Tag: George W. Bush

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Where are Your Marchers? Your civil libertarians? Your Freedom Fighters?

The Bush Administration asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T for complying with a government “request” to turn over– without the inconvenient assistance of an actual warrant or subpoena– information about millions of private phone calls made by Americans.

The government argued that the judge needed to protect national security by turning a blind eye to this rather blatant invasion of personal privacy. The judge declined to do so.

What’s wrong with you people out there? Can’t you read? Why are there no marchers in the streets to celebrate this victory of liberty against government over-reach, this violation of civil rights?

Where are the raging editorials? Where are the outraged investigative pieces on the news?

I’m not mad. I’m just curious. I read your Constitution and your Bill of Rights and I’ve heard you sing your anthems, and I’ve seen your tattoos and your bumper stickers. So where are you now?

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Are you Scared Yet and Lucky George: More on Canadian Jihad

On the CBC tonight, members of the mosque where Qayyum Abdul Jamal sometimes led prayer services and taught reported that he made inflammatory and “extreme” comments. Among other things, he said that Canadian forces were in Afghanistan to rape Moslem women. He criticized any involvement with politics because most politics involves corruption. He thought movies and television were filled with sinful ideas and images.

He almost sounds like Dr. James Dobson.

What was missing from these several accounts of Jamal’s teachings was any mention of violence, or an advocacy of violence against Canadian targets.

It’s not unreasonable to believe that he wouldn’t make such statements in public. But it is also very striking that the CBC decided to broadcast this piece. Why is the CBC trying to help the prosecution? Where is journalistic objectivity? Where is even one astute reporter to point out that many extremely conservative Christians and right wing militia groups in the U.S. have been making similarly contemptible speeches for years, but we haven’t seen many of them rounded up? They have, for example, called critics of the Iraqi war “traitors”. They have called pro-choice activists “murderers”. They have had even harsher words for rock musicians and film-makers.

One of the pieces of evidence against the seventeen “terrorists” is their participation in training exercises held in wilderness areas north of Toronto, allegedly with real bullets.

In California, there is a valley where gun enthusiasts can legally shoot off as many guns as frequently as they wish. In fact, the range is polluted with tens of thousands of casings– and beer cans and fast food wrappers. They can also go to rifle-ranges in almost any city in America, and they can carry the loaded gun, concealed, to and from the range in most states.

Ah– but they aren’t threatening to actually go out and kill anyone. Maybe. Or is it just that we assume that white people carrying loaded weapons around are okay, even if a few white people do end up committing murders, whereas Moslems doing the same thing are presumed to be terrorists.

Did the U.S. make any effort to infiltrate and control militia groups in the U.S. after Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing?

The hype and hysteria about this case is unbelievable.

The saddest part is that even the reporters who occasionally toss in a phrase like “of course, they haven’t been convicted” act as if overwhelming proof has been offered that there was a real plot and that these suspects were actually intending to carry it out.

Peculiarly, some of the members of this group are charged with belonging to a terrorist organization, while it is admitted that they had no connection to Al Qaeda. By inference, it seems they had no connection to any outside terrorist organization at all. In this case, the government appears to be saying they are guilty of belonging to a group of which they are guilty of belonging to. I’m trying to figure out if the government is really that stupid– okay, I hear a chorus of people saying, no, no, they can’t be– or if there is some angle on this that makes sense. How do you prove in court that they belonged to a terrorist organization? By showing that they were intending to act like a terrorist organization. But then you will have to show that they actually were plotting to commit terrorist acts. If you have proof of that, then you don’t need the charge that they belonged to a terrorist organization. You could simply charge them with conspiracy.

I suspect that when the dust settles, we will hear about some young, emotional Moslem men who said stupid things and dreamed of joining the battle against the decadent culture in which they lived, but didn’t actually have any definite plans for attacking anything or anyone.

I suspect we’ll find out that the ammonium nitrate for the bomb was not only provided by the RCMP, but may even have been suggested.

Someone says to me, how can you say that before all the facts are in? I say, you’re right. People shouldn’t make those kinds of hysterical charges until they know more facts about what actually is going on.

Just as public officials should stop congratulating themselves and each other on having stopped a terrorist attack when they have yet to prove that any such attack was really being planned.

