News of the Month

July 13, 2002

Before I talk about our heroes, I want to talk for a few minutes to the Libertarians in the audience. (You non-libertarians can listen, too, if you want; it might be interesting.) The heart and soul of Libertarianism is, as Terry Liberty Parker often quotes, that “each individual is free to do as each decides, EXCEPT initiate, or do a credible threat to initiate, physical force against the person or justly acquired possessions of another.”

That’s kind of a big mind-full, so let me repeat it in slightly different words: “Everyone should be free to do what she or he wants, except to do, or threaten to do, violence against another person or that person’s property.” (Or, as we Wiccans phrase it, “If it harm none, do as thou wilt.”) From there, though, all sorts of secondary philosophies, opinions, and platform planks have been clopped onto that basic wisdom, sort of like … barnacles on the side of a ship.

One of those barnacles is that businesses – corporations – should be left free to pursue their objectives – meaning their profits – unhindered by regulations of any sort. In order to attach this barnacle to the side of the Libertarian ship, we have to accept a truly perverse twisting of the Constitution, first decreed by the Supreme Court in the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad case of 1886 – that corporations have all the rights and privileges of “natural persons” – meaning human beings.

An interesting sidelight of that case is that it’s one of the first instances where the Court’s actions made it unmistakably clear that its members had been paid to rule the way they did. Before arguments even began, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Waite said, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.” No argument; no discussion; no deliberation – just an imperial pronouncement, and splat! Corporations become people.

Once you accept that bit of bought-and-and-paid-for bull-byproducts, everything else follows. Enron can lie, cheat, and steal billions from the citizens of California, and still have enough influence with Crown Prince Cheney to tell him whom to appoint as chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Monsanto can sue a farmer for illegal use of its patented technology, despite the fact that its technology actually invaded the farmer’s land, violating his property rights and ruining a lifetime of careful seed cultivation by him.

Libertarians mistrust government – and rightfully so. Mismanagement, fraud, and waste are rampant. Government is the only place where a manager and his department are rewarded for incompetence. “We didn’t do our job this year because we don’t have enough resources to do it. We need more people. And more computers. And more money. And more power.” How many times have you seen that happen? It’s happening in the FBI right now. Think about it. Libertarians argue that government is pretty much the worst agent to do just about any job you can think of – that private industry, governed only by the free market, can do nearly anything more effectively, more efficiently, and cheaper than government. And I agree: it can. The trouble is, it doesn’t – and won’t – at least as long as the mega-corporations are free to buy all the influence they want in the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, and the White House. The mega-corporations don’t just run the government; they are the government. Don’t believe me? I’ll tell you all about it next month; but if you want a preview, look in Michael Moore’s best-selling book, Stupid White Men, in the “Who’s Who in the Coup” section starting on page 16.

OK; enough of that – we’ll talk about it more next month.

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On to our heroes, people who have the guts to stand up and tell the truth against sometimes overwhelming pressure to sit down and shut up. Let’s start with Aaron McGruder, the artist who creates the “Boondocks” comic strip, who offered this prayer on Thanksgiving Day of 2001:

“In this time of war against Osama bin Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that our leader isn't the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties. Amen.”

Check his strip out – it runs in the American-Statesman every day.

Our next hero is also represented by a prayer he wrote, though a somewhat longer one. He is Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who consistently backs views that favor the people over the corporations and their paid-for government. He introduced the “Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act of 2002,” which would require that consumers be allowed to know about all genetically engineered components in their food. Of course it’s going to fail – yes, it enhances the people’s right to make a free and informed choice about the food we put into our bodies; but would make the corporations (gasp!) spend money.

Rep. Kucinich is one of the few members of Congress who consistently fights against our illegally installed “President” and “Vice-President,” their so-called “PATRIOT” Act, and the formation of the American Gestapo, the “Homeland Security Service.” (“Gestapo”, by the way, was a German abbreviation for Geheimestaatspolizei, meaning “homeland police.”) His prayer says, in part:

“Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why we must challenge the rationale of the PATRIOT Act. We must ask, why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?

“How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?

“How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?

“How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?

“How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?

“How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?

“We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and Internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it. We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant. We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups. We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.

Let us pray that our nation's leaders will not be overcome with fear. Because today there is great fear in our great Capitol. And this must be understood before we can ask about the shortcomings of Congress in the current environment. The great fear began when we had to evacuate the Capitol on September 11. … It continued when we abandoned Washington when anthrax, possibly from a government lab, arrived in the mail. It continued when the Attorney General declared a nationwide terror alert and then the Administration brought the destructive Patriot Bill to the floor of the House. … The trappings of a state of siege trap us in a state of fear, ill equipped to deal with the Patriot Games, the Mind Games, the War Games of an unelected President and his unelected Vice President.”

