11.28.2005
Post Thanksgiving thoughtsfrom Leonard Peltier
Aho my relations,
I again write to you on this day of mourning as I approach the end of
3O years of deprived freedom. I am here to appease a vengeful
government that has come onto our lands, committed genocide and
continues to rob us of our history and culture while giving away our
land, murdering, and torturing our people.
I am held here because of the corruption of two countries (Canada and the United States) which illegally extradited me, and which led to an illegal conviction and imprisonment. Despite the incessant claims of this being a country of laws and an example to the world of justice, freedom, and democracy, it is obvious that this Government protects whoever it wants, and imprisons and kills whoever it wants.
My imprisonment is one key example of what lengths this Government
will go to in order to achieve its goal of repressing indigenous
dissent. The United States Government continually seeks to imprison
all indigenous peoples on our land. The US Government has been
increasing its oppressive and tyrannical tactics. All peoples rights
are being eroded and fears are heightened as a tool to keep the war
machine alive and increase the destruction of Mother Earth. Innocent
people are dying, not only in this country, but all over the world in
the name of "democracy and freedom."
My elders before me said, and I tell you now, "The earth does not
belong to us, we belong to the earth." And I want to say, this earth
belongs to Tunkashala, the creator of all that is. There has already
started a time of great cleansing upon the earth and this Government
has begun to crumble. The fabric of the constitution is soiled and
torn.
We as human beings can give thanks or mourn, but if all that happens
is no more than lip service, very little will happen to correct
things. In the traditions of my native people we barely had words of
thanks. It was something that was shown by action of giving or doing.
We all breath the same air, are made of the same earth, and drink of
the same water. We are all more relative than we sometimes
acknowledge. We need to do more than just what is right. We need to
join together and right what is wrong.
It is time we all unite to stop the ma! dness threatening the whole
planet, and stand together with those who go beyond words and deliver
on the promise of freedom and justice, and against those guided by
greed, arrogance, and prejudice. Stay true, work in unity, confront
the traitors, don't be afraid, and don't let our struggle die. And
finally, I mourn the loss of so many of our relatives over the past
year and especially my brother Steve Robideau. I appreciate you each
and every one. Now, please organize and set out to correct the wrongs
so that this day of mourning will become a relic of the past.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier Mitakuye Oyasin
posted by Leonard @ 8:04 PM, Nov. 24, 2005 http://www.leonardpeltier.org/
Special Thanks to Ken Norton of http://www.commonsenselaw.com/
11.23.2005
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FIRST THANKSGIVINGby James W. Loewen
Over the last few years, I have asked hundreds of college students, "When was the country we now know as the United States first settled?"
That is a generous way of putting the question. Surely "we now know as" implies that the original settlement happened before the United States. I had hoped that students would suggest 30,000 BC, or some
other pre-Columbian date. They did not. Their consensus answer was "1620."
Part of the problem is the word "settle." "Settlers" were white. Indians did not settle. Nor are students the only people misled by "settle." One recent Thanksgiving weekend, I listened as a guide at
the Statue of Liberty told about European immigrants "populating a
wild East Coast." As we shall see, however, if Indians had not
already settled New England, Europeans would have had a much tougher
job of it.
Starting with the Pilgrims not only leaves out the Indians, but also
the Spanish. In the summer of 1526 five hundred Spaniards and one
hundred black slaves founded a town near the mouth of the Pedee River
in what is now South Carolina. Disease and disputes with nearby
Indians caused many deaths. Finally, in November the slaves rebelled,
killed some of their masters, and escaped to the the Indians. By now
only 150 Spaniards survived, and they evacuated back to Haiti. The
ex-slaves remained behind. So the first non-Native settlers in "the
country we now know as the United States" were Africans.
The Spanish continued their settling in 1565, when they massacred a
settlement of French Protestants at St. Augustine, Florida, and
replaced it with their own fort. Some Spanish were pilgrims, seeking
regions new to them to secure religious liberty: these were Spanish
Jews, who settled in New Mexico in the late 1500s. Few Americans know
that one third of the United States, from San Francisco to Arkansas
to Natchez to Florida, has been Spanish longer than it has been
"American." Moreover, Spanish culture left an indelible impact on the
West. The Spanish introduced horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and the
basic elements of cowboy culture, including its vocabulary: mustang,
bronco, rodeo, lariat, and so on.
