 |
Don't Mess With Texas
Daniel Patrick Welch
Teach them a lesson they'll never forget. So goes the thinking in Texas-on-the-Potomac. And what a lesson it has been! They'll never mess with us again, nosirree Bob! As this childish thinking worms its way around the neocon braintrust, now giddy with "success" of their own definition (like toppling the Taliban?), it is instructive what lessons might be drawn by more rational--albeit scared to death--observers around the world.
These are some of the conclusions I've drawn, doing my humble little part to follow Bush's sage advice. First, if you don't already have nukes, you'd better get some--and that right soon. Uncle Sam don't play. While you're in the catalog, get a whole bunch of night goggles, and tons more air support. Spend more on the military, and less on feeding, housing and educating your people, if you care about your own sovereignty.
The picture of the American GI lounging in Hussein's chair, plastered on front pages everywhere, sent the disturbing signal: it's ours....it's ALL ours. I can't imagine that image spun quite the way it was intended around the globe--or maybe that's just the point: we're comin' to getcha! And another thing--don't bother trying to meet the Americans head on. Lesson number two is that, in asymmetrical warfare, guerrilla campaign is the only way to go--do anything, and I mean anything (see Lesson #1: Get Nukes) to keep the mighty invading army at bay.
Lessons 3 through umpteen were learned before the war started, actually: international law doesn't apply to the U.S., The UN, EU, as well as various global aid organizations, conventions, and agreements are quaint relics of a bygone era. Oh, right--there is a caveat here: we can bring them back to life on call when it suits our purpose and we want to complain about other people's behavior.
Although it may seem incongruous, I'll allow myself a Seinfeld moment here. What the hell, Americans watch 25 hours of TV a day anyway. I couldn't help thinking of the time Kramer was boasting about his karate prowess until he was forced to reveal that he was just beating up children. In an ominous twist, the kids ganged up and waited for him in the alley, where they beat the crap out of him.
And what is all this focus on civilian dead? I mean it's horrific, of course--it's the whole ball of wax, really. But soldiers aren't people? When the tables are turned, the U.S. screams bloody murder if one of our boys is killed, TV up close and personals, etc. Enemy soldiers don't have mothers? They can be blithely incinerated from 40,000 feet by fuel-air bombs and other weapons more horrific than anything currently banned--international law, thankfully for the Americans, hasn't had time to catch up to the technology. I guess that undermining, bribing, and threatening pays off. Bush and Rumsfeld (dubbed Chemical Donald by a British columnist) even insist that we have the right to use nuclear weapons, or other gases only allowed for domestic crowd control.
Only the Americans have the sovereign right, drunk with power and arrogance, to threaten to try the invaded in US courts for "war crimes." Bush and his corporate cronies are so busy trying to teach the world a lesson that they forgot the lessons they should have learned from history. For all the distorted comparisons to Hitler, they seem to have missed this gem from the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal: "War is essentially an evil thing... To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
There are other lessons, both foreign and domestic. Before the war came the bugging of UN personnel, some in their own houses. A sort of Watergate gone global--get the message yet? For icing, Americans exploited the fog of war to shoot up convoys of diplomats with whom they just happened to have beef, and killed a few journalists who gave them bad press--one of them on air! Now THAT sends a message! Coupled with the unabashed prostitution of embedded (or "in-bed-with") journalism, and we have a pretty good idea of which way we are supposed to go.
But let's not forget the domestic lessons. The Bush Cartel is an equal opportunity terrorist. Cops in Oakland opened fire on protesters with "non-lethal" weapons (kind of like pushing someone gently down the stairs) in an incident oddly reminiscent of the San Francisco 1934 general strike--which also started on the docks. Radio hosts encourage violence against protesters, and some have obliged, plowing into one demonstration in a truck, calling in bomb or sniper threats. A high school principal pulled the plug on movies like "Bowling for Columbine" by that dangerous radical, Michael Moore.
John Kerry was attacked for speaking out against Bush. One GOP hatchet man went so far as to suggest that Kerry had no right to call for "regime change" during wartime. Hmmmm..in civics class I was led to believe we had (technically) regime change every four years. And the Democrats, for crying out loud, who have enough trouble defining the word "opposition!" Forget Syria and Iran: if the milquetoast Kerry, who voted for the war, is fair game, who's next?
But I suppose ol' George and his puppet masters might be touchy on the subject. Imagine if people learned the wrong lessons, and enforced regime change the way they do--or even ascended to power the way Bush did? Yikes! Iraqis, of course, don't speak out because they are afraid of the regime, and our freedom, by contrast, is the reason we should all just shut up (or else). Beam me up, Scottie! The whole project has the air of what Robert Parry has called Bush's Alderan, recalling the Star Wars plot line where a small rebel planet destroyed by the infamous Death Star to keep everyone else in line.
Don't worry, we are told--it will all come into focus soon. Yeah, we know. But no matter how many staged footage of toppling statues, Iraqis are a proud people. And a gun-toting one. When the US military tries to disarm Iraqi civilians, we'll see...
What is also waiting to come out is that this episode of Gilligan's Travels to Liliput hasn't been quite the romp we've been told, even in the last week. Then again, it is a fiction to think that the access will be freer under the watchful eye of the US military occupation. Government minders are no match for tanks shelling your hotel.
And as far as lies go, you ain't seen nothin yet. Suicide bombers--the term itself a manipulative attempt at a subtle link with the events of Sept. 11--will be branded terrorists (or, even more incomprehensibly, 'cowards') by an occupation force and a press corps which refuses to admit it is there illegally. What a world turned on its head: how could there possibly be any illegitimate American targets where there is an occupying army? But of course, the invaded squirming under the tread of an Abrams tank don't have the right to resist. Further resistance will be dismissed as "getting in the way of rebuilding Iraq." They will not be heroic defenders of their country, but always foreign fighters, just as they were "outside agitators" according to COINTELPRO, and "agents provocateurs" at the Haymarket. Of course. In what conceivable universe could people actually want to repel foreign invaders?