Lucky George W. Bush! Why? Because this story has pushed the real story onto the back pages for a day or two, which is, that the political and military situation in Iraq looks worse, and worse, and worse. A comment from a woman in Baghdad: It’s as if they are just killing each other for sake of killing now…

The media coverage of the arrest of the 17 “terrorists” has been nauseating. Even the CBC, that alleged bastion of liberalism, seems to feel compelled to tour around Toronto showing its audience video of what a reporter thinks would be logical targets for a terrorist attack, including the CN tower, CSIS headquarters, and the Air Canada Centre– without any evidence that the “terrorists” thought this. None at all. Even the police haven’t leaked that information yet.

If you were a lackey of Stephen Harper’s and you wanted to scare citizens of Toronto as much as possible, you could not have scripted a more compelling presentation.

The CBC’s treatment of this story is worse than bad.  It is disgusting.

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Big Brother is Here, Now

This may well be one of the most chilling stories that I have read in a long time. Your leaders– they of the mighty speeches lauding our history of freedom and liberty and democracy– are enthusiastically spying on you, without warrants, without judges, without congress.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is doing what every citizen of the United States should be doing. It is asserting the right of any individual to not have his private conversations intercepted by his government without just cause.

The Bush administration, as is well known, has asserted that it has the right to spy on anyone whenever they damn well feel like it without the slightest degree of oversight. All they have to do is say aloud to themselves, three times, “we are at war, we are at war, we are war”. Astonishingly, we are then at war. If we are at war, then national security trumps all.

According to the New York Times, Mr. Gonzales responded: “Obviously, our prosecutors are going to look to see all the laws that have been violated. And if the evidence is there, they’re going to prosecute those violations.”

That’s hilarious– Mr. Gonzales doesn’t mean he’s going to check into the “laws that have been violated” of course– because the Bush administration has clearly violated laws in the holding of prisoners and domestic spying and the use of rendition.

There is not even a the need, apparently, to persuade congress that something like a “war” exists and that the U.S. is in it.

The Bush administration even now is considering whether to prosecute the press for publishing secrets about the government’s illegal domestic spying activities. Yes, up is down and down is up. The Supreme Court, stacked with Republican appointees, has never been more receptive.

The True Post Modernist: George Bush

As many people have remarked, Bush’s actions here are at odds with true conservatism, which views government with suspicion, and seeks restrictions on it’s ability to interfere with peoples’ lives.

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Liberal Culture

There’s a hole in daddy’s arm
where all the money goes
Jesus Christ died for nothing,
I suppose.

I wonder if hard core George Bush supporters ever watch Jon Stewart late at night and say to themselves, gosh, I wish we had one of those. Because as much as you’d like to believe that Ann Coulter is witty or that Bill O’Reilly is smart or that Sean Hannity is insightful, you just know they’re not, and you just know that Jon Stewart and George Clooney and, in this case, John Prine, are way smarter and way cooler and way more astute than any conservative writer or commentator except maybe Clint Eastwood.

And I think conservatives know it as much as anyone knows it. Why else would they even care what gets published in the New York Times or who says what on “60 Minutes” or who wins Oscars or Grammies? If the New York Times is really out of step with the majority of right-thinking Americans, then your worries are over, aren’t they, Charles Krauthammer?

Not exactly. There was a man who served on our church council in Chatham who never, ever voiced an opinion on the matter of women serving in church office. He just listened to all the arguments and then made up his mind that he wouldn’t listen to any of the arguments but just vote the way he felt about the issue, which was that it just wasn’t right for women to serve as Deacons. When I challenged him to explain why he believed what he did, he became annoyed and frustrated, and finally blurted out, “that’s just the way I feel”.

So even though Sam Stone is an amazing song that convinces you that there is something totally messed up with the war in Viet Nam– it’s probably not going to change your mind about Iraq or Iran or North Korea. Those people still need to be killed. And the more they think we want to kill them, the safer we’ll all be.

Free speech does not guarantee anyone the right to be heard but it does guarantee the right of the speaker to speak and not be silenced.”

Cal Thomas.

So it’s a good thing if Fox News, or the White House, or CNN, doesn’t actually allow anyone with a contrary opinion the opportunity to address any issues. You just go right on holding your contrary views in your own living room, where they can do the least damage. And a President who, according to Newsweek, doesn’t hear anything that contradicts his own views on the Iraq war or terrorism or global warming or free speech, shouldn’t worry about the fact that he isn’t exposed to any new ideas or possible solutions.

On John Prine’s brilliant Donald and Lydia.

Who do you want to invite to your party?

