Enemy of the State
Well, well. It seems somebody at ABC has a sense of humor. Kudos to him or her who decided to show Enemy of the State this evening. Just a reminder to anyone out there that once somebody is labelled an enemy of the state -- or a suspected terrorist -- the rest of the "machine" of the state -- that is, the men and women who are just "doing their jobs" -- kicks into gear to utterly screw said somebody. Anybody. And when there's no oversight by folks up for reelection every two to six years, that label can be applied on the basis of the right person's error or animosity, without remedy for the wrongly targetted.
I hope ABC shows Brazil next week.
Incidentally, my post on the NSA scandal was a bit off-base. The folks that handle threats to the President are the Secret Service, not the NSA; so instead of "Death to Bush", we should start or end every email, phone call, etc. with "in the bomb name of hijacking Allah, the just nuclear and chemical merciful, bomb".
Of course, the reality is more sinister. I have some Kyrgyz and Russian names in my address book, relics from my days in the 'Stan. None of the email addresses I used in '94 and '96 are active anymore, so I don't have to worry about my address showing up in some list because of anybody I knew over there. But can anyone else say the same of their foreign associations? Any Islamic studies majors on a mailing list of the local mosque, which may or may not have suspicious characters in attendance? Anybody take any trips to, say, Iran -- and maintain contact with some of the folks you met?
My good buddy in grad school, Don Max, did his MA thesis work in Venezuela. Another friend left Bratislava just before the referendum disintegrating Czechoslovakia, left Chiapas just before the riots there, and left Bishkek not long before Akaev dissolved the Parliament -- all very suspicious.
Beware, fellow citizens: it is not your own actions that draw suspicion to you now, but presumed association with a suspected terrorist, drug dealer, illegal immigrant, pornographer -- or a critic of the Bush administration. Think I'm being pranoid? Does the name Edgar J. Hoover mean anything to anyone? How about Richard M. Nixon? The point is that nobody outside the administration is actuallly aware of just who is being surveilled, or why. Which means that you can get screwed, and nobody -- nobody -- will have to answer for said screwage.
Thanks, all you morons who voted not once, but twice, for Bush and his team. We may all be potential enemies of the state, but it is y'all who are enemies of the Constitution.
I hope ABC shows Brazil next week.
Incidentally, my post on the NSA scandal was a bit off-base. The folks that handle threats to the President are the Secret Service, not the NSA; so instead of "Death to Bush", we should start or end every email, phone call, etc. with "in the bomb name of hijacking Allah, the just nuclear and chemical merciful, bomb".
Of course, the reality is more sinister. I have some Kyrgyz and Russian names in my address book, relics from my days in the 'Stan. None of the email addresses I used in '94 and '96 are active anymore, so I don't have to worry about my address showing up in some list because of anybody I knew over there. But can anyone else say the same of their foreign associations? Any Islamic studies majors on a mailing list of the local mosque, which may or may not have suspicious characters in attendance? Anybody take any trips to, say, Iran -- and maintain contact with some of the folks you met?
My good buddy in grad school, Don Max, did his MA thesis work in Venezuela. Another friend left Bratislava just before the referendum disintegrating Czechoslovakia, left Chiapas just before the riots there, and left Bishkek not long before Akaev dissolved the Parliament -- all very suspicious.
Beware, fellow citizens: it is not your own actions that draw suspicion to you now, but presumed association with a suspected terrorist, drug dealer, illegal immigrant, pornographer -- or a critic of the Bush administration. Think I'm being pranoid? Does the name Edgar J. Hoover mean anything to anyone? How about Richard M. Nixon? The point is that nobody outside the administration is actuallly aware of just who is being surveilled, or why. Which means that you can get screwed, and nobody -- nobody -- will have to answer for said screwage.
Thanks, all you morons who voted not once, but twice, for Bush and his team. We may all be potential enemies of the state, but it is y'all who are enemies of the Constitution.
posted by heavynettle at 20:04
1 Comments:
I too found the irony funny enough to sit through the scenes with America's Sweetheart, Liza Bonet (or is it Will Smith?) But the ending of the movie--where the NSA blunders into a shootout with the Mafia--showed another great irony of the misuse and abuse of government power: despite it all the eavesdropping, invasion of privacy, suppression of civil liberties and so forth, the government heavies generally can't use their power to actually fight people outside the system.
I mean, I have to take my shoes off every time I get on an airplane (and I get a little notice EVERY SINGLE TIME that my bag has been searched) but at the same time, the Feds can't even estimate to the nearest million how many illegal aliens are in this country. And it's not just DHS (formerly Immigration.) The FBI consistently shows their agents can't find their ass with both hands; the CIA is in the news far too often for a covert agency (hell, they even had press releases from Afganistan with agents real identities in them); the Justice Department is too busy going after ELF, ALF, and doctors prescribing pot to actually bust open a terrorist cell (it was announced this week that ECOTERRORISM, which has yet to take a single life, is the top domestic terrorism threat. Really. They said that. I guess the White Supremists groups known to be training Al Qaeda operatives [they both hate Jews, so they work together] in Paraguay and Idaho don't matter as much as long-hair idiots torching unihabited ski lodges.]) Then there's the ATF (remember them?) and...well, you get the idea.
Privacy may be gone due to the Internet, DBMS, or even, lastly, the Patriot Act. But we're not any more secure in our beds from criminals of terrorists smart enough to copy the methods of criminals.
And if all esle fails, we can just pay in cash.
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