Imagination Reform: what should the Gov't do?
 

the US government needs some new ways to terrorize americans. anyone got any suggestions as to how they might repress and antagonize us further?

Well, when our government could think of nothing else, they 'accidentally' said that AlQaida were planning to float a boat, complete with nuclear weapon, up the River Thames.

Then they withdrew the allegation about an hour later. Which, if I was cynical, I would say was the plan all along, once they'd scared people a bit.

Now, after it's been revealed that they underhandedly took undeclared 'loans' from rich friends, they want to make us pay even more tax - this time to fund political parties.

shit man, why reinvent the wheel? kathy acker had it all presciently figured out back i think in the 80s or early 90's

listen

ps you can also right-click & download file

I didn't even know I was being "terrorized"...

WWIII

They could make us wear loin cloths and spend all day making pyramids in their honor. And a sphinx with GWB's face on it.

aren't you going to accuse chabib of being kkkchris?

man, i'm disappointed! :D

yeah, it must suck for chabib that he can't use that troll anymore

The FCC needs to start regulating EVERYTHING.

most people don't. do you ever go to protests or get involved with public acts of dissent just at the edge of legality? i'd suspect not or you'd have more personal experience with government repression.

unrelated to that, last weekend, my girlfriend and i were leaving a movie theater and 2 cops had two children detained. one was around 10. the other was about 13. one was hispanic and the other black. these cops were aggressively and illegally questioning them to the point at which the kids were in tears. in the middle of a huge crowd of people, i stopped and screamed at the cops. "what the fuck do you think you assholes are doing!?! you can't question those kids without their parents present. and you kids. what the fuck? don't tell those goddamn cops anything. you don't have to say shit without yr parents or a lawyer--EVER. that badge doesn't mean shit. fucking cops. you should be ashamed. you know damn well better than that." the white cop with the shaved head (same one we saw tackling a small black woman who had been shoplifting but not resisting arrest about a month earlier) turned red--completely red--his whole head. the black female cop shrugged like a "vegan" caught hiding under the bed with a big mac.

after i made a scene, others expressed their disdain for the NYPD.

oh, then there's the time the secret service tried to have an art project i had mounted removed. that was interesting.

oh, what about the guy from the department of justice who tried to have me arrested for riding my bike? or the dozen undercover cops on unmarked motorscooters who, without dispersal orders, warning or revealing their badges forcefully and aggressively attacked a group of cyclists with their scooters by t-boning, tackling and colliding with the wheels of the bikes at around 25 mph?

how about the undercover cops who show up to meetings at indymedia and times-up!?

it's all state sponsored terror. it's all someone trying to use authority to instill fear in someone else.

random searches on the subways? random searches of vans and trucks on 7th avenue during the week? cops with assault rifles outside of hotels, museums or in train stations? you think that deters terrorists? no. terrorists are way more imaginative than the authorities. the only thing that command presence is intended to do is to act as a sort of public theater intended to instill fear in citizens.

You can't really expect a 10-13 year old kid to know their rights especially when they are alone and being harassed by cops (pretty freaked out)......but yeah, I know what you are saying.

of course the systematic demolition of civil rights, while outraging many, intimidate a lot of people, keeping them out of the whole democratic process.

& wait until they overturn roe v wade--- thats gonna be a fucking mess.

a la South Dakota. I have a feeling this will spread into my state next.

Well CHABIB, no gov't is perfect. Really. If you think the US Gov't & law enforcement are bad, you probably haven't lived in other countries very long.

As for the kids, do you know why they were questioning the kids? Have you ever been to France? I've seen first hand cops in France take kids by the neck(yes, as young as 10 years old) and smack them upside the face. Sure, they were pick-pocketers, but nonetheless...kids. You will find corrupt and abusive cops in all countries, not just the US.

Best thing to do: stay out of trouble and don't let yourself be vulnerable to getting in trouble.

Screaming at cops when you don't have a clue wtf's happening is just plain stupid and you're probably lucky they didn't harrass you. And then you'd wonder why they harrass you? Um, okay. How do you know the kids weren't doing something violent to someone? It's not like "13yr old kids could be rapists or anything", right? That was my first question: why were the cops questioning the kids?

As for art, well you're going to have to accept the fact that not everyone's going to like your art and if it's politically motivated or controversial by nature, then expect the repercussions of it and don't complain. That just goes with the territory, my friend.

I don't think the US Gov't is "terrorizing" me.

Maybe some of you are more easily brain-washed into being "terrorized"? I dunno. I can't answer for everyone here.

I see flaws in all Gov'ts, not just the US. But I guess when you're the most powerful country in the world, you'll always have the microscope on you, waiting for people to criticize you for whatever.

I'm just not that kind of person. I tend to judge EVERYTHING equally, all gov'ts, all police. Complaining about the US police & Gov't is just being discriminatory and unfair to those being "left out" of the complaint.

Also, the US is quite a completely different country to really judge fairly considering it's economic & geographic background. There isn't a country that has as much power in the economy with as many people, so comparing the US is always going to be an unfair advantage. Who/what do you compare the US to...Europe? Japan? China? You can't compare the US to another country, it's just much too hard and really not fair.

I don't know, but I'm sure that police brutality happens in every country & not just the US. As far as the Gov't, I think it might be a little unfair to compare our Gov't with others and how other gov'ts would approach the situation(especially 9/11). How Luxemburg approaches terrorism in their society would be probably different, certainly not as difficult.

