accomplishing this may not be as difficult as it 
   sounds.  What it will take is to educate young people 
   -- and especially young BLACK people -- to follow a 
   few simple rules when dealing with the authorities. 
  
   The rules should be posted in foot-high letters on 
   billboards in every city.  They should be scrawled as 
   graffiti on every ghetto wall.  They should be taped 
   to lockers in schools and carved into police-cell 
   walls and posted all over the Internet.  They should 
   be set to a beat and turned into a hip-hop song. 
   They should be seen wherever people who are the 
   system's favourite targets gather. 
  
   If everyone followed the rules to the letter, the 
   system would stumble to a halt.  And then, either the 
   laws would change in an attempt to eliminate 
   injustice, or the system would be forced to cast off 
   its mask and reveal the monster police state lurking 
   underneath. 
  
   If that happens, there can be only one response, and 
   that's to take it to the streets, dismantle the 
   motherfucker and start afresh. 
  
   The rules fall into two categories:  Stymie the Cops, 
   and Get Your Rights -- ALL Your Rights. 
  
   You've waited long enough.  Here are 
  
   THE RULES OF RESISTANCE 
  
   NEVER tell the police anything the law doesn't require 
   you to tell. 
  
   (According to a disastrous U.S. Supreme Court 
   decision in June 2004, that means your name 
   only [unless you're driving a car, in which 
   case, of course, you're required to show I.D]. 
   Practice these words for all other cop 
   questions:  "I'd rather not say.") 
  
   NEVER consent to a search of your person, your 
   vehicle, your possessions or your residence. 
  
   (Insist they get a warrant.  If they 
   search without one, they generally can't 
   use as evidence whatever they might find.) 
  
   NEVER confess.  To anything.  Never admit to 
   anything. 
  
   (If arrested, say "I want to speak to a 
   lawyer."  Say nothing until you have. Never 
   believe the cops when they tell you things 
   will "go easier with you" if you give a 
   statement, turn in your partner or point them 
   towards evidence. This is the biggest lie 
   cops tell, everyone knows it and yet, dumb 
   motherfuckers fall for it every day.  Don't 
   be a dumb motherfucker.  The policeman is 
   not your friend.  He wants to see your ass 
   in stir.) 
  
   NEVER discuss your case with cellmates or others 
   in or out of jail. 
  
   (Assume everyone you meet in jail is a 
   police informant.  Many of them are.) 
  
   NEVER plea bargain. 
  
   ALWAYS demand a lawyer. 
  
   (From the moment you are arrested, 
   tell the cops you want to speak to a lawyer. 
   At the police station, tell everyone you 
   come into contact with that you want a 
   lawyer.  Don't talk to the cops until you've 
   spoken with a lawyer.) 
  
   ALWAYS plead not guilty. 
  
   (Even if you're guilty as hell.  Make them 
   prove it.  Often, they won't be able to 
   if you don't help them.) 
  
   ALWAYS demand a full jury trial. 
  
   (Use the rights you have.  Challenge 
   jurors.  Drag out the process.  Make it 
   as expensive as possible for the State.) 
  
   ALWAYS appeal, if you are convicted. 
  
   ALWAYS pass on these rules to everyone you know. 
                                         === 
  
   There they are.  Ten simple rules that hold awesome 
   power. 
  
   Skeptical?  Good.  But think about it. 
  
   Can you imagine what the impact would be on the 
   system if every single mother's son picked 
   up by the cops refused to co-operate?  Refused to 
   tell them where he threw the dope, declined to 
   identify the other dudes who were hanging out 
   on the street corner, withheld permission for a 
   search, demanded a lawyer, refused to confess or 
   make a deal and insisted on a trial, complete with a 
   jury of his peers?  Do you think the system could 
   withstand that for long? 
  
   It could not.  The system sustains itself only because 
   it is a revolving door into which the vast majority of 
   its victims are sucked into a vicious vortex of 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)