Beginning with 1620 also omits the Dutch, who were living in what is
now Albany by 1614. Indeed, 1620 is not even the date of the first
permanent British settlement, for in 1607, the London Company sent
settlers to Jamestown, Virginia. No matter. The mythic origin of "the
country we now know as the United States" is at Plymouth Rock, and
the year is 1620. My students are not at fault. The myth is what
their textbooks and their culture have offered them. I examined how
twelve textbooks used in high school American history classes teach
Thanksgiving. Here is the version in one high school history book,
THE AMERICAN TRADITION:
After some exploring, the Pilgrims chose the land around Plymouth
Harbor for their settlement. Unfortunately, they had arrived in
December and were not prepared for the New England winter. However,
they were aided by friendly Indians, who gave them food and showed
them how to grow corn. When warm weather came, the colonists planted,
fished, hunted, and prepared themselves for the next winter. After
harvesting their first crop, they and their Indian friends celebrated
the first Thanksgiving.
My students also learned that the Pilgrims were persecuted in England
for their religion, so they moved to Holland. They sailed on the
Mayflower to America and wrote the Mayflower Compact. Times were
rough, until they met Squanto. He taught them how to put fish in each
corn hill, so they had a bountiful harvest.
But when I ask them about the plague, they stare back at me. "What
plague? The Black Plague?" No, that was three centuries earlier, I
sigh.
"THE WONDERFUL PLAGUE AMONG THE SAVAGES"
The Black Plague does provide a useful introduction, however. Black
(or bubonic) Plague "was undoubtedly the worst disaster that has ever
befallen mankind." In three years it killed 30 percent of the
population of Europe. Catastrophic as it was, the disease itself
comprised only part of the horror. Thinking the day of judgment was
imminent, farmers failed to plant crops. Many people gave themselves
over to alcohol. Civil and economic disruption may have caused as
much death as the disease itself.
For a variety of reasons --- their probable migration through
cleansing Alaskan ice fields, better hygiene, no livestock or
livestock-borne microbes --- Americans were in Howard Simpson's
assessment "a remarkable healthy race" before Columbus. Ironically,
their very health now proved their undoing, for they had built up no
resistance, genetically or through childhood diseases, to the
microbes Europeans and Africans now brought them. In 1617, just
before the Pilgrims landed, the process started in southern New
England. A plague struck that made the Black Death pale by comparison.
Today we think it was the bubonic plague, although pox and influenza
are also candidates. British fishermen had been fishing off
Massachusetts for decades before the Pilgrims landed. After filling
their hulls with cod, they would set forth on land to get firewood
and fresh water and perhaps capture a few Indians to sell into
slavery in Europe. On one of these expeditions they probably
transmitted the illness to the people they met. Whatever it was,
within three years this plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96
percent of the inhabitants of southern New England. The Indian
societies lay devastated. Only "the twentieth person is scare left
alive," wrote British eyewitness Robert Cushman, describing a death
rate unknown in all previous human experience. Unable to cope with so
many corpses, survivors fled to the next tribe, carrying the
infestation with them, so that Indians died who had never seen a
white person. Simpson tells what the Pilgrims saw:
The summer after the Pilgrims landed, they sent two envoys on a
diplomatic mission to treat with Massasoit, a famous chief encamped
some 40 miles away at what is now Warren, Rhode Island. The envoys
discovered and described a scene of absolute havoc. Villages lay in
ruins because there was no one to tend them. The ground was strewn
with the skulls and the bones of thousands of Indians who had died
and none was left to bury them.
During the next fifteen years, additional epidemics, most of which we
know to have been smallpox, struck repeatedly. Europeans caught
smallpox and the other maladies, to be sure, but most recovered,
including, in a later century, the "heavily pockmarked George
Washington." Indians usually died. Therefore, almost as profound as
their effect on Indian demographics was the impact of the epidemics
on the two cultures, European and Indian. The English Separatists,
already seeing their lives as part of a divinely inspired morality
play, inferred that they had God on their side. John Winthrop,
Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "miraculous."
To a friend in England in 1634, he wrote:
But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for
300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the small
pox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared
our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in
all not fifty, have put themselves under our protect....
Many Indians likewise inferred that their God had abandoned them.
