Sandals at the Gate

"Gestapo interrogation methods included: repeated near drownings of a prisoner in a bathtub."
-- http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-gestapo.htm

"The CIA officers say 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted the longest under waterboarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk, with debatable results."

-- Brian Ross, ABC World News Tonight, November 18, 2005

"When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief. Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said."

-- "Bush Could Bypass Torture Ban," Boston Globe, January 4, 2006

Whatever the Germans as a whole know about the concentration camps, they certainly knew about the systematic mistreatment of Jews that had occurred before their very eyes, and from which so many had profited. And if they were not really "good Germans," I wondered, what should or could they have done, given the reality of Nazi tyranny?

Our relationship essentially ended then and there. I understood intellectually that she was just defending her father and was neither an anti-Semite nor an evil person. But there it was. She on one side. The survivor on the other. A gulf between them. Whatever my head said, my heart knew that the world is divided into evil-doers, their victims, and those like Inge who do not want to know.

And that I had no choice but to stand with the victims.

I never dreamed at that moment that I, as an American, would a few years later face this same question as my government committed mass murder of civilians in Indochina in violation of the Nuremberg Principles. Or that more than four decades later I would still be struggling with what it means to be a "good American" after learning that a group of U.S. leaders has unilaterally seized the right to torture anyone it chooses without evidence and in violation of international law, human decency, and the sacrifice of the many Americans who have died fighting autocracy and totalitarianism.

Bush Embraces Torture

To ask what it means to be a "good American" is not to compare Bush to Hitler, or Republicans to Nazis. The question does not arise only when leaders engage in mass murder on the scale of a Hitler or Stalin, which Bush has not. It requires only that they engage in actions that are clearly evil, which Bush has.

Every generation or so an evil arises which is so monstrous, so degrading to the human spirit, so morally bankrupt, that even to debate it is a sign of moral corruption. Native American genocide, slavery, totalitarianism, and Jim Crow laws are evils so unspeakable that we cannot understand today how anyone with a shred of decency could have once supported them. Today torture, a practice far more degrading to us than to our victims, represents such an evil.

The issue has become urgent because Bush has chosen to demand the legal right to torture anyone he wishes. When torture was revealed at Abu Ghraib, the administration - falsely and shamelessly - attempted to shift its own responsibility onto foot-soldiers like Lynndie England. Since then, however, leaks have revealed that the CIA has tortured terrorist suspects all around the world, using techniques like "waterboarding." In response, Senator John McCain proposed an amendment, attached to the 2006 Defense bill, that would ban torture.

Bush's first response to McCain's amendment was to threaten to veto the Defense Bill if it passed. When it became clear that McCain's amendment would pass by an overwhelming majority (it passed in by a 90-9 margin in the end), Bush reversed course and said he would support the amendment. Yet when he actually signed the bill, Bush added something called a "signing statement" in which he reserved the right to do whatever he chooses as Commander-in-Chief to "protect the American people from further terrorist attacks." In short, even as he signed McCain's amendment, Bush let it be known that he intends to torture as he sees fit.

Bush's demand is unprecedented. No leader in all human history, not even Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, has publicly demanded the right to torture. All others have behaved as Bush did before the amendment when he secretly tortured on a scale unseen in American history even while saying he wasn't. Forced into the open by the McCain amendment, however, Bush chose to openly demand the legal right to torture. Most experts assume he will continue to torture.

It is important to understand what this means. Bush justifies his right to torture on the grounds of saving American lives in a global "war on terrorism." Unlike previous wars, however, this war will never end. On the contrary, Bush's bungling of the war on terror--including the increased Muslim hatred of the United States that the practice of torture has caused--makes it more likely that there will be another domestic 9/11, leading in turn to more demands to torture. Bush's assertion of his right to torture, therefore, would make torture a permanent and growing instrument of U.S. state policy.

Also, by opposing the McCain amendment, Bush took direct responsibility for the torture he and his administration have inflicted on countless suspects. As you read these words, people are screaming in agony from Gestapo techniques used in CIA and "allied" torture chambers around the world. Many or even most of the victims are innocent. The New Republic has noted that "Pentagon reports have acknowledged that up to 90 percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, many of whom were abused and tortured, were not guilty of anything.... And Abu Ghraib produced a tiny fraction of the number of abuse, torture, and murder cases that have been subsequently revealed."

"BEFORE BUSH, NO LEADER IN MODERN HISTORY, NOT EVEN HITLER, STALIN, OR MAO, HAD PUBLICLY DEMANDED THE RIGHT TO TORTURE."

Mr. Bush's statement that "we do not torture," even as he was threatening to veto the entire Defense bill because it limited his right to torture, is a dramatic example of how torture degrades the torturer even more than his victims. And it is a disgraceful commentary on our nation that no major church, business, or political leader, nor the fawning media personalities who interview him and his officials, has expressed outrage at this bald-faced lie. And one can barely mention an unspeakable Congress, which ignored his lying about torture after spending two years impeaching his predecessor for lying about sex.

The real question for us, however, is what this says not about President Bush and our other leaders, but ourselves. What are we, as citizens, as human beings, willing to live with? Are we willing to live with a President, Vice-President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Attorney-General who either engage in or rationalize torture in our names, even as they shamelessly deny they are doing so?

If we are willing to live with this evil, the torture will continue. If not, it can be brought to an end. Who are we?

Becoming "Good Americans"

We are in some ways more morally compromised than the "good Germans" of the 1930s.

To begin with, we are far less able to claim we do not know. Our daily newspapers regularly report new revelations of Bush Administration torture.

Second, by opposing torture, we face far less severe threats than did Germans who tried to help Jews. Even the strong possibility that we could become targets of illegal spying by this Administration for protesting its torture is far less frightening than the death or imprisonment faced by Germans who helped Jews.

And, third, unlike the Germans, we cannot reasonably claim that it is futile to oppose our leaders. Creating or joining an organized effort to prevent torture can succeed because we possess one great advantage that human rights advocates in Germany did not have: the public is with us.

Most Americans abhor torture and can understand the argument that it does not protect American lives. This is why the McCain amendment enjoyed 90 percent majorities in the Republican-controlled House and Senate, and why it is possible to bring to power leaders who are not committed to torture.

If we can build a movement to limit and ultimately remove from power those who torture, and thus endanger our lives, we will be achieving other important goals as well.

We will be building support for international law, which is one of humanity's few frail protections against far greater violence. If we can implement international law against torture, perhaps we can extend it to preventing the murder of civilians or aggressive war. We will be reaffirming America's once strong commitment to building the kind of new international order that is required to reduce international terrorism, and fostering a world in which U.S. leaders would once again be respected as fighters for human decency rather than despised as threats to it.

We will bring the once-powerful but forgotten force of morality and nonviolent action-- for civil rights, for peace, for women's rights-- back into our politics. A false morality that claims to love Jesus while torturing and killing in his name will be replaced by an authentic morality that seeks to address the root-causes of terrorism and violence.

