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 11 Sep 2004 @ 15:33
Just a few headlines on wsws.org website today, 9-11-04…
US military launches bloody attacks on rebel strongholds in Iraq
[link]
The political issues behind the Jakarta bomb blast
[link]
Death toll rises on US-Mexico border
Stop the persecution of immigrant workers!
[link]
Israel targets Palestinians, threatens Syria
[link]
Although I agree we must have peace and love in our hearts and spread this consciousness out to the planet, via vibration, words, articles, radio stations, tv etc, very little to nothing will change if we don’t get to the bottom line or cause of these issues.
As long as we don’t see everyone (and I do mean everyone) as consciousness/souls in bodies and that we are all connected via this energy/intent, then there will not be peace and respect on or for the earth.
If we have a “them” and “us” attitude, therefore believing/feeling we have the “right” to land, and feel/believe we are “justified” to shove people out, take over their country or bomb them, then how can there ever be peace?
If we allow lies to rule our government,(and other governments) in any way shape or form, then how can there ever be peace?
If our very lifestyles demand more of the earth then it can handle, and we constantly need/desire it’s resources/life blood just to support our lifestyles, how can there be peace?
Yes this is a beautiful planet, and the high vibration of love is a potential that exists for all of us, but words won’t do it folks, we HAVE to reflect this in every way.
Allow lies, ego/power struggles etc to run the day, then it matters not how much you “speak” of love and peace, you won’t get it, maintain it, and spread it out to the planet. If your actions don’t reflect it, then your intentions are NOT what you think they are. Action follows intention, in everything.
If you really have the intention for a better planet, peace, love and highest benefit to be the norm, then this has to be reflected in your actions also.
You can’t say you want peace, then support a government that demands war. You can’t say you want peace, and live a wasteful lifestyle.
You can’t say you want peace and see people as separate and/or evil.
This is pure and simple. No matter how many sweet, acceptable, loving, pseudo-positive you “sound”, nothing will change if one’s actions and intentions don’t change.
This is not negative, it just is. One gets so accustomed to the low vibe, the lies, the downward spiral that one doesn’t even notice it anymore and actually believes that by keeping their “attitude” positive, things will change. The Universe doesn’t work in such a way, how can the human species progress and evolve in this way?
Can you imagine if the law of gravity only said in words that it will be a force that keeps your feet on the ground, but in truth some people float and some people don’t? It is through the action of gravity that makes it true and real, not just the belief in it. This is how Natural Laws work, and this is how Spiritual Laws work and this is the Truth.
It is believed that we all have the right to our “opinions” and lifestyles. Free will is the name of the “game”. Yes, we have the right, but then we also have to take responsibility for the consequences of this free will. You want to vote, pay taxes, believe lies, support one side/country in war, etc then do it, but accept the responsibility that you are also part of the cause for it. You are just as complicit as any government official.
So go ahead spread love and peace via words, “positive attitude”, not seeing the truth of the world situation etc, but also take responsibility for your actions. Your soul knows this, but your mind/ego fights it to the core. Again, this is pure and simple. The way things are going, NOTHING or very little will change. More >
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 10 Sep 2004 @ 14:58
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
As the 1,000th US soldier dies in Iraq
The fight to end the war means opposing both Bush and Kerry
By Bill Van Auken, SEP presidential candidate
9 September 2004
The passing of the grim milestone of 1,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq must be the occasion for redoubling the fight for an immediate end to the US occupation of that war-ravaged country.
This means a struggle not only against the Bush administration, but also against the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate John Kerry, who voted to authorize the war and has vowed to continue it.
After the Iraqi people themselves, who have seen tens of thousands of their countrymen killed, wounded and tortured by the US occupation army, the American troops are the principal victims of this war.
Every reason given for sending them to fight and die has proven a lie. There were neither any weapons of mass destruction nor any Al Qaeda-Baghdad connection. The Bush administration’s promise to turn Iraq into a beacon of democracy has produced a puppet regime headed by a homicidal thug and long-time CIA agent who is despised by the majority of the population.
