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number 50 for 9-11-05
I Will Not Forget the Day Nothing Changed
At midnight last night, I hit CNN.com and Foxnews.com with a hypothesis. Fox News would already be talking up 9-11, and CNN would be talking up Katrina.
I was correct.
In fact, Fox News made it seem like, even at 3 in the morning, planned memorials were already occurring. It highlighted how 9-11 has changed everything, and how the world will never be the same.
Here's the truth:
9-11 did not change shit. 9-11 merely informed the ignorant public to what was already going on. People in other countries hate us and want to kill us.
That's a no shit story for a lifetime, kiddo, but what the hell.
What continually disturbs me, four years later now, is how the media, the president, the government, and even people conversationally continue to use 9-11 to win arguments and silence any speech they disagree with.
What changed for me after 9-11 was the assumption that free speech and freedom was eternal. Since 9-11 I've seen multiple freedoms as a citizen removed, and none returned.
I assumed, naively, in the weeks after 9-11, that the PATRIOT Act and many of its future incarnations would be overturned as unconstitutional, seeing as they are. Instead, it's been renewed, its sequel has passed, and it remains: Anyone who the president deems to be an enemy combatant can be held without due process, shaky due cause, and at the whim of one man indefinitely.
This is intolerable.
Not because the combatant is not guilty. He likely is, in any given case. Not because he doesn't deserve torture. Often, they do.
BUT BECAUSE WE ARE BETTER THAN THAT.
We believe in freedom, which also includes due process, a jury with peers, and warfare conduct becoming a superpower. Or at least, we did.
My hope, that the courts would overturn these war powers, has been dashed. They're siding with the president. Of course, but hey, a guy can hope, can't he?
Citation
The court said that because we are at war with Al Qaeda, this man is technically a combatant.
Okay. I challenge the court to produce the act of congress declaring war on the terrorist organization of Al Qaeda.
None exists.
In fact, we have merely authorized the president to attack IRAQ, which was wrongheaded and foolish, but is says nothing about Al Qaeda. The reason being, if we declared war on Al Qaeda, we'd be even MORE required to give them due process than even our own criminals.
Instead, we pursue "police actions" eternally, sending people to other countries to be tortured, holding people without charges.
WE ARE BETTER THAN THAT.
Or, in fact, we're not.
In truth, we have regularly and continually considered to threaten the use of WMD in the fashion that we used as a justification to annihilate and colonize Iraq.
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Instead of focusing on this, however, the president is putting his brain where it REALLY needs to work, the disaster that is Katrina.
He's fired the head of FEMA, too little too late.
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And he's fired off THIS gemmie, which I'm still having trouble fathoming. Apparently, lifting all restraints on the prevailing aid for workers reconstructing Hurricane Katrina's wake is his idea of saving money on the relief efforts.
What does lifting the prevailing wage mean in our speak?
Well, he said that the minimum wage no longer applies, so that the people who rebuild are given the economic incentive to do so. Problem being, it totally fucks anyone who works on the relief effort, and also means few will want to except illegal immigrants and other people already marginalized.
It ALSO means that all of the unemployed people in New Orleans who get a job rebuilding their own city will not only have no home, no money, and dead relatives, they'll be paid FAR BELOW THE MINIMUM WAGE to do so.
This is just...I'm fucking speechless.
George Bush just went from insensitive and stupid in my head to purposefully ignorant and diabolical bastard.
I might, you know, divert some of the money from the military to the disaster, but that's just me. And hey, what do I know? I believe in responding to disasters as they fucking happen.
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In other news: Gas companies will profit 10 billion dollars this year.
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God Bless America. But if you're poor or brown? FUCK YOU.
CORRECTIONS:
Stephen G informs me that many nominees for chief justice have been new to the job, and that things turned out fine. I didn't know this, and he's right upon research, so I reverse my position. I think Roberts will be just fine as the chief justice, though he will adopt positions I disagree with. I think we asked for this with our voting, so it's hard to stand against it.