Douglas Barbour wrote:
> of a different kind.
>
> After what can only be called a disastrous year, here's the news of a
> beginning for another (& I'm not talking about the tsunami): US
> intends to construct a bunch of permanent Guantanamos:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1382362,00.html
>
> the world will not heal this way.
The mind misgives. I heard the report on NPR last night while driving
home. What in God's name are we turning into? Instinctively I doubt
this is about homeland security but about domination, power wielded
Because We Can, it is about becoming what we have beheld. I never
imagined while watching those buildings burn on 9/11 that we could
descend to this. Then again...why not? Since this is presumably a
literary group, I recall the English so-called Renaissance of the Tudors
and early Stuarts--Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth, James. An age that
produced some of the greatest and most influential poetry in English,
that gave us Marlowe, Shakespeare, countless others. It also gave us
Thomas Cromwell, who presided over the forced dissolution of the
Catholic monasteries (I can only imagine the details), the Star Chamber
and Bill of Attainder, and Sir Richard Topcliffe, Elizabeth's chief
torturer and Jesuit-hunter. A real threat from outside--the Spanish
effort to reclaim England for Catholicism--became the rationale for
domestic butchery. What has changed? A real and heinous attack in New
York in 2001 has fueled not only a showtime war with real bodies but
also an obsession with anyone who is Not Us, be they Muslim or
dissenting American. I truly fear what is coming here because I have
long since given up hope that the average citizen of this country is
able to do more than wag his tail and beg for a new treat as a reward
for being a Good Puppy.
If the government can develop a Star Chamber network akin to Elizabethan
England's, if they can condemn without hearing or confrontation of
witnesses, if they can incarcerate and torture foreign nationals without
charges or trial, if the Habeas Corpus has been overturned...all with
the rationale of 9/11...then anyone can be next.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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