Stripped bare of all these false pretexts, the war stands as a criminal colonialist enterprise aimed at militarily subjugating Iraq in order to control its vast oil reserves.
More than half of the soldiers killed in Iraq were under 30, drawn overwhelmingly from the working class. Many of those whose lives have been needlessly sacrificed in what Washington insiders describe as a “war of choice” joined the military straight out of high school to get a job or money for college. These young men and women are now dying at the rate of three a day.
While the identity of the 1,000th soldier killed in Iraq is not yet known, names released by the Pentagon Wednesday included those of Tomas Garces, a 19-year-old army specialist from Weslaco, Texas, a Rio Grande Valley town where the unemployment rate is close to 15 percent, and Devin Grella, 21, a private first class in the reserves from Medina, Ohio, who was the 35th soldier from that state to die.
In addition to the dead, there are some 7,000 wounded, among them many who are permanently disabled. Some 1,100 soldiers and Marines were wounded in the month of August alone, as US forces faced determined resistance in heavily populated Iraqi cities.
There is every reason to believe that casualty rates will rise substantially after the November election. The Bush administration has deliberately postponed launching far more intense counterinsurgency operations to suppress the Iraqi resistance and retake cities that it now controls for fear of the impact the carnage would have on the November vote.
The preparations for a brutal offensive are already under way. General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told a Pentagon press briefing Tuesday that the US military in Iraq is now working “to set the conditions for the successful use of force later” against cities and areas where the Iraqi resistance has gained control. Military commanders in Iraq have indicated that any such action will be delayed for two to four months.
The administration dismissed any significance to the 1,000th US military fatality in Iraq. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld described the number of casualties as “relatively small” and obscenely lumped them together with the lives lost in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, as all part of the global “war on terrorism.”
Kerry took note of the figure, calling it “tragic” and incorporating it into a new tack that the Democratic campaign has taken on the Iraq war.
It should be recalled that during the Democratic primaries Kerry cast himself as an antiwar candidate, opposed to Bush’s policies in Iraq. Once he had the votes needed for the nomination, Iraq became a non-issue. Kerry deliberately disassociated himself from the broad popular opposition to the war. He adopted the slogan that “failure is not an option,” and vowed to continue the occupation and even increase the number of US troops there.
Then, last month, Kerry announced that—even if he had then known that Iraq had neither the weapons nor terrorist ties alleged by the administration—he still would have cast his vote of two years ago giving Bush the authority to launch a “preemptive” invasion. With this statement the Democratic campaign essentially ceded the issue of Iraq to Bush.
Now, following relentless attacks against him by the Republicans, and a drop in the polls—particularly among those describing themselves as strongly committed to the Democratic candidate—Kerry has resurrected Iraq as a campaign theme.
Beginning on Labor Day, Kerry described Iraq as “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The candidate traveled Wednesday to Cincinnati, Ohio, to deliver a speech in the same hall where Bush made his fraudulent case for war nearly two years earlier. Kerry censured the Bush administration for a series of “miscalculations.”
“His miscalculation was going to war without planning carefully and without the allies we should have had,” said Kerry. “As a result, America has paid nearly 90 percent of the bill in Iraq. Contrast that with the Gulf War, where our allies paid 95 percent of the costs.”
What precisely is it that Kerry finds “wrong”—aside from Washington footing the bill—about the war in Iraq, a war that he and his running mate John Edwards both voted to authorize?
That the war was based upon lies and waged in blatant violation of international law merits no mention by Kerry. Nor did the Democratic candidate say a word about the continuing bombardment of crowded urban neighborhoods in Baghdad, Fallujah, Najaf and elsewhere in Iraq, which constitutes a war crime. The sadistic torture of Iraqi civilians at Abu Ghraib and other US detention camps in Iraq also failed to feature among the things Kerry found wrong about the war.
