America's Yellow-Armband Momentby arendt
Legend and trivia
In the early 1980s, the International Herald Tribune ran a full-page advertisement for war-era commemorative photo featuring Christian X on horseback with a Jewish Star of David on his sleeve. The image echoed a popular tale which claimed that the king wore the symbol as sign of support for and solidarity with Danish Jews suffering from Nazi persecution during the occupation. (The story had become well-known partially through its retelling in Leon Uris's 1958 novel about the founding of Israel, Exodus.) This attribution of support is apocryphal, however, as Jews in Denmark were never forced to wear the yellow badge.<2><3>
<2> Lidegaard, Bo (2003), Dansk Udenrigspolitiks Historie, IV, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, pp. 540-549, 614-615 (Danish)
<3> United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Frequently asked questions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_X_of_Denmark#_ref-2Our craven Congress has just passed the equivalent of a yellow-armband law for anyone in America who has reason to place an overseas telephone call, especially to any part of the world in which Islamic terrorism exists. Are you as big a bunch of cowards as Congress? Will you hesitate to call your friend in Germany or France because that friend is of Arabic extraction? Would you dare to call a friend in Syria or Jordan? Do you really want to wind up on an FBI watchlist? Of course, you wouldn't think twice about calling a friend in Israel.
And that dichotomy between "worthy" and "unworthy" friends is exactly how America has been sold down the river - one slice of baloney at a time. America is no longer the "land of the free", and Congress is certainly not the "home of the brave". But, We the People can be brave. We can be as brave as the peaceful Danes, staring down the Nazis over their demonization of an entire ethnic group and their attempts to co-opt the rest of Denmark into assisting in rounding them up.
The FISA wiretap law is beyond the totally unconstitutional nullification of the Fourth Amendment. It is the next creeping step in the establishment of a police state. Congress has just demonstrated that words and votes by ordinary citizens are useless weapons in the war against the Bush Regime. Just as a puppet Danish government passed morally offensive laws that were resisted by the Danish people, and especially by the Danish King, it is time for America to resist the morally offensive Star Chamber that the Democrats have just acceded to.
Do you want to do something patriotic? Call your friends overseas. Call them every day. Talk about the weather. Talk about sports. Read them the telephone book.
Do you want to do something patriotic and dangerous? Go online, find the name of a legitimate business in, say, Dubai. Make a phone call. Talk to a hotel about making a reservation. Get some information from the internet and see about importing some art. Keep it legal, but just keep pushing the envelope.
Are you suicidally brave, get the number of a charity in Iraq. Make sure it is not on any terror watch list. Call them up in Iraq, and make a contribution for charitable aid. Sit back and wait for a visit from the FBI. Tell them what you did.
Now, in all this, notice your mental state. You are doing something completely innocuous, and completely legal - and yet, you are worried that you will be declared a terrorist, have all your property confiscated, and be thrown into Gitmo or rendered to some nameless hell hole. That is because there is no longer a Rule of Law in this country, because whatever George Bush or some rightwing buttlick at DHS says is illegal is all that it takes to ruin your life, forever.
Welcome to the New America. It sucks. But, maybe, if enough patriots pour enough sand into this version of the new american police state, it will grind to a halt before it gets running.
Having seen how utterly ineffective actual physical demonstrations are in the face of the corporate media and the corporate Congress, we have to find some kind of protest or civil disobedience that actual DISCOMFORTS the status quo. I think "Danish Dialing" is a camoflagued, Distributed Denial of Service attack on FISA. And I think its time we found many more crates of digital tea to throw into King George's harbor.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
