HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
Posted, August 8, 2008,  12:01 p.m. est

    

As the 2008 Olympic Games get underway in that country of smog and human rights violations, China, the games continue  here in this country of smog and human rights violations.

While the President of the United States makes accusatory remarks to the Chinese government, one can only wonder what he is thinking about his own violations of Democratic rights as the leader of the free world.

Feeling if not smug, but clearly sacrosanct as he made his way across the blue Pacific stopping along the way to chide the North Korean government, another oppressive regime, George W. Bush continued his political adieu to the world-at-large. He, the mighty ruler of the great experiment, would blister with punishing words all those abusers of individual rights and freedom along his path.

"The US believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings," Mr. Bush said in Bangkok, in the key speech of what is likely Bush’s final Asian tour. "So America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates, and religious activists."

"We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labor rights not to antagonize China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential.”

Gitmo, FISA, Abu Ghraib, the C & O Canal...

The C & O Canal?

It is high summer where I live here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The sky is Pacific Ocean blue sprinkled with tiny polka dot snow-colored clouds. The sun casts a golden glow on all it kisses as it peaks over the earth’s horizon. The summer morning atmosphere is absent of humidity rare for this region of the country. The air dances with a gentle breeze; the trees sway a samba, nature’s morning tune.

I was up earlier than usual this August morning and decided to take a walk along the towpath that winds along the Potomac River in the C & O Canal National Park.

I am fortunate to live within walking distance of President George Washington’s dream of connecting the eastern states with the western frontier that led to the creation of the Patowmack Company and the canal.

As I amble along the winding towpath, I watch the leaves dance in the wind along the riverfront. An occasional cluster falls from the sky and my three little dogs who accompany me on my walk run to the side of the towpath to discover what has fallen.

Satisfied it is nothing too exciting the three take off ahead of me in search of trouble. A turtle to harass? A snake to torture? Up ahead a bit, a chipmunk scurries across the path and my dogs run after it because oh, how they love to torment.

All that beautiful peace and quiet  but for nature's song is shattered by their barking as they corner that poor little chipmunk. I chase after them into the woods where the chipmunk cowers beneath a rotting tree trunk, and shout at them, my errant children, to leave the poor thing alone. They are wonderfully obedient, but for my little Miniature Pincher, Gigabyte, who always has to get in the last word.

"Gi"… I utter my warning voice.

She gives me her big brown soulful eyes, offers up one final ruff – that last word - and then slinks away sulking, her fun interrupted. Bichi and Afikomen (Afi), my two little Bichon Frises follow after Gi, and I after them.

And that’s when I saw it, hidden in the flora and fauna of George Washington’s Park, amongst the Paw Paw trees and the mighty Oaks, that manmade metal rectangular box with the light of the sun bouncing off its camera lens, America’s newest symbol of freedom: the surveillance camera.

It shook me to the core.

I blinked my eyes thinking that I was imagining. But I wasn’t, it was there, the erstwhile reminder of the chipping away of individual rights the real fallout from 9/11 and the price this country has paid for the Bush/Cheney Administration.

What did Bush say in his lecture to the Chinese: “Trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential?”

Maybe I’m making too much of the camera. Maybe it is there to defend women from possible rape on the canal. Maybe it is there to protect the fallen should an accident occur. Will I ever know?

But just the fact that I thought of that camera as my enemy rather than as my friend is testament that I feel my rights as an American citizen have been compromised.

Did you know that the first Olympic Games began in 776 B.C., in Olympia, Greece?  America was born a free nation in 1776. President John Quincy Adams turned the first spadeful of earth for the construction of the canal in ceremonies at Little Falls, Maryland, on July 4, 1828. Now it is 2008, and despite all the horrors the world has let, the games go on.

It is a testament to the world that despite its arguments, and its sometimes misguided leaders, that every four years someone will shout, “Let the games begin.”