The Place of Dead Roads

Ahhh...what fun I had growing in Fairfax City, VA. Members of my family have degrees from George Mason University. Far too many days and nights spend making pizza at Picco's, formerly of Olde Towne Fairfax. How things have changed...
From LeftHook, Full Report: Student Brutalized by Cops, Right-Wing Students, for Protesting Recruiters At George Mason University:

A Pakistani-American who served four years in the United States Air Force as munitions personnel was beaten and brutalized by right-wing students and campus police last Thursday at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Tariq Khan, now a junior majoring in sociology, said he was standing in front of the recruitment table outside the school student center - as he has often done before - during noontime with a paper sign reading, "Recruiters lie, don't be deceived," taped to his shirt. A student approached Khan and initiated a verbal argument, screaming in his face; he then took the flyer and ripped it up in front of him, Khan says...

...the officer "grabbed him, put him in a half-nelson headlock," and then "slammed him into a metal stage," propped three feet above the floor. Wells added that the officer then slammed Khan into the ground hard, resulting in his face hitting the surface.

...a university employee who stood about six feet eight inches and weighed around 300 pounds began helping the cops to further subdue Khan. "He performed jujitsu moves on me while the cops held me down, and the cops let him do it," Khan said...

He says one cop was preparing to spray him with mace. "He held the can straight at my eyes, about five inches away from my face," Khan said. "So I started yelling, 'Hey, this cop is trying to mace me, someone take a picture if you have a camera!"

Wells quickly took out her cell-phone camera and began snapping pictures. "After I did that, the cop put away his mace can and said, 'Okay, no one's going to get maced today.' I mean, clearly, he knew he was doing something wrong," she said...

Khan also says another policeman told him that "You people are the most violent people in the world." Before being hauled off to the Fairfax County Jail, Khan was warned by the police who were questioning him that "If you even look at [cops] the wrong way, they'll hang you up by your feet."

Asked what motivated him to begin his protest against military recruiters on a campus where there is no organized anti-war movement, the former Air Force enlistee said, "For four years, I was making bombs. Then I started wondering where those bombs were actually going."

This is Gitmo in Fairfax, VA not because Mr Khan was mistreated while in detention. What is seen here the same view toward peoples of the middle east which sources the brutality displayed at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bhaghram. This scares me because the GMU campus was a place I biked through for years as a kid. I am sure there are times when 1984, definitely, The Place of Dead Roads, were in my bag while at GMU. At that time, I thought they were only cautionary fantasies. I am being to see they were predictions.