Remaining Alert and Defiant

[Ivo Skoric]

Remaining “alert and defiant” as prescribed by doctor Ashcroft I 
drove back from the speeding ticket hearing in Queensbury Town 
Court down the Thruway at 110 mph. Because I was alert, I spotted 
the State Trooper before my radar detector picked up his radar 
signal, so I slowed down to a meager 70 mph making myself 
unworthy of a speeding ticket. And because I was defiant, I sped 
up back to 110 mph as soon as I lost the trooper’s car in my 
rearview mirror. On the other hand, I am not sure whether Ashcroft 
exactly had that in mind, when he called on Americans to be “alert 
and defiant” for this September 11. Fearful and fearless in 
accordance with the rest of the doublespeak we heard preceding 
this sad anniversary.

Alert and defiant, I picked up the following ‘intelligence chatter’ in 
the U.S. news media:

1) “We will use our position of unparalleled strength and influence to 
build an atmosphere of international order and openness in which 
progress and liberty can flourish in many nations. A peaceful world of 
growing freedom serves American longterm interests, reflects enduring 
American ideals and unites America's allies....Today, humanity holds in 
its hands the opportunity to further freedom's triumph over all its ageold 
foes. The United States welcomes its responsibility to lead in this great 
mission.”  (George W. Bush, NY Times, 9/11/02)
“The plain fact is that our country has, with all our mistakes and 
blunders, always been and always will be the greatest beacon of 
freedom, charity, opportunity, and affection in history. 
If you need proof, open all the borders on Earth and see what happens. 
In about half a day, the entire world would be a ghost town, and the 
United States would look like one giant line to see `The Producers.' . . .” 
(Larry Miller, Jan. 14, 2002, The Weekly Standard)
“We Americans are not better than any other people, but the Western 
democratic system we live by is the best system on earth.” (Thomas 
Friedman in one of his innumerable odes to the American democracy, 
published by The New York Times)

I didn’t see ‘The Producers’ and don’t care much about them. I think if 
borders are open, I’d chose New Zealand over the U.S. But, more 
importantly, why then this ‘greatest beacon of freedom, charity, 
opportunity, and affection in history’ houses more prisoners per capita 
than any other country in the world including communist China and all 
those pesky undemocratic un-modern Arab regimes? The Economist 
(08/31/02) calls the U.S. “The world’s most enthusiastic jailer”. Currently 
there are 1.96 million people behind bars in the U.S. and 4.66 million 
people on probation or parole - more than a population of a smaller 
European country. Incidentally half of them are not white. Incidentally 
half of them didn’t commit a violent crime, much less a terrorist act.

America stands for freedom... There's an old punk rock band called the 
Vandals with a song that goes, "America stands for freedom, but if you 
think you're free, try walking into a deli and urinating on the cheese." 
("Anarchy Burger (Hold the Government)," 1989, Epitaph Records; 
quoted by Vin Diesel in “Triple X” movie 2002). Well, of course, freedom 
has understandable limitations: no yelling fire in a theater, no stealing 
cable, no jaywalking...um, no talking about overthrowing the 
government, no looking at really, really naughty pictures, no bearing of 
arms in public, no smoking in California restaurants, no serious cussing 
on broadcast television, no public sex, no right to keep your own state 
free of others' nuclear waste, no peyote ritual for Indian prayer services, 
no gay unions in Nevada, no free speech on the sidewalks in front of 
casinos. More freedom, though, than any nondemocracythat's what 
we mean. (Thursday, July 11, 2002, Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury, Gut 
Reactions: Food and patriotism, By Dayvid Figler)
				
And, it is getting WORSE. As a consequence of the September 11 and 
the subsequent Operation Enduring Freedom the freedom of individuals 
around the globe has been shrunk, restricted, curtailed - it seems that 
even countries that initially rejoiced in the America getting hurt, learned 
how to profit out of that fate. Detentions are prolonged, more arbitrary, 
and their conditions are harsher, discriminatory legislation has been 
passed, there is an international clampdown on foreigners and asylum 
seekers, the rights at trial eroded, death penalty expanded, use of torture 
increased, surveillance powers of police increased, people are extradited 
without rights guarantees, there are new restrictions on freedom of 
assembly and on freedom of expression, and some peaceful activity can 
be defined as terrorism. The U.S. can get citizens of other countries, that 
FBI suspects are connected to terrorism, arrested in third countries and 
extradited to fourth countries where they can be tortured, far from the 
inconvenient eyes of human rights organizations, for the benefit of the 
FBI intelligence gathering. In an example of shameless profiling, FBI is 
bluntly asking people arrested under Patriot Act whether anybody in 
their families is a Muslim, and compares the sound of their names to 
familiar pronunciations of Arabic names. 

