Are Your Politics Hurting Someone?

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:00:00 GMT
The Woman I Love

Because the Woman I love lives
Inside of you,

I lean as close to your body with my words
As I can -

And I think of you all the time, dear pilgrim.

Because the One I love goes with you
Wherever you go,
Hafiz will always be near.

If you sat before me, wayfarer,
With your aura bright from your many
Charms,

My lips could resist rushing to you and needing
To befriend your flushed cheek,

But my eyes can no longer hide
The wondrous fact of who
You Really are.

The Beautiful One whom I adore
Has pitched His royal tent inside of you,

So I will always lean my heart
As close to your soul
As I can.

(The Subject Tonight Is Love - 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz, Versions by Daniel Ladinsky)

C. D. Tavares - Your Papers, Please!: Mr. Tavares took a clue from Vin's Do we really have to show a 'government-issued ID'? while traveling from Phoenix to Honolulu and back. He had to be firm on the return trip, but on persisting to the ticket agent and her supervisor to "Check Security Directive 96-05, look at paragraph 1, section C, and process me as a selectee," he showed no steenking gummint ID. He reminds us, however, of why he could get away with this.

And once you let them know that you know that their ID policy is theirs alone, and not some government mandate, the "requirement" evaporates... at least until the day the government decides this is a good idea after all.

And that's the day I'll be buying pontoons for my RV.

He links to other similar stories on cypherpunks, where the proponent was allowed to board and then removed from the (United Airlines) plane, and Permanent Tourist, which included this:
Yet another agent in the Midwest admitted that airline personnel were deliberately and knowingly coercing people into showing government ID by saying "it's the law." According to him the reality is that the companies are simply tired of people selling their frequent-flyer tickets. The airlines wanted to stem this practice by checking everyone's ID, but knew there would be BIG problems if they instituted this procedure as a private corporate policy. It was so much more convenient to say it was federal law and make the government the scapegoat. So this policy meets the airlines' private financial goals, and the government's goal of ever-increasing social control.

If no one complains or asserts their rights regarding travel, then another freedom is "poof" gone. Our children watch this happen, and grow up thinking that the state has both the right to define our identity by issuing documents saying who we are, and also the right to require us to produce them on demand.

bob lonsberry - Whose Fault When Children Stray? usually not the parents according to Mr. lonsberry. I agree. Warning, contains Bible references (no problem for me, but might be for you).

David Charter at The Times - Autism cases show tenfold increase: but government studies still refuse to accept the MMR vaccine as a cause. [lew]

Fox News - Supreme Court Weighs Rights of Landowners: Anthony Palazzolo of Rhode Island sued the state for $3.15 million because they disallowed improvement of his land because of the "wetlands" there. In my opinion, this is a clear fifth amendment issue ("nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"). The state took his land. They must pay him. It's hard for me to imagine the Supremes deciding this correctly, however. It would basically kill one of the main strategies of the environmental movement. They would no longer be able to mandate property use by getting 51% of the vote. The only way to protect property would then be to purchase it. As it should be. The Nature Conservancy figured this out a long time ago. They aren't alone in this, however, as evidenced by a Google search for "conserve land by buying it". [sierra]

The case is being closely watched by organizations on both sides of the property-rights debate. Among those supporting Palazzo are Defenders of Property Rights, the National Association of Home Builders and the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Supporters of Rhode Island include the National Wildlife Federation, the National Conference of State Legislatures and 18 states.

Michael Doyle at Scripps-McClatchy Western Service via Knox News - High court hears property rights case: another story about Palazzolo v. Rhode Island. [market]

Bureaucrash "is a network of guerilla activists who oppose the growing disease of the bureaucratic state. We use creative activism to change the political dogmas of our generation."

One of their campaigns is Are Your Politics Hurting Someone?

NPR - Fresh Air 2/26/2001: Terry Gross interviews Glyn Moody, the author of Rebel Code : Inside Linux and the Open Source Revolution. He reminds us that Linux should really be called GNU-Linux, and belays the fear that Linux is unsupported: you can buy real commercial support from IBM. Requires RealPlayer.

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