News of the Month

December 14, 2002

The repercussions of November’s Republican victory keep coming at us. In the words of an article in the American Statesman of November 25, entitled GOP to Push Social Change:

“With Democrats no longer blocking their way in the Senate, President Bush and Republican congressional leaders plan a more vigorous push of their social policy agenda by trying to limit abortions, provide greater support to religious groups and increase funding for sexual abstinence and fatherhood programs, according to White House officials and key lawmakers.

“When the Democrats’ 18-month rule of the Senate ends in January, Bush – backed by a new Senate majority, a larger House majority and what many GOP officials say they perceive as a new mandate from voters – will be in a stronger position to make broad social changes than he was during his first two years in office. Republicans plan to use this power to help more religious groups administer government social programs, appoint more conservative judges, outlaw late-term abortions and increase funding for pro-family initiatives and sexual abstinence teachings as part of a new welfare law.

“Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the Senate GOP’s third-ranking leader, said Bush and the Republican-led Congress will take the country in a ‘more conservative direction’ in the next two years. ‘There are a lot of conservative groups who would like to see things they care about considered,’ he said.”

Of course, when they call these things “conservative,” they’re lying. True conservatives are interested in conserving the heritage and principles of this nation, including individual liberty and limited government. These right-wing would-be tyrants are not conservatives. They’re thieves, going after all the money, privilege, and power they can grab – for themselves; and they believe that right now the way to grab those things is to foist onto the American people the smoke-and-mirrors issues the article mentions.

There is not one single proposal of substance in the entire mish-mosh of right-wing lunacy they call their new social program. Not one program to actually help people, nothing to protect people, and nothing to get government off the people’s backs. What they are proposing is a laundry list of Radical Sacreligious Right hot buttons that reduce individual freedom, even further accelerate the transfer of wealth from working people to the super-rich, and push the Government even more intrusively onto our backs, into our bedrooms, and into our pocketbooks. The time has come for the true conservatives to take back the name that has been stolen from them by the lords of misrule who occupy the seats of power, both in Washington and in Austin.

The biggest news of the month, of course, is that Emperor George’s minions and sycophants in the Congress have given him his best tool for repression yet – the “Homeland Security” act. I don’t know if Congress was paid or cowed into voting for this piece of Nazi-esque bulldreck, but I do know that with it in place, our rights and freedoms are all but dead. What does this latest act of treason against the Constitution mean? First, let’s ask real conservative columnist William Safire, quoted in Letters at 3AM, Michael Ventura’s biweekly column in the Austin Chronicle:

“This is what will happen to you. Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend – all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as ‘a virtual centralized grand database.’ To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you – passport application, driver’s license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the FBI, your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance – and you have the super-snoop’s dream: a ‘Total Information Awareness’ about every U.S. citizen ... [The new agency] has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.”

The Gestapo – excuse me, Homeland Security – Act does a lot of damage; the Office of Information Awareness that Mr. Safire is talking about is only one bit of mischief out of many. But, to continue Mr. Ventura’s column about that Office:

“The Office of Information Awareness isn’t an Orwellian fantasy. Thanks to a confused, timid, pliant Congress, it is now the law of the land. This “office,” by the way, is under the command of John Poindexter. Remember him? In the Reagan administration, it was his idea to sell Iran missiles in exchange for American hostages, and then to use that money to fund an illegal (by U.S. and international law) “contra” movement against socialist Nicaragua – “Iran/Contra” was his baby, and he was convicted on six counts for his crimes (one of them being that he lied to Congress under oath). But Poindexter served no prison time; Congress, you see, had granted him immunity. It is to Poindexter that every piece of information about your life is now being entrusted.

“Add to this mix the rulings of America’s new secret court. The New York Times reported that on Nov. 18 “a special federal appeals court” ruled “that the Justice Department has broad new powers ... the judges said today that the passage of [last year’s USA PATRIOT Act] ensured that there is no wall between officials from the intelligence and criminal arms of the Justice Department. ... Applications for criminal warrants must comply with the Fourth Amendment’s proscriptions against intrusive searches and require an official declaration that there is ‘probable cause’ to believe the subject is involved in a crime. By contrast, the intelligence surveillance law requires only a showing that there is a probable cause that the subject is the agent of a foreign power,” which could mean anything. “Today’s ruling was a significant victory for Attorney General John Ashcroft, who announced immediately that he would use it to greatly expand the use of the special intelligence court by prosecutors to obtain wiretaps.” A New York Times editorial commented that this appeals court’s proceedings “are held in secret, and the government is the only party allowed to appear before it. The members of the court are hand-picked by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. ... The combination of one-sided arguments and one-sided judges hardly instills confidence in the court’s decisions.”

“What all this amounts to is an unprecedented shift of power not only from Congress to the presidency, but from the Constitution to the presidency. The essential idea of the Constitution – that the president is answerable to Congress and to free courts – has been subverted, gutted. More power is now concentrated in the White House than at any time in our history. We have taken a huge step from a republic to ... the opposite of a republic. We are living in redefined America. The groundwork has been laid. The price has yet to be paid. You’ll pay it, and sooner than you think. Yes: you. And me. And every other American. The word is totalitarian. There will be no exemptions.”

Read your history: study Germany in the 1930s – before they revealed their true intent; before they invaded Poland; before they started murdering Jews, and gays, and Poles, and …. Read your history. And then get involved – the rush to totalitarianism in this nation must be stopped. Bombard your Representative, and Texas’s two senators, with demands that the freedoms granted to us by the Constitution be restored. (And if you think that’ll do any good, I’ve got a bridge up in Brooklyn I’d like to talk to you about.) With a few notable exceptions, the Congress of the United States is corrupt, and they’ve fallen all over themselves flopping onto their back for their assault. Only it’s not just they who are being raped – it’s all of us.

