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Tuesday, July 23, 2002
Well said, JMS Posted by J. Michael Straczynski, probably best known as the creator of the Babylon 5 television series: From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5) >I would be interested to hear some alternate suggestions on how to deal with them [terrorists]. After all, it is one thing to criticize. It is another to offer an alternative. The alternative is that we use the system of justice that has served this country for over two hundred years. We endured two world wars and one cold one. We faced the greatest military war machine in human history, with their own agents in this country as we had agents in theirs. We beat them by hewing to the ideals and the standards and the laws that had propelled us to that moment out of history in the first place. The moments we look back at in shame are the moments when we *diverged* from our sense of justice, as with the Japanese internment camps. Let's take a good, hard look at what we're facing here. For all the announcements to come out of the administration, we have had no further attacks on American soil, and the one attack we DID have consisted of a handful of individuals wielding *box cutters*. That's it. We're talking freakin' exacto-blades here. They used our own technology against us. This could have happened at ANY point in time prior to that moment. It could have happened during the Korean war, the Vietnamese conflict, the Gulf war...all you need is X number of guys with the will to do it. We are not in any more danger now than we were then. We have ALWAYS been vulnerable to such things because we are a free society, and there are an awful lot of people pissed off at us for a variety of reasons. Not ONE really credible threat has been exhumed since 9/11. The "dirty bomb" bit turned out to be just a *discussion* about such things, so that even Ashcroft had to backpedal. The Al Queda structure has been severely weakened by the actions in Afghanistan (or so we are told), the hostiles in this country (not yet proven but I'm willing to believe they're here) are small in number...is all this worth throwing the Constitution away, the same Constitution that served us through the Civil War, in which over 100,000 US citizens died, in which brother could not trust brother? (Yes, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeus corpus for some of that time, and there were other abuses, but we recognize them now AS abuses. If we see that it was wrong then, why repeat the error?) The administration says we are at war, and therefore must sacrifice our rights. But in fact we are NOT at war. There has been no declaration of war from congress. Is the solution to detain American citizens in military cells without right of attorney (even if they are lowlifes like Padilla)? Is the solution to dealing with maybe a few dozen dangerous guys (and there have ALWAYS been dangerous guys in this country, anybody who thinks otherwise is nuts) to have a million people acting as informants and spies on other American citizens through TIPS? Is the solution, as Ridge and Bush are now advocating, to use the military to make arrests in violation of the Posse Comitatas act? No. The solution, the alternative to dealing with the problem you ask for is the one we've had for two hundred years. A nation with laws, and oversight, and checks and balances. If we sacrifice that, then the country we hand to our inheritors won't be worth the struggle we endured to maintain it. jms (jmsatb5@aol.com)
Creative accounting "The perpetrators of the budget binge — President Bush and Congress — are sacrificing the public's long-term welfare for their own short-term political gains. In the case of Enron, the company's long-run stability was sacrificed for inflated stock prices in the short run. In the case of the federal budget, the health of Social Security and other programs is being sacrificed for unaffordable tax cuts. The motivation is the same: the decision makers don't believe they should be accountable for the long-run problems. Kenneth Lay walked away from Enron with millions. And the president and most lawmakers in Congress will be gone from office before the effects of the budget policies are fully felt." A great editorial piece about the parallels between the scandals of corporations like Enron and what's going on with the Federal budget, and how the results will eventually be the same, especially for Social Security. Read it here [registration required].
Ignoring horror "An international human rights organisation has accused the Russian military of a campaign of executions in Chechnya to deliberately reduce the break-away republic's male pop." The United States more or less ignored the many human rights abuses in Chechnya during the Clinton administration, and will likely continue to do the same during the Bush adminstration, especially since the Russians can just claim their actions are a neccessary part of the "war on terror." This won't alter the fact that the Russians are doing the same sorts of things that would have us threatening war if they were being done by some country we didn't like. Read more about it here.
Hiding behind his master's troops "Afghan President Hamid Karzai has asked for American bodyguards to help reinforce his security. Until now Mr Karzai has been guarded solely by Afghans, most of them mujahideen fighters." Apparently it is a tradition of sorts in Afghanistan for unpopular rulers to bring in foreigners to protect them, so now the U.S. puppet in Kabul is having to resort to the same tactics. Given the recent assassination of Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir, he has every right to be afraid for his life, but asking for help from America was a political blunder, to say the least. Read more of the story here.
Money! "While Congress is putting the spotlight on business practices in response to a spate of corporate malfeasance that has shaken the markets and shrunk the retirement accounts of constituents, both parties continue to rely on the corporate sector as a steady font of campaign cash — even as they jockey for supremacy on the subject of who is going to reform Wall Street." U.S. lawmakers are currently all talking a lot about reforming things, but, as this article points out, they are at the same time taking large amounts of cash from pretty much anyone who will give it. Maybe they think that this will all blow over, or that no one will notice when they pass some ineffectual set of new laws that do little or nothing to curb corporate greed and corruption. Read the article here [registration required].
No, President Bush, we will not help you attack Iraq "The last thing Europe wants is to be accused of going wobbly on Iraq. But the American talk of overthrowing Saddam Hussein by military force is raising alarms in European governments. They are saying that any American miscalculation could undermine the international coalition that is fighting against terrorism, and the broad-based diplomacy needed to solve the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians. Also, they fear that a drive against Iraq would drive a wedge between Britain and the rest of Europe." The article talks about the reactions of various European governments to the United States' obsession with Iraq, and what those governments think is more important at the moment (like peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians). Once again they seem to be tired of Bush's tendency to assume they will all fall into line with whatever he wants, even when they obviously don't agree with him. Read the article here [registration required].
