Maine National Guard bars Green Party leader from flying

[Raymond D. Mereniuk]

On 4 Nov 2001, at 0:04, Jim Choate wrote:

> And you're naive.

> It appeared extreme to a minority of people then. The fact it happened
> once is enough to make sure it DOESN'T happen AGAIN, not even once is
> acceptable. Unfortunately this isn't an isolated case. They are not
> kicking kids out of school for wearing 'anarchy' t-shirts and wanting to
> form an 'anarchy club' in school. Both acceptable behaviour in America
> (spelled with a 'c', not a 'k').
> 
> Besides, if this guardsman was as naive as you say how did he know who she
> was? As I understood it her name was on a list.
> 
> Think about that, on a list...
> 
> You're an apologistic idiot.

You may be right, I may be naive and I may be an apologistic idiot.  

Your mention of the list and the guardsman being aware of this 
horrible threat coming through the airport were assumed but my 
thought was it was a local redneck or folks in a vigilante mood.  It 
would appear this person was targeted.  When such folks take 
actions like this there is a reaction, ie - the victim had it written up in 
a press release/article and the guardsman and airport appear 
pretty stupid. Hopefully the victim of this epsode, and others of 
similar episodes, will take legal action and sue.  Hopefully the 
American system will retain this ability.

I once lived in a society where everything I did was recorded.  I was 
a foreigner and I expected it.  I got picked up in a business related 
deal and the officers started the interrogation by telling me what 
they knew of my existence, they knew everything.  My long work 
hours were interpretted as an attempt to cook the books.  They 
knew every detail of my personal life.  I was guilty because I was an 
eager beaver, had to be....

In western liberal democracies we believe we have lots of freedom. 
Cross the wrong people and your name is on a list.  You are naive if 
you for any moment thought this was not the case.  It isn't right but it 
is reality.  Hopefully in the long run we are moving to a system which 
is more open and free.  We aren't there yet, hopefully after the 
excesses of this current crack-down we will move on to a better 
status quo.  

The whims of society and government tend to oscillate in a sine 
wave manner, from one extreme to the other.  The current trend is to 
a dark side, from a national government point of view.  They are 
going to do a lot of stupid things which will take some time to 
correct.  It is wrong and bad but I can't do much to stop it.  I can call 
or write my local elected representitives but they are trendiods 
which go along with current trends.




Virtually

Raymond D. Mereniuk
Raymond at fbn.bc.ca
History of a Telco, A Fairy Tale
http://www.fbntech.con/telcohis.html