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agreed in general with much of the above that counsels caution in the face of paranoia:
what bothers me about this announcement (not so much the plan, but the announcement of the plan, that it was the lead story for cnn, that it can be watched travelling around the world today by looking at the papers) is the following:
that the bush administration has created a legal framework that makes it quite easy to declare a state of emergency.
that their practices lead me to think that this administration would almost prefer a state of emergency.
that almost every regime that has used a state of emergency to keep itself in power in a democratic context has promised elections soon, but they rarely happen.
that there is no administration i can remember that i would trust less in this context than that of george w bush.
and i would worry about the consequences of this scenario, simply because i do not think people would believe that explanations for the declaration of the state of emergency, were it to happen. this is a consequence of losing all credibility over the iraq war. i do not know how things would then play out. but i cannot imagine an other-than-ugly scenario.
and there is a cynical way in which i wonder if the announcement could be seen as a near-advertisement for an attack--if you want to really fuck things up, do it between x and y dates.....
but too i hope to find myself in mid movember 2004, looking back on this and think geez, there was a period of that could easily have been one of total paranoia and it would have been really easy to have gone there
maybe read through this thread, if i remember it is here
.....good thing nothing happened.....
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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