Cushman, our British eyewitness, reported that "those that are left,
have their courage much abated, and their countenance is dejected,
and they seem as a people affrighted." After all, neither they nor
the Pilgrims had access to the germ theory of disease. Indian healers
offered no cure, their religion no explanation. That of the whites
did. Like the Europeans three centuries before them, many Indians
surrendered to alcohol or began to listen to Christianity.
These epidemics constituted perhaps the most important single
geopolitical event of the first third of the 1600s, anywhere on the
planet. They meant that the British would face no real Indian
challenge for their first fifty years in America. Indeed, the plague
helped cause the legendary warm reception Plymouth enjoyed in its
first formative years from the Wampanoags. Massasoit needed to ally
with the Pilgrims because the plague had so weakened his villages
that he feared the Narragansetts to the west.
Moreover, the New England plagues exemplify a process which antedated
the Pilgrims and endures to this day. In 1492, more than 3,000,000
Indians lived on the island of Haiti. Forty years later, fewer than
300 remained. The earliest Portuguese found that Labrador teemed with
hospitable Indians who could easily be enslaved. It teems no more. In
about 1780, smallpox reduced the Mandan’s of North Dakota from nine
villages to two; then in 1837, a second smallpox epidemic reduced
them from 1600 persons to just 31. The pestilence continues; a fourth
of the Yanomamos of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela died in the
year prior to my writing this sentence.
Europeans were never able to "settle" China, India, Indonesia, Japan,
or most of Africa because too many people already lived there.
Advantages in military and social technology would have enabled
Europeans to dominate the Americas, as they eventually dominated
China and Africa, but not to "settle" the New World. For that, the
plague was required. Thus, except for the European (and African)
invasion itself, the pestilence was surely the most important event
in the history of America.
What do we learn of all this in the twelve histories I studied? Three
offer some treatment of Indian disease as a factor in European
colonization. LIFE AND LIBERTY does quite a good job. AMERICA PAST
AND PRESENT supplies a fine analysis of the general impact of Indian
disease in American history, though it leaves out the plague at
Plymouth. THE AMERICAN WAY is the only text to draw the appropriate
geopolitical inference about the importance of the Plymouth outbreak,
but it never discuses Indian plagues anywhere else. Unfortunately,
the remaining nine books offer almost nothing. Two totally omit the
subject. Each of the other seven furnishes only a fragment of a
paragraph that does not even make it into the index, let alone into
students' minds.
Everyone knew all about the plague in colonial America. Even before
the Mayflower sailed, King James of England gave thanks to "Almighty
God in his great goodness and bounty towards us," for sending "this
wonderful plague among the savages." Today it is no surprise that not
one in a hundred of my college students has ever heard of the plague.
Unless they read LIFE AND LIBERTY or PAST AND PRESENT, no student can
come away from these books thinking of Indians as people who made an
impact on North America, who lived here in considerable numbers, who
settled, in short, and were then killed by disease or arms.
ERRAND INTO THE WILDERNESS
Instead of the plague, our schoolbooks present the story of the
Pilgrims as a heroic myth. Referring to "the little party" in their
"small, storm-battered English vessel," their story line follows
Perry Miller's use of a Puritan sermon title, ERRAND INTO THE
WILDERNESS. AMERICAN ADVENTURES even titles its chapter about British
settlement in North America "Opening the Wilderness." The imagery is
right out of Star Trek: "to go boldly where none dared go before."
The Pilgrims had intended to go to Virginia, where there already was
a British settlement, according to the texts, but "violent storms
blew their ship off course," according to some texts, or else an
"error in navigation" caused them to end up hundreds of miles to the
north. In fact, we are not sure where the Pilgrims planned to go.
According to George Willison, Pilgrim leaders never intended to
settle in Virginia. They had debated the relative merits of Guiana
versus Massachusetts precisely because they wanted to be far from
Anglican control in Virginia. They knew quite a bit about
Massachusetts, from Cape Cod's fine fishing to that "wonderful
plague." They brought with them maps drawn by Samuel Champlain when
he toured the area in 1605 and a guidebook by John Smith, who had
named it "New England" when he visited in 1614. One text, LAND OF
PROMISE, follows Willison, pointing out that Pilgrims numbered only
about thirty-five of the 102 settlers aboard the Mayflower. The rest
were ordinary folk seeking their fortunes in the new Virginia colony.