We will thus also join this renewed moral force with a practical strategy that can actually protect us from terrorism.

Torture is only the most dramatic example of how Bush has endangered our lives by bungling the war on terrorism. He has also dangerously neglected Homeland Security, alienated world opinion, helped Al Qaeda grow in numbers and fervor, wasted vast resources in Iraq in ways that increase terrorist ranks, failed to build an effective democracy in Afghanistan, failed to bring peace to the Middle East, and failed to address the poverty that fuels anti-American terrorism. Ending torture is a necessary precondition to developing an effective strategy that will actually protect rather than endanger Americans.

And we will strengthen democracy at home. Nothing is more un-American and undemocratic than the idea that a small group of Executive Branch leaders should be free to torture, kill, and spy at will. This idea is in fact precisely what generations of Americans have died fighting against. Ending Bush's use of torture will be the beginning of restoring an accountable and democratic government to this nation.

Conservative Totalitarianism

Ending torture will have a major impact beyond torture itself for a simple reason: as slavery was the linchpin to the entire pre-bellum Southern social order, torture has become integral to today's conservative ideology. Conservative ideology was once a coherent set of ideas built around limiting state power over the individual. It has today degenerated into a rationale for expanding executive power over the individual, including not only the right to torture but the right to spy on citizens, wage aggressive war while lying about it, prevent gay people from marrying, deny a woman the right to an abortion, publish disguised government propaganda in the media, and even deny us the right to die in peace if conservatives decree that we must live as vegetables or in unendurable pain.

It is no coincidence that the executive's right to torture was defended not ony by Bush and Cheney, but also by conservative ideologues at The Weekly Standard, financed by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and edited by William Kristol, who published a cover story by Charles Krauthammer-- widely admired in conservative circles-- which declared that "we must all be prepared to torture" to save American lives. Or that the The National Review opined that "if McCain's amendment becomes law ... we will then be able to apply only methods formulated to deal with conventional soldiers in a different sort of conflict than the one that faces us now. This is folly."

Today's conservative movement has been reduced to a set of
impulses, above all a totalitarian impulse to support the expansion of autocratic power it was founded to restrain. Since its ideological blinders prevent it from developing sensible measures to reduce terrorism, it has turned to justifying only those policies that expand executive power and seek to rule through coercion, threats, and violence.

Whatever a movement to abolish torture will achieve for society, it is clear what participating in it means for each of us as individuals. It means above all that our children and grandchildren will not remember us with shame, that they will not one day have to try to justify to our victims our failure to oppose the torture being conducted in our names, and that the term "Good American" will mean just that, and not an excuse for fear or indifference, like the idea of the "Good German."

When we fight to end torture we not only fight for human decency, international law, democracy, and freedom.

We fight for ourselves.

Fred Branfman is a writer and long-time political activist. His email address is fredbranfman@aol.com and his website is www.trulyalive.org. He is writing a book entitled Facing Death at Any Age.

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yogi Berra said it best: "It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."

Predictions in politics rest upon two assumptions: (a) that present trends will continue into the future, and (b) that there will be no totally unexpected "surprises."

Both assumptions are rarely true and both are refuted both by common sense and by the lessons of history.

Case in point: last week's "Texas shootout." Until last week, the White House routine was in motion and functioning smoothly: Bush was the public face of the Administration, and Cheney the hand in the sock-puppet, self-selected in 2000 to give stability, maturity and "gravitas" to the Bush regime. Last week Cheney was exposed to the public at large as the reckless, self-absorbed, super-annuated adolescent that his perceptive critics knew him to be. Today the right-wing propaganda mills are up to full speed, telling us "move along, folks, nothing to see here." But try as they might, the public perception of Dick Cheney will not revert to status-quo-ante. The "present trend" of the Bush/Cheney team has been turned in an altered direction.

But Dick Cheney's bad aim was a minor disruption, of interest to us only because of its immediacy. Other "surprises" are well known to all of us.
In the fall of 1958, Fidel Castro seemed to be insignificant irritant to the regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. On New Years Day in 1959, Batista fled Cuba, and two days later Castro and his "brigands," marched into Havana.

In the summer of 1963, John Kennedy's election to a second term appeared to be a near-certainty.

So too, his brother Robert's nomination at the Chicago Democratic convention in August, 1968.

On election day in 1964, Lyndon Johnson seemed assured of a second term four years hence. And on election day, 1972, there was no reason whatever to doubt that Richard Nixon would serve out a full term.

In the early eighties, Reagan's UN Ambassador, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, warned us all that where communism had established its rule, it had never retreated one square inch. And Mikhail Gorbachev, the Right told us, was just another Communist apparatchik, like all the others - "Khruschev with a tailored suit and a thin wife," as George Will put it.

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was a prisoner of the South African apartheid regime. In 1994 he was elected President of the Republic of South Africa.
Political upheavals are like earthquakes. Beneath a placid landscape, stresses quietly build up until the fault ruptures, suddenly and without warning, forever transforming the landscape.

So, is an upheaval looming ahead for the United States? Not necessarily. For history also teaches us that democracies can descend slowly, by small increments, into despotism. As William O. Douglas put it: "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged."

Which is our future? A bang, or a whimper? Or perhaps a renaissance? We don't know. But the answer, to no small degree, is in the hands of us, of "we the people."

This much seems likely: given the increasing unrest among the American people, the accumulating evidence of GOP corruption and Administration crimes, and the likelihood of a devastating economic setback, come September and October this year, the political landscape will be radically different than it is today. It could be far worse, with an intervening catastrophic terrorist attack followed immediately by martial law and full-fledged fascism. On the other hand, we the people just might achieve our deliverance from this reign of error, lies, greed, and cruelty.

The latter, hopeful, outcome may appear impossible today. But we must never forget that every successful peoples' liberation movement begins as an impossible dream. (And, be sure, many such movements remain so). They then proceed to possibility, then probability, and finally to inevitability and success.

The resistance to Bushism is now at the "impossible" stage; today, the Busheviks control the ballot box and the mainstream media. Their continuing control of the Congress and soon the Courts seems assured, and the alleged "opposition party" is enfeebled, disorganized and compliant. To be sure, if conditions and trends remain as they are today, and there are no "surprises," continued control by the GOP of all branches of government is a certainty.

However, it is very unlikely that conditions and trends will remain as they are, or that there will be no disrupting "surprises." Below this controlled and placid political and economic landscape, the stresses are accumulating.

Among them:
More and more moderate republicans and authentic conservatives are finally coming to realize that they share little more with the Bush Administration and the GOP Congress than a name, "Republican," and an adjective, "conservative." With the rightward shift in US politics, traditional Republican values and policies - fiscal responsibility, small government, local control, individual self-reliance -- are approaching congruence with those of the Democratic party. And genuine conservatives share with the Democrats, and in opposition to the Bush regime, a respect for our Constitution, the balance of governmental powers, and the rule of law.

