The WAR On US Is Here

The WAR On US Is Here

The WAR On US Is Here
By Jim Kirwan
5-12-6


Tens of millions of phone calls, indeed all the phone calls made by US citizens, have been monitored by the government since 2001. This is the largest data bank ever compiled in history and it involves trillions upon trillions of conversations that have been illegally monitored by this government, in service to the Corporatocracy that runs our lives. The phone companies must answer for this invasion of privacy and explain their willingness to violate the Constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment, along with the provisions of 1978 law governing spying of US citizens. Government says in one breath that they are being selective, in the next breath they say that all conversations of every American have been monitored. This constitutes WAR upon all the citizens of the USA. This was meant to be a secret war, until USA Today broke the story ­ now the government and all the corporations that colluded in this vicious attack upon us all, must be called to account in public for this crime!

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The US is facing a cloak and dagger attack on all fronts by major corporations that have held their hidden agendas for over a hundred years. Corporate interests have been at stake in every war we've had since the First World War and the Corporatocracy has been funding both sides of all the major conflicts since about 1914. With this latest revelation it is clear that the USA was the original target all along. This is a war without principles or human values. It's being waged to establish unilateral control over everyone and everything and that needs to change!

It should be noted that on March 17, 2003 Bush hired "the former head of the KGB (the secret police of the former Soviet Union), General Yevgeni Primakov," as a consultant to the US Department of Homeland Security.
Primakov joined another Russian, Oleg Kalugin, KGB (Ret) with the Department of State Security, also as a part of Homeland Security. On January 1, 2005 Kalugin was replaced with the infamous and sinister Silver Fox himself (his former CIA code name), Gen. Markus Wolf. "Wolf was the head of the international intelligence gathering arm (HVA) of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or Stasi." This went a long way toward perfecting the spying and wiretapping of the entire USA, and insured that Americans would become the next victims of State Terrorism ala the USSR and Communist East Germany.

http://www.kirwanesque.com/politics/articles/2005/art13.htm

Corporate conspiracies were thwarted back when they were the Robber-Barons: Back when there were no rights for women, for slaves, for children, or for workers. There were rights but only for major players that held nearly total power over all that worked for them. There were Wildcat strikes, and a rebellion that was only deflected when government intervened to create protections and perks for those who had to work to live. Over the last four decades those protections and guarantees have been systematically destroyed, so that Americans are again virtually defenseless against the NEW Robber-Barons behind their corporate shields.

The USA; began with a Mega-Holocaust against the native population that lasted over 400 years and killed in excess of 50 million people. There was also Mexico and the Philippines. All that blood and death became the real foundation for this nation. These actions were each supported by America's claim to "special considerations," under either "Manifest Destiny" or The Monroe Doctrine: each of which claimed special rights for America. The rights to life or liberty for those we slaughtered had no standing because American Colonial aspirations were at stake: Very reminiscent of what is happening in Palestine now. Fast forward to the latest unilaterally declared wars and we can see that the whole project has moved from past wars on others in this Hemisphere ­ to finally become what it always was ­ a War upon the World!

With the illegal and unilateral war on Iraq, the excesses of war itself have risen a thousand fold and have increased the elite's ability to shatter laws at will to complete their power grab unchallenged. The communications corporations that did the spying did so eagerly, because it was part of how they fit into the overall plan. In the last three to four decades, the US unleashed a new series of wars throughout this Hemisphere, to strengthen American diplomacy, by invasion and regime-change, by the casual use of death squads, and by an ever-increasing perversion of national economies that used the IMF and the World Bank ­ to destroy sovereignty throughout the region. Under cover of 'The Cold War' and the exaggeration of a Communist threat this was only practice ­ for what was yet to come.

Many, if not all the American officials involved in the brutal Hemispheric wars of the late 1970's and 80's ­ Iran-Contra, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, the guns for drugs and the weapons for Hostages fiasco's ­ resurfaced in this Bush administration, to direct this War upon America. Those of us who fought in the Reagan years first thought that those who were convicted were dead and buried politically. Then under Bush II, the dead were resurrected to be major players in the barbarity of the New World Order in Iraq, in Palestine and in Afghanistan, and in all that is slated to follow. This can be stopped if these retreads from the 1980's are barred from government jobs and publicly investigated for what they've been doing for Bush and the Corporatocracy.

This administration and its sponsors apparently need Special-Ops people like Elliott Abrams to oversee Middle Eastern affairs, despite his pleading guilty to a federal crime during the Reagan years. There also was Otto Reich, accused of running an unlawful domestic propaganda operation for Reagan; he was tapped as a special envoy. Bush also recruited Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of various federal crimes stemming from his service as national security adviser to Reagan. Poindexter was chosen by Bush to head the controversial Total Information Awareness data-mining project, an operation viewed as so dangerous to privacy and civil liberties that it was formally stopped by Congress. Most of the convictions obtained were overturned by presidential pardons.

There was also John Negroponte, accused of shielding human-rights violations. unlawfully supporting the Nicaraguan contras, and overseeing death squads. After Negroponte's stint as ambassador to the United Nations, Bush made him the director of national intelligence. Likewise, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was accused of writing the infamous "torture memo" that not only approved of forms of torture but also suggested that the president could violate federal law. Gonzales was later made attorney general. And former CIA Director George Tenet was accused of the most serious intelligence blunders of the century. It was Tenet who gave Bush the excuse to invade Iraq by stating that the presence of weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk." Bush gave Tenet the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom. And of course there are many more including Oliver North and Richard Armitage, a former undersecretary of Defense, and former assistant to Colin Powell, along with John Bolten, Richard Pearle and a whole host of others. Reagan's polices in Latin America were approaching major criminal charges and crimes against humanity when Poppy Bush stepped in to pardoned the convicted and seal the records.