We will be treated to many more planted stories of 'potential' WMD's, the horrors of Saddam's regime, the noble cause of "Freeing" Iraq. And the horrific cost of this war and the sanctions which preceded it will be laid at Iraq's own door--with a docile press corps, the victor writes the history.
This all relies, by the way, on keeping the American bubble inflated. The Stupidity Factor doesn't appear to be evaporating any time soon. Many Americans are perfectly happy to have a "president" who is no smarter than they are--it's not threatening unless you get on his bad side. Kind of like the old drunk on the corner stool in the bar. He tells some good jokes, but watch out when he's in a mood. Remember that egghead Carter? Yuck. I used to think that the monopoly corporations who funded Bush's rise to power had picked wrong--and it may still be shown that they overplayed their hand. But my cynicism and despair have deepened in the past few months. What a coup (pun intended) to have picked a true idiot, a mean, drunken frat boy who does what he's told and then some, sticking to it like a rabid pit bull.
I can't help thinking that Randy Newman had the dark side of the American character pegged, and I keep running this old lyric through my head:
Americans dream of Gypsies I have found/and Gypsy knives and Gypsy thighs that pound and pound and pound and pound/And African appendages that almost reach the ground/And little boys playing baseball in the rain/America, America, may God shed his grace on thee/You have whipped the Filipino, now you rule the Western Sea/America, America, step out into the light/You are the best dream that man has ever dreamed/and may all your Christmases be white.
So, many of the people will eat it up. But the economy is in deep trouble and getting worse--the "what now" burp is already hitting the markets. And using the Conquering Hero spike to float their crazy economic agenda just won't work like they want it to. Even Democrats will put up some kind of a fight.
Don't forget the Afghan "model," where Special Forces casualties are said to be "staggering." Sorry for all the quotes and parentheses, but the bogus language of this war makes it almost impossible to talk without footnotes. Let's not kid ourselves, no matter how many times we watch the bogus, staged, rehashed footage of statues toppling: this "war" (slaughter) isn't "over" (left the front page) any more than its Afghan counterpart, where 11 civilians were recently killed by "mistake" (murder-from-above by an arrogant superpower that would rather kill and ask questions later, earning it the enmity of all and the certain retaliation by virtually anybody).
And I was only kidding before when I mentioned John Kerry. Of course we can't forget Syria and Iran, now in the sights of the voracious Democracy Installing Cabal (you do the letters). And then there's Colombia, Venezuela, Philippines, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Montezuma, the Shores of Tripoli.... But let's not forget the biggest lesson, looming in the shadows: the Kramer lesson (apologies to Michael Richards). The kids are waiting in the alley, George. They are learning different lessons from this war--and their numbers are growing.
© 2003 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted.
Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School. His columns have also been aired on radio. Others interested in airing the audio version (electronic recording available) please contact the author. Welch speaks several languages and is available for recordings in French, German, Russian and Spanish pending a reliable translation, or, alternatively, telephone interviews in the target language. Other articles, stickers for upcoming protests and other 'stuff' can be found at fringefolk.com/RFVD.html
What's next, More Humble Foreign Policy?
by Andrew Limburg
Tuesday, April 29th, 2003
(original article here)
Florida (Independent Media TV) – If the Bush Administration continues to walk the path it is walking now, we will look back at these years with great regret. The destruction brought on by Bush and this administration is overwhelming.
One of his biggest lies during his campaign in 1999, was when he said, "Let us not dominate others with our power, Let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character — the modesty of true strength, the humility of real greatness. This will be the spirit of my administration.", and later, “must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."
Hey Dubya, do you call what your doing HUMBLE FOREIGN POLICY?
The majority of his staff regard the United Nation as something that should go the way of the League of Nations. The Administrations policy reflects the desire to destroy the UN, with repeated comments of irrelevance, and ignoring the UN to go to war. Richard Perle, part of a Pentagon Defense Advisory Board, and one of the major players in the Bush Administration was even bold enough to write an article for one of England’s largest sources of news (The Guardian), called, “The Death of the UN�.
NATO is tittering on the brink. With huge rifts between some of the major countries. Our relationship with Germany and France has been affected to a great deal.
Our somewhat new friendship with Russia has been heavily damaged.
France and Russia are working to become closer allies militarily, and France and India are looking at increasing their defense relationship. France, Germany, and Belgium are looking at solidifying their common defenses.
They have destroyed Iraq, and different people in the administration have called for “Regime Change� in North Korea, Syria and Iran*.
(* - Note on reference used for Iran: The Weekly Standard is a conservative news producer with William Kristol as one of it’s main editors. William Kristol is the director of the The Project for a New American Century, click here, and scroll down to the bottom of this 1997 document to see who is on board this sick ship).
They have walked away from the Kyoto Treaty on controlling emissions that cause global warming. Not to mentioned the environmental destruction here at home.
They have broken the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, calling it old and out-dated, so that they can build a Missile Defense System that doesn’t work.
They have told the international community that they will not subject our citizens to the International Criminal Court and have twisted arms to have other countries do the same, trying in effect to render it useless.
Congratulations Dubya !!! This was your humble foreign policy plan?
To repeat, Bush said during the campaign, "Let us not dominate others with our power, Let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character — the modesty of true strength, the humility of real greatness. This will be the spirit of my administration.", and later, “must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."
Destroy the UN, destroy NATO, destroy relationships with some of our strongest allies, destroy our fairly new friendship with Russia, destroy the Middle East, destroy our image around world, destroy the Kyoto Treaty, destroy the International Criminal Court, destroy the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, destroy the environment and our environmental laws in the United States, and possibly destroy our Economy?
What an unbelievable two and a half years.
You lose the popular vote in the country by 500,000 votes, and win by a very questionable 300 some odd votes in Florida. Where your brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida hires a firm to take away the voting rights of felon’s, but in addition, knowingly takes away the right to vote for over 58,000 Florida voters. The majority of whom were Black, who roughly vote 90% of the time for Democrats.