Conservative: Bill O’Reilly
Liberal: Jon Stewart
Conservative: Ann Coulter
Liberal: Hillary Clinton
Conservative: Clint Eastwood
Liberal: George Clooney
Conservative: Sonny Bono’s second wife
Liberal: Sonny Bono’s first wife.
Conservative: Ted Nugent
Liberal: Janet Reno
Conservative: Reese Witherspoon
Liberal: Keira Knightly

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The Iraq Dollar Auction

Wow. I missed the shocking news — Saddam Hussein hated the United States and tried to think of ways to hurt it. ABC news with exclusive audio tape!

I saw that ABC News item. It wasn’t “news”. It was a tape they had acquired which did not provide any new information that was not already out there and widely known. In fact, the story largely substantiated the position that Saddam was not a real threat, and had no connection with Al Qaeda.

If you are watching the news, I presume you are also aware of the fact that Iraq is now near full civil war, and that the occupation is generating more new terrorists every day than Osama could have wished for in his wildest dreams, and that large Republican-connected corporations have been gleefully lining their own pockets while mismanaging the rebuilding of that pathetic little country, and that whenever a competent official emerges from the U.S. occupation administration, he says something truthful and is sacked.

I always find it strange that nobody seems to be demanding the simplest and most obvious measure of accountability from the Bush administration: tell us how long it will take and how much it will cost and how many people will die before you have what you promised us: a peaceful democratic Arab state in the Mid-east. So far, it is estimated to be over $20,000 per American household. How much would you say is too much, and how long, and how many lives, would you say is too many? $50,000? $100,000? And how long should the bulk of the U.S. military be tied up in Iraq? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? Any reasonable person would want to know those things before committing to a course of action that will be almost impossible to extricate ourselves from, with decency and integrity.

Well, we know why nobody from the Bush administration will give us any kind of plan. If they did, it would immediately be apparent that the plan has failed. By saying “nobody can say how long it would take” and “it undermines the troops to insist that we have a clue about what we are doing and how much progress we are making” Bush can hope that some miracle will come along and save his ass from the embarrassment of having to admit, “we had no real idea, when we went in, of how difficult it was going to be to get out”. It’s a win-win proposition. If things go badly, it’s because we haven’t waited long enough. If things eventually go well, we knew it would.

Will anyone admit that Bush doesn’t know what he got into and has no clue how to get out? We are now into what John Nash (“Beautiful Mind”) called a “dollar auction”. You are bidding on a dollar under rules that require you to pay out even if you lose the auction. So, when you reach and pass the full “value” of the dollar, you have to keep bidding, because otherwise you still pay but get nothing. Yes, Viet Nam exactly.

Doesn’t matter to him, does it? He’ll be out cashing out in a couple years. He doesn’t actually receive suitcases full of cash from all those corporations and billionaires he has served so diligently the last six years… until he gets out of office. And then watch the payback– it should be absolutely glorious! No individual in the history of the U.S. has transferred so much wealth to so many investors, shareholders, and corporate leaders. The oil industry alone should be falling over themselves to reward him– look at the deal they got in the Gulf of Mexico!– but the pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, credit institutions,– they’ll all be rushing forward to thank the man who did so incredibly much for their profit margins (while doing virtually nothing for the economy as a whole or people who actually work for a living).

Meanwhile, an adult will have to take over the presidency and sit there and think: how long do we let this shit go on before we admit it was a huge mistake? And stop bidding? And the same adult will have to do something adult about paying bills around here. I don’t think anything Bush has done is quite as remarkably, shamelessly, outrageously childish as the handing over of billions and billions of dollars in national debt to the next generation. Some of his most fanatical devotees compare him to Jesus Christ, and they have something there: I’m watching this man walk on water right now. It’s amazing.

It’s hard to call an administration “corrupt” when it does, openly and shamelessly, what other administrations would do only in secret. The lobbyists now enter through the front door, proudly and glibly, and meetings that used to be hidden are now simply “secret”. The Bush administration actually invites corporations to write legislation for themselves. The same people who defend this government would be horrified at the idea of a labour union writing it’s own contract or a teenager making his own house rules or an actor directing his own movie– and perhaps should be. But that’s the way the Bush administration operates.

There are ideological differences, which can be argued endlessly, but then there’s simple competency issues, of which a clear vision eventually emerges.

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The Cost of the Iraq War

According to Harper’s Magazine, the projected cost of the Iraqi adventure will come out to about $20,000 per U.S. household.

