Previous Politech message: "Free Congress' Lisa Dean: Anti-war protester committed treason" http://www.politechbot.com/p-04603.html --- From: "Singleton, Norman" <Norman.Singletonat_private> To: declanat_private Subject: RE: Free Congress' Lisa Dean: Anti-war protester committed treaso n Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 08:30:13 -0500 Under Lisa's leadership, Free Congress was heroic in the battle against Know Your Customer and the National ID card. They where also one of the few conservative groups to oppose Ascroft's drive for a police state. This is sad, very sad. Norman Kirk Singleton Legislative Director Congressman Ron Paul 203 Cannon 202-225-2831 "Everywhere there rises before our eyes the specter of a society where security, if it is attained at all, will be attained at the expense of freedom, where the security that is attained will be the security of fed beasts in a stable, and where all the high aspirations of humanity will have been crushed by an all-powerful state." J. Gresham Machen --- Reply-To: "JRConklin" <janconklinat_private> From: "JRConklin" <janconklinat_private> To: <declanat_private> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330002942.01ea8268at_private> Subject: Re: Free Congress' Lisa Dean: Anti-war protester committed treason Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 00:28:22 -0700 Declan, Lisa Dean is not only tossing about the term "treason" loosely, she is also misstating several facts in her efforts to vent her own lack of appreciation for other people's opinions. First and foremost, those troops are NOT over there fighting for me; they are there at the direct command of Bush and his administration, and unless one has one's head firmly rooted in the sand, one has to admit that the basic reasons for the war are many and varied. It is not accepted as universal fact that our loyal, hardworking troops are laying their lives on the line simply for freedom; it is a well documented fact that U.S. involvement of any type in the middle east, and Iraq in particular, has always been involved with oil. If Iraq did not command the second largest reserves of oil in the entire world, I doubt many would care about the freedom of that little country or its people - certainly not the likes of Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft. Secondly, if you want to criticize somebody for irresponsibly putting others' lives at risk, take a long, hard look at the risk those same troops are taking on. Can you honestly say each and every one of them would be willing to give up their lives for every hidden agenda that is a factor in this war? If that were so, then Bush would not have had to put a "freeze" on the active status of all the forces shortly before he began pushing the war. Even members who were due for discharge before this war was publicly known to be inevitable were not allowed to leave. It is a pity that a member of the Free Congress Foundation should demonstrate such an inability to free her mind from popular rhetoric. Regards, /jan --- Subject: RE: Free Congress' Lisa Dean: Anti-war protester committed treason Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.5762.3 Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 10:35:35 -0800 From: "Clinton D. Fein" <clinton.feinat_private> To: <declanat_private> Lisa Dean's atrocious article is typical of a group who thinks they have it all so down they can afford witty anecdotes to make what they consider a serious point. Germany's own justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, compares Bush's tactics to Hitler's so protestors carrying "Bush is Hitler" signs are hardly an inappropriate sentiment, let alone a treasonous act. I've been seeing and receiving plenty messages from furious "patriots who want to rip protestors in two," none of whom have actually ventured anywhere near San Francisco, let alone confronted the protestors. Dean's barely veiled condoning of their sentiments renders her accusations, of supporting free speech but not fighting words, somewhat hollow. While casually lumping diverse and varied agendas of protestors is in and of itself enough to preclude one from making intelligent opinions about their motives, flinging accusations of treason should be frowned upon more than carrying slogans in peaceful protests. Next time Dean is altruistically serving soup to the homeless, she may want to consider that some of the very protestors she's assailing are perturbed by mainstream media reports, that the cost of the first 25 Tomahawk missiles launched in the first hour of the first day in the war with Iraq was more than fifty times the annual HUD budget to End Homelessness in America. She may pause to think that many of the same protestors, right or wrong, would sooner die than drink coffee from Starbucks, and who blame "comfortable lifestyles" of SUV drivers as more responsible for the war than free speech advocates. While many protestors do not support the war against Iraq or the troops fighting it, there are those among the protestors who have family and loved ones in the military who are fighting this war, and want to see them home safely. Dean's admonishment to: "remember that these men and women are serving