Protest Irony

Muslim outrage over the Muhammad cartoons continues to be front page news.

Meanwhile a 2/14/06 blurb, that portends the death of freedom in the U.S., was relegated to the back pages.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, two workers for CityWatcher.com were voluntarily embedded with tiny silicon chips. The chips, according to CEO Sean Darks, work “like an access card.”

Recall that Wal-Mart revolutionized retailing by introducing barcodes. Wal-Mart has since introduced the next retail revolution: embedding RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips in its products.

Does anyone doubt that embedding employees with ID chips is the next step? Or that government will begin to look at embedding us with ID chips to “fight terrorism?”

This possibility should be guarded against by every American, given that the President is secretly and illegally wiretapping millions of American’s private communications.

Unfortunately, Americans are not connecting the dots.

Instead we’re divided over the seriousness of the President’s crimes. Yet his secret spying is part of an all-or-none package that includes unrestricted authority to use full war powers against all Americans.

With these unlimited, unrestricted and non-expiring war powers, Americans are giving the President the authority to deny them their rights to an attorney and trial by their peers. As a result, American citizens can be imprisoned indefinitely and tortured, for the purpose of extracting confessions. If an American citizen is killed during this process, it will be without penalty or avenue of redress.

Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court will have the power to revoke these non-expiring war powers once their use is accepted as law.

Considering that newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is expected to side with the President and give him unlimited power over our lives, one would think Americans would be organizing massive protests to protest his spying.

Yet we aren’t protesting our loss of fundamental rights. Unlike our forefathers who put their lives on the line for liberty, most of us are AWOL.

Is it possible that Americans do not realize that, by 2008, they must have federally approved ID cards with a “machine readable zone” that will allow easy capture of all data on the ID by stores – or anyone else with a reader?

Or that these cards, vulnerable to technological glitches and false security alerts, will control all access to air and train travel, opening a bank account, entering federal buildings and “any other purposes that the Secretary [of Homeland Security] shall determine?”

But if we know, how is it we are so calm?

Does anyone doubt that the government’s next step will be to promote the embedding of RFID tags in us?

Once in place, required tagging – in combination with the President’s unlimited war powers – must mark the death of freedom, individuality and dissent in the United States.

In the profit sector, an employer will be able to track all employee movements. The potential to coerce workers through manipulation, harassment and firings will be staggering.

As computing power grows, the government will gain the ability to track all tags, 24/7. Since spying will be the norm, we will have no recourse if we are called in for questioning. If they don’t like our answers, can’t make up their minds about us or don’t have time to think about it, we can be plopped in a cell until further notice, to undergo whatever treatment thought necessary.

We will become one of those countries that jail, torture and kill “dissidents” – citizens – who are concerned about the environment, globalization, jobs, health care, peace, justice and freedom of speech.

And we will be hard pressed to find out about the fates of our fellow citizens. PBS is slated by the GOP for extinction and the corporations that “own the pipes” of Internet broadband are insisting they have the right to control the Internet and, effectively, screen out what they don’t want us to read.

So have your lobotomy now.

Of course, there’s another option.

Let’s not pretend that Americans care about freedom. Instead, let’s focus on American strength: our desire for fun, entertainment and winning. Let's play a game. After all, we like competition.

Let’s play World Cup Protest.

Who’s going to win? Will it be the nearly one million believers in the sanctity of Mohammed who are protesting against the Muhammad cartoons?

Or can we get a couple of million believers in the sanctity of freedom to march on Washington in protest of the President’s spying on us?

True, we might need a fund raiser to get prizes to reward people for showing up.

We also may need top entertainment – bands and comedians – to generate interest.

And advertising – we’ll have to buy a lot of air time – if the networks will sell it to us.

Last, but not least, we’ll need a big, engraved trophy – maybe a silver reproduction of Lady Liberty – for the winning protestors.

But, surely, having our government declare war against us – combined with a future of being tagged so we’re easy targets for control and detention – is worth the effort.

Because won’t it be ironic when those against freedom win the protest game?