Gripe, Gripe, Bitch, Bitch

I’m done. I’m moving to Antartica. Hopefully there I won’t be bothered with all the Presidential elections and stupidity the candidates have shown. Unfortunately, I know that should I actually move to Antartica I would be stepping into a raging fire of political mess. Who runs Antartica? Who should control it, patrol it, claim it, destroy it, save it, etc. etc. The list goes on. Maybe the moon is a better choice. I’ll call it Politicfreeland. I’ll be the leader and the only law is NO POLITICIANS.

Ok so that probably won’t work either, but I just can’t stand this much longer.

GRIPE #1 – WAR ON TERROR

It’s a great idea, really it is. Hunt down and kill all terrorists. But let’s break this down for a moment.

Merriam-Webster defines terror as a state of intense fear; a cause of anxiety; violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands. It comes from the Latin word, terrEre, meaning “to frighten” similar to the Greek word, trein, meaning “to be afraid.” The base of the Greek word tre means to shake.

Terrorism was first attested in 1795, as “government intimidation during the Reign of Terror” (1793-July 1794) after the French Revolution, from French terrorisme. The general sense of “systematic use of terror as a policy” is first recorded in England 1798. The term terrorize meaning to “coerce or deter by terror” was first recorded in 1823. Terrorist in the modern sense dates to 1947, especially in reference to Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine. Earlier it had been used of extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866), and Jacobins during the French Revolution (1795). All this information taken from Merriam-Websters Dictionary.

So if I were to terrorize someone, all I had to do was frighten them. Well, I do that on a daily basis. I mean my mom sees me every morning.

Joking aside, people are terrorized everyday in one form or another. Burglars, muggers, stalkers – They are all terrorists. They terrorize the “good and innocent” people. I use the term “good and innocent” loosely. Terrorists are also people like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Ladin and Adolf Hitler.

But what about George W. Bush and his administration and the Patriot Act? What about McCarthyism and Alien Registration Act? Wouldn’t Joseph McCarthy fit the description of a terrrorist? His tactics used to get information out of various suspects is nothing short of terrorism.

Take for example this excerpt from Arthur Miller’s autobiography Timebends (1987), about the blacklisting of Louis Untermeyer.

“Louis Untermeyer, then in his sixties, was a poet and anthologist, a distinguished-looking old New York type with a large aristocratic nose and a passion for conversation, especially about writers and to become a poet. He married four times, had taught and written and published, and with the swift rise of television had become nationally known as one of the original regulars on What’s My Line?, a popular early show in which he, along with columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, publisher Bennett Cerf, and Arlene Francis, would try to guess the occupation of a studio guest by asking the fewest possible questions in the brief time allowed. All this with wisecracking and banter, at which Louis was a lovable master, what with his instant recall of every joke and pun he had ever heard.

“One day he arrived as usual at the television studio an hour before the program began and was told by the producer that he was no longer on the show. It appeared that as a result of having been listed in Life magazine as a sponsor of the Waldorf Conference (a meeting to discuss cultural and scientific links with the Soviet Union), an organized letter campaign protesting his appearance on What’s My Line? had scared the advertisers into getting rid of him.

“Louis went back to his apartment. Normally we ran into each other in the street once or twice a week or kept in touch every month or so, but I no longer saw him in the neighborhood or heard from him. Louis didn’t leave his apartment for almost a year and a half. An overwhelming and paralyzing fear had risen him. More than a political fear, it was really that he had witnessed the tenuousness of human connection and it had left him in terror. He had always loved a lot and been loved, especially on the TV program where his quips were vastly appreciated, and suddenly, he had been thrown into the street, abolished.”

How many Americans don’t go outside their homes due to the same feelings as Untermeyer? Only these Americans are blacklisted because of their faith, skin color, or ethnicity. So who excatly are the terrorists; the planners of 9/11, my Arab neighbors or the government?

The Bush administration, shortly after 9/11, passed the Patriot Act through Congress and into action. For the most part, it expands the powers granted under FISA law, although that is a weak overview. It has both good and bad policies in it. To save time and space, I will not overview the Patriot Act. You can view the Act in its entirety at Electronic Privacy Information Center – USA Patriot Act HR 3162RDS.

Various news stations have reported on abuses this Act has allowed, showing how America’s freedoms are being trampled beneath the idea of national security. But take a look at this excerpt from Andrew C. McCarthy’s article on Terrorism and the New York Times.

“So what is the Times’s latest litany of complaints?…”

“…[T]he unraveling of the Detroit terror cell case, to which the Times devoted nearly 4000 words last Thursday. The paper editorializes about DOJ’s “terrible miscarriage of justice” in choosing to “mov[e] against four Middle Eastern immigrants[,]” with the result that “[t]hree of them were convicted and imprisoned – two on terrorism charges – until the government was forced to repudiate its own case.”

Here’s what the Times doesn’t tell you: These particular “Middle Eastern immigrants” were found in an apartment with, among other things, forged green cards and visas, fake passport photos, and 105 audiotapes advocating jihad. Only the charge of material support to terrorism has collapsed. That happened because of overly aggressive tactics by the local prosecution team. It goes without saying that this is cause for great concern and censure. That is precisely why DOJ itself unearthed and brought the misconduct to the attention of the trial judge, who commented that this was an example of “the highest and best tradition” of the Department.

As it happens, three of the “Middle Eastern immigrants” were convicted of fraud and misuse of identification documents. Although it admirably asked the court to reverse those convictions because of its prosecutor’s errors, DOJ, far from “repudiat[ing] its own case,” will be re-trying the three defendants on the fraud charges – serious felonies founded on strong evidence that will likely result in re-conviction and ultimate deportation.”

Reading an article, similiar to the above in the newspaper would cause me to worry and panic against