Not in Our Name
"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." -- Charles Kuralt
Joel Veitch at rathergood.com - Viking Kittens - a Flash video captioning and illustrating Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. Rather good. [mind]
I did it. I drove to Nashua yesterday afternoon to experience Vin Suprynowicz'es Ballad of Carl Drega book tour. Heard a pretty lady who works with Gunsite and is travelling the country giving presentations about security. Talked with Richard and Ilana Freedman. Ilana is running for U.S. Congress from the 5th Congressional District of Massachusetts. Vin talked for over an hour telling short forms of many of the stories in his books. He stressed that his newest book is not celebrating Carl Drega's or anyone else's killing sprees. He considers them to be canaries in the coal mine. If these pretty regular folk can be pushed into a corner where the only way they can see out is to start shooting, what does it say about the American regulatory state? What to do about it? Home school your kids. Exercise your second amendment rights. Refuse mandatory vaccinations. Tell these stories. He likened libertarians (Big-L or little-l), freedom fighters, to furry rodents trying to stay out of the way of the soon-to-be-extinct socialist dinosaurs. Rather than cutting our fir and painting our skin to look like dinosaur scales, we should grow our fur longer, be proud of who we are, and start burying nuts for the time when the dinosaurs die out. It was well worth the six hours of driving. Somehow I managed to stay awake until half an hour past midnight. Ten minutes of shut-eye in Greenfield (the half-way point) helped a lot. Lots of cops on the road. Saw two guys pulled over and a speed trap in one of the little villages on a back road with virtually no traffic.
Perry de Havilland at samizdata.net - One click, you're guilty - of possessing child porn. [samizdata]
Eric Raymond at Armed and Dangerous - Failsafe - a letter Mr. Raymond wrote to the Boston Globe in response to Elaine Scarry's Failsafe!.
After all that argument and build-up, it is only unfortunate that she stopped short of the logical conclusion: that to prevent future hijackings, the logical course is to arm the passengers.
The extension to other situations involving crime, terrorism, and politics (insofar as the three are distinguishable at all) is left as an exercise for the reader.
Not in Our Name is printing "A Statement of Conscience Against War and Repression" in America newspapers. They ran a full-page ad in the New York Times on September 19. They are requesting people to sign the statement and contribute. There are currently 15,000 signers. I signed it. My take: the military is to be used for defense only. The Bill of Rights applies to all people, citizens and non-citizens. There are no exceptions. The USA PATRIOT act is an abomination. [mirabai]
Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.
The signers of this statement call on the people of the U.S. to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.
We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the United States government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.