When people of the United States gave up their citizenship to become "consumers"- the stage was set for complete capitulation to whatever might follow. The Corporatocracy is "successful" because they are not bound by any need for self-responsibility, or the public good ­ their only obligation is to profits, for the shareholders of course. Corporations are private constructs with human privileges. People have to face consequences for their actions, while corporations only need worry about market share. Their solution to staying profitable is to control the monopolies they created to eliminate choice; so that whatever happens ­ the public must turn to them and continue to buy whatever they are selling ­ the oil and gas industry, medicine, insurance, drugs, or the communications acts that have stolen the airwaves that "the people" owned ­ until the Corporations turned them into Big-Brother Incorporated ­ personified!

This new revelation of massive spying on everyone in the country just confirms the truth beneath the lies ­ read the financial particulars in the Patriot Acts, as they pertain to what government can do with your bank accounts. If they find "anything suspicious" in your life -- they can seize your bank accounts -- and there is nothing you can do about it, because of National Security. This is why they want to tap the phones of every American ­ so the government can build a profile and then arrange for that to match whatever they want to charge you with. The Corporatocracy has long-since become a law unto itself. Now they've added their own private armies, inside the war zones; without military or civilian oversight of their mercenary activities.

Private armies form the second largest component of troops in Iraq. With this kind of corporate involvement on the ground, under cover of 'security'; when there is a split between the military and private corporate purposes under Bush ­ it's the corporate agenda that usually wins. Non-responsible mercenaries do whatever they are told by those who pay them. They wear US uniforms, but do not answer to military or civilian authorities. Corporations also decide who they should ask for help, with whatever they're interested in at the moment. Here's one example from inside Iraq ­ specifically Abu Ghraib. http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen05102004.html

The Corporatocracy is raking in those hundreds of billions that are being spent on the wars (6 billion a month now), and the reconstruction that isn't, on the Gulf Coast here. They designed US policies to ensure that their profits will never be interrupted, by either wars or natural disasters. All that money in the secret, no-bid, sole-source contracts, and virtually no responsibility for anything that happens ­ no wonder they want the troops to stay. No questions and no real investigations! They OWN the Congress, the Department of Justice and the Courts, and they have a revolving-door arrangement with the White House. The only way they lose is IF the public brings down these sweetheart deals with those private corporations, and imposes corporate responsibilities that could revoke corporate charters and force the reorganization of their corporations! Guilty executives should be banned from ever holding a management position in any business ­ IF and after ­ they ever get out of Folsom or Attica!

Ordinary people need to re-claim their citizenship and participate as citizenship requires. Americans should downgrade 'consumerism' from its position at the top of their lives to its real place well below those considerations that are about freedom and life and real possibilities in the world. The mayor of Salt Lake City said this:
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_international&
Number=294615694&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=21&part=

It may sound insane to suggest that people could leave themselves open to enslavement by something as "American" as "consumerism:" That might be the case, unless one looks at how employees of those corporations are treated each and everyday. The evermore stringent control over employees, job-security, wages, retirement, and health-care, the list is long and includes monitoring not only of phone calls but of the private lives of employees as well. But it's what those corporations do that is where the real threat lies! Corporations have been spending furiously to patent seeds and plants, and trees around the world. They've undertaken plans to buy out local farmers or force them off their land - to virtually gain control of all the land and whatever can be done upon that land, from farming to drilling to clear-cutting or grazing ­ it will be their choice. They want to privatize the fresh water supply for the planet, while they try to corner worldwide markets for energy in all its forms. Timber, raw minerals of all kinds ­ nothing has escaped the greed of these faceless entities that say they want to kill four billion people, just to remake the world into something they can manage. For those who doubt the role of corporations in controlling the American public; have a look at this short piece of police footage from Seattle ­ and think again about who is really preventing free-speech and who indeed controls your rights!
http://www.earthfiles.de/forum/start.php?OTMP=/topic%3D106575263503

This began with those who claimed a special status over all others in the world. Whether that's the Jews today in Palestine or the Americans with the "Manifest Destiny" they gave themselves so long ago. It is more than possible that these views are only the by-product of a mind-set: A partial view that sees and believes whatever it wants, in order to 'create their own realities.' When challenged 'special people' usually demand 'the right to create that world they have envisioned for themselves.' What they won't tolerate are all those laws and precepts that would create a world in which there is a possibility; for love & life to co-exist with war & death. Never-ending wars against a circumstance of terror can never be a purpose for existence. We must find ways to learn to live together once again ­ or most of us shall die alone ­ together.

