This is your brain on bush

Below is a map of surveillance societies around the world.
The black ones are the worst offenders.
*** For those who can't find the US on a map, that would be our country on the left under the big yellow country which is Canada, such as. We share this dubious distinction with those big black blobs on the right which include, such as, Russia and China. Oh and I see England, such as, on there too. I think they are worse than the US in some respects. Could that be Greece in green? Wow. Green is good. Such as, that is where I shall vacation this year.



Hey we are right up there with the worst of them! Why not read all about this map?

Now for your reading enjoyment, this article by Tom Engelhardt, "How Bush Took Us to the Dark Side" should sum it all up. In defense of our leader, he didn't invent this stuff- he and his cronies just made it "business as usual" and dare I say it? Legal?

I'll start you off with the opening paragraphs from Engelhardt's piece. And oh goodie. It takes place right here in good old NY (that bastion of liberal free thinking and secular cultural scum or whatever their codewords are for Jews and homosexuals are these days):

"If you don't mind thinking about the Bush legacy a year early, there are worse places to begin than with the case of Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lilliendahl. Admittedly, she isn't an ideal "tempest-tost" candidate for Emma Lazarus' famous lines engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. After all, she flew to New York City with her girlfriends, first class, from her native Iceland, to partake of "the Christmas spirit." She was drinking white wine en route and, as she put it, "look[ing] forward to go shopping, eat good food, and enjoy life." On an earlier vacation trip, back in 1995, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks, a modest enough infraction, and had even returned the following year without incident.

This time -- with the President's Global War on Terror in full swing -- she was pulled aside at passport control at JFK Airport, questioned about those extra three weeks 12 years ago, and soon found herself, as she put it, "handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep… without food and drink and… confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned." It was "the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected."

By her account, she was photographed, fingerprinted, asked rude questions -- "by men anxious to demonstrate their power. Small kings with megalomania" -- confined to a tiny room for hours, then chained, marched through the airport, and driven to a jail in New Jersey where, for another nine hours, she found herself "in a small, dirty cell." On being prepared for the return trip to JFK and deportation, approximately 24 hours after first debarking, she was, despite her pleas, despite her tears, again handcuffed and put in leg chains, all, as she put it, "because I had taken a longer vacation than allowed under the law."

I don't think she was exaggerating unfortunately. Oh lordy. Read it all.