What has been done to the Iraqi population is, to put it bluntly, not an issue for Kerry. As we mark the 1,000th US fatality, it should be noted that no one in the Washington establishment has even bothered to estimate the casualties inflicted upon Iraqi civilians in the year and a half since the US invasion.
Estimates range as high as 37,000 killed and many more wounded. In a country where 60 percent of the population is under the age of 18, a large proportion of those who have been slain or maimed by US bombs, missiles, shells and bullets are children. Their deaths and agony go unrecorded, continuously censored from the major media’s coverage of the war.
So what’s wrong about the war for Kerry? His differences are a matter of tactics and style. He is committed to a successful consummation of the criminal and reckless aggression launched by the Bush administration, but insists that his election could win Washington greater international backing, while lulling the growing antiwar sentiment within the US itself.
Kerry has suggested that US troops could be withdrawn from Iraq after his first term, meaning four more years of war and thousands more US soldiers and tens of thousands more Iraqis killed. Kerry qualified even this halfhearted promise with a warning that withdrawing from Iraq too soon could leave a political “vacuum.” In other words, he is determined to continue the occupation until a pro-US regime is consolidated, a goal that means unending colonial war.
While the Republicans have undoubtedly smeared Kerry and grossly distorted his political record, their derisive singsong chant of “flip-flop, flip-flop” has some political basis.
Bush and his handlers portray Kerry’s twists and turns on the Iraq war as merely a matter of political opportunism, driven by the polls or some personal indecisiveness that disqualifies him from assuming the exalted title of “commander-in-chief.”
In reality, Kerry’s problem is that from the outset of his campaign he has been compelled to speak to two audiences. The first is the majority of the population which is opposed to the occupation of Iraq and wants US troops withdrawn.
The second—and for him the most important—are the predominant sections of the US corporate and financial oligarchy, which in no way want the election turned into a referendum on the Iraq war and global US militarism.
To the extent that Kerry is forced to criticize Bush on Iraq once again in order to boost his flagging campaign, it amounts to empty demagogy. When it comes to the fundamental aims of US imperialism in Iraq, there are no differences between the two candidates.
Kerry’s statement that he would still have voted for the war, like the vote itself, was no accident. The war on Iraq—whatever tactical differences existed over timing and diplomatic preparation—was a consensus policy of the ruling elite. It is the culmination of a strategy developed by both Republicans and Democrats since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 13 years ago—the use of overwhelming US military superiority to achieve global hegemony by securing a stranglehold over markets and sources of strategic raw materials, foremost among them oil.
Kerry’s election would not spell an end to either the US occupation of Iraq or the continuing campaign of global militarism under the pretext of a war on terrorism. Whatever sympathy he feigns for the working class youth in uniform who are being killed and maimed in this war, he is committed to continuing the slaughter for years to come.
Bringing a halt to the war and to the entire bipartisan program of world domination is possible only by means of a break with the two-party system and the emergence of a new mass political movement of working people, based on a socialist program. Only this kind of a movement, representing the needs and desires of the vast majority of the population, can end the domination of US foreign policy and every other vital social question by the predatory interests of a tiny financial elite.
(clip)
See Also:
Complaint filed with Pentagon over Kerry medals
The anatomy of a right-wing provocation in US election campaign
[8 September 2004]
The US sinks deeper into the Iraqi quagmire
[7 September 2004]
The Republican convention and the specter of dictatorship
[4 September 2004] More >
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 9 Sep 2004 @ 13:01
1) DOVE Report ***(Dove is Reporting Sundays only)
[doveofo] NESARA Process; Why NESARA Needed in Oct. 2004 - Bush Martial
Law
September 5, 2004 9:56 p.m. PDT
Hello Dear Friends and White Knights,I extend my sincere and heartfelt thanks to the dozens of you who haveresponded to my requests in the last two weeks. I have spent hours on the
telephone talking with many people in the last two weeks asking for theirassistance in being able to reach certain very key people. Many of you have responded with great dedication and have given freely of your time
and energy to help me move forward with the process which will bring NESARA to announcement in the next few months. My deep heartfelt thanks to all of you.
