RNC & Intro to _1984_

[pynchonoid]

counterpoint to Pynchon's post-9/11 concerns:

http://www.antiwar.com/ocregister/fortress-ny.html
Sunday, September 5, 2004
Fortress New York
Be careful what you wish for: The city's convention
set-up might be the model for real homeland security.
By STEVEN GREENHUT 
Columnist, The Orange County Register

[...] In and around Midtown Manhattan,
convention-goers got a taste of life in a society
where the overriding goal is to stop attacks at all
costs. It was the bitter taste of losing one's
freedoms, albeit in this case for the short duration
of this national convention.

It was Fortress New York. For those of us with the
proper papers - a neck-load of colored and numbered
badges and IDs granting entry to Madison Square Garden
and surrounding sites - the anti-terror lockdown meant
endless annoyances, hassles and humiliations. For
those who tried to protest the convention goings-on,
things were worse. [...] 

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1786
The Rise of the Homeland Security State
Fortress Big Apple, Revisited
By Nick Turse

[...]  I also looked out my window and caught sight of
the ultimate blending of corporatism and the
police-state -- the Fuji blimp -- now emblazoned with
a second logo: "NYPD." This spy-in-the-sky, outfitted
with the latest in video-surveillance equipment, had
been loaned free of charge to the police all week
long.

[...] Like so many others, I was illegally arrested
and taken to a makeshift detention center set up by
the city especially for the protesters. It was the old
municipal bus garage which bears the name "Marine and
Aviation Pier 57" but has now been dubbed "Guantanamo
on the Hudson." Of course, being incarcerated in New
York's own Gitmo (before being packed off to central
booking and then a cell in the infamous "Tombs")
rather than in America's "offshore archipelago of
injustice" -- Abu Ghraib, the actual Guantanamo, or
"Camp Justice" on the Indian Ocean island of Diego
Garcia, to name but a few -- means I fared infinitely
better than most victims of America's security culture
run amok. Still, the visible abrasions on my wrists
from the plastic cuffs (fastened so purposefully
tight) that restricted the blood flow to my hands
while I was in transit to jail aboard a corrections
bus, or the tears of the woman in a cage on the same
bus suffering from also too-tight hand restraints
(which left the cops in a joking mood), do show the
bare traces of the Abu Ghraib mentality alive in
America's security forces, at home as well as abroad.

Of course, in communities of color and poor
neighborhoods, such tactics, and worse, are old hat --
as my cell-mates behind the arraignment courtroom were
quick to point out. But now the NYPD is field-testing
new tactics and tools to use against us all. Perhaps
most distressing, they've established a precedent and
the tacit acceptance of the public as well. Most New
Yorkers either left town or failed to vigorously
protest the chilling effect of the growth of the
homeland-security complex. [...] 



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