Similarly, many libertarians are becoming disenchanted with the Bushevik assault on civil liberties and its flirtation with theocracy. In fact, a recent analysis of congressional voting records has determined that with the exception of the estimable libertarian-republican, Ron Paul, virtually all the top voting scores in the libertarian index belong to House Democrats.

Bush has lost the confidence and support of a majority of Americans. His approval ratings have once again dropped below 40%. A November AP-Ipsos poll found that 57% of those polled do not believe that the Bush Administration has "high ethical standards," and the same number say that Bush is not honest. Last month, a Gallup poll found that 58% consider Bush's second term a failure, and 53% believe that Bush's administration deliberately misled the public about Saddam's alleged WMD programs. Finally, an October Ipsos poll found that exactly half of the population would want Congress to consider impeachment if Bush lied about his reasons for going to war with Iraq

The Religious Right is fracturing, and the moderate Christians are becoming politically active, reminding us that Jesus blessed the peacemakers and condemned the wealthy and the hypocrites. Some evangelical Christian ministers are openly criticizing Bush's environmental policies and expressing concern about global warming.

The patience of the international community with the neo-con's imperial ambitions is wearing thin. And as knowledgeable observers of international politics and economics are fully aware, the community of nations is quite capable of exerting considerable economic pressure on the US government.

Bushism is based upon and sustained by a scaffolding of lies and deception. At long last, the public is beginning to "wise up," and as the Busheviks respond to public skepticism with still more lies, their credibility crumbles, and with it their legitimacy and political clout.

Doubts about the validity of the election process will not go away, despite the disparagement of the issue by the mainstream media and the persistent indifference of the Democratic Party. More and more jurisdictions are decertifying electronic voting devices as legal challenges proliferate.

The US economy is approaching a breaking point, as the housing bubble is about to burst followed by the bankruptcy of millions of double-mortgaged speculating home owners. With ever-more Americans "maxing-out" their credit cards and credit qualifications, and with the continuing decline in median middle-class income, consumer spending is certain to stall. Nothing provokes the American public to political action more than economic distress.

It is finally beginning to dawn on a few "movers and shakers" of finance and industry that where Bush, Inc. is leading, they should not want to follow. There are few winners in an economic depression, least of all investors. And a country that fails to invest in infrastructure, in scientific research, in technological development, and in education, and which "outsources" its technical jobs, is committing economic suicide. Savvy investors and corporate financial officers recall that they flourished during the Clinton administration, not to mention most Democratic administrations.

After five years of slavishly spewing out Bushite/GOP propaganda, the mainstream media is losing its credibility and its audience. The public is beginning to look to alternative sources for its news: the foreign media, the independent press, and of course, the internet.

The would-be despots, Bush, Cheney and the rest, are not very good at despotism. There is a widening charisma-gap, as these leaders appear ever-less "commanding" and ever-more puerile, incompetent, and even pathetic. In addition, Bush and his minions are not "deep thinkers." They prefer faith to science, and gut-feeling to expertise. The public is beginning to appreciate that this administration can not bend reality to its will, and that eventually "reality bites."
All these factors are working to the disadvantage of the Bush regime, thus, the sub-surface stresses are accumulating. Given the manifest skills of the Bush propaganda machine, and the blackmail and intimidation issuing from Karl Rove's office, the political fault beneath could hold fast throughout the next decade, into the Jeb Bush Administration. Or it could rupture next month. My guess is sooner, rather than later.

Meanwhile, the resistance is gaining in strength.

The catalytic moment for liberation movements arrives when (a) the movement achieves self-awareness - when the dissenters look about and find that they are not alone, and recognize that they are participants in a concerted political force, (b) when the movement acquires effective leadership that focuses goals and coordinates action, and (c) when leaders and followers of the movement achieve results, albeit minor, and thus perceive that success is achievable. This perception that success is possible is, in itself, a formidable political force. "Perception is reality." Si, se puede!

I opened with a warning about the unreliability of political predictions. So I will not now hazard predictions about the State of the Union in the fall, as the mid-term election approaches. However, I can point out some factors that might emerge in the meantime to re-shuffle the political deck.

Election fraud: As Bush's approval ratings continue to fall, the economy sours, the Iraq casualty toll increases with no end in sight, the Abramov and Plame scandals yield indictments, the defensive lies from the White House become more transparent and desperate, opinion polls point to a Democratic blowout in the November elections. As more and more voices are heard to ask, "why on earth did we elect these guys?," the public becomes ever more receptive to the reply, "we didn't! Those damned machines elected them!" Then the Busheviks face a daunting dilemma: can they allow a Democratic takeover of the Congress, and with it the power of congressional investigation including the levers of subpoena and the threats of perjury and contempt of Congress? Or dare they once again "jigger" the computer programs, in the secret and unauditable ballot and compilation codes, to assure a GOP "victory," thus inviting a Ukrainian-style public rebellion?

The Mainstream Media: As the MSM continues to lose its audience, it faces another dilemma: propaganda vs. profits. When the Soviet media, state-owned and thus in no need of profits, persisted in spewing out state propaganda, it gave rise to an underground media, samizdat, and an enthusiastic public audience for foreign broadcasts and publications. In the United States today, profits are a factor, as here and there elements of the MSM, facing competition from foreign and independent sources and the internet, are exhibiting increasing critical independence from the GOP party line. The opponents to Bush, Inc., need no counter-propaganda. A healthy dose of the truth will suffice as an invaluable resource in the struggle to bring an end to the reigning oligarchy.

Leadership: The resistance to Bushism is essentially leaderless, and thus unfocused and disorganized. When the leaders emerge, reflecting the values and aspirations of the resistance movement, that movement may become a formidable force.

I am not proposing another despot to replace the ones we have. If prospective leaders step forward with agendas alien to the followers, they will be discarded. Successful leaders must embody the values and aspirations of the movement. In an authentic popular movement, communication and coordination between leaders and followers flows in both directions. Though rebels by nature resist authority, leadership in a resistance movement is essential, for if the movement is to be effective, its goals must be defined and focused, and its activism coordinated. Let's be realistic: where would the sixties civil rights movement be without Martin Luther King, Jr. - or, of not King himself, a King-like leader? Where India, without a Gandhi, South Africa without a Mandela, Russia without a Sakharov? For that matter, where would the United States be without a Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and the rest? All of these succeeded as leaders because those in their movements chose to follow. Other individuals, lost to history, claimed leadership and were rejected.

Message Discipline is behind much of the success of the GOP. Memos with "talking points" issue forth from the offices of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, with clear and simple messages that are heard, incessantly, in the echo chambers of right-wing talk radio and right-wing punditry. In contrast, the left speaks with a thousand tongues, with worthy causes spread all over the political landscape, and with factions, that should be allies, fighting amongst themselves for a place at the podium. Witness the Washington Mall peace rallies, where we hear messages of gay pride, reproductive freedom, animal liberation, save the rain forests, abolish the death penalty, and, oh yes, end the war. All these are commendable causes, and all these are also wedge issues that fracture the coalition, to the delight of the right, which therein gains an opportunity to divide and conquer.