"The New England landing came as a rude surprise for the bedraggled
and tired [non-Pilgrim] majority on board the Mayflower," says
Promise. "Rumors of mutiny spread quickly." Promise then ties this
unrest to the Mayflower Compact, giving its readers a uniquely fresh
interpretation as to why the colonists adopted it.
Each text offers just one of three reasons---storm, pilot error, or
managerial hijacking--to explain how the Pilgrims ended up in
Massachusetts. Neither here nor in any other historical controversy
after 1620 can any of the twelve bear to admit that it does not know
the answer---that studying history is not just learning answers--that
history contains debates. Thus each book shuts student shout from the
intellectual excitement of the discipline.
Instead, textbooks parade ethnocentric assertions about the Pilgrims
as a flawless unprecedented band laying the foundations of our
democracy. John Garraty presents the Compact this way in AMERICAN
HISTORY: "So far as any record shows, this was the first time in
human history that a group of people consciously created a government
where none had existed before." Such accounts deny students the
opportunity to see the Pilgrims as anything other than pious
stereotypes.
"IT WAS WITH GOD'S HELP...FOR HOW ELSE COULD WE HAVE DONE IT?"
Settlement proceeded, not with God's help but with the Indians'. The
Pilgrims chose Plymouth because of its cleared fields, recently
planted in corn, "and a brook of fresh water [that] flowed into the
harbor," in the words of TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN NATION. It was a
lovely site for a town. Indeed, until the plague, it had been a town.
Everywhere in the hemisphere, Europeans pitched camp right in the
middle of native populations---Cuzco, Mexico City, Natchez, Chicago.
Throughout New England, colonists appropriated Indian cornfields,
which explains why so many town names---Marshfield, Springfield,
Deerfield--end in "field".
Inadvertent Indian assistance started on the Pilgrims' second full
day in Massachusetts. A colonist's journal tells us:
We marched to the place we called Cornhill, where we had found the
corn before. At another place we had seen before, we dug and found
some more corn, two or three baskets full, and a bag of beans. ..In
all we had about ten bushels, which will be enough for seed. It was
with God's help that we found this corn, for how else could we have
done it, without meeting some Indians who might trouble us. ...The
next morning, we found a place like a grave. We decided to dig it up.
We found first a mat, and under that a fine bow...We also found bowls
, trays, dishes, and things like that. We took several of the
prettiest things to carry away with us, and covered the body up again.
A place "like a grave!"
More help came from a alive Indian, Squanto. Here my students are on
familiar turf, for they have all learned the Squanto legend. LAND OF
PROMISE provides an archetypal account"
Squanto had learned their language, he explained, from English
fishermen who ventured into the New England waters each summer.
Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn, squash, and pumpkins.
Would the small band of settlers have survived without Squanto's
help? We cannot say. But by the fall of 1621, colonists and Indians
could sit down to several days of feast and thanksgiving to God
(later celebrated as the first Thanksgiving).
What do the books leave out about Squanto? First, how he learned
English. As a boy, along with four Penobscots, he was probably stolen
by a British captain in about 1605 and taken to England. There he
probably spent nine years, two in the employ of a Plymouth merchant
who later helped finance the Mayflower. At length, the merchant
helped him arrange passage back to Massachusetts. He was to enjoy
home life for less than a year, however. In 1614, a British slave
raider seized him and two dozen fellow Indians and sold them into
slavery in Malaga, Spain. Squanto escaped from slavery, escaped from
Spain, made his way back to England, and in 1619 talked a ship
captain into taking him along on his next trip to Cape Cod.
It happens that Squanto's fabulous odyssey provides a "hook" into the
plague story, a hook that our texts choose to ignore. For now Squanto
walked to his home village, only to make the horrifying discovery
that, in Simpson's words, "he was the sole member of his village
still alive. All the others had perished in the epidemic two years
before." No wonder he throws in his lot with the Pilgrims, who rename
his village "Plymouth!" Now that is a story worth telling! Compare
the pallid account in LAND OF PROMISE. "He had learned their language
from English fishermen." What do we make of books that give us the
unimportant details--Squanto's name, the occupation of his
enslavers--while omitting not only his enslavement, but also the
crucial fact of the plague? This is distortion on a grand scale.
