Category: Politics

Watching that stupid little fool, inarguably the most powerful man on the planet, propped up in the white House behind a podium with its modern speaking tube mumbling, and as if sedated, the same phrases over and over again may have been the scariest experience of my life. I have always tried to avoid watching him, and with great success until tonight. This time the prospect had something of the attraction of a choice seat for the proverbial train wreck, and I just had to be there, since it bode well to be a doozy. It was.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtains!”
When do Dorothy and Toto show up?

“How am I doing?” Ed Koch used to ask continually as he walked about a New York City smothered by his outsized personality.
George W. Bush doesn’t ask this question, and now he has a very good reason not to. A new poll by Quinnipiac University indicates that if an election were held now he would lose to anyone fielded against him, in other words, candidate Fill-in-the-blank is doing better than the man some call the incumbent president.
Polls are mostly useful for those who find their results agreeable, so this one will be ignored by the White House, especially since this is a regime which knows it is not going to have to depend on a free election to stay in power.

Too many are shutting it down.

The creator of a satirical Web site that took aim at Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, said he felt a chill when the letter on White House stationery arrived.

The website, www.whitehouse.org, is overloaded right now because of its sudden celebrity.

Most of us hardly need to hear much more argument or even more real eloquence on the subject of an Iraq war and the murderous political cynicism behind it, but career diplomat John Brady Kiesling’s letter of resignation is exceptionally representative of both. An excerpt:

. . . this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

Later in the body of this letter to his superior, Colin Powell, Kiesling asks, referring to our reckless swaggering before the world, “Has ‘oderint dum metuant’ really become our motto?” A translation of Caligula’s words would be “Let them hate so long as they fear.”

Is Reuters making a cynical editorial comment, or just reflecting the reality of the fascist coup, by describing Bush as “taking power” in this report on tonight’s press conference?

Reflecting the seriousness of the situation, the 8 p.m. EST news conference will be only the president’s second such solo event in the White House East Room since taking power more than two years ago. The first was in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Also, two news conferences in two years? Hardly sounds like responsible government to me.

Mark Morford has a vision. No, it’s a nightmare. It’s our future.

These are the final days of peace in America. Please remember to turn off the lights and lock up when you leave.
These are the last days of relative calm before we start bombing and massacring hundreds of thousands of people and in so doing enter into what many believe will a very long, drawn-out, insanely expensive, volatile, destabilizing, completely unwinnable war against a cheap thug of an opponent who has negligible military might and zero capacity to actually
harm the U.S. in any substantive way. U-S-A! U-S-A!
. . .
War is at hand. America is about to turn a corner, sharp to the right. These are the last days of peace in America as you know it. And we will never be the same.

Doesn’t this say just about everything we need to know about democracy in the U.K., the U.S., or indeed, the world?

Until now, Blair has said he reserved the right to go to war without U.N. authorization in case a singular “unreasonable veto” was wielded.
But in a debate on music television channel MTV he appeared to extend that proviso to include multiple vetoes.
“If there was a veto applied by one of the countries with a veto or by countries that I [my italic] thought were applying the veto unreasonably then in those circumstances I [my italic] would,” Blair said when asked if he would go to war without a new U.N. mandate.

Baby Bush [who himself routinely speaks in terms of “I” will do this or that] and toady Blair each see war and peace as their personal decisions and do not even pretend to be representing a constituancy.

There are all kinds of reasons to question the various plans for the site of the World Trade Center, but one of them is not an argument about aesthetics.
The entire former WTC area was extraterritorial, meaning not subject to the laws of New York City or New York State. Significantly, the Port Authority buildings were the last New York City commercial or office spaces to regulate or prohibit smoking, and in the end that was done independent of New York laws. More significant for civil rights was the fact that demonstrations or protests of any kind, and the behavior or even the very presence of the public was subject to the whims of the Port Authority and could not be challenged by law. I have personal experience with the burden of arrogant Port Authority power. These were not the streets of the city. Private property!–we can keep you out.
The World Trade Center was Supermall, and those planning its replacement now are repeating this affront to New York freedoms and sensibilities. Private property!–we can keep you out.
All of this brings me to my latest story about the outrageous violation of civil liberties in the name of public order. Stephen Downs was arrested in an Albany area mall on monday night for wearing a pro-peace t-shirt.

One shirt simply said “Let Inspections Work” on one side and “No War With Iraq” on the other. The other shirt said “Give Peace A Chance” on the front and “Peace On Earth” on the back.
. . .
Signs posted at entrances to the mall say that “wearing of apparel… likely to provoke disturbances… is prohibited” at the mall.

When security approached Downs and his 31-year-old son in a food court, they were asked to remove their shirts. The son did so, but the father refused and was arrested for trespasssing when he declined to leave the mall as requested by mall security. Today Newsday reports, “The men had had the T-shirts made at a mall store and wore them while they shopped.”
The malls of America, they’re not just an assault on our aesthetic and social sensibilities anymore. They are an assault on our freedoms as well. Private property!–we can keep you out.

Some of us know that there was a fascist coup two years ago, but some of us refuse to give up. John Bonifaz probably expects to take his case to the Supreme Court, although he can hardly have any illusions about its chances.
Newsday‘s Ellis Henican says that Bonifaz believes that war should never be a one-man choice, and that, like many of us, he believes that under the U.S. Constitution it must be the decision of Congress.
The “legendary creative legal stratgist” and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient argues that the Constitution does not permit Congress to delegate its unique power to declare war [even to an elected president, and even when we have such, I might add], according to Article 1, Section 8.

As he drew up his court papers, some legal strategists – even some of Bonifaz’s friends – were openly dubious. “Forget about this,” they told him.
Congress hasn’t passed a formal declaration of war since World War II. Somehow or another, the U.S. had found its way into Korea and Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf War – plus nearly six decades’ worth of smaller conflicts – without a single formal declaration of war, whatever Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution might seem to say.
Good point.
But the more he studied the law, the more this young lawyer became convinced. This time was different.
In Vietnam, the legal challenges hadn’t been brought until the war was underway for years. By then, Congress had already approved major war expenditures and even extended the draft – actions that were arguably the equivalent of a formal declaration of war.
None of that applied here.
“This case deals with an extraordinary moment in American history,” Bonifaz said. “Never before has the United States premeditated a first-strike invasion of another country and the conquering and occupation of that country. This is not about repelling a sudden attack.”

No and this is about much more than a tyranny replacing a republic. It’s about world dictatorship, and it has to be stopped.

I think we have hardly seen the beginning of a powerful antiwar movement without precedent.

LONDON, March 2 — The people who helped organize the largest worldwide peace demonstration in history last month say they are not through yet.
More than 120 activists from 28 countries emerged from an all-day strategy session here this weekend with plans not just to protest a prospective U.S.-led war against Iraq but to prevent it from happening. They want to intensify political pressure on the Bush administration’s closest allies — the leaders of Britain, Italy and Spain — and force them to withdraw their support, leaving the United States, if it chooses to fight, to go it alone. And they intend to further disrupt war plans with acts of civil disobedience against U.S. military bases, supply depots and transports throughout Europe.

And I also think that the movement will not disappear even if the war does.

Organizers say they would like to find a way to channel the newfound enthusiasm and activism into a worldwide political movement. But they say the disparate nature of those participating would make such a movement difficult if not impossible.
“This was caused by social forces, and it’s not something that organizations produced,” said Andrew Burgin, a member of the coalition’s British steering committee. “They’re not in our control. . . . You don’t lead a movement like this, the movement leads you.”