To the public at large, a thousand messages equate with no message, and a validation of the tiresome right-wing criticism that "the left has no new ideas."

The essential message of the resistance movement must be simple, clear, with few elements, and comprehensive enough to encompass a broad coalition of citizens, who may differ on particular issues: liberals, progressives, the religious, the secular, moderate Republicans, conservatives, libertarians. To the religious, ask "What would Jesus Do?" (I.e., promote peace and charity, and condemn wealth and hypocrisy). To "establishment" Republicans and their followers, "What is the supreme object of your loyalty? A party? A man who happens to be President" or your country and its laws and Constitution?" And to citizens in general: "What have they done to our country?"

If these few and simple messages are repeated, over and over, the public might at last pay attention, and the resistance movement might achieve self-identity and grow into an irresistible force for reform and renewal.

In conclusion, we must pay no attention to the pundits' proclamations that Democratic control of Congress is "out of reach," that impeachment is impossible, or that claims of election fraud are groundless paranoia.. There are live bombs in the basement of The House of Bush - scandals, crimes, betrayals, treachery, even treason. Any one of these potentially explosive issues might, at any time, go off and bring down the entire wretched structure. Or they might all be defused, as a long night of despotism falls upon our republic. We can be confident only of this much: the present trends will not continue, and we must expect and be prepared to deal intelligently with the unexpected.

We Americans are not an evil people. Woefully ignorant at times, and short on political sales-resistance. But when we sense that we've been swindled and lied to, watch out! Our country was born in rebellion against tyranny. We have a Constitution and we have a tradition of liberty and the rule of law. We have vivid memories of a short time ago when we lived in a country that was both prosperous and free.

But neither were the Germans or the Russians fundamentally evil people. Yet they succumbed to evil regimes. The Germans had to be liberated at horrendous cost. After seventy long years, the various nationalities of the Soviet Union threw out their oppressors. We may suffer the fate of the Germans - there are no guarantees. Or perhaps "the Old World" will come to the rescue of the New," just as we came to their rescue in the century just past.

Far better that we accomplish our own liberation and renewal. For only the American people can restore the honor of the United States of America.

Copyright 2006 by Ernest Partridge

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"We have met the enemy and he is us."
- Pogo, 1971
The following happened in the United States of America on Feb. 9 of this year.

The scene is the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public Library in Bethesda. Business is going on as usual when two men in uniform stride into the main reading room and call for attention. Then they make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's computers to view Internet pornography.

As people are absorbing this, one of the men challenges a patron about a Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this point, a librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside. A police officer is summoned. The men leave. It turns out they are employees of the county's Department of Homeland Security and were operating way outside their authority.

We are indebted to reporter Cameron W. Barr of The Washington Post for the account of this incident, which, I feel constrained to repeat, did not happen in China, Cuba or North Korea. Rather, it happened a few days ago in this country. Right here in freedom's land.

There are those of us who'd say the country has become less deserving of that sobriquet in recent years. They would point as evidence to the detention of U.S. citizens without charges, counsel or recourse, to laws empowering the government to check up on what you've been reading, to revelations of illegal eavesdropping.

And there are others who'd say, "So what?" They're in the 51 percent, according to a recent Los Angles Times/Bloomberg poll, who say we should be ready to give up our freedoms in exchange for security.

Apparently, they are ignorant of what Benjamin Franklin said: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Apparently, they're also unversed in something Mr. Bush said as a candidate in 1999: "There ought to be limits to freedom." Mind you, this nugget of wisdom wasn't dropped in a discussion of national security. Rather, it was the future president's reaction to a Web site that made fun of him.

Seven years later, he's clearly getting his wish. It chills me to know that doesn't chill more of us. Indeed, of all the many things I cannot fathom about certain of my countrymen and women, their ability to be sanguine at the threatened abrogation of their rights is very near the top.

The only way I can explain it is that freedom - the right to do, say, think, go, "live" as you please - is so ingrained in our psyche, has been such a part of us for so long, that some are literally unable to imagine life without it. They seem fundamentally unable to visualize how drastically things would change without these freedoms they treat so cavalierly, what it would be like to need government approval to use the Internet, buy a firearm, take a trip, watch a movie or read these very words.

If that sounds alarmist, consider again the experience at Little Falls, where an agent of the government literally read over a man's shoulder, Big Brother-like, and tried to prevent him from seeing what he had chosen to see.

The fact that we are at war doesn't make that OK. The fact that we are panicked doesn't make it OK. The allegation that the material is unsavory doesn't make it OK.

Look, freedom is a messy business. It is also a risky business. But it means nothing if we surrender it at every hint of messiness and risk. That's cowardly, and it's un-American.

You'd think we'd have learned that lesson after the Sedition Act of 1918, the excesses of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the surveillance of the Rev. Martin Luther King. But apparently the lesson requires constant relearning. And vigilance.

So thank you to the Little Falls library for having the guts to say: Hell no. Some things should never happen in freedom's land.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for The Miami Herald. His column appears Sundays in The Sun. His e-mail is lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Through the justifications it has put forth for warrentless wiretapping, the Bush administration is almost literally crossing the Rubicon, beginning the process of transforming the United States from a republic into to a presidential dictatorship.

The warrantless wiretapping is dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional by itself. These are criminal acts by the President, and in and of themselves warrant impeachment and removal from office (whether or not impeachment is politically practical under a Republican Congress.)

But the Administration’s feeble rationales justifying this program are even more dangerous. Bush and his surrogates claim that the President has the constitutional right, as part of his inherent powers as Commander-In-Chief during a time of war (an endless war in this case) to do anything he chooses to do if he believes it protects national security. In short, Bush claims the power of a dictator.

Where could this power grab lead? President Bush and his surrogates have proclaimed many times that opposition to the Iraq war is dangerous, demoralizes the troops, encourages the enemy, and threatens America’s chances for victory. If Bush believes that opposition to the war threatens national security, why doesn’t he have the right to act against opponents to the Iraq war to protect national security?

Apparently government agents have already spied on a small Quaker peace group. Why then shouldn’t Bush have the power to wiretap the phones of Iraq war opponents from Rep. Murtha to Cindy Sheehan? Why shouldn’t he have the right to infiltrate anti-war groups with government informants? Why can’t he place agent provocateurs in anti-war groups to incite violent demonstrations in order to discredit the anti-war movement which is harming national security? Why can’t he burglarize the offices of psychiatrists of leading anti-war figures to find information with which to discredit them? Why can’t he break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee?

Wait a second; the government has already done all of these things in the recent past. It was called Watergate and the COINTELPRO Program (which lasted from 1956-71. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” groups and individuals that opposed U.S. government policy. The COINTELPRO program was investigated by a bi-partisan Senate Select Committee whose final report stated that the FBI “conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.” The Senate investigation led, among other things, to the passage of the FISA act which required a warrant from a special court in order for the government to place domestic wiretaps.

