NYT Article: Police Surveillance of Cyclists as Political Dissidents

wrote:
wrote:

Liberté, Égalité, Vous Papiers?

You should look at the treatment many people receive from the US
customs when visiting the USA...

There is a difference between having one's identitly verified and
intentions determined when entering a foreign country, and being
accosted on the street by police demanding identification because one
doesn't look "french". By contrast, in the US it is such that most
police departments are barred by law from asking anyone their
immigration status.

This is from Graham Obree's book 'The Flying Scotsman', speaking of his
treatment when travelling to a world cup track meeting.

'When we reached Miami, I was hauled into immigration, which clearly
meant that I would miss my onward flight... I was forced to sit in a
room full of other detainees for an inordinate amount of time in
unbearable heat, and when I went up to ask about my case, I was
rebuffed in a manner that could start a prison riot. Between expletives
he said that if I did not shut the f*** up, the US government would
have me in handcuffs.'

One man's story of being told to wait to cross an international border,
where his ego is bruised by not being recognized, does not a police
state make.

A few links for your entertainment to illustrate a few other
differences between the USA and France...

The fact that horrible things have happened in the US (and continue to
do so in one form or another) is not unique. Horrible things happen all
over the world. In free societies, the difference is that these
atrocities are made public, and eventually they are put right. Most of
the free societies in the world today (France and the UK included) are
free today thanks to the efforts of the US. Check
http://freedomhouse.org/ to see where the real atrocities are happening
in the world today.


And that's without even considering the real cranks like the KKK,
Survivalists, TV evangelists, gun nuts and all the rest, not to mention
the behaviour of the USA in Iraq...

The KKK (started by Democrats, by the way) is a tiny fringe group of
nuts of even less significance today than skin-head movements in
Europe. Survivalists? Like having paranoid doomsday-folks hole
themselves up in the woods is a problem? Perhaps TV evangelists should
be delt with the way missionaries in China are delt with.

By "behavior in Iraq" I assume you mean the despicable behavior of
individual sickos like Lindie England, and not the freeing of millions
of people from a sadistic dictator. Crimes by US soldiers have been
investigated and prosecuted publicly as the illegal abberations they
were. Saddam's Iraq used atrocities as policy. Mass graves with
hundreds of thousands of victims, child prisons, rape-rooms, tounges
being cut out, all that is a thing of the past. Iraq has so far held 3
public elections with a higher voter turn-out than the UK or US has
seen in years. Iraq has joined the free world and it's citizens long
subjected to murderous brutality soon will enjoy all the freedoms you
take for granted.

Joseph

PS: If this thread continues, let's all please try to remain civil.
(Myself included)

wrote:

Iraq has joined the free world and it's citizens long
subjected to murderous brutality soon will enjoy all the freedoms you
take for granted.

As an American I know that you are led to belive such things But...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1651810,00.html

wrote:
wrote:

Iraq has joined the free world and it's citizens long
subjected to murderous brutality soon will enjoy all the freedoms you
take for granted.

As an American I know that you are led to belive such things But...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1651810,00.html

I'm sure in another context you would insist Allawi was a stooge of the
US since he was appointed my the US "puppet" IGC. His comments were
made as part of a campaing for the elections where he was running on a
law-and-order platform.

Of course Iraq is in a rough situation, and many bad things happen
there. The difference is that now these bad things are seen as the evil
that they are, not standard policy of the government. And the issue is
brought up in a public forum by a public figure and denounced, and the
will is there to deal with it. All Iraqiis will soon enjoy the freedoms
one has in a free society. Some of them already do.

Joseph

wrote:

Iraq has joined the free world and it's citizens long
subjected to murderous brutality soon will enjoy all the freedoms you
take for granted.


I know that an American you are led to believe such things But...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1651810,00.html

and..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...643463,00.html

wrote:

By "behavior in Iraq" I assume you mean the despicable behavior of
individual sickos like Lindie England, and not the freeing of millions
of people from a sadistic dictator. Crimes by US soldiers have been
investigated and prosecuted publicly as the illegal abberations they
were.

Really? To most of the rest of the world it looked like a few 'stupid
grunts' were sold down the river in order to cover up the complicity of
those much higher up who authorised and enabled the atrocities to take
place in the first place!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...664207,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/...657434,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/...653937,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...638810,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...580243,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...448281,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianwe...305741,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/editor/sto...235084,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...218400,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1212197,00.html

etc. etc.etc.

wrote in message
oups.com...

Cheto wrote:

And the UK is a paradise of freedom?

Hell no! Blair and Bush are both corporate puppets leading their
respective countries into a corporation-dominated
hierarchical-authoritarian future.

Gee and ere I thought I was the last reactionary.