Imagine what could have been if he was no put into office by the Supreme Court. What is even scarier is to imagine what is next on the plate of his humble foreign policy
AN ANGRY AMERICAN
SEEKING THE RESTORATION OF THE CONSTITUTION
By: Dorothy Anne Seese (reprinted with permission)
Someone might say, "you had a delightful breakfast at your favorite cafe this morning, the sun is shining in the Phoenix Arizona metroplex, the temperatures are delightful, you're still able to live independently even with your handicaps, and while your income is limited, you aren't actually in need. Why are you angry? Why don't you just sit back and enjoy the roses?"
I , Me, My ... what has that got to do with my anger? Is it not obvious that beyond my personal life, it's ups and downs, the pains and the medications, the money or lack of it, the conveniences I enjoy, that I'm watching my nation go to Hell in a handbasket? Yes I am an Angry American. I'm a Constitutionalist, one who believes in the visions of the Founding Fathers, in liberty, in the FULL Bill of Rights, and all these are being trashed. So just because I can go buy some red flame grapes from whatever country is sending them to us these days (probably Chile) there's nothing in America about which I can feel righteously angry? Friend, you are what is wrong with this country if that's your line of thinking, so go to the temple of the great "god" SELF and offer your incense.
I want to enumerate and elaborate on a few of my complaints, the sources of my anger.
* American Media. Darned if they didn't label everyone who opposed Bush's War as a leftist or a liberal, totally ignoring the entire Libertarian and Paleoconservative Republican opposition! We are neither leftists nor liberals, we are people who insist on following the Constitution and never allowing our representatives to delegate to the Executive Branch those powers granted exclusively to the Legislative Branch. As far as I am concerned, the "war" against Iraq, or more properly just the invasion of a sovereign nation (regardless of how brutal, stinky and bloodthirsty Saddam & Company were) was an illegal incursion into Iraq for a purpose that was never proven to be in our national security interests, and when we invaded, we never found any weapons of mass destruction. But we invaded, we have taken over, and we are promising the Iraqis their own government as long as it meets with US approval. Am I supposed to applaud this administration for that kind of unconstitutional action? Well, I won't, and Teddy Roosevelt would agree with my anger, because he said this:
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt [1918]
Yet the White House, their media cronies and a lot of flag-waving Americans who believed all the trash and disinformation on television thought our "liberation" of Iraq was an act of courage and military genius on the part of George W. Bush, new American emperor.
I am angry with the media, the Rush Limbaugh blabbing mouths, bobbleheaded Sean Hannitys and other talking brainless heads who are paid millions to "hannitize" or "limbaughize" the American public into rallying around the president and his imperialist staff. In September 2001, this nation had the world's sympathy and we could have used that opportunity to illuminate the world on holding fast to freedom even in the face of a horrific attack by someone. Instead, our government took over Afghanistan in search of an old turbaned lunatic we haven't found yet ... but American troops are still in Afghanistan, will be there until Hell freezes over and they're still dying there from hostile fire. Bring our military home, I will thank you. So will their families and friends. So will the Afghanis who are capable of establishing their government in their own way, according to their own culture, which is not western, United States culture and never will be. If we're so interested in tolerance in our own country, why aren't we tolerant of the right of other nations to have their own cultures, as objectionable as they may seem to our western way of thinking? Generally we are very tolerant of other cultures when they either have nuclear weapons to use against us, or they have no oil or other resources we want. But I should go watch the bunny wabbits and not be angry? I refuse.
* American Imperialism. There is a quote by Thomas Jefferson that sums up in a few words my whole foreign policy and what was intended to be America's foreign policy:
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling
alliances with none." --Thomas Jefferson
Please tell me why I should not be angry that America has engaged in "entangling alliances" all over the world, at the cost of hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars, only to become the most hated (but not the most feared) nation on earth? We have not fought an honest war since World War II. I know there are many who do not believe either World War I or II were honest wars. Whether the Kaiser would ever have been a threat to us or not, and the sinking of the Lusitania proved to be an honest act of war because of its military cargo, did we really have a national security interest in World War I? Or just the monetary interests of the elitists who still form the "shadow government" that turns the legislative wheels in Washington D.C.?
I do recall World War II as a child, and I am certain that Hitler's ambitions would never have stopped at the conquest of Europe. Madmen never conquer enough. Alexander the Great's conquests proved that. If he had not died, he probably would have traversed India and gone into China. There were indeed U-boats off our Atlantic coast, and Japanese subs off our Pacific coast. So I will categorize World War II as necessary to our national security interests and thus a "just" war, one legitimately declared by Congress. However, the fact that we still maintain military presence in all of the countries we either defeated or aided is ridiculous. Those bases should have been closed and the US should have brought all its military personnel home. What, in our Constitution, gives us the right to forever occupy a vanquished foe? Nothing!
Since World War II we have not engaged in a single war with the intent to win, nor have we brought our military home. We merely rotate the troops, but the bases remain. Hence we have created endless "entangling alliances" all over the flippin' world and then wonder why we're the target of such terrorism. They're jealous of our freedom? That is absurd. They are angry at our hegemony, our imperialist ambitions and multinational corporate interests. That's why they hate us. And that's why this nation can never feel the safety it felt before World War II. Or perhaps prior to the Korean Conflict when our intent to meddle became obvious to the world.
* American Anti-Constitutionalism. Someone asked me the other day what I thought of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This person is an internet friend whose views closely parallel my own, so I facetiously replied, "Nice documents, should be preserved in some national museum as relics of a great experiment in liberty that failed." Yet underneath the flippant reply was this anger aimed at those who take the oaths of office to uphold the Constitution (which includes the Bill of Rights and further amendments) and think nothing of overriding, ignoring, twisting, or judicially perverting the original wording and intent of the Constitution itself.