Realizations of the oft-considered kind could lead to real control over these wildly irresponsible corporations: The corporate shells that we've allowed to rule our dreams, our lives and even our most private thoughts must be destroyed by rules and regulations! People must begin to re-examine the reasons, or lack thereof, for all this death and open-ended war. People need to question how much of their lives they really own ­ and how much of their lives they should give to something as cold and brutal as the Corporatocracy; be that in purchases from them, by way of products or services or in allegiances given ­ either by force of need ­ or by willing cooperation. Every aspect of these monstrous creations should be rethought. If that happens then people will stand against the steel fist of corporate-dictatorship that is so thinly veiled beneath the tattered shreds of what was once a velvet glove that promised ­ a consumer's paradise ­ in exchange, of course, for all else that might have ever mattered to you. . .

kirwan
kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net

Another Day in the Empire: Slate Dismisses Ahmadinejad’s “Goofy” Letter

From the keyboard of Kurt Nimmo:

Another Day in the Empire

Slate Dismisses Ahmadinejad’s “Goofy” Letter

Friday May 12th 2006, 8:42 am

According to Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate, Ahmadinejad’s letter “is a bizarre document” and Condi Rice “is right to say that it fails to address any of the issues on the table,” that is to say “issues” put on the “table” by the neocons, a small number of Muslim-hating fanatics in the process of devising excuses to invade or at least bomb the heck out of Iran.

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As Hassan Rohani, representative of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khameini, writes (and Time Magazine publishes, remarkably), the “issue” was manufactured by the United States and Israel. Iran is fully within its right, according to the fine type of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to develop nuclear energy. “Iran is prepared to work with the IAEA and all states concerned about promoting confidence in its fuel cycle program. But Iran cannot be expected to give in to United States’ bullying and non-proliferation double standards,” writes Rohani. Kaplan buys into the neocon generated “sensationalism and war mongering,” as Rohani characterizes it, and references a War Street Journal, er Wall Street Journal, op-ed “likening [the Ahmadinejad] letter’s philosophical depth to that of the Unabomber’s soliloquies.”

Thus, once again, we realize there is little difference between so-called “liberals” and “conservatives,” or rather neocons. Ahmadinejad’s letter is crazy because he has impertinence to tell the truth. “The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-a-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.” How dare Ahmadinejad make mention of these historical facts. Obviously, Ahmadinejad is unhinged, a regular Ted Kaczynski.

As a neocon apologist, Mr. Kaplan expects us to believe that the “crewmen on the USS Vincennes” innocently “mistook the [Iranian] Airbus for an incoming F-14 fighter,” as if U.S. Navy Captain Will C. Rogers III’s crew lacked the ability to tell the difference between a commercial airbus and a fighter jet. Kaplan does not bother to repeat the lame excuses offered by the U.S. that “the aircraft was outside the commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,000 feet, and on a descent toward the Vincennes,” as the History Channel describes it, although a month later, after the sensationalism (and public attention) waned, the U.S. “admitted that both the Vincennes and the airbus had been within a recognized commercial flightpath, and that the Iranian jet was flying at 12,000 feet and not descending.” Of course, Mr. Kaplan would probably not compare Captain Will C. Rogers III to Ted Kaczynski (Rogers killed 290 people, Kaczynski only three).

Kaplan does not bother to mention Ahmadinejad’s assertion that September 11 could not have been “planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services—or their extensive infiltration,” but then such declarations are verboten in the corporate media, and rest assured Slate is part of the corporate media (in fact, it is owned by the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post). More than a few have pointed out the obvious—it is was impossible for a band of cave-dwelling Muslims in one of the most backward countries on earth to pull off nine eleven—most notably Andreas von Bülow, former state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defense who served on a parliamentary committee on intelligence services. Andreas von Bülow knows more than Kaplan or the pundits at Fox News about the feasibility of such matters (Fred Barnes, executive editor of the neocon house organ the Weekly Standard, from his bully pulpit at Fox, declared Ahmadinejad’s letter “reads … [like] some left-wing document,” while the churlish ignoramus John Gibson compared the letter to “Democrat talking point[s]”). Of course, we shouldn’t expect Fox News or CBS and Slate for that matter to admit the obvious and instead pedal the Bushzarro world version of events. Only Arabs and Europeans, as Kaplan makes certain to note, put any legitimacy in Ahmadinejad’s letter, a sort of abridged version of the Unabomber Manifesto.

Finally, for Kaplan and the gatekeeper liberals in the corporate and much of the alternative media, the problem is not the neocon agenda, well-documented, for total war against Islam, but rather that Ahmadinejad and Bush are “two of the world’s most stubborn, self-righteous leaders” and instead of brushing off Ahmadinejad’s “goofy letter,” Bush should engage the Iranians in “comprehensive talks,” a suggestion at odds with reality (and the objectives of the neocon agenda), thus demonstrating that Fred Kaplan should be writing about high school football games in Emporia, Kansas, and not dispensing his malarkey on Slate (possibly the CIA’s favorite website), where “liberals” essentially spin stale excuses for impending mass murder committed by people who make Ted Kaczynski look like a piker.

Addendum

I neglected to mention the most important point made by Ahmadinejad: Iran has never attacked the United States, although the latter has attacked the former, as any serious student of history (not brainwashed by Fox News propaganda) realizes. In 1953, the CIA sponsored and orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadeq. Obviously, I have mentioned this many times and no doubt I now resemble a record skipping over the same groove repeatedly. Regardless, this fact figures prominently in Iran’s argument and should not be glossed over—or, as in the case of Kaplan and the neocons, relegated to the memory hole.

Battle Cry for theocracy

Battle Cry for theocracy

Religion
Battle Cry for theocracy

By Sunsara Taylor
Online Journal Guest Writer

May 12, 2006, 01:26

If you’ve been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in “God’s army” to get alarmed, wait no longer.

