Salami: i know you're pissed. i am too. but you're, like, PMSing too much!
every 28 days is enough, right? well....i get pissed tooo! GOD DAMMIT!! [<<<< Carlin-esque]
we have every right to be extremely angry though and we are not alone.
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I'm angry
by George Paine
May 04, 2003
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I said <http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000626.php> a few days ago
that
I'm ashamed of President Bush. I said that I'm ashamed that he feels that
the Constitution
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.table.html> is
something that can be shredded in wartime. I said that I'm ashamed that
he
engages in aggressive war in my name. That isn't the half of it.
I'm angry at my President. I'm terribly, terribly angry. I'm angry that
he
sends out <http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15770> INS and
Homeland Security Department thugs to harass diners in South Asian
restaurants in Times Square. I'm angry that these thugs don't even allow
those Americans that they harass and detain to contact a lawyer.
I'm angry that Mike Hawash
<http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000632.php>
was forced to languish in solitary confinement as a farcical "material
witness". I'm angry that Jose Padilla
<http://cgi.warblogging.com/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?search=Jose+Padilla>
still languishes in a US Navy brig and is still forbidden from seeing an
attorney, more than a year after his detention.
I'm angry that I know, personally, people who have been touched by the
massive domestic "security" apparatus constructed after September 11.
They
say that in South America everyone knows someone who's been
"disappeared". I
feel like things are getting that way here, too, except that not quite
that
many people are being "disappeared" yet they're just being harassed. I'm
absolutely livid at the thought that a student at the State University of
New York was interrogated by the Secret Service after he wrote an
editorial
in a school newspaper asking Jesus to smite President Bush. I'm furious,
completely furious that that friend of mine was asked if he had a copy of
Mein Kampf and the Unabomber's Manifesto as the Secret Service turned his
apartment upside down. Do you realise that the Secret Service told him
that
his editorial was not "protected speech"?
I'm furious that a friend of a friend of mine was detained for almost a
day
in the bowels of the New York Federal Building after he was caught taking
a
picture of a surveillance camera. I'm furious that he, an American
citizen,
wasn't allowed to call an attorney, even as he was being interrogated by
the
FBI. I'm furious that it took a friendly FBI agent breaking the rules for
him to contact the outside world and that the only reason he was released
when he was released was because his boss happened to know the FBI agent
who
was interrogating him.
I'm absolutely livid that entire families have had their doors broken
down
and their homes searched and their patriarchs carted out in handcuffs on
the
word of some anonymous paid informant.
I can't believe that we live in a country where secret courts consider
secret evidence when deciding whether or not to issue secret search
warrants
to secretly search people's homes and offices and plant listening and
tracking devices. I'm livid that secret courts then rule that this
behavior
is perfectly acceptable because even though it "may violate" the Fourth
Amendment, because it at least "comes close". I'm absolutely furious that
Americans get detained for months on end in solitary confinement on the
basis of secret evidence without so much as the right to challenge their
accuser in a court of law. Is this not the most basic, fundamental
underpinning of Western jurisprudence?
I'm furious that our Attorney General would float legislation called the
"Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" that would, as I said
<http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000477.php> several months ago
would:
allow the Justice Department to name Warblogging or a group that I belong
to
a terrorist organisation. Once they've done that they're free to break
into
my apartment at three in the morning and wake me up at gunpoint. They can
take me to a military facility in North Carolina (or, even better, take
me
to Gitmo ) and tell a secret court that I have lost my citizenship by
being
a member of a terrorist organization. They can then try me in a secret
military tribunal and sentence me to life in prison. All secretly. You'll
never know about it. All you'll know is that Warblogging is no longer
being
updated. That's all you'll know. Me? I'll rot in a Navy brig for the rest
of
my life ? at least until democracy is restored in this country. I never
had
an opportunity to convince others to no longer consent to this
government.
They snatched me before I could write my next article about civil
liberties.
I'm absolutely, positively livid that even as the United States allies
itself with terrorist dictatorships like Uzbekistan that the United
States,
the country I love, criticizes Canada
<
http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=78a2260b-4770-4682-be60-e6fe1
d3b
8144> because it "cares too much about liberties".