I have just listened to a radio interview with an officer in the Texas National Guard who says he and his fellow National Guard members have
received training to implement "martial law" in the United States. He says they have been told the Bush government will declare martial law on November 1, 2004. The Texas National Guard officer says they were warned not to tell any media personnel about this Bush government plan to declare
martial law on November 1, 2004. And of course, the REASON the Bush government is choosing November 1, 2004 is to be able to cancel the election.
I'm asking everyone, who has the computer capability, to listen to this interview which takes 10 - 20 minutes to download. Although the host of the radio show is Alex Jones, who does not have the right contacts to
confirm NESARA and therefore does not support NESARA, Alex does sometimes receive good information. What this Texas National Guard officer is saying about the Bush government getting National Guard soldiers trained to implement martial law is absolutely true and I have confirmed it.
The Bush regime has put a former USSR KGB chief in charge of part of this martial law preparation and training activity and some of the tactics include randomly stopping old ladies on the street and searching them, as well as how to "take over a city" and how to arrest people and take people
to the internment camps in the USA.
Please listen to this interview and forward this email to others and ask them to listen to the interview:
[link]
In addition to this shocking information from the Texas National Guard, Alex talks about a new book called "In Defense of Internment" which claims that internment camps are "good"! The author, Michelle Malkin, is LYING
about the claims she makes in her book and she is part of the brainwashing the Bush regime is trying to do on the American people to convince Americans that they should let the Bush government totally destroy our country.
It is ENTIRELY possible for us to bring NESARA to ANNOUNCEMENT BEFORE November 2004. The steps needed to bring NESARA to announcement in October 2004 are a well-defined process and most of the resources to
accomplish these steps are already confirmed. I hope this week to have two meetings which will put the NESARA process into acceleration so that we absolutely DO see the NESARA announcement in October 2004!
I have felt a tremendous pressure to work night and day to move NESARA forward for the last several months. I've known since February 2004 that the Bush regime is hoping to declare martial law this year; they wanted to
do it in June 2004 and now are hoping to do it on November 1, 2004. The Bush regime has not been able to successfully do
any additional terrorist attacks since the 9-11 attacks and the benevolent Forces will continue toprevent terrorist attacks.
HOWEVER, the Bush regime is working on "other ways" to declare martial law. It is up to WE, THE American PEOPLE, to bring NESARA to announcement BEFORE the Bush regime can trick Americans into allowing marital law to be
declared.
The globalists, with whom the Bush government is working, are stepping up their activities to put the world's people into total subjugation. In Russia, the two planes that went down and the hostage event at the school were ALL staged by the Russian government. These were the Russian leaders' "9-11 attacks" on the Russian people.
It's time to get NESARA announced! NESARA Now!
Blessings and Love,
Dove of Oneness
Worldwide NESARA Take Action Teams Director
Dove uses a pseudonym for security and privacy reasons. The term "White Knights" is borrowed from the Wall Street Journal and the world of big business hostile takeovers when a vulnerable company is "rescued from a hostile takeover by a White Knight" corporation or wealthy person.
Certainly, these people fighting to bring Americans and the world the
benefits of NESARA and to rescue our people from government and banking fraud deserve to be called "White Knights". World Court is the International Court of Justice in the city called The Hague, in the Netherlands. This is NOT the International Criminal Court from which Bush Jr. removed the U.S. These are two totally different courts with
different purposes.
The Dove Report currently has 15,769 subscribers and is read by over 315,000 people worldwide in forums on other websites and published in magazines and journals nationally and internationally.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
For more information on NESARA, go to WWW.NESARA.US .
To SUBSCRIBE to the Dove Reports, please send an email with Subject of
"Subscribe" to dovelist@nesara.us. Please allow 72 HOURS for processing
your request. More >
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 4 Sep 2004 @ 17:34
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
Keynote speech at Republican convention: a fascistic rant from a pro-Bush Democrat
By the Editorial Board
3 September 2004
The keynote speech by Democratic Senator Zell Miller to the Republican National Convention Wednesday night was a snarling diatribe against the presidential candidate of his own party, John Kerry, in which Miller depicted all opposition to the Bush administration as tantamount to treason.