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In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement and an offshoot of Teen Mania Ministeries, has held mega-rally rock concerts in San Francisco and Detroit, attracting more than 25,000 youth, and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia Stadium in Philadelphia.

They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Ron Luce, Battle Cry’s leader and Teen Mania president and founder, makes clear this is not mere metaphor: “This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent -- the ‘forceful’ ones -- will lay hold of the kingdom.”

A glimpse at Battle Cry’s Honor Academy, which trains 500 youth each year and preaches that homosexuality and masturbation are sins, reveals a lot about what kind of society they are fighting for. Interns are not allowed to listen to secular music, watch R-rated movies, or date. Men are not allowed to use the Internet unsupervised and the length of women’s skirts is regulated. The logic behind this, that men must be protected from the sin of sexual temptation, is the same logic that drives Islamic fundamentalists to shroud women in burqas!

Behind this multi-million dollar operation that sends more than 5,000 missionaries to more than 34 countries each year, are some of the most powerful and extreme religious lunatics in the country. Their partners include Pat Robertson (who got a call from Karl Rove to discuss Alito before the nomination was made public), Ted Haggard (who brags that his concerns will be responded to by the White House within 24 hours), Jerry Falwell (who blamed September 11 on homosexuals, feminists, pagans, and abortionists), and others. Their past events have been addressed, by video, by Barbara Bush and, in person, by former President Gerry Ford. This weekend’s keynote address will be from Franklyn Graham, son of Billy Graham, who has ministered to George Bush and publicly proclaimed that Islam is an “evil religion.”

What most of these figures have in common is their insistence that the Bible be read literally and obeyed as the inerrant word of God. And, as Ron Luce leads youth to pray, “I will keep my eyes on the battle, submitting to Your code even when I don’t understand. . . . outside my comfort zone in the battle zone,” it would be foolish to expect that there is any part of the Bible’s literal horrors this movement would be unwilling to enforce. That includes stoning disobedient children and non-virgin brides (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and 22:13-21), executing gays (Leviticus 20:13), and keeping slaves (Peter 2:18).

Already they staged a protest on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall precisely because they were “the very city hall steps where several months ago ‘gay marriages’ were celebrated.” Their answer to the scourge of rape and violence against women is to condemn divorce, spread ignorance, insist on virginity -- the very things that will more entrap women in these nightmares. And today, they aim to hold rallies at fifty City Halls around the country.

Of course, like the president who appointed Ron Luce to the White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities, Battle Cry tells its share of bald-faced lies. For one, they claim that “a society fortified by biblical principals and a strong moral code . . . is the heritage our forefathers fought and died to secure for us.” But the word "God" never appears in the Constitution. After three-and-a-half months of debate about what should go into the document that would govern the land, the framers drafted a constitution that is secular.

Further Battle Cry claims America has been “set aside for God’s purposes -- a country established for good and fruitfully blessed so that we might take God’s message to the ends of the earth.” It is revealing that for all their talk about the value of life and the evils of violent imagery, Battle Cry never speaks against the real violence and loss of life being inflicted by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Still, there is one thing that Battle Cry gets right: this country is in the midst of a deep moral crisis. We are indeed living through times when business-as-usual is unconscionable.

As the Bush regime wages unjust wars and conducts torture, as they leave New Orleans to rot, and drag this country each day closer to a theocracy where abortion and birth control are banned, science is pulled under, gays are persecuted, it is no wonder that young people are searching for meaning and morality.

The truth is, however, youth will not find the morality they need in a stadium listening to Ron Luce preach about religious war and intolerance. And they won’t find it while buying Battle Cry’s keepsake dog tags.

These youth need to be challenged to look around them and think for themselves.

I am confident that if they do, many of them will find that the truly moral way to live is to throw their tremendous energies and dreams of a better world into stopping this madness and driving out the Bush regime.

This generation -- and their counterparts all around the world -- will have to live with the consequences, one way or another.

Sunsara Taylor is a writer for Revolution newspaper and initiator of World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime.

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FBI goes fishing, casting a scary chill -- Page 1 -- TimesUnion.com

FBI goes fishing, casting a scary chill -- Page 1 -- TimesUnion.com

FBI goes fishing, casting a scary chill

By MARK FELDSTEIN
First published: Thursday, May 4, 2006

WASHINGTON -- In an earlier life, I spent 20 years as an investigative reporter, getting subpoenaed and sued in the United States, and censored and physically harassed in other parts of the globe. But when I switched careers to academia, I thought such scrapes would come to an end. I was wrong.

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On March 3, two FBI agents showed up at my home, flashing their badges and demanding to see 25-year-old documents I've been reading as part of my research for a book I'm writing about Jack Anderson, the crusading investigative columnist who died in December.

I was surprised, to put it mildly, by the FBI's sudden interest in journalism history. I asked what crimes the agents were investigating.

"Violations of the Espionage Act," was the response.

The Espionage Act dates to 1917 and was used to imprison dissidents who opposed World War I.

Evidently the Justice Department has decided that it wants to prosecute people who whispered national security secrets decades ago to a reporter now dead. The FBI agents asked me if I had seen any classified government documents in the nearly 200 boxes of materials the Anderson family has donated to my university. I replied that I had seen some government documents -- reports, audits, memos -- but didn't know what their classification status was.

