News of the Month

October 13, 2001

The biggest news of the past month, of course, occurred 2 and a half days after our last show.  We’ve heard hour after tedious hour of discussion, prognostication, opinion, and pooled ignor­ance masquerading as “erudite comment” on that tragedy, so I don’t want to discuss the events in New York themselves.  What concerns me right now are the changes being made to our society and our nation because of those events.  Our freedoms are in danger, friends –the government shows all the signs that it’s going to seize this golden opportunity to drastically reduce every freedom we are guaranteed by the Constitution; and the majority of the sheep – pardon me, peo­ple – out there will be oh, so glad to be led to that slaughter, for fear of the threat of “terrorism.”

Take just one example: on Thursday, October 4, as reported by Reuters, “The new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said he would not support new privacy legislation, but instead emphasize enforcement of existing laws, reversing a position taken by the consumer protection agency last year.  FTC Chairman Timothy Muris, an appointee of Republican President Bush, said Thursday in a long-anticipated speech that he does not currently see the need for new legis­lation that would give consumers greater control over how information about them is shared among businesses, both over the Internet and in the ‘offline’ world.  Instead, the agency will concentrate more heavily on enforcing existing laws and policies, boosting its enforcement staff and budget by 50 percent, Muris said in a speech at a privacy conference in Cleveland.”

There’s nothing ominous in that – oh, no.  We have the “Homeland Security Service” to protect us.  Hmmm.  “Homeland Security Service.”  Reminds me of the names of a couple of similar organizations from earlier in this century.  They were the “State Security Service” and the “Homeland Police.”  Amazing how similar the name of our new agency is to those two older ones.  Let’s see; the Homeland Police, or in the original language, Gehiemenstadtspolitzei; and the State Security Service, or Stadtsicherheitsdienst.  Too long for you?  Try their abbreviations, the Gestapo and the SS.  Ring any bells?  Like, alarm bells?

While we’re on the topic of Nazi repression – and, for those of you who don’t remember history, we are – I heard something truly scary on KLBJ-AM just yesterday morning.  They have even the school teachers – the ones who are supposed to teach our children how to be free & indepen­dent, thinking human beings –turning our schools into training grounds for a new Jugendcorps –youth corps.  One teacher who called in said, “I’m thrilled about the fact that the separation of church and state is breaking down in the schools.”  Another said, “Our seniors (meaning high school seniors) are asking questions; but we tell them that the people who say the attacks were a result of our own failed foreign policy just … aren’t operating with their full capacity.”

The enemies of freedom just don’t let up.  And I’m not talking about Osama Bin Laden, or the Taliban, or the “Northern Alliance” (who, from all reports, are just as bad as the Taliban – but they’re on our side, so who cares how many women they rape?).  No – I’m talking about our own government!  I mean, if King Georgie II had asked for it, he couldn’t have … (pause) Oh, my god... (pause; shiver)  … if he’d asked for it, he couldn’t have created a better excuse to start taking our liberties away.

You want an example?  On Thursday, the American-Statesman reported that one of King Geor­gie the Stupid’s paid stooges in the Senate introduced a bill to make it illegal for any Federal employee to reveal any vulnerability in the pipelines that crisscross this country.  We have sev­eral of them running through Austin, including one that’s getting ready to be used for purposes it was never designed for – a clear safety violation.  The head of the US Office of Pipeline Safety, a retired Navy intelligence officer, said that from what he knows, the dangers of a pipeline acci­dent are far greater than those of any potential terrorist threat.  Or how about this: last week, Deborah Winger appeared on a TV talk show to plug her new movie; she said that she had been warned to “censor what she said” by Federal officials.  A movie actor?  Plugging a movie?  What would she possibly have said that would have been any real danger to national security?

Even the Supremes are joining in the dismantling of liberty.  On the day before the October 1 opening of the Supreme Court’s 2001-2002 term, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said she foresaw unprecedented restrictions on democratic rights in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.  She flatly declared, “We’re likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country.”

This terrifying statement was part of a speech at the Greenwich Village campus of New York University Law School.  She went on to say, “It is possible, if not likely, that we will rely more on international rules of war than on our cherished constitutional standards for criminal prosec­utions, in responding to threats to our national security.”  She went on to say that the attacks “will cause us to reexamine some of our laws pertaining to criminal surveillance, wiretapping, immigration, and so on.”  So much for the Constitution, folks!  ‘Course, we learned last Decem­ber that the Supremes are just paid flacks for the powerful, anyway.

And, of course, just last weekend King Georgie started “retaliating” against the nation of Af­ghanistan for harboring Osama Bin Laden.  Hah!  Are we trying to “bomb them back to the stone age?”  Russia already did that – and had to pull out with its tail between its legs.  Are we trying to reduce them to poverty and despair?  The Taliban itself, Afghanistan’s supposed leaders, al­ready did that – kinda reminds me of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia years ago.  But none of that matters; after a long search, we finally found enemies we can point at and say, “That’s them!”

Or did we?  Take Osama Bin Laden, for example.  Did you know that the Bin Laden family and the Bush family are as thick as thieves?  (Chuckle.)  They’re both very powerful partners in The Carlyle Group, a super-exclusive “investment club” for the super-wealthy.  They’ve both been using their government connections to rake in billions over a lot of years.  (Where did you think Osama got all his money?)  Oh: their investments?  Mainly oil, and defense contracting.  No con­flict of interest there – the current “war” has nothing to do with oil – noooo – and the defense contractors aren’t making a dime off this.

Or even, consider the Taliban.  Our enemies, right?  You’d think so; but listen to this, taken from an article written just last May in the Los Angeles Times:

“ ‘Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civil­ization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you.  All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.’

