Mikaela asks:
Anyone hear Republican Chris Smith's statement to corporate heads of tech. companies raked over the coals yesterday for their collaboration with China?
"Are you gentlemen aware of just how widespread torture really is in China? Propoganda and secret police are the two main pillars of any dictatorship anywhere in the world."
Here's the thing: I agree, and if all Republicans agreed, I'd have much less fear about the direction we're heading in this country.
Meanwhile, in the news about the U.S.:
- More evidence of widespread torture by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo
- GAO report finds unprecedented spending for propaganda -- polite, PC term is public relations -- by our government under the Bush Adminstration (to the tune of $1.6 billion), including controversial use of covert propaganda by the Pentagon in Iraq.
- Domestic spying by our secret NSA agents, which, coupled with the new Orwellian designation "enemy combatant" means they can pick up any one of us at any time and hold us without charges, without legal recourse, forever. Okay, that's an exaggeration. For the duration of the "war," but since this "war against terrorism" has no end date, much like the "war on drugs" and "war on poverty" before it, it amounts to the same thing: indefinitely.
Anyone? Anyone?
Yet members of the same party denouncing Google get angry at librarians refusing to cough up and hand over information under the so-called "Patriot Act." Unbelievable, hypocritical, and SCARY.
Can't someone connect the dots here and rally Democrats and conservative Republicans who believe in freedom to get rid of the anti-Patriot Act once and for all?
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