Does anyone else consider as an added benefit the lack of control the state
can exert by eschewing kars and all the attendant licensing;and living a
cycling life?

wrote:
wrote:

By "behavior in Iraq" I assume you mean the despicable behavior of
individual sickos like Lindie England, and not the freeing of millions
of people from a sadistic dictator. Crimes by US soldiers have been
investigated and prosecuted publicly as the illegal abberations they
were.

Really? To most of the rest of the world it looked like a few 'stupid
grunts' were sold down the river in order to cover up the complicity of
those much higher up who authorised and enabled the atrocities to take
place in the first place!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...664207,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/...657434,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/...653937,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...638810,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...580243,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...448281,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianwe...305741,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/editor/sto...235084,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...218400,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1212197,00.html

etc. etc.etc.

There is a big difference between memos discussing what is acceptable
and legal treatment of high-value prisoners for the purpose of
extracting information, and mistreating random prisoners for one's own
sick sadistic pleasure. Those stupid grunts caused significant harm to
the just cause of freeing Iraq, and any suggestion that their
meaningless deeds were authorized or un-officially condoned is
ludicrous. By their own admission many of those accused said they
actively kept such abuses from their superiors because they knew that
it would not be tolerated.

So you think they should give Saddam back his shotgun, and get the
oil-for-palaces program running again so the people don't have to
suffer the indignities of having to vote? Or do you agree that ridding
Iraq of Saddam and his sons was in itself a good thing?

Joseph

wrote:


There is a big difference between memos discussing what is acceptable
and legal treatment of high-value prisoners for the purpose of
extracting information... and mistreating random prisoners for one's own
sick sadistic pleasure.

You mean there is a difference between torture in order to serve the
'needs' of the invading forces and torture which is done 'just for
fun'? Probably doesn't make any difference one way or the other to the
victims... You also seem to be in some sort of state of denial when you
talk of 'memos' as though their contents had no relevance to what was
being done as a consequence of them.

do you agree that ridding Iraq of Saddam and his sons was in itself a good thing?

Looking at Iraq at the moment I don't think that many Iraqis could say
that they are better off. I guess it is a good thing for all the
American companies making a fortune out of 'rebuilding' Iraq, (and
charging extortionate rates for doing so) while in exchange as much oil
as is possible is being pumped out of the country to feed America's car
culture and plans are being drawn up to exploit the remaining 100-200
billion barrels of oil which are still in the ground.

In any case many of the deprivations the Iraqi people suffered under
the the previous regime were no less due to other external factors,
such as the US blockade of medical and other supplies which cost the
lives of over half a million Iraqi children, Oh, and wasn't it the USA
who bolstered his power in the first place by supporting him when he
invaded Iran back in 1980? (And he was an American puppet for a long
time before this).

All that really changed was that Saddam no longer served the needs of
the USA, so it's a bit hypocritical to try to claim 'the moral high
ground' now. After all, history shows us that the USA is quite
prepared to support almost any dictatorship if doing so serves
America's interests. What's more the USA is also quite prepared to
undermine legitimate democratic governments and to engineer the
establishment of dictatorships if this suits its purposes, as it did in
the case of Chile back in 1973.

wrote in message

Just more evidence that the USA really has sleep-walked its way into a
state of Corporate Fascism, as argued by commentators ranging from Noam
Chomsky through to the comedian Bill Hicks.

Can't you do better than Noam Chomsky and some comedian I've never heard of?

No one can doubt that Chomsky is a bona-fide genius and not just some
'conspiracy nut'. When a young man Chomsky virtually invented modern
linguistics. There is, surprisingly enough, even a useful wikki page on
Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

In linguistics, Chomsky is a bona-finbe genius. Genius isn't all that
transferrable, however. Just because you have achieved brilliance in an
academic field does not mean you are brilliant in all fields, or even more
than one. In politics, Chomsky is on the far, far fringe.

On Fri, 23 Dec 2005 00:52:11 +0000, Mike Kruger wrote:

wrote in message

Just more evidence that the USA really has sleep-walked its way into a
state of Corporate Fascism, as argued by commentators ranging from Noam
Chomsky through to the comedian Bill Hicks.

Can't you do better than Noam Chomsky and some comedian I've never heard of?

No one can doubt that Chomsky is a bona-fide genius and not just some
'conspiracy nut'. When a young man Chomsky virtually invented modern
linguistics. There is, surprisingly enough, even a useful wikki page on
Chomsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

In linguistics, Chomsky is a bona-finbe genius. Genius isn't all that
transferrable, however. Just because you have achieved brilliance in an
academic field does not mean you are brilliant in all fields, or even more
than one. In politics, Chomsky is on the far, far fringe.

No, he's not. He's right on. He seems on the fringe because
the rest of the western world is disgustingly to the right. Peace, love
and understanding are only for songs and peoples' personal inner circles
in our current corporate dominated society where ignorance and selfishness
prevails.