I can't imagine a country where the Director of Homeland Security (I'm
sorry, but what kind of countries call themselves a "Homeland"? I
remember
the "Fatherland" and "Motherland"...) says
<http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document100801c.shtml> that
"Liberty is the most precious gift we offer to our citizens". Come on,
Mr.
Ridge, the government does not "give" us Liberty! We give ourselves
Liberty!
We hold these rights to be "self evident", Mr. Ridge! To say that you
"give"
us the right implies that you can also take it away! You are doing so,
but I
am here to tell you that I will not stand idly by as you do so!
I'm positively boiling that the White House wants to give the CIA and
Department of Defense
<http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12519&c=206> the
right
to subpoena records about ordinary Americans here in America. They
actually
want to give the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense
the
right to spy on Americans in America! Have these people never heard of
Posse
Comitatus? Have they not read the executive orders forbidding CIA
domestic
operations against Americans?
I'm furious, completely furious, that the FBI can subpoena records of my
interactions with various companies without so much as a court order. I'm
livid, absolutely livid, that the White House still wants to develop the
Total Information Awareness <http://www.warblogging.com/tia/> program a
program designed to spy on every aspect of every American's life.
I'm beside myself that the United States has become a nation where the
news
media censors itself <http://www.thememoryhole.org/> to the point of
deleting news
<http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/cbs-deletes-stories.htm> !
I can't imagine that we live in a country our United States! where people
routinely e-mail me asking me if I feel safe writing what I say. I'm
absolutely ashamed that members of my family have to ask me if I'm
worried
that the Government will come after me. I'm furious that my relatives,
friends and readers ask if I'm worried of tax audits or worse as
retaliation
for what I write here on Warblogging.
I'm absolutely, positively furious that my government wants the right to
declare me a "foreign power" and "terrorist" and arrest me based on
"secret
evidence". I can't believe that they then want the right to hold me in
solitary confinement in a military prison for the rest of my life as an
enemy of the state! They want the right to strip me of my citizenship at
their say-so to accomplish this neatly, without the interference of such
pesky things as habeus corpus!
I'm furious that my country even as it oppresses and strangles its
citizens
and allies itself with evil dictatorships that torture and execute people
for exercising their religious beliefs engages in aggressive "wars of
liberation". I'm furious that my armed forces open fire on demonstrators
in
a foreign country that has been placed under our imperial thumb. I'm
furious
that the Department of Defense announces that we will be establishing
massive military bases in Iraq before even a provisional Iraqi government
can be established to so much as rubber stamp such an arrangement.
I'm furious that my President appears on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a
military uniform to address the troops and announce combat in Iraq
"over". I
challenge him to tell that to the people of Fallujah, who have been
massacred in the streets of their city! That aside, I'm trying to think
of
the last time I saw a "president" in military uniform. I can think of
three
in particular: Saddam Hussein, Pervez Musharraf and Manuel Noriega.
I'm furious that my President told me and the rest of the world that Iraq
had WMD and that we knew that for a fact but that now his minions tell us
<http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/04/sprj.irq.main/index.html>
that
we're unlikely to find WMD at any site "suspected of having them before
the
war." I'm furious that they told us they had evidence and intelligence,
and
some of us trusted them, but that their evidence and intelligence
repeatedly
failed to pan out when given to UN weapons inspectors and even
"epxloitation
teams" of the US Army currently operating in Iraq.
I've been ranting for quite a while now. I'm angry. I'm very angry.
Perhaps
most of all I'm angry that President Bush plans to exploit the memory of
September 11 by spending the month of September travelling between
campaign
events and memorial services for people who died on that fateful day.
He's
been exploiting that tragedy for all it's worth since it happened, and it
doesn't just make me angry it makes me cry.
