US Homeland Gestapo send Josh back to jail

Boing Boing carries news and a link to a final video diary by Josh Wolf before his bail is revoked and he is returned to prison once more. This entire ridiculous case has smacked of deliberate and malignant persecution (for instance Californian laws protecting journalists were bypassed by the gestapo making this a federal case - this was justified by saying the police department involved gets some funds from federal sources; yes it is that plain and weak an excuse). Now with this revoking of his bail it is even more clear that the US authorities are determined to stamp down on anyone who stand up for their civil liberties when it doesn't suit the bastards in charge. Land of the free my fucking arse. Why don't these arseholes just put on jackboots and bloody armbands and have done with it? Apologies for the crude comments, but this makes me bloody furious. Travelling V blogger Amanda Across America has a recent interview with Josh online.

The twisted bastards who run American think nothing of sacrificing countless lives to bring 'freedom and democracy and liberation' to Iraq are the same ones stamping all over individual freedoms for no other reason than they feel like it. Wake up, Americans, before you end up being arrested for taking a photograph of your family in a national park and find the federal gestapo seizing you in case those pics of 'lil Hank and Missy frolicking in front of Redwoods with Ranger Bob smiling in the background are a threat to national insecurity. Folks in charge are as terrified of the freely expressed thoughts of ordinary citizens over the web as their counterparts were of the easy availablity of books after Gutenberg's moveable print, or as scared as when the Bible was translated out of Latin and into the ordinary language of the people. They are scared of us. As Alan and David put it in V For Vendetta, the government hasn't really heard the people's voice for years and they've forgotten how loud it is.

Governments and large companies (as I know to my cost) don't really like individuals having free speech because of the potential power that gives them (no matter how much they profess to be committed to free expression). You've got a voice. We've all got a voice. We've all got a choice. We can bleat in the flock like sheep or we can use that voice. And since we're all linked that voice can be a chorus. Read. Think. Speak. Don't just assume, hey, this is nothing to do with me. Do that and you'll still be thinking that when your DNA sample is on government records along with the ID card with your every detail, retina scan and daily movements logged from a mesh of CCTV, cell phone calls and GPS and your opinions noted, analysed and filed in the name of security. Subversives might be our last best hope for democracy.