There’s a lot more to the prayer – and to his views; I urge you to go to his web site at http://www.house.gov/kucinich/ and read more.

Next I want to talk about Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. She was the first (and for a time, the only) member of Congress to call for an investigation into King George II’s foreknowledge of, and possible collusion in, the attacks of last September 11. On May 16, she wrote:

“Several weeks ago, I called for a congressional investigation into what warnings the Bush Administration received before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I was derided by the White House, right wing talk radio, and spokespersons for the military-industrial complex as a conspiracy theorist. Even my patriotism was questioned because I dared to suggest that Congress should conduct a full and complete investigation into the most disastrous intelligence failure in American history. Georgia Senator Zell Miller even went so far as to characterize my call for hearings as ‘dangerous, loony, and irresponsible.’

“Today’s revelations that the administration, and President Bush, were given months of notice that a terrorist attack was a distinct possibility points out the critical need for a full and complete congressional investigation.

“It now becomes clear why the Bush Administration has been vigorously opposing congressional hearings. The Bush Administration has been engaged in a conspiracy of silence. If committed and patriotic people had not been pushing for disclosure, today's revelations would have been hidden by the White House.

“Because I love my country, because I am a patriot, and because the American people deserve the truth, I believe it would be dangerous, loony and irresponsible not to hold full congressional hearings on any warnings the Bush Administration had before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”

To quote Mike Ruppert, “Congresswoman McKinney is the ONLY Congressperson with the will and integrity to demand a full inquiry of what Bush knew and when he knew it about (the) 9-11 attacks (and to find out where the $2.3 TRILLION the DOD "LOST" went to), AND NOW WE MAY LOSE HER. For her courage the Democrats are trying to get rid of her. Rather than using their resources to defeat Republicans, they are taking aim at a 5-term Georgia Congresswoman.”

What revelations is she talking about? Actually, they’ve been coming thick and fast, but tonight I’ll just talk about one of the heroes who have risked their careers to bring buried information to the surface. Not that there aren’t a lot more, but we need to leave some time for our guest, too.

From the Washington office of the Los Angeles Times of May 27:

“FBI officials in Washington not only stymied an investigation into flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui before Sept. 11, but also actively tried to stop field agents from connecting the suspected 20th hijacker to the terrorist attacks even after they occurred, a Minnesota field agent contends in a 13-page "whistle-blower" letter made public Sunday.

“FBI agent Coleen Rowley, general counsel in the Minneapolis field office, also charges in her letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller that intelligence about Moussaoui provided by the French government, which included information on his ‘activities connected with Osama bin Laden,’ was more than enough to obtain a special surveillance warrant to search Moussaoui's laptop computer in the weeks before the attacks.

“But requests for such a warrant were thwarted by FBI supervisors in Washington who seemed so intent on ignoring the threat posed by Moussaoui that some field agents speculated that key officials at FBI headquarters ‘had to be spies or moles . . . who were actually working for Osama bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis’ effort,’ Rowley wrote.

…

“Within days of Moussaoui's arrest Aug. 15, FBI field agents in Minneapolis were convinced that he was a dangerous Islamic militant who had sought aviation training for terrorist acts. That belief stemmed from their investigation, as well as from a wealth of information provided by the French intelligence service, Rowley said. Her reference to ‘activities connected to … bin Laden’ is the first indication that authorities had suspected Moussaoui of being linked to the alleged terrorist mastermind prior to Sept. 11.

“Despite those concerns, officials at FBI headquarters in Washington repeatedly quashed efforts to help the field agents secure a special warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which would have allowed them to run wiretaps and search Moussaoui's computer and personal effects, Rowley said.

More and more people are realizing that King George II is lying to the American people about his activities relative to the September 11 attacks. For example, consider this report from Reuters in Monterrey, California, on June 4:

“A U.S. Air Force officer has been suspended from duty after he wrote a letter to a California newspaper accusing President Bush (news - web sites) of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen ‘because he needed this war on terrorism,’ a military official said on Tuesday. Lt. Colonel Steve Butler was relieved of his duties as vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute pending an investigation into his letter, which was published in the Monterey County Herald on May 26, a military spokesman said. Butler's letter accused Bush – the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces – of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to occur for his own political ends.

“ ‘Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama,’ Butler's letter said. ‘His presidency was going nowhere. He wasn’t elected by the American people, but placed into the Oval Office by the conservative Supreme Court ... the economy was sliding into the usual Republican pits and he needed something to hang his presidency on.’