One of my Christian lady friends, during the height of the airline fiascoes, said to me on the phone, "well we have to give up some liberties in order to have more safety and security." She claims to be a Republican, but she is a twit. Since she is 73 and not a well woman, I did not get into an argument with her. But I heard echoes of her statement all over the nation, blaring out of the propaganda machines we call "the media" (whether radio or television). She bought into the notion promulgated by an imperialist, Constitution-ignoring administration that it is perfectly all right, in fact necessary, for citizens to surrender their liberty to the government in exchange for "security" -- as if national security demanded any surrender of our constitutional guarantees. If I had wanted to be nasty, I would have told her that Hitler would have loved her attitude in 1933 Germany. I didn't. It isn't easy for me to hold my tongue, but after all, she isn't the only stupid American to buy into that hogwash and call it prime rib. I wish she were!
Do Americans learn the Constitution any more? Do they know their Bill of Rights? Do they understand the meaning of liberty and the intent of the Founding Fathers in establishing a nation where the representatives are to represent the people and not the special interest groups, the shadow rulers comprised of the filthy rich globalists, and the giant bureaucracy that the people cannot possibly monitor and control? Worse yet, does anyone care? After all, I had my choice of restaurants this morning, all that was required of me was to be able to pay the tab. Am I not therefore "free?" God help us!
* Neocon Centrists and RINOS. Neocons and RINOS (Republicans in Name Only and generally one and the same individuals) are anti-Constitutionalists. They are imperialists, and differ from their liberal counterparts only in strategy to arrive at the same result: a new world order or global governance. They do not give a confederate dollar about the Constitution or the Bill of Rights as long as they can display the documents, take the oaths and do as they please, fooling some of the people all of the time. As a long-time Republican (I voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, largely because I detested Richard Nixon) it pains me to see Bush-campers believing one of the most dishonest presidents we have had, and one of the most imperialist. He is openly imperialist, and his followers adore and follow him for things that would have turned them into a raging lynch mob if Bubba Clinton had tried to pull that junk. Now Clinton was a scuzz, but he was a public scuzz, and we loved to tear him to pieces. We also had no equivalent of John Ashcroft to fear, or his jackboots who listen to our every keystroke if we do not agree with the plans, programs and actions of George W. Bush, the New American Emperor.
In 1964, with Kennedy assassinated, my head a bit clearer (although I still detested Nixon), I voted for Arizona's Barry Goldwater and became what was then known as a "Goldwater" Republican. That stood for small central government, small taxes to support it, few federal "programs" that Reagan correctly described as being the closest thing to immortality on earth, and Tenth Amendment states' rights (exclusive of forced segregation). History records that Lyndon B. Johnson won the election, pushed his "Great Society" onto a confused public and began a program of federal expansion so heavy that America and its economy are about to implode under the weight of our own bureaucracy.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) stands nearly as a lone voice against the evils of the neocons and RINOS. If he were to run for president, he would meet with the same fate as Bobby Kennedy ... some "lone gunman" set up to take the blame for the work of expert snipers with friends in very high places.
Other than Ron Paul and the true members of his Liberty Caucus, the Lew Rockwell crowd and the free, thinking Patriots of America, will anyone stand up for what is right ...a return to a Constitution and Bill of Rights? Are there enough thinking people in this nation to realize that with the entire world against us, we're all lemmings headed for the precipice and into the sea? That our great nation and its wonderful resources will belong to someone else after the rubble is scraped away?
If only it were our "freedom" of which the world was jealous, they would not have the kind of hatred they do toward the United States. They might consider us ugly Americans, or gluttonous eaters and selfish, indulgent fools, but they would not be firm in their determination to obliterate us. It is our hegemony, imperialism, and insistence on being the dominant force in the world, imposing our culture and our corporate interests on everyone in the world, that makes us the nation in the crosshairs.
So I am angry. To support the reasons for this further, this essay can be ended with two quotes from our founders that we should really take seriously.
"...no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights [1776]
"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond [1821]
"Published originally at Ether Zone : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
Dorothy Anne Seese is a freelance political writer for Patch Work papers
and a regular columnist for Ether Zone.
We invite you to visit her website at Flagship
Dorothy Anne Seese can be reached at carrot710@yahoo.com
Published in the April 29, 2003 issue of Ether Zone.
Copyright © 1997 - 2003 Ether Zone.
REASONS BUSH SHOULD NOT BE ELECTED IN 2004
(Or Why We Need a “Regime Change� in Washington)
Compiled by a concerned American from various sources including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Truthout, Buzzflash, Information Clearing House, Fox News, Counterpunch Please give a copy of this to everyone you know who is open-minded and tell them to give it to everyone they know who is open-minded
Click here for a downloadable pdf version. - Problems.Sorry. Check back.
NOTE: I am working on fixing the width problem in the pdf file.
