Our Way of Life

[Originally posted on goofyblog 10.20.06]

In honor of the loss of habeas corpus in this country and Keith Olbermann’s intense editorial last night on MSNBC about it, everyone needs a quick review on what rights we still have left as U.S. citizens. The above film is from a group called flexyourrights.org.

Several years ago, I read the excellent book, Beat the Heat: How to Handle Encounters with Law Enforcement, written by Harvard Law School graduate, Katya Komisaruk. This youTube vid is a short, graphic representation of the concepts detailed in the book. It’s an eye-opener. [NOTE: This short is no longer available. It has been withdrawn because the complete video is being sold here, but you can still see the whole thing here.]

In these days of the futile, wasteful “War” on drugs, now in it’s 4^th decade (whose only purpose is to prop up the prison/law enforcement/military complex), the “no knock” search warrant and the rise of SWAT teams (leading to citizen as well as police deaths during mistaken-address/identity raids such as the Corey Maye case), the largest prison population on earth, the move in California to make certain citizens wear GPS bracelets at all times, this current move of the President is just more of the same “safety/security” bullshit that we’ve been consuming for, well, 40 years now. You may think “this won’t ever happen to me” and you might be right who knows what the future brings, but at the very least, you’ll be entertained and informed.

You’ll never learn this info from the hundreds of cops shows and movies that seem to be about 70% of the “entertainment” on television and in movie theatres. Good luck.

In closing, a few quotes for ya:

“It astonishes me to find … [that so many] of our countrymen … should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty … which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries,”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, 1788.

Found on the Andrew Sullivan’s conservative blog, the Daily Dish.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Ben Franklin

We will not allow the enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms.
-George W. Bush, September 12, 2001

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.
-Adolf Hitler