“Butler, a 24-year Air Force veteran who served as a combat pilot during the 1990 Gulf War, was not immediately available for comment. … Butler’s suspension was apparently based on Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says that any commissioned officer who uses “contemptuous words” against the president or other senior officials may be punished by a court-martial.”

Fascinating! The Uniform Code of Military Justice is a law, passed by Congress, to be a single “justice” system for all the uniformed services. Now, the Constitution says that laws passed by Congress rank below the Constitution in precedence. This means that legally, the provisions of the UCMJ have to yield to the provisions of the Constitution. That’s not happening. Here is a law that is being used to deny people their first-Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. This law – just a plain old law, passed by Congress – has been trampling the Constitutional rights of our nation’s defenders since its adoption in 1950.

Our rights and liberties – including our right to know the truth – are being taken away, piece by piece. (Pause.) You know, if you plop a frog into boiling water, he has the sense to hop right out. But if you put him in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, he doesn’t notice it until he’s dead and poached. Well, friends, we’re being poached, and it’s not likely to stop until we and our freedoms are dead – or we turn off the gas.

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OK – I have to cover three pieces of actual news from this month.

First, something you probably heard about – from the front lines of our illegal war against Afghanistan, being illegally waged by the illegally installed “president” to ensure that his illegitimate corporate sponsors can build an unwanted pipeline to carry the oil they steal out of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc. Our glorious heroes of the United States Air Force bombed a deadly threat in Afghanistan – a wedding. A wedding! “Gotta make sure them ragheads don’t get married and reproduce!” say our heroic defenders. I remember Vietnam; I was in the Army at the time, and I refused to go to Vietnam because it violated the Nuremberg treaties concerning the conduct of war. This war is just as wrong, just as illegal, and just as purposeless. The US must get out of Afghanistan – now.

Remember the book 1984? The glorious leaders of Oceania told the people – the proles – that they were at war, and would always be at war. War without end; amen! Friends, we’re there. Our glorious leaders have told us, in so many words, that we would be at war for the foreseeable future – maybe even forever. Against terrorism? Hardly! The World Trade Center attacks were King George’s Reichstag fire – his excuse to carpet-bomb Afghanistan, just as he threatened to do early in his reign if the Taliban didn’t OK his corporate sponsors’ oil pipeline. They didn’t; so he did. All he needed was an excuse, even if he had to order the FBI not to investigate valid leads in order to make sure that excuse happened. King George and his Crown Prince must be removed from office, before their greed and lust for power kill all of us … proles.

Second, did you watch our little toy king this week “take on” the corporations and their schemes for theft by accountant? You know what it is, of course; he’s grandstanding – playing to the proles (the common people, the people who don’t count for … excrement … to him and his corporate sponsors – to us, in other words). He knows damned well that if he really meant all those words, it would be like Ben Sargent’s cartoon last Wednesday. Actually, as the Statesman reported on Thursday, King George himself was the lucky recipient of some spare change from a couple of the very programs that he’s standing up on his hind legs complaining about! The report said:

President Bush received two low-interest loans, to buy stock, from the oil company where he served as a board member in the late 1980s. He then benefited from the company’s relaxation of the terms of one of the loans in 1989 as he was engaged in the most important business deal of his career. On Tuesday, Bush called for a halt to those types of insider transactions, saying, “I challenge compensation committees to put an end to all company loans to corporate officers.”

The last piece of hard news this evening is from Reuters in London & Philadelphia:

“Global markets reeled on Wednesday (June 26) after U.S. long-distance carrier WorldCom, Inc., shocked investors with its disclosure of a $3.8 billion accounting scandal, one of the largest in history.

“The … company, which switched auditors from Andersen to KPMG this year, said it booked operating expenses such as routine network maintenance as capital investments, which allowed it to hide expenses, inflate cash flow, and artificially post profits.

“The news further soured investor confidence after such once high-flying companies as energy trading company Enron Corp., telecom giant Global Crossing, and conglomerate Tyco International crashed on a lack of accounting transparency.

“ ‘This is just another nail in the coffin of confidence,’ said Paul Marsch, a London-based Morgan Stanley telecom analyst.”

See? Although corporations can do things more effectively, more efficiently, and at less cost than government, they don’t – and won’t. As long as corporations have all the – no, more than the – privileges of human beings, and as long as they have the money to buy all the Senators, Representatives, Supreme Court Justices, and Presidents they want, there is no justice, and therefore no liberty, in this country. Corporations must be hauled back to earth, and made accountable to “we, the people of the United States of America.” Tune in next month, when we go into this in more depth, and feel free to call in and join our discussions.