No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post
In the last two weeks we have seen multiple examples of what civil liberties advocates have been warning about over and over again. The infrastructure of the police state, put together behind the scenes and with secret rooms and fusion centers, was put on display in a number of different places.
In the decades before 9/11 we became accustomed to being a nation with a law enforcement mindset, meaning that almost everything that happened domestically - even terrorist attacks against us (both foreign and domestic) - were treated as crimes The response was to use all legal resources at our disposal to find, detain, try and convict those responsible. And by the way, it worked. After 9/11 our leaders made it clear (via) that the old ways no longer were effective because it caused us to ignore threats while they gathered. They claimed we were therefore geared towards prosecuting crimes after the fact instead of preventing them in the first place. This is the Original Lie in the War on Terror. In fact, "we" were not being complacent at all. There were government agencies tracking terrorist activity and in some cases frantically trying to get the attention of the White House. The American intelligence bureaucracy was performing well enough to identify threats and send word of them through the proper channels. The problem was not the blinkered outlook of the CIA or FBI but that of the President.
Such catastrophic negligence should have been the end of the his tenure. His abdication of responsibility was the highest of crimes, but he did not have enough honor to say "the buck stops here", accept the blame and let the chips fall where they may. Instead he brazened it out. He used the immediate national impulse to rally together and support our leaders as an opportunity to create a new paradigm, one not founded in law but in might. In the name of preemption - which everyone but our top levels of leadership had already been engaged in - he urged us to accept a new America that would prioritize striking out at those who would kill us before they could complete their work. Which, again, our agencies already had.
So the administration went below the surface and began to secretly capture, hold and torture those who were thought to be enemies. The important wrinkle here was not that we were going after them - we had been doing so for years - but that we now did so behind the scenes, with no regard for domestic or international law. (Please note: Lying about an affair during a deposition and wholesale repudiation of treaties, conventions, the Constitution and fundamental morality are entirely different species of contempt for the law.) They approach the legal system not with hostility but indifference, the way an agnostic regards God. All they want is to be told they can do whatever they want. As Jane Meyer quoted an anonymous former Justice Department lawyer (p. 224), "[t]hey didn't want serious legal advice. They liked the answers they were getting." They undertake a course of action with not the slightest thought of whether or not it is legal, or whether our system of justice can effectively process the results later. We will never get a satisfactory disposition for those locked away in our secret places because there was never any intent to expose them to the legal system.
The problem is, an attitude like that is hard to keep quarantined. The torture and cruelty that started on the battlefields of Afghanistan didn't appear in Guantánamo by coincidence; it was by design. The use of the same reverse engineered SERE tactics in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib is not some fantastic synchronicity like Newton and Leibniz simultaneously developing the principles of integral calculus. Instead it was created and spread almost instantaneously because once you have hijacked the Office of Legal Counsel do nothing more than dispense golden shields you have functionally done away with the law; and where law does not exist there is no external obstacle to barbarity.
We did not insist on a full accounting after 9/11, and those in charge were emboldened. We did not insist on transparency when post-9/11 abuses started to come to light, and our leaders realized how powerful fear could be. We have averted our eyes every time we have been told we needed to for our own safety, and each time the lawlessness grew. It now is visible in the wildly disproportionate show of force in Minnesota and its conflation of peaceful assembly with riot, in the Blackwater mercenaries paid to roam the streets of New Orleans and in the makeshift detention facilities of Mississippi and Iowa. And yet we continue to look away, and continue to submit.
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A chilling moment for me was
A chilling moment for me was hearing Rachel Maddow, supposedly a progressive champion (right?), say - back when it looked like Bloomberg would run - that she thought he was pretty ok, or something like that. This was AFTER the mass arrests, harrassments and illegal detentions of the RNC.
That was an "oh sh*t!" moment for me.
And I don't think it can be said often enough that this is the way Nazi-ism happened. People who warned about the seriousness of the direction Hitler was taking Germany in were shushed up as extremists, alarmists - the same kind of thing we've been hearing for years in America. We've been told not to make such a big deal out of every little thing, in effect.