Bush lied to Americans about his primary reason for War with Iraq. Saddam H. was an “evil “ man, but only a convenient excuse. The war had been planned back in 2000 when the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) think tank advocated it WHETHER OR NOT Saddam H. was in power. Founders & members of PNAC fill Bush’s key administrative positions. Actually, a blueprint for our current policy originated with Dick Cheney’s writings back in 1992. In 1997, the PNAC was formed to achieve Cheney’s goals. Then in Sept. 2000, the PNAC think tank published an update of Cheney’s original plan (called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century�) The Bush plan for long-term war on terrorism is consistent with PNAC goals. Ongoing multi-theatre war with an endless budget will be financed to a great degree by the American taxpayer with renewed deficit spending while Bush-affiliated corporations and PNAC members are enriched. Even without further military action (beyond Afghanistan & Iraq) the 2004 budget will not be a pretty picture. The Iraq war alone will cost American taxpayers between $100-200 billion dollars. In order to finance a large military build-up, money will have to come from social, medical, educational, and retirement services as well as other domestic programs. The American taxpayers who sacrifice their hard-earned money to pay for Bush’s wars on terrorism have already been asked to pay even more dearly by risking the lives of their sons or daughters. A long-term war on terrorism potentially entails a higher cost in American lives—both on the battlefield and in terms of more attacks on civilians reminiscent of Sept. 11. War traditionally means some degree of sacrifice of constitutional checks and balances so that the executive branch may make decisions expediently. A permanent state of domestic emergency means on ongoing erosion of constitutional safeguards. This permanent state of domestic emergency might seem perfectly rational to Americans, particularly if they experience more grief, anger, and fear for their safety due to new terrorist reprisals, but it will insidiously erode individual rights more as time goes on. It’s not a far stretch to imagine the possibility of a police state. Remember what Benjamin Franklin said about this: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.� So far, the Bush administration has been true to the goals of the PNAC document written in 2000. There is no reason to believe this will not continue—unless the American public takes action. For example, the PNAC document urged that the anti-ballistic missile treaty be eliminated. The Bush administration has advocated this. The PNAC recommended a defense spending increase of 3% to as high as 3.8% of the gross domestic product. Bush’s 2004 budget requested $379 billion for defense. This is 3.8% of the GDP. The PNAC recommended the development of small nuclear warheads to target deep underground bunkers. This year the house gave the Pentagon approval to develop a weapon like this. It’s called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. The 2000 report also says that a US role as police force for the world will need to be under the leadership of American politicians, not the UN. The war to “free the Iraqi people� to ensure world peace (at gunpoint) was lead by Bush & fellow politicians. It was definitely not a UN action. The US Civil Rights Commission has verified that a faulty list of registered voters was used in Florida in the 2000 election. This could easily have cost Al Gore the 537 votes that decided the election in favor of George Bush since about half of the people omitted from the list were black voters who would have been expected to vote for Al Gore. The seriously flawed list had been used a couple years earlier in a very close election between Jeb Bush & his opponent for the Florida governorship. In the prior election, a republican firm (DBT Online) was paid $4 million to generate the list purportedly to eliminate deceased voters or felons who would not be allowed to vote in Florida. Florida is one of the few states that computerizes the ethnicity of each voter under the Civil Rights Act so the race of the voters eliminated is a matter of public record. The problem with the list was about 90% of the 57,000 voters on the list were on it in error. They had a legal right to vote but were turned away from the polls on Election Day. Combine this problem with the fact that 180,00 votes were never counted because of a technical error—like a stray mark on the ballot, circling Al Gore’s name instead of punching a hole, etc. and you have a serious misrepresentation of the will and intent of the voters in Florida. G.W. Bush started his presidency with miscarriage of democracy. Americans who voted for Bush have gotten an entirely different president than they voted for. In the second presidential debate in October, Bush stated, “I am really strongly committed to clean water and clean air and cleaning up new kinds of challenges like global warming.� So far Bush’s environmental campaign promises have failed to materialize. He has reneged on a campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (which would be an action that would help clean up global warming.) The administration withdrew proposed regulations that would require a substantial reduction in permissible arsenic levels in drinking water. Despite saying last October that he wanted to renew our commitment to the Clean Water Act, he decided to remove protections for isolated waters & weaken sewage overflow rules. He has cut the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by half a billion dollars over 2 years and has been regularly rolling back EPA regulations Along with tax cuts, education was Bush’s stated top priority when he entered the White House. He was the Education President. He promoted the No Child Left Behind bill, which combined greater scholastic accountability and testing with increased funding. Congress passed the bill. However, Bush did not ask for the funding Congress granted in his 2003 and 2004 budgets. The New Hampshire School Administrators Association calculated that Bush’s education plan imposes $575 per student but his budget allows for only $77 per student. The states will be mandated by law to provide the new services, even through many states already have serious budget deficits. In fact, the Bush administration almost acts as if it doesn’t want the American public educated (maybe it wouldn’t be so easily manipulated?) since it has already begun to cut education budgets in order to finance the military-industrial complex. Our non-superpower allies who believe that American imperialism is wrong will more than likely put their money into improving the plight of their populations and their educational systems. They will become more educated and Americans less educated by comparison. The Bush administration wants to rewrite Iraqi textbooks and provide education for Iraqi children, but not ours. In his campaign, Bush presented himself as a “compassionate conservative� who was a friend to the needs of children. He said his administration would “leave no child behind�. President Bush has proposed tax cuts in child-care assistance for low-income families and in programs designed to investigate and combat child abuse and neglect. He also plans to cut money provided by Congress for an early learning trust fund—which is an effort to improve child care & education for children under age 5. He cut child nutrition & child medical care as well. In his campaign, Bush contrasted himself to Clinton by saying that his administration would restore morality to the White House. But instead, he has appointed 2 convicted felons to high offices without Congressional approval, has appointed a number of Enron executives, and has built a defense policy board consisting of 9 members who sit on the corporate board of at least one defense contractor. The Bush administration quashed opposition to his plan to invade Iraq based upon false documents that they implied were proof of clear and imminent danger. Specifically, they used documents that said