The Administration’s rationale for warrantless wiretapping could justify the reinstatement of any or all of the illegal activities of the old COINTELPRO Program and the Watergate burglars. Even Nixon’s lawyers never claimed a constitutional power for the President to act unilaterally in war time without regard to the Congress and the Courts (although Nixon once famously said, “If the President does it it’s not illegal.”) Bush provides the rationale to go even further. Since the President has the right to take all actions he thinks necessary to protect national security, why couldn’t he censor newspapers that oppose the Iraq War? Why couldn’t he arrest Iraq war opponents, and hold them without charges and without the right to a trial until he decides that the “War on Terror” is over? Taken to the extreme, why couldn’t he torture Iraq war opponents based on his signing statement to the McCain anti-torture Amendment which states that the President can bypass this law if he believes doing so protects national security?

I’m not saying that these things will happen. I’m saying that Bush’s theory of President’s unilateral war time powers could justify such actions and more.

The Bush administration’s legal theories are an invitation for denying Americans their basic democratic rights. The American people must be shown the danger. This should not be a Democratic vs. Republican issue nor a liberal vs. conservative issue. It should be an issue for all Americans who care about the survival of our republic. If Bush can’t be stopped now from wiretapping Americans without a warrant, then this could be the beginning of the end of democracy in America as we know it. Hopefully Congress and the courts, with pressure from the American people, will overrule Bush’s assertion of dictatorial power.

Copyright 2006 © HuffingtonPost.com, LLC

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don't get me wrong; manipulation and intimidation still occur. They just take on more subtle -- and, as a result, more insidious -- appearances.

This White House is a new master of the form, and they have found a way to pay for their deception. They are quietly picking the back pockets of U.S. taxpayers to turn around and sell Bush's political product back to . . . U.S. taxpayers.

The tab for the fleecing and flogging of Americans comes to at least $1.6 billion. That's the amount seven Bush administration agencies spent from 2003 through mid-2005 on hundreds of contracts with advertising agencies, PR firms, and individuals, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.

The GAO report carefully itemizes this administration's preference for pre-packaged reporting at the expense of real news and information -- in a scheme to make U.S. taxpayers pay for their own deception.

The report found that White House public relations spending goes well beyond the practices of any prior administration. The contracts included $2.5 million to present the Army's strategy in the global war on terrorism; $86 million to explain the new Medicare prescription drug benefit in a bilingual ad campaign; and a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks.

Fixing the Facts

This is not the first we've heard about this. Last September, GAO auditors scolded the White House for squandering American tax dollars to hire fake news reporters and unleash a pre-packaged news blitz in advance of the 2004 elections. That GAO report found the White House violated the law by hiring pundit Armstrong Williams to appear before the cameras and tout Bush's education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, while interviewing administration officials on the air.

The White House continues to deny that the government's practice of feeding TV stations prepackaged fake news, which don't disclose the government as the source, amounted to "covert propaganda."

Yesterday's GAO finding shoots down that sophistry. "No amount of money will successfully sell the Bush Administration's failed policies, from the war in Iraq, to its disastrous energy policy, to its confusing Medicare prescription drug benefits," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said following the release of the report. "The American people know the Bush Administration is on the wrong track and the White House PR machine won't change that fact."

The Propaganda Track Record

The question now before Congress and the Department of Justice is whether this spending merits the enforcement of long standing prohibitions against "covert propaganda." The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the domestic dissemination of government-authored propaganda or "official news" deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." The GAO has already found at least four separate occasions that Bush administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions.

A recently inserted provision into an annual spending bill would require federal agencies to include a "clear notification" within any prepackaged news story that was paid for by the government. Though this new legislation still floats somewhere between a Senate committee and the floor.

Given its track record, it's more than likely that the White House has set other illegal propaganda efforts loose in the media mainstream. We just don't know about them yet.

The Public Eye and Prosecutor's Sword

While the compounding evidence is damning, the GAO lacks the teeth to enforce laws against the ongoing abuse. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has final say over executive branch legal matters. And GAO and Justice Still don't see eye to eye on covert propaganda, specifically on the issue of unidentified video news releases.

Much of this has been left to the public to do what our elected and appointed officials are unwilling or unable to: pressure our government to stop using our money on propaganda. In October, Free Press unleashed a public campaign to do just that. In less than a month, nearly 40,000 concerned citizens signed letters to Congress and the Justice Department, urging Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "to prosecute these crimes to the fullest extent of the law."

Justice should never be delivered by popular fiat – but it's essential that our elected officials and their appointees understand that the public is watching. As more evidence comes into view, we're able to assemble a case against an administration that has gone too far, involving a systemic and quiet campaign to raid the public till, manipulate the Fourth Estate and turn the electorate in favor of an unpopular president.

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.

This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.

DOMESTIC SPYING After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.

According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to police itself and hold the line between national security and civil liberties on its own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy doesn't work that way. It's not clear that this administration knows where the line is, much less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's own dedication to the truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a question about whether he believed the president had the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. In fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was doing just that, and had signed off on it as White House counsel.

THE PRISON CAMPS It has been nearly two years since the Abu Ghraib scandal illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and other abuses at United States military prison camps. There have been Congressional hearings, court rulings imposing normal judicial procedures on the camps, and a law requiring prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it clear that he intends to follow the new law on the treatment of prisoners when his internal moral compass tells him it is the right thing to do.

On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States military authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners who had gone on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest being held without any semblance of justice. The article said administration officials were concerned that if a prisoner died, it could renew international criticism of Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is not some minor embarrassment. It is a lingering outrage that has undermined American credibility around the world.

According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees are neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were handed over to the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan warlords. Others were just swept up. The military has charged only 10 prisoners with terrorism. Hearings for the rest were not held for three years and then were mostly sham proceedings.
And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to run these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim who is to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled with dangerous terrorists.

THE WAR IN IRAQ One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me" moments was when he told Americans that the United States had to invade Iraq because it possessed dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat to America. The White House has blocked a Congressional investigation into whether it exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist that the decision to invade was based on the consensus of American intelligence agencies.

But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article by the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar, who said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a decision to invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded only the analysts who produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion. He said the intelligence community did that analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided society ripe for civil war.

When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.

Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes the people who still fervently support George W. Bush seem just plain stupid, and other times it seems they must be dishonest and even malevolent, harboring a hatred for their country that allows them to support misguided ideas and private agendas over the public good. In more reasonable moods, I want to believe that the Bush supporters are just like me in simply wanting what is best for the country safety, security, fairness and a commitment to a government that observes the principles upon which our nation was founded. When I'm thinking that way, I assume we don't disagree on goals and objectives, just on the most effective way to achieve those goals and objectives.