“...to curtail individual rights, as the Bush administration has done, is to 
draw exactly the wrong lessons from history. Every time the country has 
felt threatened and tightened the screws on civil liberties, it later wished 
it had not done so. In each case — whether the barring of government 
criticism under the Sedition Act of 1798 and the Espionage Act of 1918, 
the internment of JapaneseAmericans in World War II or the 
McCarthyite witch hunts of the cold war — profound regrets set in 
later.” (Op-Ed, New York Times, 09/10/02)
								
The situation of freedom is in the sad state globally and the world is one 
worse place to live after September 11 events. Add to that the fact that all 
the economies of the developed world shrank since the tragedy. And is 
there still a reason to trust the government? Or is there only fear of being 
apprehended? Was Osama Bin Laden right about the 9/11 redistributing 
the world’s capital flow, indeed? Arkady Ostrovsky in the 8/6/02 issue of 
Financial Times reports that “while the marjets in the developed world 
remain close to their September 11 levels, emerging markets, in spite of 
the turmoil in Latin America, have risen 30% since then.”

And what exactly is the turmoil in Latin America all about? It is about 
IMF and corrupted local politicians screwing up yet another country in 
the world. Starting in 1995, in accord with agreements with the IMF, 
Argentina cut the budget for public hospitals, ended its preventive 
health care programs and froze budget for public schools. Today the 
country that according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization 
statistics has the highest per capita production of food cannot feed more 
than a half of its children. One of the world’s largest producers of high 
protein red meat and soy cannot provide a gram of protein per kilo of 
weight, the requirement for normal development of child’s nervous 
system, to 28% of its children, that are indigent. According to 
Argentina’s National Institute on Statistics and Censuses, of 36 million 
people, Argentina has 9.8 million children below age 14, and the 
whooping 58% of them go hungry, despite the country’s production of 
70 millions tons of food - nearly 2 tons per person. Why? Because the 
food is exported and the money earned is poured into wealthy Western 
lenders’ and local corrupted, treacherous, wealthy collaborators’ 
pockets. It is a simple case of the neo-colonial plunder.

“Formerly admired almost universally as the pre eminent champion of 
human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected 
international organizations concerned about these basic principles of 
democratic life. We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that 
support our antiterrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as 
"enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely 
without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal 
counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the 
Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt. 
Several hundred captured Taliban soldiers remain imprisoned at 
Guantánamo Bay under the same circumstances, with the defense 
secretary declaring that they would not be released even if they were 
someday tried and found to be innocent. These actions are similar to 
those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by 
American presidents.”
(The troubling new face of America, by Jimmy Carter, Washington Post, 
Friday, September 6, 2002; Carter may be a better ex-president than he 
was a president)
 
The conclusion is that under the cloak of protecting and advancing the 
cause of freedom the U.S. in the recent years sponsored and/or allowed 
the cause of freedom to suffer and fail worldwide. That’s what bring us 
to the second chapter. 

2) 2-1=4
Vice-president Dick Cheney said that the U.S. should wage a war against 
Iraq, and Secretary of State Collin Powell said that it should not, yet Ari 
Fleisher, the White House press secretary, said that there are no 
differences between what those two said. 

