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Re: This inflames me
On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Don Smith wrote:
> Isn't it hypocritcal that we're fighting a "war on terror" and yet the
> people in Guantanamo Bay are not prisoners of war?
Ha! Good point.
> That's why this citizen watch thing is *such* a bad idea. When you get
> scared and angry people who want something to get *done*, because
> they're *sure* this guy (or these people, or whatever) is guilty, even
> if they can't prove it... that's when you either get a lynch mob or a
> Gestapo.
FWIW, I think the first article I read on this compared the citizen watch
to the Stasi in East Germany. Whatever that portends.
> If we give that up, we're just a few short steps away from the
> Japanese-American internment camps of WWII (or worse), which I think we
> all agree now was a shameful wrong, despite the fact that it was legal
> at the time, and even the Supreme Court declared it constitutional.
Hmmm. Of course, at the time, the Japanese had a religion which regarded
the Emperor as a descendant of the gods, or something, so there was a
blurring of the boundaries between religion and culture and politics
there, too, perhaps. There were German internment camps too, of course,
and I have heard stories of Jewish-German-Canadians who were sent to these
camps just because they were German; apparently the fact that they were
Jewish, and thus *not* likely to help Hitler, didn't matter.
But I haven't studied any of this stuff closely, and what I've just said
here stems from old, old memories of things friends of mine discussed
years ago. So, like, don't quote me or anything.
--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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