Is your library unpatriotic? The FBI has now started checking library records. From metafilter.

On a related note, go take a look at the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association.

From the Washington Post article:
"People are scared and they think that by giving up their rights, especially their right to privacy, they will be safe," Krug said. "But it wasn't the right to privacy that let terrorists into our nation. It had nothing to do with libraries or library records."

Or, as Ben Franklin put it: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

It was true then, and it's true now.

Today the US government is willing to strip constitutional protection away from a suspected terrorist who happens (inconveniently) to be an american citizen. What is the next crime or suspicion of crime where we will cheerfully throw away due process?

Someday, when they have run out of suspicious men with bombs, what happens then? Will all the suspicion and paranoia just get packed neatly in the boxes we took it out of? Or will the powerful look for someone else? Some other danger/threat that must be guarded against?

How dangerous will it become in the future to ask questions and hold opinions the government considers "un-american"? Our most powerful politicians have been claiming for months that those asking questions and voicing different opinions are, at best, unwitting stooges of "the terrorists" - letting divisive ideas grow and fester - harming our ability to defend our country. At worst, they are aiding the enemy - muddying the waters so more evil plots can be laid.

I look to the future these days, and I shudder. Out of fear, the american people are placing a great deal of power in the hands of a very few. They are crying out "protect us!" and they don't seem to worry just now if an innocent is caught in the crossfire - because there are no innocents. The merest breath of suspicion is condemnation, and condemnation equals guilt.

I feared by now we would have mobs of angry citizens hunting down those deemed "un-american". What has happened frightens me just as much. We as a people are handing over our rights with an ease and speed that leaves me speechless. All I can do is paraphrase Ben Franklin.

"Those who give up a little liberty, in order to gain some security, deserve neither liberty, nor security."

Perhaps the witch hunts are yet to come.

Americans Must Fight For Peace
Read this. Please. Everyone.
From a recent speech by U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio: "We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. We did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on Sept. 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan."

This is important. This needs to be remembered. Please, even as you are being besieged by ads for more war movies and the president is on the TV talking about "evil" as if god actually talks to him, please remember that killing innocents in a village half a world away will never bring back your lost loved ones.

And for the love of anything and *everything* stop being so f***ing suprised when you see another GI's picture on the news and an anchor talking somberly about how he died. We are letting our govrnment send our brothers, husbands, sons, fathers, mothers, wives, and daughters out to die and more of them *will* die. That's what happens in combat! It is not just the "other side" who dies, and you will not see the body bags coming home on TV like our parents saw 30 years ago. Government and the media have learned from the past. All we'll see are heroic, ernest graduation pictures of young men and women cut down. A clean scrubbed face behind an anchor, with no messy corpse to make us question why in the *hell* this is happening.

An eye for an eye makes *nothing* better and it won't bring back one damm person. I say this now and I'm going to keep saying it until somebody listens.

It's happening, folks. Jesus christ, it's really happening. Neo-McCarthyist, 1984-esq, big brother MIB's lurking at the edges of our lives. Just waiting for an impropriety to occur.

I. Am. Frightened.

I and people like me could very well get blackballed in the near future. I suppose I'm a lot of pretty disreputable things right now. I'm liberal, libertarian, pagan, pro-peace, and intellectual. I think spewing foul epithets about Ramadan only exposes the paucity of learning in the average American mind. I think just because we've pushed the SMITE button and turned a foreign country into rubble in no way makes us better, brings back a single dead soul, or fixes a single problem in the world.

Artists, intellectuals, and protesters were the first ones they came after in the 50's. Is it happening again? Should I thank TBTB that I haven't gotten a visit yet? Should I expect one? Should I laugh it all off and just try to go on with my life, trying to keep my head above the ocean of governmental yes-men, every one of whom clamors louder than the one before to support the president and his decisions. Every one of whom struggles to fly the flag just a little more obviously.

Maybe military action was the only way. But we'll never really know, will we?

But it's not war folks. That takes an act of congress. This is the president doing his thing.

Hmmm.... and I *still* don't buy into the whole "go about your lives as if nothing is wrong or *they* win", "buy lots of stuff to strengthen the economy or *they* win" mentality. The only way to defeat terrorists involves me being broke and in denial? I don't get it.

