Faustine:

Aimee wrote:

...

I'm so damn mad, I can't even subscribe to a mailing list.....

YEAH!!! THAT'S THE SPIRIT!!!!!

Spirit of ignorance. Somebody FWD'd a quip from Tim May, posted to another list, referring to an "Agent Farr," connected with hypothetical terroristic acts. I am only a victim of May's master polemics.

But I have to admit I was rather hoping you'd come back anonymously to mix it up and give everyone a little hell in the grand manner. Oh well.

I'm going to disappoint you.

You know, people around here just aren't the same without a sufficient number of convenient targets to flatter their egotistical delusions about being followed around by crack teams of Special Agents who find them so fascinating they can't resist posting replies in their pet forums. (Admitting you have a research interest in people who think they're subjects of surveillance just wasn't important enough, I guess.)

Texas humor. It's misunderstood. It's partially my fault you caught hell, I "aggravated" Tim. In retrospect, it was most unwise. I should try to stay out of his radar.

You haven't missed much though. Did you know that a lard-assed welfare parasite arsonist lunatic put a four-dollar bounty on your head a month or so ago?

No, I didn't. I have many admirers.

I was quite offended mine wasn't any higher--

I'm flattered my head was worth $4. My first TNA.

"I have always been among those who believe that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking." - --Woodrow Wilson

:) Reminds me, book of situational interest: American Political Prisoners: Prosecutions [Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts] By Stephen M. Kohn (Praeger, 1994, ISBN: 0-275-94415-8, 240 pages). The gist: The book is the product of FOIA requests (and a successful lawsuit), consisting of official correspondence, letters from prisoners, photos, etc. of people "not thinking correctly." The prisoners in the book ran a gamut from labor, anarchists, pacifists, etc. Conditions of confinement were so poor, that some died before trial, others went insane, or become infected with TB in prison. Many of them simply circulated written material. Statements such as "gone crazy over patriotism," "We need preparedness, not to kill one another, but to live peaceably, happily and equally," and "war is organized murder," effectively netted people torturous, abusive conditions. We convicted several preachers for preaching "do not kill," others for criticizing war bonds, many for membership in the IWW, and a substantial number of people based on no evidence whatsoever. (WWI was trench warfare. The military had not yet mastered combat discipline.) In the eyes of many, patriotism was used as a weapon to quash a movement (organized labor) seen as a threat to our power structure. It put an ugly, human perspective on what I otherwise knew as just a few cases and names. The laws are still on the books. (Our sabotage and espionage laws do need reworking.) I was struck by how some called themselves "internationalists." Our national security outlook predicts the rise of NGOs and networks based on subnational identifiers, which will be the cause of subversion and insurrection on a global scale. It doesn't sound too much unlike the "internationalists," does it? The reaction in other countries will no doubt be more extreme. (I don't envy our people that have to make foreign faction-calls in the coming environment, it's like sticking your head in a guillotine.) ~Aimee