Consider - if they can pre-emptive invade the houses of potential peace protestors at the Convention cities, they can do it in every city in America. They only need an excuse, and it obviously doesn't have to be much of one. And I think it's important to observe that they apparently knew exactly which houses to attack. Now we have a pretty good idea of exactly what they are doing with all that domestic spying.
And I wonder - was there even one SWAT team member who thought, maybe just to himself or herself, 'is what we are doing right?'
__________________________Was there one person shooting tear gas into a crowd who stopped to think to himself or herself 'should I really be doing this to my fellow citizens?'
Why are Democrats Afraid to
Why are Democrats Afraid to Speak the Truth?
The Democratic campaign enjoyed a spectacular and spirited convention climaxed by a phenomenal speech by Senator Obama. The McCain campaign followed with a phenom of its own with the addition of Governor Sarah Palin to the ticket. Prior to that spontaneous decision, John McCain was experiencing difficulty attracting an audience. In fact, with the prearranged agenda including Bush and Cheney, they would likely had difficulty filling the convention hall. This situation was remedied by the creation of the John McCain traveling burlesque show. Hopefully, the same people who support Sarah Palin are those who supported Sanjaya right up until it was time to declare him an American Idol. While the Republican propaganda machine is frantically fabricating a history for Palin, scrambling like canaries in a cage startled by the appearance of a cat, Barack Obama himself appears tired, bored, deflated, and even defeated. It’s time for the Democratic Party to employ a novel strategy in the political arena. It’s time to tell the truth.
It is a foregone conclusion that multi-national corporate interests own the federal government lock, stock, and barrel, with Big Oil as the majority shareholder. George Bush is a president with no leverage over these entities in fact; he invited them to the party. When Bush proclaims, “we must protect American interests abroad,” it is these corporate interests to which he refers. The lobbyists who represent these interests have written any and all legislation passed within the last eight years. The Republican hierarchy has embedded within it, individuals in key positions who steer all government policies to favor these groups. If John McCain and the Republican Party remain in power, this situation will not change. Furthermore, if some tragedy were to befall McCain, Palin has left no doubt in anyone’s mind that she is completely capable of reading the commands issued by these individuals. While the McCain/Palin Campaign portrays itself as the reform ticket, these same multi-nationals are pouring money into the effort directly and through 527 provisions to insure its success. This phenomenon can be compared to the scenario in which a drug kingpin who has already bought-off key players in law enforcement and the judiciary, finances the campaign of the ‘law and order’ candidate who is secretly also on his payroll.
This reality is understood throughout the world (except among the religious right which is, by the way, neither) so much so that the European Union was formed in large part to insulate governments on that continent from this same corruption. Any and all candidates running for political office in democracies throughout Europe who have ties to our corrupt administration are handily voted down. The impact of this unified agreement has resulted in a blockade of many American products to a consumer base of nearly half a billion and the subsequent loss of countless American jobs. The distrust of American enterprise has facilitated a rapid increase in the demand for Russian oil and natural gas causing the current tension between the oil friendly Bush Administration and the neo-capitalist Russian government. It is no wonder that the Republican Party will never support successful programs for public education. It is to its advantage for its core electorate to remain oblivious to its true priorities and their consequences. Anyone interested in the future of these great United States must focus on the interview in which Dick Cheney openly admitted that the Republican Party, “will say what we need to, to get elected,” and then pursue, with reckless indifference, the policies agreed to prior to the campaign.
Barack Obama must reinvigorate his campaign by simply implementing the truth. In plain terminology, Obama must educate the American people in how it works, how it got this way, and how it can be fixed. He must loudly proclaim that this Republican Administration has not only undermined the Democratic process through trickery and fraud, but has nullified the legislative process by expanding the powers of the presidency which has led to the paralysis of Congress. America is not only crying for change but is also starving for truth. Somebody has to go first.
Good piece, Mr Concept.
Good piece, Mr Concept. But...
1) Obama will never proclaim any truth,
2) somone (Nader) already is,
3) the EU now too is totally controlled by the same multinational corporate power controlling the US (Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi).
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