Schutzhaft.

What brought that up? Was reminded of this post from the previous incarnation of this blog, made on Feb. 5, 2004:

Not a new comparison, but the official name for the organization created in the ’30s in Germany, Geheime Staatspolizei, literally translates as ‘(private, institutional) Home Nation Police.’

A non-literal translation would appproximate to ‘Office of Homeland Security.’

The German organization was commonly known by its abbreviated name: Gestapo.

The role of the Gestapo was to investigate and combat “all tendencies dangerous to the State.” They had the authority to investigate treason, espionage and sabotage cases, and cases of criminal attacks on the party and the state. The Gestapo’s actions were not restricted by the law or subject to judicial review. A Nazi jurist, Dr. Werner Best, stated, “As long as the [Gestapo]… carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally.” The Gestapo was specifically exempted from being responsible to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws. The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was Schutzhaft (protective custody) - a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings.

The Texas office of Homeland Security actually ran a promotional ad featuring a decorated Luftwaffe officer standing in front of an American flag.

said reminder triggered by reading through this commentary:

At least the Nazis bothered to construct a cover for their tactics, describing the detention of the opposition as Schutzhaft, or protective custody. Bush and the neocons offer no such cover, instead proffering the same old threadbare and transparent palliative—in order to protect the American people from ubiquitous and around-every-corner terrorism, promised to last for generations, the state is unfortunately forced to resort to eviscerating the Constitution, not that most Americans have an inkling of what the document spells out—the rights and the responsibilities—or will they particularly care so long as they are free to shop and watch football and sit-coms.

[snip]

So keen are the neocons to gather intelligence on American “enemy combatants,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England issued a memorandum directing intelligence personnel to receive “refresher training on the policies for collection, retention, dissemination and use of information related to U.S. persons,” that is to say traitors, mostly involved in criminal plots to exercise constitutionally guaranteed liberties such as free speech and the right to assemble, now anathema to the fascist state, as it was to Hitler and his minions. Article

More on the dastardly dismantling of America this past week.

The congressmen who supported this mockery have put their contempt for freedom on full display. They have rescinded the oldest and most treasured principle in American jurisprudence dating back 800 years to the Magna Carta. Habeas corpus is the fundamental protection that the one has from the tyrannical and erratic actions of the state.

The proposed legislation allows the president to apply the moniker of “enemy combatant” to any terror “suspect” taken into US custody and strip him of all his human rights. The president is under no obligation to file charges or provide evidence of guilt. The arrest is completely arbitrary and depends entirely on the discretion (whims?) of the executive. It is a flat rejection of the basic belief that “men are innocent until proven guilty”.

Here’s what Winston Churchill said about habeas corpus, “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.” Article

Yet more:

The way in which Bush and the republicans insist on calling the suspects that he’s decided to detain indefinitely and without charge, “enemy combatants”, is an affront to our basic principles of due process which our government regularly expects other nations to adhere to at the risk of being targeted for retaliatory action as violators of human rights. How can any of those held get a fair trial in any proceeding when the government has already paraded them around as guilty? The very language, ‘enemy combatant’, is not even descriptively accurate except in the way they’ve, again, made up a definition to suit their made-up law.

Whether or not these defendants have been ‘combatants’ (or not) is a matter to be determined in court. Yet, the label is applied to every individual Bush grants permission to detain. In effect, under this law, the mere act by the president of detaining someone takes away their presumption of innocence which is the most basic of protections against any prosecution, in any system.

[snip]

When, in our system of jurisprudence, have defendants been required to prove unaccountable witnesses unreliable? Our own legal system would be a travesty if we allowed anyone to have us convicted of a crime without our being able to face that accuser. Further, the ‘probative evidence’ allowed under the law would be subject to arbitrary rules of admissibility from the very court prosecuting. Don’t bother presenting evidence against the military tribunal, because they will assume the power to decide whether your evidence is “unfair, confusing, misleading, or wasting their time.”

Here is the provision:

“The military judge shall exclude any evidence the probative value of which is substantially outweighed - “(i)”by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the commission; or “(ii) “by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.”

[snip]

There was a great rush in putting this torture and detention bill into law. Bush and his cabal must have felt the heat of the higher court’s ruling on their tribunals and didn’t think they could withstand a challenge to release these suspects outside of Gitmo. There’s no question that this has to be rear-covering for Bush himself, who alone has the assumed power to tell our government’s military and intelligence to commit these illegal abuses of liberty and due process. The only thing that’s missing is a Congress with a majority which will hold him accountable, and not just serve as a sop to wipe Bush’s nose every time he dribbles.

The other need for a rush on this bill is obviously the republican’s need to hold onto the power they derived from five years of fanning the flames of fear that flashed from the 9-11 attacks. The torture and detention law republicans just passed, in every provision, enhances or expands the government’s ability to intrude in the private affairs of American citizens and weakens the very protections of freedom and individual rights that are embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which they claim to defend. These constitutional protections serve to restrain our government and its elected representatives as they perform their duties, to act in a manner which preserves the promises of democracy and provides for free expression, debate, and advocacy, and representation in our political and legal system.

Yet, republicans are intent on destroying these protections in the name of defending us from those threats they have failed to counter using means which have sustained our nation through generations marked by grave dangers and risks in defending against Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and against the mischief of the Cold War.

There is a weakness and fear that the republicans possess which they want to spread to the rest of the nation as they hope to have us cowering behind their skirted flag. They fear the American voter most of all; those who would resist their hijacking of our democracy are to be intimidated once again from rejecting their discredited, ‘protections’ they are imposing without our consent.

Republicans have revealed themselves as the party of fear. Americans need to let them know that we are not afraid to exercise the strength of our vote, rejecting that fear in November. Article