Sunday, January 3, 2010
Dedicated To A Nation Of 'Adult Children' Who Want Terrorism To Disappear (but not their neighbor or themselves)
.Conservative Columnist David Brooks On America, A Nation Of Adult Children who believe that living in a police state beats having to do anything to ameliorate the conditions that lead to it:
(Quote context, in regard to the 'Underpants Bomber' and concurrent citizen attention on alleged 'flaws' in the New American Police State Apparatus.)
"Now we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved. We seem to be in the position of young adolescents — who believe mommy and daddy can take care of everything, and then grow angry and cynical when it becomes clear they can’t [...]
H/t Firedoglake
Which is QUITE a change in the American attitude from 9 years ago:
"On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid, the 'shoe-bomber,' attempted to detonate explosives on an American airliner. On December 27, Usama Bin Laden issued a new, menacing videotape. How did the Bush administration respond to these dramatic events? How did CNN cover the response?
Bush's response was to plant a live oak tree and go for a jog, and follow 'through on his promise to get a little bit of rest and relaxation on this trip down here to Crawford.' CNN reported this as a good thing. Bush also declined to comment on the Bin Laden tape, and CNN helpfully explained this silence as a wise decision not to respond to someone who 'might be dead.'"
In Full @ Juan Cole's Informed Comment
Pop Quiz!
Analyze the childlike, mercurial, historically amnesiac, American socio-cultural traits, and hypothesize how they affect the reasons, rationales, and denials in regard to the persecution of worthless wars that create 'terrorism' in the first place.
Well, since we can't control our childish desires to accumulate "stuff" at the expense of environmental destruction and slave-labor conditions (Even your chocolate... ...and flowers, Luvr!) those demands place on the extractive and manufacturing countries of the world (ie. the "third world"), we can start by putting everyone we 'fear' in prison... or something LIKE a prison.
(This article appeared in the January 4, 2010 edition of The Nation.)
America's Secret ICE CastlesAlso see: ICE Agents' Ruse Operations "ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians--OSHA inspectors, insurance agents, religious workers--in order to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history...."
By Jacqueline Stevens
December 16, 2009
"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear."
Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."
Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants--nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.
I obtained a partial list of the subfield offices from an ICE officer and shared it with immigrant advocates in major human and civil rights organizations, whose reactions ranged from perplexity to outrage. Andrea Black, director of Detention Watch Network (DWN), said she was aware of some of the subfield offices but not that people were held there...
In Full @ The Nation
...And just in case you think these things can't happen to citizens like "Joe or Jane America", or YOU, see:
The Art Of Institutional Slander - Are You A 'Person Of Interest'?
Tuesday August 05 2008
"...the 'person of interest' is someone against whom there is no real evidence but someone who can be, at least for a time, used, vilified, scapegoated. It's time our law enforcement politicians learn to say 'No comment' and for them to educate the public that very often, especially at the beginning of a case, police have no idea who the perpetrator was, or at least no real evidence." In Full Here
Which leads to THIS chilling thought:
One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists
By Chris Hedges
Dec 28, 2009
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Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home,"
One final thought...
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