Bryan and I have been living among checkpoints, assault rifles, tanks, and generals in power, for years. The excuse for this is "terrorism". Put a 100000 military guys on the street with absolute authority and sure as hell they're going to piss off a lot of people, but the vast majority will think "at least we're safe". Everbody's been tortured or beaten or has relatives who have in Turkey but they still think (or at least tell pollsters) that they trust the police and the army. Europeans are horrified by the readiness of US cops to point a gun at your head but Americans see this as something they have to live with to "keep the streets safe". Protests against police brutality during martial law - which is what you have now - have virtually no effect, so it's no use beating each other over the head about it.
Peoples' security fears are very easy to exploit and this is why Israel, Turkey, the US, and many others sponsor or condone terrorism, often against their own people (1). This is what we really have to expose and protest. Why the hell should we believe Bush's al Qaeda story? Look at today's Guardian for a tally of the lies they've told us about the war. The Bush government is getting away with murder not only in Afghanistan but across the board: tax cuts for the rich, handouts to big business, police state measures, an all-fronts assault on the environment, global unilateralism, militarism, you name it. The Bush - Cheney cabal are taking the US back to the pre-VietNam era for a total victory of the new-old right. The martial law measures being enacted fully exploit the climate of terror created by the periodic attack warnings from Ashcroft and the FBI but have little to do with fighting terrorism. Their real targets are the sections of society which the right would like to submit to its will: workers, the poor, blacks, women, gays, etc. Our job is to warn these people of what's in store for them, which is something very much worse than getting pushed around by airport security.
1) One of the crazy things that most people are ready to believe is that the KGB and its poor copies in Iraq, Syria, and North Korea, can track down and suppress the minutest opposition, but incomparably better funded and more sophisticated outfits like the CIA, FBI, or MOSSAD can't. The CIA is soo incompetent that it can't even keep track of the people it trained, the Taliban. Saudi, Paki, and US intelligence has been working hand-in-hand - everyone's been trained by Langley - right from the start, and now these dumb flakes have all lost the fundamentalists they've been controlling (except the ones in Saudi, of course - you won't hear a peep from them). So now with great regret the US has to massacre the Afghan people and shut down democracy at home. Israeli intelligence can vector attack helicopters down on terrorists' cars but it can't pick up an assassination plot against a goverment minister, so with great regret it has to go and kill a lot of Palestinians. And guess what, Yigal Amir killed Yitzak Rabin while under Shin Beit surveillance too. Hey, shit happens. It's just the darndest thing the way these spooks keep fucking up and the right always seems to come out on top in the end. Too bad Bush put a lid on the Whte House papers so we'll never know what his dad and Ronnie were up to with the Taliban.
Hakki Alacakaptan
|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
|| [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Kelley
|| >
|| >Bryan says: On an initial note, having read the interview
|| with the Green
|| >party woman, I agree that she has the political tactics of a
|| high-school
|| >student, and also that she wasn't clear about why they
|| actually pinpointed
|| >her for search....but I totally disagree with you on the above
|| statement.
|| >What is ignorant is you Kelly, that you think that she SHOULD NOT be
|| >outraged by the treatment that she got.
||
|| go back to my posts and read how many times i said, "it sucks". i am
|| outraged by the treatment she got.
||
|| as i said early and repeated, on its own merits, without
|| exagerrating, the
|| case is bad enough. please go back and re-read what i wrote.
||
||
|| kelley
||