“[W] ar is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Colin Powell 
and Dick Cheney are in perfect agreement. And the Bush administration 
won't privatize Social Security.
Ari Fleischer's insistence that Mr. Powell and Mr. Cheney have no 
differences over Iraq seems to have pushed some journalists into facing 
up, at least briefly, to the obvious. ABC's weblog The Note described it 
as a "chocolateisvanilla" claim, admitting that "The Bush team has 
always had a credibility problem with some reporters because of their 
insistence on saying 'up is down' and 'black is white.' "
(Paul Krugman, Op-Ed, The New York Times, 09/06/02)

“Hijackers armed with boxcutters attacked the nation’s financial 
and military headquarters, so the White House increased funding 
for missile defense. We were told it was a time for sacrifice. We 
were told to go shopping. The attack was launched by a gang of 
thugs operating out of many countries, including our own. So we 
invaded Afghanistan.
     According to President Bush, the terrorists hate our "love of 
freedom." But now, the president can declare any American an 
"enemy combatant" and detain them indefinitely without charges, 
counsel, or contact with anyone. Maybe he thinks the attackers 
will stop if we no longer have our Constitutionally protected 
freedoms.
     The CIA and the FBI both failed miserably to protect the 
American people, so they got enormous budget increases. 
Meanwhile, if our schoolchildren get failing test scores, we slash 
their school’s budget. 
  (An essay by Kenneth R. Olson, a Portland, Oregonbased writer 
and photographer. It’s one of the essays on tompaine.com on the 
theme "Agenda Interrupted? 9/11 One Year Later.")

“George Bush Channels George Orwell - Can A Sitting President 
Be Charged With Plagiarism?
     As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves 
to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be 
borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George 
Orwell’s 1984, the prophetic novel about a government that controls 
the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on 
subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs.
     1984 was intended as a warning about the evils of 
totalitarianism  not a howto manual. We’re a long way from 
resembling the kind of authoritarian state Orwell depicted, but 
some of the similarities are eerie.
     In 1984 , the state was perpetually at war against a vague and 
everchanging enemy  a convenient way to fuel hatred, nurture 
fear and justify the regime’s autocratic practices. Bush’s war 
against terrorism is almost as amorphous. Exactly what 
constitutes success in this war remains unclear, but Bush is clear 
on one point: the war will continue indefinitely.
     In 1984 , an omnipresent and allpowerful leader, Big Brother, 
commanded the unquestioning support of the people. He was both 
adored and feared. No one dared speak out against him. President 
Bush is not as menacing, but he has quietly achieved the greatest 
expansion of executive powers since Nixon. His minions cultivate 
an image of infallibility and impugn the patriotism of anyone who 
questions his leadership.
     In 1984, Big Brother’s everwatchful eye kept tabs on the 
citizens of Orwell’s totalitarian state. The Bush administration has 
its new TIPS program to enlist citizenspies as extra eyes and ears 
for law enforcement. And the Justice Department, thanks to the 
hastily passed USA Patriot Act, has sweeping new powers to 
monitor phone conversations, Internet usage, business 
transactions and library records.
     Could America become an Orwellian society that accepts war 
as peace, freedom as slavery and ignorance as strength? Can it 
happen overnight, or would it involve a gradual erosion of freedoms 
with the people’s consent?
     So powerful was the state’s mind control and manipulation in 
1984 that, eventually, everyone came to love Big Brother.
     Perhaps in time we all will, too.”
(Adapted from an essay by Daniel Kurtzman, a San Francisco 
writer and former Washington political correspondent.)

To conclude: Soviet Union is dead, but the doublethink is not. It 
found fertile ground in the post 9-11 U.S. administration, down to 
the patriotic pins on the lapels of the suits worn by those who 
always thought how to fill their own pockets first.

3) For freedom, as it is understood under the “2-1=4" formula, the 
U.S. is readying itself to “put a case for action,” “search a way to 
fight,” and “step up drive to destroy.” Destroy what? Well, destroy 
something. The recipe is to substitute Saddam Hussein for Osama 
Bin Laden. You might not be able to kill either of them, but 
Saddam you can at least locate with the billion dollar intelligence 
apparatus, and they both classify as bad guys, anyway. Talk about 
Iraq so you can avoid talking about Israel. Sharon needed a media 
break to pacify those unruly Palestinians. And Arafat doesn’t mind 
playing along as long you let him remain a figurehead. Put the 
nation on the terror alert, so they don’t bother you with social 
security. Shoot first, then ask questions or give explanations to the 
annoying world of lesser powers.

