Phyrfight Intel

A letter I sent To Panera Bread.

To: Panera Bakery

I was very excited when a brand new Panera Bakery opened up near my home; you have fantastic baked goods and very good sandwiches too. In fact I’m still at your cafe, outside on the patio enjoying a beautiful Texas evening, my bagel and a cup of coffee.

I develop websites so I was especially happy to learn this location has WiFi web access. However, as I was checking on one of my sites I made a startling discovery. You see, Tac Pro Shooting Center is a client of mine. It is a training facility for military, police, and civilians, run by a very nice British ex-pat couple, Bill and Alice Davison. The discovery which you have no doubt figured out by now is that Panera’s proxy server is blocking my access to their website because it discusses “weapons.” Somewhat surprised by this I though I would check to see if other websites that have weapons on them are also blocked. The first one that came to mind was Aljazeera.com. I don’t know why, it just popped into my head. If you haven’t heard, this is the news service that reports merciless terrorist demands, rants, and anti-American propaganda. Anyway, I know that they have pictures of folks getting their heads cut off on that website, presumably with weapons. I suppose they could have used kitchen knives, but the images are kind of grainy and I couldn’t really tell. Besides even if it was a kitchen knife before, afterwards I think even a San Francisco federal judge would have to concede that if you can separate someone’s skull from the rest of their body with it, it’s a deadly weapon. So I typed in www.aljazeera.com and voilà there was the website. It was not blocked by Panera’s proxy server and right there on the front page was a horrific photo of a dead American, his twisted body charred black and hanging out of a military vehicle. I didn’t bother to search for the beheading images. I didn’t need to, I’d seen enough.

This is very interesting isn’t it? On the one hand you block access to a website where law abiding American citizens, police, and military personnel can learn skills that will help them defend themselves and others, sometimes against terrorists. (TPSC alums are on the ground in Iraq right now.) And on the other hand you don’t block a website where anyone can see actual murders of innocent civilians and the burned and mutilated bodies of American servicemen. I’ve heard that Panera tries to be a socially responsible company, so I hope the irony of this situation is not lost on your executives and shareholders.

Now, I happen to believe very, very strongly in the U.S. Constitution and all of its amendments, especially the first one, commonly referred to as The First Amendment. If you aren’t familiar with it you should look it up. At any rate, since your company chooses to restrict people’s First Amendment rights in order to promote what I suppose is your view of the Second Amendment (inferred by the block), I’m going to leave this place and will never return. But I’m going to go one step further. I’m going to forward this email to everyone I know (a lot of people) and then I’m going to post it on every forum I can think of (read by an astronomical number of people). I would bet by this time tomorrow, five to ten thousand people will have read it. And by next week who knows. Isn’t the Internet great?

Gary M

Political Activist and former Panera Bread Customer.