William Bradford praised Squanto for many services, including his
"bring[ing] them to unknown places for their profit." "Their profit"
was the primary reason most Mayflower colonists made the trip. It too
came from the Indians, from the fur trade; Plymouth would never have
paid for itself without it. Europeans had neither the skill nor the
desire to "go boldly where none dared go before.|" They went to the
Indians.
"TRUTH SHOULD BE HELD SACRED, AT WHATEVER COST"
Should we teach these truths about Thanksgiving? Or, like our
textbooks, should we look the other way? Again quoting LAND OF
PROMISE. "By the fall of 1621, colonists and Indians could sit down
to several days of feast and thanksgiving to God (later celebrated as
the first Thanksgiving)." Throughout the nation, elementary school
children still enact Thanksgiving every fall as our national origin
myth, complete with Pilgrim hats made of construction paper and
Indian braves with feathers in their hair. An early Massachusetts
colonist, Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, advises us not to settle for this
whitewash of feel - good - history.
"It is painful to advert to these things. But our forefathers, though
wise, pious, and sincere, were nevertheless, in respect to Christian
charity, under a cloud; and, in history, truth should be held sacred,
at whatever cost."
Thanksgiving is full of embarrassing facts. The Pilgrims did not
introduce the Native Americans to the tradition; Eastern Indians had
observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries. Our modern
celebrations date back only to 1863; not until the 1890s did the
Pilgrims get included in the tradition; no one even called them
"Pilgrims" until the 1870s. Plymouth Rock achieved ichnographic
status only in the nineteenth century, when some enterprising
residents of the town moved it down to the water so its significance
as the "holy soil" the Pilgrims first touched might seem more
plausible. The Rock has become a shrine, the Mayflower Compact a
sacred text, and our textbooks play the same function as the Anglican
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, teaching us the rudiments of the civil
religion of Thanksgiving.
Indians are marginalized in this civic ritual. Our archetypal image
of the first Thanksgiving portrays the groaning boards in the woods,
with the Pilgrims in their starched Sunday best and the almost naked
Indian guests. Thanksgiving silliness reaches some sort of zenith in
the handouts that school children have carried home for decades, with
captions like, "They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash.
The Indians had never seen such a feast!" When his son brought home
this "information" from his New Hampshire elementary school, Native
American novelist Michael Dorris pointed out "the Pilgrims had
literally never seen `such a feast,' since all foods mentioned are
exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided by [or
with the aid of] the local tribe."
I do not read Aspinwall as suggesting a "bash the Pilgrims"
interpretation, emphasizing only the bad parts. I have emphasized
untoward details only because our histories have suppressed
everything awkward for so long. The Pilgrims' courage in setting
forth in the late fall to make their way on a continent new to them
remains unsurpassed. In their first year, like the Indians, they
suffered from diseases. Half of them died. The Pilgrims did not cause
the plague and were as baffled as to its true origin as the stricken
Indian villagers. Pilgrim-Indian relations began reasonably
positively. Thus the antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad
history, but honest and inclusive history. "Knowing the truth about
Thanksgiving, both its proud and its shameful motivations and
history, might well benefit contemporary children," suggests Dorris.
"But the glib retelling of an ethnocentric and self-serving falsehood
does no one any good." Because Thanksgiving has roots in both Anglo
and Native cultures, and because of the interracial cooperation the
first celebration enshrines, Thanksgiving might yet develop into a
holiday that promotes tolerance and understanding. Its emphasis on
Native foods provides a teachable moment, for natives of the Americas
first developed half of the world's food crops. Texts could tell
this--only three even mention Indian foods---and could also relate
other contributions form Indian societies, from sports to political
ideas. The original Thanksgiving itself provides an interesting
example: the Natives and newcomers spent the better part of three
days showing each other their various recreations.
Origin myths do not come cheaply. To glorify the Pilgrims is
dangerous. The genial omissions and false details our texts use to
retail the Pilgrim legend promote Anglo centrism, which only handicaps
us when dealing with all those whose culture is no Anglo. Surely, in
history, "truth should be held sacred, at whatever cost."
© : t r u t h o u t 2001
11.07.2005
Drifting towards a Police State by Mike Whitney
November 04, 2005
“Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid the terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends”
-- Former Attorney General, John Ashcroft
Did you know that under the terms of the new Patriot Act prosecutors will be able to seek the death penalty in cases where “defendants gave financial support to umbrella organizations without realizing that some of its adherents might eventually commit violence”? (NY Times; editorial 10-30-05) So, if someone unknowingly gave money to a charity that was connected to a terrorist group, he could be executed.