“....a radically new conception of America's role in the world has 
been advanced by the Bush Administration. It has claimed nothing 
less than a right and a duty of the United States to assert military 
dominancea Pax Americanaover the entire earth. Discussion 
along the way has been muted, but now a debate has begun. Its 
subject, however, has been not so much whether the United States 
should wage war on Iraq as whether it should wage the debate on 
the war, orwhat is only a little bolderwhether the United States 
should first meet certain conditions (find allies, explain itself to 
Congress, win the support of the American public, make plans for 
Iraq's political future) and only then wage the war...” Schell points 
out that something bigger is taking place: “A debate about the war, 
if the nation decides to have one, will be in vain if it does not 
address the wider revolution in policy of which the war is an 
expression...Should the United States aim at preserving military 
dominance over the earth for the indefinite future? Is such 
dominance possible? If it is possible, do the people of the United 
States want it? If the attempt is made, can the United States 
remain a democracy? Can the United States act as military 
guarantor of a world that rejects and hates its protector? George 
Bush is thinking about it. Are we?”
(By Jonathan Schell in The Nation, dated September 23,2002, 
published August 26)

“Denmark, like many traditional allies of the United States, will 
have to rethink and reorient its foreign and security policies away 
from dependence upon the United States. For countries that have 
held the United States as their role model and authority in security 
affairs - and as a sort of protective father figure - the rapid demise of 
the United States as a responsible and respected super power is 
so shocking that it is likely to be denied. The regime of George W. 
Bush represents a very dangerous combination of historically 
overwhelming physical power, intellectual poverty, and decreasing 
legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world. Responsible powers, 
big or small, look in vain to Washington for leadership or vision. 
They must begin to learn to stand on their own feet.”
(By Jan Oberg, TFF director, 9/10/02)

In its relentless fight for freedom (again, as understood under the ‘2-
1=4' formula), the U.S. has approached many governments 
requesting them to sign agreements not to surrender or transfer US 
nationals to the new International Criminal Court (ICC). It has 
already signed such bilateral agreements with Israel, East Timor, 
Romania and Tajikistan. However, in some other countries this 
philosophy of ‘we can do what we want and be accountable to no 
one’ does not fly that well. Apparently to the point that German 
voters will decide on their next chancellor judging him by his 
stance on George W. Bush. Incumbent Schroeder went as far as 
to proclaim that Germany will not support the war on Iraq even if 
such is sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council. His opponent, 
Stoiber, remained calmer and more reasonable, opposing just 
Bush’s unilateral war effort, but that’s not what wins votes in 
electronic media driven democracies. And with undefeated Al-
Qaeda moving quietly back to their caves, while the world is 
listening to the debate on the war on Iraq, there was already an 
attempt on life of Afghanistan’s president Karzai, whose 
administration apparently wouldn’t survive a day without foreign 
support. But, George W. Bush not only lacks support for his war 
against Saddam Hussein among his closest allies, but also among 
his own cabinet members, and within his own family.
				
“A habit of ignoring inconvenient reality, and presuming that the 
docile media will go along, soon infects all aspects of policy.
As crazy Al Haig said Sunday on Fox, Bush 43 "has to be careful 
of the old gang. These are the people that created the problems in 
the first place by not handling Saddam Hussein correctly. . . . I'm 
talking about the previous administration and their spokesmen, Jim 
Baker, Scowcroft, and a very wise daddy who's not talking at all 
and he shouldn't."
The pathologically blunt General Haig simply spit out what other 
conservatives imply: Daddy wimped out in Iraq and Junior has to fix 
it.
You might think the United States would have an elevated debate 
before deciding to launch a major war against another country. But 
we've simply had a childish game of Chicken, with different factions 
sneering at one another: "You're a wimp!" "No, you're a wimp!"”
(Paul Krugman, Op-Ed, The New York Times, 09/06/02)