Has anyone wondered if this "war on terrorism" will do as well as the "war on drugs"?

Two good articles at the NY Times - An Alternate Reality and The Real War.

I'm getting very tired of the flag. It's the same kind of tired I feel when I see a gap commercial or hear a top 10 song. Overdone and overdone. Holding that symbol does not make you better people, folks.

Hmmm.... and on that subject, spending lots of money won't make you a better person either; no matter what the president says.

Things that are making me smile: Smallville (I want to see flying by the end of season 1, but please don't do the costume), Buffy (Going where only intrepid fanfic writers once dared. And a naked Spike didn't suck either), and my computer (functioning nicely)

Things *not* making me smile: Christmas shopping, lousy weather, paperwork, 1-800-mattress, and large crowds.

Had an idea this morning. Terrorism is guerilla warfare on a global scale. Regular armmies can't win guerilla wars - as proved by the British defeat in the American Revolution, the American defeat in Vietnam, and the Russian defeat in Afganistan. (Just the first three I thought of.) so I don't think armies will do much good in the new wars to come. It's not about nations fighting nations anymore. it's the third world versus the western world. The have nots taking by force that which they have been denied.

I need to speak out about something. I had a feeling as soon as everything happened that there would be an increase in xenophobia and paranoia. I understand that people are frightened and angry and that the safe and secure feelings that go with the word "home" have been destroyed for many. Especially for most who reside in the northeast. But it's not a good enough reason to hate. I heard, this weekend, coming from the mouths of those I consider my friends, words of anger, bitterness, and hate that stunned me.

Wiping out the innocent with the guilty will solve little. Shutting our borders will solve even less, and in some parts of the country, will do much more harm than good. (Without migrant farm workers, many of them undocumented, I don't think you'd be seeing much produce in your local grocery store.) And I cannot stress this enough:

The guy at the 7-11/Quickie Mart is not your enemy. The guy pumping gas over on the corner is not your enemy. They have done NOTHING to you. Every race, color, and creed has it's scumbags. If you condemn your innocent neighbors for the actions of madmen, you are little better than the lunatics who would murder innocent civilians (in America and elsewhere) just to make a point.

About 40 years ago we, as a country, rounded up everyone of Japanese descent and put them in CONCENTRATION CAMPS. It happened. If we are not very careful, it will happen again. I will not stand by and watch innocent men and women keep to their homes out of fear because of their race, religon, or nation of origin. This does not make me un-patriotic. These are the founding prinicples of our country: that no one should live in fear because of their religon or ethnicity.

And on the subject of founding principles - for all of you who might have seen some visitor/tourist/recent immagrant cheering at the attack. First, I want to say that anyone who would take vicious pleasure in the death and suffering of so many is a waste of skin that I don't even want to share breathing space with. But - I want you to think for a moment. I want you to think about free speech and what it means. Because the moment we make these freedoms conditional, "they" have won. It pains me to say it, but those bastards had every bit as much right to cheer as we did to sob. Because this is America.

I will continue to support the relief and war efforts ('cause everybody's calling it a war now) in any way I can - but I'm not going to stop questioning and thinking either. I am seeing of late increased, widespread social peer pressure to conform. I see people getting long looks if they do not have a flag or a pin on their person. I'll tell you this right now - I can serve my country much better by *thinking* than by wearing a piece of cloth. The flag gives us hope and brings us together, but it is by the use of our minds and hearts that we will get through this.

And here's an article that I think everyone needs to take a look at.

I've been hearing about NATO's mutual defense pact, and about 20 billion dollars congress has given over to fight this, and how the president is vowing to "eradacate terrorism". And all I can think is that this is how world wars start. Why do I feel like something big and nasty is coming?

It finally happened. I saw something that moved me to tears. I've been shocked, angry, bewildered, but now I've seen pictures of others around the world affected by all this, and now I'm just at my desk trying not to cry.

Another photoessay at Time.com.

List of tennants of the WTC - Costar Group

Price gouging in the midwest. When things calm down a little, a lot of folks are going to be asking questions. This is a federal offense, folks.

I still can't get NPR on my radio, but their website is back up.