Or, that the Senate Intelligence Committee is fine-tuning the details of a bill that will allow the FBI to secretly procure any of your personal records without “probable cause” or a court order giving them “unchecked authority to pry into personal and business matters”? (New York Times, “Republicans seek to widen FBI Powers, 10-19-05)
Or, that on June 29, President Bush put “a broad swath of the FBI”
under his direct control by creating the National Security Service (aka; the “New SS”)? This is the first time we’ve had a “secret police” in our 200 year history. It will be run exclusively by the president and beyond the range of congressional oversight.
Or, that on October 27, 2005 president Bush created the National Clandestine Service, which will be headed by CIA Director Porter Goss and will “expand reporting of information and intelligence value from state, local and tribal law enforcement entities and private sector stakeholders"? This executive order gives the CIA the power to carry out covert operations, spying, propaganda, and “dirty tricks” within the United States and on the American public. (“The New National Intelligence Strategy of the US” by Larry Chin, Global Research)
Or, that Pentagon intelligence operatives are now permitted to collect information from US citizens without revealing their status as government spies? (“Bill would give Cover to Pentagon Spies”, Greg Miller, Times Staff writer, “The Nation”)
Or, that within 2 years every American license and passport will be made according to federal uniform standards including microchips (with biometric information) that will allow the government to trace every movement of its citizens?
Or, that recent rulings, the DC District Court unanimously decided in two different cases that foreign prisoners have no rights under international law to challenge their indefinite imprisonment by the United States and, (in Rumsfeld vs. Padilla) that the president can lock up an American citizen “without charges” if he believes he may be an “enemy combatant”? Both verdicts overturn the fundamental principles of “inalienable rights”, habeas corpus, and the presumption of innocence; replacing them with the arbitrary authority of the executive.
The American people have no idea of the amount of energy that has been devoted to stripping them of their constitutional protections and how stealthily that plan has been carried out. It has required the concerted efforts of the political establishment, the corporate elite, and the collaborative media. For all practical purposes, the government is no longer constrained in its conduct towards its citizens; it can do as it pleases.
The campaign to dismantle the Bill of Rights has focused primarily on the key amendments; the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 14th. These are the cornerstones of American liberty and they encompass everything from due process to equal protection to free speech to a ban on the “cruel and unusual” treatment of prisoners. Freedom has little tangible meaning apart from the safety provided by these amendments.
At present, there’s no reason for the administration to assert its new powers. That would only dispel the widely-held illusion of personal freedom. But, the existing climate of “well being” will not last forever. The poisonous effects of war, tax cuts, burgeoning budget deficits, and inflation indicate that darker days lie ahead. The middle class is stretched paper-thin and disaster could be as close as a hike in interest rates. The new repressive legislation anticipates the massive political unrest that naturally follows a tenuous and volatile economic situation.
Is this why Congress has rubber stamped so many of the administration’s autocratic laws, or does Bush simply “hate our freedoms”?
The members of America’s ruling elite carefully follow the shifting of policy in Washington. They have the power to access the mainstream media and dispute the changes in the law that they oppose. Regrettably, there’s been no sign of protest from the bastions of the corporate, financial and political oligarchy; just an ominous silence.
Does this mean that American Brahmins have abandoned their support for personal liberty and the rights of man?
America is undergoing its greatest metamorphosis. It has been severed from its constitutional moorings and is drifting towards a police state. If Samuel Alito is appointed
to the Supreme Court then Bush will be able to solidify his “unchecked” power as executive and 50 years of progressive legislation will be up for review. Everything from abortion to Miranda will be reconsidered through the hard-right lens of the new majority.
Americans still seem blissfully unaware of the fundamental changes to the political system. The cloak of disinformation and diversion has successfully obscured the perils of our present course. Freedom is no longer guaranteed in Bush’s America nor is liberty everyman’s birthright. The rickety scaffolding that supports the rule of law has been replaced by the unbridled authority of the supreme presidency. The country is slipping inexorably towards the Orwellian nightmare; the National Security State.