Americans change their priorities "Wagging the dog no longer cuts it. If the Bush administration wants to distract Americans from watching their 401(k)'s go down the toilet, it will have to unleash the whole kennel. Maybe only unilateral annihilation of the entire axis of evil will do. Though the fate of John Walker Lindh was once a national obsession, its resolution couldn't knock Wall Street from the top of the evening news this week. Neither could the president's White House lawn rollout of his homeland security master plan. When John Ashcroft, in full quiver, told Congress that the country was dotted with Al Qaeda sleeper cells 'waiting to strike again,' he commanded less media attention than Ted Williams's corpse." An interesting op-ed piece about how the President and the rest of the corporate puppets in Washington still don't get just how angry their consituents are about the recent financial scandals and the lukewarm response to them. Read it here [registration required].
Monday, July 22, 2002
Democrats vs. Greens Sam Smith writes in today's Undernews: "ANTI-GREEN WITH ENVY AMERICA'S MORIBUND liberal-left can't stand the idea that there is actually a federally qualified, lively progressive political party that refuses to pay it any mind. While the Green Party is doing so well that both parties tried to cut deals with it in New Mexico, the archaic left continues to assume that the way to attract Greens back to its brownfields is to hector them. Latest case in point was a piece in the Washington Post by Liza Featherstone in which she took the Minnesota Greens to task for daring to run a candidate against Paul Wellstone, including this absurdity: "So why are the Minnesota Greens opposing him? Well, because the Minnesota Green Party, like many third-party efforts these days, is not so much about building a political movement as making a political gesture. It has no realistic strategy for achieving a set of policy goals, and its platform has become secondary to its attitude toward politics. And that attitude is not one of participation in the political process so much as alienation from it." In fact, the Minnesota Greens seem to some (including your editor) to have made a major tactical mistake, but not unlike those that frequently happen in politics. To turn such an error into a philosophical dysfunction is roughly the same as declaring a stolen base to be a sign of spiritual vision on the part of a ballplayer. Besides, Featherstone is only able to come up with the Minnesota example to support her prejudices about third parties. In fact, Greens are doing better than ever around the country and are so threatening to the ancient regime that papers like the Washington Post feel compelled to go on the attack. When the Post gets scared enough to stop blacklisting you and criticizes you by name, you are making headway. And anyone who knows anything about Greens would rank alienation near the bottom of their faults. This is, of course, a messy business. I would, for example, much prefer the Greens be far stronger on populist and civil liberties issues. And I do not deny that the problem of when one runs candidates and against whom is a complicated and tricky one. But Featherstone and other voices of the archaic left are really in no position to tell the Greens how to stage their revolution. It's a little like George Bush lecturing on corporate ethics. And if the liberal-left had done its own job right, folks like the Greens wouldn't be such a threat to it. Fortunately, the common scold approach to the problem isn't the only one. A number of Democrats - including Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee and Maine Democratic senatorial candidate Chellie Pingree - have managed to work out a fair accommodation with the Greens. McKinney even videotaped As a starting point, Democrats should treat Greens at least as well as they treat soccer moms. Democrats have to realize that Greens are not going to go away. And they certainly are not going to be scared off by arrogant attacks by loyalists of a party that has all but destroyed itself through its own cowardice, lack of imagination, and willingness to play the submissive in the great S&M game of the Democrats' conservative leadership." Oops... "US air strikes in Afghanistan have killed hundreds of civilians, according to a detailed on-the-ground survey that threatens to embarrass the Bush administration. The survey into the impact of the war on terrorism, published in the New York Times yesterday, claims that 812 Afghan civilians have died in the strikes. Conducted by Global Exchange, a respected human rights organisation, the survey warns that the number of civilian fatalities could rise as field workers reach remote villages that have been hit." Of course, our puppet President Karzai has already come out with a statement supporting the US bombing, but one would hardly expect anything else from the man we basically put into power. Read the Guardian article here.
Resisting neo-liberalism "Rio de Janeiro. A crisis is brewing in Brazil as Luis Inacio da Silva, the left-leaning candidate of the Workers Party, has opened up a wide lead in the upcoming October presidential elections. A victory by da Silva, commonly known as "Lula," would be a political jolt for South America. Brazil is the largest country with the biggest economy in Latin America. It lies between two tumultuous nations-Argentina which is experiencing an economic implosion, and Venezuela, where rightist and traditional political parties backed by the United States recently tried to overthrow President Hugo Chavez. Moreover, da Silva's opposition to the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas and his independence on foreign policy issues like Cuba mark him as an adversary of the Bush administration." The current center-right President of Brazil can't run again, and apparently his coalition can't find any other candidate to stand against de Silva who isn't tainted by corruption. Some major American investment banks find the idea of de Silva as President so disturbing that they downgraded their ratings of Brazil back in May, which caused an economic crisis. The reaction of the Brazilian people? "'These banks have led the neo-liberal sacking of our country and now they are trying to scare people into perpetuating a political order that serves only their narrow interests,' fumed Reinaldo Gonzalvez of the Economic Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro." Read the article here.
Controlling those pesky protesters "The U.S.'s nonlethal-weapons programs are drawing their own fire, mostly from human-rights activists who contend that the technologies being developed will be deployed to suppress dissent and that they defy international weapons treaties. Through public websites, interviews with defense researchers and data obtained in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by watchdog groups, TIME has managed to peer into the Pentagon's multimillion-dollar program and piece together this glimpse of the gentler, though not necessarily kinder, arsenal of tomorrow." Are those weapons are going to be used on enemy soldiers with guns? Terrorists with bombs? Of course not. They'll be used on protesters, "rioters," and other civilians. Is it better than being shot? Most likely. But that just means that the police (or military) will resort to using them more often. Read the article here.
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