"Just because the documents aren't marked 'classified' doesn't mean they're not," Agent Leslie Martell suggested helpfully. But I was unable to give her the answer that she wanted: that our collection housed classified records.

Later, after I thought about it, I could recall seeing only one set of papers that might once have been classified: the FBI's own documents on Jack Anderson. But our version of those papers was heavily censored, unlike the original FBI file already in their own office.

Ironically, for the past five years, the FBI and other federal agencies have refused to turn over such documents to me under the Freedom of Information Act, even though almost all the people named in them are now dead. The government claims it would violate their privacy, jeopardize national security or -- in the most absurd argument of all -- compromise "ongoing law enforcement investigations."

I told the FBI that the Anderson papers in our collection were "ancient history," literally covered in dust. That didn't matter, the agents replied. They were looking for documents going back to the early 1980s. The agents admitted that the statute of limitations had expired on any possible crimes committed that long ago, but they still wanted to root through our archives because even such old documents might demonstrate a "pattern and practice" of leaking.

The agents also wanted the names of graduate students who had worked with me on my book to see if any had seen classified government documents. They hadn't, but the FBI agents didn't seem to believe our denials and wanted to know where the Anderson archives are housed and who controlled custody of the papers.

The agents said they are investigating espionage involving two indicted lobbyists for the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and they wanted me to tell them the names of former Jack Anderson reporters who were pro-Israel in their views or who had pro-Israeli sources. I told them I felt uncomfortable passing on what would be secondhand rumors.

If I didn't want to name names, the agents said, they could mention initials and I could nod yes or no. That was a trick Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman used in "All the President's Men." I didn't name any initials, either.

I tried to explain to the agents why it was extremely unlikely there could be anything in our files relevant to their criminal case: Jack Anderson had been sick with Parkinson's disease since 1986 and had done very little original investigative reporting after that.

If the agents had done even rudimentary research, they would have known that. The fact that they didn't was disturbing, because it suggested that the bureau viewed reporters' notes as the first stop in a criminal investigation rather than as a last step reluctantly taken only after all other avenues have failed. That's the standard the FBI is supposed to use under Justice Department guidelines designed to protect media freedom.

I decided there were good reasons not to help the FBI:

Whistle-blowing sources would be scared off from confiding in reporters about abuses of power if they had reason to fear that the government would find out about it by rifling through journalistic files even past the grave. And the public justifiably won't trust the press if it's turned into an arm of law enforcement.

I told the FBI that although I was no longer an investigative reporter, my sympathies still remained with my fellow journalists. "We're not after the reporters," Agent Martell replied. "Just their sources."

I didn't find that a comforting response.

Ultimately the courts may have to decide whether we make the Anderson papers available to the federal government. But I am proud that my university and the Anderson family are resisting the FBI's fishing expedition into these files.

Mark Feldstein is director of the journalism program at George Washington University and a former investigative correspondent for CNN in Washington. His book "Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture" will be published next year. He wrote this article for The Washington Post.

Dear George... Have I Told You How Much I Appreciate You? :: Alternative Press Review :: Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream

Dear George... Have I Told You How Much I Appreciate You? :: Alternative Press Review :: Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
Dear George... Have I Told You How Much I Appreciate You?

by Zbignew Zingh

Dear George,

I hope you don't mind if I address you familiarly, Mr. President? It seems like you've been on my mind so much these past many years that I can speak to you like an old buddy.

I want you to know, George, that despite all the derogatory things that I've said and published about you on the Web, I really, really do appreciate what you've done for me. So, I'd like to express my sincere thanks to you, publicly, just this once.

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Of course, just because I appreciate what you've done for me, please do not misunderstand me. You're still an ignoramus, a liar and a thug. But I do appreciate you.

When you first were “elected” in 2000, George... well, at that time, I still thought that you were, more or less, elected... I thought of myself as a proud and politically “liberal” citizen. You know who I mean, George. I was one of those gullible, Panglossian types who got my news from the television, and who thought that the United States was the champion of democracy that could do no wrong. My glass was always half full and never half empty. I used to vote for the Democratic lesser-of-two-evils and I really thought that the Two Parties were totally different. Yes, I admit that I wore rose colored American glasses, George; but I've grown up, since then. I've gotten wiser and I've educated myself better. You know, once I was blind and now I can see, and all that. I owe it all to you, George. You have been the impulse behind my improved vision, my educational betterment.

You see, unlike your predecessors – Republican and Democratic presidents alike - you have absolutely no skill whatsoever concealing in silken gloves the tightly clenched iron fists of greed and power. True, your predecessors hammered their victims as viciously and as you do, but they succeeded in covering their actions with a veneer of righteousness that, in those naïve days, caused me to accept the veneer as reality. Your naked power plays, by contrast, are so crass, so blatant, so transparent that you have completely shattered any illusion that what America does is for the good of its citizens and the good of the world. In short, George, you've opened my eyes, not just to your transgressions and those of your associates, but to all that preceded you, too.

You see, unlike Mr. Clinton, who, at least, purported to feel our pain while he caused so much of it, you just inflict pain without any empathy at all. It really looks like you enjoy inflicting pain and killing people and punishing anyone who crosses you. You seem to have that natural Machiavellian knack, even though you probably have never read, nor could you comprehend, the words of Machiavelli's book. And unlike your predecessors who lied so effectively while they led us into one imperial war after another, you lie very, very unskillfully. It is as though you and your associates know that you no longer need to feign any conviction or consistency in your lies; instead, you rely on the fact that most Americans simply cannot accept, simply refuse to accept the truth about what you have done and what you are doing.