their nation and as a citizen of their nation, they are serving YOU. They are putting their lives at risk FOR YOU. They aren't doing this for publicity, or for some other self-serving reason, they are doing it FOR YOU. And in case you didn't hear me, let me say it again, THEY ARE RISKING THEIR LIVES FOR YOU!" is in one abbreviation, BS. They are doing it because they don't have a choice, and whether they support the war or not. They are doing it because they signed up for whatever social, economic or personal reasons they did. They are doing it because they are trained and obliged to follow orders. For many of the protestors, the troops, following orders, are destroying America's image in the world, sapping up any sympathy garnered by the unrelated terrorist attacks of September 11, inviting more terrorist attacks, killing innocent citizens, and destroying America's economy. For some they are clearing the landscape and paving the way for fat contracts to be awarded to organizations like Halliburton. For some they are attempting to realize the dangerously misguided vision of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby et al. Further, for many, the leaders of this war have irreparably damaged the notion of a global peacemaking body, and given more power to the government to threaten and damage constitutional rights than any other in America's history. Perhaps those who do not support preemptive wars and are fearful of the precedents they set, are pissed off that this war is micromanaged by a Secretary of Defense that has never dug a foxhole. Perhaps, as much as people, like me, don't support this war -- or the President for that matter -- we don't like what we are seeing anymore than we would like Saddam Hussein or some such dictator to "liberate" us from him by tomahawking our families. The last thing we care about, or need, is a Lisa Dean telling us what we should be grateful for, whom we should support, and how we ought to do it, as much as we support her right to express herself without pledging allegiance to Tony Blair. If Lisa Dean supports the troops, demonstrate it by signing up, not using them to support an argument to squelch speech whilst simultaneously bragging that it's the very reason they're over there dying for us. If speaking out, loudly if necessary, against what we perceive as wrong is treasonous, sign me up. _____________________________________ Clinton Fein Editor & Publisher Annoy.com 555 Florida Street, Suite 407 San Francisco, CA 94110 Phone: 415-552-7655 Fax: 415-552-7656 http://annoy.com --- From: "Nathan Cochrane" <ncochraneat_private> To: <declanat_private> Subject: RE: Free Congress' Lisa Dean: Anti-war protester committed treason Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 11:06:09 +1000 Message-ID: <00e001c2f721$bace2a10$405002a0at_private> MIME-Version: 1.0 Hi Declan That is the beauty of free speech. It has to allow the people calling Bush Jr "Hitler" and those who call those people "traitors". Let them cry "Treason!" from the highest edifice, Declan. It gives them further to fall. --- From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavittat_private> To: <declanat_private> Cc: <lsdeanat_private> References: <5.1.1.6.0.20030330002942.01ea8268at_private> Subject: Re: Free Congress' Lisa Dean: Anti-war protester committed treason Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 03:37:25 -0800 Declan, When I took philosophy in high school, one of the basic rhetorical techniques we were taught NOT to use was ad-hominem attacks, as an attack on the messenger, and not the message, proves nothing - yet, this technique seems to be a particular favorite of a certain style of conservative pundit (unfortunately, American media doesn't provide me with a lot of left-wing pundits for comparison). The ideological desperation implicit in attempting to smear the entire peace movement with the brush of a few loose cannon street punk leftists is astonishing... or to label us all disgruntled latte-drinking yuppies. Have these people even seen a peace march, to know what they're talking about?!? Most of the peace activists I know wouldn't go near a Starbucks (both for ideological and economic reasons)! The most noticable thing about the last caravan I took up to San Francisco was the fact that the overwhelming majority of the protestors had gray hair! I'm thirty-one now, and there were damn few people even within ten years of me! There were more little old ladies than twenty-something hippies (most of those were fourty or fifty something). I think that sign was stupid, and if you surveyed the protestors in that march, probably 98% of them would agree. Furthermore, if you surveyed the protestors, I'd bet you'd find (like most of the ones I know) that for most of them, this is only one in a long string of community activist/organizing/service work they've done. Many of the peace activists in my community have a record of community service and service to the poor and otherwise needy that qualifies as heroic, and extends over decades. Lisa S. Dean is totally off base, and by her rhetoric, she displays her ignorance of who is out there on the streets (and elsewhere) protesting this war. Which is fine with me: if