George W. Bush Is Out of Control!
William Rivers Pitt at truthout - Arrest Me - George W. Bush is out of control. And how! [smith2004]
George W. Bush is out of control.
I'll say it again.
George W. Bush is out of control.
I'm waiting for the black government cars to come squealing up in front of my house, for the thump of leather on my stairs, for the sound of knuckles on my door, for the feel of steel braceleting my wrists, for the smell of urine in some dank Federal holding cell as I listen to questions from men who no longer feel the constricting boundaries of constitutional law abutting their duties.
Sounds paranoid, doesn't it? Straight out of the Turner Diaries, maybe. Sounds like I'm waiting for the ominous whop-whop-whop of the blades on a black helicopter churning the air over my home. Sounds like I'm waiting to find a laser dot on my chest above my heart before the glass breaks and the bullet pushes my guts out past my spine.
Crazy, right?
Ask Andrew J. O'Conner of Santa Fe, New Mexico if it sounds crazy. Mr. O'Conner, a former public defender from Santa Fe, was arrested in a public library and interrogated by Secret Service agents for five hours on February 13th.
His crime?
He said "Bush is out of control" on an internet chat room, and was arrested for threatening the President.
Reuters via Rense.com - Lawyer Arrested For Wearing A Peace T-Shirt - this happenned on Tuesday at a Mall in Albany that I drive near every day. A man bought a T-Shirt in the mall, put it on, and went to the food court. Mall security demanded that he take it off or leave. He refused. They called the cops. I heard on the radio that yesterday one hundred people gathered in front of the mall all wearing peace T-shirts. They were not hassled. [smith2004]
Alfred A. Hambidge, Jr. at Strike the Root - The Wall - good anti-war piece about an encounter Mr. Hambidge had at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. [sierra]
We both knew he had my attention now. "Know how many names are here?" he asked. "Something like 50,000," I replied. "You make it sound like a goddamn statistic" he said, "There's Fifty Eight Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty Nine names on this Wall." He said the words slowly, enunciating each one. "Fifty Eight Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty Nine. Every one of them a son; a brother, or a father, a husband, a cousin, a lover, a neighbor, a friend. Fifty Eight Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty Nine boys brought home in boxes. For what? For fuckin' nothing. And now the bastards are gonna do it again."
"You mean Iraq ?" I asked. "That isn't gonna be for nothing. Saddam is dangerous, he has to be stopped."
The man could barely conceal his contempt. "Give me a break. A danger to who? Us here in the U.S. of A.? Is his navy off our coast? Is his air force flying over our cities? The only danger he poses is to his neighbors, maybe, and they're so worried about it that they're willing to let us die for them, but won't fight him themselves. And they want us to pay them for the privilege. With friends like that . . . ." His voice trailed off. "Maybe you're right," he finally said, "this isn't for nothing. It's for oil."
...
"And what the hell is terrorism, anyway? It's not a thing; it's not a place; it's not a person. It is a political and military strategy, that's all. Having a 'War On Terrorism' is as ridiculous as having a 'War on Flanking Maneuvers'. You'll end terrorism when there's no longer anything for anybody to get pissed off about. As for now, maybe if we looked at why people are pissed at us, we'd begin to understand. Hell, it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong; it's what they perceive that motivates them. What you have to address is why they perceive things as they do. Only then will you start to get a clue. And spare me the bullshit about them hating us because of our freedom. We haven't been truly free in a long time. And now we're letting all this demagoguery convince us to give up what little liberty we have left. Big Brother Lives!
...
"You know what really galls me? How those that seem to yell loudest for war have never seen one. They've never seen a buddy disappear from the waist up after a shell hit, then see his legs stand there for a moment before falling over. They never saw a friend all psyched up about going home tomorrow after finishing his tour get hit in the belly with shrapnel, see his guts spill out, then watch him try to gather up his intestines lying in the dirt. They never saw what napalm does do a little girl's skin. They never saw a 19-year-old from Iowa screaming and writhing on the ground because a mine blew his legs off. They never saw a man take a bullet through the brain, then watch his body flop around on the ground for a minute or so because it doesn't realize he's dead. They never put pieces of someone into a bag, not knowing who it was until you read the tags, because there wasn't any face left to go along with the other parts. They haven't seen the shit I've seen, and they want to do it all over again. Those bastards!
Politech - Ashcroft tells Congress that Patriot Act II is a ghost, from IP - and ah nevu had sex with that woman. [politech]
Kim du Toit - Gratuitous Gun Pic - Kim goes for the big guns, the M45 Quadmount. Four .50 BMGs mounted on a single platform and synchronized to fire in sequence. "Meat chopper" indeed! [kimdutoit]