“That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghan­istan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today.  The gift, announced last Thursday (May 16) by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban, and rewards that ‘rogue regime’ for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God.  So, too, by the Taliban's estima­tion, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

“Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.

Of course, much less was made by US news parrots… – excuse me, outlets … of our attack on the people of Afghanistan.  “Oh, that don’t count – it’s a bunch of them furrin men, women, and children dyin’, not Americans!”  Think about it – how much did you see of the disastrous impact our nighttime attacks must have had on Kabbul and the other Afghan cities we attacked?  I saw one clip of one bomb strike, repeated throughout the day last Monday, but with a frame around it containing Arabic lettering – as if to say, “We’ll show you this, but remember: it’s comin’ from them ragheads, so you cain’t believe it.”

One TV newsman – US – reportedly said that he’d been told to stop saying that we were bomb­ing Kabbul, and start saying that we were bombing military targets around Kabbul.  Freedom of the press, that’s what we have.  I love my country, but I’m scared spitless of its government.  Pay attention to the lies, friends.  They’re everywhere.  The government learned its lesson in Vietnam – show too much of the carnage, and the American people will find their hearts and stop the war.  Our rulers perfected their “solution” in the Iraq destruction – I can’t really call it a war – keep the news agencies away from the real action, and only show the sanitized version to the folks back home.  Don’t show US fighters strafing columns of defeated and retreating Iraqui soldiers, which is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and every rule of “civilized warfare.”  They have it down pat now – we won’t see one thing that is really happening over there.  Our so-called “free press” has its nose so far up … umm; maybe I’d better leave it at that.

So why do they do that?  Why have the people in our government forgotten – or lost sight of – the fact that people are dying because of their actions?  Well, I’m becoming more and more con­vinced that the answer to that question is that our government is not where – or what – we think it is.  Our government – our true government – isn’t in Washington any more (if it was ever there); it’s in the boardrooms of the super-wealthy, super-powerful transnational corporations like Monsanto, Ford, Exxon, and … yes, Dell.  We’re going to be talking more about this fact in coming shows – talking about the fact that the people who are dying in America, in truth, mean as little to King Georgie and his super-rich corporate barons, earls, and dukes as the people who are dying in Afghanistan.

Don’t believe it?  A reporter recently asked King Georgie if he cared that his programs were hurting the poor, the racial minorities, and the disenfranchised.  His answer?  In true frat-rat style, he said, “I don’t give a f…” ummm; again, I’d better stop there.  The government is not in the three Constitutionally mandated branches any more; it’s out in St. Louis, and Detroit, and Houston – and Austin.  We’ll be talking about that – starting next month, in fact, in our virtual interview with Ramsey Clark.

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Closer to home, last Wednesday Austin heard from two farmers, Percy Schmeiser and Rodney Nelson, who talked to us about their fight against the global biotech terrorist corporation, Mon­santo.  They told how corporate power, with a jet-assisted take-off by our wise and benevolent rulers in Washington, is assaulting their freedom to pursue what is probably the most fundamen­tal occupation in the world – growing our food.  We’re going to have a show about the growth of government-assisted corporate power soon, discussing the way corporations have very nearly become the government today.  In the meantime, you might be interested in looking up the corp­orations headed by King Georgie’s cabinet before they ascended to government power.  Hmph.

Remember last month, how some turkeys from the Radical Sacrilegious Right organization “God Hates Fags” were going to protest the University Baptist Church’s stance of tolerance for every­one?  They chickened out.  Decided that “discretion was the better part of valor.”  …  Typical.

Oh – my social security number ends with “98,” so I was last in line to get my Federal Income Tax rebate check.  It came late last month.  Hmmm.  How many of you “helped the economy” by spending your tax rebate check on something?  I know exactly how many of you did it.  Down to the person.  How many?  None of you.  Because none of you received a tax rebate check.  So what did we all receive?  A loan, that’s what.  Uncle Sam was loaning us our own money.  King Georgie the Stupid figured “The economy’s going great guns – I’m in my office, all’s right with the world!”  Did I say stupid?  When the payments caused the easily foreseen shortfall in the budget, Congress had to borrow 28 billion dollars from Social Security to pay for it.  “Bread and the games of the circus” – somebody in Washington’s been reading history.

So it was a loan, not a rebate; what does that mean?  Those checks are not a rebate on taxes we’ve already paid – they’re an advance on whatever refund we might get, come tax time next year.  Jim Hightower calls this piece of lying flummery “rebate and switch.”  OK, then; how are you going to pay back this loan?  Easy – come tax time next year, everyone pays that loan back, whether they want to or not.  Say you do your taxes, and find that the Infernal Revenue Service owes you a $200 refund.  Oops!  Remember?  You borrowed $300 from the Treasury last sum­mer.  “I’m so sorry,” King Georgie says, “you’re not getting the $200 refund you deserve; you owe us $100 to finish paying off that loan you took out last summer.”  Hmph; as bad as GMAC.

Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote, “The American republic will endure until the day the Con­gress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”  Well, it wasn’t Congress who discovered it; it was our illegally selected and illegitimately sitting “president.”  Combine that with the golden opportunity that the very real tragedy in New York is giving that political opportunist to tighten down the screws on our freedoms, and the Republic is in danger.  The Senate – more than once – has galloped off in full stampede, bamboozled by the king’s histrionic hand waving.  I personally want, as should we all, to thank the members of the House, who are having the good sense to say “Wait a minute!  Surely we can take a few hours to at least discuss the restrictions on the people’s freedom being proposed by this administration.”  Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you.