At least 1,720 US soldiers have died in the Mega-Mogadishu of Iraq. (That's 51 more US military deaths since our last LNS release less than one month ago.) For what? The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich. Nothing more...There will be hell to pay. Rwandan radio announcers were the first media professionals to be convicted of war crimes, but they won't be the last...Of course, it isn't just war crimes that the Corporatist news media is complicit in, it is also treason, by covering up the truth about pre-9/11 inaction and post-9/11 blunders, as well as other "high crimes and misdemeanors," most notably, the theft of two consecutive US presidential elections, etc....The integrity and courage demonstrated by Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), Joe Wilson, former US Ambassador to Iraq, Ray Mcgovern, former CIA analyst, Cindy Sheehan, mother of one of the 1700+ US soldier killed in Iraq, John Bonifaz, activist lawyer, and all the others who participated in the historic Downing Street Memo hearing held in the small, cramped room in the basement of the US Capitol, stands in start contrast to the complicity of the US regimestream news media that did little more than mock the session, caricature the proceedings and those who participated and of course distort the facts that led to it...
Six months before the 2000 election I warned a friend, “This could be our last election.” Well, the Bush Abomination was installed illegitimately by US Supreme Court Injustices Scalia, O’Connor, Thomas, Kennedy and Rehnquist. Yes, it was a judicially sanctioned coup. (Now we have endured the unprecedented travesty of two consecutive US presidential elections, in which the exit polls, the most accurate instrument available, did not correspond to the “official” vote counts.)
But remember that the first year of the first term of the Bush Abomination did not go very well politically or economically, and indeed W Jong Il, the Maximum Leader for the Minimally Minded (back then we simply referred to him as “the _resident”) was doing very badly even in the cooked corporatist news media polls. Until 9/11/01, when after dozens (literally) of warnings from the intelligence community went un-acted upon, Al Qaeda struck and slaughtered thousands of innocents. The PNAC cabal got their wished for “second Pearl Harbor.”
Soon, we were talking about the rise of fascism in the USA, and in particularly about the complicity of the corporatist news media. Some colleagues took exception to our use of the term “fascism” and also counseled against our vitriol toward the news media, offering the same old tired excuses for them.
Now here we are five years into this alternative universe, a nightmare realm of treason (pre- and post-9/11), war crimes (Iraq) and looming economic and environmental disasters. The term “fascism” is on the lips of many, and the complicity of the corporatist news media has become so shocking in its brazenness that it is undeniable except by those who have gulped down the cool-aid.
Yes, despite astonishing ruthlessness and almost absolute power, the Bush abomination is in trouble. Even the corporatist news media’s own polls show Bush’s job ratings sinking swiftly (imagine what the real numbers look like). They have to recover so that the manufactured “victory” in the 2006 election will seem plausible. So how will they turn it around? Well, consider what happened in 2001 and where it led us. Does the PNAC cabal wish for a third Pearl Harbor to serve as a launching pad for another war in the wrong place?
Meanwhile, remember that 2+2=4. Remember, and resist! Listen to Air America (in particular Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes and Jeanine Garafalo). Subscribe to The Nation. Support Amy Goodman’s DemocracyNow! Support the bastions of the Internet-based information rebellion, e.g. www.buzzflash.com, www.truthout.org, www.mediamatter.org, etc. Participate in MoveOn.org. But don’t give a penny to the Democratic Party until it starts talking about fair elections and free press in the USA, and don’t fall for the shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader either. The cravenness of the Democrats does not cancel out the cravenness of the shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader, who shamelessly lied when he said there was no difference between Gore and Bush in 2000 and shamelessly took the Bush cabal’s filthy money in 2004. Wait for the Lech Walesas, Vaclav Havels and Mikhail Gorbachaevs to discover themselves – because just as surely as the Berlin Wall fell they will appear…Meanwhile, print yourself up a bumper sticker that says: “No Statute of Limitations,” because there isn’t any on war crimes or treason…
NOTE: The LNS will issue "Articles of Impeachment" from time to time...Stay tuned...
Death of the Republic?
Buzzflash Editorial, 6/10/05, GOP House Judiciary Chair Uses Pinochet Tactics to Abruptly and Unilaterally Shut Down Hearing Into Abuses of the (Un)Patriot Act, Because He Was Afraid the Truth Would Come Out. America: "IT" is Happening Here. Democracy is Being Dismantled by GOP Thugs, www.buzzflash.com: This morning, House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI) unilaterally and arbitrarily shut down committee hearings on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act without comment or issuing a statement. Sensenbrenner gaveled the committee hearings in the middle of witnesses testifying about human and civil rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay, racial profiling of individuals of Middle Eastern descent, prolonged detentions of Americans after September 11th and other abuses.
The suppression of free speech and testimony in the congressional committee in charge of protecting our civil liberties shows the Republican’s power grab has no limits and no decency.
The witnesses appearing before the House Judiciary Committee included, Chip Pitts, Chair of the Board of Amnesty International USA; Dr. James J. Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute; Deborah Pearlstein, Director of the U.S. Law and Security Program “Human Rights First”; and Carlina Tapia Ruano of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
The witnesses were called by the indomitable Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) who continues to stand up to the right- wing’s attempt to eviscerate American Constitutional liberties…
What member of Congress in their right mind could possibly consider giving more power to an Administration that endorses torture and indefinite detentions?
Democracies do not fail overnight. They slowly erode and descend by denying rights to the minority, the takeover of an independent judiciary, suppressing speech and assembly, and the rise of secrecy and repressive police powers in the executive branch.