the pro-war forces want to badly underestimate their opponents (and they appear to have done so, which I think is the cause of the level of outrage being expressed), that is fine with me. I don't thin k any of us (other than the same radical loose cannons carrying these signs) underestimates them: we know they're determined to perpetrate this war at any cost. And Lisa - I didn't ask these men and women to risk their lives for me, and I'd much prefer it if they'd go do something else... serving in a soup kitchen sounds like a great idea. Let's take the hundreds of thousands of soldiers now being deployed in Iraq, and turn them loose to do good works here, and elsewhere. Building a house (ala Habitat), digging a well, and feeding a hungry child does a damn hell of a lot more for America's national security than lobbing another $1 million Tomahawk into Baghdad. Regards, Thomas Leavitt -- Thomas Leavitt, Sr. Systems Admin For Hire Resume at http://www.thomasleavitt.org/personal/resume/ Phone: 408-591-3342 / Email: thomasat_private / Fax: 815-371-2804 Wired since 1981. Internet-enabled since 1990. Web-enabled since 1993. Older, wiser, and poorer, post-crash. :) --- Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 00:56:57 -0600 To: declanat_private From: John Haas <johnh6at_private> Subject: Re: Free Congress' Lisa Dean: Anti-war protester committed treason Declan, This is a first time reply on my part, but I couldn't let this pass. I wonder how long it will take you folks on the Libertarian side of things to recognize the extreme (and dangerous) nature of those on the right today. They have a perpetual war in the war on terrorism, and if that doesn't hold people's attention...well, Iraq is only the first of three in the "Axis of Evil". Enough to keep us rolling for years to come. And the worst part is that they appear to have discovered what they consider the ideal means of suppressing any and all disagreement: accuse the dissenter of terrorism (as Richard Perle has done) or treason! And the echo chamber of right-wing press, radio and talking-heads on TV are there to re-enforce this idea. Isn't it just amazing that the "conservatives", theoretically dedicated to a strong support of the Constitution and what it means, now seem to be working the hardest to undermine it? And as an aside, reprehensible as the banner may have been in San Francisco, just how far off was it from a member of Congress saying 10 years ago that a sitting President of the United States wouldn't leave his state alive, should he ever visit there? And while Republicans are demanding total and unquestioning support for George Bush these days, are their memories really so poor that they've forgotten the many statements made by DeLay, Lott and others when Clinton had US Forces involved in Kosovo? Statements which were identical to Tom Daschle's in meaning and intent, if not in word? Frankly, I grew more and more concerned that what we know as "democracy" may be steadily dying under this administration, with its addiction to near total secrecy. An administration which has shown itself to be totally willing to make totally contradictory statements from one day to the next, confident that a willing press will not question them, will not even point out the contradictions to the readers. And the administration's friends (such as Free Congress, better knows as Freepers) are totally willing to make any accusation in an attempt to silence all dissent and disagreement. FYI - have you read the article in www.editorandpublisher.com regarding the failure of the media to educate the public prior to the war? Most interesting, I thought, was the paragraph pointing out that on 1/7/03, 44% of Americans thought "most" or "some" of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, and that only 17% knew that none of them were. The amazing part was that in polls taken about a year earlier, most Americans knew that the hijackers were almost entirely Saudis. So how did Americans come to change their minds? The article notes how often (and successfully) the Bush administration would speak of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, not only in the same speech and paragraph, but often literally in the same sentence. Yet rarely did any newspaper or TV station followup the statement with a clarification that there were no Iraqis amongst the hijackers. Or that 41% of Americans were "certain" that Iraq already possessed nuclear weapons and that this had been confirmed by the UN Inspectors (which of course is not true). Yet dispite being so terribly off, the poll found 66% of Americans consider themselves to have a "good understanding" of the issure for and against the war. Have we ever gone to war with our citizens being so totally ignorant of the actual facts, except perhaps the Spanish-American War, with it's yellow journalism? Cheers, John Haas --- From: "KAT MAN" <katman0at_private> To: declanat_private Subject: Anti-war protester committed treason - NOT Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 19:05:37 +0000 I'll happily witness against Bush & co. Katman NWO NOT NOW, NOT EVER! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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