It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
Mother Davis squints her eyes as she reads about the latest news from the Bush Administration Special Office of Keeping Secrets From The American People (The BS Office, for short):

The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives has requested as part of its standard oversight duties information about how the Justice Department, headed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, is using the domestic spying privileges it gained last fall through the passage of the so-called Patriot Act.

You may not remember, but as part of the post-September 11 and anthrax scare, George W. Bush and Ashcroft pushed the Patriot Act through Congress, so that government groups like the FBI could gain new powers to spy on people within the United States. For example, now, the FBI can get wiretaps not just on people suspected of criminal activity, but the friends and relatives of suspects as well. The FBI has also been given the authority to search through citizens' library records, through bookstore purchases, and newspaper records as well.

All that the congressional Judiciary Committee wanted was for the Bush Administration to provide information about how many times these domestic spying privileges have been used.

Ashcroft's Justice Department refuses to cooperate with the information request, saying that the information was "classified."

Let's ask the obvious question again: What are George W. Bush and John Ashcroft trying to hide?

Afraid of the answer,
Mother Davis

Posted by Katherine Davis at 9:01 PM. # (permalink)  




Return to the Irregular Times Main Page

Read our Blog Archives