The Georgia Democrat’s nationally televised speech recalled the anticommunist ravings of Joseph McCarthy. The enthusiastic response by the assembled Republican convention delegates exposed the dirty secret of American politics: the Republican Party’s embrace of a political perspective, based on militarism, chauvinism and Christian fundamentalism, with distinctly fascistic overtones.
The center of Miller’s address was the charge that the Democratic Party was guilty of dividing the country in wartime. “Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most?” he asked. “Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats’ manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.”
The content of this charge is to criminalize all political opposition to the Bush administration, including opposition from within the bourgeois establishment. Leveled against the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party, it is an absurd inversion of the truth.
At the Democratic convention, Kerry and the party officialdom sought to impose a ban on any direct criticism of Bush—lest the media and the Republicans denounce them for “negative” campaigning. Needless to day, Bush and the Republicans felt no compunction in turning the bulk of their convention into a savage attack on Kerry, which reached its apogee in Miller’s speech.
Moreover, the Democratic Party has—from the right-wing conspiracy to topple the Clinton administration, to the stolen election of 2000, to the failure of the Bush administration to prevent the 9/11 attacks and its subsequent cover-up of the events surrounding the attacks, to the massive lying employed to justify the Iraq war, to the revelations of US torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere—done everything in its power to conceal the criminality of Bush and the Republicans from the American people and shore up the Bush administration.
“Manic obsession” far more accurately describes the Republican Party campaign that led to the impeachment and Senate trial of Clinton—in the course of which congressional Republican leaders denounced Clinton’s bombing of Iraq in December 1998 as an attempt to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, paying no heed to the prerogatives of the “commander in chief.”
Miller’s demand for unconditional support for any president engaged in military action overseas has the most ominous implications. It amounts to a declaration that under conditions of war—which in the case of Bush’s self-declared “war on terror” is of indefinite scope and duration—all opposition to or even criticism of the president is disloyal and must be suppressed.
Kerry, in fact, has limited his criticisms of Bush’s war policy entirely to the tactics and methods employed in the attack on Iraq, never calling into question the legitimacy of Bush’s decision to launch the unprovoked invasion of a defenseless country.
Miller continued with a bizarre presentation of the military as the foundation of American democracy. He declared, “it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.”
He made a crude appeal to nativism and chauvinism, saying, “Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.” The delegates responded with cheers and chants of “USA, USA.”
According to the US Constitution, the president does not “decide” whether to go to war. The power to declare war resides exclusively with Congress. The president’s role as commander-in-chief originally signified the supremacy of the civil power over the military, not the elevation of the chief executive above democratic control. But over the past six decades, as the United States emerged as the dominant imperialist power in the world, there has been a corresponding decline in any legislative restraint over the use of the military.
Miller combined his glorification of militarism with a saccharine, fawning depiction of Bush’s personality. He laid special emphasis on the president’s religiosity and his messianic view of the world role of the United States, saying Bush “is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America.” In other words, America is God’s country and Bush is God’s chosen leader. The implication—which clearly resonated with the assembled Republican delegates—is that anyone who opposes Bush is doing the devil’s work.
Vice President Dick Cheney followed Miller to the podium and touched on much the same themes, in a speech that was equally reactionary but delivered in a plodding fashion, without the overt hysteria of the keynote speaker.
Cheney made only a perfunctory reference to domestic issues, devoting one paragraph each to education, jobs and health care. On the economy, with perhaps unintended irony, he declared, “President Bush delivered the greatest tax reduction in a generation, and the results are clear to see.” The results are indeed evident: the wealthiest one percent of Americans reaped hundreds of billions, while working class living standards have continued to decline and an additional four million people have been pushed down into poverty.
