When you’re facing a possible prison sentence of over 100 years for threatening an FBI agent, what better way to spend your time than to snark?
That’s exactly what Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown is doing while he awaits a trial expected to begin in Dallas in April.
As Breitbart News reported a year ago, Brown was arrested in September 2012 after releasing a series of YouTube videos, including one titled “Why I’m Going To Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith: Revenge of the Lithe,” where a visibly upset Brown delivered a long rant in which he insulted and appeared to threaten the FBI agent. Brown was arrested in a raid on his Dallas apartment that was partially captured live on his webcam. Since then, federal prosecutors have added charges against Brown a number of times.
D Magazine has given Brown a forum to express himself by making superior comments about his fellow prisoners and to give his political thoughts and observations. So far, they’ve published three pieces under the title The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Jail.
Here’s a short collection of the wit and wisdom of Barrett Brown.
On Immigration:
…the majority of my fellow inmates have been Mexican laborers who are guilty of nothing more than moving from one place where their productivity as measured in real dollars was low to another place where their output was higher, all in accordance with the natural osmosis of the market.
On ‘Dreamers’:
In some cases, the “Mexicans” in question were actually raised in the United States from infancy, speak English better than they do Spanish, and are otherwise indistinguishable from the large mass of American Hispanics. But merely by living in the country in which they have spent almost their entire lives, they are subject to arrest and expulsion to Mexico, a country with which they are essentially unfamiliar. If they return to the United States — and of course they do, for here are their families and their lives — they are subject to arrest and federal incarceration for “re-entry.” Many of the “Mexicans” I’ve met are on their third or fourth such charge, with each successive “crime” carrying more and more prison time. Naturally, all of this is done at great expense to the same American public that has allowed this state of affairs to come about to begin with — which is to say that at least some degree of justice is achieved, if only by accident.
…white inmates are forever watching programs in which tacky people with beards buy things from garage sales and resell them or alter motorcycles in order to make them into better motorcycles or harass ducks for reasons that remain unclear to me, and that a disquieting number of these shows appear on The History Channel and A&E.
On American History:
Of course, such cases as these are somewhat over-represented down here in the Southwest, where so many Mexicans still inexplicably insist on treading ground that the United States rightfully stole from their country whole generations ago.
On World War II internment camps:
Back during World War II, the site was used as an internment camp for Japanese and German residents. Sometimes I like to pretend that it’s 1941 and I’m a detainee. “You cannot do this to me!” I’ll suddenly shout out in a German accent. “I am loyal American person! How can you lock up my children?” German accents are funny.
…a number of inmates run their own elaborate gaming systems involving football scores and raffles and other such things; they roam the room, presenting these schemes to each other on notepads like so many liberal college girls bearing petitions.
Okay, that line about liberal college girls was funny.
Follow Lee Stranahan on Twitter @Stranahan
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