Yes, unfortunately, police brutality can happen/does happen everywhere, but that's besides the point. It sounds to me more like an excuse. WE, the United States, are supposed to be a free country, no? So why shouldn't anybody, myself included, compare the USA w/other govt's that are supposedly not as qualified to run a country? Aren't we supposed to be an example? Isn't that supposedly why we're in Iraq?

any citizen of the USA should damn well judge their country, we're living in it! WHy not ask questions? Why not get upset when we see those with powerful positions abusing it?


ever hear of free speech? I'm sure chabib didn't expect for everyone to like his art, but that doesn't mean they have to right to remove it. are you saying ANYTHING that's politically motivated shouldn't exist?

(oh no, i'm geting sucked in)
i plan on posting a little on the weekends, but in a very limited capacity. lethrneck4 & jfreimark are not on my ignore list yet, but i'm sure that's coming at some point. (feel free to poke fun at that eventuality, khchris, if that's what gets you off, but i feel like i've suffered far more than you have from trolls & flamers.)

as khchris stated, you are lucky chabib. usually if you really do say the word "fuck" to a cop in just about any tone of voice or context then you end up on the ground with a knee in your back as handcuffs are applied. This hasn't happened to me, but it has happened to people I know. chabib's hunch as to what was going on must have been correct & the fact that there was a crowd of people around probably also aided his righteously indignant cause.

as for khchris' repeated assertion that he "doesn't feel terrorized" by the government, it could have something to do with not even realizing he's in denial. Judging by his posts, it seems his fear has made him irrationally disregard the First Amendment.

(now i'm really getting sucked in)
& no, I'm not your troll

^^^ what amyvega said

in addition


see, that's the politics of fear, that's what means to be "terrorized".

you don't need to be shitting your pants in fear of having a door knock in the middle of the night, carted away to a torture camp, or dropped out of a helicopter in the middle of a freezing ocean, your pregnant wife giving birth blindfolded in a prison, your baby sold. that's the politics the u.s. has exported to other countries (supporting pinochet & the argentinian military dictators, rafael trujillo in the dominican republic, somoza in nicaragua, papa doc in haiti, suharto in indonesia, the rise of saddam hussein, manuel noriega, etc etc... for over 100 years now)-- but it's not a domestic practice-- at least not yet.

all that's needed is to have people "cautious", "not vulnerable to getting in trouble", afraid say to go to a demonstration, to make themselves heard, to dissent with the majority, and blam, you have a nice little erosion of democracy which, with time, might very well end in a full-blown police state. the people's sheepish acceptance of domestic spying without court supervision certainly points in that direction.

having a democratic government doesn't guarantee freedom will last forever. rome started as a republic & ended up as an empire. the french revolution was taken over by napolen & later reverted into a monarchy. who's to say american democracy is going to last forever? especially if its own citizens are only trying to be cautious and cover their ass?

The USA kept religion & state separate for over two centuries; the fact that the line has been blurred now doesn't bode well.

The fact that multinational corporations control much of US government policy instead of We the People isn't a good sign either.

Freedom in America will continue to gradually erode as people become more ignorant, apathetic & easily controlled through their fear. There is very little actual true representation in our supposedly democratic government. Campaign finance reform will never happen. The only solution, indeed our only salvation, if you will, is for We the People to demand a constitutional amendment to end all repeat terms of office & effectively end the tyranny of career politicians. & since this collective effort will never happen either, we are, quite frankly, doomed.

Board members from countries other than America shouldn't feel smug about our eventual downfall either, as it will severely negatively impact them as well.

It wasn't too cool of the Romans to persecute early Christians because they were perceived as a threat to the official state religion. When Constantine became a Christian & made it legal, it was because the Roman Empire was going to pot at the Circus Maximus & Roman leaders felt they needed to try to once again instill a work ethic by hopefully converting people to a more pious religion, i.e. Christianity.

There are many parallels to the fall of the Roman Empire that are happening now in America; !@#$%! makes a decidedly apropos point.

Author Reza Aslan reminds us that usually religions have an archetypal, universal & meaningful message in the beginning, but after the prophet dies, the followers start with their dogma & take a big shit all over everything. St. Paul & Shi'ite Muslim clerics are a couple of prime examples.

khchris... the kids were running around in the bathroom. it turned out that some jackass who worked at the theater had grabbed them and thrown them into a wall to get them to settle down. the thing was... he wasn't the one in trouble. these two kids were--with the police--for being rowdy in a bathroom. it seemed unnecessary to have two cops yelling at them to the point of tears when an adult had just abused them.

the other thing with that case is that there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything. if a cop violates the law to make a point, that's absolutely wrong. it happens all the time and just cos one instance of it might not be as extreme as another doesn't make either instance acceptable. many americans have this ridiculous ability to rationalize abused power as a necessity to keep order.

fuck that. it's wrong. it's particularly wrong when it results in harm to the public. people like you don't seem to care about that though. that's pathetic and weak. you don't just have liberty because someone tells you you do. you have liberty when you fight for it and question those who act to violate it. if yr the type of person who lives life by saying that things aren't as bad as X, Y or Z, you don't deserve freedom or liberty. yr not using them anyway. why not join the army? they'll happily absolve you of that pesky freedom and readily manipulate yr life for you.

as for art, i'm happy to make things that people hate. that's great. it's fun to exploit symbols to create dialogue. the thing is, no one has a right to request that i remove something that's not violating any laws and no one has a right to try to use law enforcement against me to remove something that violates no laws. you think that's ok?

do you engage in these dialogues purely in the interest of conversation, or do you really believe that opression, repression, abuse and the violation of civil liberties are ok?

So what rights do I have as a minor anyway?