Surprisingly(?), even Henry Kissinger joined the ‘wimp crowd’:
“A week or so ago I wondered when [Henry Kissinger] was going to 
pronounce on the impending confrontation with Iraq. And I bet right. 
He is against it. So is his former colleague, and partner in the 
dread firm of Kissinger Associates, General Brent Scowcroft. The 
general is known to be a ventriloquist, or rather dummy, for George 
Bush Senior, who is now widely reported as being in the 
dovecamp, or dovecote. (This incidentally demolishes one facile 
argument, or taunt, about George W. picking a fight with Saddam 
Hussein as part of some Corsican conception of family honour.)
Those who don't want a 'regime change' in Iraq now include the 
Saudi royal family, the Turkish army, the more prominent 
conservative spokesmen in Congress and the Kissinger hawks. 
General Sharon, at least in his public pronouncements, appears to 
be against it as well. And somebody with a good contact among 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff seems to be leaking pessimistic or 
pacifistic material at a furious rate. Those who like to think of 
themselves as antiwar or antiimperialist might wonder what there 
is left for them to say: all the warloving imperialist hyenas are 
barking for peace at the top of their leathery old lungs.”
Christopher Hitchens, The Observer, 8/25/02

The conclusion?
9/10/2002 at 12:30 p.m., Haliburton’s Dick Cheney canceled his 
appearance at a dinner honoring Henry Kissinger and hurried back 
to his Secure Undisclosed Location.
If he turns back on the ‘substitute war’, I’d start really cheering W’s 
war on Saddam, because all the wrong people would be against it.

4) Thomas Friedman asks this rhetoric question in The New York 
Times: “Why do so many foreigners reject the evil perpetrators of 
9/11 but still dislike America?” Rhetoric, because he also answers 
it himself, in a single breath: “It's because, while we have the best 
system of governance, we are not always at our best in how we act 
toward the world. Because we want to drive big cars, we support 
repressive Arab dictators so they will sell us cheap oil. Because 
our presidents want to get votes, they readily tell the Palestinians 
how foolishly they are behaving, but they hesitate to tell Israelis 
how destructive their West Bank settlements are for the future of 
the Jewish state. Because we want to consume as much energy 
as we please, we tell the world's people they have to be with us in 
the war on terrorism but we don't have to be with them in the 
struggle against global warming and for a greener planet.”

Indeed, the post-adolescent U.S. signature on Kyoto agreement, 
would send the pre-renaissance Saudi royal family to the homeless 
shelter. A little bit more bluntly, but then, from the mouth of a 
“foreigner”: "There were 9,000 soldiers killed in Srebrenica in the 
eyes of the U.N. soldiers, who were supposed to protect them. But 
they didn't do shit. It's like watching those airplanes bang into the 
World Trade Center and not trying to save those people." (Danis 
Tanovic, Academy Award winner, Directors World, March 25, 2002)

It seems to be true that Americans are hated unfairly by the world. 
After all, the recently shrinking score of crooked corporate 
executives, and to them attached corrupted political prigs, are no 
less hated by an average American than by an average non-
American. Yet, unfortunately, the ‘average American’ has not much 
say in the “great game” of foreign policy and associated corporate 
plunder - with as much power to stop it as an average Afghani had 
to stop Al Qaeda - yet in both examples the war in the end was 
more or less indiscriminately applied to the entire population, and 
innocents died.

“On Sept. 12, I finally peeled myself away from the TV that had 
rendered me googleeyed and headed to the store. It was my first 
venture off the sofa, away from the phone's redial button and my 
son and into the transformed world. My attention was keen, and I 
hadn't slept.
Right away, a shift in my attitude manifested itself. I drove slower 
than usual, and at the first fourway stop signs, I waved two cars 
ahead. Overnight, other drivers had ceased to be mere traffic. The 
same held true in the store. In normal maneuvers, I might have 
battered my cart against others like a bumper car. But faces that 
would normally have blurred past had become distinct, particular. 
It's how you study people at a funeral to find out who's kin to the 
deceased.”
(Mary Karr, op-Ed, NYT, 09/08/02)

The same had happened to me. During a week past September 11 
last year in New York, I simply couldn’t avoid noticing the faces of 
other people in the subway. I have heard from friends from Sarajevo 
that this also happened to them when the war started. Only there it 
lasted more than one thousand days, not just a day. And this 
attentiveness to the existence of others is similar to what I 
experience engaging in deep back-country snowboarding with my 
friends (the avalanche alert there being a substitute for the terror 
alert table). Conclusion would be that we all become better persons 
when faced with the mortal danger. But do we have really therefore 
to live in the permanent state of war as prescribed by doctor 
Ashcroft?