It's hard to keep that thought, though, when the lies keep piling up higher and deeper, and when so much of the energy of Bush supporters goes into evading reality. Is it really possible for there to be an honest difference of opinion about the calamitous Bush decision to invade Iraq? No weapons of mass destruction there, as we were told there were. No link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, as we were told there was, and as we continue to be urged to believe by deceptive administration rhetoric. Almost no likelihood that a stable democracy will be possible in an Iraq rent by ethnic feuds and anti-democratic traditions. Billions upon billions of dollars squandered in Iraq, and billions more stolen by corrupt U.S. contractors. Meanwhile, the Homeland Security entity Bush created has shown itself to be yet another huge government boondoggle, and utterly witless in responding to a national emergency.

Beyond that, we have the shameful spectacle of Americans who call themselves patriots urging a forfeiture of our rights and liberties as U.S. citizens the rights to due process and the protections devised by the founding fathers to guard against abuses of power.

And beyond that, we have breaches of national security in the outing of a CIA agent for no better reason than spite. We have the staffing of all kinds of highly paid and important government jobs with incompetent administration cronies and partners in crime. We have repeated and massive failures of imagination. No one could have imagined a) people flying planes into U.S. skyscrapers, b) a storm of the magnitude of Katrina, or c) a Palestinian militant group like Hamas winning elections in Palestine these being just a few of the things Condoleezza Rice has said the administration couldn't imagine.

Beyond all of that, we have the growing gap between rich and poor, the exportation of American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, the wasteful and exploitive health care system that continues to bankrupt American industries, the packing of the Supreme Court with judges confirmed despite their stonewalling before the congressional oversight committees charged with vetting them before they assumed lifetime appointments. We have been unable or unwilling to secure our borders. We have seen corruption on an unprecedented scale and massive neglect of dozens of urgent national needs. Science has been disregarded whenever it runs afoul of the profit motive, and we have a foreign policy no one, least of all the people in charge of it, seems to understand.

Our actions in Iraq have fueled the most extreme anti-Western views throughout the Islamic world, and the entire Middle East is less stable than it was when the Bush bunch took office.

Meanwhile, we build for our children and grandchildren a legacy of international hatred, plus a huge debt burden as the Bush administration spends and spends as though there is no tomorrow.

We've squandered our good name and our moral authority in the world as we've watched Rumsfeld and Cheney and other spokesmen for our nation argue to justify torture in the interest of our safety.

At a time when it was absolutely essential that the world know unequivocally just who the good guys were, Bush and Co. have sullied the image of America all over the globe, drawing a portrait of a nation that behaves with arrogance, defies world opinion, ignores planetary environmental concerns, and treats other nations with disdain.

All of this harm has come to our nation and to its image, and still a cluster of supporters insist on tarring anyone who might question this ruinous administration. One of the ignorant nimrods who regularly write to this paper to call me a Marxist argues that those who disagree with the president are delighted to see America fail, that people like me take pleasure in anything that gives comfort to our enemies. He argues that people who question the reckless use of the military are "pacifist military haters." There is no truth to such baseless and childish nonsense, but he seems to think it sounds persuasive, or perhaps he thinks it's a kind of logical argument.

That's one of the reasons it's difficult not to think some of these Bush supporters are just willfully stupid.

These people grow more tiresome as they have less and less with which to argue. Their recourse, it seems, is to tag people they disagree with by calling them "leftists" and "liberals," as if those words cancel out all arguments. These people exploit the nation's soldiers to bolster their arguments.

They claim to support the troops, but you never hear a peep from them about cuts to the Veterans Affairs budget or the shameful number of avoidable deaths and injuries suffered by our soldiers because the Bush administration still has not provided frontline troops with the kind of armored vehicles that could have saved them from many of those deaths and injuries.

But to people who are either stupid or malevolent, hatred of those they would label as "liberals" trumps love of country every time and blinds them to the harm being done to our security, our heritage and our well-being.

Jaime O'Neill is a widely published freelance writer.

Copyright © Paradise Post 2006

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Please, someone enlighten me. For the past 5 years I have been informed by Bush or some cabinet member that this is War time, that we are IN a War, we are AT War, we have a Wartime President, and we are preparing War against Iran and Syria, etc. Bush talks constantly of a War against terrorists.

I’d like to know with what country are we at War? Are we at War with specific countries, with a single person in a country, or with multiple persons in many countries?

I know there was a World War I, and a World War II. I have copies of their Declarations of War. War was declared, proclamations announced, armies were raised, several million people were destroyed, not to mention entire cities.

If we are now at War, is it World War III, Bush’s War I, an extension of the Gulf War, War against Afghanistan, War Against Iraq, Generalized War against anyone Bush declares is not with him? I’d like to know the name of the specific War we are in. Is it really a War we are now In?

George Bush said we were at War after 9/ll, against terrorists and terror and any country that harbored terrorists. People involved in the 9/11 disaster were mainly Saudis, so why are we not at War with the Saudis? But Bush is friendly with the Saudis, and will remain so as long as a gallon of petroleum is left in that country.

If we are at war with specific terrorists and everyone that participated in flying planes against the Twin Towers is now dead, then whom are we at War With? For a while after 9/11 Bush of “getting those terrorists’ as though the people who commandeered the planes were still alive.

Is anyone who has a grudge against the U.S. and the Bush administration, and would like to change the Bush regime, a terrorist?

Does that leave out anyone in Muslim countries, or in former Soviet countries, or even in Europe? I believe that many thousands of people, all around the world, fervently hate Bush and his neocon fascist theocrats and would happily see them vanish from the daily scene.

I know there were actual terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, sponsored by people like Osama bin Laden, arising out of unannounced Wars with the Soviet Union and continuing throughout the Gulf War. The history of terrorism goes back a long way in time, often coexistent with the history of the corporate military establishment and warmongering.

The Taliban regime of Afghanistan supported the training camps and refused to eject the people being trained. Were we at war with just the Taliban, just with people in the training camps, or with all the other people in Afghanistan? Are we justified in killing anyone in Afghanistan if they are not “with us?”

But then the picture gets confused. Did we actually declare “War” against Afghanistan? Did this qualify as the beginning of WWIII? I know that troops invaded Afghanistan, destroyed the main training camps, dispersed the trainees and occupied the country. We changed the regime, installed our own puppet ruler and then settled down to daily killing random Afghanis and friends seeking vengeance against American brutality and destruction.

I know we are still there. In fact, the other day I heard that Britain was sending another 3,000 troops, with other contingents to arrive in Afghanistan because evidently terror is on the rise there. Must we exterminate all the inhabitants of Afghanistan to stop their hate?

Was the War over when we invaded and occupied Afghanistan? Did simple Police Action then begin? If a single terrorist remains in a country, does that justify our occupying that country, killing its inhabitants, substituting our own puppets, and calling it “democracy?”

Osama bin Laden escaped from being surrounded and went to some other country as our favorite terrorist. Did each country bin Laden escaped to then qualify for a different War? Bush said he would fight terror wherever it raised its ugly head and that if they weren’t with us, then they were against us?

Is “they” a country, a group of people, or anyone Bush considers to be a terrorist? Is “Stateless Terrorism” an entity? Is a vague ideology like the neocon strategy for world domination a terrorist entity?

