Re: <nettime> [bruces@well.com: Wait one bioterror minute -- this

[Cecil Touchon <touchon@sprynet.com>]

http://www.fas.org/butler/lehman2.html

If any government wants to they can easily charge any of us for at least 
100 counts of SOMETHING and any one of us could most likely be held 
legally guilty of 95 of them. So what? So nobody is safe once these 
legalistic bureaucrats bead in on ANY particular individual - its just a 
matter of spin.  Take the FBI for instance. Anyone who works for the 
bureau is a  bureaucrat and if you put bureaucrat and investigation 
together they combine to make the word nightmare. Add to this that 
Publicity and Fashion work hand in hand and that the fashionable thing 
at the moment is to have a lot of publicity about finding terrorists, 
especially bio-terrorists coupled with the problem that they can't find 
any, then you have a high degree of probability that these bureaucrats, 
who need good publiciy showing that they are doing something, are going 
to arrest the next best thing, outstanding citizens who have a 
resemblance to what they are looking for, like scientists, artists and, 
well... anybody. If, therefore, they investigated themselves bringing 
the full force of the bureaucratic investigative gaze down upon each one 
in turn and brought an appropriately selected
100 charges fitted to each individual. The FBI would be kept very busy 
up until each and every one of them is in prison for 96 counts of 
bullshit. This might be a good retirement program for the government in 
general. Prison for all.

So we have to ask ourselves the question: Why isn't anyone in charge of 
this pack of  bloodhounds training them to go after the fox instead of 
whatever is moving? Where is the sport if the hunting party has utterly 
no discrimination about what constitutes a good chase? What good 
fisherman doesn't release most of what he catches? If there is anything 
that begs attention just now it is that writers and poets, artists and 
designers, critics and philosophers take some time to contemplate how we 
might suggest some sort of simple litmus test or set of guiding 
principles for these bureaucrats to use so that they do not waste time, 
taxpayer resources and the lives of private citizens in the pursuit of 
'justice'.  They seem to have lost their way and need our help. Let us 
turn our asute eyes and ears and critical minds to these bureaucrats and 
fashion elegant solutions that might serve to protect us all and our 
mothers, sons and daughters from the cruel crush of the bureaucratic 
wheel that crushes all before it. Let the proposals for the safe use of 
governmental power begin!


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