The vice president then turned to his main task, intimidating the American people with the threat of terrorism. Significantly, he did not speak the word “Iraq” in the course of his 40-minute address. This omission is typical of the duplicity of the entire Republican convention.
Speaker after speaker has evaded the issues posed by the invasion of Iraq—the lies used by Bush & Co. to justify the war, now thoroughly exposed; the mounting resistance of the Iraqi people; the staggering cost in human lives and resources; the growing hatred of the US government throughout the world. Instead, Iraq is presented as a central part of the “war on terror,” supposedly a justified response to September 11, despite the fact—admitted by Bush himself—that there is no evidence of any connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Cheney echoed many of Miller’s criticisms of Kerry’s national security record, while repeating one of Bush’s standard invocations of American unilateralism, that he “will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people.” Of course, the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with defending the American people, who faced no threat whatsoever from that blockaded and impoverished country. What this phrase really means is that Bush will not be deterred by worldwide outrage or international law from attacking whatever country he chooses. Again the Republican delegates responded with chants of “USA, USA.”
The vice president also claimed that Bush had “put this nation where America always belongs: against the tyrants of this world and on the side of every soul on Earth who yearns to live in freedom”—another brazen lie. The Bush administration’s closest allies include the medieval ruling family of Saudi Arabia, dictators like Mubarak of Egypt and Musharraf of Pakistan, ex-Stalinist thugs like Karimov in Uzbekistan and Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, the King of Morocco and many other rulers just as tyrannical as Saddam Hussein.
In perhaps his most significant comment, Cheney declared that Kerry did not threaten US national security as one of 100 senators, because his views rarely prevailed. “But the presidency is an entirely different proposition. A senator can be wrong for 20 years, without consequence to the nation. But a president always casts the deciding vote.” Like Miller’s declaration, “I want Bush to decide,” Cheney’s comment amounts to endorsing a presidential dictatorship.
The remarks of Miller and Cheney were clearly addressed to the ultra-right, Christian fundamentalist layer that constitutes the sole significant popular base of the Republican Party. These elements were well represented at the Republican National Convention, although their far-right, xenophobic, semi-fascist political views have been largely concealed by the media coverage and the Bush campaign propaganda. A few glimpses, however, have appeared in the press.
The Washington Post took note August 29 of several planks in the platform of the Iowa state Republican Party, adopted in June. These include: abolition of government-mandated minimum wages; supporting landlords who refuse to lease property to cohabiting gays “based on moral objections”; backing termination of parental rights for people convicted of a second drug offense; supporting the teaching in public schools of non-evolutionary theories such as “creation science”; US withdrawal from the United Nations and the removal of UN headquarters from US soil; and a constitutional amendment denying citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States. Perhaps the most remarkable plank was one denouncing any national health care system, characterizing such plans as socialistic, and proclaiming the belief that “health care is a privilege and not a right.”
The Post also noted the dismay among some delegates that the invocation for the opening session of the convention was delivered by Imam Izak-El M. Pasha, the Muslim chaplain of the New York City Police Department. The newspaper cited the views of Robert Steinhagen, a delegate from Dallas, Texas, full-time fundraiser for a Christian ministry, and veteran of several Republican congressional campaigns. Steinhagen declared, “I think the president is wrong when he says Islam is a peaceful religion.” Bush, he said, “should not have allowed this to happen.”
The purpose of Zell Miller’s speech, however, goes beyond simply pumping up “the base” with ultra-right demagogy. The logic of Miller’s characterization of the Democratic Party and Kerry leads inexorably to a refusal to accept an electoral defeat of Bush as legitimate, and, ultimately, to a resort to force. “The soldier,” in Miller’s phrase, must intervene to defend America from the traitors within.
There has been a constant undertone through the election campaign that Bush & Co. have not resigned themselves to accepting the outcome of the November 2 vote. Top administration officials have raised the possibility of postponing the election in the event of a terrorist attack, or holding it under conditions tantamount to martial law. Bush’s repeated statements that “I don’t intend to lose my job” should be understood as more than the usual election-year bluster.