The effect has been jarring, George. So jarring that you have caused me to go back and reexamine my own gullibility, my own innocence, my own mental construct of my old liberal American world. Your insensitive, heavy handed style of governance, so much like that of a Mafia don, or the tinhorn despots you are allied with, has startled me into looking more closely at how someone like you could come to power in these United States. And once I started looking more closely, George, I continued digging, searching, analyzing. Then I fell through the looking glass and tumbled deep into the wonderland of our political and economic history.

George, I frankly needed more time, more space, better sources of information, so all-consuming was the quest for truth that you launched me on. So I disconnected my television (no great loss there, I assure you!), changed my old habits and amusements, and poured my energy into study and examination of what had gone wrong for someone like you to be holding the reins of government. Thanks to you George, I also had to get beyond all those tired old media – the New York Times, the Washington Post, the weekly news magazines, the Rupert Murdoch news holdings, the ClearChannel radio stations, the whole raft of corporate media that seem to be your cheerleaders. You also caused me to reexamine my old perceptions of the so-called “Democrats” and the “public” radio and television stations because they, too, had more and more often fallen in line with the corporate weltanschauung that you embody. Thanks to you, George, I have finally learned what I should have learned long ago: you can't trust the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, any large corporation and anyone in the administration. If the Federal Reserve Board says its Black, it's probably White. If the Pentagon says its Hot, then it's probably Cold. If the CIA says its False, then it's probably True. If Wall Street says Buy, then you should Sell. If the DOJ says it's Constitutional, then it most likely is Not Constitutional.

I'm on a journey now, George, and I have you to thank for pushing me off on it. You gave me a big shove into unknown waters when you said that I'm either with you or I'm against you. You shoved me off because I am most definitely not with you. I admit that it's a little scary because I'm not certain where it all leads, George. I am certain, however, that it leads far away from the illusory world of faux democracy, deceptocracy, secret government, torture, lawlessness, economic and political degeneracy that you epitomize.

I think, George, that quite frankly you scare a lot of people. No, I'm not talking about little people like me. I think you scare the bejeezers out of the mucky-mucks who own and run you, the people who bankrolled your career and who pull your puppet strings. You frighten them because they must recognize how effective you have been in startling whole masses of people like me, in the U.S. and elsewhere, into undertaking similar journeys. In short, you, George, have the capacity to single-handedly rip the veil off the 200-plus year illusion of American exceptionalism, economic aggression and exclusionary politics that has sustained our national ego for all this time. You, George, seem to have the innate ability to disillusion oh so many millions of people with our hollow economic, political and social orders so that, more than any progressive, more than any liberal, more than any revolutionary, you could actually kick out the psychic props that hold up the whole rotten edifice. Thus are you most frightening to those who desperately want to paint the smiley face back on capitalism, who want to re-clothe the iron military fist in silken gloves of “diplomacy” and who want to restore the myth that America is somehow better than everyone else. You, George, have not even bothered with the niceties of gloving your bloody hands in silk. You have not trifled with the diplomacy of manners or the perfume of noble causes. Yours is the face of raw, naked power. You have dropped the mask, George, and the face you show us is not the one that our Owners and Leaders want us to see.

Equally frightening to the Leaders and Owners and String-Pullers of our world is how effectively you have discredited most of the major institutions they rely on to command respect and obedience from all of us. By packing the Courts with right wing radicals you have denigrated the judiciary. By cozying up with fanatical religious bigots, you have undermined the respectability of the religion you profess. By claiming the power to eavesdrop, kidnap, torture, incarcerate and wage war, literally at will, you have debased the presidency and proved the need for a weaker, a more constrained Executive Branch of Government. By manipulating world financial institutions, discarding treaties willy-nilly, and force-feeding your authoritarian brand of top-down “democracy” down the throats of the unwilling, you have caused disrepute for everything that you tout.

Of course, I completely understand, George, that America is not better, or worse, than any other nation on earth. Given the same degree of power and opportunity, every civilization, every ethnicity, culture, religion, empire or nation has done, or would do the same. There is no more criminality, no more avarice, greed or corruption in our body politic or among our people – nor any more “goodness”, charity, benevolence, wisdom, insight or piety either – than in any other place on the face of the earth. What distinguishes the U.S. from everyone everywhere else is the current balance of political, economic and military power. We have it; others don't.

But the mere recognition that we are fundamentally no different than anyone else threatens the mythology that has stoked our hallucination for many decades. What you have therefore caused me to understand, George, is that even impeaching you is not sufficient. Replacing you with a prettier face or a nicer president or a Democratic Congress is not enough. Nostalgia for a better time is not enough. George, what you have taught me is that there really is nothing to be nostalgic for.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't cherry-pick the best from whatever any culture or economic or political theory can offer. It simply means that we have to look forward to creating new and better systems, rather than just dumping your kind and returning to a mistaken nostalgia for a past that never was. This is a troubling understanding, but thanks to you, George, many people now think that way.

By the way, George, particularly as to you, I have a theory, why your poll numbers have plummeted. Please don't take this as a personal attack, because I really am grateful to you. You see, it's really not what you do that alienates even your erstwhile supporters, but how you do it.