That’s just the financial cost, of course. The cost in lives and limbs is far, far greater.

As with many large human enterprises that end in disaster, the actual costs are never known or described at the time the enterprise is embarked upon, because if they were, no sane person would approve of the plan. If George Bush were running for president this year and he promised to start a war that would cost every household $20,000, I don’t think most people would vote for him.

I’ve heard it argued that most people felt, at the time, that attacking Iraq was the right thing to do. That is why the Democrats– especially Hillary Clinton– sound so anemic right now. They can’t really take Bush to task about this– they voted for it too.

Were there reasonable people around who knew that attacking and occupying Iraq was going to cost so much at the time George Bush set out to do it. The answer is clearly yes. Not George Bush, no. Not anyone on his staff– except, dimly, Colin Powell– no. Not anyone in the Republican party, no. And, it is clear, almost nobody in the Democratic Party, which is why so few Democrats are now able to make hay of the horrible consequences of the stupid decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

But a lot of other people, including Canadians and Europeans knew that it was a bad idea. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien– probably not sure if he was doing the right thing at the time– declined to participate because a large majority of Canadians didn’t think it was a good idea. They were right.

The Americans are in a massive, unholy mess right now in Iraq. Bush keeps on insisting that there is light at the end of the tunnel, but I think that light is coming from a directorship at a large oil company after 2008, or the reflection off Karl Rove’s fleshy forehead.

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Alito’s Joke

The Judicial Committee Hearings on Judge Alito are the funniest in years. The Democrats ask him what his view on abortion is and he says he has no views and even if he did, it would be unethical for the Senate to approve of a candidate to the Supreme Court who could actually explain what he thinks about the law.

The Republicans crawl on the floor and kiss his wounded knee. His wife bursts into tears and flees the room. Oh, those nasty, nasty, vicious, oppressing, liberals!

George Bush admits that he nominated a man with no views at all. He would like Alito to approach each case that comes before the Supreme Court the way a good chef approaches brain surgery.

Is anybody really confused? The Bush Administration knows that it could never nominate the candidate it really wants– James Dobson– to the Supreme Court, so they find a low-profile candidate and tell him to hide his views and then try to pass him off as a moderate and attack the Democrats for being obstructionist and for supporting “activist” judges.

It’s not an activist judge that locks up people without trial? Or has evidence destroyed so DNA testing can’t prove innocent people have been executed?

If abortion ever comes before the Supreme Court, Justice Alito promises to approach the issue with an open mind. I repeat: with an open mind. George Bush did not put him on the Supreme Court to please the Christian Right. How could he have, when clearly Alito has no beliefs about the issue of abortion. None at all. If you have a book on abortion that you could send him, he would appreciate it, because he has never, ever given the slightest thought to the issue of abortion. In fact, if you could send him a doctor who could, in plain English, explain to Judge Alito what abortion is, that would be wonderful and he would be ever so grateful.

I can just imagine him jumping out of his chair after a presentation, “by golly– I was wrong! I think a woman does have the right to terminate a pregnancy.”

That, at least, is the possibility he asks us to imagine. Is this a lie? Would Jesus lie?

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Senator Russ Feingold

When you’re as cranky as I am, you don’t have many heroes. But here’s one. Senator Feingold is the only Senator who did not vote for the stupid, unconstitutional, and toxic “Patriot Act”.

I hereby nominate Feingold for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. If we start a grassroots movement now, maybe we can actually force President Bush to award him the medal. It would be the public telling the President that it will not put up with any abridgement of our sacred rights and freedoms.

It’s scary what you dream about at night in distant motel rooms. Never mind. Back to sleep.

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Protesters

With George Bush busy handing over ever more control of the economic lives of U.S. citizens to mega-corporations, the Homeland Security Keystone Kops, the banks, and credit card companies, it’s time to crack open a little vintage Clash: the Guns of Brixton.

When they kick down your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head?
Or on the trigger of your gun?

Sound a little unduly violent? I just watched video of the Portland demonstrations against George Bush, when he made an exclusive appearance there before a gathering of rich Republican Party faithful. A number of things struck me about the video, and the meeting, and the general circumstances, even beyond the fact that the police pepper-sprayed infants in their mothers’ arms.

1. I don’t, as a rule, believe that people should try to achieve through demonstrations and violence what they could not achieve through the ballot box. Generally.

