dare to rant

What’s great about society is that, as a whole, people have a very short attention span. Something that is considered wrong or unacceptable at a fundamental level will be protested… but the interval of the protest is almost always a limited period of time.

Let’s take the whole post-9/11 “arrest now, decide why later” policy. There are people who are getting out of jail today, being released with absolutely no charges. We’re not even talking about people who aren’t guilty, we’re talking about people who haven’t even been accused of anything. It’s just outrageous. But this was a known fact many years ago. People forget. People stop caring. Only recently, some of the wardens remembered they exist, and their “cases” were “tried”.

Want to hear the real numbers? It’s scary. Over 7,000 prisoners have been taken in related to terrorist activities. Out of those, 700 ended up in Guantanamo Bay. From various sources, it has become known that some were released, and 500 are still thought to be in Guantanamo. As for the rest, no one has any idea what has happened to the thousands of potentially innocent people still held in prisons. That information is still classified. They are presumed tortured or dead. This is the most daunting fact:

Out of ALL the 7,000 prisoners that were taken, only 10 have ever been convicted of anything. That’s a whopping 0.14% conviction rate.

We are in the middle of an election and no one is talking about this. The main discussion right now is the true metaphoric connotations of the expression “lipstick on a pig”. Seriously?

I’ve gotta say — when I first saw Obama, he seemed like a dream candidate. But his stands on foreign policy have really depressed me. First off, he’s okay with the idea of the US using Pakistan as a base for attack without their permission. Even McCain went out of his way to disagree with Palin and say that he would be against it since “Pakistan is a sovereign nation”. Is it so hard to ask for reasonable amounts of logic from both sides?

Secondly, Obama went out of his way to make it clear that he supports the US’s current “special” relationship with Israel (remember: VIOLENCE = We give you guns). The fact is that he talks so much about change, and although it’s true that economic policy demands change in this country, foreign policy needs it just as much if not more. It was really disheartening that he still wants to supply one side of a complicated battle with weapons for no apparent reason other than favouritism. What change?

Back to the prisoners — one of the many sources for “suspects” is the TSA. These guys are the people who will strip search you if they see any signs that you may be dangerous (e.g. suspicious traits like being from that far off country… what’s it called… Mozlimstan or something). Anyhow, the TSA felt that the work they were doing was not being properly recognized in the institution’s name — which I completely disagree with — I think the acronym fits perfectly (Thousands Standing Around — not taking credit for that, i read it somewhere).

They have now decided to rename themselves to the Freedom Center.

…Lovely. We all know that strip searches and taser sessions are synonymous with the rights and liberties we have come to love America for. The TSA is freeing people from all kinds of dangerous threats to their lifestyle, like being able to walk the streets, working, and staying in touch with direct family.

Sorry folks, there’s no punchline here. I’m just showing you the bullshit that no one has bothered to clean up.