It’s two years until the next elections – if we’re even allowed to have elections in two years – and that’s plenty of time for the strait jackets of government repression to be buckled down real tight under the legislative tools that our “representatives” have handed the Emperor and his goons. Friends, we don’t have two years. Unless we, the people, do something to take back our republic before then, there might not be a republic to take back. If you think I’m an alarmist, find some people who lived in Austria in 1938, and ask them what they thought the Anschluss would mean to them. Then ask them what it did mean, once it was accomplished.

On November 21, this item appeared on the Independent Media Center of Vancouver, Canada:

A coalition of Canadian peace groups today announced their intention to send an international team of volunteer weapons inspectors into the United States later this winter. The coalition, Rooting Out Evil, are recruiting inspectors through their newly launched website, http://www.rootingoutevil.org.

“Our action has been inspired by none other than George W. Bush,” said Christy Ferguson, a spokesperson for the group. “The Bush administration has repeatedly declared that the most dangerous rogue nations are those that:

1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties; and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.

“On the basis of President Bush's guidelines, it is clear that the current U.S. administration poses a great threat to global security,” said Ferguson. “We’re following Bush’s lead and demanding that the U.S. grant our inspectors immediate and unfettered access to any site in the country, including all presidential compounds, so that we can identify the weapons of mass destruction in this rogue state,” added David Langille.

Or have you realized that you’re living in the number one international terrorist nation in the world? Weapons of mass destruction? We are the only nation on earth who has ever used nuclear bombs on another nation’s civilians. We have a history of using biological warfare against our own citizens – the delivery system (smallpox-infected blankets) was a bit less advanced than today, but we are guilty of the very same behavior, right down the line, that we accuse Iraq of. So what gives us the high ground to threaten to attack Iraq over the very behaviors in which we ourselves surpass every other nation in the world? Think about it.

Finally, I want to read you something that’s “news of the month” only because I just read it this month. It’s about our pathological response to the attacks of September 11 last year, by Pagan activist Starhawk in her new book Webs of Power – Notes from the Global Uprising:

“Defining the September attacks as an act of war rather than a criminal act has only dignified the perpetrators. Going to war has turned us into Bin Laden’s recruiting agency, rapidly alienating the entire Muslim world. Bombing Afghanistan has made us look like thugs to the Muslim world (and to everyone else with a heart and sense) and bred thousands of new potential read-to-die enemies. The bombing, by preventing relief trucks from delivering serious food supplies before winter, now threatens to impose starvation on up to seven million Afghanis.

“Diplomacy does not mean weakness. It means being smarter than the opposition, not just better armed.” So much for that! “Diplomacy also does not mean simply issuing ultimatums backed by bombs. It means understanding something of the culture of the people you’re negotiating with. It means actually negotiating, offering a carrot as well as a stick, being willing to let the other side come out with something less than total humiliation. If the goal of the war is truly to get Bin Laden, well, the Taliban just offered to deliver him to a third country.”

Of course, now, from our perspective of December 2002 we know that the objective of the war isn’t to get Bin Laden. It’s to get Saddam Hussain! Or … is it? (Pause) Starhawk continues:

“This could be a moment to switch our policy, to negotiate, to work with and strengthen international institutions …, to begin to deliver massive and meaningful humanitarian aid to the region. Any or all of those acts would increase our long-term security far more than our present course.

“We have about as much chance of doing any of the above as I have of being offered a post in the current administration. All the indications are that Bush wants a war, to establish US hegemony in Central Asia and the East, to forestall an Asian alliance that might oppose our vested interests with interests of their own, to take control of the rich oil resources of Central Asia and provide a safe passage for an oil pipeline across Afghanistan, to deflect from the illegitimacy of his own presidency, to implement the entire right-wing agenda. We need to continue educating the public about those aims and about the consequences of the war.”

We need, as the subtitle of Starhawk’s book says, a global uprising. Nothing less will do the job; nothing less will ensure our security – or our liberty. The path the Bush junta is careening down will lead to a totalitarian United States, a United States perpetually at war, a United States in which every one of us is as much at risk of dying in one of the junta’s oil wars as of dying in an attack by a foreign “terrorist”. Now, let’s be clear – by “uprising” I’m not talking about a violent revolution; we did that once, and look where it’s gotten us. The uprising I’m talking about is the kind of uprising we’ve seen in the streets of Seattle, and Quebec, and Genoa, and Milan, and Washington, and San Francisco, and yes, even Austin. An uprising of the people who are tired of having our liberties taken away, our privacy eliminated, and our security undermined – tired of living in the world’s number one international terrorist nation, one in which millions of innocent civilian lives are snuffed out in our name.

I’m tired of it! Are you? Are you tired enough of it to do something about it? If you are, then right now – or tomorrow – or Monday at work – but soon, then start spreading the word. Tell people about what’s really happening in this once proud and free country. Tell your friends and family and co-workers the truth about what’s being done to us, and to the rest of the world in our name. Opportunities for action will come; but for now, we need to inform as many people as possible of the truth, so as to be ready for those actions. Or, in Starhawk’s words:

“We need to continue educating the public about (Bush’s) aims and about the real consequences of the war. To do that, we need to talk to people – not just at rallies and teach-ins, but in our neighborhoods, or workplaces, our schools, on the bus, in the street, on talk shows, with our families. It can be easier to march into a line of riot cops than to voice an unpopular opinion where we live, but we’ve got to do it, and learn to do it calmly and effectively.