I was in New York City when the World Trade Center was hit. I woke up to
a
friend telling me that one tower had collapsed, that the Pentagon was on
fire and that there was a car bomb at the State Department. I woke up and
smelled the stench of death. I inhaled people's ashes. I inhaled the
ground
up concrete and steel for weeks. I hacked up phlegm impregnated with the
cremated remains of people I would never know for weeks upon weeks. I
watched the second tower fall from a New York City roof. I spent weeks in
Union Square mourning with my fellow New Yorkers. I spent months upon
months
upon months walking by photographs of the missing.
President Bush is exploiting our national grief. He is using our grief to
oppress Americans in the worst way since Woodrow Wilson signed the
Espionage
Act. He is using our grief to convince us to become "conquer monkeys" as
Garry Trudaeu put it
<http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2003/db030504.gif>
. Now he plans to exploit September 11 to get himself reelected. And I
think
it will work.
We live in a country that no longer respects civil liberties or the rule
of
law. We live in a country where police officers say "Yes, we have every
right. You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under
an
internal Homeland Security investigation." We live in a country where
they
react to a request for an attorney like such:
When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do
have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the
station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I
asked
how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: "Maybe a day,
maybe a
week, maybe a month."
We live in a country that celebrates Loyalty Day
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030430-26.html> for
God's sake!
We live in a country where the Internal Revenue Service announces a
crackdown on poor families who may or may not be improperly claiming the
benefit of the Earned Income Tax Credit even as they announce that they
will
be weakening investigations of corporate tax evaders due to budget
issues.
I'm furious that the President that President Bush and his staff of
neoconservatives most admire is Woodrow Wilson the man who outlawed
dissent
with his Sedition Act of 1918 that outlawed:
Uttering, printing, writing, or publishing any disloyal, profane,
scurrilous, or abusive language intended to cause contempt, scorn ? as
regards the form of government of the United States or Constitution, or
the
flag or the uniform of the Army or Navy ? urging any curtailment of the
war
with intent to hinder its prosecution; advocating, teaching, defending,
or
acts supporting or favoring the cause of any country at war with the
United
States, or opposing the cause of the United States.
What does this all add up to? I see only one pattern here: fascism.
Do you in the White House and in Congress hear me? How about you guys in
the
Department of Defense and the FBI? In the US Courts system? In the INS
and
in Homeland Security? I know you read Warblogging. I know you're reading
this. What do you think of what I say here? Do you dare try to defend
your
policies, your lies and your oppression? I invite you to post comments!
You've been lurkers for too long! Come forward, show yourselves, defend
yourselves!
You should be ashamed of yourselves! Your actions cast a pall over this
great nation. Your actions are forcing our founding fathers to turn over
in
the graves, over and over again. Your actions are a betrayal a stab in
the
back. The great Americans who fought and died defending freedom in World
War
II did they die in vain? Did they die on the beaches of Normandy and in
the
forrests of the Bulge and in the streets of Nice only to see America turn
against itself?
What can we do about it? I honestly don't know. I have three thoughts:
First, I think that it's possible that we can suddenly gain an awareness,
as
a country, as a nation, of what's happening and fight against it. We can
fight against President Bush and his neoconservative cronies and throw
him
out of the White House in disgrace. This is, of course, my preferred
scenario but I don't think it's very realistic.
Second, I think that we can continue on the road we're on until things
get
so bad that even the apolotical people living in Des Moines must wake up
and
take notice that things will get so bad that, like in South America,
everyone will know one of the "disappeared". Maybe at this point we will
strike back as a nation and throw these crooks and oppressors out of the
White House.
The third possibility is that the productive, intelligent members of our
society who recognize what's going on will pick up and move. I've already
received e-mail from at least half a dozen Americans who have done just
this
they're now living in various European countries, in Canada and in New
Zealand.
I just can't imagine that this country that I love so much precisely
because
I've always considered it free, because I've always thought it was "the
worst country in the world except all the others" is doing all of this. I
feel like a German in 1934. What do I do? I don't know what to do, but I
am
determined not to stand idly by as the country I love is destroyed
systematically by a power-mad pseudo-dictator.
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BAH! Bastards Will Pay!! oh yes. they will.
(hehe)
omg that is the most incredible display of racist gibberish i have seen in a very very long time!! and to ask 'exactly why anyone would think it is racist' beneath is just pure genius!