Surely, in the past, many American presidents and politicians and businessmen have instigated unjust wars and wreaked havoc among the downtrodden in order to line their own pockets and protect their real constituents' economic interests. Many Americans could tolerate the injustice of what was done in their names because these past acts were often deftly carried out and the protocols of social illusion were respected. Moreover, many Americans perceived that they benefited from these injustices, albeit indirectly, and, in some instances, they even shared the biases that blessed the travesties that were committed.

But you're something special, George. You're inept. A bungler. An incompetent. You have no finesse. Indeed, throughout history, many have shown themselves quite willing to accept the evils dished out by their leaders. But incompetence - - whoa Bessie! - - that is the one unforgivable sin. For many of your own disappointed supporters, including the country's legitimately worried power elite, you should be impeached for your bungling and ineptitude, if not for the actual deeds that you have done. America hates a loser, George, and you're a loser.

As for me, personally, I'd like you to stay on in office, George. I don't want you to be impeached. I would like it if you fulfilled the remaining three agonizingly long years of your presidency (if only we could keep your twitchy fingers off the nuclear button and prevent you from attacking anyone else). A few more years of you – should the world survive them – and some of the critically important lessons for change might actually take root. For you have become such a wonderful enzyme, such a potent catalyst for our collective political and economic education, that were you out of office and some pretty-faced, old style, more adroit political deceiver in charge, then we might all start to slip back into our dreamland; we might all backslide into complacency, slip back into the hallucination and politically degenerate state of our pre-Bush years.

So be assured, George: I, we, indeed the whole world appreciates what you are doing for us. You are still an ignoramus, a liar and a thug, but we appreciate you.

copyleft 2006

BBC NEWS | Americas | Death raises concern at police tactics

BBC NEWS | Americas | Death raises concern at police tactics

BBC NEWS
Death raises concern at police tactics
By Matthew Davis
BBC News, Washington

The recent killing of an unarmed Virginia doctor has raised concerns about what some say is an explosion in the use of military-style police Swat teams in the United States.

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Armed with assault rifles, stun grenades - even armoured personnel carriers - units once used only in highly volatile situations are increasingly being deployed on more routine police missions.

Dr Salvatore Culosi Jr had come out of his townhouse to meet an undercover policeman when he was shot through the chest by a Special Weapons and Tactics force.

It was about 2135 on a chilly January evening. The 37-year-old optometrist was unarmed, he had no history of violence and displayed no threatening behaviour.

But he had been under investigation for illegal gambling and in line with a local police policy on "organised crime" raids, the heavily armed team was there to serve a search warrant.

As officers approached with their weapons drawn, tragedy struck. A handgun was accidentally discharged, fatally wounding Dr Culosi.

Two months on, investigations into the incident are still continuing, a delay which Dr Culosi's family says is compounding the "horror and burden of it all".

Salvatore Culosi Sr, the dead man's father, told the BBC: "I never knew him to carry so much as a pocket knife so it bewilders me how a detective could spend three months investigating my son and not know he is a pussy cat.

"If anything comes out of this it must be that another family does not experience this pain and anguish for absolutely no reason.

"Policy needs to change so these kinds of accidents never occur again."

'Excessive force'

Professor Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarisation from Eastern Kentucky University, says that in the 1980s there were about 3,000 Swat team deployments annually across the US, but says now there are at least 40,000 per year.

What we find is that when Swat teams go out, shootings go down
John Gnagey
National Tactical Officers Association

"I have no problem with using these paramilitary style squads to go after known violent, armed criminals, but it is an extreme tactic to use against other sorts of suspects," he said.

Dr Kraska believes there has been an explosion of units in smaller towns and cities, where training and operational standards may not be as high as large cities - a growth he attributes to "the hysteria" of the country's war on drugs.

"I get several calls a month from people asking about local incidents - wrong address raids, excessive use of force, wrongful shootings - this stuff is happening all the time," he adds.

Every wrongful death of a civilian, or criminal killing of a police officer, fuels the complex and emotive argument over the way the United States is policed.

Those who reject criticism of the use of Swat teams argue that the presence of the units actually prevents violence through the credible threat of overwhelming force.

John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, told the BBC: "What we find is that when Swat teams go out, shootings go down.

"We don't see it as escalating anything. We see it as reducing violence."

The NTOA rejects Dr Kraska's figures and says the actual number of deployments is far lower, but says there is a need for national training standards.

An NTOA study of 759 Swat team deployments across the US, found half were for warrant service and a third for incidents where suspects had barricaded themselves in a building - 50 were for hostage situations.

When criminology professor David Klinger looked at 12 years of data on Swat teams in 1998, he also found the most common reason for calling out teams was serving warrants, but that the units used deadly force during warrant service only 0.4% of the time.

Recruitment video

Last year the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) commissioned music video director JC Barros to make them a 10-minute film - To Protect and Serve - that would "get young men and women excited" about a career with the force.

The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy
Dr Peter Kraska
Eastern Kentucky University

More action film than recruitment video, it follows two LAPD officers who - in one day - capture a robbery suspect, are first on the scene when a gun-toting man takes a woman hostage, mediate a fight, and help to find a young kidnap victim.

Along the way they are supported by colleagues from bike patrol, K-9 dog teams, air support and, of course, the Swat team.

But Dr Kraska sees such initiatives as reflecting a changing culture of police work.