In that context, it is worth noting the lengthy profile of Bush that appeared in the New York Times September 2. The Times quoted one Bush supporter, conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the first Bush administration. “The key to understanding George W. Bush is to understand that he is a deeply religious man in a fundamentalist sense,” Bartlett said. “He truly believes there is good and evil in the world and that his job is to be on the side of good ... he’ll pretty much do anything to stay in office because he truly believes in his foreign policy.”
There is the sharpest contrast between the ruthlessness of the Bush campaign and the impotence and half-heartedness of Kerry and the Democrats. Kerry himself made no explicit response to Zell Miller’s vicious speech, and his running mate John Edwards contented himself with a limp comment that the Republican convention had offered “hate” while the Democrats were offering “hope.”
Kerry’s spinelessness is bound up with the fact that there are many potential Zell Millers in the Democratic Party establishment. Another prominent Democrat, former New York mayor Ed Koch, also spoke from the Republican convention platform on Wednesday to urge a vote for Bush.
Kerry has solidarized himself with the invasion and occupation of Iraq because, whatever tactical differences might exist, the consensus within the American ruling elite is fully in favor of a strategy of US global hegemony, and the Democratic Party is, no less than the Republican Party, an instrument of American imperialism. But were Kerry, as an electoral maneuver, to veer significantly from his pro-war stance, he would face defections to the Bush camp by pro-war Democratic officeholders like Joseph Lieberman, and public attack by the likes of Joseph Biden and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
See Also:
New York protest revealed mass opposition to Bush war policies
Where were the Democrats on August 29?
[3 September 2004]
Crackdown on anti-Bush protests
Thousands arrested in New York City
[2 September 2004]
The Republican convention: Wall Street fetes its political stooges
[2 September 2004]
Republican convention opens: panic-mongering in the service of war and reaction
[1 September 2004] More >
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 2 Sep 2004 @ 23:11
I remember as a child my grandmother, a german jew who fled the nazis, told me over and over..."Don't ever think it can't happen here!" "We never thought it could happen in Germany either." Well folks, she was absolutely right!
Just because they haven't officially called these "camps for citizens", "concentration camps" does NOT mean they are not one and the same intention.
But go on...vote for the candidate of your choice, pay their salaries, (via taxes) and, oh yes, please don't forget to have a good day...
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fyi....
Nazi Concentration Camps 1933-1945
The information in this timeline is from the book Inside the Vicious Heart written by Robert H. Abzug. 1933
American newspapers and magazines reported the existence of concentration camps in early 1933, when Dachau first slammed its gate shut on a group of Communists and other political enemies of the Nazis. The camps had gained reputations for harsh and sadistic treatment of prisoners.
1937
Buchenwald was built by the Nazis as a camp for political prisoners like German Communists and Social Democrats. Between 1937-8, Jews were added as Germany's anti-Semitic campaign was set in motion. With a population of 15,000 prisoners, the camp was one of slave labor, with German Communists at the top.
August 18, 1940
Hans Frank, Nazi governor of occupied Poland, announces plans to make Cracow free of Jews, declaring, "the Jews must vanish from the face of the earth."
1941
In Alsace, France, up a winding road from the village of Natzwiller, the Nazis built a labor camp, Natzwiller-Struthof, whose inmates originally were German, and whose duties were to supply labor for building V-2 factories in man-made caves dug out of the Harz Mountains. The prisoners would live in the cold, damp tunnels as they built them.
Consider the fact that there are more people in American prisons than in any other country in the world, while at the same time, prison labor industries, (slave labor) is considered a booming business. Even so, while prisons are being built as fast as possible, there is not enough space to house them all. This is your "Justice system" at work, being paid for by your tax dollars.....
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Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.
by Jonathan Turley
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.
Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.
The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.
The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.
Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.
This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a time of war."
In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights.
Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.
Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.
Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.
We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.
For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.
Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.
Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.
His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors.
In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.
More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"
Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough."
Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.
Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.
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