that enough uranium for an atomic bomb had been purchased from Niger by Saddam H.’s government. Without clear and imminent threat, without a direct act of aggression by Iraq against the US, and without UN authority (this is a violation of the UN charter), the Bush administration invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. Any argument that Saddam’s failure to disarm fast enough was justification for the invasion, the destruction of major cities, and killing of thousands of Iraqis fails because the invasion was a disproportionate remedy for Saddam’s foot-dragging. Killing of civilians in a war of aggression can be seen as a war crime. The US has not allowed free access of humanitarian organizations into Iraq—which it is required to do in the event of aggressive occupation. Since the war itself was in violation of international law, the post-war occupation of Iraq by the US is illegal as well. Only the UN has authority to govern and rebuild the country after the war. No Pentagon officials or arms manufacturers should be allowed to participate in the rebuilding. One former CIA agent said that the Niger faked documents were so obviously amateurish that some part of the CIA had to have known that the evidence was not sound. They presented it anyway. We have heard of no investigation & correction of this problem so that in the future, CIA agents are not permitted to submit faulty information to the administration to justify committing our young people into harm’s way. Why have we heard of no CIA shakedown? Other misleading information was used by the Bush administration as well: pages 6-19 of a 19-page document cited by Powell are word for word copies of a document written by Al-Marashi. The document was presented as current information about Iraq, even though it was 12 years old. The document was written at the time of the 1991 Gulf War. The bin Laden audio tape that Colin Powell claimed showed a partnership between al-Qaida and Iraq did not sound supportive of Iraq since bin Laden said that Saddam’s party were “infidels�. The Bush administration made reports of an Iraqi aircraft sound as if it could deliver chemical and biological weapons across Iraq’s borders to Israel or other countries. Aircraft experts said the airplane was very primitive and could not be tracked for more than about 5 miles because they had to track it with the naked eye. It was reinforced with duct tape and aluminum foil. One of Bush’s stated reasons for going to war seems to be a non-issue. If the administration had 14,000 suspected weapons of mass destruction sites, why have WMD been so hard to find? In his state of the Union address, President Bush referred to a huge amount of suspected Iraqi weapons including 30,000 munitions, 500 tons of chemical weapons, 25,000 liters of anthrax, and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin—that takes up some space. Scott Ritter has said for some time that Iraq’s capability for producing or deploying chemical or biological weapons was 90-95% destroyed during earlier weapons inspections and that an infrastructure capable of producing them again was unlikely to have been rebuilt due to economic sanctions against the country combined with constant satellite and other surveillance. Why wouldn’t Saddam H. use any of his weapons on Americans if he had them? Since the Bush administration had such an obvious interest in finding WMD, shouldn’t the UN have taken over the search from day one? One retired CIA officer stated that he anticipated that if need be, WMD would be planted. The Bush administration was not looking credible when it explained that the WMD had been moved to Syria. Wouldn’t satellite pictures have recorded that? Did they think Americans are so stupid as to keep buying this reason for hostilities with yet another target? The Bush administration has already traded individual freedoms for security. It has relaxed authorization of internet surveillance and wiretaps of citizens and resident aliens through Foreign Surveillance Act court. This gives them easier access to business and personal records. They have detained 1,200 non-citizens without evidence linking them to al-Qaida, they’ve detained 2 US citizens in a military brig without counsel and without revealing charges against them; they allow the government to monitor conversations between attorneys and their clients on the basis of “reasonable suspicion�. The Patriot Act allows the government to seize library and computer records of library and bookstore patrons if it first gets a search warrant from a federal court. These proceedings are secret and not subject to appeal. The library or bookstore may not tell the patron that the federal government is monitoring the patron. In March, 2003, the city of Arcata California was the first of over 112 cities to pass a city ordinance that outlaws voluntary compliance with the Patriot Act. Across the country citizens have been forming Bill of Rights defense committees to fight the erosion of liberties in the Patriot Act. A statewide resolution against the Patriot Act was close to being passed in Hawaii as of April and it has since passed. In May, 2003, New Mexico and Alaska passed a statewide resolution. Early in 2003, the American Library Association (which has 64,000 members) passed a resolution urging Congress to repeal the Patriot Act. After that, state library groups began to follow suit. The Patriot Act II, if passed, would give the government the authority to enter homes, conduct searches, download computer contents and Internet viewing histories without informing the resident that the search was conducted. Another flagrant violation of the US Constitution (Fourth amendment) occurred in March of this year. A physician working with Doctors Without Borders was eating supper at an Indian restaurant in NYC. Five NYPD officers raided the restaurant with guns drawn. Then approximately 10 INS and Homeland Security officers arrived who denied requests for legal counsel & said that those present would need to be detained at the police station until security clearance was obtained—which could take as long as a month. One of the other customers urged the physicians to do whatever the officers said for the sake of others. He was a US citizen who said he’d “been through this before�. The physician was detained 1 ½ hours without a warrant under the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act has already been violating the constitutional rights of innocent American citizens. The Bush administration feels they are justified in doing this. President Bush violated international law by reserving government contracts for domestic companies. Nor was there a public discussion or bid opening for these contracts. The World Trade Organization rules say that governments cannot discriminate against member countries. Our economy—which was bad before the war & worse after the war due to war expenditures—will worsen if the international community retaliates against America’s monopoly on Iraq-rebuilding by refusing to open bids for their governmental contracts to American businesses. Or if other countries boycott American corporations. There is suspicion that the Bush administration would prefer to weaken the US dollar. Bush’s Treasury secretary, John Snow, (who is the chief spokesman for the dollar) advocated a strong dollar during his Senate confirmation hearings. However, on a day when the dollar took a new beating, he commented that he was not concerned about the recent decline in the dollar. The next day the dollar fell to a four-year low against the Euro. Investors speculated about whether Bush’s economic team was drifting away from a previous 8-year long “strong dollar policy�. A weaker dollar is not of benefit to the average American consumer and will drive up mortgage rates. A loss in confidence in the dollar would result in recession and a dollar collapse would crash the U.S. economy. Direct foreign investment in the U.S. fell 45% last year. U.S. investment abroad exceeded foreigners’ investment in the U.S. for the first time since 1995. The most ominous reason not to “reelect� Bush is a chilling suspicion