Totalitarian State

The so-called “War on Terrorism” appears to be making more headway with its efforts to control ordinary citizens than it is with the ephemeral “terrorist groups” those citizens are supposed to fear.

Garry Kasparov has been sentenced to five days in jail to allow for “free elections” in Russia. Kasparov is charged with organizing a protest against the government of Vladimir Putin, the person who George W Bush “was able to get a sense of his soul.”

It follows the jailing of thousands of supporters of a political opponent of Pakistani President and Bush ally, President Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf has declared a state of emergency in his country to dismiss “independent-minded judges” and control dissent from his citizens prior to a “free” election. It was the second time a political opponent of Musharraf returned to the country from exile to find supporters jailed.

While formal arrests and police control of protesters seem extreme in what could be considered the backwaters of democracies, the activities are paralleled in this nation with the creation of the so-called “free speech zones” where dissent is handled at the end of a police baton and temporary prisons.

Criticized across the extremes of political perspective, the “zones” take on the air of benign legitimacy based on the name coined for them, while effectively preventing dissenters from airing their concerns directly to their leaders. In the United States it creates a "boy in the bubble" zone for the nation's leaders roughly outlined by the DC beltway.

The name of "free speech zones" continues the misdirection aimed at American people, where a “war on terror” to protect our freedom as a country is used as justification to eliminate defined civil liberties contained in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights and common law values dating back to the Magna Carta which helped dissolve the divine right to rule and place control of a nation in the hands of the subjects.

What is lost on those who back “law and order” as it relates to controlling “terrorism” is the fact that “terrorism” is defined as anything that opposes a ruler, and worse, in a constitutionally-defined government, the rule is by law passed with the consent of the citizens rather than the decree of the leader.

In a society where citizens treat politics as sport and political information is gathered as though watching a play-by-play broadcast during that sporting event, the basis under which this nation has been founded is lost because fewer and fewer really understand the rules by which the game is supposed to be played.

Take care,

jim