If terrorists are spread world wide, does that mean we are then at War with the world? Are we now in WW IV, world-wide, with the right to invade any country or send missiles and planes into it to seek terrorists and in the process kill any civilians that happen to have been living there?

Did the Downing Street Memo that had Bush and his neocons talking about invading Iraq and other countries, long before 9/11, purposely create terror? Was the War against terror actually a very good pretext to occupy Iraq for its petroleum, to put military bases there and a large embassy from which diplomats could fan out to threaten and dominate the entire Middle East?

Did not the Bush family and their cronies, with their sales of weapons and aggressive trading in oil, enrage people who were victims of weapons and cultural arrogance? What part did Christian fundamentalism, with its contempt for Islam, play in cultural jingoism and Islamic resentment?

For instance, Iraq had never threatened the U.S. and in the past 4 years we found they had no WMD’s, no Yellow Cake, no aluminum tubes for nuclear devices, no long-range missiles, no fleet of pilotless planes, no nuclear bombs, thus no mushroom clouds.

Yet all the War dances of the entire Bush cabinet alleging enormous imminent fright over Saddam Hussein’s EVIL intentions, and all their twisting of intelligence to suit their New World Order plans, created a War out of imagination, lust for power, and hunger for oil.

Does 9/11 justify EVERYTHING for neocon expansionism? Is this a War or simple looting and domination of entire countries?

When and HOW did that get to be a WAR? And after we murdered about 40,000 Iraqis “accidentally” as “collateral damage” in the process of capturing Saddam, jailed him, and occupied the entire country, installed our own puppet regime under our own ruler, was the War then over?

When Bush swaggered onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, under a huge sign announcing MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, was the War then not over?

When Bush later announced that he had brought peace, liberty, democracy, sovereignty and a constitution back to Iraq was the War then not over?

Does Bush have to wait until every single person in Iraq that wants to kill him is dead, will the War then be over? Does he want to wait and lure terrorists from all over the world into Iraq, like flies on fly-paper, and kill them all there rather than have them come over here?

Does staying a failed course make any sense? Does repetition of grave mistakes not need correcting? Isn’t there any sane person in the Bush administration or Senate?

Bush sent several shiny missiles from pilotless planes screaming into a small village in Pakistan, killing innocent peasants whose families that lived in that land for ages, without consulting its sovereign government, so was he not then at War with Pakistan?

Can Bush send deadly missiles into any country in the world he pleases, solely because he holds the keys to the atomic arsenal of the U.S.? Again, is there not a sane person in the Senate to curb the reckless and murderous acts of their arrogant President?

If Burma, or Venezuela, or North Korea should happen to have a person in that country that Bush labels a terrorist, can he then simply go ahead and send missiles into that country? Will he be justified in sending troops into that country and have the U.S. occupy it for generations, spending a trillion dollars in the process?

If Bush will not leave Iraq, telling the puppets he installed to go f...k themselves, but continues to build huge permanent military bases there, and continues to occupy a palace that Saddam built, now intended for a huge embassy, from which to dominate the entire Middle East, will the War ever be over?

How long will U.S. troops skulk the streets with cocked weapons at the ready to shoot anyone who seems to object to their presence? How many houses must they knock down, how many people must they kill, how much damage to a country is too much? If the war is declared to be “over” can Bush still be War President with unlimited powers?

Perhaps Bush wants to remain War President forever as it makes him feel good, powerful, courageous, and heroic?

So, are we in a proclaimed War? When will it be over? Who does the unproclaiming? If our President lied to start a War, must he now lie to stop one?

If Condi Rice stirs up enough fright with her new mushroom clouds to send missiles into Iran, will that be a War, a Police Action, or a “justifiable preemption based on evil intentions,” or another way to loot an Arab country and in that way get oil, land, puppet regimes, and proselytize the infidels at the same time?

I saw huge signs over Bush’s head, recently, proclaiming VICTORY, when he was making a speech justifying his imperial arrogance. Should not aggression cease if victory has been accomplished, unless it was another lie to bolster up his diminishing polls?

If all the “amazing progress” Bush reports nearly daily were added up, what is left to do? Is there no sane person in the Senate, or Judiciary, to tell Bush, “Enough is enough. Get our troops home, now.”

Would it not be cheaper, more effective, to send individual CIA assassins around the world to kill individual terrorists where they lurking?

Right now Bush is proposing the largest budget in world history. Most of the budget will go to his cronies for military expansion, rehabilitation of equipment, high explosives, bunker busters, helicopters, gun-ships, nuclear submarines, armaments, new tanks and humvees.

Certainly vast amounts of precious Petroleum will be burned racing around the deserts of Araby. More troops will be killed. But many more terrorists will be created by the brutal occupation, destruction, and deaths. Civilian deaths don’t matter to Bush. When will it be enough?

Bush supporters seem delighted to occupy Muslim territory and kill the infidel. Oil and money flow in abundance to rich Republicans. The poor, starving, homeless, illiterate, sick, aged, black, brown, and other people are all grist for the corruption mill.

Republicans seem to delight in death and destruction, at least praise Bush for his “accomplishments” in saving us from the terror he initiated or creates by murderous occupation. So there seems to be no rush to cease daily threats and acts of war.

The undeclared WAR will probably go on as long as Republican Senators remain confident in keeping their jobs by being sycophants of a petulant, carefree, egotistical, dry-drunk, failed executive. Death and destruction does not seem to disturb them, but perhaps the threat of losing their jobs might.

Anyone voting for any sycophant Republican must be gullible, stupid or a fully-committed True Believer with absolutist dogma and a wish for the Rapture to take them all to Paradise.

Dick and George could use a bevy of virgins, or perhaps a good stiff shot of heavenly Jack Daniels ambrosia, to take their minds off of killing for fun and profit.

Source: Bellaciao
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=10302

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes it's the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is a regulation that bars most public access to birth and death certificates for 70 to 100 years. In much of the country, these records have long been invaluable tools for activists, lawyers, and reporters to uncover patterns of illness and pollution that officials miss or ignore.

In These Times has obtained a draft of the proposed regulations now causing widespread concern among state officials. It reveals plans to create a vast database of vital records to be centralized in Washington, and details measures that states must implement-and pay millions for--before next year's scheduled implementation.

The draft lays out how some 60,000 already strapped town and county offices must keep the birth and death records under lock and key and report all document requests to Washington. Individuals who show up in person will still be able to obtain their own birth certificates, and in some cases, the birth and death records of an immediate relative; and "legitimate" research institutions may be able to access files. But reporters and activists won't be allowed to fish through records; many family members looking for genetic clues will be out of luck; and people wanting to trace adoptions will dead-end. If you are homeless and need your own birth certificate, forget it: no address, no service.