"These elite units are highly culturally appealing to certain sections of the police community. They like it, they enjoy it," he says.

"The chance to strap on a vest, grab a semi-automatic weapon and go out on a mission is for some people an exciting reason to join - even if policing as a profession can - and should - be boring for much of the time.

"The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4803570.stm

Published: 2006/03/21 10:13:34 GMT

© BBC MMVI

village voice > news > Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff

village voice > news > Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff

Liberty Beat
The Torture Judge
U.S. court rules our government can break international laws to keep us safe
by Nat Hentoff
March 13th, 2006 12:45 AM

Essentially you have a judge saying that assuming that U.S. officials sent Mr. Arar to be tortured, a judge can do nothing about it. Georgetown University law professor David Cole, New York Law Journal, February 17

In a startling, ominous decision—ignored by most of the press around the country—Federal District Judge David Trager, in the Eastern District of New York, has dismissed a lawsuit by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, who, during a stopover at Kennedy Airport on the way home to Canada after vacation, was kidnapped by CIA agents.

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Arar was flown to Syria, where he was tortured for nearly a year in solitary confinement in a three-by-six-foot cell ("like a grave," he said). He became, internationally, one of the best-known victims of the CIA's extraordinary renditions—the sending of suspected terrorists to countries known for torturing their prisoners.

Released after his ordeal, Arar has not been charged with any involvement in terrorism, or anything else, by Syria or the United States. Stigmatized by his notoriety, still traumatized, unemployed, he is back in Canada, where the Canadian Parliament had opened an extensive and expensive public inquiry into his capture and torture. The United States refuses to cooperate in any way with this investigation.

Maher Arar sued for damages in federal court here (Maher Arar v. John Ashcroft, formerly Attorney General of the United States, et al.). Representing Arar for the New York–based Center for Constitutional Rights, David Cole predicts, and I agree, that if Judge Trager's ruling is upheld in an appeal to the Supreme Court, the CIA and other American officials will be told "they have a green light to do to others what they did to Arar"—no matter what international or U.S. laws are violated in the name of national security.

Following the dismissal of Arar's case by Trager (former dean of Brooklyn Law School), Barbara Olshansky (deputy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights) underscored the significance of what Trager has done to legitimize the Bush administration's doctrine that in the war on terrorism, the commander in chief sets the rules. Said Olshansky: "There can be little doubt that every official of the United States government [involved in the torture of Maher Arar] knew that sending him to Syria was a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and international law . . . This is a dark day indeed."

To fathom the darkness of Trager's decision that Maher Arar has no constitutional right to due process in an American court of law for what he suffered because of the CIA, it's necessary to be aware of a decision directly on point by New York's Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980.

In this landmark decision, Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, David Cole points out, the appeals court decided that "the prohibition on torture was so universally accepted that a U.S. Court could hold responsible a Paraguayan official charged with torturing a dissident in Paraguay . . . The [U.S.] court declared that when officials violate such a fundamental norm as torture, they can be held accountable anywhere they are found." (Emphasis added.)

That 1980 Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision proclaimed: "The torturer has become the pirate and slave trader before him . . . an enemy of all mankind." (Emphasis added.)

The kicker is that this decision giving American courts jurisdiction over cases of official torture in other countries was reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2004 (Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain).

Now let us hear how Judge Trager justifies his dismissal of Maher Arar's suit for the atrocities he endured in Syria because of the CIA. In his decision, Trager said that if a judge decided, on his or her own, that the CIA's "extraordinary renditions" were always unconstitutional, "such a ruling can have the most serious consequences to our foreign relations or national security or both."

A judge must be silent, even if our own statutes and treaties are violated! What about the separation of powers? Ah, said Trager, "the coordinate branches of our government [executive and legislative] are those in whom the Constitution imposes responsibility for our foreign affairs and national security. Those branches have the responsibility to determine whether judicial oversight is appropriate."

Gee, I thought that the checks and balances of our constitutional system depend on the independence of the federal judiciary, which itself decides to exercise judicial review.

Judge Trager went further to protect the Bush administration's juggernaut conduct of foreign policy: "One need not have much imagination to contemplate the negative effect on our relations with Canada if discovery were to proceed in this case, and were it to turn out that certain high Canadian officials had, despite public denials, acquiesced in Arar's removal to Syria."

"More generally," Trager went on, "governments that do not wish to acknowledge publicly that they are assisting us would certainly hesitate to do so if our judicial discovery process could compromise them."

But judge, the Canadian government itself is now actively involved in an inquiry to discover, among other things, what happened to Arar, and how. And in Europe, there is a fierce controversy over whether governments there have been covertly involved in facilitating the CIA's kidnapping of terror suspects from other lands.

Is it the job of a federal judge here to protect other governments from embarrassment and eventual punishment by their own courts for helping the United States commit crimes?

And what about our own government's criminal accountability? The February 17 New York Law Journal noted that "Judge Trager said that even assuming the government had intended to remove Maher Arar to Syria for torture, the federal judiciary was in no position to hold our government officials liable for damages 'in the absence of explicit direction by Congress . . . even if such conduct violates our treaty obligations or customary international law.' " (Emphasis added.)

If independent federal judges cannot hold our government accountable, who can? Fortunately, Judge Trager is not on the Supreme Court. But look at whom George W. Bush has appointed to be our custodians of the Constitution!