5) With all that said, what happened to the promise that America, 
the land of the free, home of the brave, once was to the oppressed 
of the world?

“[I] mmigration agents at the nation's border crossings, airports and 
seaports this week will begin to fingerprint foreigners who they 
suspect may pose security risks and will require those visitors to 
regularly report where they are staying and what they are doing in 
the United States.
The new procedures, intended to improve the monitoring of certain 
foreigners in the country, will apply to anyone arriving with a 
student, business or tourist visa who is believed to fit the criteria of 
a potential terrorist.”
(U.S. Will Fingerprint Some Foreign Visitors, By SUSAN SACHS, 
NYT 09/09/02)

‘Certain foreigners,’ of course, would mostly be of Arab ethnicity, 
Islamic faith and generally unlucky to have been born in countries 
labeled as ‘evil.’ As Thomas Friedman defiantly put it: “...while 
most people in the world are good and decent, there are evil people 
out there who are not poor, not abused — but envious. These 
extremists have been raised in societies that have failed to prepare 
them for modernity,...” - as if evil, envious people could not be 
raised in a modern society. I wonder where was Timothy McVeigh 
raised. In Saudi Arabia? Iran? Sudan? And what about Jeffrey 
Dhammer?  But the universal U.S. doors shutting policy does not 
necessarily apply only to people coming from ‘evil, envious’ places.

People in various countries had been refused visas at U.S. 
consulates without valid explanation. This undisclosed policy does 
not appear to have effect on the countries called by George W. 
Bush “the great powers” - those old, defunct empires, whose “white 
mens burden” of ruling the world the U.S. inherited, and whose 
citizens do not need visas - but, rather to those “weak countries:” 
the U.S. seems to want to limit the intake of visitors from such 
countries. I received countless reports about unsubstantiated visa 
denials in Croatia, for example, and now a friend of mine, and a 
coordinator of the Art Therapy workshop for Kids at the Raccoon 
Space (http://balkansnet.org/prostor.html) was refused a U.S. 
student visa in Macedonia. That happened despite she has a valid I-
20 from a New York University’s Tisch School of Arts, at which she 
is enrolled. Reportedly, only 70% of those perfectly eligible actually 
gets a U.S. visa in Macedonia. There is obviously no need for too 
many Macedonians visiting the U.S. all at once, is there?! As she 
was told by the barbaric and ignorant clerk at the U.S. consulate in 
Skopje: "You already have a Bachelor's Degree, Associate Degree 
and now you even want a Masters Degree!? There is no need for 
you to continue with your studies!"

Therefore it is only satisfying to hear that the INS was forced to fly 
deported asylum-seeker back from Dhaka (Bangladesh).  “The 
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was forced to return a 
deported Bangladeshi man, Mohammad Arif Rashid, from Bangladesh to 
the US after his lawyer sent a letter to the Attorney General John 
Ashcroft stating that a petition requesting the review of his asylum case 
was still pending before the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Rashid, 26, 
originally from Dhaka, Bangladesh, arrived at Los Angeles International 
Airport (LAX) on August 21, 2001 with a British passport. One 
immigration official found his passsport "suspicious" and detained him 
at Lancaster Immigration Jail. Rashid applied for political asylum during 
his detention but was denied. The INS also turned down his appeal. 
Mehdi Hasan, Rashid's family friend who resides in Los 
Angeles, assisted him in an appeal to the 9th Circuit. Rashid's lawyer 
Garris Sarin filed a petition for review of the case by April 29, the due 
date. However, Rashid was suddenly deported on June 22--one of many 
deported this summer over minor visa violations. The office of the 
attorney general responded to Sarin's letter challenging the deportation 
by asking the INS to "show cause." The INS could not prove that it has 
sufficient cause to deport Rashid, and was forced to return him to the 
United States. “		
(http://www.indypressny.org, Subuhi Jiwani) 

Conclusion: the U.S. will have to work harder on regaining the right 
to claim what it claims for itself, because less and less people 
around the world, bad or good, foreign or not are taking that claim 
for granted.

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