Consider the public health implications. A few years back, a doctor in a tiny Vermont town noticed that two patients who lived on the same hill had ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. Hearing rumors of more cases of the relatively rare and always fatal disease, the doctor notified the health department. Citing lack of resources, it declined to investigate. The doc then told a reporter, who searched the death certificates filed in the town office only to find that ALS had already killed five of the town's 1,300 residents. It was statistically possible, but unlikely, that this 10-times higher-than-normal incidence was simply chance. Since no one knows what causes ALS, clusters like this one, once revealed, help epidemiologists assess risk factors, warn doctors to watch for symptoms, and alert neighbors and activists.

Activists in Colorado already know what it is like when states bar access to vital records. For years, they fought the Cotter Corporation, claiming that its uranium mining operations were killing residents and workers. Unwilling to rely on the health department, which they claimed had a "cozy" relationship with the polluters, the activists tried to access death records, only to be told that it was illegal in this closed-record state. An editorial in Colorado's Longmont Daily Times-Call lamented, "If there's a situation that makes the case for why death certificates should be available to the public, it is th[is] Superfund area."

Some of state officials around the country are questioning whether the new regulations themselves illegally tread on states' rights. But the feds have been coy. Richard McCoy, public health statistic chief in Vermont, one of the nation's 14 open records states, says, "No state is mandated to meet the regs. However if they don't, then residents of that state will not be able to access any federal services, including social security and passports. States have no choice."

But while the public loses access to records, the federal government gains a gargantuan national database easily cross-referenced in the name of national security. The feds' claim that increased security will deter identity theft and terrorism is facile. Wholesale corporate data gathering is the major nexis of identity theft. As for terrorism, all the 9/11 perpetrators had valid identification.

Meanwhile, the quiet clampdown on vital records is part of a growing consolidation of information at the federal level. "That information will dovetail with the Real ID Act of 2005," says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Real ID cards are the other shoe that is scheduled to drop in three years." That act, signed into law last May, establishes national standards for state-issued driver's licenses and ID cards, and centralizes the information into a database.

Aside from public health and privacy concerns, closing vital records incurs a steep intangible cost: It undermines community in places where that healthy ethos still survives. In small town America, the local clerk's office is a sociable place where government wears the face of your neighbor. Each year, Vermont's 246 towns distribute their vital statistics to all residents. "It's the first place everybody goes in the Town Report," says state archivist Gregory Sanford. "Who was born, who died, who got married, who had a baby and wasn't married."

This may not be the most dramatic danger to democracy, but it is one of the Bush administration's many quiet, incremental assaults on the health of America's body politic. And it may end up listed on the death certificate for open society.

(c) 2006 In These Times

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Please join in endorsing this statement of faith leaders by completing
the information under the list of Initial Endorsers below the Statement.

NRCAT LogoTorture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions hold dear. It degrades everyone involved --policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation's most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable.

Torture and inhumane treatment have long been banned by U.S. treaty obligations, and are punishable by criminal statute. Recent developments, however, have created new uncertainties. By reaffirming the ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as well as torture, the McCain amendment, now signed into law, is a step in the right direction. Yet its implementation remains unclear.

The President's signing statement, which he issued when he signed the McCain Amendment into law, implies that the President does not believe he is bound by the amendment in his role as commander in chief. The possibility remains open that inhumane methods of interrogation will continue.

Furthermore, in a troubling development, for the first time in our nation's history, legislation has now been signed into law that effectively permits evidence obtained by torture to be used in a court of law. The military tribunals that are trying some terrorist suspects are now expressly permitted to consider information obtained under coercive interrogation techniques, including degrading and inhumane techniques and torture.

We urge Congress and the President to remove all ambiguities by prohibiting:

* Exemptions from the human rights standards of international law for any arm of our government.
* The practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby suspects are apprehended and flown to countries that use torture as a means of interrogation.
* Any disconnection of "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" from the ban against "torture" so as to permit inhumane interrogation.
* The existence of secret U.S. prisons around the world.
* Any denial of Red Cross access to detainees held by our government overseas.

We also call for an independent investigation of the severe human rights abuses at U.S. installations like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now --without exceptions.

People of faith are encouraged to endorse this statement. You may do so by completing the information below the list of recent endorsers at Http://www.nrcat.org. You may also write to the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, 40 Witherspoon St., Princeton, NJ 08542. The phone number is 609-924-5022.

The statement was adopted by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) during its founding conference at Princeton, NJ, January 13-15, 2006.

Those wishing to make a donation may do so after endorsing when you will automatically be taken to step 2 (contribute). You may also send a check, made out to NRCAT/PAEF, to the National Religious Campaign against Torture, 40 Witherspoon St., Princeton, NJ 08542. Finally, you may also donate by phone: 609-924-5022.

Your contribution will help raise funds for ongoing work against torture, including running our statement in media across the nation. Donations are tax deductible. The Peace Action Education Fund (PAEF) based in Princeton, NJ is currently the 501(c) (3) tax exempt fiscal agent for NRCAT.

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe a lifetime in the news business makes one paranoid. Or maybe it was just a matter of timing.

The story showed up in Tuesday's Press-Telegram, as I was reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's horrifying autobiography of a teenager in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Appearing on page A5, the story said the federal government had awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities." These would be used, the story said, in the event of an "immigration emergency."

Jamie Zuieback, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), explained such an emergency like this: "If, for example, there were some sort of upheaval in another country that would cause mass migration, that's the type of situation that the contract would address."

That sounds a tad fuzzy, but let's concede that the camps do have something to do with immigration, illegal or not. In fact, there already are thousands of beds in place at various U.S. locations for the purpose of housing illegal immigrants.

But for anyone familiar with history U.S. or European the construction of detention camps for whatever purpose should prompt a chilling scenario.

Same folks

The new detention camps will be built by Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The latter, as you likely know, is the defense-related corporate giant with fists full of contracts involving the war in Iraq.

Halliburton was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000. Democrats in Congress have accused the administration of favoring the company via no-bid contracts. But KBR says the detention contract was competitive.

Tuesday's story also said the contract was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers. However, Halliburton says it was awarded by the Department of Homeland Security in support of ICE.

The contract is for a year, but includes four one-year options. It is a renewal of an existing contract, notes Halliburton.

KBR, in fact, had the $9.7 million contract to build the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. This facility, popularly dubbed "Gitmo," holds 660 prisoners classified by the government as "enemy combatants."

Anyone care?

This column is written with the distinct feeling that not many people will give a hoot about any or all of this. But as already noted, a news story about construction of government detention centers should give us all pause.

Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.

Bottom line: The contract cries out for greater attention. So far, the government's expressed reason for building them is insufficient and ill-defined. And even if the camps do relate to illegal immigration, their purpose could be changed overnight.

This is an instance in which we could be well served by our representatives in Congress. They need to look at this and give constituents a better picture of what is going on.

Let's not have it said, years from now, that no one ever questioned this.

Tom Hennessy can be reached at Scribe17@aol.com

Copyright © 2006 Los Angeles Newspaper Group

Source: Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA)

Posted by Br. Karekin, BSG at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)