that the administration negligently or intentionally ignored information that indicated the possibility of the 9-11 attack because they needed the 9-11 attack to accomplish the aims of PNAC and/or to further their own financial and corporate interests. The PNAC stated that another Pearl Harbor was needed to generate support for their goals. There have been reports that the Intelligence Community received credible reports of intended attacks on the WTC, attacks against Israel or the US by Osama bin Laden, and that terrorists intended to hijack planes and turn them into weapons. On August 6, the CIA sent a memo to Bush saying that bin Laden was likely to attack the U.S. The National Security Administration intercepted 2 messages on 9/10 saying that imminent attack was planned. British, Egyptian, Israeli, and French intelligence agencies warned American intelligence that Osama bin Laden was about to attack America. The Clinton administration reports that they passed on the need for high alert against terrorists to the new Bush administration. On Sept. 7, Jeb Bush signed an executive order that allowed him to declare martial law in Florida in the event of a terrorist attack on a Florida airport. The Bush administration seemed careful about protecting themselves, but casual about protecting American civilians. John Ashcroft was advised by the FBI to travel by leased aircraft only—not by commercial jet—and he did. On 9-10, top Pentagon officials cancelled plans to travel on 9-11 due to security concerns. According to Greg Palast, until 9-11, the Bush administration, Clinton administration to some degree, the Regan administration, and George Bush Sr.’s administration had directed the CIA and it’s other agencies NOT to investigate the royal family of Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family with the exception of Osama bin Laden (who they were allowed to investigate). The directive started when George Bush senior as the head of the CIA tried to stop it from investigating the Saudi royal family. The Bush family might naturally tend to feel friendly towards some people who made them millions of dollars. The problem with not investigating the Saudi’s is that many of that family funds terrorists or organizations that have terrorist links. So this means that the trade-off for access to Saudi oil is that the American government must prohibit the CIA/FBI from doing its job of investigating/protecting Americans against some very dangerous men. Many Americans have noticed that 15 of the 19 September 11 terrorists were Saudis. The US government has not addressed this problem—Why? If the agencies had been directed not to do part of their job for years, this would explain why they appeared to the American public to be entirely taken by surprise by 9-11. However, why was more aggressive action not taken to prevent 9-11 since bin Laden WAS being investigated? Does the government pay and placate these families to avoid risking terrorist attack or public disclosure of their dealings with families that have factions more “evil� than those named in George Bush’s “axis of evil�? U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo) has promoted a plan to phase out American dependence on foreign oil. This would disentangle us from financial interdependence with terrorists. In her 3/31 statement to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, Mindy Kleinberg—whose husband was killed Sept. 11 in the WTC--urged that the apparent “luck� of the terrorists be looked into thoroughly since it seemed there might be something more than “luck� involved. She pointed out that a week prior to Sept. 11, both the SEC and US Intelligence agencies ignored a huge purchase of options purchased on a gamble that stocks of the 2 airlines later involved in the attacks would drop dramatically. The 5 million in profits made from this purchase has not been claimed by an investor as of yet. She pointed out that the INS granted Visas to the hijackers who were 19 young, unmarried males with no specific destination in the US. Fifteen of the 19 did not even submit complete or correctly answered applications. Normally Visas would not have been granted. Then the next time the hijackers “got lucky� was when they got through airport security with box cutters and pepper spray. Then Emergency FAA and National Military Command Center protocols were not followed. Two Flight 11 airline attendants called American Airlines reporting a hijacking, but according to National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, they didn’t hear about the hijacking until 20 minutes after Ground control lost contact with the plane. The fighter jets sent to intercept the hijacked plane were not sent until 32 minutes after contact was lost. The inceptors were not dispatched from the nearest base & they did not travel at maximum speed. Had they traveled at maximum speed, they could have reached NYC and the Pentagon in time to intercept the terrorist planes before they hit their targets. The morning of 9-11, NORAD had information about the 3 planes were hijacked, yet no one stopped President Bush from continuing a routine appearance in an elementary school & informed him of the national emergency in progress. The Bush administration put an overly positive spin on the results of the midterm election (and the press reiterated) saying that the Majority Had Spoken. Reality: only 33% of all Americans voted. 15% of those voters voted Democratic, 17% voted Republican. That means 83% is the American public did not vote for the Republican Party. The Bush administration and the Congress may have failed dramatically to represent those they work for—the American public. Last September alternative radio’s Democracy Now surveyed 70 Republican and Democratic senate offices asking about opposition/support for war with Iraq. Aides for both party offices said that the “overwhelming� majority of citizens calling, e-mailing and faxing were opposed to the war. Numbers as high as 200:1 in opposition were reported. The tax cuts the Bush administration has advocated do not help 70% of Americans according to the IRS. They help a small elite group of corporations or people who are already wealthy. While the Bush administration and House of Representatives praised our soldiers, the House voted to cut veterans benefits. Now with all the present (and future?) Bush administration medical and psychological injuries, returning veterans have less support than ever
The President’s Men, The President’s Corporate Affiliations And PNAC:
On September 20, 2001, the PNAC sent President Bush a letter endorsing the war on terrorism. It said that Even If the evidence does not link Iraq to Sept. 11, that Saddam H. should be removed from power. It said that Iran and Syria should be targets if they refuse to comply with US demands to stop supporting the terrorist group, Hizbullah. Donald Rumsfield is a PNAC founder who is advocating a no-evidence required approach to international relations. The PNAC delivered a letter to Clinton in 1998 that criticized him for not passing the Iraqi Liberation Act. The PNAC has funneled millions into a Hussein opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress & into an Iraqi named Armad Chalabi. Chalabi was sentenced to 22 years in court in Jordan on 31 counts of bank fraud. INC and Chalabi have promised oil contracts to anyone who would put them in power in Iraq. The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was created by the PNAC and staffed entirely by PNAC members. The committee took an office on Capital Hill before the Iraq war and set out to “educate� Americans via cable news about the need for war with Iraq. Randy Scheunemann is the president of the Committee. He served as an advisor to Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001. The original plan of Cheney’s (who was the former Secretary of Defense for Daddy Bush) to secure “peace� through military strength was written by a man who never participated in the cruel realities of war. He was a draft dodger in the Vietnam War. Bruce Jackson, the chairman of the PNAC, served for many years as a VP for the weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. Then in the 2000 campaign, he headed the Republican Party Platform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Policy. He urged removal of Saddam H. Before becoming Vice President, Dick Cheney served as CEO of the Dallas-based oil company, Halliburton. During this time, Halliburton did $73 million in business with Saddam H.’s Iraq. In October of 1995, when Cheney took over as CEO, Halliburton announced that they would be a top contender for a contract to put out oil well fires if war with Iraq erupted and to prepare the wells for repair by a subsidiary company, Brown and Root. Brown and Root has won a $900 million government contract for the rebuilding of post-war Iraqi bridges, roads, and basic infrastructure. Brown and Root previously built permanent American military bases in Kosovo. The Carlyle Group will also profit from war with Iraq and an increase in defense spending since it owns United Defense. United Defense provides the Defense Department with combat vehicle systems, fire support, combat support vehicle systems, weapons delivery systems, amphibious assault vehicles, combat support services and naval armaments. Carlyle is headed by Frank Carlucci (Secretary of Defense under George Bush, Sr.). George Bush, Sr.’s Secretary of State, James Baker, is also on Carlyle’s payroll. He was very pro-Arab and pro-Saudi-Arabia when he was in power. George Bush, Sr. is also on the payroll and he represented the company to the Saudi royal household on a few trips to Saudi Arabia. George W. Bush collected around $15,000 a year by being on the Board of directors of one of Carlyle’s subsidiaries. The Osama bin Laden family built its fortune in contracts with Saudi Arabia’s government. They were heavily invested in the Carlyle group for years but in October 2001 (after the Sept. 11 attack) Saudi bin Laden and Carlyle severed their relationship by mutual agreement. Arbusto Oil was the company that made George W. Bush his first million. Arbusto Oil was a company that kept digging dry holes in Texas until it was taken over by a company called Harken Oil. The company got financing from Saudi Arabians and then Harken obtained a contract to drill oil in the gulf. Arbusto Oil shares quickly increased in value due to its new financiers. The large conglomerations that own the US media seem to share financial interests with the Bush administration. PNAC writer William Kristol (former Chief of Staff for Dan Quayle) writes for a magazine owned by the same company that owns Fox News. The media encouraged 50% of the American public to believe that Iraq was responsible for 9-11 by telling half of the story and remaining silent about Bush administration lies. To take action on this and other issues, please visit http://TvNewsLies.org. In a March, 2003 press conference President Bush himself along with official White House transcripts use the word “scripted� to describe the press conference. However, the NY Times, Fox News, CNN, & MSNBC all changed the word to “unscripted�. MSNBC cancelled the Phil Donahue show because as they stated in a leaked internal memo: “He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush, and skeptical of the administration’s motives�. . . “at a time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.� Mussolini (the father of fascism) defined fascism as equivalent to corporatism since fascism “is the merger of state and corporate power�. Is this what the American public wants? By the way, a man named Dr. Matthias Rath says that vitamin C is effective against SARS spread. What does that have to do with all this? Dr. Rath is of the opinion that a pharmaceutical/petrochemical cartel was a huge benefactor of the Iraq war. And that the cartel also chose to secretly release the SARS virus to further their financial interests.
 Back to TvNewsLies.org home page.
The Invisible Protesters
How the Media Campaigns for Bush
Photo’s of June 23rd 2003 NYC protest
Thousands of us came to protest George Bush’s presence in New York City yesterday. We stood ten-deep in pens set up by the city’s finest, and filled four long city blocks near the Sheraton Hotel. Organized groups had come from Planned Parenthood and Brooklyn Parents for Peace. Others had been mobilized by International A.N.S.W.E.R. and United for Peace. And thousands of others had come on their own carrying home-made signs reading, Jail to the Chief, and Where are the WMD’S? or waving yellow flyers that simply said, LIAR! It’s difficult to believe, but all of us were about to become invisible.
The media also came: huge mobile units spewed out dozens of reporters with their press tags with cameramen in tow. They came to photograph and to interview. They came to report to the public. They came to share the event with their readers and viewers. And they knew exactly why they had been sent to midtown Manhattan as they rushed to snap the Bush supporters in their evening finery, waiting on line with their precious $2000 admission tickets. And all the while, they refused to see any of us. They did not hear our chants or see our signs. We were invisible.
Circulating among the crowds were some reporters from independent media sources. They took our photos and asked us questions. There also were representatives from the foreign media – and one reporter from a German TV station wondered aloud why the American media refused to acknowledge such a large opposition group. Then he smiled, rather sadly, - having obviously answered his own question. I was relieved that there would be some testimony from these sources to validate our existence and our sentiments. Somewhere, there would be a tangible record of our protests. But not in the corporate media. To them, we remained invisible.
Allow me to correct myself. For one small instance, one person among us actually gained substance and relevance. That extraordinary moment came when a small group of youngsters knocked down one of the barricades that kept us in our assigned areas. They did their dastardly deed and fled into the cover of the crowd, - and within minutes, one of the culprits was dragged by three police officers into the open space of Seventh Avenue. All of the media vultures converged in a nanosecond to photograph the arrest. Front page stuff, for sure, while the rest of us, though shouting Shame, shame, shame! were still invisible.
This morning, I scoured the newspapers, and the broadcast media for reports of the Bush fund raiser. I learned that the pResident had raised 4 million dollars yesterday. I also learned that New York would undoubtedly go for Bush in 2004, because its residents were so thrilled with his handling of the terror threats against us. Oh yes, one local news station mentioned that there were a few ‘hundred� protesters outside the hotel. Heaven be praised for the little things. But, by and large, we thousands had been re--legated to permanent invisibility.
For the record: I am NOT invisible. I will continue to make my signs and join millions of other Americans in protest against the fascism that is creeping into our lives. But, for that same record, I am frightened by the betrayal of the American media, whose job it is to accurately report the news. I am horrified by the vast corporate media that has seen fit to campaign for George Bush in his bid to be elected president for the first time. But, despite it all, we did what was right, and American, and patriotic. We had our say, invisible or not. More power to us all.
Peace.
Andrea West, NYC
The Presidential Bubble - Protesters cannot be permitted to get close enough to pose a threat, but they ought to be able to get close enough so the president can see that they are there. - At Mr. Bush's public appearances, his critics are routinely shunted into "protest zones" as much as a half-mile away. At the Columbia, S.C., airport last year, a protester with a "No War for Oil" sign was ordered to move a half-mile from the area where Mr. Bush's supporters were allowed to stand. When the protester refused, he was arrested.
Back to TvNewsLies.org home page.
TVNL does not have control over the following advertisement.
|