2. The Motion Picture Association of America and other copyright owners did not achieve anything through the ballot box either. Microsoft didn’t run a campaign during the election asking people to support it’s court battles over it’s monopoly. Boeing didn’t do any polls asking if the public thought it should hire consultants straight out of the very Pentagon offices that made purchase decisions involving their products.  Bush never campaigned on the idea of taking more rights away from consumers and artists and giving them to the massive corporate copyright pimps that have a stranglehold on the media in the U.S. He never allowed consumer groups to have any voice in the drafting of new legislation.

No, Bush campaigned against gay marriage and in favor of patriotism and tax cuts.

But all of those corporations benefited from legislation passed after they made massive donations to his re-election campaign (and the re-election campaigns of his friends in Congress).

Is that any less democratic than marching down Main Street waving a placard and chanting slogans?

3. The average American did not ask for and would never have voted for the new bankruptcy legislation which makes even more difficult for a family that is ruined financially to make a clean start… ever. Nor would the average American vote for the new tort reforms, or for a tacked in provision that would exempt gun manufacturers for any liability for criminal wrongdoings as a result of lax procedures on the part of gun store owners.

Every day, Congress passes and the President signs legislation that is the result of special interests paying big bucks to the Republican Party and having private meetings with legislators and White House operatives to which the public never gets invited.

4. The police were dressed up like Robocops– all black leather and bulletproof vests and dark helmets and batons and pepper spray. They video-taped the protesters, without, presumably, their permission (amazing how impotent copyright law is when it could be used against the corporate establishment). They informed the demonstrators that they had to get off the street and onto the sidewalk. Then they informed them that they had to get off the sidewalks and into the park. Then they informed them that the park had to be vacated immediately for reasons of national security. Then they moved in and pepper-sprayed the demonstrators.

5. If I was George Bush– or, more likely, his allies in the state and municipal governments– it would be very, very easy to develop a procedure through which the police can beat up and intimidate protesters with impunity. All you have to do is have some people infiltrate the demonstrators and start smashing windows, throwing rocks at police cars, and yelling obscenities. Make sure this gets filmed for broadcast on Fox News or CNN. The vast majority of the sleeping public, drugged out, overweight, exhausted from their minimum wage jobs, will feel that police brutality is not only justified, but absolutely demanded by the situation. They mostly wouldn’t even mind if you locked up a number of these people without charges or access to lawyers.

In fact, we know that this is exactly what some government agencies have done: infiltration and provocation.

Am I talking radicalization here? You have to keep in mind that, with the exception, perhaps, of Karl Rove (who won’t care about anything beyond the end of Bush’s current term anyway), most of the people in power in the present U.S. government are stupid and short-sighted. They are not sure just how far they go before a backlash develops and people turn against them and we start a long term of relatively liberal leadership, possibly in 2008.

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President Torturer

From the Washington Post, July 15, 2005:

But the Pentagon working group’s 2003 report, prepared under the supervision of general counsel William J. Haynes II, said that “in order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority.”

Do Americans read any of their own news? What do they think about this stuff? The man they elected to the highest office in the land is an admitted torturer. No, he didn’t personally kick or beat these prisoners, or take their clothes away, at Abu Gharib or Guantanamo, or put women’s underwear on their heads, or make “use of military working dogs” — whatever the hell that means. He is simply in charge of it. He has authorized it. He has approved it. His representatives have begged the Supreme Court to let him do it. Let me, let me, let me use a cattle prod on someone’s genitals. Please.

There is nothing complicated here. There is nothing convoluted or difficult to understand about the situation. Mr. Bush belongs to a political party that claims that they are the ones standing up for “values”, for principles, for accountability and integrity. And they torture people. And they don’t deny it. That is the ultimate expression of the real moral values in this political environment, of the men who claim to be more godly than John Kerry: we want to torture people.

The only thing more depressing than this, is the fact that in the next election, I doubt very much that the Democrats will run someone who will make a point of saying “I won’t allow any torture”. No, no, no– that would make the candidate appear to be a wuss. Then the Republican candidate will say, “I represent the party that will torture people. I will beat up and kill people on your behalf.  I am willing to be your killer and torturer. Vote for me.”

Of course not. He will say that he is opposed to gay marriage and that he supports education and motherhood and apple pie.

And he’ll probably win.

But wait– doesn’t that mean that he is our man. He is doing our will. WE torture people?

Yes.