Sensenbrenner’s belligerent act to shut down dissent and gag witnesses warning about the broad police powers given to the administration should give Americans pause as the Republican Party inches closer and closer to turning American into a one-party state.
The witnesses to the Bushevik violations of our Constitution, civil liberties, and individual rights valiantly continued to speak after Sensenbrenner formally shut down the hearing (probably as a result of a phone call from the White House). But their voices were hardly heard, which was the objective of the Busheviks.
What makes the barbarians in the White House shudder most is a bright light of truth reaching the American public.
They have been unusually successful in intimidating the media into enabling their lies. Now, they are just preemptively breaking laws and the rules of Congress to suppress the truth.
It can happen here, and it is.
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/05/06/ana05020.html
Sidney Blumenthal, Nixon's Empire Strikes Back, 6/9/05, Guardian: The unveiling of the identity of Deep Throat - Mark Felt, the former deputy director of the FBI - seemed affirm the story of Watergate as the triumph of the lone journalist supported from the shadows by a magically appearing secret source. Shazam! The outlines of the fuller story we now know, thanks not only to Felt's self unmasking but to disclosures the Albany Times Union of upstate New York, unreported so far by any major outlet. Felt was not working as "a disgruntled maverick ... but rather as the leader of a clandestine group" of three other high-level agents to control the story by collecting intelligence and leaking it. For more than 30 years the secrecy around Deep Throat diverted attention to who Deep Throat was rather than what Deep Throat was - a covert FBI operation in which Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was almost certainly an unwitting asset…
Nixon's grand plan was to concentrate executive power in an imperial presidency, politicize the bureaucracy and crush its independence, and invoke national security to wage partisan warfare. He intended to "reconstitute the Republican party", staging a "purge" to foster "a new majority", as his aide William Safire wrote in his memoir…
But now George Bush is building a leviathan beyond Nixon's imagining. The Bush presidency is the highest stage of Nixonism. The commander-in-chief has declared himself by executive order above international law, the CIA is being purged, the justice department deploying its resources to break down the wall of separation between church and state, the Environmental Protection Agency being ordered to suppress scientific studies and the Pentagon subsuming intelligence and diplomacy, leaving the US with blunt military force as its chief foreign policy…
Under Bush, the Republican Congress has abdicated its responsibilities of executive oversight and investigation…
One of the chief lessons learned from Nixon's demise was the necessity of muzzling the press. The Bush White House has neutralized the press corps and even turned some reporters into its own assets…
Mark Felt's sudden emergence from behind the curtain of history evoked the glory days of the press corps and its modern creation myth. It was a warm bath of nostalgia and cold comfort.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0609-29.htm
Bill Moyers, The Mugging of the American Dream, 6/6/05, www.AlterNet.org: Washington is a divided city - not between north and south as in Lincoln's time, but between those who can buy all the government they want and those who can't even afford a seat in the bleachers…
Believe it or not, the United States now ranks the highest among the highly developed countries in each of the seven measures of inequality tracked by the index. While we enjoy the second highest GDP in the world (excluding tiny Luxembourg), we rank dead last among the 20 most developed countries in fighting poverty and we're off the chart in terms of the number of Americans living on half the median income or less…
It wasn't supposed to be this way. America was not meant to be a country where the winner takes all. Through a system of checks and balances we were going to maintain a decent equilibrium in how democracy works so that it didn't just work for the powerful and privileged (If you don't believe me, I'll send you my copy of The Federalist Papers). The economist Jeffrey Madrick put it well: Because equitable access to public resources is the lifeblood of any democracy, Americans made primary schooling free to all. Because everyone deserves a second chance, debtors - especially the relative poor - were protected by state laws against their rich creditors. Charters to establish corporations were open to most if not all (white) comers, rather than held for elites. Government encouraged Americans to own their own piece of land and even supported squatters' rights. The old hope for equal access to opportunity became a reality for millions. Including yours truly…
Ruby and Henry Moyers were knocked down and almost out when the system imploded into the Great Depression. They worked hard all their lives but never had much money - my father's last paycheck before he retired was $96 and change, after taxes. We couldn't afford books at home but the public library gave me a card when I was eight years old. I went to good public schools. My brother made it to college on the GI bill. And in my freshman year I hitchhiked to college on public highways stopping to rest in public parks. Like millions of us, I was an heir to what used to be called the commonwealth - the notion of America as a shared project. It's part of our DNA, remember: "We, the People...in order to create a more perfect union"
You're never more mindful of this than at the Lincoln Memorial…
Standing there last night, I sensed that temple of democracy where Lincoln broods to be as deeply steeped in melancholy as it was during the McCarthy reign of terror, the grief of Vietnam, or the crimes of Watergate. You stand there silently contemplating the words that gave voice to Lincoln's fierce determination to save the Union - his resolve that "government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth" - and then you turn and look out, as he does, on a city where those words are daily mocked. This is no longer Lincoln's city. And those people from all walks of life making their way up the steps to pay their respects to this martyr for the Union - it's not their city, either. This is an occupied city, a company town, a wholly owned subsidiary of the powerful and privileged whose have hired an influence racket to run it. The records are so poorly kept it's impossible to know how many lobbyists there really are in this town, but the Center for Public Integrity found that their ranks include 240 former members of Congress and heads of federal agencies and over 2000 senior officials who passed through the revolving door of government at warp speed. Lobby