URL: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9048
November 04, 2005
“Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid the terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends”
-- Former Attorney General, John Ashcroft
Did you know that under the terms of the new Patriot Act prosecutors will be able to seek the death penalty in cases where “defendants gave financial support to umbrella organizations without realizing that some of its adherents might eventually commit violence”? (NY Times; editorial 10-30-05) So, if someone unknowingly gave money to a charity that was connected to a terrorist group, he could be executed.
Or, that the Senate Intelligence Committee is fine-tuning the details of a bill that will allow the FBI to secretly procure any of your personal records without “probable cause” or a court order giving them “unchecked authority to pry into personal and business matters”? (New York Times, “Republicans seek to widen FBI Powers, 10-19-05)
Or, that on June 29, President Bush put “a broad swath of the FBI”
under his direct control by creating the National Security Service (aka; the “New SS”)? This is the first time we’ve had a “secret police” in our 200 year history. It will be run exclusively by the president and beyond the range of congressional oversight.
Or, that on October 27, 2005 president Bush created the National Clandestine Service, which will be headed by CIA Director Porter Goss and will “expand reporting of information and intelligence value from state, local and tribal law enforcement entities and private sector stakeholders"? This executive order gives the CIA the power to carry out covert operations, spying, propaganda, and “dirty tricks” within the United States and on the American public. (“The New National Intelligence Strategy of the US” by Larry Chin, Global Research)
Or, that Pentagon intelligence operatives are now permitted to collect information from US citizens without revealing their status as government spies? (“Bill would give Cover to Pentagon Spies”, Greg Miller, Times Staff writer, “The Nation”)
Or, that within 2 years every American license and passport will be made according to federal uniform standards including microchips (with biometric information) that will allow the government to trace every movement of its citizens?
Or, that recent rulings, the DC District Court unanimously decided in two different cases that foreign prisoners have no rights under international law to challenge their indefinite imprisonment by the United States and, (in Rumsfeld vs. Padilla) that the president can lock up an American citizen “without charges” if he believes he may be an “enemy combatant”? Both verdicts overturn the fundamental principles of “inalienable rights”, habeas corpus, and the presumption of innocence; replacing them with the arbitrary authority of the executive.
The American people have no idea of the amount of energy that has been devoted to stripping them of their constitutional protections and how stealthily that plan has been carried out. It has required the concerted efforts of the political establishment, the corporate elite, and the collaborative media. For all practical purposes, the government is no longer constrained in its conduct towards its citizens; it can do as it pleases.
The campaign to dismantle the Bill of Rights has focused primarily on the key amendments; the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 14th. These are the cornerstones of American liberty and they encompass everything from due process to equal protection to free speech to a ban on the “cruel and unusual” treatment of prisoners. Freedom has little tangible meaning apart from the safety provided by these amendments.
At present, there’s no reason for the administration to assert its new powers. That would only dispel the widely-held illusion of personal freedom. But, the existing climate of “well being” will not last forever. The poisonous effects of war, tax cuts, burgeoning budget deficits, and inflation indicate that darker days lie ahead. The middle class is stretched paper-thin and disaster could be as close as a hike in interest rates. The new repressive legislation anticipates the massive political unrest that naturally follows a tenuous and volatile economic situation.
Is this why Congress has rubber stamped so many of the administration’s autocratic laws, or does Bush simply “hate our freedoms”?
The members of America’s ruling elite carefully follow the shifting of policy in Washington. They have the power to access the mainstream media and dispute the changes in the law that they oppose. Regrettably, there’s been no sign of protest from the bastions of the corporate, financial and political oligarchy; just an ominous silence.
Does this mean that American Brahmins have abandoned their support for personal liberty and the rights of man?
America is undergoing its greatest metamorphosis. It has been severed from its constitutional moorings and is drifting towards a police state. If Samuel Alito is appointed
to the Supreme Court then Bush will be able to solidify his “unchecked” power as executive and 50 years of progressive legislation will be up for review. Everything from abortion to Miranda will be reconsidered through the hard-right lens of the new majority.
Americans still seem blissfully unaware of the fundamental changes to the political system. The cloak of disinformation and diversion has successfully obscured the perils of our present course. Freedom is no longer guaranteed in Bush’s America nor is liberty everyman’s birthright. The rickety scaffolding that supports the rule of law has been replaced by the unbridled authority of the supreme presidency. The country is slipping inexorably towards the Orwellian nightmare; the National Security State.
URL: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9048
