Yes, Ken, this is terrible, particularly when the expansion of one Guatanamo into
many follows after the continuing reports of torture, injustice, and the illegality
and inhumanity of the first.

And I agree with you about the Good Puppy citizen. When I was in a cab in
Maine, the cabdriver was listening to some radio station and some caller called
in and said he really didn't mind if he were subjected to surveillance and
monitoring, to being stopped and searched routinely, etc, because 'he had
nothing to hide' and they'd probably watch him for a day or two realize he was a
good citizen and a waste of monitoring time. When the show's host said
something about the government telling one what to do, and used the example
of what if the government banned certain models of suvs for environmental
reasons, limiting what the guy could buy, the caller got quite indignant. That
was 'different" he said, "he didn't mind being watched but he did think he had
the right to buy what he wanted." And I think for many here, freedom has
become no more than the freedom of a consumer, that as long as that's not
interfered with, the loss of any other freedom isn't even a blip and there's a
prevailing assumption with most that if you're hauled away, you surely must
have done something.

So many casualties in this too, erased, unknown. When I was in Portland, which
is where a number of the 9/11 plane hijackers stayed before they got on the
planes out of Logan, someone told me the story about the local woman who had
owned the hotel where they'd stayed and how due to the following FBI
interrogations and media scrutiny etc, she'd had a nervous breakdown, become
institutionalized, and was now homeless on the streets of Portland.

Well, and the government can as of now, do all of those 'if's' and is doing them
and with plans to only extend the process, so, yes, I don't know where we are
going either, down, apparently, the darkest of roads,

best,

Rebecca

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 09:05:32 -0500
>From: Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: testing
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>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